Old habits are hard to break, aren’t they?

Gov. Doyle’s veto pen may have brought back to life the so-called Franken­stein veto, though the res­ur­rec­tion may have been inadvertent.

LFB direc­tor Bob Lang said in the agen­cies ini­tial review of the Doyle’s vetoes, a par­tial veto of a pro­vi­sion on a study of inter­me­di­ate care facil­i­ties for the men­tally retarded struck parts of three sen­tences to cre­ate a new one. That use of the veto would appear to be con­trary to the April 2008 state con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment, Lang said.

Lang said that the vio­la­tion was likely inad­ver­tent. (The memo on the veto can be viewed here.)

As passed by the Assem­bly and Sen­ate, the pro­vi­sion required the DHS Sec­re­tary to appoint a com­mit­tee to study the need for and preser­va­tion of the care facil­i­ties. The legislature’s ver­sion required the study be sub­mit­ted to the JFC by Dec. 1.

Doyle’s par­tial veto nar­rowed the scope of the study, elim­i­nated the com­mit­tee, and deletes the Dec. 1 report­ing date.

Lang advised the JFC that a legal opin­ion should be sought, but said a over­ride was not the best route.

He said the appar­ent vio­la­tion of the con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment would “ren­der the veto inop­er­a­ble” and that the bud­get would revert to the lan­guage in the doc­u­ment approved by the Legislature.

I’m not a Wis­con­sin state con­sti­tu­tional scholar, but often I play one on this blog, but wouldn’t it just be more cor­rect to assume the entire por­tion of the bud­get he com­bined three sen­tences into one is vetoed?  If you actu­ally read the veto (below), you can see Doyle’s cre­at­ing pol­icy never before agreed upon by the leg­is­la­ture — the rea­son for the “Franken­stein Veto” in the first place — while at the same time, elim­i­nat­ing passed pol­icy; which in the legal sense is a veto.

Per se, it’s safe to say the Governor’s intent was to veto that which the leg­is­la­ture passed in full ses­sion.  It’s safe then to assume the best course of action would be for a double-nullification: One back­ing the ini­tial veto, and another elim­i­nat­ing the new policy.

The leg­is­la­ture can always re-pass a law doing exactly what the bill was sup­posed to do before the ille­gal veto was written.

The actual veto is here.

Most of us have a par­ent or two who will give you ‘that look’ when you know you’re in trou­ble with them.  It may or may not be the infa­mous “Evil Eye” of gypsy leg­end, but you know what I’m talk­ing about.

Appar­ently Obama has the same sort of thing, but it’s reserved for heads of state and reporters who ask tough questions.

As the sum­mer begins, White House watch­ers have spot­ted a new look by Pres­i­dent Obama: The Evil Eye!

Staffers have joked about the men­ac­ing glance, which comes when the pres­i­dent meets with world lead­ers who are not aligned with his pro­gres­sive view.

White House pho­tog­ra­phers have cap­tured the “evil eye” in recent weeks, dur­ing ses­sions with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribev.

Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni got hit with the commander’s mal­oc­chio last week in the Oval office.

And at least one White House reporter has been on the receiv­ing end of the dag­gers dur­ing a press conference.

No word if it looks any­thing like this.

Well worth the read is today’s edi­to­r­ial in the Green Bay Press-Gazette on the state bud­get signed yes­ter­day by Gov­er­nor Jim Doyle — a wholly-owned sub­sidiary of WEAC — in which they get tired of Doyle’s near seven-year blame game on the who’s really at fault at the budget.

What’s the old say­ing about point­ing at some­one else?  ‘For that one fin­ger you have pointed at some­one else, you have three point­ing back at you.’

In a prac­tice that dates back at least as far as for­mer Gov. Tommy Thompson’s admin­is­tra­tion, Wis­con­sin has been oper­at­ing under a Ponzi scheme of a state bud­get that rou­tinely passes some spend­ing along to the next two-year cycle — pre­sum­ing the money will be there to spend in two years. The inten­tion of this “struc­tural deficit” is to make the bud­get look bal­anced, even though a busi­ness oper­at­ing under gen­er­ally accepted account­ing pro­ce­dures would show buck­ets of red ink.

Doyle is not the first gov­er­nor to gam­ble with tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars. But he has now had nearly seven years in office to cor­rect the fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­ity of the past, and he can no longer blame Thomp­son, for­mer Gov. Scott McCal­lum or even Wall Street.

For bet­ter or for worse, this bud­get is entirely the respon­si­bil­ity of Doyle and his Demo­c­ra­tic col­leagues who hold a major­ity in both houses. When Smoke-Free Wis­con­sin — one of Doyle’s biggest friends in Madi­son — inquires how the bud­get can raise taxes on smok­ers $300 mil­lion while cut­ting suc­cess­ful anti-smoking pro­grams by 55 per­cent, Doyle can’t blame Thomp­son or the real estate markets.

