"Poll Watcher Militia" was a hoax.

Predictable, of course.

The original page made derogatory statements about liberals and urged people to harass voters who signed the Walker recall petition who were sex offenders, tax dodgers or anyone with an outstanding warrant....

The question is why anyone fell for it, though I'm sure many of those who spread the word about it knew or suspected it was fake but took advantage of the opportunity to manipulate the anti-conservative hatred.

ADDED: The author of the linked Capital Times article, Steven Elbow, commenting in his own thread, tries to make up for his gullibility by saying that whoever put up the page was trying to encourage other people to harass people who had signed the Walker recall petition:

The author of the “militia” webpage knows that airing his ugly views is risky – drawing outrage from anyone with a sense of fairness and decency, and causing embarrassment to those who share those views but have to walk that thin line between the mainstream and the extreme to maintain their political credibility. So instead of putting his name behind his views, he airs them anonymously. Whether he considers it a hoax or not is irrelevant. The page espouses the views of its creator. More worrisome is it taps into that dark current of hate that drives today’s politics, normalizing threats, violence and racism. And that scares people. That’s why this story was reported, and why it resonated with readers.

Elbow is making a big assumption! We don't know who put up the webpage, so we can only speculate why that person did it. It's at least as likely that a Walker hater put the website up in a scheme to propagate the opinion that conservatives are out to suppress the vote. It's also possible that it was a "pure" troll, committed to neither side, but hoping to get some fun out of watching lefties and righties go at each other. Isn't that what the use of the "Trollface" meme tends to mean? (You have to click through Elbow's link to the Facebook page to see the deployment of that stock cartoon laughing face.)

Get bent.

Some days the blog has a theme... almost always just by chance. It's delightful to perceive it, so let me share my perception right now. There are 3 posts, and bending is most obvious in the most recent one about how the new iPhone 6 Plus can get bent.

The bending theme also appears in the next post, about the Capital Times's devising a "complex" approach to statistics that shows Mary Burke beating Scott Walker. (When did you stop beating your governor?) In the comments, MadisonMan says — boldface added — "If you're trying to find a particular fact, you can bend statistics in any way you want to find that fact eventually."

Okay, that's 2 out 3, so now it becomes a game to see how the other post of the day can be said to fit the theme. The other post is the one parsing the NYT editorial on Obama's shock-and-awe warmaking in the Middle East. Now, here's where my mind went. And maybe this is because we were joking about male genitalia in the iPhone 6 comments, where EDH said:

Other devices have been released recently that were specifically designed to have a curved frame, including the LG G Flex (pictured). The phone is said to be more comfortable to hold, and easier to place in a back pocket

God faced the same dilemma when designing the penis.

That war post ends quoting Bill Clinton — "... Osama bin Laden... I nearly got him once... I nearly got him. And I could have killed him...."

You see where I'm going?

"Mary Burke is winning... Based on a complex statistical model developed for the Capital Times..."

Lefty newspaper does "complex" stuff.

ADDED: "Complex" was a big hippie word. Wow, man, that's so complex. I remember. Meade remembers. That's all the verification I need for that proposition. Back me up, oldies.

So, then I looked up "complex" in the Oxford English Dictionary, because that's usually what I do when I fixate on a word. One of the oldest uses appears in John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding"(1690)(boldface indicates the part quoted in the OED):

We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which does not wholly consist of them. As simple ideas are observed to exist in several combinations united together, so the mind has a power to consider several of them united together as one idea; and that not only as they are united in external objects, but as itself has joined them together. Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together, I call COMPLEX;—such as are beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe; which, though complicated of various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet are, when the mind pleases, considered each by itself, as one entire thing, signified by one name.

Is Scott Walker's "fixation" on Reagan "creepy"?

The Capital Times writer Paul Fanlund says so, as he identifies "3 Themes" in Scott Walker's just-published book "Unintimidated." The other 2 themes are "He throws even his allies under the bus" and "His egocentricity is just bizarre." This is the Cap Times, appealing its readership of Madison liberals who've been hating Walker for the last 3 years and have been hating Reagan even longer.

