This morning's paper

Out of the dozens of websites I visit regularly and the hundreds I might visit in a week, exactly one seriously slows or crashes my browser every single time, and that's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's. A question for my fellow Mac/ Safari users: Do you get that, too, or is it just me? Anyway, here's what I found interesting:

• Jim Stingl is on the money today.

  No one is asking anyone to change religious beliefs about homosexuality, but please don't confuse your faith and what everyone else should do. No church would be required to marry gays.
  
  We're talking about equal rights for all citizens. We're talking about allowing gays and lesbians to have their unions recognized by the state and protected by the law.
  
  That's stabilizing, not threatening.

  
  
• This is just asking for trouble, and seems like Walker: Tosa Ranger is packing a heretofore-unfriendly ethics board with the people who got him elected in the first place.
• In another "Dog Bites Man" headline moment (yesterday's was "GOP candidate Walker says he'll pursue tax freeze, cut spending"), we learn that "Lobbyists often help lawmakers draft bills." This is part of why the system's broken: While it's true that your average lawmaker is not going to be well-versed enough in the arcana of everything to write all the laws they have to, I believe that any group registered to lobby on a bill must not be involved in the crafting of the language of that bill. That seems self-evidently reasonable, especially given the recent examples cited:

  • Officials from Wisconsin Right to Life were given copies by a Republican author of draft legislation that would protect health care workers' right to object on moral grounds to performing certain procedures. Wisconsin Right to Life officials not only provided the drafting instructions to the bill, but worked with the bill drafter at the Legislative Reference Bureau to influence its content.
    
  • An attorney and lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin suggested changes to the Democratic author of a proposal to provide emergency contraception to rape victims; the author passed her suggestions to the bill drafter.
    
  • A lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union and other community advocates were part of a "Health Care Work Group" that came up with legislation introduced by Democrats to require the next session of the Legislature to develop a plan to provide health care to all Wisconsin residents.

  It doesn't matter that I tend to like Planned Parenthood and SEIU; their actions here crossed a line, a line willingly blurred by "business as usual" in a capitol that smells more corrupt every day. (Also recall that for that first example, WRL not only wrote much of the bill, they were the only group to lobby for it--and it passed anyway.)

McIlheranWatch will be later today.