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Madison Marathon bans runner
on 09/02/10 at 9:00 am | Ramona Villarreal considers herself an athlete and an honest person. The 56-year-old Madison resident has competed in Ironman competitions and run at least 15 marathons -- including, she reckons, 10 Madison Marathons. But no more. Villarreal has been "permanently banned" from future Madison Marathons. If she tries to register, she will be denied. If she shows up anyway, she's been warned, "We will have the right to remove you...and won't hesitate to do so." |
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Doug La Follette plans to donate $100,000 to create an endowment fund
on 09/02/10 at 9:00 am | Doug La Follette, Wisconsin's secretary of state, has been thinking lately about his life and legacy. The 70-year-old Madison resident doesn't have children or some other "obvious choice" to bequeath money to. But he does have a child, of sorts, in the group he helped found 40 years ago: Wisconsin's Environmental Decade, now Clean Wisconsin. |
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Fred Risser considers the Capitol Square vegetable garden a smashing success
on 09/02/10 at 9:00 am | State Sen. Fred Risser, the nation's longest-tenured lawmaker, has found something new to be excited about: the vegetable garden on the Capitol Square's southwest corner, by Inn on the Park. Proposed by Madison FarmWorks and approved by the Executive Residence Board that Risser heads, the small plot, formerly used for flowers, boasts an abundance of tomatoes, cabbage, beets and other veggies. He considers it a smashing success. |
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Move over, Stalin (but hand-signal first)
on 09/02/10 at 9:00 am | An actual letter received by Isthmus, in response to Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's Aug. 13 cover story, "In Defense of Madison": "Your overly glorious portrayal of Madison, together with your arrogant stance in front of your bike, leve [sic] no doubt as to what type of mayor you are and why you should be defeated next election... |
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Mike May's personal emails
on 09/02/10 at 9:00 am | Madison City Attorney Mike May thinks it's no big whoop that the state Supreme Court recently ordered records custodians to prune out the personal content of emails sent and received by government employees on their work computers. While the case was pending, his office filed an amicus brief supporting this result. |
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It's the stupid season, stupid
on 08/26/10 at 9:00 am | The other day I got an urgent call from a campaign staffer for Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate for governor. It seems that a spokeswoman for Scott Walker, one of Barrett's Republican rivals for the state's top job, retweeted a tweet from another Walker campaign official that linked to a YouTube video of dancing blacks, in a song about a train, apropos of Walker's opposition to high-speed rail. The spokeswoman claimed she linked to the video by mistake. Barrett's backers scoffed at this. |
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UW changes tune on Primate Center tour invite
on 08/19/10 at 9:00 am | The statements seemed clear enough. At a Dane County committee hearing on July 8, Deb Hartley of the UW-Madison's National Primate Research Center proclaimed the facility open to all: "It doesn't take a resolution or a citizen's act to get into the facility," Hartley assured the committee. "[A]nybody can come in...and we'll show you what we have." All that was required was to be 18 or older, get a TB test, and complete some paperwork. |
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What else we learned about Madison liability payouts
on 08/19/10 at 6:00 am | Records obtained by Isthmus with the kind assistance of city risk manager Eric Veum show that, between Jan. 1, 2009, and July 31, 2010, Madison paid a total of $1,079,154 in 198 payments to liability claimants. |
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Bartender: 'The police almost killed this guy'
on 08/19/10 at 6:00 am | On the night of the incident, Elissa Parker, a bartender at State Street Brats, called the Dane County Public Safety Communications [911] Center to report what she felt was unacceptable behavior by the cops. What follows is a partial transcript of that call. |
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City of Madison paid off man injured by cops
on 08/19/10 at 6:00 am | The city of Madison last year quietly paid $27,000 to settle an excessive-use-of-force claim against Madison police stemming from a 2006 arrest, Isthmus has learned. Yet despite this indicator of the claim's validity, the officers involved, following an equally secret internal review, did not receive so much as a reprimand. |
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Wisconsin Attorney General race between Hassett and Van Hollen pivots on role of office
on 08/12/10 at 9:00 am | There's a reason state attorney general is an elected partisan position: However much anyone tries to deny it, political ideology is key to how the job gets done. But oh, how they try to deny it. |
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Madison city attorney notices called improper
on 08/05/10 at 9:00 am | It may not qualify as the crime of the century, but Madison attorney Erik Guenther suggests it might be a crime. On July 14, Guenther's law firm colleague, Marcus Berghahn, was served a subpoena ordering him to a hearing six days hence. The subpoena, issued by Madison Municipal Court Judge Daniel Koval, included an official-looking sticker asking Berghahn to contact the City Attorney's Office to "discuss your testimony." |
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Dean Health Plan pays to settle lawsuit
on 08/05/10 at 9:00 am | Dean Health Plan, a Madison-based HMO, has settled a lawsuit alleging wrongful denial of an insurance claim. Andrew Erlandson, a local attorney who filed the suit on behalf of Joe "Kay," says the insurer agreed to pay $3,250, several times more than the $646 it initially refused to pay. |
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Mayor Dave: In the money
on 08/05/10 at 9:00 am | All signs are that Dave Cieslewicz intends to seek a third four-year term as Madison mayor next spring. Besides launching campaign-related Facebook and Twitter pages, he's quietly building a campaign war chest that might make potential challengers think twice. |
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More blood to spill at Capital Newspapers
on 08/05/10 at 9:00 am | Few Madison institutions have suffered more in recent years than Capital Newspapers, owner and publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal, The Capital Times and other papers. Staff sizes have been slashed, benefits cut, and even the cafeteria has been shut down. Now it appears there's more suffering to come. |
