Susan Happ Candidate Forum, New Report On Campaign Spending In Wisconsin, Can Body Parts Be Trends?

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• Wisconsin Attorney General Candidate Forum: Susan Happ

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  Central Time hosts a candidate forum with Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ, who is one of three candidates running to become the state’s next Attorney General. Her opponents are Republican Brad Schimel and Libertarian Tom Nelson.

• New Report Shows Lower Spending On Political TV Ads In Wisconsin

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  A new report from the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity shows television campaign ad spending is down in Wisconsin when compared with TV ad spending in 2010. A political scientist breaks down the report and discusses what we can learn from it about the gubernatorial election.

• Are Big Butts Actually A Trend?

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  Iconic fashion magazine Vogue recently published an article titled, “We’re Officially in the Era of Big Booty.” Numerous recent popular music videos from artists like Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Lopez, and Beyonce have indeed given a lot of attention to butts.

  But can a part of the body actually be a trend, and if so, is it actually something new? Large behinds have been celebrated for decades – think of the song “Baby Got Back” from the early 90s, and if you really go back in time, women of the 19th century even wore metal bustles. A cultural commentator weighs in.

• Attorney General Candidates Sound Off On Same-Sex Marriage

  Editor’s Note: Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Central Time” spoke with the three candidates for Wisconsin attorney general about the possibility of defending the state’s same-sex marriage amendment.

  Here’s what each candidate had to say.

  
  Brad Schimel
  Republican

  “Whatever your personal opinion about the constitutional amendment, it is our law. It was lawfully passed by the electorate and therefore your job is to go and defend it. And it’s a little misleading to pretend that if the attorney general doesn’t defend a law, it’s going to go undefended, because instead what happens is the state then has to hire an outside attorney or an outside attorney team that will come in and do this instead. We’ll spend potentially millions of dollars of extra taxpayer money because the attorney general’s not doing the job they were hired to do.

  “My job as attorney general is part of the executive branch. It is not my place to decide to interpret the law and decide what’s constitutional. There has been no court that has determined conclusively that the 10th Amendment doesn’t override the 14th Amendment. We’ve got a conflict of two different constitutional amendments here and ultimately we’re not going to know the answer to this until the United States Supreme Court decides which one takes supremacy on this.”

  
  Tom Nelson
  Libertarian

  “As attorney general, you’re a lawyer with a client and your client decides those policies. And what I would do, and what any attorney general would do, and what I expect Mr. Schimel or Ms. Happ would do, is call the governor up and say, “What’s our position on this?” and then advocate it.

  “Now I want to give you the political answer as a libertarian. To the extent I had any power to make the decision or influence it, the government really doesn’t belong in the marriage business. Why should the government decide who can get married and who can’t? It’s not a government function. This is the core problem with government in America today and in the world, is government prying into too many places where it doesn’t belong … and we’re getting away from that in some areas. Until recently, a man and his wife could go into the bedroom and shut the door and commit felony after felony in private by not having sex in the prescribed way. Well, we’ve pretty well gotten rid of that. We’ve grown out of that, and now we need to move out of government involving itself in marriage. It’s just not a political question.”

  
  Susan Happ
  Democrat

  “That one, you know, I have a bigger issue with. It has been found to be unconstitutional not just by the court in Wisconsin, by other courts. In that case, it’s true that the voters did pass the constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The problem with that is we still have to comport with the United States Constitution. And one court after another has struck down these types of laws. And so, our ban against same-sex marriage I believe to be violative of the Equal Protection Clause, and that is a law that I would not defend.

  “And look, I want to be clear. When we talk about the attorney general’s obligation to defend laws, that is absolutely true. If there is a law in direct conflict with the Wisconsin or the United States constitution, then you have to take a harder look at that. And there have been previous attorneys general who have not defended other laws, including the current attorney general who said he would not defend the domestic partnership registry. And in fact, attorney Schimel has also said that he would not defend and the domestic partnership registry. So, it’s rare and it’s the exception but it does happen where past attorneys general have declined to defend laws that they knew to be unconstitutional.”