A Wisconsin gun control advocate says Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a Chicago gun ownership law doesn’t mean other gun laws are now in jeopardy. Jeri Bonavilla of WAVE – the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort - says nothing in the court’s decision to overturn a Chicago gun law came as any surprise. “The precedent was set with the Heller decision two years ago, that struck down the gun ban in Washington, D.C.” said Bonavilla. “The makeup of the court is virtually the same, so we’re not at all surprised that it came down as it did.” [Read more...]

The death of Robert Byrd won’t immediately affect the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, but his home state’s political landscape has changed in the more than fifty years Byrd represented West Virginia in Washington, D.C. University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin says the 92 year-old Byrd entered national politics from the conservative southern wing of the Democratic party – including an association and a vote he later came to regret. Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, when he began his political career in the state legislature. “He used that as part of his entry into politics,” notes Franklin. “And in the 60s voted against the Civil Rights Act, along with just about every other Southern Democrat.” [Read more...]