Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 11.  Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 5:21 PM, for 10h 24m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1861, Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional president of the Confederate States of America.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mary Spicuzza, Madeline Heim, and Guy Boulton report Thousands of Wisconsin vaccine appointments have been canceled or delayed because of uncertainty over vaccine supply:

David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire report ‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants:

Dozens of heavily armed militiamen crowded into the Michigan Statehouse last April to protest a stay-at-home order by the Democratic governor to slow the pandemic. Chanting and stomping their feet, they halted legislative business, tried to force their way onto the floor and brandished rifles from the gallery over lawmakers below.

Initially, Republican leaders had some misgivings about their new allies. “The optics weren’t good. Next time tell them not to bring guns,” complained Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, according to one of the protest organizers. But Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican came around after the planners threatened to return with weapons and “militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn.”

“To his credit,” Jason Howland, the organizer, wrote in a social media post, Mr. Shirkey agreed to help the cause and “spoke at our next event.”

Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.

 Texas lawyer boldly declares: ‘I’m not a cat’:

“Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings,” Judge Roy Ferguson, presiding over the case, begins by telling Mr. Ponton in the video.

“Augggh,” an exasperated Mr. Ponton responds, as his kitten face looks forlornly at the corner of the screen, its eyes seeming to be full of terror, shame and sadness. “Can you hear me, Judge?” he asks, although the audio was never at issue.

H. Gibbs Bauer, another lawyer on the call, puts his glasses on and leans forward to better examine the wonder on his screen. He adjusts his tie, as if subconsciously aware of his supporting role, but keeps a straight face.

As does a stone-faced man in another box, identified as Jerry L. Phillips, seemingly unfazed by the cat.

Mr. Ponton continues.

“I don’t know how to remove it,” he said. “I’ve got my assistant here and she’s trying to.”

To get the hearing moving, he offers: “I’m prepared to go forward with it.”

Then, crucially, he clarifies: “I’m here live. I’m not a cat.”

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 7.  Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 5:19 PM, for 10h 21m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1950, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy made the first of many baseless claims to have a list of 205 names of known communists working for the State Department.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Isiah Holmes reports Evers pushes for $165 million recreational cannabis market:

Cannabis is in Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2021-23 biennial budget, with the governor pushing legalization and regulation of the plant. If approved, Wisconsin would begin taxing cannabis similar to alcohol, joining 15 other states, including all of its neighbors, in legalizing a recreational market.

“Legalizing and taxing marijuana in Wisconsin,” said Evers, “just like we do already with alcohol, ensures a controlled market and safe product are available for both recreational and medicinal users and can open the door for countless opportunities for us to reinvest in our communities and create a more equitable state.”

The governor added, “frankly, red and blue states across the country have moved forward with legalization and there is no reason Wisconsin should be left behind when we know it’s supported by a majority of Wisconsinites.”

This marks the Evers administration’s second attempt at putting cannabis in the budget. Republicans in the legislature shot down the proposal for the 2019-21 budget. Since then, some within the GOP have introduced their own proposals to legalize medicinal cannabis, or reduce existing fines for possession.

(Note well: I don’t smoke and seldom drink, but would not stop others. Regulate cannabis like wine.)

Michael M. Grynbaum reports Lawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against Disinformation:

In just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media.

Fox Business canceled its highest rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on Friday after its host was sued as part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit. On Tuesday, the pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax cut off a guest’s rant about rigged voting machines. Fox News, which seldom bows to critics, has run fact-checking segments to debunk its own anchors’ false claims about electoral fraud.

This is not the typical playbook for right-wing media, which prides itself on pugilism and delights in ignoring the liberals who have long complained about its content. But conservative outlets have rarely faced this level of direct assault on their economic lifeblood.

 Kari Paul writes Facebook bans misinformation about all vaccines after years of controversy:

Facebook has banned misinformation about all vaccines following years of harmful, unfounded health claims proliferating on its platform.

As part of its policy on Covid-19-related misinformation, Facebook will now remove posts with false claims about all vaccines, the company announced in a blogpost on Monday.

These new community guidelines apply to user-generated posts as well as paid advertisements, which were already banned from including such misinformation. Instagram users will face the same restrictions.

“We will begin enforcing this policy immediately, with a particular focus on Pages, groups and accounts that violate these rules,” said Guy Rosen, who oversees content decisions. “We’ll continue to expand our enforcement over the coming weeks.”

Groups on Facebook have been known to create echo chambers of misinformation and have fueled the rise of anti-vaccine communities and rhetoric. Under the new policy, groups where users repeatedly share banned content will be shut down.

Koala gets behind wheel of car after being rescued from Australian freeway:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 10.  Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 5:18 PM, for 10h 18m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 12.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Involvement & Cable TV Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4 PM.

 On this day in 1922, President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio set in the White House.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Daphne Chen and Jordyn Noennig report A 22-year-old student leader was shot and killed near 22nd St. and Wisconsin Avenue:

Milwaukee police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old Milwaukee man just before 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the 2200 block of West Wisconsin Avenue.

Police identified the victim as Purcell A. Pearson, a recent UW-Whitewater graduate and nephew of Milwaukee City Attorney Tearman Spencer.

According to a profile of Pearson written by the university in June, the 22-year-old psychology major planned to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology and eventually open up a mental health practice to serve low-income, diverse neighborhoods.

Pearson was also a leader in the Black Student Union, according to the profile, and helped create a campus police officer liaison position to represent concerns of Black students. He also served as chapter president of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Last year, Pearson won a UW systemwide competition focused on communicating research findings to the public. His competition entry focused on the overrepresentation of Black men as criminals in the news media.

Michael S. Schmidt reports Breaking With G.O.P., Top Conservative Lawyer Says Trump Can Stand Trial (‘Charles J. Cooper, a stalwart of the conservative legal establishment, said that Republicans were wrong to assert that it is unconstitutional for a former president to be tried for impeachable offenses’):

Mr. Cooper said they were misreading the Constitution.

“The provision cuts against their interpretation,” he wrote. He argued that because the Constitution allows the Senate to bar officials convicted of impeachable offenses from holding public office again in the future, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”

Mr. Cooper’s decision to take on the argument was particularly significant because of his standing in conservative legal circles. He was a close confidant and adviser to Senate Republicans, like Ted Cruz of Texas when he ran for president, and represented House Republicans — including the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California — in a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is also the lawyer for conservative stalwarts like John R. Bolton and Jeff Sessions, and over his career defended California’s same-sex marriage ban and had been a top outside lawyer for the National Rifle Association.

Paulina Villegas and Hannah Knowles report After Capitol riot, desperate families turn to groups that ‘deprogram’ extremists:

Parents for Peace, a 10-person operation of mostly volunteers,says calls to its national helpline have tripled since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with a growing number of younger people being groomed in white supremacist ideology. After supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the intervention groups have experienced a deluge of calls related to the attack as well as to conspiracy theories and QAnon.

The range of extremist ideas they encounter also has widened in the past year, driven by the 2020 election and the pandemic.

With the federal government sounding some of its strongest alarms yet about the threat of domestic extremism,these groups say they offer a way forward. Often staffed in part by the formerly radicalized, they are on the front lines of the fight against right-wing extremism, a growing threat that is in the spotlight but which experts argue has long been neglected.

London’s thinnest house for sale for over a million euros:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 2.  Sunrise is 7:00 AM and sunset 5:17 PM, for 10h 16m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 19.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1904, a the Great Baltimore Fire starts: it destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Toluse Olorunnipa and Michelle Ye Hee Lee report Trump’s lie that the election was stolen has cost $519 million (and counting) as taxpayers fund enhanced security, legal fees, property repairs and more:

President Donald Trump’s onslaught of falsehoods about the November election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot — and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.

The total so far: $519 million.

The costs have mounted daily as government agencies at all levels have been forced to devote public funds to respond to actions taken by Trump and his supporters, according to a Washington Post review of local, state and federal spending records, as well as interviews with government officials. The expenditures include legal fees prompted by dozens of fruitless lawsuits, enhanced security in response to death threats against poll workers, and costly repairs needed after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. That attack triggered the expensive massing of thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington amid fears of additional extremist violence.

Although more than $480 million of the total is attributable to the military’s estimated expenses for the troop deployment through mid-March, the financial impact of the president’s refusal to concede the election is probably much higher than what has been documented thus far, and the true costs may never be known.

(Trumpism has been a pestilence on America.)

Beth Reinhard, Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, and Josh Dawsey report The cottage industry behind Trump’s pardons: How the rich and well-connected got ahead at the expense of others:

A federal judge in South Dakota was blunt last summer when she sentenced Paul Erickson, a seasoned Republican operative who had pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering.

“What comes through is that you’re a thief, and you’ve betrayed your friends, your family, pretty much everyone you know,” District Judge Karen E. Schreier told Erickson in July, before sentencing him to seven years in prison for scamming dozens of people out of $5.3 million.

But Erickson, who had advised GOP presidential campaigns and a noted conservative organization, had a way out.

He had the support of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, a member of President Donald Trump’s inner orbit. And, unrelated to his conviction, he had been caught up in the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, an inquiry much reviled by Trump.

For years, [Susan] Holden said, Erickson lied to her on a near-daily basis about the project, guaranteeing that she would not lose money. He even traveled to North Dakota to meet her and her 80-year-old mother, showing off a parcel of land he claimed had been purchased with her money.

In fact, Erickson admitted in court that he never bought any land for the project. His pardon means he no longer has to pay her or his other victims restitution.

“I was crushed,” Holden said. “All I could think of was, ‘Goddamnit, Trump, you didn’t even look into the case. Kellyanne walked into your office and said, ‘This poor guy, Russia witch hunt’ — and you did it.’?”

Find Mars, Gemini and the Winter Circle in February 2021 skywatching:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of ten.  Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:15 PM, for 10h 13m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 29.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1778, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic

Recommended for reading in full — 

Dan Alexander reports Trump Shifted Campaign-Donor Money Into His Private Business After Losing The Election:

^Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, which never received a cent from the former president, moved an estimated $2.8 million of donor money into the Trump Organization—including at least $81,000 since Trump lost the election.

In addition, one of the campaign’s joint-fundraising committees, which collects money in partnership with the Republican Party, shifted about $4.3 million of donor money into Trump’s business from January 20, 2017, to December 31, 2020—at least $331,000 of which came after the election.

The money covered the cost of rent, airfare, lodging and other expenses. All the payments are laid out in filings the campaign submitted to the Federal Election Commission. Representatives for the Trump Organization, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Two days after the election, on November 5, the joint-fundraising committee paid $11,000 to Trump’s hotel empire. A week later—after the Associated Press, Fox News and other major media outlets had already called the race for Joe Biden—the same committee put another $294,000 into Trump’s hotel business to rent space, order catering and pay for lodging.

(The Trump campaign has been a funnel from low-income donors to Trump’s under-performing properties.)

 Ryan Mac and Rosie Gray report Donald Trump’s Business Sought A Stake In Parler Before He Would Join:

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trump’s campaign and Parler about Trump’s potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company. It is unclear as to what extent the former president was involved with the discussions.

(The Trump Organization wanted a stake in a racist social media platform. Of course they did.)

Gabrielle Canon reports Fox News cancels Lou Dobbs Tonight:

News of the cancellation came one day after Dobbs, 75, was named as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election technology company and voting machine maker, which accuses Dobbs and other Fox News anchors of promoting unfounded claims that Smartmatic was involved in a scheme to hand the presidency to Joe Biden.

Citing the fabricated reporting, Smartmatic sued to the tune of $2.7bn. The 285-page lawsuit, filed in New York state supreme court, claims the network launched a “disinformation campaign” against the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county. Trump’s former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell who appeared as guests on the network, were also named in the defamation suit.

(Dobbs had the highest-rated program on Fox Business. Ratings aren’t what did him in.)

Yellowstone Bison Are Built for Winter Survival:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of eighteen.  Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 5:14 PM, for 10h 11m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 40.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt report Biden Signals Break With Trump Foreign Policy in a Wide-Ranging State Dept. Speech:

President Biden on Thursday ordered an end to arms sales and other support to Saudi Arabia for a war in Yemen that he called a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe” and declared that the United States would no longer be “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions.”

The announcement was the clearest signal Mr. Biden has given of his intention to reverse the way President Donald J. Trump dealt with two of the hardest issues in American foreign policy.

Mr. Trump regularly rejected calls to rein in the Saudis for the indiscriminate bombing they carried out in their intervention in the civil war in Yemen as well as for the killing of a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, on the grounds that American sales of arms to Riyadh “creates hundreds of thousands of jobs” in the United States. And he repeatedly dismissed evidence of interference by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in American elections and Russia’s role in a highly sophisticated hacking of the United States government.

Saudi leaders knew that the move was coming. Mr. Biden had promised to stop selling arms to them during the presidential campaign, and it follows the new administration’s announcement last month that it was pausing the sale of $478 million in precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, a transfer the State Department approved in December over strong objections in Congress. The administration has also announced a review of major American arms sales to the United Arab Emirates.

Tanvi Misra reports Revealed: US citizen newborns sent to Mexico under Trump-era border ban:

At least 11 migrant women were dropped off in Mexican border towns without birth certificates for their days-old US citizen newborns since March of last year, an investigation by the Fuller Project and the Guardian has found.

Based on multiple conversations with lawyers who work with asylum seekers at the border and a review of hospital records and legal documents, multiple US citizen newborns were removed to Mexico after their mothers were subject to a Trump-era border ban that the Biden-Harris administration has been slow to rescind.

Advocates suspect the actual number of such cases could be higher because the vast majority of these fast-track “expulsions”, as the administration calls them, have occurred away from the public eye and without the involvement of lawyers.

 Inae Oh writes In Voting to Back Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GOP Goes Full Q:

Only eleven Republicans votedfor the Democrats’ move to oust Greene from her committees. It was mostly a powerful show of support from some of the GOP’s top officials for someone supposedly ripping their party apart. Despite all the hand-wringing over an existential crisis within the GOP, their votes to protect Greene actually appeared quite a simple task. Still, the resolution passed and Greene was stripped of committee assignments.

Exposing Government Botnets That Spread Propaganda: