Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:29 PM, for 15h 11m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 71% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1989, the Chinese communist government commits the Tiananmen Square massacre:

Declassified files
In British government files declassified and made public in December 2017, it was revealed that Alan Ewen Donald, who served as the UK’s ambassador to China from 1988 to 1991, had reported in 1989 that a member of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China had estimated the civilian death toll at 10,000.[2][160][161]

Other estimates
Other estimates of the death toll have been higher than the figures announced by the government. Nicholas D. Kristof, then Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, wrote on June 21 that “it seems plausible that about a dozen soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians.”[4] US ambassador James Lilley said that, based on visits to hospitals around Beijing, a minimum of several hundred had been killed.[162] In a 1990 article addressing the question, Time magazine said that the Chinese Red Cross had given a figure of 2,600 deaths on the morning of June 4, though later this figure was retracted.[163] A declassified US National Security Agency cable filed on the same day estimated 180–500 deaths up to the morning of June 4.[164] Amnesty International’s estimates puts the number of deaths at between several hundred and close to 1,000,[163][165] while a Western diplomat who compiled estimates put the number at 300 to 1,000.[4]

Recommended for reading in full —

Trump declares himself a king:

As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2018

(Those ‘numerous scholars’ are merely Trump’s monarchical ambitions.)

Tamar Auber reports Rudy Giuliani: Even if He ‘Shot James Comey’ Trump Still Couldn’t Be Indicted:

President Donald Trump‘s personal lawyer made the bold claim that even if the president committed murder he still could not be indicted for his crime.

The comment was made in an interview to the Huffington Post on Sunday in which Giuliani argued that Trump’s constitutional powers were so broad he could do anything he wanted and still evade an indictment.

“In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Giuliani told HuffPost.“I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”

…

Former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen, however, told HuffPothat despite Trump’s campaign brags and his lawyer’s misguided claims, “A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?…It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.”

He added, “The foundation of America is that no person is above the law.”

Anticipating Trump’s undemocratic ambitions, Harry Littman yesterday wrote President Trump Thinks He Is a King:

The president believes he is above the law. That’s the takeaway from the confidential 20-page memo sent by President Trump’s lawyers to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, published over the weekend by The Times. And it’s the same sentiment that Rudy Giuliani expressed on Sunday when he suggested that Mr. Trump has the power to pardon himself.

The central claim of the legal memorandum is that it is impossible for the president to illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling. That’s because, as president, Mr. Trump has the constitutional power to terminate the inquiry or pardon his way out of it. Therefore — and this is the key and indefensible point — he cannot obstruct justice by exercising this authority “no matter his motivation.”

This understanding of presidential power is radical and absolutist. It is also unsound and almost certain to be sharply rejected should it ever be proffered in court.

Even granting the contention that Mr. Trump could simply terminate the investigation, it is a non sequitur to argue, as the president’s lawyers do, that as a consequence he cannot obstruct it. Imagine, for example, that the worst version of facts proves true: that Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey, tried to fire Mr. Mueller, constructed a false account of the June 2016 Russia meeting, and tried to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal decision that was driven by Justice Department policy, all to protect his own skin and his family’s fortune.

If this were the case, the elements of obstruction — in brief, the interference or attempted interference with an official proceeding, such as a grand jury investigation — would be plainly met. Most important, the president would have acted with corrupt intent as it is well understood under the law.

Jennifer Rubin observes Word salads, contradictions and hints of authoritarian delusion:

A pack of constitutional experts savaged the argument that Trump could never be prosecuted for obstruction. Daniel Hemel writes:

The Declaration of Independence charged King George III with “obstruct[ing] the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to the laws for establishing judiciary powers.” That alone is evidence that the founding generation did not believe that heads of state were immune from obstruction charges. And while Article II instructs the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” that does not give him carte blanche to wield his law enforcement powers any way he chooses.

Trump is not the first sitting president to face accusations of obstruction of justice. During the Watergate scandal, the first article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee charged Richard Nixon with obstructing justice by endeavoring to influence an FBI investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. That article passed the committee by a 27-11 vote, with six Republicans joining all the committee’s Democrats in the majority. . . . a president commits criminal obstruction only when he abuses his power over law enforcement for personal, pecuniary, or purely partisan ends. But Dowd’s claim that the obstruction statutes never apply to the president is without merit.

Laurence Tribe likewise tweeted: “Trump’s lawyers’ sweepingly Nixonian claim of unbounded presidential power is inconsistent with the core American principle that no-one is above the law. It would mean that even pardoning someone in return for a bribe is just fine. That’s simply wrong.”

And last December, Lawfare blog’s Ben Wittes explained:

That is, as long as the President is operating plausibly within the boundaries of the Take Care Clause, which requires that he “Take Care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and within the parameters of his oath to “faithfully execute” the duties of President, he probably cannot be said to act with the requisite criminal intent to violate the obstruction statutes with an otherwise lawful act of managing the Executive Branch. But I do think it’s at least theoretically possible for the President to issue orders to the Executive Branch that are so outside of the bounds of those clauses that a reasonable jury could lawfully regard him as acting with the requisite mens rea for conviction under one or more of the statutes.

One of those instances would be falsifying explanations for a meeting involving his son and son-in-law, a meeting that concerned cooperation between Russian operatives and the president’s campaign.

