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Here’s What We Know About the Rape Case Rocking the NHL

by LolitaYork Posted on September 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in August, NHL All-Star Patrick Kane was accused of rape by a woman he met on a night out in the small town of Hamburg, New York. News of the resulting sexual-assault case against the Chicago Blackhawks forward has dominated hockey’s preseason, and it took a bizarre turn on Thursday, when the lawyer for the woman accusing Kane of raping her quit following what’s being called an elaborate hoax.

Grand jury proceedings have been delayed, and evidence from the accuser’s rape kit, leaked to the press, have led to plenty of premature speculation about what actually happened. Twists and turns aside, the case has pulled the NHL into what’s become an ongoing controversy over how pro sports leagues handle domestic violence and sexual assault. Here’s the backstory to the Kane case:

Is Patrick Kane a big deal? Yes. Consider this: The Buffalo native joined the Blackhawks as the first overall pick in the 2007 draft, and the team has won three Stanley Cups in the last six years. When the United States earned the silver medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics, Kane, now 26, was the youngest player on the squad.

What’s the case against him about? On the night of August 1, Kane allegedly invited two women to his lakefront mansion in Hamburg after meeting them at Skybar, a popular Buffalo nightclub. An off-duty Buffalo police officer who had been hired as a driver by Kane took the three and Kane’s friend to the home in the early morning of August 2. (The officer, Lt. Thomas English, told the Buffalo News that he hadn’t seen improper behavior at the bar and left after he dropped the group off at Kane’s house.)

The 21-year-old alleged victim told investigators that after the group made it to Kane’s house, “she went by herself into another room, where Kane followed her, overpowered her and raped her,” according to the Buffalo News. The accuser and her friend reportedly left the house and called a relative after the alleged incident. She then went to a local hospital for an examination, and police were called. No charges have been filed against Kane. At a press conference on September 17, Kane apologized for the distraction and said he was confident of “having done nothing wrong.”

What’s the “hoax” controversy? For more than a month, Erie County authorities have been investigating the allegations against Kane. Last Sunday, in an apparent leak to the press, the Buffalo News and the Chicago Sun-Times reported that DNA tests of the accuser’s rape kit “showed no trace of Kane’s DNA was found in the woman’s genital area or on her undergarments.” Kane’s lawyer, Paul Cambria, later told the Chicago Tribune that the rape kit results had been shared with both him and the accuser’s attorney weeks earlier. (The tests also found traces of Kane’s DNA under the accuser’s fingernails and on her shoulders.)

The case took a bizarre twist this past week, when the accuser’s lawyer, Thomas Eoannou, told reporters the accuser’s mother found a “rape kit evidence bag” at her front door. At a press conference, he said the bag had once contained a rape kit and raised concerns that the evidence had been tampered with. Eoannou called for an investigation into how it landed at the mother’s front door.

On Thursday night, Eoannou walked back the claims he made the night before and told reporters he would step away from his client’s case. After hearing the mother’s explanation of how she obtained an evidence bag, Eoannou said, “I lack confidence in the story that was told to me.”

Then, on Friday, Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III pushed back on claims that evidence had been tampered with, telling reporters, “We believe that a person, the complainant’s mother, has engaged in an elaborate hoax.”

Sedita explained that hours after the alleged incident at Kane’s house, the accuser traveled to her mother’s house to change her clothing. She and her mother returned to the hospital to undergo a sexual-assault exam. When the examiner found out the accuser had changed her top, a nurse asked the mother to go home and put it in a sealed bag bearing the hospital’s label, the victim’s name, and her date of birth. Sedita said at the press conference the mother hadn’t told police that the hospital bag had been left at her house. Instead, when investigators stopped by the house to pick up the top, they placed it in their own evidence bag instead of the bag the mother had been given at the hospital. (The accuser’s mother denies the whole situation was a hoax.)

So the “rape kit evidence bag” on the mother’s front steps turned out to be a hospital bag all along. The kit never left the forensics lab. (Sedita showed surveillance video supporting that.) Roland Cercone, another lawyer for the accuser, wrote in a letter to the Chicago Tribune on Saturday that the accuser’s mother would cooperate with investigators in an inquiry into the bag, calling the whole situation a “mess.”

Grand jury proceedings have been delayed. Sports law expert Michael McCann told SI.com that the most recent events lower the likelihood Kane will get charged and raise the possibility of a settlement between the two camps. (Kane’s attorney denies any such talks are taking place.) Or the DA’s office could close the case without a grand jury hearing and without charges.

“The question in my mind isn’t when this case goes to a grand jury…it’s if this case goes to a grand jury,” Sedita said.

How has the NHL responded to the accusations? Following the mess created by the rape kit controversy, a handful of sportswriters have written that it’s finally time for the NHL and the Blackhawks to suspend Kane with pay while the investigation is underway. There’s some precedence for this in the NHL: A year ago, the league suspended Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov pending a domestic-violence investigation by the league itself. (Voynov eventually pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. This month, he decided to leave the NHL and return to Russia.)

But no sanctions have been brought against Kane, who is currently training with the Blackhawks as the season approaches. In fact, last week, flanked by the Blackhawks’ president, general manager, and coach, Kane read a prepared statement, calling the case a “distraction” and saying he’s “confident once all facts come to light I will be absolved.” And Wednesday, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told reporters he doesn’t “think today’s developments really have any direct impact on Kane’s status from the league’s standpoint.”

How does this case fit in with other recent accusations against pro athletes? The allegations against Kane come amid growing backlash across pro sports over the way leagues and teams handle accusations of violence against women. The NFL faced harsh criticism last year when then-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was suspended for just two games following his offseason arrest for assaulting his fiancée. After public outcry and the release of video footage of the assault, the Ravens released Rice.

In the post-Rice era, some leagues appear to have taken a more proactive stance against domestic violence. In March, NASCAR suspended (and then reinstated under indefinite probation) Kurt Busch on the basis of domestic-violence allegations; less than a month ago, the Cleveland Browns indefinitely suspended offensive line coach Andy Moeller after an alleged assault against a woman in his home.

But the NHL has so far backed away from any change. In an interview last October, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said the league doesn’t need to formalize a new policy because “our players know what’s right and wrong,” adding that there are mechanisms in place “to hopefully not get to that point.”

Still, according to some hockey writers, the Kane case is the NHL’s opportunity to redefine their stance on domestic-violence allegations against players.

“Allowing Kane to attend training camp sends a message to the accuser that she does not matter,” wrote five hockey journalists for SB Nation. “If the NHL wants to repair its relationship with female fans, the league needs to send the message that sexual assault allegations will be handled seriously and properly, regardless of who you are or how many Stanley Cup rings you have.”

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Here’s What We Know About the Rape Case Rocking the NHL

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Federal Court to EPA: No, You Can’t Approve This Pesticide That Kills Bees

by DavidPigdon Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, a federal appeals court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a pesticide called sulfoxaflor. Marketed by agrichemical giant Dow AgroSciences, sulfoxaflor belongs to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which have been implicated by a growing weight of evidence in the global crisis in bee health. In a blunt opinion, the court cited the “precariousness of bee populations” and “flawed and limited data” submitted by Dow on the pesticide’s effects on beleaguered pollinating insects.

Before winning approval for sulfoxaflor back in 2013, the company hyped the product to investors, declaring that it “addresses a $2 billion market need currently unmet by biotech solutions,” particularly for cotton and rice.

US beekeepers were less enthusiastic—a group of national beekeeping organizations, along with the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, quickly sued the EPA to withdraw its registration of sulfoxaflor, claiming that the EPA itself had found sulfoxaflor to be “highly toxic to honey bees, and other insect pollinators.”

Thursday’s ruling, a response to that suit, took their side. It applies only to sulfoxaflor, which Dow markets as a foliar spray on a variety of crops, including cotton, soybean, citrus, stone fruit, nuts, grapes, potatoes, vegetables, and strawberries. It has no bearing on the EPA’s equally controversial approval of other neonics like clothianidin and imidacloprid, which are widely used as seed treatments on the two most prominent US crops: corn and soybeans.

But Greg Loarie, an attorney for EarthJustice who argued the case for the beekeeper’s coalition, told me that the decision has broad significance because the ruling “makes clear” that when the EPA is assessing new pesticides, it must assess robust data on the health impacts on the entire hive, not just on individual adult bees.

