Labor unions and leftist activists are expected to once again descend upon the Captiol in Madison, WI on Tuesday. They plan to protest Governor Scott Walker’s first 2-year budget proposal, which seeks to cap entitlement programs and make cuts in education while expanding school voucher programs, in an attempt to close a $3 billion budget deficit. Republicans also expect to add the collective bargaining provisions that were passed in March, unless the State Supreme Court issues a ruling before then.

Opponents of Walker’s proposal view their side as an issue of human rights and a statement against corporations, and have not surprisingly ratcheted up the rhetoric. On its website announcing Tuesday’s protest, the Wisconsin state AFL-CIO posted:

Debate will be limited, democracy will be circumvented and the balance will greatly tip in favor of ramming through an anti-worker, anti-family, anti-community agenda. Come bear witness to this denial of democracy… Please take part in democracy and bear witness to the extreme attack on the people of Wisconsin. Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, June 14, as we continue to stand strong against a budget that guts public schools, attacks health care, raises taxes on workers and seniors, and jeopardizes public services like police and fire. All while handing over $300 million a year in tax breaks to the rich.

Oh, the drama….

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By the time the votes in Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court race were all counted the day after Tuesday’s big election, Big Labor candidate, Joanne Kloppenburg, had a 204 vote lead out of almost 1.5 million cast. Statistically this is zero and as today’s first round of county-by county recount tallies dribbled in, it looked as though the State of Wisconsin was in for a long, emotionally agonizing process. Just today, the lead managed to swing back and forth at least three times. First Kloppenburg was ahead, then Prosser, then Kloppenburg — all by as few as a dozen votes. 

As of late this afternoon, though, that agonizing process appears to have come to an end. A clerical error has been discovered that nets sitting Supreme Court Justice David Prosser somewhere around 7500 votes and almost certain victory. The 14,000 votes cast in the overwhelmingly Republican City of Brookfield were counted election night, they just weren’t reported. 

Unless a similar clerical-type error is found in an area as heavily Democratic as Brookfield is Republican, it’s impossible to imagine Kloppenburg prevailing. The best news for Prosser is that the heavily liberal Dane County (Madison) is already over 60% done with their recount and Kloppenburg’s only picked up a total of 12 votes. 

The other outlier is the heavily Democratic Milwaukee Country, but again a clerical error of this kind is a freak happening and unlikely to be recreated anywhere else. 

Furthermore, sources tell me that the person responsible for this reporting error, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, is famous for her incompetence and her stubborn refusal to give up an old personal computer in favor of a newer system that wouldn’t cause these kinds of problems. The win-win might be Prosser winning the election and Nicklolaus finally being relieved of her duties. 

Look for an explosion of liberal rage over this, the least of which will be lawsuits. Big Labor, the White House and Big Crybaby Public Employees went all-in on this election in the hopes that replacing Prosser with a left-wing judicial activist like Kloppenburg would be their judicial activist firewall in stopping Governor Scott Walker’s reform programs — a program we now hope will include a Voter ID law. 

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First off, if you live in Wisconsin and haven’t yet voted to re-elect State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, stop reading this and go vote. Secondly, if you know anyone in Wisconsin and haven’t yet called and urged them to vote for Prosser, stop reading this and go do so now. Put simply, this race is going to come down to who gets their base out and if we lose this one, we’ve not only lost hope for any kind of real reform in Wisconsin, we’ve also given Barack Obama an easier path to re-election in 2012.

Those of you under the misguided notion, that even in the event of a Prosser loss, his 4-to-3 tie-breaking swing vote in favor of judicial restraint will remain on the court long enough to validate Governor Walker’s Budget Repair Bill, had better think again. The Madison judge, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi, who has pulled every judicial activist trick in the book to block Walker’s bill on an absurd technicality, has no doubt intentionally decided to run out the clock in the hopes liberal activist Joanne Kloppenburg succeeds in unseating Prosser. Sumi’s delayed her next ruling for nearly two months. This allows her to hold on to the case until the end of May or the beginning of June. Prosser’s term would end July 31, which make it very possible the State’s highest court won’t rule until long afterwards.

See how that works?

This isn’t an accident or coincidence. It’s by design. Delaying the enactment of a law over a technicality regarding an Open Meetings rule no serious person thinks was violated, is one thing. Throwing a wrench in the gears in order to slow down the process in the hopes a more favorable appeals court judge will win an election, is something else. The will of the people is being overturned by the worst kind of judicial overreach my former home state has seen in a long time — which brings me to the bigger picture.

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We are less than a week away from Tuesday’s crucial winner-take-all April 5 State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, an election that will likely set the legislative course of that state for a generation. The stakes are for all the marbles and boil down to a simple choice. Either sitting State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser will be re-elected and the voters, though their elected officials, will be allowed to govern, or Big National Labor, Big Spoiled Public Employees, and the White House Re-election Machine will prevail in electing Joanne Kloppenburg — a hardcore Leftist with zero judicial experience. The result of that catastrophic possibility is almost assuredly an end-run around democracy as four Robed Masters take over the running of the state through judicial fiat. Prosser is presently the tie-breaking 4-to-3 vote in favor of judicial restraint on the court. Should Kloppenburg prevail, however, it’s no secret the court will legislate from the bench and strike down all reforms passed by Gov. Scott Walker and the state legislature.

Big Labor most certainly understands the stakes on April 5 and undoubtedly did from the beginning. Pro-union supporters have launched an unprecedented campaign of violence and intimidation in the state all with an eye on the prize of stopping Walker with a firewall built around the State Supreme Court and an ongoing recall petition drive.

In addition, just when you think the thuggery — which has been all but ignored by local and national media — can’t get any worse, we learn that a union campaign of outright extortion only the mafia could be proud of has just been launched against Wisconsin small business owners:

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows.

If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”

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