GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) - A Wisconsin pastor who works to get local churches to minister to college students across the country is the new president of Bob Jones University in South Carolina.
Trustees at the school selected Steve Pettit on Wednesday to be the new leader at the fundamentalist Christian school and its 3,000 students in Greenville.
University Board of Trustees Chairman Larry Jackson says Pettit was a natural choice because of his work with college students for three decades.
Pettit is currently president of the Steve Pettit Evangelistic Association and serves as the national director for Cross Impact Ministries, a Brookfield, Wisconsin, group which helps local churches reach out to college students.
Jackson replaces Stephen Jones who stepped down as president of the university in May for health reasons.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Investigators looking into the 2012 recall campaign of Gov. Scott Walker and other conservative groups are trying to salvage their probe despite rulings this week by a federal judge that put it in jeopardy.
The investigation, which has been ongoing for nearly two years, comes as Walker’s star is rising in the Republican Party and he considers running for president in 2016.
Here are some key questions as the legal battle over the investigation continues.
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WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK?
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa ruled that the investigation into possible illegal coordination between the governor’s recall campaign and conservative groups supporting him was a breach of free-speech rights. He also ordered prosecutors to return all property seized in the investigation and to destroy all copies of information obtained in the probe. The judge, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush, issued the ruling in a lawsuit filed by Wisconsin Club for Growth, a conservative group that said the so-called John Doe investigation amounted to harassment.
Randa’s ruling was put on hold less than 24 hours later by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Randa should not have halted the investigation while he was still considering prosecutors’ appeal of his earlier decision that they were not immune from being sued. The appeals court also blocked the portion of Randa’s order requiring prosecutors to return or destroy evidence they had collected.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A convoluted legal fight over an investigation that has dogged Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for years shows no signs of ending soon, despite a pair of legal wins this week for the first-term Republican who is weighing a presidential run.
The secret investigation, known as a John Doe, focused on alleged illegal coordination between conservative groups, Walker’s campaign and others during recall elections in 2011 and 2012. Three other lawsuits are pending in state court connected to the investigation.
Walker, who is running for re-election as he considers whether to seek the GOP nomination for president in 2016, scored a victory Thursday when a federal judge halted the investigation for the second time in as many days. Prosecutors were expected to ask for a stay while their appeal of U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa’s order halting the probe is pending.
Deadlines for attorneys to file briefs in that case stretch through the end of July, and a final decision may not come until after the November election.
The investigation has been a distraction for Walker as he runs for re-election against Democrat Mary Burke, a former state commerce secretary and Trek Bicycle Corp. executive. The Wisconsin Club for Growth, a conservative group with close ties to Walker, filed the civil lawsuit against prosecutors to stop the investigation that began after Walker won a recall election in 2012.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday said Randa’s original order Tuesday stopping the investigation was in error because he had yet to rule on whether a separate appeal by prosecutors was frivolous.
Randa said Thursday that the appeal, which was to his ruling that prosecutors are not immune from being sued by Wisconsin Club for Growth, was indeed frivolous. That reinstates his preliminary injunction halting the probe into Walker’s campaign, the Club for Growth and other Republican-backing groups.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin attorney general hopeful Susan Happ said Thursday she isn’t convinced criminalizing first-time drunken offenses would be the right move, saying most first-timers realize they’ve made a mistake and turning them into criminals would inundate the state’s courts.
Happ, who serves as the Jefferson County district attorney, spent close to an hour at a WisPolitics.com luncheon at the private Madison Club fielding questions from the website’s president, Jeff Mayers, and diners. Asked for her thoughts on criminalizing first-offense drunken driving, she said the real problem is Wisconsin residents drink a lot and tolerate drunken driving.
“It’s a societal issue,” she said.
Wisconsin is the only state where the first offense is a civil violation. But Happ said she didn’t know if criminalizing the first offense would help.
She noted that many first-time drunken drivers realize they made a mistake, lose their license for up to nine months, face fines and contend with steeper insurance premiums. She also noted that first-timers who injure or kill someone face criminal charges.
Criminalizing the first offense would push more drivers to fight the charges in court, increasing costs and caseloads for overworked district attorneys and flooding the state’s courts with cases, she said. Drunken drivers don’t think about the penalties when they get behind the wheel because they’re impaired so criminalization wouldn’t act as a deterrent, she said.
Happ is battling Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and state Rep. Jon Richards of Milwaukee for the Democratic nomination. The winner of the Aug. 12 primary will face Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel, a Republican, in the Nov. 4 general election. Incumbent Republican J.B. Van Hollen isn’t seeking re-election.
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