The Washington Times cuts through the verbiage and tells it like it is:

The public educators engaged in the demonstrations, many of whom earn more than $100,000 in salary and benefits, seem to think the normal rules of professional conduct do not apply to them. Many falsely called in sick to engage in self-serving political activism, apparently without fear of being disciplined. A group of Madison East High School students engaged in what a union organizer called an "unplanned walkoff" of the school grounds, but that the students said was organized truancy instigated by their teachers.

These demonstrations may be dramatic and TV-friendly, but White House operatives and their union cronies are on the wrong side of history. The American people are fed up with a sense of entitlement, waste and abuse in government service. Americans in the private sector have lost jobs, been forced to take pay cuts to continue working and have reduced spending just to make ends meet. Government workers face no such jeopardy and instead enjoy automatic raises, regardless of performance. The measures causing all the ruckus in Wisconsin would require public-sector employees (excluding police and firefighters) to contribute half of their pension costs and at least 12 percent of their health care costs, which is a better deal than most Americans get. The public sector employees also would lose collective bargaining rights for anything other than pay. These are reasonable sacrifices to make in a time of fiscal crisis, and by resisting them, the demonstrators expose themselves as selfish and unreasonable.

The White House and its allies have backed similar demonstrations in Ohio and Indiana, and more may be planned for other states. One can reasonably ask why Mr. Obama is spending his time seeking to undermine democratic processes in U.S. state legislatures and ignoring the pleas of Iranians trying to throw off the shackles of Islamic rule.

The president has been more forceful in backing unions in Wisconsin than freedom seekers in Iran. The difference is the Iranian protestors are useless to his re-election effort. Obama can't win without the lock-step support of the teachers unions, so intervening in this ginned up demonstration against some extremely modest proposals by Governor Walker - even though it is monumentally unseemly for a president to take sides in this matter - makes perfect sense from a partisan political perspective.