Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:21 PM, for 14h 59m 05s of daytime. The moon is new today, with just .1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred ninety-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets today at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1977, Star Wars opens. On this day in 1889, Wisconsin Gov. Oscar Rennebohm is born.
(The Star Wars trailer was so new at the time that it did not capture the setting as “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”)
Recommended for reading in full —
Karla Adam reports British outraged over alleged U.S. leaks in the Manchester bomb investigation:
LONDON — British indignation over alleged American leaks of investigative material related to the Manchester bombing will likely create a charged environment Thursday when British Prime Minister Theresa May meets later with President Trump.
May said Thursday morning she would “make clear” to Trump when they meet later in the day at a NATO summit in Brussels that “intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure.”
Leaks from the ongoing investigation — including the publication of crime-scene photos in the New York Times and the naming of the suspected bomber by U.S. broadcasters — have provoked ire from British officials.
Betsy Woodruff, Lachlan Markay, and Asawin Suebsaeng report Reince Priebus Sweating Secret Comey Memos, White House Sources Say:
Three White House officials told The Daily Beast that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has privately expressed worry about a possible Comey memo specifically involving one of their reported chats, and how it might play in the press and to investigators.
“Nervous laughter,” one official succinctly characterized Priebus’ demeanor in the midst of recent revelations.
In late February—long before Trump fired Comey over the “this Russia thing”—Priebus had reportedly already acted on the president’s behalf in trying to use the FBI to quash the Trump-Russia news.
According to CNN, Priebus asked Comey and his then-top deputy, Andrew McCabe, on Feb. 15 to refute news reports about conversations between Trump campaign staff and Russian government officials. Comey and McCabe reportedly refused. The White House denied the story at the time.
Matt Ford writes of The Known Unknowns of the Russia Investigation:
On Friday, CNN reported on similar Russian conversations held last summer about Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who spent two years as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency under the Obama administration. Those exchanges prompted a “five-alarm fire” within the American intelligence apparatus, according to an anonymous U.S. official quoted by CNN. The Times reported that the findings were then passed to the FBI, which opened a counterintelligence probe that eventually grew into the sprawling investigation that has consumed Trump’s nascent administration.
Many questions still remain about the inquiry’s origins. It’s not clear if the FBI and other agencies already had other curious information in their possession before learning about Russian officials’ conversations and deciding to launch the probe. Both outlets’ descriptions of the talks suggest a familiarity with Trump campaign staffers and a desire to sway them somehow. They also underscore the lopsided efforts to undermine last year’s presidential election, a plot that U.S. intelligence officials concluded in January was designed to hinder Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Dan Bice reports that Sheriff Clarke directed staff to hassle plane passenger after brief exchange:
Sitting on the tarmac at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Jan. 15, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. sent a text message to one of his captains after a brief verbal exchange with a passenger.
The sheriff explained in the text what should be done when Riverwest resident Dan Black got off the plane.
“Just a field interview, no arrest unless he become an asshole with your guys,” Clarke wrote Captain Mark Witek. “Question for him is why he said anything to me. Why didn’t he just keep his mouth shut?”
“Follow him to baggage and out the door,” Clarke continued. “You can escort me to carousel after I point him out.”
One man was fortunate to escape with only minor injuries after a bear charged him: