If that sounds like a big nothing-burger to you, you’re not alone.  The most interesting thing here is not the non-scandal, but the extent to which a tangled web of special interest groups is spending millions of dollars to try to turn policy disagreements into criminal acts – or at least create an appearance of impropriety that can be used in the next campaign.

One Wisconsin Now is the political arm of the Institute for One Wisconsin.  The Institute is bankrolled in part by – drum roll please – hedge fund billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  What does One Wisconsin do with the $$?  Well, some of it gets funneled to another political operation called the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund.   Other members of the club include politically-motivated unions like the SEIU and AFSCME.

One Wisconsin Now also tries to drag down the American Justice Partnership, which I run, for contributing to the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – a group dedicated to supporting conservative, rule-of-law AGs such as JB Van Hollen.

Groups like One Wisconsin Now know how deeply unpopular Obamacare is with the people of Wisconsin.  They understand the bill was steamrollered through Congress despite questions over the constitutionality of several provisions.  Now they’re trying to browbeat and intimidate AGs like JB Van Hollen for daring to challenge their dream of socialized medicine.

The threatened action suggests the controversial measure is about to move from the legislative realm into what could become a protracted and messy fight in the courts. The attorneys general say they will sue once President Obama signs the bill into law. They are pledging to take their battle all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Newly elected Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli lays out the crux of the argument from the article penned by Warren Richey:

“Just being alive is not interstate commerce. If it were, there would be no limit to the US Constitution’s commerce clause and to Congress’s authority to regulate everything we do.”

For years we’ve promoted the importance of the office of AG and this development cements our belief. No matter how this turns out it’s great to see these 11 Attorneys General standing up against big government mandates.

The suggestion by President Obama to provide a paltry $50 million to institute a medical liability pilot program is just another example of how insincere, deceptive and ignorant he remains on the substantive issues affecting our health care system. To infer that giving each state $1 million to study the medical malpractice liability issues it faces is laughable.

Dr. Rubin, who is a board member of Docs 4 Patient Care, presents a common-sense three-point plan to combat the problem of abusive medical malpractice lawsuits. Fear of such lawsuits force physicians to practice defensive medicine that in turn increases the costs of our health care system by $200 billion to $400 billion per year.

The Obama plan to provide $1m per state to study the issue is too clever by a half. The President hopes to fool us into thinking he’s serious about med mal reform when the reality is that there is plenty of evidence that reform could save hundreds of billions of health care dollars each year. The President is both unwilling to stand up to the trial bar that funds his political operation and unwilling to shoot straight with the American public. No wonder his health care proposal is in such choppy waters.

Read Dr. Rubin’s full piece here.

In “The Majority Leader of the Lawsuit Lobby” at National Review, our friend Jim Copland takes a look at the “unprecedented” bidding being done on behalf of the trial bar by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. That’s the same Harry Reid who’s taken in over $2m from non-lobbyist lawyers.  Copland notes:

Over this election cycle, Senator Reid’s campaign and leadership committees have raked in over $2 million from non-lobbyist lawyers, more than twice as much as he has received from any other industry or profession. Four of Reid’s seven largest campaign donors are law firms, and these aren’t corporate-law firms helping to structure the financials for Las Vegas casinos but rather out-of-state plaintiffs’ firms, including asbestos firms in New York, Maryland, and Illinois, as well as a toxic-tort firm in California.

Copland explores the substantial return that the trial bar has received on their investment in Reid. He finds that the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act ended up a “bonanza for the litigation industry”, that the trial bar used the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to gut “the statute of limitations in pay-discrimination claims”, and that the trial bar/Reid agenda is just getting going.

So in the eyes of big government liberals all is well when the trial bar steers millions to the Senate majority leader but it’s a crisis for the Supreme Court to allow corporations to exercise free speech. Only in Washington.

The most recent sign of hope is found in an asbestos trial in which a Madison County jury found on behalf of the Ford Motor Company. The Madison County Record has the details but the following quote from Ford attorney Manuel Sanchez sums things up nicely:

“It’s a new day in Madison County for corporate America,” Sanchez said. “Not only did we get a great jury, we got a terrific, fair and impartial judge.”

That judge is Barbara Crowder and the Ford case is the first Madison County asbestos case to go to trial on her watch as the court’s new asbestos jurist.

Fair and impartial are characteristics seldom associated with Madison County and asbestos – here’s hoping Judge Crowder continues to keep her courtroom a place where justice prevails.

Lindsay Lohan is suing the financial company E-Trade, insisting that a boyfriend-stealing, “milkaholic” baby in its latest commercial — who happens to be named Lindsay — was modeled after her. And she wants $100 million for her pain and suffering, The Post has learned.

This must read exposes the absurd over-reach of the current FDA.  This type of government over-regulation is strangling free enterprise and the job creating businesses that employ our friends and neighbors.  Dan does a better job telling the story than we do but here’s a picture that appears with the op/ed that while maybe not worth a thousand words made us chuckle over our morning bowl of Cheerios.

Nice work Dan!

Since you can afford an $800 jacket and you’re a personal injury lawyer you could probably afford to buy a new one.

Or since you make your living bringing personal injury lawsuits you could threaten . . . to sue the city where the airport is located, the concession where you think you left it and the airline!

That’s what William Ogletree, a Houston trial lawyer chose. The Ogletree case is just one more example of lack of personal responsibility that runs rampant these days. For more of the gory details read this article from the Southeast Texas Record.

When asked an open-ended question about the one or two reform ideas they would most like to see emerge from the meeting, Republicans and Independents would put medical liability much higher on the agenda than what is being discussed in Washington.

Needless to say we couldn’t agree more.  The need for medical liability reform is the sleeping giant of the health care debate.  By embracing it Democrats could score a hat trick: a) find enough common ground to get agreement with Republicans, b) tackle one of the major cost drivers that is essential to actually getting control of health care costs, and c) catch up with the public!

But will the trial bar let them do what’s good for the country?  Do we really need to answer that?

A Pittsburgh-based coal company, CONSOL Energy, will lay off nearly 500 of its West Virginia workers next year and its CEO blames environmentalists dead-set against mountaintop mining who have waged “nuisance” lawsuits for the job loss.

One again a broken legal system collides with a struggling economy to cause even more pain among hard working families.  Read the full story here.