Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

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Author: Owen

Prison Warden Gets Away With Homicide

by | 1845, 29 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

I’m certainly not a softy when it comes to crooks but making someone die of dehydration is beyond inhumane. This warden should be in jail for the rest of his life. Yet another example of our two-tier justice system.

In a move that is sure to have political repercussions, Dodge County District Attorney Andrea Will, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, has slashed felony misconduct charges against former Waupun Correctional Institution Warden Randall Hepp to a misdemeanor, letting him off with a $500 fine for his role in the death of inmate Donald Maier.

 

The plea deal, finalized Monday in Dodge County Circuit Court, is the latest chapter in Governor Evers’ Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ ongoing saga of mismanagement and dodged accountability.

 

Hepp, who conveniently announced his retirement just days before charges were filed in June 2024, was initially accused of felony misconduct in office, a charge that could have landed him three-and-a-half years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The allegations stemmed from the deaths of two inmates at Waupun, Wisconsin’s oldest maximum-security prison: Cameron Williams, who died of a stroke in October 2023, and Maier, who succumbed to dehydration and malnutrition in February 2024 after guards shut off his cell’s water supply. Court documents paint a grim picture: Williams, ignored after begging for hospital care, collapsed and crawled to his cell, his body undiscovered for at least 12 hours. Maier’s death, ruled a homicide by the Dodge County Medical Examiner, was a slow torture of starvation and thirst, with staff failing to provide meals or water.

 

Yet, according to a report by WLUK, Will justified the reduced charge by claiming Hepp was “well respected” within Evers’ Department of Corrections and unaware his guards were flouting policy Hepp pleaded no contest, and Judge Martin Devries, an appointee of former Republican Governor Scott Walker, ordered the $500 fine and court costs, requiring Hepp to pay within 48 hours and submit a DNA sample. Maier’s mother, Jeanette, called the sentence a “slap on the wrist,” lamenting that her son was “treated worse than a caged animal.”

Source of Massive Power Outage is Unknown

by | 1916, 28 Apr 2525 | | 0 Comments

I suspect that someone does know and they don’t want to say.

A sweeping power outage left millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France without electricity on Monday, leading to chaotic scenes and widespread disruption.

 

A problem with the power connection between France and Spain was a contributing factor to the outage, the head of a trade body that represents Europe’s power industry said.

 

[…]

 

Mr Ruby said this “meant the Spanish grid was disconnected from the broader European grid”.

 

He added that the interconnector incident was unlikely to have caused the outage on its own and that there were “likely to have been other elements in this equation”.

 

A day of widespread disruption saw trains cancelled and evacuated in some regions, and traffic lights stop working as delays mounted at airports.

Ah, Eduardo… We Barely Knew Thee

by | 1907, 28 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

But we knew enough. This is the upstanding “migrant” that the Left and Judge Dugan are so worked up about.

He was previously removed from the U.S. through Arizona in 2013, authorities say.

 

The complaint charges Ruiz with domestic-violence-related battery and says that he told police that there was a fight that arose because he was playing loud music.

 

He was accused of intentionally elbowing a woman, causing her pain and bruising. Ruiz was also accused of striking his roommate 30 times with a closed fist and shouting obscenities when the man confronted him about the music, the complaint says. The roommate’s girlfriend tried to intervene, and Ruis struck her with a closed fist too and shoved her, the complaint says. He is also accused of grabbing the roommate by the neck.

Despite Evers’ “Year of the Kid,” Government Education is Failing Them

by | 1852, 28 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

I feel like I’ve been shouting about this for decades and nobody in government has ever expressed real concern. The government-education complex is just about funneling gobs of money to political-favored groups of people… the kids be damned.

The Department of Public Instruction on Monday released the scores from several years of the state’s Forward Exam, which is the state test taken mostly by kids in elementary school and junior high.

