Author: jnweaver

By Ryan J. Foley
Associated Press

The American Civil Liberties Union and the state’s attorney general are making similar legal arguments in asking a judge to turn down the Legislature’s request to intervene in a major gay rights case.

They are on different sides of the dispute, but both agree the Legislature has no legal grounds to fight the lawsuit aimed at getting the state to pay for health care benefits for the partners of gay state employees.

WASHINGTON – When 20-year-old Nathan Bush was pulled over in Kenosha last October with drug paraphernalia plainly visible in his car, he lost his driver’s license – and tens of thousands of dollars in financial aid.

Bush, an incoming junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he could have been slapped with the far more serious charge of possession of marijuana, but instead had all of his federal dollars taken away in courtroom negotiations.

….As part of this year’s reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which a congressional committee is expected to consider this week, the so-called “retroactivity clause” could be repealed – in other words, the government could no longer legally withhold tuition assistance from students who were convicted of drug-related offenses before they filed their first application.

Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to sign a law that would waive tuition at state public universities for children of Wisconsin soldiers killed while on duty and eliminate the property tax burden for their widowed spouses. The proposals are part of a larger package that contains some benefits that also would apply to disabled veterans and their spouses.

One provision would have the state pay half the tuition at state public universities and colleges for all the state’s 497,000 military veterans.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned convictions in a 1981 Madison rape and homicide case, based on DNA testing of evidence used to convict a man who has been serving a life sentence in prison for the crimes. Also quotes Keith Findley, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the UW Law School, which filed an amicus brief in the case.

Chronic wasting disease has been in the U.S. deer herd for at least the past 30 years. Questions about why it got there and how it spreads have been around for just as long.

Experts on the disease are gathering in Madison this week to share their research on the disease found in the Wisconsin herd in February 2002, the first time it was discovered east of the Mississippi.

(Debbie McKenzie, a senior scientist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Science, is quoted in this story.)

The state Legislature’s budget shortchanges public education – both K-12 and universities – and deals a blow to smart land-use planning.

Eleven Republican legislators, not satisfied with the investigation launched into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s handling of the Paul Barrows matter, called on the state’s attorney general Friday to launch her own investigation.

Madison-based Stratatech Corp. has been awarded another federal grant, this one for $4 million for development of its genetically engineered therapeutic human skin substitute with enhanced antimicrobial and angiogeneic properties for use in the treatment of type 1 diabetic skin ulcers.

….The UW-Madison spin-off, which was established in 2000, also is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its flagship StrataGraft engineered skin tissue product for the treatment of burn victims.

Stratatech’s products are based on a patented, unique source of pathogen-free human skin cells identified at UW-Madison as being able to multiply indefinitely.

Quoted: Thomas German, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The $192,000 Paul Barrows problem at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became a $1 million problem Friday when Republicans pushed through the state Senate $500,000 in annual cuts to the university’s budget over the next two years, citing the embattled administrator as the reason.

In what could be the most important decision of his term, Gov. Jim Doyle is threatening to veto the entire state budget passed by the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee and Assembly.

The budget approved by those bodies, but still pending in the state Senate, contains a major reduction in state funding for public schools that Doyle claims would either trigger a massive property tax increase or result in deep cuts in school budgets across the state.

In an interview, Doyle acknowledged that he’s taken the rare step of considering an across-the-board veto – instead of just using his pen to rewrite the most objectionable parts – because Republicans want to “get me in a box.”

The GOP-crafted state budget may have flown through the Assembly early Wednesday, but the plan still faces major roadblocks before it can become law.

Standing in the way are fiscal conservatives in the state Senate, who want deeper spending cuts in the state’s $52.9 billion two-year spending blueprint, and Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat who has warned he could veto the entire plan if it doesn’t give more money for schools.

Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday slammed the two-year, $54 billion budget passed by the state Assembly earlier in the day, but Republican leaders celebrated the spending plan they said reins in the tax burden on families.