Prosser's Hometown Newspaper Endorses Kloppenburg

Appleton Post Crescent endorses JoAnn Kloppenburg in today's paper.  Here are the Money Quotes:

"So, yes, you have a lot to ponder before April 5.

But here's something else that might have been missed amid Wisconsin's recent political ugliness. In 2006, Prosser said that while he was a legislative leader, staffers who worked under his direction did campaign work. He also acknowledged that in his interview with The P-C on March 18.

Here's a member of the highest court in Wisconsin, whose judges are expected to possess unimpeachable integrity, admitting he condoned illegal activity as an elected official.
In a brief filed by the attorney of former state Rep. Scott Jensen, a Prosser protege who was charged with three felony counts of misconduct in office (in a December 2010 plea deal, Jensen pleaded no-contest to a misdemeanor charge), Prosser said he basically did the same thing that caused Jensen to be charged.

Prosser's statement was presented in Jensen's defense. He's saying, as others said, that's the way business is done in Madison. That's what Jensen's job was about, too.

It's illegal. It was illegal when Prosser was in charge and it was illegal when Jensen was in charge.

As a taxpayer, what do you think? Should your tax dollars, which were used to fund the caucuses until they were disbanded in the wake of a scandal, have gone toward campaigning?  Only someone who works — or worked — in the Capitol would think taxpayers would go for that.

Again, it was against the law. You'd think Prosser would acknowledge that, even if he didn't agree. But he told The P-C that "it was a different era and public expectations were quite different." Prosser said that the law "had never been interpreted that way."

So, what do we do? Let bygones be bygones?

We can't. The Post-Crescent endorses JoAnne Kloppenburg."