In its opinion, the court rebuked the EPA for approving sulfoxaflor despite “inconclusive or insufficient data on the effects…on brood development and long-term colony health.” That’s a problem, the court added, because pesticides can cause subtle harm to bees that don’t kill them but that “ripple through the hive,” which is an “interdependent ‘superorganism.'” Indeed, many independent studies have demonstrated just such effects—that low-level exposure to neonics is “sub-lethal” to individual bees but compromises long-term hive health.

“The EPA doesn’t have that hive-level information on very many insecticides, if any,” Loarie said.

And in the case of sulfoxaflor, the agency didn’t try very hard to get that information. In January 2013, because of major gaps in research on the new chemical’s effect on bees, the EPA decided to grant sulfoxaflor “conditional registration” and ordered Dow to provide more research. And then a few months later, the agency granted sulfoxaflor unconditional registration—even though “the record reveals that Dow never completed the requested additional studies,” the court opinion states.

In an even more scathing addendum to the court’s main opinion, Circuit Judge N.R. Smith added, “I am inclined to believe the EPA…decided to register sulfoxaflor unconditionally in response to public pressure for the product and attempted to support its decision retroactively with studies it had previously found inadequate.” The judge added, “Such action seems capricious.”

Sulfoxaflor’s twisted path through the EPA’s approval process isn’t the first time the agency has green-lighted a neonicotinoid pesticide under dodgy circumstances, as I showed in this 2010 piece on clothianidin, a widely marketed pesticide marketed by Dow’s European rival, Bayer.

In 2013—the same year the EPA approved sulfoxaflor—the European Union placed a two-year moratorium on clothianidin and two other major neonics, citing pollinator health concerns. For a study released last year, the US Geological Survey found neonic traces in all the Midwestern rivers and streams it tested, declaring them to be “both mobile and persistent in the environment.” In addition to harming bees, neonics may also harm birds and fish, Canadian researchers have found.

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Federal Court to EPA: No, You Can’t Approve This Pesticide That Kills Bees

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Did Mayan deforestation change the climate?

by PenelopLucero Posted on September 3, 2015

Did Mayan deforestation change the climate?

By on 3 Sep 2015 5:07 pmcommentsShare

The pre-Columbian Mayans are known for many things: El Castillo at Chichen Itza, stucco masks and hieroglyphics, and a Long Count calendar that had nothing to do with a 2012 apocalypse, to name a few. But contemporary thinkers tend not to associate the Mayans with environmental degradation and climate change. A team of geoarchaelogists, led by researchers from the University of Texas-Austin, is here to change that.

The group’s new review claims that we should look to the “Mayacene” era (c. 1050 BCE to AD 950) as instructive of what infrastructure development can do to local ecosystems — and how, in turn, those local environmental changes force human adaptation. Previous research has suggested that pockets of devastating drought, when combined with political fragility and war, helped topple the empire.

“Many aspects of Maya landscapes can have negative impacts,” wrote the authors in Quaternary Science Reviews, “including sedimentation on slopes, valleys, wetlands and lakes, and pollutants such as mercury and potentially phosphorus, if the latter is high enough to produce harmful algal blooms.” Markers of Mayan environmental changes and adaptations are still apparent in the region today.

Here’s more from UTNews:

By looking at Maya impacts on climate, vegetation, hydrology and lithosphere from 3,000 to 1,000 years ago, researchers propose that the Maya’s advanced urban and rural infrastructure altered ecosystems within globally important tropical forests.

The researchers identified six stratigraphic markers — or “golden spikes” — that indicate a time of large-scale change, including: “Maya clay” rocks; unique soil sequences; carbon isotope ratios; widespread chemical enrichment; building remains and landscape modifications; and signs of Maya-induced climate change.

… Maya clay and soil sequences indicated erosion, human land-use changes and periods of instability. Soil profiles near wetlands revealed heightened carbon isotope ratios due to agriculture and corn production; and researchers noted a three- to fourfold increase in phosphorus throughout Maya-age sediments.

