A year ago today here in Wisconsin...

... the Joint Finance Committee had just passed Gov. Walker's budget repair bill, and Meade and I were talking about the previous days protests...

He laughed... did the exaggerated flailing arms and stomping legs of drumbeat dancing, accompanied by the chant "THIS is WHAT deMOCracy LOOKS like." Putting the mock in democracy....

The fact is that the Republicans decisively won the governorship and both houses of the state legislature — probably with next to no votes from the people who came to the demonstration. If you're asking — like Shilling — for the Republican legislators to listen to democracy, they should look at the last election, the people all over the state who voted for them and, presumably, for fiscal responsibility and shared sacrifice.

I posted a bunch of photos Meade had taken the previous day, showing the big mess of signs and sticks that were thrown around outside the entrance to the Capitol.

"Educators... care..." enough to leave signs to be trampled into the texture of the wet concrete....

"Proud" pile of dirty snow promises to "fight."

I contrast this to the tea party rallies where people famously leave the place clean. I think this post of mine had an effect. It got picked up by various pro-Walker sites and shows, and thereafter the protesters were fairly scrupulous about litter — of the horizontal, outdoor type. Taped-up signs, signs stuck in snow piles, and horizontal indoor arrays of signs would proliferate like mad.

Meade interviewed a woman who had a sign portraying Scott Walker as Hitler. At 0:46 she does a take that we've never forgotten.

I took a photo of a woman holding a Walker-as-Hitler sign in front of her face.

I asked the woman if she thought Scott Walker was like Hitler, and she said "Yes." So I said, "Are you saying that you think fascism could come to America," and she said, "It's what's happening."

I video'd a guy with a "Sic Semper Tyrannis" sign, which is an allusion to assassination.

A collection of photos I took of signs at the day's protests — including "Trap the Rat."

More signs, by Meade and me, including a misspelling of the sort lefties had been mocking as "Teabonics" when made by tea partiers.

Protest dogs.

One of my favorite videos from last year's protests, showing very enthusiastic teenagers marching from West High School toward the Capitol. Lots of screaming and jumping. Meade quips: "They're so happy to be out of school."

Late that evening, we got the word that the 14 Senate Democrats had fled the state. And I saw a news story that said "It appears that tomorrow may well be the biggest day yet at the Capitol in the current wave of activity...." I asked — it's funny in retrospect — "Could things get any bigger?"

A photograph of protesters in the Capitol around a big American flag hung upside down, and I sympathetically opined: "I don't think most of those people posing around it realized they were part of a tableau of disrespect." Some commenters informed me that the flag hung upside down is a signal of distress and snarked "google and basic deduction can be your friend." I Googled and came back:

This isn't a ship in distress. It's an appropriation of our national symbol to make a political statement. I'm very familiar with this from the 1960s.

Debate ensues.

We get the news that the Madison schools would close for a second day it becomes known that teachers will do another sick-out to protest.