Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 15m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 43.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress adopts a resolution severing ties with Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not published until July 4.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Andrea Salcedo reports A former police officer arrested after the Jan. 6 riot was told to stay away from guns. He bought 34, feds say:

In January, a federal judge agreed to release Thomas Robertson, a former Rocky Mount, Va., police officer facing multiple charges over his alleged participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

But Judge G. Michael Harvey’s release conditions were clear: Robertson could not own any firearms, destructive devices or dangerous weapons while his case was pending. If he owned any guns, he must relocate them within two days.

Days after his release, authorities found eight firearms at his Ferrum, Va. home, according to court documents. The judge gave Robertson a second chance, reminding him of his release conditions.

Then, last month, authorities found a loaded M4 carbine and a partially assembled pipe bomb while conducting an authorized search at his home, court records state. Robertson is also accused of buying 34 firearms online and “transporting them in interstate commerce while under felony indictment,” prosecutors said.

….

On June 29, the FBI visited Robertson’s Virginia home for a second time and discovered a loaded M4 on his bed, along with the ammunition and the semi-assembled pipe bomb. Agents also found a box labeled with the words “Booby Trap.” Inside the box, agents found a metal pipe “with two ends caps, with a fuse inserted into a hole that had been drilled into the device.” Although this device did not contain explosive powder, such material was found in the building on Robertson’s property, prosecutors said.

Donald Ayer, Norman Eisen, and E. Danya Perry write Why the Law Is Strong Enough to Take On Donald Trump:

A 15-count indictment for tax fraud and other charges filed in New York on Thursday against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has already stimulated as much hand-wringing as satisfaction from those who have called for accountability for Donald Trump.

Some express concern that Mr. Trump himself was not charged and may never be. Others note that these are “only” state tax fraud counts against his business and an associate — rather than bold federal action against Mr. Trump himself by the Justice Department.

As former federal and state prosecutors and government lawyers, we believe that the charges support a different conclusion. Rather than betraying weakness, they are a signal that our system of dual sovereignty, in which multiple jurisdictions are empowered to address egregious wrongdoing, can also address the difficulties that Mr. Trump has posed in his long-running battle with the rule of law.

Ali Breland reports The Trump Team’s New Social Media Platform Is Already Flooded With Hentai:

“Welcome to GETTR and start a new journey!” So reads an introductory message on the home page of Gettr, a right-wing social media app recently launched by a team led by Jason Miller, an ex-spokesperson of former president Donald Trump.

That “new journey,” thanks to spam comments left en masse below the message, involves encountering things like anime porn and repeated copies of an image depicting Hillary Clinton’s head photoshopped onto another woman’s nude body.

Major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and its image-sharing subsidiary platform Instagram, have automated filters that root out and remove or censor nude images. At the moment, the Trump-linked social media app apparently has nothing of the kind.

Flying car makes successful test run between airports in Slovakia:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 16m 07s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater Fire Department holds a business meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1967, it becomes legal to purchase oleomargarine in Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Molly Beck reports Wisconsin lawmakers pass bill that labels legislators’ discipline records ‘confidential’:

Wisconsin lawmakers on Wednesday sent Gov. Tony Evers legislation that could make it harder to get records about lawmakers who are disciplined or accused of harassment, government transparency experts warn.

The measure would formally create a human resources office for the state Legislature and says disciplinary records and complaints against lawmakers should be treated confidentially, bolstering a legislative practice of withholding complaints against lawmakers.

The proposal passed the Senate Wednesday and goes to Evers just as a Dane County Judge ruled that Assembly leaders violated the public records law by withholding a sexual harassment complaint against a Democratic lawmaker after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other news outlets sued seeking the records.

“This greatly magnifies the concern that I have over the proposed human resources office,” Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said. “The Legislature is trying to change the law after getting caught breaking it.”

The measure passed both the Assembly on Tuesday and the Senate on Wednesday with no opposition.

Reid Epstein reports Wisconsin G.O.P. Wrestles With Just How Much to Indulge Trump:

Wisconsin Republicans were already going to great lengths to challenge the 2020 election results. They ordered a monthslong government audit of votes in the state. They made a pilgrimage to Arizona to observe the G.O.P. review of votes there. They hired former police officers to investigate Wisconsin’s election and its results.

But for Donald J. Trump, it wasn’t enough.

In a blistering statement last week on the eve of the state party’s convention, the former president accused top Republican state lawmakers of “working hard to cover up election corruption” and “actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit of the election results.”

Wisconsin Republicans were alarmed and confused. Some circulated a resolution at the convention calling for the resignation of the top Republican in the State Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos, who in turn announced the appointment of a hard-line conservative former State Supreme Court justice to oversee the investigation. The Republican State Senate president released a two-page letter addressed to Mr. Trump that said his claims about Republicans were false — but that made sure to clarify in fawning language the state party’s allegiance to the former president.

