Bice Lying About Toney. (You Expected Otherwise?)

The Milwaukee area and the State of Wisconsin are very fortunate to have a couple of people who are actual journalists.  

As the race for Attorney General heats up, the news media have botched their “gotcha-style” reporting into the three-year-old case of a man named Ruben Houston, shamelessly using the tragic death of a Fox Valley firefighter for political purposes. It’s a concerted effort, led by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s columnist Dan Bice, to smear Fond du Lac County DA Eric Toney, the only candidate with prosecution experience in the Republican primary....

Why take out Toney?  Because the other Pubbie candidate for the slot is a nut-job.  If Toney loses the primary, it will be a cake-walk for Marc Elias' apprentice, Josh Kaul, to win.  And as we all know, Marc Elias is the slimiest campaign lawyer in the US.  (Hint:  he didn't "leave" Perkins; he was pushed.)

Back to the story.

Bice and his horse-whisperers want you to believe that Toney was responsible for a low-bail given a felon who went on to murder an Appleton firefighter.

 ...Toney’s prosecutor never asked for $500 bail. In fact, he OPPOSED a request from the defense attorney to modify Houston’s bail. The judge, Gary Sharpe, then gave Houston $500 bail – an amount that no one had asked for. Bice also downplays the fact that Houston was released…to Marathon County, which then released him on a signature bond, but that fact is getting minimal scrutiny....

Marathon County is a Lefty-La-La-Goo-Goo land, people.

Beyond this, Bice makes a very serious error of fact.  He claimed that Toney's office did not notice a name-change of the perp.  There's a reason for that:  there was no name-change.

...We contacted Huston’s family to unravel the curiosity of a name change that never ended up on the online court website, CCAP, which Toney’s prosecutor used to run his record.

Normally, name changes go before a court and a record is generated.  Dan Bice falsely wrote, “The court case in which he was permitted to change his name is not available through online or Milwaukee County Courthouse records. It appears the name change would have occurred while he was in bankruptcy with his wife.”

It turns out that Houston never changed his name at all, and he never went before a judge – Houston was always his name, perhaps the result of a misspelling by a hospital decades ago....

There's a lot more at the link.

By the way, it's my experience that Bice is a better reporter than this.  Just sayin'....