At the Wisconsin Capitol today, a rag-tag band plays and the assemblyman who's been avoiding Meade suddenly shows up.

Brett Hulsey was avoiding Meade yesterday, but he sought us out today, when we dropped by to see what was going on down at the Capitol. The encounter begins about 2 minutes in, and you see uncut footage of the whole conversation:



The band, which looks like this...



... plays "Solidarity Forever" and then "On, Wisconsin!" Meade sings along with "On, Wisconsin!" and, as he explained to me later, he's deliberately singing tunelessly as a critique of the band.

"'Tear Down This WALL'ker"/"Torture Fitzgerald"/Meade + Hulsey/Krampus.

At the Wisconsin Capitol today... a man in a Reagan mask had come up with a clever saying...



A woman with pinwheels didn't seem to be taking the subject of torture seriously enough...



Our assemblymanm Brett Hulsey — who'd been trying so hard to avoid Meade — found us and was amiable and talkative....



So... let the wild Krampus begin!

"Anarchists hijack the anti-cuts demo and go on rampage in central London."

Click through for vivid photos.

David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg square off over judging (and running for judge) in Wisconsin.

We watched the whole debate last night, and those snippets give you the flavor of it. The ad Prosser asks Kloppenburg to ask her supporters to take down is the one we were discussing yesterday under the title "Mother Of All Negative Ads."

How can you write 3946 words on the topic "Why Is Bob Herbert Boring?"

Was that some kind of joke?

Geraldine Ferraro...

RIP.

ADDED: Remember when she said Obama was sexist and the media was in the tank for him?

"Defecating dog sparks US shootout."

Why did BBC publish this story? It's not exactly big international news!

Two neighbours in the US state of Mississippi drew weapons and fired at each other as an argument over a defecating dog ran out of control.... injuries are not life-threatening... "Just meet me at the levee and I'll shoot you down."...

I think the BBC is into stoking anti-hillbilly bigotry. Bob Wright was doing that yesterday:

You can have any color you want as long as it's...

... not black.

Obama looks us in the eyes and explains Libya.

Persuaded?

Madison's new tourism industry: the endless protest.

There's this:

Spend Sunday, April 10th, and the previous Saturday afternoon and evening, in Madison with hundreds if not thousands of other Wisconsinites as we convene the first in a series of meetings of the Wisconsin People’s Assembly. By participating in the Assembly, you will have the opportunity to meet, learn from, and build lasting personal connections with Wisconsinites coming from all trades, communities, and backgrounds.

I'm getting a tourism vibe. And it's not just the "wave" logo, suggesting a beach outing. It's the whole visit-Madison-for-the-excitement pitch.

Obama's Libya adventure does not fit the War Powers Resolution... and can only be supported by the most extreme view of presidential power.

Lawprof Bruce Ackerman explains:

After the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which granted the president the power to act unilaterally for 60 days in response to a "national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." The law gave the chief executive an additional 30 days to disengage if he failed to gain congressional assent during the interim.  

But... these provisions have little to do with the constitutionality of the Libyan intervention, since Libya did not attack our "armed forces." The president failed to mention this fundamental point in giving Congress notice of his decision on Monday, in compliance with another provision of the resolution. Without an armed "attack," there is no compelling reason for the president to cut Congress out of a crucial decision on war and peace....

The War Powers Resolution doesn't authorize a single day of Libyan bombing. But it does provide an escape hatch, stating that it is not "intended to alter the constitutional authority of the Congress or of the President." So it's open for Obama to assert that his power as commander in chief allows him to wage war without Congress, despite the Constitution's insistence to the contrary....

Many modern presidents have made such claims, and Harry Truman acted upon this assertion in Korea. But it's surprising to find Obama on the verge of ratifying such precedents. He was elected in reaction to the unilateralist assertions of John Yoo and other apologists for George W. Bush-era illegalities. Yet he is now moving onto ground that even Bush did not occupy....

The War Powers Resolution cedes power to the President in the very place where the argument for independent presidential power is strong: When there is a national security emergency. If you don't fit the War Powers Resolution, because it's not an emergency, the argument for independent power is at its weakest.

Here's the part of my diavlog with Bob Wright where we talk about this issue. Note how, challenged, Bob comes up with a generic neocon argument about how more democracy in the world is good for national security. I press him about how there needs to be an emergency to justify not including Congress in the decisionmaking. (I've let this clip go on a bit, so it's a little long, but I purport to tell you the whole story of constitutional law, so it's actually super-concise.)

Bob Wright says that because the attack on Libya "is truly multilateral... it not only diffuses the literal cost ... but the blowback that you get from intervention inherently."

But it doesn't work, does it, for the United State to try to spread the responsibility around? It reminds me of getting stuck in a group project at school, when you're the GPA-protecting A+ student and everyone else knows it. In school, the A+ student knows this is a bad deal. He's not thinking: I love this diffused responsibility! He's thinking: These other students are dragging me down, and if this project gets a D, I'm getting a D, so I'll do everything I can to get the A for everybody. And all the other students are thinking about how they will take advantage of this arrangement. There's no diffusion illusion in school. Does it get any better in military maneuvers? Those other countries are already flaking out, and the United States will be exposed as having the full responsibility it always had. Was there ever any serious hope of diffusion of "blowback"? I doubt it. If there was, it was naive and, really, quite ugly. We'll go to war if we can hide behind France?!

"No more Althouse for you!"

When you've had too much Althouse, I'm cutting you off!

We're fighting for al Qaeda?

The Libyan disaster.

"Maybe Hulsey just thinks conversations with Meade should be safe, legal, and rare."

Heh.

Wisconsin collective bargaining law is published despite the court order barring Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing it.

So... a loophole? It got published by someone other than La Follette?!

The governor and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said flatly Friday that the law will take effect on Saturday. But Reference Bureau Director Steve Miller said his department's publication of the act was only administrative. He said La Follette still needs to publish the act in the Wisconsin State Journal...

"Every attorney I have consulted said this will now be law," said Fitzgerald, who said he was aware this was going to happen. "It wasn't a secret. I think they left the door open for this."

The struggle continues, and I'm sure the Wisconsin people are exasperated... but who with?