so, sunday we were over on the drudge report and noticed that mr. drudge had linked to a story on green bay, wisconsin's wbay-tv website. the caption that he chose for his text link read: Wisconsin police requiring thumbprints for traffic violations...
a check of the drudge report archives shows that the link first appeared on drudge at 15:58:05 est, 23 december 2007 ~ link
besides finding the premise of the story troubling -- this quote attributed to a "defense attorney" we found particularly nauseating:Citizens do have the right to say no. "They could say no and not have to worry about getting arrested," defense attorney Jackson Main said. "On the other hand, I'm like everybody else. When a police officer tells me to do something, I'm going to do it whether I have the right to say no or not."
now how would you like to have an attorney with an attitude like that defending you? yeah, same here. so we assumed that mr. main must be a public defender.
we were going to do a post about this story and we wanted to link to mr. main's wisconsin state bar entry, to at least try to warn anyone from wisconsin who might be googling and happen by here, to be sure and avoid this guy.
so we get on the wisconsin state bar website and search "jackson main" and it says "deceased." the next move was to search "main" in hopes of finding him because as you see his full name is jackson turner main, jr. and the only other attorney in wisconsin with the surname "main" is edward d. main.
then we thought maybe the reporter, sarah thomsen perhaps, was working on a couple of stories at the same time and put the wrong name in this story (see eustace mullins quote here) - so we emailed ms. thomsen:Reply-To: wesawthat@gmail.com
around twenty-four hours later ms. thomsen was kind enough to reply:
From: wesawthat@gmail.com
To: sthomsen-at-wbay.com
Subject: Police Begin Fingerprinting on Traffic Stops
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:56:39 -0600
Organization: www.wesawthat.blogspot.com
hi thanks for your story but i do have a question: in your story you quote "defense attorney Jackson Main" however when i search the wisconsin state bar association website www.wisbar.org the only jackson main that comes up is listed as deceased. a search of just the surname "main" returns only the deceased jackson turner main, jr. and one other main, edward d. main.
so iam wondering if you can clarify etc.
thanks
--END------- Original Message -----
to which we replied:
From: Thomsen, Sarah
To: wesawthat@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 08:00 PM
Subject: RE: Police Begin Fingerprinting on Traffic Stops
You did find the correct Jackson Main. The attorney I interviewed for that story has since passed on. I believe I did that story three or four years ago. I'm surprised you still found it on a website! As an update, the police department never decided to do such fingerprint people at traffic stops. The idea was dropped shortly after our story ran.
Thanks for the interest!
Sarah Thomsen
--END------- Original Message -----
so the moral of the story (if there is one) must be, that before you get all excited about something, check it out first.
From: wesawthat@gmail.com
To: Thomsen, Sarah
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2007 08:05 PM
Subject: Re: Police Begin Fingerprinting on Traffic Stops
oh wow - the drudge report is linked to that story right now (and has been since yesterday), so i thought it was new (and so does a lot of other bloggers) LOL
http://www.drudgereport.com/
left hand side
thanks so much for replying.
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