Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM, for 9h 30m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
The Whitewater Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1973, Pres. Nixon’s lawyers tell John Sirica, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, of an eighteen and a half minute gap in White House audio tapes.
Recommended for reading in full —
Chris Strohm and Shannon Pettypiece report Ex-Fox News Employee Says She Was Blocked From Investigating Trump-Russia Ties:
A former Fox News employee said the network blocked her from going to Moscow to investigate President Donald Trump’s links with Russia, one of several claims of news bias at 21st Century Fox Inc. made by former and current workers opposing its takeover of Sky Plc.
“You can’t do in-depth reporting if you’re not there,” said Jessica Golloher, a former Fox Radio correspondent who is suing the division for gender discrimination, at a gathering with U.K. lawmakers and citizens in Parliament on Monday. “Fox didn’t let me go to Moscow to dig into Trump’s Russian connections, even when I offered to pay my own way.”
“Fox is just buying what the White House is selling,” she said….
(Fox is the closest thing America now has to state media).
Devlin Barrett and Carol D. Leonnig report DHS inspector general: Travel-ban confusion led agents to violate court order:
The Trump administration’s botched rollout of its first travel ban led federal agents to violate court orders by telling airlines not to let certain passengers board U.S.-bound flights, according to an internal watchdog.
In a letter Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, John Roth, notified lawmakers of the violations. He also alerted them that his findings have become bogged down in a battle with the department over redactions that he said would obscure the true failures of the administration’s handling of the first travel ban.
In the early days of the Trump administration, the president signed an executive order temporarily banning entry to the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as refugees.
The move led to confusion and alarm at airports, where immigration agents were unsure how to enforce the order and passengers were unsure whether they could enter the United States. It also sparked protests at some major international airports….
(Lack of clear direction served the darker purpose of inflicting maximum worry on those who might, but were not, part of a travel ban.)
Catherine Rampell contends The GOP readies itself to welcome Roy Moore:
….In any case, by arguing that victory refutes all allegations against Trump, Republicans are laying the groundwork to welcome Moore to Washington if he wins next month.
Already, White House officials are ducking questions about whether Moore should be allowed to serve as senator. A mere week ago, Conway said there was “no Senate seat worth more than a child.” On Monday, when asked whether Alabama voters should cast their ballots for Moore, she denounced his Democratic opponent and said, “I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through”….
(If Moore should win – and there’s a good chance he will – one can expect that the GOP majority will allow him into the chamber and will rely on his vote.)
Betsy Woodruff, Ben Collins, and Spencer Ackerman report Twitter Clams Up Over Russian Trolls:
Twitter has not provided the House and Senate Russia investigations with any additional Kremlin-backed imposter accounts and bots since at least Nov. 1, The Daily Beast has confirmed.
The lack of new disclosure comes as evidence continues to mount that inauthentic Russian activity continues apace on the microblogging platform.
Twitter first identified 201 non-bot accounts tied to the St. Petersburg-based troll farm known as the Internet Research Association on Sept. 28. Barely a month later, for a Nov. 1 congressional hearing, the company increased that figure tenfold, to 2,752—in addition to the existence of 36,746 Russia-linked bot accounts involved in election-related tweets. Twenty days after that, however, Twitter has yet to provide an updated amount, let alone specific propaganda accounts, to legislators, three sources familiar with the inquiries tell The Daily Beast….
Sunday was turkey, Monday was mashed potatoes, and today it’s classic pan gravy: