Wisconsin News and Sports
Tom Glavine attempts to become Major League Baseball's 23rd 300 game winner when the New York Mets open a 3-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park.
The Brewers have allowed a 6 1/2 game lead after the all-star break, slip all the way to 1/2 game over the Cubs, now 1-game after Chicago lost 4-1 to the Philadelphia Phillies last night in Chicago.
Jeff Suppan pitches for the Brewers tonight as they open a 6-game homestand against the Mets and Phillies.
A political science professor from the UW-Oshkosh is taking on Wisconsin's gay marriage ban.
Wisconsinites approved a statewide ban on gay marriage last November. Bill McConkey has filed a lawsuit in Dane County to prevent it from being enforced and is also asking the court to overturn the ban. He says the amendment was an affront to the intellect of the state. The lawsuit challenges the amendment on the grounds that it violates the 1st and 14th amendments to the US Constitution, and also on the grounds that it was posed wrong on the ballot to the people of Wisconsin.
McConkey is not gay. He's married, with nine children and seven grandchildren. Although, he says sexuality is not what the lawsuit is about. McConkey's doing it because it's a Constitutional violation.
McConkey has no legal background and filed the lawsuit without the help of an attorney. He says it's not clear if his challenge will go forward, but he's open to any help opponents of the ban want to offer.
McConkey is currently waiting to see if the Governor or Attorney General respond to the lawsuit.
The President of the UW System is urging lawmakers not to compromise on funding higher education.
The budget offered by Assembly Republicans includes $120 million in cuts to University of Wisconsin campuses. System President Kevin Reilly says even meeting half way on that is a bad idea. Reilly says even if Democrats and Republicans meet halfway, the UW System will still be losing $60 million in funding, which would make it difficult to keep up with the demands being placed on campuses.
During a round table discussion with Chancellors on Monday, Reilly said the hope at this point is that cooler heads will prevail in a budget conference committee and the UW will be taken off the chopping block. He says such a move is needed to improve the future of Wisconsin's future students.
It might seem convenient at the time, but snuffing out cigarettes in flower pots can be very dangerous.
A recent apartment fire in Madison that was started when someone attempted to put out a cigarette in a potted plant highlights the danger of potting soil. Glen Loyd of the State Department of Consumer Protection says there might not have been a fire danger if the pot had been full of dirt, but this potting soil contained Peat Moss .
"It isn't soil. It's mostly man-made material that can burn. And on a day like today a lot of flower pots are just drying up and they're ready to burn if you put a cigarette in them."
Pete Moss is used in potting soil to hold water but it's highly flammable if it gets too dry. Despite the danger, Loyd says there aren't their any warnings on the packages.
"You would think that a warning might be appropriate, but a lot of people around the country don't realize the problem. If you do an Internet search, you're going to find very few fires that are gonna be attributed to potting soil."
A fire in Wisconsin's capitol city two weeks ago started in a planter on a deck and spread to the attic. No one was inured, but damage to the apartment is estimated to be 3-and-a-half-million-dollars. Madison fire department spokesperson Lori Worth says cigarettes are the leading cause of fatal fires in the nation.
(Jennifer Miller, WIBA, contributed to this article.)
Big Oil gets even more record profits, and one lawmaker says they should not be let off the hook for gas gouging.
State Representative Mark Pocan (D-Madison) cites Exxon Mobile Corporation's second-quarter net income of $10.26-billion, which he says is the fourth-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.
"Their profits are obscene, but so are the prices Wisconsin consumers are paying. I think the least that we should be able to do is have some sort of assessment so that we could have Big Oil companies help pay for some of the transportation costs in Wisconsin."
Governor Doyle had proposed a 2.5% assessment on gross receipts for oil companies, but, defending their "no-tax increase budget," the Republican-controlled Assembly eliminated the gas tax from their version of the budget. (Reality Check) Pocan says that amounts to a reduction of $247.6-million in revenue from the Governor's budget plan, which would translate into cuts to education, and local aid for police and fire services. The GOP believes that any tax on Big Oil would simply be turned around and put right back on the consumer. Pocan (pronounce) believes the Democrats will prevail.
"I think the Democrats are trying to stand with the public on this issue and I think ultimately we will prevail because public opinion certain feels that companies that have record profits should be paying their fare share and we shouldn't be burdened with those costs."
Pocan says he's not worried about a court challenge, because he's very confident that it's not only legal, but also the appropriate thing to do.
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