Bucher wants paper to do his job

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Bucher wants paper to do his job
Republicans are chortling over an exchange between Waukesha DA Paul Bucher and AG Peg Lautenschlager, whose job he's seeking. They think Bucher scored some real points. I think he comes off looking like someone asking the newspaper to do his job.The tit-for-tat exchanges are about political telephone calls at state expense, made by a former staffer to State Sen. Alberta Darling. The staffer, Chris Slinker, resigned instead of being fired, and is now running for the Assembly. The calls went to a political consultant working on local races, not on Darling's campaign.Lautenschlager thinks someone should look into the 226 calls, and offered to help Bucher, who didn't seem to be doing it himself.Bucher fired off a sharp reply telling the AG to “rest assured I will take care of him if the facts justify a criminal investigation.”So far, Bucher's investigation has been to write a letter to the Journal Sentinel, asking for any information they have, since they wrote the stories about Slinker's phone calls.To no one's surprise, except possibly Bucher's, the newspaper did not tell its reporter to give Bucher the information. (Surely his wife, a former Journal Sentinel reporter, didn't expect the paper would hand it over -- or did she?)The newspaper's story was based on information obtained in an open records request from the State Senate chief clerk. All Bucher needs to do is to make a request for the same information and he will have everything the newspaper has.If you want to read some of the cute lines in the back and forth between Lautenschlager, Bucher, and others, www.wispolitics.com has them all posted.