Wisconsin state Democratic senator won’t reveal his location but believes all the Democratic senators have left the state.
The Senate sergeant-at-arms has completed a search of the Capitol building and having found no Democratic senators it’s not clear what he’ll do next. Also unclear is how aggressive the state patrol will be in trying to round up the recalcitrant Democrats — although if they’re all out of state then the state patrol is handcuffed, as it were.
If you’re a fugitive Democratic senator from Wisconsin on the lam out of state, we want to talk to you. Email us at the tips line at the top of this page.
Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) portrays his union-busting plan as an austerity measure in the midst of a severe state budget crisis. But if you step back for a moment and think about it, taking away state employees’ collective bargaining rights is unlikely to pay immediate short-term dividends for the state budget. If you take another step back and look at what — or more to the point who — created this budget crisis in the first place, it starts to show what a naked union-busting move Walker is making.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has come out with a statement in support of Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting ways in Wisconsin.
But keep in mind the larger context here.
Wisconsin isn’t the only place where there’s a showdown over collective bargaining for public employees. Brian Beutler surveys the national landscape, including Boehner’s home state of Ohio, where Republican Gov. John Kasich is backing a bill similar to the one that has sparked protests in Madison.
Milwaukee TV station WISN has tracked down some of Wisconsin’s Democratic senators at the Clock Tower Resort and Conference Center in Rockford, Ill.
We couldn’t help but notice that the hotel bar there is the “Tilted Kilt,” whose logo features a St. Pauli girl gone bad.
Fancy digs.
Late Update: Illinois readers emailing in to inform us that the Tilted Kilt is a regional chain that’s basically a knock-off of Hooters.
Later Update: Late word is that the Democratic senators initially all met up at the Clock Tower Resort — a rendezvous point of sorts — but have since gone their separate ways, although not back to Wisconsin.
Last Update: Clearly I’m not up to speed on the proliferation of Hooters-like chains. TPM Reader SG gives me the smackdown: “Duuuude, that is not just a local or regional chain – they’re everywhere. But kudos to you for not knowing!”
Our Ryan Reilly headed over to today’s meeting of the DC chapter of the Federalist Society, where Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) was the featured speaker. This line from Ryan’s dispatch caught my eye: “Americans are ‘on our knees in front of China for credit,’ DeMint told the mostly conservative attendees feasting on fried rice and fortune cookies at Tony Chang’s restaurant in the Chinatown section of D.C.”
Eric Kleefeld tracks down a Wisconsin Democratic state senator who partly explains the caucus’ out-of-state odyssey today, which included a short-lived rendezvous at the Clock Tower Resort and Conference Center in Rockford, Ill., before a reporter sniffed them out and sent them scurrying in different directions.
This week the sun released its largest solar flare in four years:
Wisconsin Democratic state Sen. Lena Taylor’s Facebook status: “brb.”