The NYT Update on Wisconsin's Capitol Access.

Noting that -- finally! -- the laws are being equally enforced: NOBODY gets to stay overnight, and EVERYBODY* will be permitted to visit, as usual, during normal daytime guest hours. People wanting to see their State Capitol, heck out-of-staters or foreign visitors too, as well as the local and bused-in hippie protesters.

No special "let me in; I'm NewMedia" or "I'm a law professor; How Dare You Keep ME out" shenanigans required.

Ah, these performance art bloggers. They want the exclusive video, it seems, and will go to any extent to get themselves in, while others were banned this week -- by illegal police-enforced restrictions -- from entering the building. So sayeth Judge Albert, speaking for the courts.

The Laws are the Laws for everyone, you see. And it's simply unconstitutional to permit such policies, even if those with special Internet-made Althouse-blog-endorsed NewMedia press passes (or righteous, law professorial, emotional indignation) got special entrance privileges this week.

Score one for Justice as a whole.
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*Now, if we could only do something in our State about the unconstitutionality of denying homosexual marriage, while permitting heterosexual marriages, even second-time and childless ones, and all the benefits that entails (ie/ financial: insurance, Social Security survivor benefits, child-custody presumptions, absent the need for special contracting documents, etc.), while essentially keeping the same-sex relationships stalled at the Doors of Justice*...

Hey, then we'd really be on to something big civil-rights-wise in our State, and eventually across the entire country, no? Because much as some would like to make these silly hippie-dippie protests in Madison these past two weeks into a major issue, really, it's small peanuts that they "took over", or "occupied 24/7" a government building. Something for their personal scrapbooks is all, and to tell the grandchildren about, their own glory days so to speak. (Heck, it's not even like they were protesting innocent deaths, like in a war or something.)

Remember what Dr. King said about how the racial majority with their special privileges not permitted to others not even seeing the civil rights they daily enjoyed while others were denied based on an immutable characteristic? How they too would be helped if the laws opened their majority eyes that it's not right (nor Constitutional actually -- recognition of that, one day will come...) to treat one group this way (ie/better) and another group that way, based on something so arbitrary?

I strongly believe we'd all be better off if we didn't create an elite class who use their wiley ways to gain access -- like in the case of suddenly calling yourself "Press" while others were forced to wait for admission to Wisconsin's State Capitol this week -- or who used their "my skin is white" privilege, or "my marriage is between 'one man one woman' so let me in" to all three of these these revered and valued institutions.

You see, honest competition and fair outcomes, indeed do benefit society as a whole. Sure it might hurt your feelings if you don't have exclusive access (but "I'm special, dammit", how dare you not see that??), but as Dr. King promised and was proven true, so long as reverse discrimination doesn't occur, those currently in the majority enjoying their special privileges without even seeing it, will suffer no harm whatsoever when the exact same civil rights are extended to others, nothing at all will be taken from them:

ie/
You visit the Capitol to protest today (not putting your overnight belongings on display for the entertainment purposes of NewMedia); we visit the Capitol to look around and take tours and pictures. Shared rights, equally enforced, it's not always that somebody has to lose when somebody else wins, like in athletics. Someday, the privileged elite will experience that, and perhaps understand.

Hopefully sooner, rather than later. Today though, all Wisconsinites and visitors can celebrate inclusion, in the entrance to the Capitol building at least.