Not that they care, but the persecutors in the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office are giving Milwaukee a bad national name, as demonstrated by the Daily Signal:

The fact that such a secret persecution of citizen advocacy organizations even occurred ought to be an embarrassment to a state that prides itself on being a progressive bastion of individual freedom. It is more reminiscent of a banana republic than the world’s foremost democracy.

We interrupt this blog to point out: Wisconsin is not now, nor has it ever been, a “bastion of individual freedom.” The Progressive Era brought us the income tax. Nothing free there. And banana republics have tropical weather, which this state does not.

To allow an investigation of issue advocacy based simply on allegations of collaboration between elected officials and the public would chill core political speech. The right of citizens and their membership associations to directly engage elected leaders is all the more important on politically charged questions of public policy. Such collaboration is the norm in the political arena, where there is extensive interaction between citizens groups and elected officials about proposed legislation. In fact, such coordination is vital to a functioning democracy.

Under the warped view of the democratic process exhibited by the local prosecutors involved in this investigation, public officials would be strictly prohibited from speaking to the public about important public policy issues. Advocacy groups — no matter what their political persuasion — also would have to avoid any contact or discussion of issues with government officials and each other for fear of their conduct being considered criminal.

The public’s right to engage in issue advocacy, including coordinated activity, cannot be limited in this way and is as protected at the state level as it is at the federal level. Wisconsin is failing to draw the sharp line that the FEC and the courts have drawn between regulating express advocacy that is intended to support or oppose particular candidates running for office and grass-roots advocacy on important public policy issues. As Bob Bauer, President Barack Obama’s former White House counsel, recently said, we should “value, not distrust, collective political action and the strategies through which it is effected.” …

In fact, not a single decision by the U.S. Supreme Court or the 7th Circuit upholds the type of punishment of coordinated issue advocacy that Wisconsin prosecutors were pursuing. Why? Because the prosecutors were trying to punish political speech.

I hope that the civil rights lawsuit filed against these prosecutors is successful and results in a large judgment that deters this type of investigation from ever happening again. But this also should spur the Wisconsin Legislature to repeal the laws allowing such secret — and, frankly, un-American — political investigations and to get rid of campaign finance regulations that are unconstitutional and an insult to the First Amendment rights of Wisconsin citizens.