On the Reagan "fixation," there's Walker's annual Reagan birthday party (which is also the anniversary of his wedding to his wife Tonette). Here's how Walker describes the party in 2011, which was just before the big Wisconsin protests began.

[On] Saturday, February 12, Tonette and I hosted a dinner at the Executive Residence to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. (I had been in Dallas to see the Packers win the Super Bowl on the sixth, his actual birthday, so we postponed the celebration by a week.) 

Meade and I were reading the book out loud together last night, and at that parenthetical, I said: "Oh, yeah, the protests blotted out all the great afterglow feeling we were having over winning the Super Bowl." That was sad!

Tonette and I host a dinner each year on Reagan’s birthday. We serve his favorite foods— macaroni and cheese casserole, and red, white, and blue Jelly Belly jelly beans— and have musicians perform patriotic songs and Irish music. 

Aw, come on. That's creepy?! That's incredibly sweet. Who gives a party and serves mac-and-cheese and jelly beans? It's beyond unpretentious, and it's just charming and nice. Why shouldn't Republicans celebrate Ronald Reagan, their modern-day icon? And I give Walker credit for putting the celebration on February 6th (or 12th) instead of March 30th (in the style of the Democrats, with their icon JFK (see Rule #8, here)).

It is a wonderful evening, and serves as a reminder for me each year to be hopeful and optimistic just like Ronald Reagan. It happens to be a dual celebration because President Reagan’s birthday is also our wedding anniversary. Tonette jokes that I never forget our wedding anniversary because it is Reagan’s birthday.

Well, isn't that a really low-key and generous way to make your anniversary something that's fun for other people you know? But for Fanlund, that's part of a creepiness profile.

Hey, Fanlund, ever consider whether you're creepy? Maybe Walker seems creepy to you because deep down you know the way you look at him is creepy.

"Solidarity singers hijack Scott Walker's 'Unintimidated' book title."

The Capital Times can't get enough of fawning over Wisconsin protesters. You'd think someone would have noticed that the "hijack" metaphor lacks the intended cuteness on September 11th.

"Using his veto power, Scott Walker could expand vouchers even more."

The Cap Times reports:

With the stroke of his veto pen, Walker could simply cross out the limits when the budget lands on his desk. Although the broad power of the Wisconsin gubernatorial veto has been curtailed somewhat in the past few decades, it remains an effective way to fundamentally rewrite legislation.... 

The cons are obvious: Reneging on the deal could infuriate Republican moderates in the Senate, including Olsen and Senate President Mike Ellis. Working with the moderate wing of his party in the future might become problematic for Walker. In the run-up to his re-election campaign in 2014, he doesn't need to lose GOP support. 

The pros are simple: It would further endear Walker to the national conservative movement and put another feather in the cap he wears as a likely presidential candidate.

"Walker quietly tops list of GOP favorites for White House..."

"Gov. Scott Walker is the sleeping lion in a list of possible Republican candidates for president in 2016, surging to the top of some politicos’ lists who see his scandal-free past as a big boon. Mr. Walker stands above even 'first tier' Republican candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Christ Christie, political analyst Larry Sabato with the University of Virginia said, in a report from The Washington Examiner. That’s because he beat a concerted Democratic Party recall effort — and that sets him apart, and above, Mr. Sabato said."

Says the Madison rag The Capital Times, evincing a little too much devotion to Governor Christie.

"Awful online comments hurt understanding of news, reports local news site filled with awful online comments."

Interview with the UW scientist whose report on the effect of nasty online comments got mocked in The A.V. Report.

I turned my conversation with [Dominique] Brossard to the digital Capital Times....

Her reaction to our plan to scrutinize comments for relevance and taste? “I’m so happy to hear you say this because I’ve been speaking with different people who (think) we should stop allowing comments. I say, look, it’s a great opportunity for us to engage, where well-meaning citizens may have something important to say and can add to the discussion.”

The trick is to figure out who is "well-meaning." Sharp criticism and biting satire should count as "well-meaning." The term we use monitoring comments on this blog — to the extent that we get into the comments, which is always an incomplete process — is "good faith." We get to apply our subjective judgment about that, but it keeps us from drawing the line over notions of "civility." A mainstream newspaper will have trouble being intuitive about the good faith of the very best creative and comical comments, and their monitoring is likely to slide into insipid enforcement of a civil tone, which makes the comments almost pointless. I say almost, because there is some point to the look and the feeling that comments are accepted.