 

“The Forward Exam, revised extensively and administered during the 2023-24 school year, was updated to align with newer, revised Wisconsin Academic Standards in English language arts and mathematics,” DPI said in its announcement. “Given the differences between the previous and updated Forward Exam ELA and mathematics assessments, the trend data should be interpreted with caution.”

 

DPI’s release includes hundreds of pages of school-by-school test results, but it does not include any overall numbers. Parents would need to look for their kids’ school, broken down by year, and then look to compare those scores with earlier years.

 

Will Flanders, an education expert for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said any parents who do that will see the Wisconsin school kids continue to fall behind.

 

“To the surprise of no one, [the test scores] reveal that student proficiency is still down since the COVID 19 pandemic. Proficiency is about 3.61% lower in third grade reading statewide than the 2018-19 school year,” Flanders wrote on Twitter.

 

He also said the test scores show the DPI lowered the bar for kids.

Trump Floats Baby Bounty

by | 1924, 23 Apr 2525 | , | 1 Comment

This is a terrible idea.

The White House has been fielding proposals aimed at persuading people to marry and have children, an effort being pushed by outside groups focused on increasing the nation’s birth rate after years of decline.

 

One such proposal that has been pitched to White House advisers is a $5,000 “baby bonus” to every American mother after she gives birth.

 

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” President Donald Trump said Tuesday when asked about a $5,000 incentive for new mothers.

A healthy nation has babies and we want to have policies that encourage families. Bribing new moms with $5k does not fix the underlying forces for why people are having fewer babies. Focus on policies that lower the cost of living, make housing more affordable, and stop with the apocalyptic global warming nonsense. We don’t need more welfare. We need a more stable, prosperous nation. Then the babies will come.

Leftist Prosecutor Refuses to Prosecute Man for Felony Property Damage for Political Reasons

by | 2126, 22 Apr 2525 | , | 6 Comments

This is unconscionable. Our two-tier justice system is alive and well in Minnesota. This goon is caught on video causing tens of thousands of dollars of property damage – damage that the citizens of her county will have to pay to repair out of their own pockets – and she refuses to prosecute because she agrees with the goon’s political cause. If you live in Hennepin County, you cannot rely on the “justice” system to prosecute criminals who are part of the political Left.

Hennepin County officials are not charging the man accused of damaging several Tesla vehicles in Minneapolis.

 

Authorities arrested Dylan Adams for keying six Teslas, with the damage valued at $21,000.

 

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty decided not to file charges against Adams, referring him to an adult diversion program.

FBI Investigates Milwaukee Judge for Obstruction

by | 2118, 22 Apr 2525 | , | 9 Comments

Well, well, well. Recognize where we are.

EXCLUSIVE: Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge Hannah Dugan is under FBI investigation for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant defendant evade ICE agents who came to arrest him in her courtroom during a hearing Friday morning.

 

The defendant’s attorney was made aware of the arrest and told Dugan’s clerk, who then told Dugan. She allowed the defendant to hide in her jury room (which is normally off-limits to everyone except the judge and members of the jury).

 

The ICE agents presented their warrant to Chief Judge Carl Ashley, who sent them back to Dugan’s courtroom to arrest the defendant.

 

The FBI was notified about Dugan’s apparent obstruction of justice and is currently investigating.

U.S. Opposes Allowing Ukraine into NATO

by | 1907, 21 Apr 2525 | , | 1 Comment

Good.

“We have heard from Washington at various levels that Ukraine’s membership in NATO is excluded,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “Of course, this is something that causes us satisfaction and coincides with our position.”

 

Ukrainian membership of the U.S.-led alliance would threaten Russian interests, Peskov added. “And, in fact, this is one of the root causes of this conflict.”

I support the US opposing Ukraine’s entry into NATO. The US represents the bulk of NATO resources and funding. By the terms of the NATO alliance, each country is obligated to come to the aid of a fellow NATO member should they be invaded. Ergo, if Ukraine enters NATO, we, the American People, would be on the hook to send treasure and, more importantly, American soldiers, to defend Ukraine. NATO was formed as a bulwark against the Soviet Union invading Western Europe. At the time of its founding, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union. It’s nonsensical to expect Americans to pay so high a price to defend Ukraine.

