We discuss the fact the Wisconsin Republicans will likely block new vaccine policies for students—not for COVID but for chickenpox and meningitis. Then we talk about three of the embarrassing pieces written about Dan Kelly just this week alone.
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On Tuesday, lawmakers in Madison heard more than nine hours of heated testimony over vaccine mandates for students, but not for COVID. For meningitis and chicken pox. Yes, meningitis. The disease that causes swelling of the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord. Specifically, bacterial meningitis which can cause life-threatening complications.
Republican members of a joint rules committee are signaling they would block Gov. Evers new policies that require seventh graders to get vaccinated against meningitis and create new rules for chickenpox vaccinations in school-age children.
We discuss the reasoning behind blocking vaccines that have been around for 17+ years. Is it really because of parental choice and “freedom” or is it because some GOP lawmakers have a vendetta against Wisconsin’s chief medical officer, Ryan Westergaard?
It seems as though the Protesiewitz camp is pretty settled on their anti-Kelly messaging focusing on his abortion stance. But, after reading some of the damning articles that were published this week, it seems like there is a lot to be said about his legal competency as well.
In the Wisconsin State Journal, lawyers Steph Tai and Tahirih Lee remind readers that, of the 32 opinions published by Dan Kelly when he sat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, 21 drew at least one dissenting opinion. They write “That is a shocking proportion of cases in which then-Justice Kelly failed to write an opinion that was persuasive to his colleagues.”
They go on to outline multiple examples of when other conservative justices, wrote dissents fro Kelly’s opinion, not because of ideological or political reasons but because it was poor legal reasoning.
Over at Urban Milwaukee, Bruce Murphy outlines why Walker appointing Kelly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2016 was such a bizarre choice out of the 15,000 lawyers he could have chosen from. Here’s a snippet from the piece that feels like an important thing to highlight, “Kelly has portrayed himself as someone who will “apply the law as it is written” but his book declares that “all authority” comes not from the U.S. Constitution but from God, suggesting he will be a Christian judicial activist.”
Finally, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice dug up some of Kelly’s now-deleted blog posts where he once argued that abortion promotes “sexual libertinism”, that government assistance is “stealing”, and that the push to allow same-sex couples to marry was about, “using the power of the state to compel others to legitimize the same-sex couples’ personal arrangements. But that forced legitimization is itself an illegitimate exercise of state power.”
Turns out, Wisconsin kids’ fourth favorite field trip location can actually tell us a lot about global warming in the past and the future. Researchers have studied the stalagmite at the Cave of the Mounds and have found strong strong evidence that sudden, global warming events recorded via core samples from the Greenland Ice Sheet reached well into lower latitudes, specifically Wisconsin and the Midwest, between 48,000 and 68,000 years ago.
But Kristin can’t say “stalagmite” without thinking of dancing her cares away *clap* *clap*
Reminder: There are 27 Days Until Wisconsin’s Spring Election.
