SHAWANO, Wis. – Three people, including a 10-year-old child, were rescued from atop the roof of their car on Shawano Lake Saturday after it broke through the ice and sank in about 5 feet of water.

According to the Shawano County Sheriff’s Office:

Katie Atkinson, 24, of Round Lake, Ill., was trying to drive off the lake Saturday when she hit a soft patch and the car started to go under. The Shawano Fire Department responded in an airboat, and she was rescued along with 29-year-old Matthew Weso and the child.

The trio were wet but uninjured, according to the Sheriff’s Office. They were transported to Shawano Medical Center for evaluation.

Better stick to deer hunting.

A report from the Madison Police Department identifies the victim as a 43-year-old state lawmaker from Burlington, a description that matches Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington), co-chairman of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee. Vos’ office confirmed he was the victim but would not say anything else about the matter, since it was being investigated by police.

The incident happened at the Inn on the Park, 22 S. Carroll St. Witnesses said a man came into the tavern and swore at three lawmakers, calling them criminals. A bartender said the man used the words to the effect of “money” and “damn Republicans,” according to the police report.

Another man was recording the incident with a video camera when the bartender asked him to stop. That’s when the person who had been yelling dumped the beer on Vos’ head, according to the report.

The police report says beer splashed onto two other lawmakers, Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) and Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette).

Vos told police that the man has been harassing him since February, though previous encounters had not involved physical contact. The representative did not know the suspect’s name, but a female State Capitol employee, who was with the group, gave police a name and said Capitol Police would have his contact information, according to the report. Police believe he’s a 26-year-old.

Police said that when they find the beer pourer, he will likely face a tentative charge of disorderly conduct.

The protestor has been identified as Miles Kristan, a model of liberal civility.  Apparently he is well known around Madison for his violent left-wing behavior.

A source present at the incident and who wished to remain anonymous has identified the perpetrator as Miles Kristan, a well-known fixture of the recent protests in Madison and elsewhere in Wisconsin. Kristan is also well known to the MacIver News Service. He has harassed our interns and our investigative reporter in attempts to prevent us from providing coverage of events in Madison and Janesville.

UPDATE – The MacIver News Service have discovered a video, posted online, of Kristan and another protester harassing Representatives Vos and Suder just last week. In the video, which is apparently shot by Kristan and can be seen here, the representatives leave the Capitol and head over to check into the Inn on the Park. This video corroborates allegations that these two individuals have repeatedly harassed Vos, Suder and others.

“I am somebody and you will listen to me,” the agitator screams at one point in the six-and-a-half-minute video. Earlier, he warns that he was giving Vos “five business days to respond.”

The video was posted on September 9, five days before last night’s incident.

   I’m still waiting for just one Madison liberal to condemn the assault on an elected official.  Unfortunately all I could find was liberals rooting for him. This must be the new civility we’ve been hearing about. Jim Hoft at Gatewaypundit has more.

My blog has gone through a number of changes over the last 10 years.  The posts are spread across no less than four databases over the years, fracturing the integrity of my blog history each time. Now you know why half of them are missing. Its never been very high on my priority list to add them all back. Maybe someday. At the very least I want all of the posts from Iraq added to the database.

As you might have noticed, I have done very little blogging over the last year or so.  This was mostly due to the schedule and time constraints of finishing my teaching degree and being a new parent. But part of it was because of a clash of ideology.  You see, I was told by a number of individuals that if I ever expected to get a teaching job in Wisconsin I needed to shut up and pretend that I am a Democrat.   I was told to bite my tongue and nod my head in acceptance whenever politics came to light.  We were warned by school administrators visiting my college that young teachers should expect to be Googled and have their past dredged up.  Anything that showed up would be fair game in the hiring process.  So I did what any naive unemployed teacher-in-training would do: I censored myself.  I went through my blog and hid any posts that were overtly conservative in nature. I hid direct criticism of Democrats.  I made it look generically military with little political affiliation.  I bit my tongue. I withheld stats and facts that popped into my head whenever someone tried making a dishonest claim about how much teachers make, or how much “the rich” are taxed, or any of the other outrageous claims that were freely propagated. I sat idly by and said nothing when teachers were arrested for making death threats, or got phony doctors slips so they could skip off to protest in Madison. I was appalled by the lack of moral fiber present in the behavior of those who are supposed to be the most morally upstanding people in our society.

After a lot of self reflection I finally realized that if I have to pretend to be someone else, if I have to pass a political litmus test, if I have to constantly be censored, if I have to constantly look on and bite my tongue to pursue a teaching career then perhaps this career path is not all it is portrayed to be.

Now please understand me here. I’m not looking for the opportunity to slander or badmouth teachers for the sake of disagreement. I’m not looking for the opportunity to air dirty laundry or disagreements with faculty or administrators. I do not have the right to resort to personal attacks on another person’s character.  But I do have the right to engage in friendly, civil debate without being called an asshole, a “Walker plant,” a “Koch sucker,” or have my chances at a career threatened, or the tires on my car slashed, or my personal finances and political donations printed off from the internet and passed around school like a rap-sheet for pedophilia.  If I cannot engage in friendly debate, be respected for my own views, or be hired and employed on my own merit and not on my political affiliations then perhaps I chose the wrong career path.  And perhaps this whole teaching thing is not the all inclusive, multicultural, and benevolent endeavor that it is portrayed to be.

Feingold’s stand has made it more difficult for his party to muster the 60 Senate votes it needs to pass what is a huge priority for the White House and frustrated some progressive groups who are his natural allies.

