Esenberg's itchy blogger finger

Conservatives in the Legislature/their lawyers love to pull in Marquette Law Professor Rick Esenberg to testify on behalf of some of their favorite pet projects, despite his seeming lack of knowledge of what, exactly, those projects entail. Esenberg has proven himself to be a willing patsy of the Republican Party, both through public testimony and his frequent blogs and op-eds, by distorting and/or ignoring key components of the law to suit his and their ideological needs.

So I suppose it should come as no particular shock that Esenberg has engaged in some serious false comparisons in regards to blogger Chris Liebenthal's chronicling of the ongoing "Walkergate" John Doe investigation. He thinks it's just terrible that Liebenthal has chosen to call out Walker aides for apparently campaigning on state time.

Liebenthal (aka "capper"), a social worker and official with the county employees union, was earlier this year found to have been using his work computer for personal reasons - a violation of department rules - and suspended for 10 days. While the finding said he had "engaged in political activity at work" it was, it turned out, merely browsing and reading political websites that ended up being the problem. Liebenthal had not been posting to his blog or making political comments at other sites, though several right-wing bloggers and commentators attempted to paint it that way.

The whole investigation was spurred by a pro-Walker outfit called Citizens for Responsible Government, in a sort of knee-jerk need for retribution in the wake of Darlene Wink, constituent services coordinator for then-County Executive Scott Walker, resigning after admitting to posting highly partisan comments to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel articles while at work.

That's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but already different enough from what capper got up to to warrant notice.

As far as we can now tell the allegations in the current John Doe investigation that just recently involved an FBI raid on top Walker aide Cindy Archer's home would appear to go even further - and become full-on apples to the capper case's oranges.
That hasn't stopped Esenberg from squeezing off a few rounds, of course. Seems like someone could stand a few gun safety classes, because both his choice of target and overall accuracy are way off.

Conservative watchdog group SO ANGRY at county employee blogging while on unpaid furlough

What else could explain such a needless and sloppy investigation and accompanying complaint? If you've been paying any attention to the political blog scene in Wisconsin lately, you may have noticed that the chattering classes are currently abuzz with talk of the Milwaukee County DA seizing the computer of a one Christopher Liebenthal, aka "capper."

Why would the DA, presumably someone with a fairly heavy caseload of slightly more pressing issues, swoop in to sniff around in one guy's computer, you might ask?

Well, as it turns out, conservative (the exceptionally silly kind, specifically) activist group Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) filed a complaint with said DA alleging that capper, a county employee, was blogging while at work. Which, if true, would certainly be a giant no-no and even I, friend of the capster, would advocate appropriate legal wrist slapping.

Oh but there's a whole lot more to the story than that, surprise surprise. Let's put it all in handy, bullet list format, shall we? Makes it more digestible, like taking a lactase pill before eating cheese:

• Though bloggers have long used the tactic of "I bet you write while at work!" to attack their political foes, back in May one was actually caught doing just that: Darlene Wink, constituent services coordinator for Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, got caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar and was forced to resign because of it. Turns out she'd been posting comments, under several pseudonyms, at a bunch of sites in turn praising Walker, her boss, and lambasting his critics. Tsk tsk.
• Curiosity then piqued, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed an open records request for the internet browsing history of computers in Walker's office - just to be sure no one else was up to Wink-like shenanigans as well. (Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan Jr. also filed a complaint with the DA asking that a criminal investigation of Wink be started.)
  
• In response, Cheryl Berdan of the county executive's office claimed that making those records available would cost anywhere from a cool $400 to nearly $900. Apparently no one bothered to tell anyone at the county exec's HQ that the world's upgraded from mimeograph machines, because I'm fairly certain just exporting browser history into a word document of some sort is pretty dang cheap.
• Anyway, all of this made a lot of the more rabid right-wing bloggers in the state feel especially butt hurt and angry, and many began looking for potential targets to redirect the controversy onto. Enter capper, an outspoken and somewhat prolific lefty blogger who also happens to work for the county. BINGO.
• So the CRG figures, "Hey! That guy totally has to be writing and posting on county time, because our people do it, like, constantly, and my worldview is so skewed because of it that clearly my opponents must be just as daring/stupid." They go right to the DA with a complaint, who for some reason decides he has nothing better to do and seizes capper's work computer. For the CRG and its allies, there is much rejoicing.
  

Putting aside the fact that blog time stamps are almost entirely useless as evidence because you can schedule them to go up automatically at any time you want - looking at the dates being paraded around as evidence of capper's (who gets his blog on at both Cognitive Dissidence and Whallah!) terrible malfeasance, it doesn't take a whole lot of sleuthing to realize that the whole thing is complete bunk.

Every single one of the dates in question was either 1) an unpaid furlough day county employees were all forced to take (thanks, Scott Walker!), 2) a pre-approved vacation day that capper usually announced directly on the blog, or 3) an official holiday. Like MLK Jr. Day and Memorial Day. THE HORROR.

Capper's rightfully employed a lawyer to handle what could very well turn into a defamation or libel suit against CRG and any of the several bloggers who've been posting scurrilous nonsense about the incident, some even pretending to be capper.

One such comment, posted at Boots & Sabers, even went so far as to claim that the investigation had uncovered pr0n on capper's 'puter - which put Owen Robinson, owner of the site, on the receiving end of a take-down letter from capper's attorney.

Really, the whole thing strikes me as one giant waste of the DA's (and the public's, for that matter) time, all because of some petty political vendetta. For a group that claims to be all about more responsible government and use of taxpayer money, CRG sure does seem to be overly prone to irresponsible behavior.

But hey, this is just the sort of ridiculousness Wisconsin will be in for if it elects Scott Walker as its governor - or Ron Johnson as its Senator. In addition to their own, personal shortcomings, they're liable to bring along a whole posse of like-minded supporters who'll spend all their time on partisan bickering and one-upmanship, instead of on, oh I don't know, job creation? The environment? Education? Silly little things like that.