Furthermore, Ukraine doesn’t bring much to the NATO table. They are historically corrupt and militarily weak without aid. If they want to participate in the European economy and westernization, they can finish joining the EU. NATO is a military alliance.

Russia’s position is also sensible. Look at a map. Ukraine is all up in Russia and NATO is a military alliance specifically built to oppose Russia (as the successor to the USSR). The US would have never tolerated Mexico joining the Warsaw Pact. Even Cuba didn’t join that military alliance and the US would have opposed it with vigor. Maintaining a buffer zone between Russia and Western Europe has been Russian doctrine since before Peter the Great. It is long-standing and well-known. Putin’s position is neither new nor novel.

The fact that Russia’s and the United States’ national interests align on this one point does not make us allies nor does it make Trump a fan of Putin. It’s grown-up foreign policy.

Deadbeat Student Loan Borrowers to be Sent to Collections

by | 1842, 21 Apr 2525 | | 0 Comments

It is stunning that we have given these deadbeats this much slack. Their delinquency costs us all.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department will begin collection next month on student loans that are in default, including the garnishing of wages for potentially millions of borrowers, officials said Monday.

 

Currently, roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default on their federal student loans.

 

The Trump administration ’s announcement marks an end to a period of leniency that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. No federal student loans have been referred for collection since March 2020, including those in default. Under President Joe Biden, the Education Department tried multiple times to give broad forgiveness of student loans, only to be stopped by courts.

El Salvador Offers Prisoner Exchange to Venezuela

by | 1949, 20 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

Looks like one of the reasons that Bukele was so willing to take the deportees was to use them as leverage. Good for him.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has proposed a prisoner exchange with Venezuela, offering to repatriate hundreds of Venezuelans who were deported from the United States in exchange for “political prisoners.”

In a post on X, Bukele offered to exchange 252 Venezuelans currently detained in El Salvador’s mega prison for “an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners” he says Venezuela holds, including family members of opposition leaders.

“Unlike our detainees, many of whom have committed murder, others have committed rape, and some have even been arrested multiple times before being deported, your political prisoners have committed no crime,” Bukele said in the post, which was directed at Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. “The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud.”

The US and El Salvador say most of the deportees locked up in El Salvador’s Cecot prison are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and some are members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang. But officials have provided scant evidence to show the inmates have ties to those criminal groups.

Venezuela’s leader has described the deportation of the mostly Venezuelan migrants as a “kidnapping,” and denied they are criminals while backing calls for their return.

Leftist Supreme Court Empowers Dictatorial Government

by | 1058, 19 Apr 2525 | , | 2 Comments

The people of Wisconsin voted for an activist leftist court that would undermine representative government and advance dictatorial rule. And here we are. One might remind Leftists that there may one day be a Republican governor who will use this power against their agenda, but they don’t care. This is where Leftists are better than Conservatives about wielding power. They wield it with no apologies and no consideration for anything other than the immediate gain.

In case you missed it, the liberal justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court just allowed Tony Evers to raise taxes for the next 400 years.

 

That’s not a typo.

 

The court ruled 4-3 on April 18, 2025, that the Democratic governor had the authority to use a partial veto in 2023 to lock in school spending increases through 2425 by deleting a hyphen and a couple of numbers.

 

[…]

 

In his dissent, Hagedorn accused the liberal justices of turning the executive branch into a super legislature.

 

“How does a bill become a law? According to the majority, one option looks like this: The legislature passes a bill in both houses and sends it to the governor. The governor then takes the collection of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks he receives from the legislature, crosses out whatever he pleases, and — presto! — out comes a new law never considered or passed by the legislature at all,” Hagedorn wrote. “And there you have it — a governor who can propose and enact law all on his own.”

