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WASHINGTON — Rep. Sean Duffy was wrapping up a congressional delegation tour that included a stop in Afghanistan when news broke Sunday night that a U.S. Special Forces team had killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, capping a 10-year hunt for the terrorist leader deemed responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Duffy, a freshman Republican lawmaker from Ashland, said in a statement Monday that Americans have every right to rejoice over the death of the man who had become the face of terrorism.

“The celebrations and the pride Americans feel today in their military, CIA and government for capturing the world’s most wanted terrorist are appropriate and justified,” Duffy said.

A few Madison protesters overreact to Gov. Walker’s modest proposal.

When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took his show on the road to Washington, D.C. Thursday for offer insights on “good government” at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, he showed his under appreciated imagination in describing his “very modest proposal” for public employees.

Eventually, Gov. Walker was pelted with a set of hostile questions and searing comments, but he reacted impassively. After all, what do mere congressmen and women matter when you have the Koch brothers, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and the Heritage Foundation backing you up?

Gov. Walker, however, may have accidentally created the impression that his anti-public union law is in full effect and its beneficial effects are spreading across the state. In fact, its enforcement is under a restraining order because of Republican violations of the state’s Open Meetings law. Because of litigation, it may take months before the status of the bill is resolved.

Harley Davidson Museum Riverwalk on 6th and Canal Street will be a location where all will be welcomed to Celebrate Earth Day. The event is free, beginning at 5 pm until 7 pm, activities will take place by the 6th Street Viaduct Bridge or the Hank Aaron Bike Trail. Activities planned include: The Eco- Puppet

Washington – Calling for deep domestic cuts and a wholesale makeover of Medicare and Medicaid, Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget plan was adopted Friday by the GOP majority in the House, a defining congressional vote that could leave a powerful stamp on future elections.

Passage of the Ryan budget reflects a new and striking Republican consensus that massive entitlement changes are a fiscal imperative and a political message that average voters may now be ready to hear.

“Will we be remembered as the Congress that did nothing as the nation sped toward a preventable debt crisis and an irreversible decline, or as the Congress that did the hard work of preventing a crisis? . . . This is our defining moment,” said Ryan, the House budget chairman from Janesville, as he concluded the floor debate.

“Where is the shared sacrifice?” asked Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, who said pulling back aid to the elderly and poor while exempting defense from the budget ax and wealthy Americans from paying more was “the same old ideological agenda, except this time on steroids.”

Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from a Wisconsin district bordering Illinois, has seen his profile skyrocket since he unveiled a plan to cut taxes and spending and scale back Medicare and Medicaid.

Lanky, high energy and conservative, Ryan, 41, won House approval Friday of his proposals, which have made him a fixture on talk shows and a sparring partner to President Barack Obama.

The two men, with homes 115 miles apart in Janesville, Wis., and on Chicago’s South Side, adhere to political ideologies that are worlds apart.

Last week, Ryan was invited to sit in the front row at a speech Obama gave outlining his deficit reduction proposal. From Obama, referring to Ryan’s plan: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.” Ryan, normally not a grenade thrower, condemned the president’s talk as “excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate and hopelessly inadequate.” Why does he want to cut a popular program like Medicare? His short answer is that he’s trying to ensure the program is solvent for his kids, ages 6, 7 and 9, and their kids.

Washington — Introduced by fellow Republican Jim Sensenbrenner as a “very polarizing figure,” Gov. Scott Walker lived up to that mantle in a highly charged appearance Thursday at a congressional hearing on state budget problems.

Lawmakers from his own party hailed him as a gutsy politician making tough choices while Democrats seized the chance to cross-examine a governor they regard as a poster boy for conservative overreach.

Democrats called him a union-buster, a divider and a vehicle for corporate interests.
They derided his contention that cutting collective bargaining rights was a fiscal necessity rather than a politically motivated choice.

Walker told lawmakers his policies were “progressive in the best sense of the word” because cutting compensation and benefits would allow the state to avoid layoffs and tax increases.

Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) today used her five minutes of allotted time at a Congressional hearing today to grill Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker about his priorities as he attempts to balance the state budget.

Moore accused Walker of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and the middle class while enacting tax breaks for the wealthiest residents and corporations.

Walker testified today at the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s hearing on “State and Municipal Debt: Tough Choices Ahead” in Washington, D.C.

Illuminating and skewering sound-bites are either lucky happenstance or unlikely surprises at congressional hearings, where the testimony is often controlled by the majority party, the patter is planned, dull and technical and the party in charge offers up softballs to its own knights and is prepared to cut off unpleasant scrutiny.

Little of that happened Thursday when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was invited by sympathetic GOP chairman Darrell Issa, at a time when Walker was something of the golden boy of GOP politics, to testify before the House Oversight Committee exploring “tough choices” in state budgets.

But a few weeks can tarnish any golden boy, especially when the opposition is prepared and the party in power isn’t. The GOP is suffering internal disarray over Walker. He is no longer the featured hero on many Republican websites, no longer touted as the face of the future, not when his actions in Wisconsin have clearly electrified progressives. Many of his supporters are in the fight of their political lives against recalls. Many of those who voted for him last year are now part of the resistance. They may not be ready to move over to the Democratic side, but they hardly think his image has been helpful or even traditional Republican. While some like Trump and Palin are scooting over to the Tea Party side for political advantage, pragmatic citizens are not about to swing so harshly in their basic human values.