Maybe the GOP should call Joe Friday.

The thought of using law enforcement officers to exercise force in order to achieve a political objective is insanely wrong and Wisconsin sorely needs reasonable solutions and not potentially dangerous political theatrics.

— Jim Palmer, director of the 11,000-member Wisconsin Professional Police Association, in response to Wis. Senate Republicans ordering the forcible detention of their 14 Democratic colleagues

According to radio evangelist Howard Camping, the story of the year is that Jesus Christ will reappear to end the world on May 21. If Jesus is a no-show, then the domestic story of the year might be the workers’ protests in Wisconsin, which has many subplots, including that of the state senators who fled to Illinois to prevent a vote that would cripple collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public-sector workers.

Protests have taken place every day for weeks. Tens of thousands have turned up in Madison to express outrage regarding the so-called Budget Reform Bill, the key to Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union crusade. Fans of democracy are groaning at the under-reported news of Walker’s allegiance to billionaire David Koch, the force behind Walker’s plan to cut wages and benefits of workers in conjunction with continued tax breaks for the wealthy. Fourteen state senators are AWOL!

How much crazier does this story have to get before the mainstream media give it the priority it deserves? Maybe if Kim Kardashian revealed that her greatest worry, besides cellulite, is that the Wisconsin 14 will be extradited to Madison before they get to hear her new single.

The Wisconsin standoff should be front-page news nationwide, every day. Instead, the story has been treated as a curiosity by the MSM, which seem to want to define it as a regional spat over budget cuts rather than a pivotal battle in the war between the country’s dwindling middle class and the wealthy few who want to crush what’s left of the middle class and the democratic process.

Maybe the MSM will take the story more seriously now that Walker and the rest of the GOP in Wisconsin are revealing the full extent of their fanaticism, not to mention their debt to Koch and other wealthy benefactors.