I AM THE FORCE

JENSEN HELD MONEY MEETINGS screams today's headline in the Journal Sentinel. Stunning, stunning, stunning developments in the Jensen corruption trial. Do you mean to say, that Assembly Republican leaders actually requested contributions for targeted candidates? Shocking news indeed. And truly worthy of a banner headline in the state's largest newspaper.

But I am a little confused about what this had to do with the case. Do legal fundraising solicitations actually represent bad or questionable behavior of some kind? Yesterday's testimony confirmed that these requests for campaign cash occurred outside the capitol, and that Jensen never suggested any kind of quid pro quo with those solicited. Sounds rather legal to me. Say what you will about Scott Jensen, but he never even remotely approached such clumsy chvalian illegality.

So, why is all this before us? Prosecutors apparently believe that, if they have staff describe absolutely everything that Republicans did to maintain the majority, jurors will eventually be shocked by something. And since the Dane County intelligentsia seems to believe that fundraising is dirty behavior, Blanchard and his funny-looking sidekick decided to throw that testimony on the pile.

With a supposedly tough and impatient Judge like Ebert on the bench, why is the court allowing such an extensive list of irrelevant, out-of-date, and repetitive testimony? Ebert will certainly not grant Jensen and Schultz the same kind of forbearance when they mount their defense. I can just hear Ebert now, "Hurry it up, hurry it up, you have two days to make your case so stop wasting everybody's time. We know they're guilty so let's move this thing along so I can start my vacation."

And is there something wrong with legislative leaders meeting to discuss fundraising and developments in key races around the state? After all, their ability to govern depends on the outcome of those elections. Do the naive ninnies of Dane County expect leadership to just sit back and wish for the best? In the twilight zone of the isthmus have we retroactively made fundraising a crime? Briefing lobbyists and organizations about campaigns in meetings outside the capitol has also become rather shady if we are to believe prosecutors and reporters.

Is Scott Jensen innocent of building a campaign machine with state resources? Absolutely not. But I fail to understand the importance of how much time a Ladwig staffer in 1996 believes she spent on fundraising. Or the titillating details of Patrick Essie's meetings with Jensen et al at the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The more I see from this prosecution, the more underwhelmed I am by the nature of their evidence against Darth Jensen. He may have been the guy responsible for dragging everyone across the line into malefaction, but the Blanchard/Ebert team just can't seem to find and pull back that curtain.

Maybe none of these shortcoming will matter with a Judge like Ebert and a jury from Dane. But it's a rather unspectacular case that they're building. Key witnesses with big agendas, underlain with the dubious assumption that Scooter Jensen is solely responsible for every questionable step ever taken by a Republican at the state capitol. Of course, JENSEN HELD MONEY MEETINGS so I might be wrong.