Assembly Speaker Robin Vos joins MacIver's Matt Kittle for an exclusive conversation in this week's MacIver Newsmakers podcast. They discuss the extraordinary session in which lawmakers passed legislation that cements many of the conservative reforms of the past eight years. And they tackle that all-important question: Why is emo rap suddenly so popular?

MacIver reflects on the meaning of Hanukkah in today's special MacIver News Minute.

Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch has been a critical partner of Gov. Scott Walker over perhaps the most consequential eight years in Wisconsin political history. And at the start of that time, she faced challenges far beyond policy disputes and protesters. Kleefisch sits down in the MacIver studio with Matt Kittle to share her journey - personal and political - as those eight years come to a close. This is the first in the MacIver Newsmaker podcast series examining the legacy of Scott Walker in conversations with those uniquely qualified to tell it.

Opponents of the GOP's package of extraordinary session proposals aimed at cementing the conservative reforms of the past eight years were reminiscent of the tactics and rhetoric of opponents of just about every other big government-limiting measure of the recent past. On Monday they got the band back together, wailing and railing against the last measures the GOP enacts before a new era of divided government begins.

Thanksgiving featured all the staples this year - turkey, stuffing, cranberries. And in Wisconsin it also featured another crime wave as retailers offered prices so low, they must be illegal. That's right, in Wisconsin the minimum markup law makes the kind of great deals shoppers found on Black Friday a crime. This anti-consumer, protectionist law is a Great Depression relic and should've been scrapped a long time ago.

MacIver News Minute: Happy Thanksgiving by The MacIver Institute

In this edition of the MacIver Newsmakers podcast, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke joins Matt Kittle to address the next moves for the state Legislature. Will the senate pass the Kimberly-Clark incentives package? And what can we expect from efforts to reconvene the legislature to cement conservative reforms before Gov.-elect Tony Evers takes office?

Wisconsin's executive branch took a hard turn to the left last week when voters replaced Gov. Scott Walker with Tony Evers, who promised to overturn Walker's record of conservative reforms, increase the minimum wage to $15/hr, and add massive new funding to K-12 education. But how much of that left-wing agenda can Evers hope to enact with an overwhelmingly Republican legislature?

Sen. Ron Johnson joins MacIver's Matt Kittle to talk about the midterm elections, a divided Congress, and the latest out of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Also, Kittle clearly doesn't watch SNL anymore.

Election Day was a banner day for school referenda around Wisconsin. Voters approved an overwhelming 77 out of 82 separate school district referendum questions, for a total of $1.37 billion in new school spending, including $1.2 billion in new debt.