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Daily Bread for 7.22.17

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with isolated afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 47m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1934, bank robber John Dillinger meets his end outside a movie theater in Chicago. On this day in 1864, the 1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 31st Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery continue their engagement in the Battle of Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jane Chong, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes consider How White House Threats Condition Mueller’s Reality:

So now put yourself in Mueller’s shoes. You are both a highly-experienced investigator (you’ve run the FBI for 12 years) and a highly-experienced prosecutor (you’ve headed the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, served as a U.S. Attorney, and prosecuted murder cases as perhaps the most overqualified assistant U.S. attorney in American history). You have staffed your investigation with a group of lawyers of remarkable depth and range of experience. You have on your staff Russian language capability. You have truly remarkable appellate capacity. And you have first class expertise in money laundering, campaign finance, organized crime, and other relevant areas.

But it all may not matter, because the President may decide either to issue a bunch of preemptive pardons or to try to either fire you or rein in your jurisdiction. And the talent you have collected is under attack.

How do you play it? Here are six broad areas to which Mueller may be giving some thought as he considers how to do his job under these highly unusual conditions. To be clear, the following is not based not on any communication with Mueller or his staff but on our own assessment of the law, the problems Mueller faces, and the incentives the White House’s activities create for someone in his position. We assume in everything that follows that there are serious matters under investigation. If, by contrast, L’Affaire Russe is all nonsense, the situation is far easier: Mueller can wrap up the investigation and go back to his law firm [detailed assessment follows]….

Marcin Goettig and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk report that a Polish court overhaul meets growing wave of criticism, protests:

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s ruling party on Saturday dismissed a growing wave of criticism from abroad and worries at home that an overhaul of the Supreme Court would undermine judicial independence.

In the early hours of Saturday senators of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party approved a bill that would end all the terms of Supreme Court justices except those hand-picked by the justice minister.

Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered in Warsaw and cities across Poland for candle-lit vigils, chanting “Free Courts” and demanding that President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the PiS, veto the bill. More protests were planned during the day on Saturday.

Mitch Smith reports that Minneapolis Police Chief Forced Out After Fatal Shooting of Australian Woman:

The Minneapolis police chief, Janee Harteau, resigned on Friday at the mayor’s request, less than a week after one of the city’s officers fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman who had called 911 for help….

The fatal shooting of the Australian woman, Justine Damond, last weekend by Officer Mohamed Noor led to outpourings of grief in Minnesota and outrage in Ms. Damond’s home country, where the prime minister condemned the shooting and Ms. Damond’s family members have expressed frustration with how little they have been told about what happened.

Last Saturday, Ms. Damond, 40, called 911 twice to report a possible sexual assault near her home. Officer Noor and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, arrived at the scene in a dark alley several minutes later. Officer Harrity told state investigators that he had been startled by a loud noise just before Ms. Damond approached their cruiser. Officer Noor then shot her through the open window.

Mike Wall reports that it’s Not Aliens: Weird Radio Signal from Star Likely Has Duller Explanation:

A strange radio signal that seemed to emanate from a small nearby star probably came from Earth-orbiting satellites, astronomers say.

Late last week, researchers announced that, on May 12, the 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected a bizarre radio signal in the vicinity of Ross 128, a red dwarf star that lies just 11 light-years from Earth….

“The best explanation is that the signals are transmissions from one or more geostationary satellites,” Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, wrote in a statement today (July 21). (Geostationary satellites circle Earth at an altitude of about 22,300 miles, or 35,800 kilometers.)

Smokin’ Ed Currie brings the heat:

Fear the Reaper: Breeding the World’s Hottest Pepper from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

In the competitive world of hot pepper breeding, one man is smoking the competition. Meet “Smokin’” Ed Currie. He’s the man behind the world’s hottest pepper—the “Carolina Reaper.” For the past three decades, Currie has been pushing the limits of the Scoville scale—breeding hotter and hotter peppers. We went behind the scenes at his South Carolina farm, where he’s bred a number of secret, unreleased specimens that he claims are even hotter than his famous Reaper. You may want to have some milk ready for this one.

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