“The power of your pen to mine is like Thor’s hammer to a Bobby pin,” the Senate president, Chris Kapenga, wrote, adding that he was wearing “Trump socks” and a “Trump-Pence mask” while boarding a commercial flight.

Alex Horton reports The land was worth millions. A Big Ag corporation sold it to Sonny Perdue’s company for $250,000:

In February 2017, weeks after President Donald Trump selected him to be agriculture secretary, Perdue’s company bought a small grain plant in South Carolina from one of the biggest agricultural corporations in America.

Had anyone noticed, it would have prompted questions ahead of his confirmation, a period when most nominees lie low and avoid potential controversy. The former governor of Georgia did not disclose the deal — there was no legal requirement to do so.

An examination of public records by The Washington Post has found that the agricultural company, Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), sold the land at a small fraction of its estimated value just as it stood to benefit from a friendly secretary of agriculture.

Boston Dynamics’ robot dogs dancing in sync to BTS:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 16m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, the Battle of Cherbourg ends with the fall of the strategically valuable port to American forces.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Molly Beck and Rick Barrett report Joe Biden shifts his focus from agriculture to infrastructure in his visit to Wisconsin:

LA CROSSE – President Joe Biden moved his Wisconsin visit from a family farm in the rolling bluffs of Iowa County to the concrete floor of a city bus garage in La Crosse to promote passage of a $973 billion infrastructure bill just days after a bipartisan deal nearly collapsed.

Biden was scheduled to visit Cates Family Farm in rural Spring Green with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss issues facing farmers and boosting rural economies as Wisconsin’s small family dairy farms face near extinction. But the president instead made a solo trip to La Crosse’s Municipal Transit Utility to push for the passage of an eight-year plan to rebuild bridges and roads and expand public transit and broadband access.

“This will be a generational investment to modernize our infrastructure,” Biden said in a makeshift stage at the center of the garage used to repair and house city trucks and buses.

….

The president’s trip to western Wisconsin brings him to one of the state’s key swing regions — and to a congressional district that will be among the most hotly contested in the nation in 2022.

Corrine Hess reports Wisconsin’s Democratic Candidates For US Senate Make Case For Beating Johnson:

Five hopefuls participated in a virtual roundtable hosted by WisPolitics: State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski; State Sen. Chris Larson; former state lawmaker and current Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson; Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry; and Dr. Gillian Battino, a physician from Wausau.

They were joined by Steven Olikara, founder of the Millennial Action Project, who has formed an exploratory committee but has yet to announce an official bid for the seat.

….

The Democratic candidates attacked Johnson for being a conspiracy theorist who has not done enough to help the people of Wisconsin.

Godlewski said defeating him in November 2022 won’t be easy, but she believes she can do it because she has won a statewide race. Nelson also touted being elected six times to different offices.

Larson called himself a “proven progressive,” who has received national endorsements. And Lasry said if elected he will work on bringing jobs and raising wages in Wisconsin. Lasry pointed to the recent change at the Fiserv Forum that increased the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Alex Horton reports South Dakota governor sending National Guard to Mexico border on mission funded by GOP megadonor:

South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) will deploy up to 50 National Guard troops to the southern U.S. border, her office said Tuesday, with a highly unusual caveat — the mission will be funded by a “private donation” from an out-of-state GOP megadonor billionaire.

….

Privately funding a military mission is an affront to civilian oversight of the armed forces, said military and oversight experts, describing the move — a Republican governor sending troops to a Republican-led state, paid for by a Republican donor — as likely unprecedented and unethical.

“You certainly don’t want our national security priorities up to the highest bidder,” said Mandy Smithberger, a defense accountability expert at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog.

Why sea otters are a secret climate warrior:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers and thunderstorms with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 17m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee and the Whitewater Common Council will meet jointly at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 2007, Apple Inc. releases its first mobile phone, the iPhone.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Paige Williams writes Kyle Rittenhouse, American Vigilante:

On August 27th, the Kenosha County D.A. charged Rittenhouse with Wisconsin’s most serious crimes, among them first-degree intentional homicide, the mandatory punishment for which is life in prison. Other felony charges included reckless homicide, and he was also charged with a misdemeanor: underage possession of a dangerous weapon. Thomas Binger, the assistant district attorney assigned to the case, has said, “We don’t allow teens to run around with guns. It’s that simple.”

Conservatives denounced the homicide charges as political, noting that both Binger and Graveley, the district attorney, are Democrats. Criminal defendants who cannot afford a lawyer are typically appointed a public defender, but so many conservative and far-right figures rallied around Rittenhouse that private counsel was all but assured.

Among the attorneys who stepped forward was John Pierce, a civil litigator in Los Angeles, who believed that, in the digital age, lawyers needed to “gang tackle, swarm, and crowd-source.” His firm, now known as Pierce Bainbridge, had reportedly received nine million dollars from a hedge fund, Pravati Capital, in what The American Lawyer called possibly “the first public example of a litigation funder investing in a law firm’s portfolio of contingent fee cases.” The firm would bring cases against big targets, and Pravati would receive a cut of any damages. Critics have called forms of this practice “legal loan-sharking.”

