Good morning,

Whitewater’s forecast calls for a chance of light snow, with a high temperature of nineteen degrees.

In the City of Whitewater, there’s a 7 p.m. meeting about a Whitewater Effigy Mounds Preserve Restoration Plan. Here’s the city’s description of the meeting, with an agenda that’s available online:

Neighbors and interested community members are invited to attend a community meeting on Wednesday, January 19th at 7:00 PM, held at the Whitewater Municipal Building in the 1st floor community room. This will be the second public meeting, at this meeting Jennings & Associates will present a draft restoration plan for the site. The meeting will also be an opportunity to learn about restoration efforts at the Whitewater Effigy Mounds Preserve (formerly Indian Mounds Park). A plan is being prepared to guide the city in the restoration and preservation of this archaeologically significant site in Whitewater. The City has contracted with Jennings & Associates, a planning firm that has significant background in both land restoration and planning, as well as archaeological preservation.

In our schools today, it’s Green and Gold Family Fun Night at Lakeview School, from 6 to 8 p.m. It’s also Spirit Day at the Middle School.

This is no ordinary day, as the Wisconsin Historical Society rightly recalls. It’s a day to honor Ernest Hausen:

1939 – Chicken Plucking World Record

On January 19, 1939 Ernest Hausen (1877 – 1955) of Ft. Atkinson set the world’s record for chicken plucking. [Source: Guiness Book of World’s Records, 1992]

Good morning,

Today’s forecast calls for a chance of flurries, with a high of twenty-six degrees. (Yesterday, the National Weather Service predicted an accumulation of only one to three inches, and we exceeded that range. The NWS owes Whitewater a couple of inches and a few sunny days by way of compensation.)

In the City of Whitewater today, there are two municipal meetings. From 4:15 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., there’s a meeting of Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission. The agenda is available online.

Later, at 6:30 p.m., there’s a meeting of Whitewater’s Common Council. That agenda is also available online.

Mickey Kaus has a post at Kausfiles (now at the online Newsweek) that asks, “Are We Sure ‘Civility’ Will Help the Democrats?” He suggests that so-called civility many help incumbent…Republicans. I think he’s right. Kaus writes:

But now that they’ve won the House in an off year election, GOP pols don’t need to please the base so much. They need the middle. They need swing congressmen to vote for their bills and they need supportive poll numbers to encourage those congressmen to do so. If a “civility” crusade succeeds in getting the most volatile Republicans to cool it and stop irritating the center, it won’t be doing Obama’s work for him. It will be doing John Boehner’s work for him.

America has always been a place of robust rhetoric and polemics. A milder tone may seem self-satisfying, but it won’t help the out-of-power party retake the House (or the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate, for that matter). Scoring points now doesn’t assure an out-of-power party of winning votes in ’12. For voters to change their minds about a House Republican majority, they’ll have to think something’s wrong with Republicans, and that requires, I think, a more pointed approach than so-called civility allows.