As the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources plans a major reorganization that proposes giving large livestock operations more leeway to write their own permit applications, at least one long-term trend will continue: the agency's work is growing more complex while its staff and budget are shrinking.

Kathleen Falk, one of the regional directors for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is likely looking at a job change soon — her job is a political appointment under President Barack Obama's administration. But she had a strikingly sunny outlook about the future of the Affordable Care Act.

In the world of political polling, the Marquette University Law School Poll is considered the best in Wisconsin. When a new poll is released with a new round of results, political journalists across the state avidly follow it and tweet it out point-by-point.

Hmong refugees fleeing war in Vietnam and Laos began arriving in the United States in 1976 — many of them after fighting alongside Americans in the Vietnam War, or losing loved ones in that conflict Over the ensuing four decades, Wisconsin has become home to the nation's third-largest Hmong population following California and Minnesota.