Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 7:10 PM, for 12h 39m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets this evening at 6:30 PM.

Today is the sixteenth anniversary of coordinated Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the continental United States. On this day in 1903, auto racing rebuts at the Milwaukee Mile.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jeffrey Goldberg ponders The Autocratic Element (“Can America recover from the Trump administration?”):

Like many people, I’ve lately been preoccupied by the mayhem-makers of the radical right, and by those in power who abet their work. But even as Nazis were invading Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, I found myself worrying about a more subtle, but still substantially pernicious, manifestation of democratic decay. This is the apparently deathless attempt by certain rightist Republicans to bring Hillary Clinton to “justice,” a cause rationalized this way by one such Republican, a freshman congressman from Florida named Matt Gaetz: “Just because Hillary Clinton lost the election doesn’t mean we should forget or forgive conduct that is likely criminal.”

Let us lay aside the question of whether the charges of criminality leveled against Clinton are specious (they certainly seem to be) and focus instead on the novelty of Gaetz’s mission. The idea he is endorsing—if not on behalf of Donald Trump, then in the spirit of Donald Trump—is that the political party that wins power is duty-bound to hound to the point of actual prosecution the losing party.

This is un-American, and I mean that in a very specific way. I’ve spent much of my reporting career covering countries that are not ruled by law, and that do not venerate the democratic norms of restraint, moderation, forgiveness, and compromise. It is common for autocratic rulers, even those who took office through ostensibly democratic elections, to persecute the individuals and parties that they have vanquished, for reasons ranging from paranoia to simple vindictiveness. America, though, has been different. It is not uncommon in the U.S. for the losers to challenge the victories of the winners, and this is as it should be. But it is a dangerous innovation to use the instruments of state power to harass powerless, defeated political foes. The fractures that this sort of behavior causes are not easily healed….

(Even at best, we’ve a long road ahead.)

Adam Bates contends Trump’s Decision on Military-Style Weapons Will Harm Communities:

In 2004, then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s SWAT team in Maricopa County, Ariz., raided a suburban home looking for illegal firearms.

The raid was a comedy of ineptitude.

The officers drove their armored vehicle into a parked car on the street. They changed into military-style uniforms on the lawn, leading a neighbor to conclude that they might have been amateur paintballers or even gang members. One of the many tear gas canisters police fired into the home apparently sparked a fire and set the home ablaze. A dog trying to flee the fire was scared back into the home, where it died.

Instead of a cache of illegal weapons, the raid recovered an antique shotgun and a legally owned 9mm handgun, and officers made only one arrest — for a failure to appear in court over traffic violations.

It should go without saying that military weapons and tactics should be reserved for the most pressing circumstances. Yet the Trump administration is taking the country backward by again giving police departments access to the most dangerous artillery that is often unnecessary for local officers….

Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffrey write that Trump’s Signals to White Supremacists Aren’t Dog Whistles. They’re Flares:

“They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will.”

That was Rachel Pendergraft, a spokeswoman for the political arm of the Ku Klux Klan (yes, this exists), talking last year about the way the Trump campaign was helping racist and white supremacist groups reach a growing audience. Mother Jonesinterviewed her as part of a big investigation, which found that these extremists were seeing Trump as legitimizing their once-hidden views.

Hearing people like Pendergraft talking this way—taking off the hood, as it were—was shocking enough. But here’s what really stunned us in reporting out that story: Not only were extremists excited by Trump’s campaign. Not only were they using it to recruit on a scale they hadn’t imagined before. They felt that the campaign was signaling to them actively and deliberately—and the more we dug, the more we realized they were right….

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen warns of The Russian Company That Is a Danger to Our Security:

MADBURY, N.H. — The Kremlin hacked our presidential election, is waging a cyberwar against our NATO allies and is probing opportunities to use similar tactics against democracies worldwide. Why then are federal agencies, local and state governments and millions of Americans unwittingly inviting this threat into their cyber networks and secure spaces?

That threat is posed by antivirus and security software products created by Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based company with extensive ties to Russian intelligence. To close this alarming national security vulnerability, I am advancing bipartisan legislation to prohibit the federal government from using Kaspersky Lab software.

Kaspersky Lab insists that it has “no inappropriate ties with any government.” The company’s products, which are readily available at big-box American retailers, have more than 400 million users around the globe. And it provides security services to major government agencies, including the Department of State, the National Institutes of Health and, reportedly, the Department of Defense….

(Kaspersky isn’t the only Russian company with state-security ties to Putin, to be sure.)

A dog meets a bear, and the dog wins the field:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset is 7:12 PM, for 12h 41m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1913, Oliver Hazard Perry achieves an American victory over Britain at the Battle of Lake Erie, capturing six British vessels. The victory “ensured American control of the lake for the rest of the war, which in turn allowed the Americans to recover Detroit and win the Battle of the Thames to break the Indian confederation of Tecumseh. It was one of the biggest naval battles of the War of 1812.” On this day in 1863, “Union forces, including 27th and 28th Wisconsin Infantry regiments, [win] engagements at Bayou Fourche and Little Rock, Arkansas.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Scott Bauer reports that Lawmakers add $4 million for tiny Wisconsin airport near golf course:

A tiny airport in central Wisconsin that’s seen an influx of private jets since a Republican donor’s world-class golf course opened nearby would get $4 million in improvements under funding slipped into the state budget this week.

The Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee approved the funding after the developer of the Sand Valley Golf Resort, Michael Keiser, donated $25,000 to the state Republican Party in February, records reviewed by The Associated Press show.

That donation was three weeks after Gov. Scott Walker released his budget without funding for Wisconsin Rapids’ Alexander Field. Keiser has given at least $65,000 to Walker and Wisconsin Republicans since 2012….

Casey Michel reports How Russia Created the Most Popular Texas Secession Page on Facebook:

….Moscow’s ties to the California secession movement, which received a boost following Donald Trump’s election, have seen the greatest coverage?—?understandably so, given the former #Calexit leader’s willingness to highlight his links to the Moscow-funded Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR) at every turn. Only so many people would be willing to open a “California Embassy” in Moscow, after all. (For my own writings on #Calexit’s myriad ties to Russia, in addition to the links above, click here, here, or here.) As Jonathon Morgan, the founder of Data for Democracy, noted a few months back in detailing the online footprint of Russia and California secessionists, the primary group pushing #Calexit was further “amplified by many of the same accounts that infiltrated conservative Twitter communities and promoted a pro-Trump, white nationalist agenda.” Not exactly an organic upswell.

#Calexit was further “amplified by many of the same accounts that infiltrated conservative Twitter communities and promoted a pro-Trump, white nationalist agenda.”

But for all of the egregious links between Russia and California separatists, the earliest foray into ties between Moscow-linked actors and American secession movements, per my research, was found in my former home: Texas. Back in 2015, I put together a piece for POLITICO Magazine detailing the ties between Lone Star secessionists and Russia, dovetailing off a recent visit from the Texas “foreign minister” to St. Petersburg, where the Texan turned to Russian media to fan the flames of secession. As local Russian officials were threatening to deliver arms to Mexico (and unidentified “guerrillas”) to allow Mexico City to reclaim Texas, Texas secessionists themselves were finding sympathetic ears in Moscow.

Then, in 2016, the same “foreign minister,” the Texas Nationalist Movement’s (TNM) Nathan Smith, returned to Russia, attending the same pro-secession conference as the California secessionists?—?and, this time, with the AGMR, the group behind the conference, receiving funding from the Kremlin. In the time since, it’s come out that the AGMR also helped fund the Texan’s travel to Russia….

Ron Synovitz reports that Facebook Manipulation Echoes Accounts From Russian ‘Troll Factory’:

A Facebook official on September 6 told The Washington Post there was evidence that fake accounts used to promote the Russian-bought Facebook ads were linked to the International Research Agency.

Past RFE/RL interviews with former employees of the Internet Research Agency’s operations paint a picture of a hard-charging operation that relies on a combination of methods — from generating fake news, disinformation, and memes to building up networks of fake social-media accounts run by “troll” employees who flood web forums with posts in an attempt to manipulate public opinion.

Lyudmila Savchuk told RFE/RL in 2015 that the firm was targeting Russian and English-language social-media sites at the time. “There are hundreds of people, operating around-the-clock, writing thousands of comments, texts, and posts on all social-media sites and blogs,” she recounted.

“They comment on media articles and write for social-networking sites, pretending to be ordinary people,” Savchuk said. “They run blogs under false pretenses. They promote ideas they were given through verbal or written instructions.”

Stand Up Republic shares Combating Fake News: 4 Strategies to Separate Fact from Fiction:

(On this last point, I’d suggest skipping Fox entirely; one can balance other networks adequately. Still, the point holds generally.)

James Gorman and Mae Ryan describe how Wild Dogs Sneeze to Hunt:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:29 AM and sunset 7:14 PM, for 12h 44m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress makes official the term ‘United States,’ replacing ‘United Colonies.’ On this day in 1864, the 20th Wisconsin Infantry and 4th Wisconsin Cavalry participate in an expedition from Mobile Bay to Bonsecours and Fish River, Alabama.

Recommended for reading in full —

Gloria Borger and Marshall Cohen report Document details scrapped deal for Trump Tower Moscow:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 6:28 AM and sunset 7:15 PM, for 12h 47m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.9% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}three hundred third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1504, Michelangelo’s David is unveiled in Florence. On this day in 1862, the 4th Wisconsin Infantry participates in a fight at St. Charles Court House in Louisiana.

Recommended for reading in full —

Ben Collins, Kevin Poulsen, and Spencer Ackerman report Russia’s Facebook Fake News Could Have Reached 70 Million Americans (“Facebook acknowledged that Russian propagandists spent $100,000 on election ads. It neglected to mention how many millions of people those ads reached.”):

Russian-funded covert propaganda posts on Facebook were likely seen by a minimum of 23 million people and might have reached as many as 70 million, according to analysis by an expert on the social-media giant’s complex advertising systems. That means up to 28 percent of American adults were swept in by the campaign.

On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, revealed that Russia had “likely” used 470 fake accounts to buy about $100,000 worth of advertising promoting “divisive social and political messages” to Americans. It was Facebook’s first public acknowledgment of the role it unwittingly played in the Kremlin’s “active measures” campaign. Stamos’ statement was also conspicuous by what it omitted: Facebook has refused to release the ads. More significant, it hasn’t said what kind of reach Russia attained with its ad buy.

There may be a reason for that. On the surface, $100,000 is small change in contemporary national politics, and 3,000 ads sounds like a drop in the pond when Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. But it turns out $100,000 on Facebook can go a surprisingly long way, if it’s used right. On average, Facebook ads run about $6 for 1,000 impressions. By that number, the Kremlin’s $100,000 buy would get its ads seen nearly 17 million times….

Scott Shane reports on The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election:

….An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign.

On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages. Many were automated Twitter accounts, called bots, that sometimes fired off identical messages seconds apart — and in the exact alphabetical order of their made-up names, according to the FireEye researchers. On Election Day, for instance, they found that one group of Twitter bots sent out the hashtag #WarAgainstDemocrats more than 1,700 times….

Given the powerful role of social media in political contests, understanding the Russian efforts will be crucial in preventing or blunting similar, or more sophisticated, attacks in the 2018 congressional races and the 2020 presidential election. Multiple government agencies have investigated the Russian attack, though it remains unclear whether any agency is focused specifically on tracking foreign intervention in social media. Both Facebook and Twitter say they are studying the 2016 experience and how to defend against such meddling….

David Graham ponders What the Russian Facebook Ads Reveal:

The news that Facebook ran tens of thousands of dollars worth of ads from a Putin-linked Russian troll farm is the latest evidence that the Kremlin has proved adept at turning those features of the American system it most detests into advantages for itself. Although Putin is an apostle of illiberalism, he has picked up on U.S. freedom of the press as a useful tool for Russian messages. In this case, propagandists for the nationalist Russian state are working to turn America’s diversity against it, using potent wedge issues to create and widen social fissures.

Foreigners are prohibited from spending to influence an election, so there could be a violation of law and Federal Election Commission guidelines, but it’s not like Russia is going to extradite anyone to the U.S. to face campaign-finance charges. The ads could only be further evidence of Russian attempts to interfere in the election, which at this point is acknowledged by nearly everyone save the president. But if, as Senator Mark Warner and others have implied, the Russians might have received guidance on who to target with the ads, it might point closer to the elusive smoking gun proving collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. There’s also no way to know whether the estimated $100,000 buy, a relative pittance by campaign-spending standards, is the end of the splurge or just the start….

The exploitation of the free press as a means to advance the Kremlin’s ends is not a new tactic. RT, the television channel formerly known as Russia Today, is a hybrid of an actual news-gathering operation with a propaganda outlet. But a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Russian interference in the election, issued in January, focused on the ways the Russian government used both traditional media and social-media trolling to further its goals in the election, and singled out the Internet Research Agency. That report cited a riveting 2015 article by Adrian Chen on the company, which describes how it functions as a troll farm for pro-Putin propaganda, as well as to advance the interests of commercial clients….

Denise Clifton reports Disturbing New Evidence of How Trump Is Boosting Misinformation and Propaganda:

The signs started popping up on the margins of social media as far back as 2010: Like-minded conspiracy theories spread by far-right sites like InfoWars and Russian government-controlled media like RT [Russia Today, a Putin-controlled propaganda mill]. Tweets that accused mainstream media organizations of reporting “fake news.” And later, social media networks that appeared to follow both white nationalist and Wikileaks-related accounts.

Initially, University of Washington professor and researcher Kate Starbird was studying how rumors spread on social media after disasters; they typically began with high volume after a crisis and then dissipated as news reports confirmed what happened. Then, in 2013, sorting through data after the Boston Marathon bombings, Starbird and her students noticed another kind of rumor—a kind that gained traction and volume over a longer period of time, in spite of facts confirmed in news reports. These longer-lasting rumors often intersected with politicized content. In the sustained chatter about the Boston terrorist attack, they noticed Twitter accounts pushing an alternative narrative, a conspiracy theory that Navy SEALS had bombed the race, not the Tsarnaev brothers.

Starbird mostly dismissed these kinds of alternative narratives as outliers, a conclusion she would later regret. Then came 2016, when hyper-politicized disinformation that spread in the aftermath of mass shootings and the Paris terrorist attacks was impossible to ignore. She and her team were compelled to dig deeper into the data. And as the “fake news” language of far-right and Russian media conspiracy theorists was embraced by Donald Trump and his presidential campaign, Starbird realized the phenomenon was going mainstream….

Margaret Sullivan observes that Facebook’s role in Trump’s win is clear. No matter what Mark Zuckerberg says:

….It’s even more obvious now after Wednesday’s news that Facebook sold ads during the campaign to a Russian “troll farm,” targeting American voters with “divisive social and political messages” that fit right in with Donald Trump’s campaign strategy.

The news, reported Wednesday by The Washington Post, fits right in with the findings of a fascinating recent study by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Analyzing reams of data, it documented the huge role that propaganda, in various forms, played in the 2016 campaign.

“Attempts by the [Hillary] Clinton campaign to define her campaign on competence, experience, and policy positions were drowned out by coverage of alleged improprieties associated with the Clinton Foundation and emails,” the study said.

The Trump campaign masterfully manipulated these messages. Truth was not a requirement.

And Facebook was the indispensable messenger. As the Harvard study noted: “Disproportionate popularity on Facebook is a strong indicator of highly partisan and unreliable media”….

Tech Insider contends here’s why people are afraid of clowns:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a one-third chance of showers in the afternoon, and a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 50m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 6 PM, and her Landmarks Commission also has a meeting scheduled at 6 PM.

On this day in 1927, television pioneer Philo Farnsworth achieves a breakthrough: “On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth’s image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco.^[22] Pem Farnsworth recalled in 1985 that her husband broke the stunned silence of his lab assistants by saying, “There you are — electronic television!”^[22] ” On this day in 1977, Wisconsin has her first judicial recall election: “Dane County citizens voted Judge Archie Simonson out of office. Simonson called rape a normal male reaction to provocative female attire and modern society’s permissive attitude toward sex. He made this statment while explaining why he sentenced a 15-year-old to only one year of probation for raping a 16-year-old girl. After the recall election, Simonson was replaced by Moria Krueger, the first woman judge elected in Dane County history. ”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Vindu Goel and Scott Shane report that Fake Russian Facebook Accounts Bought $100,000 in Political Ads:

SAN FRANCISCO — Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.

Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, that company’s chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down.

Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using “troll” accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites….

Michelle Castillo reports that Facebook gave special counsel Robert Mueller data on Russian ads, report says:

From March, Alexey Kovalev reports that Russia’s Infamous ‘Troll Factory’ Is Now Posing as a Media Empire (“A Russian ‘troll factory’ rebranded itself as a network of legitimate news sites. But hasn’t quite abandoned its old ways”):

Russia’s infamous troll factory — the most successful weapon in its information war arsenal — has rebranded itself as an emerging media conglomerate, an investigation by the Russian news website RBC has revealed.

The secretive troll factory, which garnered massive scrutiny from news organizations both at home and abroad in the past two years, now consists of several websites that produce original reporting and analysis with a strong “patriotic” slant, RBC reported.

The hub of these media operations is a website called FAN (Federal News Agency) whose offices in St. Petersburg are just a stone’s throw from the troll factory’s original location on Savushkina street….

Astro Teller speaks on Why Artificial Intelligence Is Not Scary:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a one-third chance of afternoon showers. Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset is 7:19 PM, for 12h 53m 18s of daytime. The moon is full today, with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1916, the first self-service grocery store – a Piggly Wiggly – opens in Memphis, Tennessee. On this day in 1864, the 25th Wisconsin Infantry leaves a fortified position at Lovejoy’s Station to rejoin Sherman’s army in Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David A. Graham reminds that Only Mueller’s Team Knows What It’s Actually Doing:

Washington sometimes comes to resemble the sitting president. Like Donald Trump, the political and media establishments of the moment have come to expect—nay, demand—instant gratification. Trump’s chaotic style have produced an unintentional experiment in unprecedented White House transparency, in which a senior aide can barely sneeze without seven colleagues telling The Washington Post about it. This in turn has created the expectation that any new development will soon be explained with detailed accounts of what the major players are thinking and what their motivations are—sometimes relayed by anonymous sources, but occasionally, as with Anthony Scaramucci, delivered in shockingly vivid terms by the principals themselves.

In this strange new normal, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation seems especially odd. Such a probe—with the power to alter or even end the path of a presidency—would always be the subject of fascination, but combined with expectation of instant answers, the secretiveness of Mueller’s team has made the few crumbs which have emerged the subject of particularly fevered speculation….

Notably, they aren’t talking. The public knows a decent amount more about the Mueller investigation now than it did two weeks ago, but most of those revelations have come when Mueller has had to work with other agencies—the FBI, which conducted the Manafort raid, the New York attorney general’s office, the IRS, or someone else. Even with all the new information, the Mueller probe remains highly opaque. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon, but neither is the importance of the probe or the desire to figure out where it’s going. That means the summer of speculation is about to give way to an equally feverish autumn of apparent augury.

(This is a sign of Mueller’s team’s discipline.)

McKay Coppins and Elaine Godfrey write, on 8.24.17, that The Republican Establishment Stands Behind Trump:

In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, The Atlantic reached out to 146 Republican state party chairs and national committee members for reaction to Trump’s handling of the events. We asked each official two questions: Are you satisfied with the president’s response? And do you approve of his comment that there were “some very fine people” who marched alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis?

The vast majority refused to comment on the record, or simply met the questions with silence. Of the 146 GOP officials contacted, just 22 offered full responses—and only seven expressed any kind of criticism or disagreement with Trump’s handling of the episode. (Those seven GOP leaders represent New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.) The rest came to the president’s defense, either with statements of support or attempts at justification.

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah writes of A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof:

….I had come to Charleston intending to write about them, the nine people who were gone. But from gavel to gavel, as I listened to the testimony of the survivors and family members, often the only thing I could focus on, and what would keep me up most nights while I was there, was the magnitude of Dylann Roof’s silence, his refusal to even look up, to ever explain why he did what he had done. Over and over again, without even bothering to open his mouth, Roof reminded us that he did not have to answer to anyone. He did not have to dignify our questions with a response or explain anything at all to the people whose relatives he had maimed and murdered. Roof was safeguarded by his knowledge that white American terrorism is never waterboarded for answers, it is never twisted out for meaning, we never identify its “handlers,” and we could not force him to do a thing. He remained inscrutable. He remained in control, just the way he wanted to be.

And so, after weeks in the courtroom, and shortly before Dylann Roof was asked to stand and listen to his sentence, I decided that if he would not tell us his story, then I would. Which is why I left Charleston, the site of his crime, and headed inland to Richland County, to Columbia, South Carolina—to find the people who knew him, to see where Roof was born and raised. To try to understand the place where he wasted 21 years of a life until he committed an act so heinous that he became the first person sentenced to die for a federal hate crime in the entire history of the United States of America….

Ashley Luthern and Gina Barton report Trust damaged between Milwaukee police and community, Department of Justice draft report says:

The Milwaukee Police Department fails the community and its own officers by not communicating clearly, making too many traffic stops and applying inconsistent standards when disciplining officers, according to a draft of a federal report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The draft report offers a particularly damning critique of Chief Edward Flynn’s reliance on data, a signature component of his strategy since he took over the department in 2008. Federal evaluators found this approach is having a damaging, if unintended, effect on police-community relations.

“MPD’s attention to crime data has distracted the department from the primary tenet of modern policing: trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve,” the draft report states.

What’s more, many officers don’t know what community policing is and don’t think it’s part of their jobs — even though Flynn promised when he was sworn in nine years ago that the department would implement it….

(Ignorance of genuine community policing is probably common in many cities & even small towns: it’s become mostly an ill-grasped slogan for poorly trained officers.)

Tech Insider introduces The Man Who Invented the Super Soaker:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a high of sixty-four and a four-in-ten chance of showers. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 7:21 PM, for 12h 56m 07s of daytime. The moon is nearly full, with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundredreth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Alcohol and Licensing Committee meets at 6:10 PM, and her Common Council at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia. On this day in 1864, the “12th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 24th, 25th and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments along with the 10th Wisconsin Light Artillery” take part in a standoff at Lovejoy Station, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jennifer Rubin observes that Ending DACA would be Trump’s most evil act:

First, let’s not think Trump — who invites cops to abuse suspects, who thinks ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio was “doing his job” when denying others their constitutional rights and who issued the Muslim ban — cares about the Constitution (any of the “twelve” articles). Trump says, “We love the dreamers. … We think the dreamers are terrific.” But in fact he loves the applause he derives from his cultist followers more than anything. Otherwise he’d go to the mat to defend the dreamers and secure their legal status.

To begin with, surely Trump could talk the nine Republicans attorneys general out of the suit they are contemplating, or at least try his hand in court (as he has done repeatedly with the Muslim ban and sanctuary city order). In any event, he could wait for a final adverse ruling that could be months or years from now rather than end the executive order on his own. Needless to say, longtime anti-immigrant extremists Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Stephen Miller have no interest in explaining any of that to the president. (When a president is as thoroughly ignorant and non-analytical as this one is, his aides have ample opportunity to lead him around by the nose.)

Moreover, if Trump really thought he had to end DACA for constitutional reasons, how can he justify a six-month extension? (Why not 12 months? Two years?) And surely, if he really wanted Congress to act, he could insist it be tied (like Harvey funding) to the debt ceiling or, alternatively, to the funding bill to keep the government operating.

No, if Trump cancels DACA, it will be one more attempt to endear himself to his shrinking base with the only thing that truly energizes the dead-enders: vengeance fueled by white grievance. And it will also be an act of uncommon cowardice. (“Should Trump move forward with this decision, he would effectively be buying time and punting responsibility to Congress to determine the fate of the Dreamers,” writes The Post.) Dumping it into the lap of the hapless Congress, he can try evading responsibility for the deportation of nearly 800,000 young people who were brought here as children, 91 percent of whom are working. (And if by chance Congress should save DACA, it will be Trump who is the villain and they the saviors, an odd political choice for a president who cares not one wit about the party.)….

Noah Lanard predicted last week that Trump Looks Likely to End Protections for Dreamers. Here’s What Would Happen Next:

The fate of roughly 800,000 immigrants who came to the United States as children has never been more precarious. President Donald Trump is likely to end protections for the young adults, known as Dreamers, who were given permission to work and study in the country in 2012 by President Barack Obama, multipleoutlets are reporting. The decision, which could come as soon as this week, could lead thousands of Dreamers to be deported and many more to stay illegally in the United States, living with the fear they faced before Obama issued his order.

Ten state attorneys general have promised to sue the federal government on September 5 to force the courts to block Obama’s order, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), if Trump doesn’t scrap it by then. That means that one way or another, the program is likely to meet its demise soon. If Trump decides not to end DACA himself, then in order to keep it alive in the face of a lawsuit, he would have to overrule his attorney general, who opposes the program, and force him to defend it in court. The lawsuit would then be heard by a federal district court judge in Texas who is unlikely to be sympathetic to DACA. The judge, Andrew Hanen, already blocked a similar executive action by Obama that protected undocumented parents of citizens and legal residents.

If the fate of DACA is coming into focus, what will happen to Dreamers is less clear. Obama’s executive action let Dreamers work in the United States, instructed immigration agents not to detain them, and changed their status to “lawfully present.” To get those protections, Dreamers have to prove they’ve been in the country since 2007, arrived before they turned 16, and have not committed serious crimes. After getting DACA, they can renew their status for two-year increments. So far, the Trump administration has approved DACA applications at about the same rate as the Obama administration.

Trump, or the courts, could opt for a quick or slow phaseout of DACA’s protections from detention and deportation. As the libertarian Cato Institute, which supports less restrictive immigration policies, recently explained, when John Kelly—then the homeland security secretary and now Trump’s chief of staff—ended protections for parents of US citizens and legal residents in June, he explicitly stated that Dreamers would not be affected. A memo ending DACA could spare current Dreamers again—until their two-year protections expire and they become eligible to be detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The last Dreamers would then lose their protections about two years from now….

Greg Sargent cautions Don’t buy the latest round of laughable Trump White House spin:

It is a truly shocking coincidence that the same advisers who are telling Trump that DACA is unconstitutional were also the ones most responsible for the disguised Muslim ban and also pushed Trump to pardon Joe Arpaio. Bannon and Miller were key drivers of the ban’s original rollout. They both reportedly favored pardoning Arpaio. My point is not just that this strongly suggests their view of DACA’s constitutionality is rooted in their hostility to immigrants, though it does.

It’s also that this hints at an amusing double standard on the part of the White House’s immigration hard-line faction when it comes to the care with which they approach Trump’s exercise of his authority. Bannon and Miller’s haste to rush out the travel ban led them to trample all over the proper legal process for such measures, which in turn helped lead to its initial blockage by the courts. Bannon and Miller also appear to have privately told Trump that pardoning Arpaio would please his base, which only underscores how cavalier they were about a major decision with serious separation-of-powers implications. While Trump’s pardon power is quasi-absolute, there is widespread agreement that this nonetheless constituted an abuse of his power, something that plainly did not concern Bannon and Miller.

Nor was Trump remotely concerned about the legal details surrounding his use of executive authority to institute the veiled ban on Muslims, or about the prospect that pardoning Arpaio might constitute an abuse of his power. And do we really need to remind you of Trump’s abuses of power and lawlessness in other areas — the emoluments clause violations; the firing of the FBI director over the Russia probe after demanding his loyalty; the rage at his attorney general for failing to protect him from that probe; and the obvious use of the Arpaio pardon to signal that more pardons on Russia may be coming?….

Glenn Thrush tweets that “Sheriff Clarke, shut out by [Chief of Staff] Kelly, going to Trump PAC, via sources.”

(There’s a dispute about the reason Clarke is stuck in secondary role with a PAC – an alternative explanation says Kelly didn’t play a dispositive role; it was Clarke’s dishonesty about his academic work that would have kept him out in any event. Either way, he’s heading to the minor leagues.)

NASA SPoRT (Short-Term Research Prediction and Transition Center) shows what Hurricane Irma looks like from above:

The eye of a category 5 hurricane. #Irma #GOES16 pic.twitter.com/eATVZspJZx

— NASA SPoRT (@NASA_SPoRT) September 5, 2017