1. Republicans Lied to the people of Wisconsin:
2/7/12 - Jeff Fitzgerald and Scott Fitzgerald:
Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, and his brother, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, told The Associated Press in an email that Republicans developed the district lines properly.
August 1, 2012 not so much:
Newly released documents show that Wisconsin legislative Republicans talked privately about using the redistricting process to keep GOP incumbents from losing elections.
2. Republicans lied to a judge and ignored a court order:
Emails showing the internal debates among Republican lawyers were released this week after Senate Democrats gained the majority and took hold of the legal file and made them available to reporters. The files take up three banker boxes and several computer discs, and Democrats are putting them online so the public can easily view them.
Some of the emails appear never to have been released before. If they were not, it could spell legal woes for Republicans because of a raft of court orders to release material earlier this year. During that earlier fight over records, a panel of federal judges fined attorneys for lawmakers about $17,500 for filing frivolous motions to block the release of records.
"I have some very serious concerns about whether the Legislature was forthcoming about the documents they produced and the representations they made to the court," said Peter Earle, an attorney for immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, which sued over the maps.
Earle and Doug Poland, an attorney for a group of Democrats who also sued over the maps, said they did not recall seeing the two email chains in which Troupis, McLeod and others discuss citizenship. Earle and Poland are checking whether they had been produced during the lawsuit.
"They appear to go right to the heart of the Voting Rights Act claims," Poland said. "It's hard to believe we would have missed something like that."
Troupis, McLeod and another attorney involved in the case did not respond to questions Thursday on whether the material had been previously released.
3. Republicans have absolutely no problem wasting taxpayers money if it helps keep them in power:
4. Then followed this all up with a massive dose of hypocrisy: Scott Fitzgerald seriously asked Mark Miller to release all of the redistricting documents??The state paid Voces $185,500 because it lost the case and is in negotiations with the group Poland represents over paying its legal fees. All told, taxpayers have paid $1.6 million so far to draw the maps and contend with litigation.
And this is just one issue! Imagine what they are doing that we do NOT know about!
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