Brossard's "well-meaning" might be the same thing as our "good faith." My commenting instructions  seen above the window where you compose your comments — say:

We value all comments made in good faith. I love different points of view and even edgy modes of expression. What we delete are bad faith comments, comments that we believe have the ulterior motive of destroying the conversation and driving people away from this forum.

Here's the post where I announced the "good faith" standard.

There might be a commenter who impresses us with a clever form of expression, even as he hurls insults. My orientation toward free speech has made me very tolerant of people like that, even when they attack me and the commenters here. I've gone very far defending edgy and harsh expression. That's part of why my new policy is about the good faith/bad faith distinction. That distinction depends on the writer's purpose, and purpose can be hard to discern, especially in clever writers.

"Barack Obama’s decision to base his re-election campaign outside of Washington seems to be working pretty darn well."

"The campaign’s massive, high-rise headquarters in Chicago’s Loop achieves a fine balance between 2008’s hip-casual dorm room (there’s a Ping-Pong table and cheeky homemade signage) and 2012’s systematized Death Star (there are more employees than I have ever seen in a political campaign, with work stations subdivided as ever more employees are added). The place hums from early morning until late at night, designed for maximum efficiency and manifest focus."

This, in Time Magazine, by Mark Halperin, is a particularly silly example of press love for Obama.

Hip-casual dorm room... cheeky homemade signage... systematized Death Star... so embarrassing. Halperin sounds like the new, overeager intern.

"Are public union labor leaders trying to save Scott Walker?"

Paul Fanlund, editor of Madison's venerable (and very liberal) Capital Times, says that many Democrats are asking that question. These Democrats are the Democrats who support Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the recall primary, who don't like the way his Democratic adversary Kathleen Falk is beating up on him, portraying him as insufficiently union-friendly. Barrett's angle is he's more likely to win, and if Walker is the enemy, then ixnay on Barrett criticism.

It's amusingly similar to the Republican primaries, where some people love Santorum because he's more hardcore, and others want Romney, because you've got to win over the moderates, and they really don't much like the hardcore of your party.

Fanlund seems to spend a lot of time listening to Democratic State Senator Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who has decided to support Barrett:

While loath to criticize Falk... Erpenbach’s decision certainly implies he thinks someone not from Dane County would run strongest statewide: “For me personally, the goal is to get him (Walker) out of office before he does any more damage.”

Erpenbach says he has spoken with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people across the state and collective bargaining is only one of many issues on voters’ minds....

Erpenbach aside, my interviews with other Democrats elicit phrases like “labor leaders are blowing it” and are “being selfish.” One says, “What we don’t need is a circular firing squad” during the next month....

Ha ha. This is just like the way the Republican establishment tries to shush the Tea Party. After all the hard ground work is done by a passionate, ideologically committed group, the party insiders move in to claim a valuable political foothold that they never would have fought for personally, and the theory is they're doing everyone a favor because the protest kids just don't look right in mainstream politics.

Kathleen Falk is getting Christine O'Donnelled! She's getting Sharron Angled!

The fake-but-accurate story — smearing Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson — that appeared in Madison's Cap Times last Saturday.

The Cap Times reveals that it published, then took down a story that "falsely said that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were joining state Rep. Steve Nass, R-town of La Grange, in pressuring the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to purge its archives of posters from last year’s protests at the Capitol in Madison."

The story was based on a news release that purportedly came from Nass’ office, but was in fact fabricated by Madison labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki [who] sent the fake release to a staff member who then forwarded it to Associate Editor John Nichols, who wrote the story.

The Capitol Times — "Your Progressive Voice" — in Madison, Wisconsin, put up a poll about the Scott Walker recall.

See? It's over in the sidebar. Keep in mind that the Cap Times is not only based in Madison. It proudly skews to the left and, consequently, attracts an unusually liberal readership. So check out the results:



It's possible that some pro-Walker site has already linked to this poll, and that's why Walker is getting 54% of the vote. (I assume my linking now will have an effect.) But it's startling to see the Cap Timesters going big for Walker like this.

