Madison schools close for a second day tomorrow, as the state teachers' union calls for more protests against the Gov. Walker's budget.

Wisconsin State Journal reports:

"This is the scariest thing I've ever seen," Betsy Barnard, a physics teacher at West High School, said of the Walker proposal. "This is going to change Wisconsin forever."

Barnard and other teachers at the rally said they are willing to make wage and benefit concessions to help fix the state budget, but Walker's plan to effectively dismantle the 50-year-old collective bargaining process for public employee unions goes too far.

"We risk our public image," Barnard said...

ADDED: "Lawmakers are making some changes to a bill that would make public workers pay more for their benefits, but the bill will still take away almost all union rights from them."

Here is Michelle Malkin's coverage, with video.

GayPatriot says: "What’s happening in Wisconsin should be happening in California, with public employee unions upset at anticipated cuts in their benefits and legislation limiting their power. Both the Badger State and the (once-)Golden State have similar rates of unionization in their workforces, 16 and 17% respectively. Both face huge budget gaps."

It's Grande Conservative Blogress Diva times again.

Over at GayPatriot.

"I think it's Althouse's popularity among conservatives that really gets a lot of liberals."

"They can’t fathom how such supposedly narrow-minded right-wingers could appreciate the work of a blogress who doesn’t share our political sentiments and often criticizes our party’s candidates. Her popularity on the right shows that we welcome and appreciate those who don’t toe the conservative line, who hold different points of view than our own."

"Why Do Liberals Hate Ann Althouse?"

The conservative GayPatriot asks:

The thing I don’t get about this hatred of Althouse is that she is kind of like the South Park of blogging. She’s witty, directing her snark at pretty much anything she finds amusing. Is is that leftists in the blogosphere today are so humorless so self-righteous that they can’t abide the least bit of mockery, criticism or a combination of both?

Or, maybe it’s since they don’t have George W. Bush to kick around any more, they’ve decided to start going after prominent blogresses?

Perhaps it’s something else. Maybe Klein has a case of ADS (Althouse Derangement Syndrome), a syndrome afflicting partisans who can’t understand how a blogress can gain a following without subscribing to any ideology.

What they don't get is that I am a pure blogger, really a blogger, showing you what blogging is. I don't think they really are bloggers. I don't think they really are journalists either. I'm called deranged or whatever when I'm riffing in a bloggerly style that they obviously don't understand or appreciate. They are journalists posing as bloggers, mucking up their journalism and simultaneously writing dull blogs.

Let's not laugh along with Jane Hamsher over Harry Reid's problems.

Quipping "INSTAPUNDIT: Bringing America together!," Glenn Reynolds highlights a couple conservative blogs that thank him for linking to a post by lefty firebrand Jane Hamsher.

GayPatriot said he'd been permanently avoiding reading Jane's blog (FireDogLake), and Glenn's post led him to something he "pretty much" agreed with. And Syd And Vaughn, another FireDogLake avoider, saluting Glenn for taking them to Jane's "very valid" post, declared "Kumbaya!"

So let's look at Jane's post — "I want to play poker with Harry Reid" — and see if it's true that lefties and righties can come together and laugh about Reid's pathetically played politics.

First, if you haven't already, read her whole post. Despite some awkward, cornball writing — "Reid looks like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs on Meet the Press" — it's generally very pithy and funny, and it sums up the embarrassing succession of bad moves Reid made. We can all have a shared laugh about that.

But, my fellow moderates and conservatives, focus on this:

A seventy-one year old dude who hasn't held office for 14 years, appointed by a crook, takes the Senate Majority Leader to the cleaners.

Reid is a red state senator, up for re-election in 2010 and under pressure from the right, who is already making noise about appeasing Republicans who aren't going to be appeased. He's a hazard to Obama's agenda, which is why leading Senate Democrats tried to ease him out as Majority Leader last year.

Hamsher is rooting for the left wing of the Democratic Party. She thinks Reid will keep the party centrally located and give Republicans some clout, so she's saying loud and clear: He's a terrible leader. Don't follow him.

So Jane's post doesn't make me say oh, ha ha, Harry Reid, what a fool. It makes me reconsider whether I want to continue knocking him around. I have been giving Reid a hard time mainly because I think law is important and the legal question is easy: Blagojevich is the governor, he has the appointment power, he appointed Burris, so Burris properly holds the Senate seat until 2010. Deal with it. Blagojevich's sliminess doesn't suspend the rule of law. Play by the rules.

I'm not going to change my strong opinion on that point, but I'm realizing that we need to keep a sharp eye on the people like Hamsher who are hot to push Congress to the left.

ADDED: Henry, the commenter, emails a Venn diagram: