Trans fats are back in the news again. Nick Rhoads over at Dane 101 takes up the question of banning trans fats in Madison, and Palmer at Fearful Symmetries has a thoughtful response here.
Most people who oppose a ban do so on the perfectly correct assumption that the government shouldn’t regulate personal behavior. If [...]

Judging from his website, mayoral candidate Ray Allen intends to make a 2004 Economic Development Commission report the centerpiece of his campaign. He is upset that the mayor and the council failed to give a two-year-old commission report the attention and devotion it so obviously deserved:
“The EDC report was published in December of 2004, and [...]

A few days ago, I mentioned the Isthmus as one of our best sources of local political coverage. They don’t disappoint; Kristian Knutsen has an excellent post today, in which he takes a look at the websites of Mayor Dave, and his challenger Ray Allen.
I trotted over to the website of Mr. Allen, courtesy of [...]

Paul Soglin highlights a meta-discussion (see this article in The Capital Times (*) and this article in the Wisconsin State Journal) about local government, and the tradeoffs involved in merging and cosolidating local services.
Paul notes the problem of cherry-picking — the urban centers of a metropolitan area are forced to deal with all the issues [...]

Wisconsin 2nd - Tammy Baldwin (D)
My introduction to Tammy Baldwin’s enduring popularity in Madison came soon after I moved to town, during a screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 in the summer of 2004. It was a cynical movie about a cynical time in our nation’s history, and one could be forgiven for taking the attitude that [...]

Dave Magnum, nee Dave Weiss, has issued ten press releases since August, and eight of them (eight!) have dealt with the logistics of having debates. Mr. Magnum wants to make sure the citizens of the 2nd District know where he stands on important issues like “Magnum proposes debate schedule” and “Magnum offers detailed debate plan”.
Well, [...]

I put Progressive Dane on notice yesterday. That prompted Dane 101’s Jesse to argue that I was being unfair to Progressive Dane, and basically too much of a party hack, in my disapproval of PD’s endorsement of the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, Rae Vogeler.
And I agree with pretty much everything Jesse said: on [...]

Last week, the Isthmus hosted a forum entitled “How to Keep Madison from Becoming Milwaukee”, which resulted in the back-and-forth one would expect from such an attention-grabbing title. I didn’t attend the forum, but I expect that it focused on issues like the ones addressed in David Rusk’s excellent book Cities Without Suburbs.
It’s a fascinating [...]

Cool temperatures arrived in a hurry, considering that the weekend was warm and sunny, and more typical of June than mid-September.
We might get our first frost of the season tonight, although it looks like cloud cover might keep the frost from forming everywhere. And we won’t hit 32° tonight, either, although we’ll probably drop [...]

They say Democrats and diehards vote early. In Madison, I suppose, it’s another way of saying that people vote early. So I was a bit surprised to be voter 57 at 9:00 in the morning, when the polls had already been open for over two hours. There was a steady stream of voters while I [...]

Madison’s favorite 9/11 revisionist appeard on Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes last night. Colmes (the show’s “liberal”) introduced him as a professor (he’s actually a guest lecturer), prompting Ann Althouse to write (*):
If those words had come out of Sean Hannity’s mouth, it would have provided a good occasion to accuse Hannity of being slanted [...]

Updated below
There’s a guest lecturer at the University of Wisconsin who has some unorthodox and objectively absurd views about current affairs. Namely, he believes that “top U.S. officials were complicit in the attacks of September 11th, 2001″.
In response, Republican lawmakers, conservative pundits and gubernatorial candidate Mark Green (i.e. sitting U.S. Congressman Mark Green) have [...]

Kristian Knutsen has a nice article in the Isthmus about Progressive Dane’s bicycle tour of the city.
For those who don’t know, Progressive Dane is a local party that’s been doing a lot of good work in Madison and Dane County. They’ve won several seats on the various bodies of local government, and they’ve helped set [...]

It’s based on anonymous, outside sources, and not confirmed, but a small article in today’s Capital Times notes that Whole Foods might be building a new store in the Hilldale area after all:
Joseph Freed & Associates is now looking at a 65,000 square-foot grocery with structured parking and condominiums along the University Avenue frontage, according [...]

Kristian Knutsen has an excellent article up at the Isthmus, detailing the minutes of the City Council debate on the sick leave ordinance.
Unfortunately, the measure failed, 9 votes to 10 (*). I was in favor of the measure (see here, for example), and it’s a shame to see my alder, Jed Sanborn, vote against it. [...]