It has finally has become clear who the loneliest group of people are in the state.

Happy Republicans.

All of their friends in the party are so angry, so against everything, that if you are happy and a Republican, then you stand alone in the panorama of politics in Wisconsin.

I know a couple of Republicans who are happy. But they have almost nobody to talk to. Lonely.

I spend a significant amount of time with the right wing of the Republican Party. I listen to Rush and Hannity, I watch Fox, including the blather of "Fox and Friends." I listen to Belling and Sykes. I ignore Jeff Wagner because he never has an original thought.

The big mantra you hear, over and over is how they think government should stay out of our lives. What they mean, of course, is that government should stay out of their lives. For the rest of us, let government ride roughshod over all of us.

According to them it's okay, for example, for government to decide who ought to be able to marry who, especially if the happy couple happens to be the same sex.

And the big one now for them is this crazy Voter ID law which, in truth, is a
solution in search of a problem. The New York Times recently did a huge piece on the law and the obvious backers of it and the possible consequences.

If you listen to right wing radio you'd think there were busloads and trainloads and truckloads and semi-trailer loads of people from Chicago and Detroit coming to Milwaukee to cast a fake ballot for somebody who is not a Republican. Voter Fraud! Voter Fraud! Voter Fraud! The Election Could Be Rigged! The screaming is at a fever pitch.

The problem, of course, is that there isn't any voter fraud. Of, if there is, it doesn't happen enough to actually make a difference or even get noticed by voting officials.

The plain fact is that the Republicans, who are fanatically pushing this law, just want to stop certain people from voting. People who Republicans think are likely to vote for Democrats.

My friend, Justice Terrence Evans of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nailed it in his decision on a voter ID law case.

Evans wrote that the court should, "strike it down as an undue burden on
the fundamental right to vote. The percentage of eligible voters participating in elections has, for many years, been on a downward trajectory. With that being the case, one would think states should be looking for creative ways (like allowing people to vote at places they frequent and are familiar with, like shopping malls rather than basements of fire stations) to increase voter participation.

"Yet, the law we today does just the opposite. Constricting the franchise in a
democratic society, when efforts should be instead undertaken to expand it, is not the way to go. The fig leaf of respectability providing the motive behind this law is that it is necessary to prevent voter fraud – a person showing up at the polls pretending to be someone else. But where is the evidence of that kind of voter fraud in this record?

"Voting fraud is a crime ... and, at oral argument, the defenders of this law candidly acknowledged that no one ... had ever been charged with violating that law. Nationwide, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud that photo ID laws seek to stop. If that's the case, where is the justification for this law? Is it wise to use a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table? I think not."

When one of the biggest initiatives of Republicans in this kind of junk legislation, it's no wonder they are all miserable. How can you possibly be happy when this is the kind of stuff you actually worry about?