News Net GAB makes it way easier recall petition signers to get their houses egged

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked over the work week. Here are some things to think about as the weekend begins.

• Ignoring the warnings of privacy advocates, the Government Accountability Board posted all 153,335 pages of Scott Walker and state senate recall signatures this week, allowing further transparency into the recall process while providing Walker supporters with a convenient list of targets for eggings and toilet paper assaults. Mercifully, the GAB omitted phone numbers and e-mail addresses from the scans, which should at least prevent petition signers from being brutalized by all kinds of right-wing spammers, but complete names and addresses of signers are available via a series of unsorted PDF files. Since the pages aren’t searchable, finding a specific name among the signatures should require any abusers to use up a lot of time and energy in the process—good thing there aren’t that many angry people willing to waste hours of their time in order to prove a point on the Internet.

• In a travel story this week, Reuters gave Madison a hat tip for keeping the tradition of a strong, proper brandy old fashioned alive and well in Wisconsin through the litany of bars that specialize in both traditional and unique takes on our fine state’s other favorite alcoholic beverage. While The Old Fashioned’s old fashioned was noticeably absent from its list, the cocktail menus at Graze, Merchant, Tornado Steakhouse, and the too-exclusive-for-most Madison Club all got shout-outs for keeping a high concentration of brandy in the bloodstreams of Madison diners. Reuters even managed to wrangle the recipe that Madison Club bartenders employ when they make an old fashioned for one of their wealthy, esteemed members. Hint: Take the normal amount of brandy and double it.

• Things are looking up for recipe brewers like Furthermore Beer and Horny Goat Brewing, whose business plans of renting out brewing facilities to make craft beer without the need of a traditional brewer’s permit were complicated significantly this year by provisions in the new state budget. While until recently it seemed that craft beer makers would, at best, need to jump through a bunch of legal hurdles to stay in business, a new emergency rule took effect a week ago that will exempt recipe brewers from needing to acquire a $2,600 wholesaler’s permit entirely, which should help recipe brewers from being threatened by the major unexpected expense. Since the legislature doesn’t have a great track record of using the term “emergency” to describe anything it does, it’s nice that, for once, the term’s use will mean an assured supply of Furthermore Makeweight for the foreseeable future.

• Magician and noted escapologist Harry Houdini spent his formative years in Appleton. To honor these Wisconsin ties, starting Feb. 11, the Madison Museum Of Contemporary Art will host an exhibit of Houdini’s original equipment and films, posters, and photographs inspired by his daring feats. The three-month exhibit celebrates his most famous escapes, and also the one grisly fate he couldn’t get away from: being punched in the gut by an art student and having all of his tricks revealed in an art exhibit 84 years later.