Associated Press

A couple of important court rulings came down this afternoon, the first in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker (R) has been dealt a major blow.

Gov. Scott Walker's law repealing most collective bargaining for local and school employees was struck down by a Dane County judge Friday, yet another dramatic twist in a year and a half saga that likely sets up another showdown in the Supreme Court.

The law remains largely in force for state workers, though a federal judge struck down part of that section of the law as well earlier this year. But for city, county, and school workers the decision by Dane County Judge Juan Colas returns the law to its status before Walker signed his law in March 2011.

Lester Pines, an attorney for the Madison teachers and city of Milwaukee employees, told the Journal Sentinel, "The decision essentially creates the (2011) status quo for municipal employees and school district employees because it declared that the essential provisions of Act 10 to be unconstitutional."

The ruling is still subject to appeal, but as of this afternoon, it's a big win for labor and a defeat for Scott Walker's union-busting efforts in Wisconsin.

Speaking of court rulings, GOP setbacks, and the Midwest, it's also worth noting that Iowa Republican officials' voter-purge plan is on hold after a state judge issued an injunction this afternoon.

The purge effort hasn't been rejected, but Judge Mary Pat Gunderson ruled that it cannot be enforced while the legal challenge continues.

Between this and other recent legal setbacks in Ohio, Florida, and Texas, Republicans have struggled badly this summer in the courts.

Van Wanggaard for State Senate/Facebook

More than a month after losing his recall election, Wisconsin Republican State Senator Van Wanggaard has conceded the race. This gives Wisconsin Democrats control of the Senate. Wanggaard had gotten a recount that showed him still losing by more than 800 votes. He then had until the end of today to decide whether to sue over the results. The Wisconsin State Journal runs his statement. A snip:

"The seemingly never-ending delay by Dane County judges preventing implementation of Wisconsin's voter ID law undoubtedly played a role in this recall election. Even if I were to challenge and win in Racine County court, an appeal to that challenge would be heard in the Madison's Court of Appeals. A challenge would also be extremely costly to taxpayers, who have already been forced to waste $20 million on the recall election.

"Despite pleas from around the state to challenge the election, it is not in the best interests of Racine, or Wisconsin, at this time. Now is the time to focus on gaining the state senate back in November, winning Wisconsin's U.S. Senate seat, and electing Governor Romney as President."

Wanggaard has made charges of suspicious activity at the polls throughout the recount process. To the extent that things went awry, much of it had to do with clerks making mistakes in complying with the part of state's new voting law that was in place. The Government Accountability Board says that where clerks failed to get voters to sign a poll book, as the new law requires, their errors shouldn't invalidate voters' votes.

(On the show: Why won't Wisconsin GOP concede?)

Posted yesterday by Wisconsin's Overpass Light Brigade. (H/t @triumph68)

Back during the Wisconsin protests, in February 2011, Madison Memorial High School teacher Nathan O'Shaughnessy sent photos and video of the students protesting the union-stripping bill. After the recall elections, he sent the video above.

They danced yesterday at Madison Memorial, just letting off steam after exams. You can dance if you want to -- that's lesson number one this week.

In other recall news: A Michigan group trying to recall Governor Rick Snyder has given up for now. Bruce Fealk says they'll try to work on building a political infrastructure instead, maybe with a progressive infrastructure and a program for developing new leaders. You know, the long view.

As the dust settles in Wisconsin, and the right basks in Gov. Scott Walker's (R) recall victory, the obvious question is coming to terms with how the incumbent managed to overcome the extensive grassroots opposition to his agenda and candidacy. There is, however, no great mystery here -- consider this chart we aired on last night's show:

Those pie charts are to scale, by the way. Walker's financial edge over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) was nearly eight to one, thanks to far-right support from across the country. (By some estimates, the margin may have even been closer to 10 to 1.)

Money doesn't always translate into success, but in a compressed calendar, and coming quickly on the heels of a heated Democratic primary, this kind of enormous financial advantage meant the deck was stacked in the governor's favor. Democrats, unions, and progressive activists gave it their all, but they ran into a juggernaut of conservative cash that proved to be too formidable.

Going further, however, the reason Wisconsin's gubernatorial recall race mattered so much, and generated so much national attention, is because the traditional Democrat-vs-Republican contest was only part of the larger picture. Walker faced this challenge, not because he's an unsuccessful far-right ideologue, but because he set out to rig the game -- stripping unions of their power in order to rewrite the political rules and make it all but impossible for Democrats to ever win a statewide race in Wisconsin.

Walker's agenda has always been about taking a level playing field and making a permanent change, tilting it in the GOP's favor forever more. And after last night, he's gotten away with it.

In the process, the governor, his party, and his very wealthy allies have also created a blueprint for other Republicans to follow elsewhere -- crushing public-sector unions in order to destroy one of the pillars of the Democratic Party's electoral foundation. If labor can't organize, Democrats can't compete.

Tom Barrett lost last night, but he wasn't the only one.

Turnout in the Wisconsin recalls has been "wild" across the state, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. This morning John Nichols tweeted that there were "lines out the door, 20-minute waits" at polling places on the north side of Milwaukee, way up from recent elections. 

That scene in Milwaukee, in particular, is not great news for Governor Walker and company. Last year a group supporting the recall drive held block parties there to help people get registered and vote in the recalls happening then.

