Finally, days later, a major Milwaukee mainstream news medium looks into whether Gov. Scott Walker committed perjury when, testifying under oath to Congress, he denied he had ever made any politically oriented statements about using his office to punish his political opponents.
The matter was first raised in a documentary film and then blogged about at UppityWisconsin and elsewhere. That film shows Walker telling a billionaire business contributor that he's using "divide and conquer" tactics to disarm public employee unions.
It won't surprise many of you to learn that the Milwaukee news organization treating this matter in depth isn't the Walker-centric Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Nope. It's Milwaukee's local Fox News affiliate TV station, WITI-TV. The Journal Sentinel to its credit did break the story on the quote from the documentary but hasn't pursued Democratic complaints that Walker may have perjured himself regarding the matter.
Channel 6 political reporter Mike Lowe Monday night led viewers through the controversy in a thorough and (yes, it's true) balanced report, complete with video clips from the documentary alongside clips from his congressional testimony three months later. The video of the news segment itself is not available to stream, at least not yet, but a comprehensive print version is on the station's web site. Wisconsin residents beyond WITI broadcast range need to be directed to this story, which shows us something fundamental about the way Walker operates. [UPDATE: The news segment can be seen now at the Fox 6 News web link below.]
The Fox 6 headline itself pulls no punches: Did Gov. Walker lie to congressional committee under oath?
Early in the story comes this choice paragraph:
No one – not even Walker’s opponent in the recall race, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, is ready to call it perjury — but this is the same congressional committee that questioned disgraced baseball player Roger Clemens, who is now facing a perjury trial.
Now there's an analogy even your low-information, Joe Sixpack voter ought to understand. Later on, Lowe tries to get a comment from Walker himself. The response is also typical of Wisconsin's self-referential Eagle Scout governor:
‘The bottom line is, my integrity. I’ve always had high standards in the state Assembly and in my time as County Executive, and as governor I continue to have those high standards,” Walker said.
Yeah. As cartoonist Robert Crumb might put it, Walker has a high standard of standardness.
Bottom line, according to Lowe's report, is that Democratic congressmen asked the chair of the committee that heard Walker's testimony to consider investigating the matter. The chair is a Republican, Californian Darrell Issa, and he blew off the Democrats. Of course. So no perjury investigation. Where oh where is special prosecutor Kenneth Starr when we really need him?