Aside from giving us a bit more insight into the Mayan civilization, the review offers a further window into the effects of deforestation on the climate. By examining pollen records as a proxy for changes in vegetation, researchers can begin to piece together a more or less unadulterated picture of how deforestation, wetland farming, urbanization, and other changes in land use can drive regional climate change, “much like how widespread forest removal is involved in climate change today,” write the authors.

We’re often given opportunities to learn from history, and this is one of them — and in this case, it’s an opportunity to learn from one of the greatest civilizations this Blue Marble has hosted. Take note.

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Clues from Ancient Maya Reveal Lasting Impact on Environment

, UTNews.

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Did Mayan deforestation change the climate?

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Judges Give NSA More Time to Suck Up Your Data

by AEDUlrikewv Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, on Friday tossed out an injunction over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of American’s phone records, but left open the question of whether the program itself is legal.

From Politico:

The three appeals court judges assigned to the case splintered, with each writing a separate opinion. But they overturned a key ruling from December 2013 that critics of the NSA program had used to advance their claims that the collection of information on billions of calls made and received by Americans was illegal.

That ruling, issued by Judge Richard Leon in Washington, sent shockwaves across the legal landscape because it was the first in which a federal court judge sided with critics who questioned the legality of sweeping up data on vast numbers of phone calls–nearly all of them completely unrelated to terrorism.

The new decision Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit did not kill the lawsuit brought by conservative gadfly Larry Klayman. The appeals court voted, 2-1, to allow the lawsuit to proceed in the district court, but the judges left doubts about whether the case will ever succeed.

In June, Congress phased out the NSA’s controversial program with the passing of the USA Freedom Act. The new law forced the NSA to obtain private phone records for counterterrorism investigations on a case-by-case basis through a court order. After the law mandated a six-month transition program for the new program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the NSA could continue its existing bulk collection program through November.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also filed an injunction to block the program, arguing that the surveillance court should not have reinstated the program after a federal appeals court in New York found it to be illegal.

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Judges Give NSA More Time to Suck Up Your Data

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Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

by KindraPVLC Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Everyone is writing about my pet topics today!

Aaron Carroll busts the myth that you should drink eight glasses of water every day.
Kiera Butler sings the praises of food irradiation.
Dylan Matthews writes that Intuit and H&R Block continue to oppose any effort to make taxes easier to file.
Larry Summers makes the case for continued low interest rates because “the global economy has difficulty generating demand for all that can be produced.”

Go read them all.

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Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

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New Study Finds That Humans Should Kill Smaller, Younger Animals

by SergioAbate Posted on August 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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When it comes to food, humans gravitate to the biggest item on the menu: overstuffed turkeys, 1,000-pound sturgeons, the fattest burger. But a new study in Science shows how our obsession with taking down the biggest prey is damaging the world’s wildlife.

Looking at 282 marine species and 117 terrestrial mammals, researchers at the University of Victoria found that human hunters and fishers overwhelmingly target adult animals over juveniles. Driven by the prestige and financial payoff of a trophy kill or gargantuan catch—and an aversion to killing young animals that might be seen as cute—humans consume up to 14 times the amount of adult animal biomass as other predators. And that’s contributing to the swift decline of populations of large fish and land carnivores, the researchers say.

Thanks to advanced hunting tactics and tools that allow us to kill without getting too close, humans have long been able to take down massive prey (e.g., the Ice Age mammoths). But with modern advancements such as guns and the automated dragnets of industrial-scale fishing, we’ve turned into “super-predators,” the researchers write. That’s just one reason, along with the ravages of climate change and habitat destruction, we’re currently in the process of losing one in six species on Earth.

These findings go against the assumption that it’s better to target mature animals and spare younger ones. “Harvesters typically are required by law to release so-called under-sized salmon, trout, or crabs, or to set their rifle scopes on the 6-point elk and not the calves,” explained Chris Darimont, one of the study’s authors, in a call with reporters. Those regulations are in line with the paradigm of “sustainable exploitation,” the idea that killing off big adult animals that dominate a habitat will allow the young to flourish and reproduce.