In second place, with 33%, is Russ Feingold, but Russ Feingold has assured us he's not running. I have — at various times — predicted he'll "reluctantly" jump in after playing coy, but I don't think he'll do it unless he feels pretty confident he will win... not just the primary, but win against Walker. And I don't think he's going to get that feeling.

Madisonians — including Police Chief Noble Wray — fret about the new concealed carry law in action.

Our local liberal rag, the Cap Times, displays and magnifies the worrying for its skittish readers.

What really trips Wray's trigger is the lack of a meaningful training requirement. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen prepared rules requiring four hours of training courses, but fellow Republicans thought even that low bar overly onerous and GOP Gov. Scott Walker agreed. Says Wray, "I thought four hours was a bare minimum," adding that almost all state law enforcement officials agree.

What exactly do you do for 4 hours? It seems as though the point of making it 4 hours was to deter people from exercising their rights. That is, it wasn't really to serve the state's legitimate interest in safety, but for the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of the citizen who chooses to carry a gun. (Do you recognize the italicized words? Google them if you don't, especially if you enjoy irony, the exposure of hypocrisy, and fun stuff like that.)

Madison's concealed gun crowd has to be minuscule, I'd guess. After all, it's hard for me to imagine the biomolecular chemistry professor or the pediatric oncologist yearning to tote a concealed sidearm. So how many are seeking permits in Madison?

I love the smug elitism. Madison people are all professors and doctors. Not even just run-of-the-mill professors and doctors. We're a steaming mass of biomolecular chemistry professors and pediatric oncologists. It's those lowlifes from beyond the gleaming city's limits who want guns. Ugh! These benighted folk want to cling to some guns along with their religion. They don't belong here, just like that fiend Scott Walker and all the Republicans in the legislature don't belong here. They are bringing their what's-the-matter-with-Wisconsin values to our beautiful city!

The author of the Cap Times piece — Paul Fanlund — tries to find out how many Madisonians there are among the the 67,000 who have applied for permits and is surprised to learn that it's illegal to disclose that information. Law-abiding gun owners actually have privacy interests the state wants to protect. What a surprise! But it would be so interesting to know what loathsome, Republican-voting communities they came from. Surely not the teeming-with-physicists-and-oncologists Madison!

Fanlund quotes Chief Wray:

"What I can't understand is how come we have not evolved beyond the point that the best way to protect ourselves is a gun? How come we cannot come up with something that is less destructive and less permanent."

I don't know, Chief. I'm pretty evolved myself, being a Madisonian professor, but I don't know. I do have a question for you though: Why haven't the police — the police you lead — eliminated crime in our neighborhoods? Why are there still rapes and robberies? Why are there still gangs? Why haven't your police evolved to the point where you have solved these problems for us? Because, I know that I, personally, would love to depend on government for all my personal protection. How come you cannot come up with something?

In Madison, Wisconsin, "the Occupy movement isn't resonating with people."

Todd Finkelmeyer observes ruefully, in Madison's pathetic newspaper, The Capital Times ("Your Progressive Voice"). He's found one UW student who is into the protest and who "has struggled to find fellow students willing to join him in making a visible and vocal protest on behalf of the youthful 99 percent."

By "the youthful 99 percent," I presume Finkelmeyer means the portion of the 99% that happens to be adult but not yet middle aged. I suppose, depending on how you define young, the percent might be something like 30%. But young people who find themselves at the lower end of the income scale have the least to gripe about. They're just starting out. The question is: Can they move up over the course of their careers? If they are students at a fine university, they ought to think they can or they're wasting their time. Whether making it in America today is easy or hard nowadays, these students are better off studying than protesting. I congratulate the students for their good sense in resisting the protest scene.

But Finkelmeyer chides them:

But in Madison, despite its reputation as a hotbed of student activism — notoriety that dates to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the city served as an epicenter for those protesting the Vietnam War — college students are slow to jump on the Occupy bandwagon.