Pierce secured a few high-profile clients, including Rudolph Giuliani and Tulsi Gabbard, who sued Hillary Clinton for saying that the Russians were “grooming” Gabbard to run as a third-party Presidential candidate. But, by the spring of 2020, Pierce Bainbridge reportedly owed creditors more than sixty million dollars.

Last August, Pierce launched a charitable nonprofit, the #FightBack Foundation, whose mission involved raising money to fund lawsuits that would “take our country back.” A Trump supporter, he was hostile toward liberals and often expressed his views crudely. One Saturday, during an argument with his ex-wife, he unleashed a stream of increasingly threatening texts, including “Go watch an AOC rally. Fucking libtard”; “I will fuck u and ur kind up”; and “People like u hate the USA. Guess what bitch, we ain’t goin anywhere.” Not for the first time, she obtained a restraining order against him.

Rosalind S. Helderman reports Arizona’s Maricopa County will replace voting equipment, fearful that GOP-backed election review has compromised security:

The process being used to recount ballots and examine voting machines — conducted on the floor of a former basketball arena in Phoenix and live-streamed exclusively using cameras operated by the pro-Trump One America News — has been widely panned by election experts as sloppy, insecure and opaque.

Among the most vocal critics has been the Republican-led leadership of Maricopa County. In May, all seven of the county’s elected officials — including five Republicans — joined in a scathing letter to the state Senate denouncing the audit as a sham.

“Our state has become a laughingstock,” they wrote. “Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.”

Noting the tactics used by organizers of the review, such as hunting for bamboo in ballot paper, they added, “Your ‘audit,’ which you once said was intended to increase voters’ confidence in our electoral process, has devolved into a circus.”

Fish and poultry try a new sustainable diet of larvae and insects:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see scattered showers and thunderstorms with a high of 77. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 18m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 82.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Updated: Downtown Whitewater’s Board meets at 4 PM, Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School Board in closed session at 6 PM and open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1832, General Henry Atkinson and the Second Army begin the trip into the Wisconsin wilderness in a major effort against Black Hawk.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Cameron Easley writes U.S. Conservatives Are Uniquely Inclined Toward Right-Wing Authoritarianism Compared to Western Peers (‘Global Morning Consult data reveals a distinctive authoritarian bent in the American right’):

• A scale measuring propensity toward right-wing authoritarian tendencies found right-leaning Americans scored higher than their counterparts in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
• 26% of the U.S. population qualified as highly right-wing authoritarian, Morning Consult research found, twice the share of the No. 2 countries, Canada and Australia.
• The beliefs that voter fraud decided the 2020 election, that Capitol rioters were doing more to protect than undermine the government and that masks and vaccines are not pivotal to stopping COVID-19 were similarly prevalent among right-leaning Americans and those that scored high for right-wing authoritarianism.

The Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol gave the country a striking wake-up call to the alarming rise in undemocratic behavior on the right side of the political aisle, and new global Morning Consult research underscores the prevalence of authoritarian attitudes among U.S. conservatives.

The research, which used longtime authoritarian researcher Bob Altemeyer’s right-wing authoritarianism test and scale and builds on recent work he conducted with the Monmouth University Polling Institute, found that U.S. conservatives have stronger right-wing authoritarian tendencies than their right-of-center counterparts in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Altemeyer defines authoritarianism as the desire to submit to some authority, aggression that is directed against whomever the authority says should be targeted and a desire to have everybody follow the norms and social conventions that the authority says should be followed. Those characteristics were all on display in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, culminating earlier this year in the attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.

The findings come from Morning Consult polling conducted from late April into early May in seven foreign countries, which in addition to the aforementioned trio included France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Responses were gathered among 1,000 adults in each of the seven countries, and were compared with a domestic poll of 1,001 U.S. adults conducted concurrently. (See more about how we conducted the study and produced our findings here.)

 Jennifer Rubin writes Why So Many Republicans Talk About Nonsense:

Republicans have all but given up on the notion of governance. At the national level, they consume themselves with race-baiting (e.g., scaring Americans about immigration and critical race theory), assailing private companies (e.g., corporations that defend voting rights, social media platforms, book publishers) and perpetrating the most ludicrous and dangerous lie in memory — that the 2020 election was stolen.

….

In truth, a great many Republicans simply like to be “important people” with the perks of holding office. It seems the notion of finding other work causes them to break out in a cold sweat, so they adopt insane MAGA positions so as not to offend the mob they helped rile up. Certainly, there are true believers who believe Trumpian rubbish and take right-wing TV hosts’ conspiracies as gospel, but they are a distinct minority. Time and again, we hear from Republican dissenters that most of their colleagues do not really believe the MAGA party lies; what they believe in is the necessity of their own reelection.

 How The Olympics Became So Expensive For Host Cities: