Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of twenty-seven.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 5:32 PM, for 10h 47m 15s of daytime.  The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the eight hundred thirty-second day.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1868, photographer Edward S. Curtis is born:

Edward Sheriff Curtis was born near Whitewater. As a young boy, he taught himself photography. His family eventually moved to the Puget Sound area of Washington state. He settled in Seattle and opened a photography studio in 1897. A chance meeting on Mount Rainier resulted in Curtis being appointed official photographer on railroad magnate E.H. Harriman’s expedition to Alaska. Curtis also accompanied George Bird Grinnell, editor of Field and Stream magazine, to Montana in 1900 to observe the Blackfoot Sun Dance. After this, Curtis strove to comprehensively document American Indians through photography, a project that continued for over 30 years. Working primarily with 6 x 8-inch reflex camera, he created over 40,000 sepia-toned images. His work attracted national attention, most notably from Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan, whose family contributed generously to his project. His monumental work, The North American Indian, was eventually printed in 20 volumes with associated portfolios. Curtis’ work included portraits, scenes of daily life, ceremonies, architecture and artifacts, and landscapes. His photographs have recently been put online by the Library of Congress.

(Morning Eagle – Piegan. 1910. Original caption: “At an age of more than ninety, Apinakuipita is still hale enough to ride his horse to the tribal gatherings.“)

Recommended for reading in full:

Charlie Savage and Robert Pear report 16 States Sue to Stop Trump’s Use of Emergency Powers to Build Border Wall:

The lawsuit is part of a constitutional confrontation that Mr. Trump set off on Friday when he declared that he would spend billions of dollars more on border barriers than Congress had granted him. The clash raises questions over congressional control of spending, the scope of emergency powers granted to the president, and how far the courts are willing to go to settle such a dispute.

The suit, filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco, argues that the president does not have the power to divert funds for constructing a wall along the Mexican border because it is Congress that controls spending.

[Read the full lawsuit here.]

Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, said in an interview that the president himself had undercut his argument that there was an emergency on the border.

“Probably the best evidence is the president’s own words,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump’s speech on Feb. 15 announcing his plan: “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”

The lawsuit, California et al. v. Trump et al., says that the plaintiff states are going to court to protect their residents, natural resources and economic interests.

  Inside Corning’s Gorilla Glass Factory:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-five.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 5:30 PM, for 10h 44m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the eight hundred thirty-first day.

The Whitewater Unified School Board meets at 6 PM and Whitewater’s Library Board at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1885, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published in the United States.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Conor Friedersdorf writes of The Snowflake in Chief:

To support President Trump is to be complicit in the rule of a thin-skinned authoritarian who denigrates the free-speech rights of people who criticize him.

The latest illustration: his weekend outburst against Saturday Night Live, a sketch-comedy show that has regularly poked fun at every American president for 40 years. The most powerful snowflake in America was triggered by Alec Baldwin. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” Trump tweeted. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”

….

Trump’s SNL tweets are of a piece with a larger, disturbing pattern of behavior in which he violates his oath to protect and defend the Constitution by calling for First Amendment freedoms to be abridged by bureaucrats and legislators; and by calling the press a public enemy and a target of his “drain the swamp” agenda.

 Stephanie Mencimer reports Trump Judicial Nominees Are Refusing to Endorse Brown v. Board of Education (“In normal times, it would be unthinkable. Under Trump, it’s become a trend”)”

There’s no Supreme Court decision more widely celebrated than Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous 1954 ruling that abolished school segregation. But this month, when Neomi Rao appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on her nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, she refused to say whether she thought the case had been correctly decided.

Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) whether the court had made the right decision in Brown, Rao replied, “As a judicial nominee, I think it’s not appropriate for me to comment on the correctness of particular precedents.” Blumenthal asked her for a yes or no, but Rao would say only that Brown is “an incredibly important decision of the Supreme Court”—a dodge she twice repeated when pressed further.

….

Rao is one of at least 10 Trump nominees to the federal courts in the past year who have refused to offer an opinion on Brown. Several of those nominees have been confirmed or approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and set for a full Senate vote.

….

Both of former President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and archconservative Justice Samuel Alito, had no trouble answering the question in the affirmative during their confirmation hearings, nor did Justice Elena Kagan when she was nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama.

  Inside the ant lab – Mutants and social genes:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 5:29 PM, for 10h 41m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the eight hundred thirtieth day.

On this day in 1801 (following a tie electoral college vote between Jefferson and Burr), the House of Representatives on the 36th ballot elects Thomas Jefferson as the third president of the United States.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Shamane Mills reports Wisconsin Trails Nation In Offering School Breakfasts:

The number of Wisconsin students who received breakfast at school through a federally subsidized nutrition program decreased slightly in the 2017-18 school year. And while about 83 percent of schools in the state participated in the School Breakfast Program, that actually puts Wisconsin near the bottom nationally.

“If a school is not offering the school breakfast program, then children cannot access it,” said Crystal FitzSimons of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), which released its School Breakfast Scorecard on Wednesday.

Schools in Wisconsin that don’t offer breakfast for low-income students tell the state Department of Public Instruction they can’t afford to.

“The biggest barrier to providing breakfast is funding,” said DPI spokesman Thomas McCarthy.

On top of federal money, Wisconsin has a school reimbursement rate for free and reduced breakfast of 15 cents a meal. But the state hasn’t paid schools that statutorily set rate since 2006. Because of a shortfall in the account that pays schools for providing breakfast, the reimbursement has fallen to about 7 cents, said McCarthy.

(One would prefer conditions in which no student needed subsidized meals, but we’ve not those conditions, and in any event expenditures of this kind are slight – and far more valuable – as against any number of needless business subsidies or capital projects.)

See also Food Research & Action Center, School Breakfast Scorecard, School Year 2017–2018:

 Corri Hess reports DNR Considering We Energies Proposal To Increase Mercury Limits Released Into Lake Michigan:

Utility company We Energies wants to increase the amount of mercury it can release into Lake Michigan from its coal-burning power plant in Oak Creek.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing earlier this week to discuss the proposal, drawing more than 100 people opposing the plan.

We Energies spokesman Brendan Conway said the new limits wouldn’t cause a health risk to humans or wildlife.

“We are not asking to be asked to be treated differently than anyone else along the lake,” Conway said. “Other permitees along Lake Michigan have received similar or higher mercury variances. People should also understand this variance we are talking about is allowed by the EPA and the DNR so this is not an imminent public health risk.”

(That’s some spokesman We Energies has – he contends it’s not an imminent health risk. This begs the question of whether it might be an intermediate or long-term risk. The question of dumping mercury isn’t answered sensibly because others dump it, but by an assessment of cumulative effects.  Conway offers a mush-for-brains level of reassurance.)

 Tour These 6 Capitals of European Craftsmanship:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 5:28 PM, for 10h 38m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 86.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the eight hundred twenty-ninth day.

On this day in 1923, Egyptologist Howard Carter opens the burial chamber of Tutankhamun.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Glenn Kessler and Meg Kelly write Fact-checking Trump’s announcement of a national emergency:

Where to begin with President Trump’s rambling news conference to announce he was invoking a national emergency to build a border wall? It was chock-full of false and misleading claims, many of which we’ve previously highlighted, either in our database of Trump claims or our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. Here’s a summary of 14 of the most noteworthy claims, starting with immigration ones first. [The full article addresses each claim.]

 The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Stone Case Definitely Tied to Russian Hacker Case:

In arguing against a change of judge for Roger Stone, special counsel prosecutors reveal search warrants on accounts related to the 12 indicted Russian hackers turned up Stone communications with WikiLeaks. Not only does this explain the relevance of Stone appearing before the same judge assigned to the Russian hacker case, but it also presents the possibility Stone’s outreach was more than just the one exchange we already know for certain.

Although Zachary Basu of Axios reports Mueller says Paul Manafort should serve 19-24 years in prison, that’s a misreading of the government’s sentencing memorandum.  In fact, the Special Counsel’s Office doesn’t expressly make any recommendation of its own:

As an initial matter, the government agrees with the guidelines analysis in the Presentence Investigation Report (PSR) and its calculation of the defendant’s Total Offense Level as 38 with a corresponding range of imprisonment of 235 to 293 months, a fine range of $50,000 to $24,371,497.74, a term of supervised release of up to five years, restitution in the amount of $24,815,108.74, and forfeiture in the amount of $4,412,500.

Second, while the government does not take a position as to the specific sentence to be imposed here, the government sets forth below its assessment of the nature of the offenses and the characteristics of the defendant under Title 18, United States Code, Section 3553(a).

(Emphasis added.  This is very clever – agreeing with the PSR is less than taking a position on a specific sentence.  The court may decide not to impose so lengthy a sentence in any event.)

Hope Kirwan reports Wisconsin Counties Hopeful New Money For Groundwater Will Help Address Causes:

Gov. Tony Evers announced he was directing the state Department of Natural Resources to allocate $75,000 to the Southwest Wisconsin Groundwater and Geology (SWIGG) study in a statement released Wednesday.

The SWIGG study focuses on private wells in Grant, Lafayette and Iowa countries. An initial round of testing found 42 percent of tested wells were at unsafe levels of bacteria or nitrates, a compound linked to a variety of health problems.

Helping Kids With Cerebral Palsy Walk with Wearable Robots:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighteen.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 5:27 PM, for 10h 36m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 76.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the eight hundred twenty-eighth day.

On this day in 1865, at the Battle of Congaree Creek, South Carolina, the 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery participates in the Union victory over elements of the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Peter Schuck writes of The Real Problem With Trump’s National Emergency Plan:

President Trump is verging on a declaration of national emergency — purely in order to fund his wall. And if he does, the courts may — or may not — reject his gambit.

But the fact that he may actually possess the legal authority to require agencies to waste billions of dollars simply to fulfill a foolish campaign promise he thinks won him the election is itself scandalous. The theatrics surrounding his petulant threat to do so obscure a vital question for our democracy going far beyond this (non)crisis, a question to which Congress should immediately turn: Who decides what constitutes a national emergency?

In hundreds of laws, Congress has given the president the power to decide. (The Brennan Center for Justice has compiled an exhaustive list.) But by failing to define crucial terms, legal standards and accountability rules, Congress has handed presidents an all-too-handy tool of tyranny commonly used by autocrats to amass more power, crush dissent and eviscerate democratic institutions. In Mr. Trump’s case, it has handed an unguided missile to an ignorant, impetuous man-child.

Congress should have known better. After all, it enacted the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which purported to regulate such declarations, only two years after President Richard Nixon’s abuses of power forced his resignation. The act actually made matters worse in a key respect: It defined a national emergency as “a general declaration of emergency made by the president.” This circular definition, of course, is no constraint at all. Or as Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

 Robert Costa, Rachael Bade, Josh Dawsey, and Seung Min Kim report ‘Off the rails’: Inside Trump’s attempt to claim victory in his border wall defeat:

“We thought he was good to go all morning, and then suddenly it’s like everything is off the rails,” said one senior Republican aide.

By midafternoon, however, Trump was back on board — agreeing to sign the legislation with the caveat that he would also declare a national emergency in an attempt to use existing government funds to pay for wall construction. It was an option that Republican leaders had urged him to avoid but eventually accepted as necessary to escape the corner in which Trump — and his party — were trapped. McConnell promised Trump he would encourage others to support the emergency in a bid to get the president to sign, according to people familiar with the conversations.

  Why Valentine’s Day Isn’t 1-800-Flowers Busiest Day: