{"id":12362,"date":"2010-08-02T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T17:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12362"},"modified":"2014-10-05T14:37:43","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T19:37:43","slug":"chanting-points-memo-emmer-and-drunk-driving-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12362","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo:  Emmer And Drunk Driving, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this morning, we busted Jeff Rosenberg at the DFL-congruent <em>MNPublius <\/em>carrying the Alliance for a &#8220;Better&#8221; Minnesota&#8217;s water in a piece riddled with factual errors.<\/p>\n<p>And when you catch someone carrying foul, deceptive water, it&#8217;s best to go back to the well.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4017\/4575208799_e7c6e34c94.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"252\" height=\"192\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what <a href=\"http:\/\/allianceminnesota.org\/page\/community\/post\/xavier\/BVq\">A4aBM had to say about the legislation in question:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In fact, records show that the Minnesota County Attorneys Association opposed the bill Emmer introduced, as well as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Office of Public Safety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At least A4aBM got that part right &#8211; as far as I can tell, anyway.\u00a0 But that should not be a shock; the County Attorney&#8217;s Association will always oppose any law that takes away discretion and power from county prosecutors, or inconveniences them in anyway.\u00a0 Emmer&#8217;s laws would have&#8230;:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>allowed drunk drives to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;allowed those convicted of DUI to get some of their rights and privacy back after <em>ten years of good behavior<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That is all!\u00a0 Of course, it would mean that county prosecutors would have to <em>prove people guilty to the standard of reasonable doubt<\/em> rather than have the accused considered guilty until proven innocent. And Mothers against Drunk Driving would, it is safe to say, repeal the Bill of Rights if it meant they could lower the blood alcohol content to .06%.<\/p>\n<p>But that lone bit of factiness is lonely in this press release:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The attorneys testifying in favor of the law were private attorneys who, according to their web sites, defend those arrested for drunk driving.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, attorneys Weidner and Stokes defended drunk drivers.\u00a0 And, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=12354\">as I showed in this morning&#8217;s piece<\/a>, they also did family, child custody, criminal defense, prosecution, personal injury and product liability and &#8211; in the interest of completeness &#8211; <strong>litigation <em>against <\/em>drunk drivers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>A4aBM either is too sloppy and stupid to check this out, or they are actively trying to deceive the public.\u00a0 I&#8217;m voting for &#8220;b&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Emmer is trying to run from the fact that he introduced a bill that lessened penalties against drunk driving,&#8221; said Denise Cardinal, Executive Director of Alliance for a Better Minnesota Action Fund.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I see no evidence that Emmer&#8217;s &#8220;running from&#8221; anything.<\/p>\n<p>Because do you know who else supported Emmer&#8217;s &#8220;implied consent&#8221; bill?\u00a0 The one that would have treated accused drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty &#8211; exactly the same as Democrats want terrorists in US custody treated?<\/p>\n<p>Former <a href=\"http:\/\/judgepedia.org\/index.php\/Eric_Magnuson\">Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Judge Eric Magnuson<\/a>. And DFL attorney general Lori Swanson.\u00a0[EDITOR&#8217;s NOTE: \u00a0While I&#8217;m told the Attorney General&#8217;s office did in fact support the bills because the Implied Consent hearings are an immense cash and time suck, I am still looking for the actual cite. \u00a0When I find it, I&#8221;ll un-strike it &#8211; Ed]<\/p>\n<p>A source close to the story emailed me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Weidner told me last night that the AG actually supported this bill. He is going to find the letter they sent&#8230;He also told me Chief Judge Magnuson supported it and threatened to end implied consent hearings b\/c they cost so much.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps A4aBM has evidence that Magnuson (and, so my source says, the Attorney General&#8217;s office) are also &#8220;soft on drunk driving?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be interested in seeing if A4aBM or Jeff Rosenberg at <em>MNPublius<\/em>, who&#8217;ve led the way in trafficking the &#8220;alternate realities&#8221; about this story, plan on accounting for those facts.<\/p>\n<p>As re A4aBM, I&#8217;m going to suggest they&#8217;re just going to keep lying &#8211; down to the simplest of facts:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Emmer&#8217;s campaign made false claims on Wednesday when it stated that prosecutors asked Emmer to sponsor a bill that lessened penalties for drunk<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, &#8220;Emmer lied about talking with prosecutors&#8221;.\u00a0 It&#8217;s quite an accusation.<\/p>\n<p>But even <a href=\"http:\/\/wcco.com\/politics\/tom.emmer.marty.2.1657841.html\">the Dayton-friendly Star\/Tribune debunks that <\/a>claim:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Emmer referred most questions on the bill to Stillwater attorney Tom Weidner, who works for a law firm that handles prosecution for 10 municipalities in Washington County and also does criminal defense, including DWI cases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So why does the A4aBM, and sites like <em>MNPublius <\/em>who serve mainly as DFL press release vehicles, so brazenly repeat such bald-faced lies?<\/p>\n<p>Because they assume the voter is stupid, and they still think in the pre-blog paradigm that assumes that absent any dissenting opinion they&#8217;ll stay that way.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s see what we can do about that, shall we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this morning, we busted Jeff Rosenberg at the DFL-congruent MNPublius carrying the Alliance for a &#8220;Better&#8221; Minnesota&#8217;s water in a piece riddled with factual errors. And when you catch someone carrying foul, deceptive water, it&#8217;s best to go back to the well. Here&#8217;s what A4aBM had to say about the legislation in question: In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-12362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","tag-abm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12362"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12365,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362\/revisions\/12365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}