News & Commentary

License plate scanners are the dark horse of the surveillance world. They've been around for a decade, but people rarely notice. They don't look much different from closed circuit cameras, perched over busy intersections. Or they're just another device mounted on a passing police car.

Dozens of singers continued their noontime Capitol ritual Tuesday despite admonitions from police and last week’s temporary court ruling allowing the state to regulate groups larger than 20.

MADISON (WKOW) -- A federal judge extended a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of a provision in a new Wisconsin law that would require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. 

The Walker administration’s attempt to silence the voices of peaceful singers in the capitol rotunda failed yesterday, as the Wisconsin Capitol Police’s apparent attempt to declare an unlawful assembly went unheard and unheeded by the sixty or so people participating in the daily Solidarity Sing Along.

Zibolski said grants could help pay the machine’s $250,000 price tag, but the American Civil Liberties Union Wisconsin Chapter’s executive director said there’s a bigger cost.

Federal Judge William Conley dealt two blows to the Walker regime yesterday with the release of two orders. The judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Wisconsin Department of Administration from enforcing a portion of the Capitol Access Policy that violates First Amendment free speech protections, and he also issued a one-week restraining order on that portion of Act 37, the mandatory ultrasound law, that requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic.

UPDATED: A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking Wisconsin's law placing new restrictions on abortions.

Madison — For the second time this week, a federal judge has blocked an action by Gov. Scott Walker and other state officials, yanking part of the administration's rules for managing protesters at the Capitol.

Following the massive rallies in 2011, the Department of Administration imposed new rules and began ticketing protesters. ACLU attorney Larry Dupuis filed a challenge to the rules on behalf of a protester who had stopped attending daily singing rallies fearing he'd be ticketed. Dupuis says Judge William Conley's ruling makes it clear that the state Capitol is one place where free-speech rights should not be restricted.