JAMES TARANTO ON POLICE SIDING WITH UNIONS:

“This is war,” Michael Moore declared last night on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” The porcine propagandist referred to the Wisconsin Senate’s 18-1 vote earlier in the evening in favor of legislation, supported by Gov. Scott Walker, that would strip politicians of the power to reward government employee unions for their political support by committing taxpayer money to their members’ extravagant pensions and other fringe benefits. . . . And yet it is just possible that Moore is on to something. One can imagine a situation in which attacks on the legislative process by government employee unions and Democrats escalate into something resembling civil war. We do not suggest that this is a likely outcome, merely a worst-case scenario–but one that is worth thinking about.

The key is the group of government employees on whom we depend to maintain the public order necessary for a republic to function: the police. Many cops are unionized, and although the Wisconsin bill exempts them from the ban on so-called collective bargaining, there are signs, as blogger and legal scholar William Jacobson notes, that some cops have been “taking sides in this political dispute”–and worse, that these guardians of public order are siding with those using lawless tactics to disrupt the legislative process.

Fire ’em and replace them with contract security. Meanwhile, the more troubling factor is that this lawlessness was aided and encouraged by President Barack Obama’s own Organizing For America.

UPDATE: Reader Mike Voncannon writes:

I’ve been a cop for over 35 years, 9 of them in Florida where we were represented by a union. My experience is that police unions do at least as much harm as good. The biggest problem I saw was the “Us vs. Them” mentality that it fosters pitting the line level officers against the ranking staff and city government.

That said, I can’t imagine an officer refusing a lawful order to do their job (in the Madison case clearing the protesters from the State House).

We’re taxpayers too and resent having to pay ever higher taxes as much as anyone. What angers us is the governmental waste we see every day. What is truly amazing is how pet wasteful projects are protected when “cuts” are announced. The latest example is funding for clean-up of meth labs nationwide has been lost and the cost (minimum $3000 per lab) put on local governments.

I don’t think anyone refused orders. They just, kind of, stood there and looked the other way.

But yeah, the usual approach to cuts is to cut muscle and spare fat.