Gov. Doyle today announced several vetoes and re-workings of the recently passed state budget repair bill. In it, he changed how the bill would be financed (instead of issuing a veto) in order to scale back the amount of money that could be found by securitizing bonds from tobacco company payments. Specifically, Doyle and his aids said they would "seek to borrow $150 million instead of the $209 million outlined in the bill."

In case you hadn't heard much about it lately, Wisconsin, like every other state, received a large sum of money ($5.9 billion) from the major tobacco companies as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement, the "largest civil settlement in US history." The agreement freed the companies from tort liability with the state governments (several of which had pending lawsuits against them) in exchange for these payments and additional restrictions on advertising.

When I first heard that 9/11 theorist and UW-Madison Lecturer Kevin Barrett was running as a Libertarian for Rep. Ron Kind’s 3rd District congressional seat, I was elated. Not because of any desire one way or the other to see Barrett unseat the congressman, but because it means the race is suddenly much more interesting then it was two weeks ago. Kind already has a competitor in Republican Paul Stark, but it is highly unlikely that Stark can unseat the New Democrat and Free Trader from La Crosse. Kind, who has held the seat since 1997, defeated his most recent Republican challenger in 2006 with 65 percent of the vote. Stark is trying to defeat Kind by tying the incumbent to Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama. Obama defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in La Crosse County with 58 percent of the vote. On the Republican side La Crosse County went to Senator John McCain by 48 percent, but Mike Huckabee came in a close second with 41 percent of the vote.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton may not agree, but this weekend Illinois Senator Barack Obama plans to start acting like he is the only Democrat in the race by mobilizing a massive 50-state strong army of new voters. One day after Obama closed the superdelegate lead with Clinton to within half-a-super supporters will gather at the King Street steps of the Wisconsin state capitol for a voter registration training session. Then they will head out into the city to sign up and educate as many new voters as possible. It should add an additional fun spectacle to the Dane County Farmer's Market and hopefully organizers will provide participants with information specific to Obama's Family Farmer policy agenda. Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz will be leading the kick-off event. Clinton has 269.5 Superdelgates to Obama's 269. Overall, Obama needs 165 delegates to officially take the Democratic nomination, while Clinton needs 328.5.

Editor: h/t to Michelle Malkin for the link back to this conversation.This past weekend the University of Wisconsin-Madison College Republicans hosted a convention on campus featuring a variety of speakers from mostly the state and local level, but also FOX News "Analyst" Michelle Malkin. Malkin kicked off the weekend's events with a speech on Friday discussing mostly issues concerning homeland security and immigration reform. When she spoke in Madison on Friday her speech was consistently interrupted by calls of "liar" and "racist" and profanities from a handful of members in the audience.

This editorial is in response to Dave St. Amant's open letter in The Capital Times.

Mr. St. Amant's open letter implicitly, and spuriously, correlates Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin's record with the totalitarian policy of neo-Conservatism. For any Democrat to level this complaint against a fellow Democrat the correlation should be true. Regarding Baldwin's record and regarding his own practical history, Mr. St. Amant presents neither facts nor truth; although I am sure he does come from a good, socially conscious family. Meaning no disrespect for his family, Mr. St. Amant would do better to remain reality based if he wants to win favor in the 2nd district; our standards are high. We expect our Democrats to be truthful, thorough, fact oriented, and then liberal. Good liberalism is always empirical, then rational. Save for his personal anecdote, Mr. St. Amant's letter is neither.

Wisconsin's spring elections take place today, Tuesday, 1 April.

As always, you can register at the polls on the day of the election, and most things with your address on it (including an ID card, lease, bill, or paycheck) can be used for identification. If you don't know where to vote, you can look up your polling place at the city clerk's web site.

To find out what's on your ballot ahead of time, you can look it up at the WI Voter Public Access site.

On my morning visit to Facebook I couldn't help but notice the little ad on the left side of my profile telling me to "Retain Justice Butler." This is the first localized political ad I've noticed in the massive social networking site. Facebook ads are dirt cheap and, while I'm still not convinced they have an impact with Facebook users, it is a savvy move on the part of the Butler campaign. Students utilizing Facebook and heading to the polls tomorrow may not know the candidates well, but the repetition of seeing Butler's name everytime they check to see what their friends are up to could create a flicker of familiarity when they hit the voting booths. While we don't make endorsements at Dane101, we do appreciate candidates who bring on board staffers who seem to grasp the vast possibilities that Web 2.0 can provide. So, we offer Kudos to the Butler campaign.

On April 1, Wisconsinites will (hopefully) go to the polls to vote on a number of state and local issues and candidates. Included on their ballots will be a decision over whether to elect a new or incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. On the one hand, your choice is current Justice Louis Butler, and on the other hand you have Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman.

A great deal of sound and fury has been coming from the blogosphere over which candidate deserves the seat more. Recent television ads have only added to the noise. Newspapers and officials across the state are declaring their support for one or the other, and the debate rages on. For the uninitiated (or those who have better things to do with their time than endlessly surf blogs), the whole mess probably seems, well, messy. So, in the interest of clearing the air a little bit and helping to create a more informed voting populace, I will be attempting to lay out the facts, events and controversies in as concise a manner as possible. Yes, I’m a masochist.

Dane101 was recently invited by the HuffingtonPost to help "HuffPost's OffTheBus Superdelegate Investigation." (hat tip to Frank Paynter for putting us on their radar). HuffPost was gracious enough to give us permission to use any of the content generated by our contributors on dane101. However, our contributors, Katjusa Cisar and Nathan Comp, ended up being assigned to interview superdelegates in Ohio instead of Wisconsin, and because that runs counter to our Madison- and Wisconsin-centric content mission we don't have much to offer on the local superdelegate front (at this time). So it goes. We still love the idea of using sunshine on the unaccountable and some other dedicated citizen journalists have provided profiles on HuffPost for a handful of the 16 WiscoSupes.

On February 12 I wrote about how disappointed I was that Senator Herb Kohl voted against an amendment to FISA that would have eliminated civil liability immunity for telecommunication companies that assisted the government in spying on U.S. citizens. I followed up my post on dane101 with a letter to Senator Herb Kohl's office expressing my disappointment and seeking an answer as to how he made his decision. He responded with the letter I have posted below. Bold added by me.

Projected winners by CNN/MSNBC/FOX are Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

10:30 p.m.: Oh, are you still here? Come back tomorrow and we'll have a results breakdown for you. We've been blogging all day and we need to unwind. Thanks for tuning in!

9:40 p.m.: Poking around the rest of the state we see that in Brown County, home to Green Bay and a large blue collar population, Obama beat Clinton 56-42. With 93 percent of the votes in Obama had 22,044 votes and all of the Republicans combined took in 15,847.

9:15 p.m.: Middleton went heavy for Obama which proves Google Trends predict absolutely nothing. Obama more than doubled Clinton's numbers: 4664-2011.

9:00 p.m.: With all Madison wards still out, these are the numbers we have in terms of turn out in Dane County. Democrats with 41,007 and Republicans with 9,819. In 2004 during the Wisconsin Primary the turn out for Democrats in Dane County was 125,363. President George W. Bush was uncontested.

8:45 p.m.: Obama continues to dominate in Dane County. He has not lost a single municipality with all of the following reporting: Albion, Berry, Black Earth, Blooming Grove, Blue Mounds, Burke, Christiana, Cross Plains
Deerfield, Dunkirk, Dunn, Mazomanie, Medina, Middleton, Perry, Pleasant Springs, Primrose, Roxbury, Sun Prairie D-3, Vienna D-2, Westport, York, Belleville, Black Earth, Blue Mounds, Brooklyn, Cross Plains, DeForest, Marshall, Mount Horeb, Rockdale, Shorewood Hills, and Middleton. McCain was also the victor in all of those with the exception of Christiana and Albion. Those communities went to Huckabee.

8:30 p.m.: We now have winners for the Dane County District 28 race. Kurt Schlicht and Susan Beil will go on to compete on April 1. They won 38 percent and 27 percent respectively.

Senator Hillary Clinton was in Madison last night hosting a rally before Wisconsinites hit the polls. Phil Ejercito took the following pictures of the former First Lady. Jason Dean wrote about the speech. Earlier today, we posted pictures of Senator Barack Obama's wife Michelle Obama speaking at the Overture Center. We would post pictures of Senator John McCain, but he blew off Madison completely. Click on the pictures to view them larger.

As Wisconsin goes to the polls we bring you these images from Phil Ejercito of Michelle Obama speaking at the Overture Center's Capitol Theatre here in Madison on Monday. In the interest of primary day balance, Phil assures us that images of Senator Hillary Clinton's rally at Monona Terrace are coming soon. Katjusa Cisar wrote about Michelle's appearance for Dane101. Click on the images to view them larger.

Barack Obama inspires the kind of mania more appropriate perhaps to the Beatles or a religious cult.

Take the elderly man accosting passersby outside the Overture Center Monday afternoon, a handmade yard sign hung around his neck.

“Vote for Ohhhhhhhhhh-BAMA!” he yelled repeatedly, raising his arms Y-M-C-A style over his head to make an ‘O.’

Obama calls this “hopemongering,” but his critics say that his campaign amounts to inspirational fluffing and not a lot of action.

Michelle Obama spoke this afternoon at the Overture Center in a speech that highlighted her husband’s roots and defended his supposed lack of substance. About 900 people filled the Capitol Theatre almost to capacity.

Mike Huckabee made his way to “the conservative bastion of the state,” holding a rally at the Concourse Hotel in downtown Madison.

His message? Don’t count him out yet.

“To give up before the outcome is really settled is the mark of a quitter, not the mark of someone you want in the White House,” says Huckabee

An energetic crowd filled the conference room to cheer on their candidate. Many were surprised to learn Huckabee was invited to sing the national anthem at Lambeau Field.