Live-blogging the Scott Walker/Tom Barrett Wisconsin recall debate.

8:40 Central Time: We're set to begin in 20 minutes. You can stream it here . Hang out here in the comments. 8:53: Wisconsin polysci pro...

At the Rose Café...

... conversation rises.

"John Edwards Jury Reaches Verdict on Just 1 of 6 Counts."

"Jurors told Judge Catherine Eagles they had reached a unanimous verdict only on Count 3 of the indictment. That charge pertains specif...

Annoying email annoys me.

2 teachers and a busload of high school students vote — using early in-person absentee balloting — in the Walker recall election.

"A witness at the Milwaukee Municipal Building on Friday reported seeing about 30 students from Pulaski High School arrived at the poll...

Elizabeth Warren says — for the first time — that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American.

Boston Globe reports: Federal statistics like those in the Harvard records, which were compiled for the Department of Labor, rely on a defin...

"New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something."

"I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do." Elsewhere, "all over the United States," they "are wringing...

1st Circuit says Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

"The appeals court agreed with a lower court judge who ruled in 2010 that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the ri...

Ronald Poppo, the cannibal's victim, the faceless man.

Video shows 3 bicyclists pedal past the naked cannibal attack. The attack goes on for 18 minutes. I don't blame the bicyclists for not s...

"When the gunmen began to slaughter his family, 11-year-old Ali el-Sayed says he fell to the floor of his home, soaking his clothes with his brother's blood..."

"... to fool the killers into thinking he was already dead. The Syrian boy tried to stop himself from trembling, even as the gunmen, wi...

The judge overseeing the John Doe investigation defends it against charges of partisanship.

"This has been an orderly and professionally conducted procedure... I realize the length of it frustrates some people. Once it's ru...

Scott Walker and Tom Barrett, together again — the second and final debate.

Tonight, at 9 Central Time. Walker and Barrett held their first debate on Friday night. Barrett was aggressive in his attacks on Walker in t...

Spelling time again.

The best blog coverage, year after year, is at Throwing Things . ADDED: " doo buh TAHN tay : The attitude of the Montana Supreme Court ...

At the Events Garden Café...

... you could walk down the aisle.

"I can’t find it in me to remand him to state prison that houses people convicted of offenses such as murder, armed robbery and rape."

"I don’t believe that that fits this case. I believe that he has to be punished, and he will be." Says Judge Glenn Berman, as he s...

"Walker leads Barrett 52% to 45% in new Marquette Law School poll."

Likely voters. Margin of error +/-4. In early May, Walker led by 50% to 44% in this poll. The same Marquette poll that showed GOP incumbent ...

"Chicago distances Obama from Wisconsin recall."

Chicago? Chicago = the Obama campaign. Isn't that weird? Anyway, Chicago wants you to know that the Walker recall business has got noth...

"I must say this venture of mine into this Intrade market has been worthwhile."

"I have never really interacted directly with you wingnuts before, and the expression, 'shit for brains,' now has a meaning I n...

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

W hat Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps ...

"It's capitalism vs. crony-capitalism."

"Romney: I’ll See Your Bain And Raise You A Solyndra."

Why did Bob Dylan wear sunglasses to the White House?

Caitlin McDevitt (at Politico) simply notes that he did , but we watched the video (over there), and this was the dialogue at Meadhouse: ME:...

"A lot of politicians can go negative without losing too much altitude, but President Barack Obama doesn’t seem to be that guy."

Writes Glenn Thrush in Politco: Obama’s sag — and it’s definitely more of a sag than a collapse — is a natural function of reluctant Republi...

"Father's death made Obama realise he could do more with his life than smoke pot Michelle tells Jon Stewart."

A Daily Mail headline. Details: On the Daily Show, Stewart joked that the stories about the president as a young man resembled the 'scr...

Everybody's talking about cannibalism.

I'm just checking the front page over at USAToday , and I'm struck by the top entry on the "most popular" list: "Poli...

"Yeah, that’s just who I want helping me out with my legal problems. A guy who technically isn’t even a lawyer yet..."

"... and has absolutely no experience. Experts believe there has been a huge disconnect between the learnings in the classroom and what...

"New Jersey man stabbed himself, threw skin and intestines at cops..."

Reports the Daily News , where comments in the "That took a lot of guts" vein are accumulating. Don't tell me... bath salts......

"The first of the three eyasses (chicks) to fledge took off this morning (May 30, 2012) at 6:59 a.m."

Here at the University of Wisconsin—Madison: Thanks to kcom in the comments over here for pointing to that video. We — especially Meade — h...

"If you're over 70, you should be able to go and say, 'Just give me some diamorphine and I won't mither you any more.'"

Said John Cooper Clark , the "great punk poet," in this long and fascinating piece in the Guardian. The subject of opiates arose i...

Chagas Disease — the “new AIDS of the Americas.”

The "new AIDS"... and "[n]ew research suggests Chagas may have led to the death of Charles Darwin — one of the great medical ...

"In an embarrassing blunder, Romney's campaign misspelled the word 'America' on its new 'With Mitt' iPhone app, launched Tuesday."

Ouch.

"Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite."

WaPo reports: Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates t...

With "bath salts" — "the new LSD" — there have been 3 or 4 cases in Miami like the naked cannibal.

According to Armando Aguilar, head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police: [H]e said the people have all taken their clothing off, been extr...

At the Rose Fly Café...

... you can talk all night.

President Obama ties the Medal of Freedom around Bob Dylan's neck.

Photo. Bob looks so old and frail! Also there and getting the same award but not shown in the picture: Justice Stevens.

"The UW's Teaching Assistants' Association has declined to endorse Democratic challenger and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who faces Walker in the June 5 recall election..."

Hot news! (You may have to wait a while for the stressed Isthmus website to load.) "Through his use of Act 10 against the workers in M...

Wisconsin recall voters "shouldn’t be basing their decisions on recent job growth, which owes far more to individual entrepreneurs and chance than to anything the governor has done."

"They should be making their choices based on the things the governor does control, not on short term economic data, which are neither ...

"Will a Mormon president treat constitutional clauses as divine injunctions?"

"If so, what grounds will we non-Mormons have for interpreting with secular arguments what is presented as God’s will? For that matter,...

"Telling young people that some jobs are 'menial' is a huge disservice to them and to the whole society."

"Subsidizing them in idleness while they wait for 'meaningful work' is just asking for trouble, both for them and for all those...

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate commits a Class I felony...

... punishable by up to 18 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

"Democrats also believe that if they can keep Walker’s margin to low single-digits heading into the vote next Tuesday they can win it on the ground..."

"... thanks to their superior organizational efforts — much of which is being spearheaded by labor unions. As evidence of their organiz...

"In this video, what is astounding is that Rebecca, the Planned Parenthood counselor, starts arranging with the actor about how to get a late-term abortion."

"To wait until her pregnancy is so developed that — and using Medicaid for this, using the state to pay for the ultrasound to determine...

"A boozed-up driver tore through a 96-year-old woman’s Long Island house Monday..."

"... spinning such a devastating path of destruction that the stove wound up in the back yard...." Great pic at the link.

Barney Frank — giving a commencement speech — makes a "hoodie" joke.

At the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, giving an honorary degree to a black man: “You know, when you get an honorary degree they give...

"I lived my whole life in New York and never experienced something this crazy."

Absurd statement from a man who witnessed a naked man biting off chunks of another naked man's face, swallowing the flesh, and growling ...

The "most popular" article in WaPo right now is "Romney's distortions about Obama do us a disservice."

But when you click on those words, you get to a column titled "Romney’s pants on fire." The 2 different headlines go to such oppos...

"Their policy is to take out high-value targets, versus capturing high-value targets..."

"They are not going to advertise that, but that’s what they are doing," says Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, "the top Rep...

Wurst Times... the other alternative brat fest in town.

The other day, I showed you some pictures of the People's Bratfest, the alternative brat fest. Little did I know there was also another ...

"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African..."

"... that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive, then I think we have a chance of a world tha...

"Ann Althouse pushes back, and she has a point. But watch a few episodes of 16 and Pregnant..."

"... and you might think that 'it’s wrong' is a useful heuristic for people incapable of fully understanding what 'it will ...

"The Tea Party's Senate Insurgency Hits Texas."

Have you noticed Ted Cruz? A former state solicitor general and clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the 41-year-old Mr. ...

Memorial Day.

"So what happened to all those candidates embodying the spirit of Egypt’s modern progressive democratic youth movement..."

"... that all those Western media rubes were cooing over in Tahrir Square a year ago? How are they doing in Egypt’s first free presiden...

2 photographs from this week in Wisconsin politics.

(The first photo, by me, is from the People's Brat Fest. The second photo, by Meade, is from an equal pay press conference.)

"One sign that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is likely to win the election on June 5 is the sudden disappearance of national media attention to the race."

Writes Stephen F. Hayes in The Weekly Standard: The networks and newspapers that gave wall-to-wall coverage to protests in the streets of Ma...

Police gun down a man who is — quite obviously! — unarmed.

It's obvious, because he is naked. They gun him down, because he his eating the face off another man, who is also naked. They continue ...

"What’s wrong with Johnny Depp playing an Indian?"

"Nothing now, because he is an American Indian. If the Comanche say it, then it is so." ... Now that he’s one of us, he’ll need to...

At the Glass Pipe Café...

... you can talk all afternoon.

"Half of us thought that he wasn’t John Waters, because that would be impossible, and half of us thought that he was."

"So we argued about it for one exit, and the only way to resolve it was to just turn around and go back." The things people do to ...

"Facebook, I wanna thank you..."

And I want to thank you... for the sublime horribleness. (Via Buzzfeed .)

"When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances..."

"... or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink." Item 2 i...

"Twenty years later, [Dan] Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic."

Writes Elizabeth Sawhill in the Washington Post, citing the increased number of children born to unmarried mothers and correlations between...

"In A World Where..."

"... One Teen's Voice Is An Internet Hit."

It's the People's Brat Fest...

On the Library Mall, here in Madison, Wisconsin, today. It's "brat" as in "bratwurst." Please spare me your sausage-...

Can you convict a man of murder when all you have is a confession?

There's nothing corroborating his statements. He just said he did it, 33 years ago, and he's a man with [perhaps?] mental illness. T...

Mitt Romney journals his "feelings" on his iPad.

Feelings? The Romnster has feelings? What feelings? "The only time I'm unhappy is if I've done something that hurt the prospect...

The Pope's butler has been arrested!

"His job included handing out rosaries to dignitaries and riding in the front seat of the 'Popemobile,' a vehicle used for publ...