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Dane County DA Ismael Ozanne speaks to appointment issue
on 08/05/10 at 9:00 am | Ismael Ozanne, Dane County's new district attorney, says he was not trying to evade Isthmus' questions when he failed to reconnect with the paper prior to its recent story on his appointment. And he gamely addresses the fact that only two of 81 letters of support sent to the governor were for him, compared to 77 for another candidate. |
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GOP warned UW-Whitewater College Republican about dissing Ron Johnson
on 08/04/10 at 12:32 pm | A junior majoring in political science, Mitch Sands is chair of the College Republicans chapter at the UW-Whitewater. He says that on Sunday, July 19, he had an encounter with the presumed frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Ron Johnson, at an event in Walworth County. |
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Wisconsin Supreme Court undercuts openess
on 07/29/10 at 9:00 am | It was like those legal dramas on TV. The judge, ruling from the bench, always starts out paying homage to some legal principle or perspective. Then there's a "but" and the judge shifts gears, coming down firmly on the other side. So it was with the Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent ruling in a case known as Schill v. Wisconsin Rapids. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, writing for the majority, began her decision by praising the state's traditions of openness. |
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Doyle's Dane County DA pick Ismael Ozanne was not clear fave
on 07/22/10 at 9:00 am | Who knows? Ismael Ozanne may yet prove to be an excellent Dane County district attorney. He worked in the office as an assistant DA for 10 years and has management experience as deputy secretary of the state Department of Corrections. People seem to like him, generally speaking, and his appointment by Gov. Jim Doyle has been called historic. "As far as we can tell, he's the first African American district attorney -- not just in Dane County but the entire state," says Doyle spokesman Adam Collins. |
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Nudes at the Wisconsin Capitol. Oh the humanity!
on 07/22/10 at 9:00 am | To read the police reports, you'd think the citizens of Madison had witnessed zombies cracking open skulls and feasting on the gooey mess inside. "It was disgusting," complainant Barbara B. told Madison police office Rene Gonzalez, according to his report. "I wanted to vomit." She was at the Farmers' Market with her 4-year-old granddaughter when participants in the World Naked Bike Ride rode past. One man fell off his bike to reveal...full frontal nudity. |
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Joel Winnig fighting for his rights in campaign for Wisconsin Supreme Court
on 07/22/10 at 9:00 am | Madison lawyer Joel Winnig says he's running for Wisconsin Supreme Court because a new law aimed at improving the integrity of the process makes it possible for him to win. The only problem: An old rule aimed at protecting the integrity of the process makes it impossible for him to run as he'd like. |
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Mayor Cieslewicz is wrong about Madison Central Library
on 07/22/10 at 9:00 am | Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz blew a gasket over an article in last Saturday's State Journal suggesting that city plans for a fully rebuilt, three-story Central Library might be scaled back. |
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Let's talk about the animals
on 07/15/10 at 9:00 am | This op-ed is referenced in an Isthmus cover story about Dr. Paul Kaufman. It was originally published in the February 10, 2006 issue of Isthmus. |
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Mark Neumann's transfer fee 'screw-up'
on 07/15/10 at 9:00 am | Former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, Republican candidate for governor, cited an inappropriate exemption to avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars in real estate transfer fees on land deals in 2008. |
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Man over monkey: UW researcher Dr. Paul Kaufman
on 07/15/10 at 9:00 am | If you talk with Paul Kaufman about animals for any length of time, sooner or later he's going to tell you about his turtle. He mentioned it in a meeting with animal rights activists early this year, and again at a campus debate in March on the ethics of using primates in research. |
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Mark Neumann, candidate for Wisconsin governor, improperly avoided paying real-estate transfer fees
on 07/12/10 at 1:27 pm | Former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, Republican candidate for governor, cited an inappropriate exemption to avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars in real estate transfer fees on land deals in 2008.
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Public info belongs on the Internet
on 07/09/10 at 10:53 am | Albert Einstein famously said, at the advent of the nuclear age: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." Substitute a few words and it reflects how some people feel about the information age: "The unleashed power of the Internet has changed everything, save our eagerness to snoop on each other, and we thus drift toward the end of privacy." |
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Madison cop allegedly refused woman's request for shirt to cover herself at World Naked Bike Ride
on 07/08/10 at 9:00 am | Cesilee Dean knows some folks will say she had it coming. She bared her breasts in public and got ticketed. Boo blanking hoo. But while Dean does plan to fight her citation in court, this is not why she's complaining. She's upset because, of the thousands of people who saw her that day, "a police officer was the only one who violated me." |
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Madison gun laws pre-slain
on 07/08/10 at 9:00 am | The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last week against local gun control laws does not put any city of Madison ordinances at risk. That's because its ordinances were shot down 15 years ago by the state Legislature. |
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Feds throw monkey wrench into UW expansion plans for Primate Research Center
on 07/08/10 at 9:00 am | President Barack Obama has not been as good to the UW-Madison as some had hoped. The university's request for stimulus funding to dramatically increase the size of its primate research facilities has been denied. |
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