Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate voted yesterday to issue arrest warrants for the Senate Democrats who have left the state heroically to halt Gov. Walker’s unwarranted attack on workers. Eight of those Republican Senators are eligible for recall for their overreach. They are:

– Robert Cowles

– Alberta Darling

– Sheila Harsdorf

– Luther Olsen

– Randy Hopper

– Glenn Grothman

– Mary Lazich

– Dan Kapanke

In a move that many are contending is in direct violation of the state constitution and a departure from normal Senate rules, Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate yesterday approved an order for the state’s police to detain the Senate Democrats, who have left the state to block Gov. Scott Walker‘s attack on the middle class and workers’ rights, and bring them to the Senate chambers. Gov. Walker also threatened that he would start sending layoff notices today to state workers.

Now they’re running roughshod over state law and the rules of their own chamber … and Gov. Walker has gone from simply acting like a dictator to acting like a hostage taker, with state jobs as his hostages. Unwilling to even consider compromise on his proposal to gut workers’ fundamental rights, he is now threatening to start eliminating those state jobs if he doesn’t get his way.

Perhaps the most outrageous part is that the layoffs are completely unnecessary to address the state’s budget problems … the same way his plan to destroy collective bargaining for public employees and make the middle class bear the entire economic sacrifice in fixing the state’s budget is completely unnecessary.

If you’re like me, you are wishing more than anything right now that Gov. Walker was eligible for recall this year — especially since polling shows he would lose in an election between him and his 2010 gubernatorial opponent. Unfortunately, he can’t be recalled until 2012, but eight of the Republican Senators backing his extreme power grab are eligible to be recalled now, including:

Randy Hopper, who won his last election by just 184 votes …

Alberta Darling, who won her race by just over 1,000 …

And Glenn Grothman, who on MSNBC‘s The Last Word, called protesters at the Wisconsin state capitol “slobs,” and insisted that they were just a bunch of “college students having a fun party.”

Here’s what you can do today:

1. If you have not already done so, sign our petition indicating your support for the recall effort now underway in Wisconsin. If you have signed, make sure to spread the word! Share on Facebook and ask others to visit http://www.pfaw.org/Recall.

2. If you live in or near Wisconsin, you can start volunteering to help gather recall petition signatures. We have 60 days to get enough signatures to hold recall elections and our friends at the SEIU will be sending out a sizable wave of canvassers this weekend to get us off to a good start. Sign up here: http://action.seiu.org/page/s/wisconsinrecall

3. If you know ANYONE in Wisconsin, please call or email them as soon as you can and urge them to support the recall effort.

4. Make a contribution to PFAW‘s work on the recall campaign.

Thanks for your activism and your support!

— Ben Betz, Online Communications Manager