Good morning.
Whitewater’s Monday will be mostly sunny with a high of fourteen. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets tonight at 6:30 PM. Whitewater’s School Board meets tonight, with open session scheduled for approximately 7 PM.
On this day in 1843, Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas. On this day in 1813, Wisconsin’s first governor, Nelson Dewey, is born.
Worth reading in full —
Michael Wines reports that for All This Talk of Voter Fraud? Across U.S., Officials Found Next to None: “After all the allegations of rampant voter fraud and claims that millions had voted illegally, the people who supervised the general election last month in states around the nation have been adding up how many credible reports of fraud they actually received. The overwhelming consensus: next to none. In an election in which more than 137.7 million Americans cast ballots, election and law enforcement officials in 26 states and the District of Columbia — Democratic-leaning, Republican-leaning and in-between — said that so far they knew of no credible allegations of fraudulent voting. Officials in another eight states said they knew of only one allegation.”
David Corn asks Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?: “With the Washington Post‘s bombshell report that the CIA has assessed that the Russian hacking of Democratic targets was done as part of a Kremlin operation to help Donald Trump win the election, here’s an intriguing question: Has Russian intelligence spied on the president-elect and, if so, what private information has it collected on him? A counterintelligence veteran of a Western spy service in October told Mother Jones that he had uncovered information—and had sent it to the FBI—indicating Russian intelligence had mounted a yearslong operation to cultivate or co-opt Trump and that this project included surveillance that gathered compromising material on the celebrity mogul. Yet there have been no indications from the FBI whether it has investigated this lead. Still, several intelligence professionals say Trump would have indeed been a top priority for Russian intelligence surveillance—especially when he was in Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned at the time.”
Anthony Faiola reports that In Poland, a window on what happens when populists come to power: “WARSAW — The Law and Justice Party rode to power on a pledge to drain the swamp of Polish politics and roll back the legacy of the previous administration. One year later, its patriotic revolution, the party proclaims, has cleaned house and brought God and country back to Poland. Opponents, however, see the birth of a neo-Dark Age — one that, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, is a harbinger of the power of populism to upend a Western society. In merely a year, critics say, the nationalists have transformed Poland into a surreal and insular place — one where state-sponsored conspiracy theories and de facto propaganda distract the public as democracy erodes. In the land of Law and Justice, anti-intellectualism is king. Polish scientists are aghast at proposed curriculum changes in a new education bill that would downplay evolution theory and climate change and add hours for “patriotic” history lessons. In a Facebook chat, a top equal rights official mused that Polish hotels should not be forced to provide service to black or gay customers. After the official stepped down for unrelated reasons, his successor rejected an international convention to combat violence against women because it appeared to argue against traditional gender roles.”
Jessie Opoien writes of someone Excommunicated: Charlie Sykes is leaving radio as he questions the direction of the Republican Party: “Sykes has become one of the state’s most influential conservative voices over nearly a quarter-century, but in the last year his opposition to Republican president-elect Donald Trump has earned him an audience beyond Wisconsin. His combative interview with Trump during the state’s presidential primary propelled him into multi-year contracts with NBC and MSNBC and attracted national reporters who sought to capture the story of a prominent conservative who refused to support the Republican nominee. A month before Trump was elected, Sykes announced his plans to leave WTMJ. He said the decision was made more than a year ago, for both personal and professional reasons. Sykes turned 62 this year and his father, Jay Sykes, died at 63. He wants to spend more time writing, traveling and with his family. If he had any doubts about the move, the political climate of 2016 erased them.”
Small-business computers have come a long way since the IBM 5100 —