Video: Outraged Wisconsinites demonstrate outside state capitol while throngs inside scream at Republicans who passed union-busting bill through chicanery

Aksarbent had to drive to and from the East Coast this week to fulfill a sad familial obligation, precluding working on the blog.
     On the way back, however, we veered right at Chicago and pointed the Ford at Madison, WI, arriving on 3/9/11, just hours after Republican state senators held a secret and possibly illegal meeting with Gov. Walker to plot to strip finance provisions from the bill relieving state workers of many of their collective bargaining rights.
     This, in the opinion of Wisconsin Republicans, entitled them to pass the bill without a quorum or the presence of 14 deliberately AWOL Wisconsin Democrats, and they did just that in minutes.
     Democrats have already asserted that this Republican trick violated Wisconsin's open meeting laws and that any bill curtailing collective bargaining rights for state workers is intrinsically financial in nature and not exempt from the legislative requirement to maintain a quorum during passage.
     Thousands of citizens immediately converged on the Capitol building in Madison, many finding their way inside to loudly voice their outrage. Plenty more were doing the same thing outside. Aksarbent miraculously snagged a parking space DIRECTLY across the street from the Capitol, due no doubt to the fine auspices of the same fates that, 20 minutes earlier, had persuaded us to slow down from 85 mph to a more sensible 65 just in time to lawfully sail past a state trooper in the I-39 median.
     Here is the video we subsequently took: