Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with an even chance of afternoon showers. Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:33 PM, for 15h 05m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred forty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
At 6:30 PM, there will be a Common Council & City Management Strategic Planning Meeting.
On this day in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a pistol duel near Weehawken, N.J. On this day in 1839, the first patent is issued to a Wisconsin resident: “Ebenezar G. Whiting of Racine was issued patent #1232 for his improved plow, the first patent issued to someone from Wisconsin. Whiting’s improvements consisted of making the mold-board straight and flat which, when united in the center with the curvilinear part of the mold-board, would require less power to drag through the dirt.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Rep. Schiff of the House Select Committee on Intellegence notes that when Trump Jr. took that [6.9.2016] meeting, the Russians had already hacked into Democratic servers, but hadn’t dumped docs:
FLAG: Schiff tells @maddow when Don Jr. took that meeting, the Russians had *already* hacked into Democratic servers, but hadn’t dumped docs pic.twitter.com/KI56VpMmZa
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 11, 2017
Trump’s surrogates (who are, effectually, fellow travelers of Russian electoral interference) don’t fare well when confronted by reasonable, loyal Americans (as one sees here in an exhange between Max Boot and Trump supporter Mike Schields):
Outraged over the NYT report about Trump Jr’s alleged collusion w a Russian lawyer, conservative @MaxBoot obliterates Trump-fan Mike Shields pic.twitter.com/iPWuepKBGs
— Lauren Werner (@LaurenWern) July 11, 2017
Alex Thompson explains Here’s exactly how Russia can hack the 2018 elections:
The year is 2018.
Tens of millions of people show up to vote in the midterm elections to discover their names are no longer on the voter rolls. Thousands of voting machines malfunction and do not properly record votes. Tallies are distorted and inaccurate numbers are sent from counties to states. TV networks call races for the wrong candidates. Recounts begin. Lawsuits are filed.
That’s the nightmare scenario for next year’s elections, and national security and cybersecurity experts warn it’s a very real possibility unless something is done about the country’s outdated election infrastructure — and fast. The hyper-partisan atmosphere on Capitol Hill, however, appears to have frozen any effort to shore up defenses ahead of the midterms, with Republicans wary of giving more attention to the ongoing Russia probes and suspicious that Democrats are only using the issue to attack the president.
Randall Eliason explains that the latest Russia revelations lay the groundwork for a conspiracy case:
Collusion is usually defined as a secret agreement to do something improper. In the criminal-law world, we call that conspiracy. If unlawful collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian nationals did take place, criminal conspiracy would be one of the most likely charges….
Conspiracies, by their nature, take place in secret. To break through that secrecy, prosecutors often rely on circumstantial evidence. The classic trial lawyer’s metaphor is that each such piece of evidence is a brick. No single event standing alone may prove the case. But when assembled together, those individual bricks may build a wall — a big, beautiful wall — that excludes any reasonable doubt about what happened.
That’s why this latest news is a big deal. The meeting helps establish a few critical facts. The first is simply that contacts between Russians and campaign officials did take place. If you are seeking to prove a criminal partnership, evidence that the alleged partners had private meetings establishes the opportunity to reach an agreement.
Stunning footage shows underwater marine life beneath Greenland: