Dee Hall on Jensen: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!

In case you haven't noticed, Scott Jensen has not yet been incarcerated for the crimes he may or may not have committed. And caucus snoop-in-chief Dee Hall needs to pout about that every now and again.

When a state appeals court announced last month that former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen couldn't move his misconduct trial to Waukesha County, many people in Wisconsin wondered why the case launched more than six years ago still hadn't been resolved.

There are several good reasons why the prosecution of this once-powerful politician is still working its way through Wisconsin's justice system, according to attorneys for Jensen and his co-defendant, Sherry Schultz, as well as a UW-Madison law professor, who said rulings in the case have helped clarify the law.

Critics, however, say the case highlights the difference between the type of defense poor and rich defendants receive.

Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said the fact that the defendants have avoided a final outcome for more than six years is "a miscarriage of justice."...

"Part of the problem is the system is accommodating a very well-connected person with a lot of money who can afford to pay high-priced attorneys for years on end," McCabe said. "Ordinary citizens are not treated this way. An ordinary citizen who is charged with a crime often has his case decided in weeks or months — not almost seven years."

We can immediately call shenanigans on any news article that quotes local rube Mike McCabe. I can't tell here if McCabe is lamenting that the poor cannot exercise their rights in the same way that Jensen is, or if he thinks we should simply deny Jensen his rights in the name of egalitarianism. I'm also guessing that if you were to ask him, McCabe has no qualms with death penalty defendants dragging their feet through the appellate process for years on end. But that's about what we expect out of Mike McCabe: ideological hackery passing as political analysis.

The problem here isn't Jensen. The problem is the speed with which the courts have handled the concerns his lawyers have brought forward. If a decent journalist were to write this story, the courts would be the central issue, not Jensen. But as is typical, Hall helps McCabe mount his high horse, and together they frame an image of Scott Jensen as the conniving bad guy trying to thwart justice.

So instead of getting a level account, we get Dee Hall telling us that Scott Jensen is not yet convicted of running a "secret and illegal campaign machine out of the Capitol" because his "hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign money and taxpayer-funded legal help (have) allowed him to mount the type of no-holds-barred defense that most people could never afford."

Yeah, that language isn't pejorative or leading at all.