Humans exploit large prey at far higher rates than other predators. P. Huey/ Science

The authors argue that this approach causes undesirable reverberations in the food web and, eventually, the gene pool. While the loss of the largest predators may be a boon to their prey in the short-term, ballooning populations of herbivores can devastate vegetation and have been linked to festering illnesses. While humans may raise increasingly large domesticated animals—whether by pumping cows with steroids or breeding only the fattest hogs—exploiting the largest animals in the wild can lead to tinier animals. For example, as bigger, stronger fish are plucked from the oceans, survival of the fittest undergoes a strange inversion: Smaller fish are more likely to reproduce in their absence, producing fewer, smaller offspring that are less resistant to further threats.

The authors suggest that human hunters start thinking small. In the case of fisheries, they suggest focusing on smaller catches—a process of narrowing entrances into traps and nets and using hooks to allow larger fish to evade capture. To preserve top carnivores on land, Darimont and coauthor Tom Reimchen say that tolerance—and a decreased emphasis on prized trophy kills—is the best way to bolster dwindling populations.

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New Study Finds That Humans Should Kill Smaller, Younger Animals

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Donald Trump Has Finally Catapulted Us Into an Alternate Universe

by FrederiVogler Posted on August 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Donald Trump saga continues its trip into Bizarroland today with the exit of Roger Stone from the Trump campaign. Trump claims he fired Stone, while Stone says he resigned—and he has the resignation letter to prove it. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m guessing Stone is the more believable party here. So why did Stone leave?

In the letter, which was obtained by The Post, Stone expressed regret for the end of a “close relationship — both personal and political/professional — since the 1980s.” But, he added, since “current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message … I can no longer remain involved in your campaign.”

Not all of you are familiar with the Stone oeuvre, so how can I put this? Roger Stone complaining that Trump has become too vitriolic and combative is like the Kardashian family getting on your case for being too much of a publicity hound. It’s like Dick Cheney advising you that you’re banging the war drums too loudly. It’s like Louis XIV telling you to cool it with the mansion building.

Roger Stone is famous for calling himself a “GOP hit man.” He admires Richard Nixon so much he has Nixon’s face tattooed on his back. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he founded an anti-Hillary group called Citizens United Not Timid. He played a bit part in the Watergate scandal at the age of 19. He is famous for his many rules, one of which is “Attack, attack, attack—never defend.”

This is the guy who left the Trump campaign because Trump was too preoccupied with “provocative media fights.” The same guy who has proudly called his brand of politics “performance art” can no longer stomach the performance art that is the Trump campaign.

So this is where we are. On Friday, Erick Erickson criticized Trump for being sexist. Today, Roger Stone quit Trump’s campaign because he was being too combative. We are now officially living in an alternate universe. Mr. Spock finally has his beard.

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Donald Trump Has Finally Catapulted Us Into an Alternate Universe

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Today’s Cliffhanger: Will Rick Perry Make It To the Main Debate Stage?

by TrinidaUdv Posted on August 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Vox’s Andrew Prokop takes a look at the polls released today and gives us his projection of who’s going to make the cut for the main stage in Thursday’s Fox News Republican debate:

Fox has said it will average the last five national polls before 5 pm today, and New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman has reported that the network will use only live interview polls. If that’s the case, polls by NBC/WSJ, Monmouth, CBS News, Bloomberg Politics, and Fox News itself will be averaged….The candidates excluded from the primetime debate appear to be Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore.

That’s kind of too bad about Perry. He’s been saying the occasional interesting thing lately, and while he’s unlikely to win, he seems more likely to me than Carson or Huckabee or Cruz.

My guess is that no one has any problem with the other six who didn’t make it. Their support is minuscule and they don’t seem even remotely likely to improve much. But Perry? His formal qualifications are good—12 years as governor, ran once before in 2012—and you never know about all that Texas money sloshing around. And there’s really no downside. His famous “oops” from last time around was the most memorable moment of the debate cycle. If he does something as dumb this time, at least we’d get some good entertainment value out of it.

Anyway, we’ll get the official word on all this from Fox in a couple of hours. I know you’re all waiting on the edges of your seats. As for me, it’s lunchtime in California. So I’m going to go get some lunch.

UPDATE: Yep, this is how it turned out. Official Fox News announcement here.

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Today’s Cliffhanger: Will Rick Perry Make It To the Main Debate Stage?

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Our Kids Are Fat, But They Don’t Know It

by DexterLenk Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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More kids are overweight today than in the past, but fewer of them realize it:

A team of researchers at Georgia Southern University found an alarming rise in the lack of self awareness among children and teenagers in the United States. Specifically, way more overweight adolescents are oblivious today to the fact that they ought to lose weight than were in decades past—and it’s a big problem.

….Adolescents, for instance, are 29 percent less likely to correctly perceive themselves as being overweight than they were almost twenty years ago, according to the study’s findings. And the drop-off is the most pronounced among younger children—overweight 12-year-olds are almost 40 percent less likely to understand that they are overweight today.

….Solving the problem isn’t as simple as telling people that they’re overweight. There’s too fine a line between promoting health and facilitating body image issues for that to be the case….”We must be very careful when we, as parents, teachers, or health care professionals, make an effort to correct the misperception among teens,” said Zhang. “It has to be a pro-health, not anti-obesity, campaign.”

This is the place where I always start to get a little uncertain about the whole fat shaming thing. I take it for granted that overweight people should be treated with normal amounts of respect and shouldn’t be harassed about their weight. At the same time, obesity really is bad for you: it’s associated with diabetes, joint deterioration, and depression. As a society, we should try to promote healthy weight, but as individuals we should cool it with the fat jokes. This is a difficult combination to pull off.

And it’s even more important with kids, since childhood obesity is strongly associated with adult obesity. Unfortunately, it’s also harder with kids, since they have less knowledge, less self-control, and less concern with problems in the far future. How do you get them to take healthy weight seriously, but in a way that no one can complain is akin to fat shaming?

Obviously parents have to take a big role in this: if they don’t take healthy eating seriously, neither will their kids. Beyond that, I’m not sure. Ideas?

UPDATE: Aaron Carroll coincidentally reminds us today that not all obesity is created equal. Being mildly overweight has very few health implications. It’s only being seriously overweight that’s truly a problem:

Costs are NOT equally spread over obese individuals. People with class 1 obesity, or those whose BMI is greater than 30 but less than 35, pretty much have no elevated health care costs….The paper further reports that a person who has a starting BMI of 40, and can lose 5% of their weight, might expect to see reductions in health care costs of $2137. But only about 6% of adults have a BMI that high. Losing 5% of weight if you have a starting BMI of 35 would save you $528. Losing that weight if you’re starting with a BMI of 30 would save you $69.

Obviously, being moderately overweight can eventually lead to serious obesity, so it’s not something we should just ignore. Still, it’s true that the vast majority of those we call obese are only modestly overweight and don’t really have any serious health issues because of it. The real goal here is preventing mild overweight from turning into serious obesity.

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Our Kids Are Fat, But They Don’t Know It

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court Just Removed a Major Threat to Scott Walker’s Presidential Campaign

by GiselleMcCorkin Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

On Thursday morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court squashed a criminal investigation into whether Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign illegally coordinated with conservative dark-money groups to defeat a recall effort against him in 2012. The sharply worded decision aggressively slapped back the local prosecutor leading the probe and contended there was no constitutional basis for the investigation. This move appears to permanently settle a matter that posed a potential threat to Walker’s presidential ambitions.

The inquiry focused on whether Walker’s top advisers worked with a dozen outside groups—politically active nonprofits that do not disclose their donors—to run campaign ads opposing the recall campaign that was launched after Walker crushed public sector unions in his state. On the federal level and in most states, it is illegal for outside groups that can collect unlimited amounts of money to work closely with candidates they support. In today’s decision, the Wisconsin court ruled there was no legal rationale for an investigation because the dark-money groups did not explicitly call for voters to vote against the recall. Instead, they put out a slightly less specific message: support Walker. As a result, the court ordered the investigation to halt immediately—and they instructed prosecutors to destroy all related documents and free witnesses from the obligation to cooperate.

“To be clear, this conclusion ends the…investigation because the special prosecutor’s legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law,” Justice Michael Gableman wrote for the majority in the four-to-two decision. “Consequently, the investigation is closed.”

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court Just Removed a Major Threat to Scott Walker’s Presidential Campaign

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