The pleasure of your company

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on political incivility.

"Another attempt at bipartisanship has taken root among everyday citizens in the Madison area.

"A liberal couple and conservative couple who had been having regular dinners to exchange their views decided in August to invite others. About 70 people showed up at the most recent meeting of what they're calling Reach Out Wisconsin."

Our liberal friends, including liberal friends in Madison, appear to share an utter lack of inclination to turn dinner into anything along these lines.

Also at Reach Out Wisconsin's website, you can read its mission statement. There is no vision statement, as such, but its vision of evening meetings is described in detail.

The Top 10 reasons that Top 10 lists are so popular with journalists, readers

Mallary Jean Tenore at Poynter

Spelling does not take precedence

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] says "Justices should shut out the political clamor and rule the way logic and precedence [sic] demand - in favor of the law." One of the precedents is a Court of Appeals decision with an opinion by Judge Laurence Silberman."The mandate [for individuals to purchase health insurance] 'certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than ... that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family,' he wrote." This is a reference to Wickard v. Filburn, though summarized in a way that seems to leave room for death panels in the Department of Agriculture.

Update: Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge explains in a New York Times op-ed that

"Opponents of the new mandate [to purchase health insurance] complain that if Congress can force us to buy health insurance, it can force us to buy anything. They frequently raise the specter that Congress might require us to buy broccoli in order to make us healthier. However, that fear would remain even if you accepted their constitutional argument, because their argument would allow Congress to force us to buy broccoli as long as it was careful to phrase the law to say that 'anyone who has ever engaged in any activity affecting commerce must buy broccoli.'"

He goes on to provide reassurance that

"There are, of course, limits to what Congress can do under the commerce clause. If it tried to enact a law requiring Americans to eat broccoli, that would be likely to violate bodily integrity and the right to liberty."

Via Mickey Kaus, who comments,

"it’s a little suspicious–and surely not a selling point–that under Elhauge’s argument the only limits on government would be the rights — like 'bodily integrity' and privacy — that liberal lawyers have dreamed up but not the limit — i.e. whether or not something is 'interstate commerce' – the Founders dreamed up."

A patter of Bourgeois

Father Roy Bourgeois was in Milwaukee to speak at this year's Call to Action conference, Annysa Johnson reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"This year, he received a second 'canonical warning' from the Maryknolls, saying he would be expelled from the order if he did not publicly recant. The move prompted more than 200 priests, including some in Wisconsin, to sign an open letter supporting Bourgeois' right to speak his conscience.

"Catholic teaching holds that only men are called to the priesthood. Pope John Paul II reinforced that position in a 1994 apostolic letter, saying the church has no authority to ordain women."

Which leaves the potential for parishioners to be asked to donate time and money for programs to spread and reinforce Catholic teaching, while a priest in the same parish says his conscience demands he publicly contradict Catholic teaching. And continue on the payroll.

P.S. Here's the conference schedule.

Federal hiring proves to be recession-proof

Tom Curry reports at MSNBC.

"While overall payroll employment in the United States has fallen by nearly five percent since the official start of the recession in December 2007, there are 12 percent more federal workers today than there were when the downturn started, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics."

and

"going back to the Bush presidency, a report from the Congressional Research Service found last April that that 'the federal workforce grew by more than 350,000 employees between 2000 (the low point during the last 12 years) and 2010... .'"

(via KausFiles)

Last Round-up

"Nino's closes its doors after 41 years: Local streak house was last in restaurant chain", Josh Lintereur reports in the Sheboygan Press.