"From the very beginning of Occupy Madison, from the very first general assembly at Reynolds Park and in the following weeks, there was a noticeable lack of students," says [that one UW student], who in late October helped organize two Occupy UW marches as a member of the Direct Action Committee of Occupy Madison. He had hoped those would turn into weekly on-campus protests, but only 15 people showed up for the second march and no more were held due to a lack of interest.

"I don't think the outreach we did was as good as it could have been, so it didn't grow and Occupy UW has sort of been put on the back burner," says Phillips.

Maybe people don't want to be organized — by others, that is. Maybe the UW students are organized within their own lives and are pursuing an education and aiming toward a career path. Back in the not-so-good good old days of Vietnam protesting, you couldn't just concentrate on getting started on the path to economic well-being. The military draft was staring you in the face.

And, by the way, Finkelmeyer, mixed metaphor alert: "hotbed... epicenter...  bandwagon."

The article goes on and on, with lots of quotes from professors and other politicos who wonder why the students are resisting the pull of protests. The delightfully named Elizabeth Wrigley-Field — "a New York native who is pursuing her Ph.D. in sociology from UW-Madison" — "cautions" us not to "over-generalize" and say that the students are apathetic.

"I think part of the strength of the Occupy movement in most areas is that it's a novelty of sorts... But we already had that here with the occupation of the Capitol (in February and March) and then we had Walkerville...."

So maybe they're not apathetic; they're sick of all the protesting. Or they're passionate about their own individual lives and they need to study to get to a solid place for themselves in this risky economy. That tent-city out on East Washington Avenue is — by contrast — a horrifying alternative. It's irrational to think that hanging around in a parking lot with a bunch of left-wingers hoping for a revolution is going to work out better for you than concentrating on your school work and your job search.

IN THE COMMENTS: sean said:

Somewhat akin to what Prof. Althouse said, my back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that there are about 12 million Americans of college age, of whom perhaps 400,000 go to colleges of the caliber of Wisconsin or better. (The majority, of course, don't go to college at all, at least not to four-year institutions.) So Wisconsin students are in the top 3% of their age group, if not the top 1%, and obviously they aren't disposed to protest on behalf of other people.

And Patrick said:

I had the good fortune of being in Madison on Christmas eve day. As we drove down E. Wash, past the Occupy parking lot, it looked barren, save for some tents. I'd assumed that if they were still "occupying," they'd be up at the Capitol. What sort of impact could they possibly imagine having from that parking lot? "Occupy Parking Lot" just loses whatever zing those clowns ever had. Total failure. They need to "move on."

I responded: "It's the parking lot of what used to be a Don Miller car dealership, so we always call it 'Occupy Don Miller.'"

"Republican bigots and the candidates who encourage hate."

Another dishonest, embarrassing editorial in the venerable Madison rag known as the Capitol Times.

A clue to the clueless: One man booed, the surrounding audience tried to shush him, and the candidates on stage couldn't hear it.

"I believe an individual has the right to use force as a means of protecting themselves, their families, and their homes from aggressors."

So says Wisconsin recall candidate Kim Simac, as quoted in a Capital Times editorial titled "Unlike Simac, Holperin respects the whole Constitution." (Jim Holperin is the Democratic incumbent, representing the Northwoods, where a recall election will take place tomorrow.)

The quote is sound, and I'll bet a lot of people of the Northwoods love it, but the Cap Times is using it to leverage a whole theory that Simac only cares about the Second Amendment.

The pathetic Madison newspaper — does anyone in the Northwoods read it? — begins by joking that Simac is "apparently a graduate of the Sharron Angle School of Constitutional Scholarship" and reminds us that Angle — the Nevadan who tried to unseat Harry Reid in 2010 — once referred to using “Second Amendment solutions” to deal with the excesses of government.  Note, Simac didn't say "Second Amendment solutions." Her quote is about defending life and property from "aggressors," which would make most people think of criminals — attackers and home invaders. If "aggressors" makes you think of the government... you might want to think about joining the Tea Party yourself.

The Cap Times touts Holperin's "record of taking the whole Constitution seriously."

He has championed the right to speak, to assemble and to petition for the redress of grievances. 

