Sunday, November 13, 2011

Mountains Out Of Molehills And Molehills Out Of Mountains

Charlie Sykes touts another "breaking story" from the crack reporters propagandists at Media Trackers and at the MacGuyver Institute.  This time the story has to deal with some knucklehead who made a stupid off-the-cuff comment on Facebook about killing Scott Walker.

Keep in mind that there is no specific plan on how the alleged assassin-wannabe would go about the deed, strengthening the point that it was more of a vent than an actual threat.

Now compare that to the story at Mother Jones, where a group of thugs have actual plans on how they are going to try to tamper the recall effort by committing fraud in misrepresenting themselves and then destroying the ballots they have signed.

So how serious is this threat?  The article explains:
Michael Maistelman, a Wisconsin attorney and election law expert who reviewed screenshots of the comments, says the postings could raise serious legal issues if the plan is to tamper with official recall petitions. "If a person fraudulently solicits recall petitions and then destroys those petitions, they will probably go to jail," Maistelman says. "The law is very clear on this."

[UDPATE]: Reid Magney, a spokesman from Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board, says destroying or defacing an official recall petition would violate state law. (Here's the relevant statute.) Such a violation, he adds, would be a class I felony in Wisconsin, which carries a maximum fine of $10,000 and up to three-and-a-half years in jail.
Somehow, I don't think it pays to wait for Media Trackers or MacGuyver to cover this story. They simply don't deal with reality.

Cross posted at Whallah!

1 comment:

  1. And they call union workers a bunch of "thugs". Go figure.

    ReplyDelete