Federal Judge Admits Limitations of Power

by | 1927, 18 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

Progress

A federal judge declined to issue an order Friday evening blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, concluding he lacks the authority to issue a nationwide order after the Supreme Court tossed his order earlier this month.

 

Lawyers with the ACLU had asked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to issue a temporary order blocking any imminent AEA deportations, saying the Trump administration was actively busing dozens of men to an airport in Texas to be deported.

 

Boasberg said he was “sympathetic” to the concern about deportation flights resuming imminently, but he said he lacks the authority to issue a nationwide temporary restraining order barring such deportations.

MN Government Goon Caught Vandalizing

by | 1913, 18 Apr 2525 | | 0 Comments

So much hate.

A member of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s administration has been repeatedly caught on camera allegedly vandalizing parked Tesla vehicles with his keys while out walking his dog.

 

Dylan Bryan Adams, 33, a fiscal policy analyst for the State of Minnesota, was captured on vehicle surveillance footage allegedly dragging a key across the exteriors of several Teslas, stripping paint and causing thousands of dollars in damage.

 

Authorities reportedly arrested Adams on suspicion of causing an estimated $20,000 in damage, with formal charges still pending, according to the Minnesota-based crime watch account @CrimeWatchMpls on X.

Get it Done or We’re Moving On

by | 1856, 18 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

I like this stance.

When asked about the deal between Russian and Ukraine, Trump said: “We’re talking about here people dying. We’re going to get it stopped, ideally.

 

“Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass.”

 

[…]

 

Zelensky had been hoping to use the deal to secure a US security guarantee in the event of a ceasefire deal, telling European leaders last month that “a ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine”.

 

The US has so far resisted providing Kyiv with security guarantees.

At this point, this is clearly a negotiating tactic by Trump to put pressure on getting a deal done. But he’s also right. This isn’t our war. Our interests are limited and it is not our full responsibility to fix it. At some point, we should walk away.

And no way in hell do I want America giving Ukraine unlimited security guarantees. Maybe commit to economic sanctions or something if Russia misbehaves, but I don’t want us committing to armed defense of Ukraine.

That being said, I hope they get to a viable deal very quickly.

WI School Districts Whine After Making Terrible Decisions

by | 0752, 15 Apr 2525 | , | 1 Comment

This is happening all over Wisconsin. I saw a post about Port Washington schools having the same problem.

This is a recent board deck from the West Bend School District (thanks to the local resident who sent it to me). They hired 60… SIXTY… people with “free” federal Covid slush fund money. This is a district that has had declining enrollment for the better part of a decade and is projected to continue to have declining enrollment for another decade.

And yet, when someone came around with free money, they found a way to spend it by padding their staff with useless (I say “useless” intentionally) staff. How many of those staff members are friends of family of existing staff members? How many are doing jobs that have absolutely zero impact on student performance? The decision to hire these people was a terrible decision and a complete waste of money. How can I tell? The West Bend School District’s student performance has not improved. That is the #1, #2, and #3 goals of a school district – to educate kids. If adding these people did not positively impact educational outcomes, then it was a waste of money.

Now that money is finally going away and school districts all over Wisconsin – bolstered by the bleating of Governor Evers – are whining and crying about “cuts.”

Get bent.

They never should have wasted that money in the first place and the fact that these people should now all be fired is 100% the responsibility of the idiots who made the decision to hire them in the first place. The vast majority of Wisconsin’s school districts are terribly run and should not be rewarded for their mismanagement.

Honda Might be Moving Some Manufacturing to USA

by | 0742, 15 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

There’s an old saying in economics… there are no solutions, just tradeoffs. Overall, tariffs are bad policy, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t positive tradeoffs. Here’s a potential positive tradeoff

TOKYO (Reuters) -Honda is considering switching some car production from Mexico and Canada to the United States, aiming for 90% of cars sold in the country to be made locally in response to new U.S. auto tariffs, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Tuesday.

 

Japan’s second-biggest automaker by sales plans to increase U.S. vehicle production by as much as 30% over two to three years in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to put a 25% levy on imported vehicles, Nikkei said.