Is there any evidence that Simac doesn't respect First Amendment rights? Of course, Holperin has a record: He's been the Northwoods senator for decades. But what has Simac ever done to deserve this smear?

He has worked to protect the right to privacy.

Now, that's a specific aspect of constitutional law that conservatives and liberals disagree on. But it has nothing to do with "the Sharron Angle School of Constitutional Scholarship" and whether one loves some clauses of the Constitution and ignores others. It has to do with how expansively one ought to interpret the Due Process Clause and whether one supports finding constitutional rights when there is no explicit constitutional text. That's a difficult area of constitutional law that is a perennial issue in American political debate. It has nothing to do with Sharron Angle, enthusiasm for gun rights, and the failure to respect the entire Constitution.

The Capital Times — I've said it before — is a rag. It should be ashamed of itself. As we say in Wisconsin: "Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame."

The final 2 Wisconsin recall elections may produce the state's first Tea Party state senator.

The Capitol Times reports:

Kim Simac, the founder of the Northwoods Patriots... is challenging [Democratic incumbent Jim] Holperin...

“It has been on our minds and in our plans for two years now to have someone from the tea party movement in the state Senate,” says Tim Dake, chair of Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, a Tea Party Patriots organization. “If she wins, it is going to be huge.”...

In addition to the new ads hitting radio and TV audiences Wednesday, Simac launched a six-day, 2,000-mile tour of the district that will take her through each of the 11 counties in Senate District 12.

“Our goal all along has been to meet as many people face to face as possible. The voters are the most important in this election,” Simac says on her campaign website. “It was the people in the 12th Senate District who were left without representation when Jim Holperin fled the state. I intend to go to every house I can to tell them personally I won’t abandon them when the times get tough.”

Simac will be driving around the 12th District in her green GMC truck with a campaign sign rigged to the back....

Here's an ad of hers from the end of July, in which, appearing in overalls, Simac makes a point of displaying her lack of wealth, apparently in response to a criticism from Holperin — which I haven't found on line and can't quite extrapolate. At the beginning of this ad, she says "Jim Holperin's campaign ads imply that any person who has a low income should be ashamed and should not run for public office."



Poking around on the internet, I think what she's talking about are ads against her that say she didn't pay taxes in various years, when she simply didn't have enough income to owe taxes. Here's her press release on the subject.

Here's a new article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with some information on both candidates. Holperin is a Democrat who, despite fleeing Madison with the other Democrats last winter, did in the end vote for the GOP's budget repair bill.

The Capitol Times ask Biddy Martin: "Do you have any regrets..."

"... about not letting UW System President Kevin Reilly and the Board of Regents know about the plan you and Gov. Walker were working on to award UW-Madison public authority status?"

Of course, she says no. There's a lot more to this interview, but you have to read between the lines, because Martin speaks in that diplomatic, bureaucratic way. But she sure did love the students. She's going to miss them and all the fun she had with them. And those protests at the Capitol? Not an obstacle. Of course not.

The local Madison newspaper can't handle the word "all."

Here is the Capital Times's editorial about the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

All of the defenders of Supreme Court Justice David Prosser would have Wisconsinites believe the man who had admitted to shouting obscenities at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson before threatening to “destroy” her, and who now stands accused of trying to choke Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, is just a victim.

All who defend Prosser want people to believe he's just a victim? Why would a newspaper that cares at all about its credibility write like that? The usage collapses on its own lack of internal cohesion. There's no way the Capital Times has checked out everyone who has attempted to defend Prosser. And who could believe that — in amongst all those defenders — not a single person had seen any complexity in the story, that they all said he's just a victim?

It's knee-jerk politics too, but can you even stand to read it long enough to form an opinion of the politics? The first word of the first sentence repels the thinking reader.

"In my career of 50 some years I have never come across a situation where the majority leader of any party could determine that the votes of another party could not count. This is the height of arrogance."

Said Wisconsin state Senator Fred Risser, contempt-of-senate-uously.

The link goes to the Cap Times, a local "mainstream" rag, which doesn't bother to find out what the Democratic Senators are supposed to do to get out of the contempt they were found to be in.