His position on the issue is unique in the 100-member Senate.

All the measure’s other opponents in that body are Republicans. Feingold is the only senator opposing the bill from the progressive side of the debate and the only one who is arguing that the new regulations are so timid and easy on Wall Street that passage would do more harm than good.

“It doesn’t do the job, and I’m not going to be part of basically defrauding the American people into thinking it does,” said Feingold in an interview that underscored his pointed differences with his own party on a reform package intended to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic financial meltdown of 2008.

It was all for show though, as I rightly predicted.  Much like the Democrats in Arizona begging Obama not to sue their state, Feingold is only worried about the upcoming election.  Feingold gladly voted for the $787 billion “stimulus” and the unconstitutional health care mandate.  My prediction was that Feingold could be a dissenting vote on the finance reform bill and look good for his constituents, while the two RINOs in Maine pick up the slack and help ram the bill through anyway.  Other than Scott Brown’s vote, I was right.   The bill readily passed without him, and will be signed into law next week. Meanwhile, Feingold doubles down on his campaign rhetoric as the November election gets closer.

I agree with the Journal Sentinel that the bill includes some positive consumer protections. But after listening to Wisconsinites frustrated about the prospect of future bailouts, I cannot support a bill that simply doesn’t get the job done.

I work for the people of Wisconsin, not Wall Street, and the people of Wisconsin deserve a bill that will protect them and their families from the pain of another financial crisis.

Feingold is doing his best to paint himself as a maverick who bucks the trend of the liberal Democratic Party’s  big spending, big government agenda.  But the facts of his record say otherwise.

According to the US Congress Votes Database Feingold voted with the Democratic Party 79.8 percent of 598 votes in the current congress.  Feingold is a rank-and-file Democrat according to GovTrack’s own analysis of bill sponsorship.

What about campaign contributions? He’s a man of the people who bucks the liberal trend of being in the pocket of corrupt union influence, stays away from the influence of greedy lawyers, and whose voting on health care is not determined by campaign contributions, right?  Well, no.

Top 20 Feingold Contributors

Nearly all of his contributions come from unions, lawyers, and health care industries.  Feingold is no different than Pelosi, Reid, and Obama. Its time to give this career politician the boot this November.

Update

I’ve had a couple people comment on the large number of contributions from the University of Wisconsin.  First, you need to remember that nationwide roughly 72% of college professors identify themselves as liberal (shocking, I know) while  only 15% identify as conservative. You also need to know a little something about Madison, WI (home of the largest UW school in the system).  Madison is such a large liberal stronghold, that around the rest of the state it’s commonly referred to as “The People’s Republic of Madison,” also commonly known as “78 square miles surrounded by the real world.”

I think this clip from Ghostbusters pretty much sums things up.

Up to 1,000 jobs at Bucyrus International Inc. and its suppliers could be in jeopardy as the result of a decision by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, funded by Congress, to deny several hundred million dollars in loan guarantees to a coal-fired power plant and mine in India.

About 300 of those jobs are at the Bucyrus plant in South Milwaukee, where the company has 1,410 employees and its headquarters. The remaining jobs are spread across 13 states, including Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana.

On Thursday, the Export-Import Bank denied financing for Reliance Power Ltd., an Indian power plant company, effectively wiping out about $600 million in coal mining equipment sales for Bucyrus, chief executive Tim Sullivan said.

The fossil fuel project was the first to come before the government-run bank since it adopted a climate-change policy to settle a lawsuit and to meet Obama administration directives.

“President Obama has made clear his administration’s commitment to transition away from high-carbon investments and toward a cleaner-energy future,” Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg said in a statement. “After careful deliberation, the Export-Import Bank board voted not to proceed with this project because of the projected adverse environmental impact.”

Its important to note that this isnt even a coal plant in the U.S., but in India, so Obama’s efforts to stop coal really won’t accomplish anything.  As Ed Morrissey chimes in, it will actually make it worse:

This decision won’t stop one carbon molecule from hitting the air.  In fact, it will likely make carbon emissions worse.  India will look for other vendors to supply the equipment, probably from neighboring Russia or China, as they will continue to build and operate the plant.  Both nations compete in the same marketplace as Bucyrus, but they don’t work as cleanly as the American company does, which means the end result will be lower efficiency and more pollution.

Democrats like Obama keep talking about eeeeeevil corporations that export jobs overseas to save costs rather than keep them in the US.  Well, Obama and his Congress just sent 1,000 jobs overseas — jobs Americans lost, and jobs that either Russian or Chinese workers will get instead. And instead of bankrupting this new coal plant, they just made it dirtier.  Good job!

Two Democrats in Wisconsin, neither up for re-election, scrambled to find political cover in the wake of the devastating decision.  Governor Jim Doyle and Senator Herb Kohl both publicly objected to the decision and promised to push for a reversal, even though there is no appeal at the Export-Import Bank.  Senator Russ Feingold, who is running for re-election, has been quiet about the debacle thus far.  The most liberal member of the Senate has expressed skepticism about cap-and-trade, but only in the way carbon allotments punish Wisconsin in order to benefit California and Massachusetts — the two states where the bill’s authors reside in both the House and Senate versions of the bill.

A whole lot of us (not the main stream media of course) were shouting about Obama’s desire to kill the coal industry when he was running for president.  But obviously those on the left in places like Milwaukee and Madison didn’t want to listen.   So as the old saying goes, you reap what you sow.  How’s that hopen’change working out for you Wisconsin? Here is a refresher for everyone who wouldn’t listen during the election.