 

Honda declined to comment, saying the information was not announced by the company.

Free Tuition Boosts Inequity

by | 0939, 12 Apr 2525 | | 0 Comments

Heh

New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine made history in 2018 when it became the first top-ranked medical program to offer full-tuition scholarships to all students, regardless of need or merit.

 

The number of applicants, predictably, spiked in the year that followed. But then, the share of incoming students considered “financially disadvantaged” sank to 3% in 2019, down from 12% in 2017, reports showed. 

“Tuition-free schools can actually increase inequity,” said Jamie Beaton, co-founder and CEO of Crimson Education, a college consulting firm.

 

“Tuition-free colleges experience surges in application numbers, dramatically boosting the competitive intensity of the admissions process,” he said. “This in turn can skew admissions towards middle- or higher-income applicants who may be able to access more effective admissions resources, such as tutoring or extracurriculars.”

What the story doesn’t talk about is outcomes. How many students were able to complete their degrees? How many graduated and went on to good careers? Colleges focus so much on the equity of admissions but not the success of their students after they graduate. That is part of the problem with higher education.

Murderer Opposes Death Penalty

by | 0846, 12 Apr 2525 | , , | 0 Comments

Oh, that’s rich. So he can execute someone by his authority for whatever reasons he likes, but he shouldn’t be killed because the government didn’t follow procedures. He’s a coward. If he wants to be a martyr to his monstrous cause, he should man up and welcome the chair.

Luigi Mangione asked a federal judge in New York on Friday to stop the government from seeking the death penalty if he’s convicted of federal charges related to the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing the Justice Department made a “political, arbitrary, capricious” breach of protocol.

 

“When the United States plans to kill one of its citizens, it must follow statutory and internal procedures,” defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said. “Mangione seeks Court intervention now not merely because the Government has failed to follow these procedures but because it has abandoned them.”

Judge Rules that Terrorist Agitator Mahmoud Khalil

by | 0836, 12 Apr 2525 | , | 0 Comments

Good.

An immigration judge ruled Friday that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported on grounds that he threatens foreign policy, as alleged by the Trump administration.

 

[…]

 

While a student at Columbia University, Khalil was part of a leadership group protesting the war in Gaza. Khalil took part in negotiations with school administrators demanding the institution cut ties with Israel and divest from Israeli companies. Khalil finished his graduate studies at Columbia in December and is set to graduate in the spring.

 

Khalil — whose wife is about to give birth to their first child — was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his Columbia housing in March.

 

[…]

 

The government has argued, under an obscure 1952 federal law called the Immigration and Nationality Act, that it believes migrants are deportable “if the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe that the alien’s presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

I love how any law with which the reporter disagrees is deemed “obscure.” Most of our laws were written a while ago and there are so dang many of them that most of them could be deemed “obscure.” But it’s still the law and it is very clear that the Secretary of State has this arbitrary authority.

Interest Groups Fight for Child Care Welfare

by | 0820, 11 Apr 2525 | | 0 Comments

This is yet another example of a “temporary” or “emergency” government program that people are trying to make permanent. The politicians decided that it was fair for taxpayers to pay for child care during the pandemic because of… something. Now that the pandemic is over, there is still an entire ecosystem of child care providers and parents who want to continue to suckle at that teat. The same politicians are pushing to make the welfare permanent as another step down the road of Socialism. Rinse. Repeat. Incrementalism works.

One in four Wisconsin child care providers could close their doors if the state’s ongoing support isn’t replaced after it ends in June, according to a state-commissioned report released Thursday.

 

More than one in three providers expect to reduce their capacity for children or the hours they operate, or both, according to the report, based on a survey of most of the state’s licensed child care providers.

 

The report was commissioned by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) and produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

It was released by the office of Gov. Tony Evers to support $480 million for child care providers in his 2025-27 proposed budget — a successor to the state’s Child Care Counts program that was funded with federal pandemic relief money.

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