In what may be the ultimate reality show, Wisconsin is injecting technology into popular democracy by putting the review of recall petitions online in real time.

For weeks, the state has been roiled by the battle to recall Republicans Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four state senators. (The battle began with Walker's push last year to kill collective-bargaining rights for public employees.) And on Tuesday, opponents officially filed petitions calling for a recall election.

One million signatures were listed on the petitions to recall Walker, and 845,208 signatures were listed on the petition to bounce the lieutenant governor. To force a vote, each petition needs 540,208.

Now the signatures must be declared valid. Republican conservatives, who support Walker and his allies, are already claiming fraud; Democrats and their union allies, who have been pushing the recall drive, say the petitions will meet the legal requirements.

The review of the petitions is a matter of considerable interest. But there are nearly 2 million signatures on the six petitions listed on the website of the Government Accountability Board, the state agency charged with processing and reviewing the documents. That's a lot of names and -- given the high level of interest in the state -- potentially an awful lot of people who want to see the review process.

“For security reasons, we're unable to provide public access to the recall petition processing center,” the board notes on its blog. “But we have set up a webcam to give the public and the media a way to check in and see what's happening.”

A Madison-based company donated the technology at no cost to taxpayers, the board noted.

But don’t go expecting “Jersey Shore” or even “American Idol.” No one lifts weights or wiggles suggestively. Also, the webcam doesn't offer sound.

The images show employees doing the type of tedious office work that checking involves: Looking at piles of papers, staring at computers. The most exciting the footage gets is when someone looks at a wristwatch.

Still, it's democracy in action and -- like any such enterprise -- the wheels grind exceedingly slowly. But they do move.

After the review process is completed, the board will meet to determine whether the technical qualifications have been met for the recall election.

Then, of course, there are possible court challenges ahead over the details and date of any recall election. Perhaps additional webcams will be needed.

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 -- Michael Muskal

Photo: Petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker are delivered to the Government Accountability Board Headquarters in Madison, Wis., on Tuesday. Credit: Michael Sears/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It is a city of formidable hills and politically correct small cars, many of which spent the morning sliding ineffectually around places such as Queen Anne Hill and Capitol Hill. Even some Metro buses, as this Seattle Times video attests, were stuck revving their engines and spinning their wheels.

Across Washington, 736 traffic collisions were reported over the 24 hours since the heaviest snow began -- 120 of them in the areas south of Seattle, near the state Capitol in Olympia, where the heaviest snowfall was reported.

PHOTOS: Northwest snowstorm

"You can see we're just getting hammered with crashes, and the reason why is folks, number one, are going too fast for conditions, and they're just not able to maintain control of their vehicles, and there's lots of little sports cars and things that really have no business being out in this kind of weather," Guy Gill, spokesman for Washington State Troopers in Pierce and Thurston counties, told the Los Angeles Times.

"Those are the ones we're towing out of the ditch."

Nor was air travel any better: More than 70 flights were canceled out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The snowstorm had been forecast to be the worst to hit the Puget Sound region in 30 years, an ominous warning that scared easily scareable Seattleites. As a result -- as is usually the case here when cold weather hits -- the city collectively declared a snow day and gave up most thoughts of going to work.

With nearly all state agencies closed --  not to mention many clinics, the zoo and every single school district in western Washington save one -- downtown Seattle's high-rises turned into ghost towns. Side streets were quickly converted from thoroughfares to sledding ramps, and corner coffee shops started filling up.

Seattle's King-5 television showed an image of a young man in saggy jeans and a baseball cap sliding face-first on a trash bag down Queen Anne Hill, then neatly folding up the bag and continuing on his way.

City officials, mindful that prior mayors' heads have rolled at election time when past snowstorms paralyzed the city for too long, quickly opened an emergency operations center. Mayor Mike McGinn was checking in periodically there to oversee the fleet of snowplows that, combined with those of the state Department of Transportation, were keeping most of the city's major thoroughfares operating relatively smoothly.

As it happened, though, Snowmageddon the storm was not.

Seattle was seeing between 1 and 8 inches of snow by midday -- a long way from the 21.5 inches that fell in a single day in 1916. Olympia was closer, with 13 inches falling before 10 a.m., just a hair shy of a record. "And it continues to snow down there," National Weather Service meteorologist Brad Colman said in an interview.

The good news (or bad news, depending on whether one falls into the sledding/coffee/good book or the commuting/just get me out of here camp) is that the snow was already tapering off by midday.

"We wouldn't be surprised to see some snow off and on through the early evening," Colman said. "But certainly the heaviest part is drawing to a close."

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-- Kim Murphy in Seattle

Photo: Seattle residents woke up to a heavy snowfall, and most went quickly back to sleep. Credit: Elaine Thompson / Associated Press

Nearly a fourth of the nation’s metropolitan areas -- including the Los Angeles region -- will struggle for five more years to regain jobs lost in the Great Recession, according to an economic forecast issued by the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Wednesday.

With the mayors gathered in Washington for their winter meeting, the forecast is part of their effort to prod Congress into passing jobs-creation legislation.

"Congress has jumped ship," said the conference president, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, likening lawmakers to the captain of the wrecked Italian cruise ship accused of leaving the vessel before its passengers were evacuated. "The economy is sinking as we speak, and they’re sitting on a lifeboat refusing to throw out a life preserver to the American people."

But the mayors face a difficult time getting a divided Congress to do anything in an election year with  partisan tensions running high. Further, they face an uphill battle staving off more federal aid cuts sought by congressional Republicans determined to reduce the federal budget deficit.

"Nobody stops you on the street and says, 'What are you doing about the deficit and the debt?' People ask you, 'How are you going to help me get a job?' " Villaraigosa said at a media breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

"If you were to grade the Congress last year, they’d get an F," Villaraigosa said. "There’s been virtually nothing done to put people back to work."

Later, at a news conference at the Capital Hilton, the L.A. mayor said: "Not all spending is equal. The fact is we do have to cut our deficits .... But you can't cut your way out of this crisis. You've got to make investments, too.''

"There are smart cuts and there are dumb cuts,'' added Scott Smith, Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., who joined Villaraigosa at a news conference. "Smart cuts are cuts of inefficiencies. Dumb cuts are cuts when you cut the meat out of programs that ... create economic growth.''

Villaraigosa continued his criticism of Congress in a speech to other mayors -- a speech that included references to Rodney Dangerfield (cities aren't getting enough respect) and Yogi Berra (congressional inaction was "deja vu all over again'').

The Democratic mayor put most of the blame on Republicans who control the House but said members of his own party also haven’t done enough.

Villaraigosa called on Congress to pass a transportation bill -- one that would include money he has sought to speed expansion of L.A.'s regional transportation system -- and to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. He also urged Congress to preserve funding for the Community Block Grant program, a key funding source for local efforts to generate jobs, revitalize run-down neighborhoods and help low-income residents.

He said he was open to finding ways to reduce government spending and increase revenue, such as closing tax loopholes, but considered infrastructure spending critical to the nation's economic recovery.

U.S. nonfarm payrolls are projected to grow 1.3% this year, not fast enough to reduce the unemployment rate below 8% nationally, according to a report  by IHS Global Insight, which predicts that by the end of the year the nation will have gained back nearly half of the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

"Despite this progress," Villaraigosa said, "the recovery is slow and it’s uneven."

For nearly 80 metropolitan areas, full recovery is more than five years away. "The recovery is very uneven across U.S. regions, with the southeastern and southwesten metro [area]s, who were the most affected by the housing bubble, looking ahead to years of recovery," the report says.

The report predicts that the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area will, by the end of this year, recover only about a fifth of the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

Villaraigosa bemoaned the hyper-partisanship in Washington and delivered a pitch for funding high-speed rail. He and other mayors were due to meet with President Obama at the White House later.

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Supreme Court: Alabama death row inmate gets new chance to appeal

-- Richard Simon in Washington

Photo: L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Credit: Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court rarely gives criminal defendants a second chance if they miss a deadline to file an appeal, but the justices did so Wednesday in the case of an Alabama death row inmate, citing a "perfect storm" of missing lawyers and unopened letters.

Cory Maples, convicted of killing two people in Alabama, was "abandoned" by his lawyers and lost his right to appeal because of "extraordinary circumstances quite beyond his control," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Alabama is one of the few states that do not pay for lawyers to represent death row inmates in their appeals, Ginsburg noted. Private law firms often take on their work as volunteers. Maples may have thought he was quite lucky when two attorneys from the prestigious New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell agreed to represent him in his appeals.

But it did not turn out as he expected. The two New York attorneys filed an initial claim, asserting that Maples' trial lawyer failed him by not arguing that he was intoxicated when he shot and killed two friends after a night of heavy drinking.

But 18 months later, when an Alabama judge rejected his initial appeal, the two New York lawyers had left their firm to take other jobs. They did not notify Maples, the judge or a local attorney who was listed on the appeals.

When copies of the judge's order were sent to the New York firm, they were returned by the mailroom unopened. As a result, the 42-day deadline for Maples to appeal this ruling passed by.

Alabama prosecutors then insisted it was too late for Maples to appeal because he had "defaulted" by missing the deadline. The Alabama Supreme Court and the U.S. Appeals Court in Atlanta agreed, saying Maples lost his chance to appeal because of his lawyers' mistakes.

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled for Maples and said he deserves a right to appeal his conviction. Maples "has shown ample cause, we hold, to excuse the procedural default into which he was trapped when counsel of record abandoned him without a word of warning," Ginsburg said.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said a "veritable perfect storm of misfortune, a most unlikely combination of events" had come together to unfairly deprive Maples of a chance to appeal.

The ruling does not free Maples from death row, but it will give him a new chance to argue on appeal that he would not have been sentenced to death had his trial lawyers told the jury he was intoxicated at the time of the crime. His jury voted 10 to 2 in favor of a death sentence.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying they wanted to maintain the "principle that defendants are responsible for the mistakes of their attorneys."

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-- David G. Savage in Washington, D.C.

Photo: A U.S. flag flies outside the U.S. Supreme Court in this file photo. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

In the days before he released 56 exotic animals on his Ohio farm and then shot himself to death, Terry Thompson was agitated both over the departure of his wife and his impending confinement, according to the investigative report of the October incident.

He also reportedly said that he "had a plan."

The report, released Tuesday night by the Muskingum County sheriff’s office to the Zanesville Times Recorder, includes statements from deputies who responded to the emergency call. It also includes an interview with John Moore, believed to be the last person to have seen Thompson alive. Their meeting occurred the night before Thompson took his life with a .357 caliber Ruger handgun.

The Oct. 18 incident touched off a flurry of questions about how exotic animals are cared for on private farms and what should be the regulatory role of the state.

Law enforcement officials ultimately killed 48 of the animals. The remaining few were captured and taken to a zoo.  

Sheriff Matthew J. Lutz did not return telephone messages on Wednesday. The report doesn’t explain why Thompson decided to free the animals, but it does offer the clearest picture to date of the events leading up to the tragedy.

Moore, the caretaker on the farm, told sheriff’s investigators that Thompson said he had received a disturbing letter from his wife, Marian. She had left the farm in the spring but returned several times a week to check on things, Moore said.

Thompson reportedly said he "had a plan” and that Moore would know about it “when it happens.” 

In addition to problems with his wife, Thompson was concerned about being confined to the farm on Kopchak Road, a condition of his release from federal prison Sept. 30. Thompson had been convicted of two counts of possessing illegal firearms.

Five days before his death, Thompson met Joe Moore -- a federal parole officer -- who told investigators that Thompson was “distraught” over the yearlong confinement.

The final report also includes the responding officers’ findings the night they arrived at the farm and tried to contain the animals, which had fled through opened doors and cut cages.

The roaming animals made it impossible to approach Thompson’s body, which investigators later said was apparently dragged 20 feet by an animal he'd freed. The animals had to be killed so that officials could reach the body, deputies said in their report.

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-- Michael Muskal

Photo: Carcasses lie on the ground Oct. 19 at the Muskingum County Animal Farm in Zanesville, Ohio. Credit: Associated Press

As Wikipedia makes its statement about SOPA, Twitter is beating the bongos.

Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, showed his political and poetic sides with a tweet Wednesday morning: "The tweets must flow, #SOPA must go -- let Congress know!" The tweet links to the Make the Call / Stop the Wall website, which in turn connects users with their senators.

"Keep the Internet free"; "Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web!"; On-Line piracy MUST be stopped" are among the common refrains from those opposed to SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act.

PHOTOS: Sites on strike

Over at Open Culture, Dan Colman writes that -- instead of going dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and related legislation making its way through Congress -- the site would "handle things in our own way -- by illuminating the matter with a little intelligent media."

The site maintains that the legislation "would carry with it a series of unexpected consequences that could change the Internet as we know it," including shutting down U.S. sites that "unwittingly host or link to illegal content — and without giving the sites due process, a real day in court."

But does the public understand what's at issue?

From tweeter Jim Sterling: "How ironic that people are complaining about the blackout of an encyclopedia without educating themselves on why"

"If you're a blogger. a tumblr. a tweeter. a fan of original online content. Then EDUCATE YOURSELF ON #SOPA today" (casslavalle).

Mashable took to the streets of New York to interview regular folks about SOPA. 

Some were baffled (" 'Sopa' in Portuguese is soup," said one woman). Of the few who had a clue, they indicated support for opposition to the online anti-piracy legislation.

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Looks like we'll all get some work done Wednesday

-- Amy Hubbard

Photo: Wikipedia went offline to protest the anti-piracy legislation SOPA. Credit: Wikipedia

Paula Deen is in unfamiliar territory: The Queen of Butter is feeling the heat after she revealed this week that she kept her Type-2 diabetes secret while continuing to serve up the rich foods that some say led to the disease.

Not helping matters? She disclosed her illness while simultaneously announcing she's repping a diabetes drug. Reaction was swift, and almost universally negative toward Deen, who's much more accustomed to a warm reaction from the fans who swarm her wherever she goes. Here's a sampling from Twitter:

--"the paula deen thing is horrible. she waits 3 yrs, now is a sponsor for her meds? the world needs better people to teach them how to cook"

--"After years of promoting unhealthy foods, Paula Deen has won a sweet gig as a pharmaceutical spokeswoman. Pass the butter."

Perhaps it's no surprise that celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain also got in a little dig. Although he denies calling Deen a "diabetic scam artist" as TMZ's headline screamed, he did offer up this tart Twitter take on Deen's actions:

"Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later."

Bourdain, of course, once famously called Deen the ''most dangerous person to America" for proudly serving up food that she knows is bad for viewers.

Not everyone is bashing Deen. Time magazine's Healthland blog offers a thoughtful reality check about the multiple factors that lead to Type 2 diabetes, quoting Constance Brown-Riggs, spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, as saying, "It’s an oversimplification to say that her cooking brought about her diabetes."

And in this "knock-'em-down-so-we-can-build-'em-back-up" media-and-entertainment world we live in, there's this new development: HollywoodLife.com says it has exclusively confirmed that ABC producers are trying to lure Deen onto Season 14 of its hit show, "Dancing With the Stars." (Would it be snarky to suggest that ABC might also be hoping for a little Novo Nordisk ad buy? OK, forget we said anything.)  

A representative for Deen said she wasn't available for comment this week, but might be available next week.

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-- Rene Lynch
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It's official: California is a land of bunny-huggers. For the third year in a row, California has earned higher marks than any other state in a survey that looks at everything from the treatment of farm animals to the keeping of pet bears. 

No state came near the maximum score of 66 in the survey from the Humane Society of the United States, which the animal advocacy group says is a reflection of how far there is to go before animals are properly protected. That's especially true if you happen to be a beast living in South Dakota, which scored a measly eight points on the Humane Society's scale -- the lowest of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

California came away with 46 points, based in part on its Farm Animal Cruelty Protection Act, which bans long confinements of animals on factory farms. It also is one of a handful of states that requires counseling for animal cruelty offenders and that bans the possession and sale of shark fins -- used in the soup considered a Chinese delicacy.

Oregon and New Jersey tied for second place with 40 points each.

South Dakota, though, was lambasted by the Humane Society for coming in "dead last," as the survey noted, for its lax rules protecting animals. It is one of only three states that have no felony laws against egregious acts of animal cruelty. Idaho fared nearly as poorly, with a score of nine.

“There are some states that are adopting innovative and strong policies to protect animals, while others are lagging badly,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society, which announced the survey's results Tuesday. It was the third year the rankings have been released.

One state that improved its ranking over 2010 was Ohio, where dozens of exotic animals, including Bengal tigers, were killed in an incident last year. Their owner had set them free before killing himself, and officials shot the animals, saying they feared for the safety of humans.

The Humane Society praised Ohio for moving to ban extreme confinement of animals on factory farms but said it needs stiffer laws to prevent the keeping of dangerous wild animals as pets.

-- Tina Susman in New York

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Photo: It's good to be a dog, or just about any other animal, in California, according to the latest Humane Society rankings. In this August photo, dogs frolic at Rosie's Dog Beach in Long Beach, where dogs can run off their leashes every day. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Seattle is waking up this morning to a blanket of snow. It won't be a record snowfall  for the city -- but it's a "whole other story" for the southwest interior of Washington state, where 10 to 20 more inches of snow are expected.

The southern two-thirds of western Washington are under a winter storm warning, said Dustin Guy, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle. The area already has had nearly a foot of snow in the last six hours, he said.

"Getting over a foot of snow anywhere west of the Cascade Mountains" is unusual, Guy said in an interview, and "travel will be quite difficult. ... Smaller communities likely will not see roads plowed anytime soon."

"Seattle itself, we've only got 1 to 2 inches so far," he said. "We'll get more throughout the morning and afternoon. We're expecting a total of 3 to 6."

For a "top 10" snowfall, Seattle would have to receive 7 inches in a 24-hour period, he said. Although the current storm is "'still a significant snow event," it's not likely one for the record books.

It's a "heavy snow event" for the Cascade Mountains too, Guy said.

"We see winter storm warnings for the mountains quite frequently ... but this is not the typical thing we see," he said. From 1 1/2 to 3 feet of snow are predicted.

Relief should arrive Thursday, the meteorologist said, with rain and a gradual warm-up throughout the day and into the evening. Then, there will be "a big slushy mess for quite a while."

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Photo: A snow-covered pickup truck exits Interstate 90 on Tuesday near North Bend, Wash. Credit: Elaine Thompson / Associated Press

Wikipedia blackout. Reddit going dark. No ICanHazCheezburger, for crying out loud.

Looks like we're all going to have to actually do some work Wednesday, when some of the biggest players in the online world areplanning to pull the plug for 24 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills making their way through Congress.

You can keep track of all the unfolding developments at our sister blog, Technology, but here's the quick take: Advocates say the two anti-piracy bills will help protect intellectual property. Critics say those bills amount to Internet censorship.

And some power players, such as Wikipedia, are vowing to go dark to remind folks what life was like before the online encyclopedia (and how much longer homework takes without it). 

Why should you care? Because parts of your Internet are going away in a few hours, starting at midnight tonight. Some sites, such as Wikipedia, are going completely dark; others, such as Google, are planning to use their homepage and other prominent spots to highlight the dispute.

"This is an extraordinary action for our community to take," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said in a statement Monday announcing Wikipedia's decision to go dark. "While we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."

Wikipedia is the Web's fifth-most popular online property, with 470 million monthly users.

Here's the good news, though: If you get in an especially productive Wednesday, you can pretty much slide for the rest of the week, right?

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-- Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Photo: Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, speaks in November during the opening session at the London Cyberspace Conference in London. Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press