Doyle frankly has lost on his bet play­ing Tommy Thompson’s game of “rack up spend­ing, rack up bor­row­ing, have the econ­omy bail you out.”  Frankly, if it weren’t for his per­sonal charisma and eco­nomic tax rev­enue of the Tech Boom, Thomp­son very well may have been fac­ing a sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to the one Doyle is now. And as a budget-watcher since 2001, you could tell for­mer Gov­er­nor McCal­lum was the first loser of this gam­ble in the post-Thompson era.

It’s amaz­ing for how much these two men [Doyle and Thomp­son] hate and loathe each other, that they are mirror-images of each other as polit­i­cal operators.

In 2006, Doyle was able to wrap Mark Green in with ‘the mess of DC’ and other fac­tors to win his re-election and blame on his bud­getary prob­lems.  He’s not going to have the lux­ury of that in 2010.  Seri­ously, will he have the stones to blame the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion and a Democratically-controlled Con­gress on Wisconsin’s eco­nomic and bud­getary problems?

If so, bring the pop­corn for the show as the DC-based Chicago Alin­skyites train their guns on Wisconsin’s Great­est Momma’s Boy.

And for those Democ­rats like Scot Ross at the ever-decreasing in influ­ence (and bud­get) One Wis­con­sin Now, want to hold on to their dreams of “two years of con­tin­ued Bush-blaming to save them in 2010,” I seri­ously hope and pray the dream pays well.  We live in an Amer­ica which has been so trans­formed by the 22-minute sit­u­a­tion com­edy and microwave it wants answers and solu­tions 20 min­utes ago.

Excuses and a blame game aren’t going to cut it.  We need grown ups in Madi­son, and cur­rently, you won­der if there are more than five on either side of the aisle.

Funny, I leave blog­ging in 2007 just as this guy’s trial wrapped up.  I return in 2009 and I might have another one to cover.

Not my idea of a great ‘Wel­come Back Present’ if you ask me…

Attor­neys for Steven Avery, who was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out pos­si­bil­ity of parole for killing a pho­tog­ra­pher, filed a court motion Mon­day seek­ing a new trial.

A jury in March 2007 found Avery guilty of killing 25-year-old Teresa Hal­bach at his Man­i­towoc County home on Hal­loween 2005.

Avery denied the charges and his attor­neys argued that law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tors planted evi­dence against him.

In a sep­a­rate trial, Avery’s teen nephew, Bren­dan Dassey, also was found guilty of killing the Calumet County woman.

The basis for the request for a new trial for Avery is the trial judge’s refusal to allow evi­dence impli­cat­ing other pos­si­ble suspects.

Avery, now 46, is the sec­ond per­son to be con­victed of a seri­ous crime after being freed from prison through DNA test­ing and the first such per­son to be sub­se­quently con­victed of killing some­one, accord­ing to the national Inno­cence Project.

Avery per­son­al­ized efforts to free wrongly con­victed pris­on­ers in Wis­con­sin when he was released from prison on Sept. 11, 2003, after hav­ing served 18 years. He was the first Wis­con­sin pris­oner freed by the Wis­con­sin Inno­cence Project, which used DNA tests to link another man to the assault that put Avery in prison.

I’ll go over my archives from the blog’s ear­lier incar­na­tion later tonight — their on 4 MS Word doc­u­ments on an exter­nal hard drive I own — to see if I have any ear­lier posts about any rul­ings sur­round­ing evi­dence being refused for sub­mi­tal at trial.

This is the first time cov­er­ing this story I’ve every heard of that charge by any defense team for Avery that Man­i­towc Co. Judge Patrick Willis denied such a request.

UPDATE: The Man­i­towoc Herald-Times Reporter and other Gan­nett Papers-Wisconsin have the details of what the court fil­ing will focus on.  (Once again, I appear I’ll be focus­ing on the work of Apple­ton Post-Crescent’s John Lee; who did a hell of a job dur­ing the first trial, for the bulk of any Avery Trial II [Dear Lord] cov­er­age to come.)

Steven Avery should have been allowed to show that other peo­ple, includ­ing his two broth­ers, had the motive and oppor­tu­nity to kill Teresa Hal­bach when she was mur­dered Oct. 31, 2005, his attor­neys said in court doc­u­ments filed Mon­day in Manitowoc.

Avery’s appeal will be heard by Wisconsin’s 2nd Cir­cuit Court of Appeals.

