What a hit piece by the Capital Times today. You can read the entire partisan propaganda piece here but the gist is that they’re all bent out of shape because the Attorney General decided to uphold the state constitution and not defend the state’s domestic partner registry. It seems they would have rather he ignored the majority of Wisconsin that voted to amend our state constitution and instead side with the special interest groups behind the Democrats. Funny how they see the “mainstream” as those who support the registry although clearly a majority of Wisconsin voted to defend marriage. Now who is playing partisan politics here?

Not content to see the people’s voices ignored on the domestic registry issue, they also blast Van Hollen for trying to clean up the blatant fraud in the last election by groups such as Acorn. In the Capital Times’ view, wanting to stop Acorn from fraudulently registering voters was “to deny the franchise to voters who were likely back Democrat Barack Obama”. Again, the CapTimes completely misses the real point – Van Hollen was protecting the franchise for real, honest voters. The only thing I will agree with them on is that stopping Acorn would be deny fraudulent votes for Democrats, but I don’t think that’s what they meant.

As Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen has been consistent in standing up for the rights of the citizens of Wisconsin and defending our constitution.  Rather than a hit piece in the Capital Times, he should be recognized for the excellent job he has done for the people of Wisconsin.  Instead we should asking why the Democrats put our state in the place of having to defend itself in a lawsuit in the first place.  That is the real travesty of this whole episode.  The Capital Times continues to show the worst of what happens when the media becomes a propaganda machine for a single party.

Here’s an interesting article from the Capital Times.  As much as they promote liberal Democrat policies for the rest of us in the state of Wisconsin, apparently they don’t like it so much when the same people they’ve supported deny them access to what should be public information. 

While I applaud them for recognizing Governor Doyle’s poor record on transparency and for recognizing that it’s the Republicans leading the charge on opening these records to the public, they just couldn’t resist a cheap shot.  In what otherwise struck me as an honest, balanced editorial on problems in the Doyle Administration there just had to be one paragraph blasting Republicans.  According to the Capital Times, Republicans “have little interest in open or honest government. After all, these are the same people who defended former Vice President Dick Cheney's secrecy and abuses of power.”

First of all, it’s intellectually dishonest to paint all members of any party with the same brush.  To claim Republicans have little interest in honest government is weak and unfounded.  If I were in Kindergarten my response might be “I know you are but what am I?”  Politicians in both parties have had problems in the past and I suspect there will be members of both parties that have problems in the future.  Remind me again where and when all the wrangling on the current state budget was happening?  It was in the darkness of night, behind closed doors, controlled by the Democrats.   The target of this article in fact is a Democrat so given those two situations I suppose it would be fair to say that Democrats have little interest in open and honest government? 

Secondly, to compare Doyle’s antics in Wisconsin to the former Vice President is comparing apples to oranges.  They’re not in the same league.  The Vice President's handlling of national security and other critically important policies is just not like remembering to file your travel receipts in a timely manner (or at all).  The attempted comparison smacks of the Madison City Council’s repeated attempts to impeach the President and stop the war in Iraq.  It’s just silly.

To borrow a phrase, the Capital Times may be hypocrites but when they’re investigating Doyle’s abuses they’re useful hypocrites.