January 27, 2012

State Individual Wrestling Tournament opens today

2008 WIAA State Tournament Action The 66th WIAA Individual Wrestling Championships open this afternoon and evening at the Kohl Center in Madison.

There will be champions crowned in 14 weight classes in three divisions.  There are 235 schools represented at this year's individual championships, including 95 from Division 1, 68 from Division 2 and 72 from Division 3.

Wausau West has qualified the most wrestlers to the field in Division 1 with 9, and Kaukauna and Wisconsin Rapids are next in line with 8.  Pewaukee has qualified the most Division 2 wrestlers with 9 and in Division 3, Coleman has the distinction of having the most qualifiers with 10.  Mineral Point is next with eight qualifiers.

Minneral Point has produced the most individual championships with 44.  Stoughton has claimed 41 individual titles, and Milwaukee South is next with 39.

A total of 10 returning champions are in this field and there are 22 wrestlers who enter the State Tournament this weekend undefeated.

Action starts this afternoon at 3pm with Division 1 preliminaries.  D-1 Quarterfinals get underway at 5:15pm and Division 2 and 3 preliminaries start at 7:15 tonight.

Listen / Download – Joe Miller previews the tournament for WRN. :43
Listen / Download – Joe Miller preview #2 on State Wrestling :53

Partial settlement reached in fatal bus crash

A Marathon County judge has approved a partial settlement in a lawsuit filed by the family of a Rib Mountain teen killed by a school bus.

The settlement gives Brandon Pippenger's younger brother $50,000 for emotional damages, suffered after he witnessed his older brother being run over by a school bus in 2005. Family attorney Christine Bremer Muggli says the settlement was reached with First Student Inc., which now owns the bus company.

Under the settlement, Bremer Muggli says more than $33,000 will go into a savings account that the boy can't draw on until he's 18.

Bremer Muggli also says they're close to settling the lawsuit involving Brandon's death. She says an agreement has been reached on the terms, but still needs to be finalized.

The Pippengers says the bus driver was negligent and would have seen Brandon running to catch the bus had he checked his mirrors. Brandon was a seventh grader at a Wausau elementary school when he was killed.

AUDIO: Matt Lehman reports (MP3 :37)

Ryan on budget: good, bad, ugly

Rep. Paul Ryan President Obama's budget plan reminds one Wisconsin congressman of a spaghetti western. Representative Paul Ryan says President Obama delivered an inspiring speech to Congress Tuesday night, but the budget he delivered today doesn't measure up to those inspiring words. "It's a spend, tax and borrow our way into prosperity budget," says the Janesville Republican. "It proposes bigger government, with higher spending, higher taxes and higher debt, as a means to produce prosperity in America."

Ryan likens the president's budget to the Clint Eastwood western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . Ryan says Obama should be commended for correcting past budget flaws, but the rest of the budget is bad – massive increases in domestic spending, and ugly – a massive tax increase. "You don't raise taxes in a recession," says Ryan. "This budget is raising taxes in a recession. This budget is going to have a $1.4 trillion tax increase."

Ryan says the tax increase will hit small business people hardest. "That's what so galling about this budget," says Ryan. "The notion that you raise taxes on the people that are most likely to create jobs in a recession. It just boggles our minds that they would actually try to pursue this kind of an economic agenda at this time."

Ryan, ranking Republican on the House budget committee, also says the administration quadruples domestic spending over four years, then uses gimmicks to claim they're cutting the budget deficit in half. Ryan and New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee, delivered the GOP reaction to the president's budget during a press conference in Washington.

AUDIO: Bob Hagie reports (2:00 MP3)

Saving face on Facebook

Two Marquette University educators are going public about privacy on Facebook . The social networking site has privacy settings which allow only certain people to view one's profile which may include information and pictures. Sarah Bonewits Feldner, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies , surveyed how MU students interpret these control options.

"There is a big difference between a person who says only my friends, but I have 455 friends, can see this versus someone who can't see anything," says Feldner.

Among the 600 respondents, the average person had 255 friends with some as high as 500.

Fellow Assistant Communication Studies Professor Scott D'Urso says as these types of websites become more common, people's habits are evolving and users becoming more aware of their privacy, or lack thereof, on Facebook.

But it's difficult to stop other from saying negative things about your or posting your picture on their profile. D'Urso says combat that with caution by being very careful about your public behavior, as well as what you do online.

The two held colloquium on the topic Thursday afternoon at Marquette.

AUDIO: Brian Moon reports (MP3 :81)

State solder killed in Afghanistan

A soldier from Wisconsin has died in Afghanistan. LisaThompson said two military chaplains came to her workplace, Gordo's Barand Grill in Portage, on Tuesday and informed her of the death of her24-year-old son, Army Spc. Daniel James Thompson.Thompson said her son waslead driver in a convoy and was killed by a roadside bomb in Kandajarprovince in southern Afghanistan. Three other soldiers also died.LisaThompson said her husband, Bob, met her at work and they criedtogether, then had to tell her son's longtime girlfriend, MariaSteinke, what had happened.Her son was a 2003 graduate of Portage High School.