We go local once again with Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

With the New York Sen­ate on the verge of a state con­sti­tu­tional cri­sis (Why has Pat­ter­son not announced a Lt. Gov­er­nor again?), you’d think a story like this would be on the back burner.

But then again, if Tommy Thomp­son, Mike Huck­abee, or any other 2008 ex-Presidential con­tender was mak­ing noise about a guber­na­to­r­ial run, it’d be news too.

Oh, my opin­ion: Run Rudy Run!

Seri­ously, who of the SCOTUS-watchers didn’t see this com­ing?

The Supreme Court ruled Mon­day that white fire­fight­ers in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied pro­mo­tions because of their race, revers­ing a deci­sion that high court nom­i­nee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a pro­mo­tion exam because no African-Americans and only two His­panic fire­fight­ers were likely to be made lieu­tenants or cap­tains based on the results, the court said Mon­day in a 5–4 deci­sion. The city said that it had acted to avoid a law­suit from minorities.

The rul­ing could alter employ­ment prac­tices nation­wide and make it harder to prove dis­crim­i­na­tion when there is no evi­dence it was intentional.

“Fear of lit­i­ga­tion alone can­not jus­tify an employer’s reliance on race to the detri­ment of indi­vid­u­als who passed the exam­i­na­tions and qual­i­fied for pro­mo­tions,” Jus­tice Anthony Kennedy said in his opin­ion for the court. He was joined by Chief Jus­tice John Roberts and Jus­tices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dis­sent, Jus­tice Ruth Bader Gins­burg said the white fire­fight­ers “under­stand­ably attract this court’s sym­pa­thy. But they had no vested right to pro­mo­tion. Nor have other per­sons received pro­mo­tions in pref­er­ence to them.”

Jus­tices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg’s dis­sent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Like any­thing else in Amer­ica, the Court is a polit­i­cal ani­mal, who’s to say if the four dis­sentors were view­ing this deci­sion by the way they see the law, or as cover for Sotomayor.

First Hon­duras, now Argentina.  Good to see Latin Amer­ica is cor­rect­ing its mis­take ear­lier this decade when it elected all those left-wingers to power.

Argentina’s first cou­ple suf­fered a stun­ning set­back in an elec­tion seen as a ref­er­en­dum on their polit­i­cal dynasty, los­ing con­trol of both houses of Congress.

The loss weak­ened Pres­i­dent Cristina Fernandez’s gov­ern­ment two years before she leaves office by dimin­ish­ing her abil­ity to push leg­is­la­tion through Con­gress and dam­ag­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of her Per­o­nist party as it seeks direc­tion ahead of 2011’s pres­i­den­tial race.

Fernandez’s hus­band, for­mer Pres­i­dent Nestor Kirch­ner, lost a bid for a seat from Buenos Aires province. The set­backs could kick off a power strug­gle within the party, which Kirch­ner has headed since 2007.

Kirch­ner con­ceded defeat early Mon­day after trail­ing Fran­cisco De Nar­vaez by 32.2 per­cent to 34.5 per­cent with 91 per­cent of the bal­lots counted.

Make sure to check out “Fausta’s Blog” later on in the day.  I’m sure she’s going to have her usual stel­lar wrap-up of all the events in Latin Amer­i­can pol­i­tics she always does.

As we all watch Chris “cap­per” Lieben­thal slow decent into mad­ness and obses­sion con­tinue — prod­ded by who­ever at WisOpin­ion thinks his daily dia­tribes are worth pro­mot­ing — we wit­ness these really stu­pid ques­tions asked by an oth­er­wise rel­a­tively smart man.

Chris, Ahab by now would have called you ‘@#&%$* up.’

If Walker gets his way, and there is a fur­lough, and then there is a sur­plus at the end of the year, do the work­ers get a refund of their lost wages which were wrong­fully taken? Or does Walker get to keep the money and claim it as an in-kind con­tri­bu­tion on his cam­paign finan­cial statement?

Chris, why the long face for your poten­tial fur­lough?  I mean, Doyle’s about to sign a bud­get which puts entire state employ­ees on a fur­lough.  Where’s the crit­i­cism of that?

Oh that’s right, been in a pic­ture with “Big Jim,” wouldn’t be cool to speak ill of “Wisconsin’s Great­est Momma’s Boy” after that huh?

My finally point on the first ‘ques­tion;’ who the hell are you kid­ding?  It’s nearly July, it would take an act of God to turn this econ­omy around to even get a sur­plus at any level of government.

Sec­ondly, you know your pro­posed option in ques­tion two is like a fed­eral felony right?  The type of legal mael­strom that would drop down on any­one who does what you even sug­gest is going to be nasty.

Dude, thought we all knew lawyers on each side of the respec­tive Cheddarsphere.