Government and Political Roundup: Oak Creek Police Chief on his way to the White House

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WASHINGTON D.C - Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards is scheduled to meet with President Obama today at the White House.

An official says the president will meet with three chiefs from communities that had mass shootings in the past year – Aurora Colorado and Newtown Connecticut being the others. Members of the Major Cities’ Chiefs Association and the Major County Sheriffs’ Association will also take part in today’s meeting, which is part of Obama’s push to address gun violence. Vice President Joe Biden is also expected to be there, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The White House official says the president will draw attention to the nation’s worst mass shootings of 2012 – including the Oak Creek shooting spree last August which killed six worshippers at the Sikh Temple. Also to be highlighted are the Newtown Connecticut school shootings in which 20 students and six adults were shot-to-death at an elementary school – and the movie theater massacre in Aurora Colorado last summer which killed 12 people.

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House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Janesville wants to get you ready for deep cuts in federal spending this spring. The Republican Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday that those cuts are probably unavoidable because quote, “Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others.” Democrats have insisted that tax hikes be part of any deal to avoid the automatic across-the-board spending cuts which are scheduled for many domestic and military programs. The cuts were part of a plan to force a major deal toward reducing the federal deficit – but they were delayed at the start of the year, when tax hikes took effect for higher-income people. Ryan, the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee in 2012, says the nation is heading toward a debt crisis if it doesn’t confront its government spending.

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Wisconsin state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Burlington and several other Republicans have been subpoenaed by two groups that lost their legal challenge to the state’s new legislative districts. A group of Democrats and a Milwaukee Hispanic group believe the GOP is still withholding documents about the mapping process that a federal court ordered to be released. And they’re accusing Republicans of trying to hide three state computers where the final documents might be stored. The plaintiffs want Vos, chief clerks of both houses, and the Legislative Technology Service Bureau to testify in court on where the computers are. Vos claims he doesn’t know. Others have not commented. Last year, a three-judge federal panel ruled that all but two of the Republicans’ new Senate and Assembly districts met the constitutional criteria of being relatively equal in population. But the judges said the GOP tried to dilute Hispanic representation – and they ordered two Milwaukee Assembly districts to be redrawn. Since then, the Republicans released a number of documents about their secret re-mapping process – and their lawyers hired a Chicago law firm to investigate whether more should have been found and turned over.

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