FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 3.14.17

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-five. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:01 PM, for 11h 54m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred twenty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1879, Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, Germany. On this day in 1794, Eli Whitney receives a patent for the cotton gin. On this day in 1854, the Baraboo River floods: “”On the night of March 14, 1859, the Baraboo River, greatly swollen by spring rains and melting snow, went on a rampage, taking out a dam that supplied power for the flour mill of Bassett and Pratt. The flour mill was then the ‘largest institution of its kind for many miles around and about it centered the interest of the entire community’. Nearly 500 men responded to the catastrophe. The progress of the water was checked by the felling of trees. The flour in the mill was hauled to safety with team and wagons. The flood caused damage to the lower Maxwell Dam.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jim Dwyer and William Rashbaum report that a Federal Inquiry of Fox News Moves to a Grand Jury, but Without Preet Bharara: “A federal grand jury sitting in Manhattan is expected to soon hear testimony from at least two witnesses to testify in coming days about business practices at Fox News when it was led by Mr. Ailes, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Ailes, who was forced out in July amid revelations of multiple accusations of sexual harassment, has denied those charges. The current inquiry, which began in September and appears to be in an early stage, may be focused, at least in part, on settlement payments, a person with knowledge of the matter said. One of those subpoenaed, according to the two people, is Mark Kranz, the former chief financial officer for Fox News who oversaw the network’s finances when it paid millions of dollars in settlements. Mr. Kranz was appointed to his position by Mr. Ailes in 2004, and resigned last year, a week after Mr. Ailes had done so.”

Jeremy Diamond has the headline of the day in Spicer: Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping: “The White House on Monday walked back a key point of President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegation that President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Namely, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump wasn’t referring to wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping.”

David A. Graham asks How Did Michael Flynn Ever Get Hired as National Security Adviser?: “Flynn’s lobbying on behalf of Turkey was not the only potentially disqualifying problem. For example, the retired general had shared bogus news items on several occasions, and his son was fired from the Trump transition effort for pumping a preposterous conspiracy theory about Clinton aides running a child-prostitution ring out of a D.C. pizzeria. Flynn’s tenure at the Defense Intelligence Agency should probably have given Trump some pause about appointing him. His brief and hectic stint directing DIA ended with his firing by the Obama administration, which probably made him a more alluring hire for Trump but should have given pause instead. ….Finally, there was the matter of Flynn’s ties to Russia, which ultimately caused his firing. In 2013, while still in uniform, he met with Russian intelligence officials, despite skepticism of many American officials. In November 2015, he traveled there for a celebration of RT, the Kremlin-backed news channel, against the advice of friends and colleagues. And during the presidential transition, Flynn spoke with the Russian ambassador to the United States, discussing sanctions levied on the Russian government by the Obama administration. Flynn then lied about those conversations, both to the public and to Pence, who repeated the denial in a CBS News interview before the election. Trump reportedly learned that Flynn had lied to Pence on January  26, but Flynn was not forced to resign until that became public knowledge.”

Zach Putnam’s film describes Coming to America as Refugees, in Children’s Words:

After several of his journalist colleagues were killed in Iraq, Ahmed Al-Zubidi applied for refugee status in the United States. After waiting seven years for approval, he was resettled in Oregon with his family. In this short film by Zach Putnam, we hear his children, 4-year-old Almas and 10-year-old Mustafa, explain what it was like to leave Iraq for Beaverton, Oregon. “When we came to America, I thought America was a dream,” says Mustafa in one of the more poignant opening scenes. “Now I’ve got my own room so I don’t have to share everything.” You can find more of Putnam’s work on his website. He is a master’s student in Multimedia Journalism at the University of Oregon.

Olly the Jack Russell runs with wild abandon at Crufts:

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