For their efforts, the union-affiliated Wisconsin Jobs Now got accused on the right of bribing voters with free BBQ. Prosecutors in Milwaukee cleared Wisconsin Jobs Now. And today election officials in Milwaukee had to call in extra workers to accommodate demand at the polls.

(Image below from 2011 block party, by Peter Rickman.)

See also the Marquette Law poll (pdf), Question 47, showing a third of Wisconsin voters have stopped talking about politics because of disagreements about the recall or Scott Walker. At least you can still borrow your parents' truck.

(Image tweeted by @triumph68, by way of 97.3 Radio Now)

The gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin is now just four days away, and with most polls showing Gov. Scott Walker (R) with a slight edge, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) is looking for an 11th-hour boost. Former President Bill Clinton visited today in the hopes of giving him one.

The clip shows the entirety of Clinton's speech, but Greg Sargent transcribed arguably the most important portion of the remarks:

"If you believe in an economy of shared prosperity when times are good, and shared sacrifice when they're not, then you don't want to break the unions. You want them at the negotiating table. And you trust them to know that arithmetic rules. Show up for Tom Barrett on Tuesday! If you want Wisconsin once again to be seen by all of America as a place of diversity, of difference of opinion, of vigorous debate, where in the end people's objectives are to come to an agreement that will take us all forward together, you have to show up for Tom Barrett on Tuesday! ...

"I can just hear it now, on Wednesday. All those people that poured all this money into Wisconsin, if you don't show up and vote, will say, 'See, we got them now. We're finally going to break every union in America. We're gonna break every government in America. We're gonna stop worrying about the middle class. We don't give a riff whether poor people get to work their way into it. We got our way now. We got it all. Divide and conquer works.'

"You tell them no. You tell them, Wisconsin has never been about that, never will be about that -- by electing Tom Barrett governor!"

This isn't just another campaign pitch ahead of an election; it's about tying the Wisconsin race to a larger dynamic -- Walker isn't just a far-right ideologue; he's also at the center of a divisive experiment in which Republicans build up an enormous financial advantage and use it to rig democracy. Indeed, Clinton spent very little time talking about Walker, and spent the bulk of his time talking about what Walker and his agenda represent.

As E.J. Dionne Jr. explained yesterday, "Walker is being challenged not because he pursued conservative policies but because Wisconsin has become the most glaring example of a new and genuinely alarming approach to politics on the right. It seeks to use incumbency to alter the rules and tilt the legal and electoral playing field decisively toward the interests of those in power."

We'll have more on the Wisconsin race, and the evident effects of Walker's efforts, on tonight's show.

The AFP's non-partisan bus

The gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin is now less than a week away, and polls show a tight race between Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D). With this in mind, the Wisconsin chapter of the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity is launching a 10-city bus tour this week, which will feature AFP national president Tim Phillips rallying conservatives in the state.

That's not exactly a surprise -- the Koch brothers, like so many far-right figures, consider Walker's race critically important -- but the amusing part is Americans for Prosperity's explanation for this week's bus tour.

Given the tour's timing and billing, any reasonable person would view it as a statewide drive to get out the vote for Walker and his GOP allies in the June 5 election. Not AFP.

AFP's Wisconsin director, Luke Hilgemann, says the bus tour has nothing to do the recall elections. "We're not dealing with any candidates, political parties, or ongoing races," Hilgemann told the Hudson, Wisconsin, Patch news site.

Got that? Just days before a closely-watched statewide election in which Scott Walker's job is on the line, an allied group is launching a 10-city bus tour -- and the group wants you to believe this has nothing to do with Walker's recall race. Seriously.

It's simply a remarkable coincidence. AFP's leaders just happened to have some free time on their hands, stumbled upon an available bus, and thought they'd make 10 carefully-selected campaign stops visits around Wisconsin. And wouldn't you know it, the Illinois chapter of Americans for Prosperity also happens to be busing in conservative activists to Wisconsin this week for pre-election canvassing, but we're supposed to believe that's unrelated to the recall election, too.

As Andy Kroll explained, AFP doesn't have much of a choice -- the far-right interest group, which launched a "Stand With Walker" campaign last year, is technically a nonprofit organization, and has to be very careful about intervening on Walker's behalf.

But if there's anyone, anywhere, who seriously believes the group's pre-election bus tour this week is unrelated to any "ongoing races," I'd like to meet him or her. I can offer them a great deal on a lovely bridge.

Jim Jorstad sends the pic above and just below. He says he found it along the road in Mazomanie, one of a series of handmade recall signs with messages about union rights, cuts to education, women's rights and the John Doe probe. The picture below comes from @triumph68. It sends you to a voter drive page hosted by Wisconsin Jobs Now.

Today Wisconsin elections officials released the latest count on absentee voting ahead of Tuesday's recall. So far, county clerks have issued 113,558 absentee ballots, compared to 230,744 in November 2010.

(Bonus: Jim Jorstad interviews Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee.)

@LegalEagle tweets this flyer from the National Rifle Association, sent in support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:

"Governor Scott Walker believes your life is worth protecting and Tom Barrett does not."

The ad specifically mentions Walker's signing the state's "Castle Law" last year, expanding homeowners' right to shoot when they feel threatened on their own property.

Facing a recall election on June 5, Governor Walker has been leading steadily in the polls. Still, the race is close enough that an outdoor shop decided to ask the NRA to find somewhere else for its recall meetings. The shop passed a new rule saying they wouldn't host political events. Nearly a third of Wisconsinites in one survey say they've stopped talking politics with someone because of disagreements over Walker.