Here are Seven Stories That’ll Leave You Craving Japanese Food:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 15h 10m 53s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the Battle of Cold Harbor continues:

From May 31-June 12, 1864, more than 160,000 men clashed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, during the Wilderness Campaign. The 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part. June 3 saw some of the worst fighting. When the 36th Wisconsin Infantry moved to the front, its colonel, Frank Haskell of Madison, was shot dead while commanding his troops to take cover. Co.G of the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters, from Wisconsin, was placed in the front of the battle on this day as well.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Heather Long and Steven Mufson report Trump thinks he’s saving trade. The rest of the world thinks he’s blowing it up:

President Trump appears prepared to unravel 70 years of pain­staking effort that the United States has led to build an inter­national system of trade based on mutually accepted rules and principles.

Ever since an agreement on trade emerged in 1947 from the ashes of World War II, presidents of both parties have pushed this system as a way to strengthen alliances and promote the expansion of democracy and prosperity in Europe and Asia.

But with Trump’s decision last week to enact aluminum and steel tariffs against U.S. allies in Europe and North America, he is subverting previously agreed-­upon trade pacts. The result is a brewing trade war with Canada, Mexico and Europe, which are expressing shock and bitter frustration while enacting tariffs of their own on a bevy of American products.

Sam Bidle reports Here’s the Email Russian Hackers Used to Try to Break Into State Voting Systems:

JUST DAYS BEFORE the 2016 presidential election, hackers identified by the National Security Agency as working for Russia attempted to breach American voting systems. Among their specific targets were the computers of state voting officials, which they had hoped to compromise with malware-laden emails, according to an intelligence report published previously by The Intercept.

Now we know what those emails looked like.

An image of the malicious email, provided to The Intercept in response to a public records request in North Carolina, reveals precisely how hackers, who the NSA believed were working for Russian military intelligence, impersonated a Florida-based e-voting vendor and attempted to trick its customers into opening malware-packed Microsoft Word files.

The screenshot, shown below, confirms NSA reporting that the email purported to originate from the vendor, Tallahassee-based VR Systems, but was sent from a Gmail account, which could have easily tricked less scrupulous users. “Emails from VR Systems will never come from an  ‘@gmail.com’ email address” the company warned in a November 1, 2016 security alert, which included the reproduction of the GRU email.

The specific Gmail address shown in the message, vrelections@gmail.com, matches an address cited in the NSA report as having been created by Russian government hackers, although in the NSA report the address was rendered with a period, as “vr.elections@gmail.com.” The timing of VR Systems’ security alert is also in line with the NSA’s reporting, which indicated that the email attack occurred on either October 31 or November 1 of 2016. The original classified NSA document contained intelligence assessments, but omitted any raw signals intelligence used to form those assessments.

North Korea, caught in a deception (yet again):

BREAKING: What first appeared to be a gesture indicating North Korea might be willing to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, appears to have been little more than a propaganda effort for the world’s cameras, @barbarastarrcnn reports https://t.co/1sLegVPr4H pic.twitter.com/cQ6jq8cA7X

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 1, 2018

Geoffrey A. Fowler writes Hands off my data! 15 default privacy settings you should change right now:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-three.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 15h 09m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1966, NASA’s Surveyor 1 lands on the moon:

The Surveyor series of space probes was designed to carry out the first soft landings on the Moon by any American spacecraft. No instrumentation was carried specifically for scientific experiments by Surveyor 1, but considerable scientific data were collected by its television camera and then returned to Earth via the Deep Space Network from 1966 to 1967. These spacecraft carried two television cameras — one for its approach, which was not used in this case, and one for taking still pictures of the lunar surface. Over 100 engineering sensors were on board each Surveyor. Their television systems transmitted pictures of the spacecraft footpad and surrounding lunar terrain and surface materials. These spacecraft also acquired data on the radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, the load-bearing strength of the lunar surface, and the temperatures for use in the analysis of the lunar surface temperatures. (Later Surveyor space probes, beginning with Surveyor 3, carried scientific instruments to measure the composition and mechanical properties of the lunar “soil”.)

Recommended for reading in full —

Steven Mufson and David J. Lynch report Breaking from GOP orthodoxy, Trump increasingly deciding winners and losers in the economy:

President Trump is increasingly intervening in the economy, making decisions about corporate winners and losers in ways that Republicans for decades have insisted should be left to free markets — not the government.

The shift amounts to a major change in the GOP’s approach to the management of the economy, and it promises to shape the success of everything from American agriculture and manufacturing to the companies that produce the nation’s electricity.

On Friday, citing national security, Trump ordered the Energy Department tocompel power-grid operators to buy from ailing coal and nuclear plants that otherwise would be forced to shut down because of competition from cheaper sources.

The order came one day after the president imposed historic metals tariffs on some of the country’s strongest allies and trading partners. Now the Commerce Department is further picking winners and losers as it weighs thousands of requests from companies for waivers from the import taxes.

“It replaces the invisible hand with the government hand,” said Mary Lovely, a Syracuse University economist. “You’re replacing the market with government fiat.”

(The point about intervention is correct, but the headline is misleading.  The GOP hasn’t routinely practiced sound free-market economics in years, and truly never sufficiently.  In Wisconsin, our state has seen eight years of WISGOP intervention in the marketplace on behalf of insiders and cronies, and even in a small town like Whitewater, there have been years of futile meddling in the local economy on behalf of outside business interests, to no value for overall household income in the community.  State & crony capitalism is sham capitalism, with many of the attributes of a long con, promising for many but delivering only for a few.  See Two Truths of Whitewater’s Economy.  Long before Trump, state and local flacks paved the way with this disordered approach.)

Steve Eder, Hiroko Tabuchi and Eric Lipton report A Courtside View of Scott Pruitt’s Cozy Ties With a Billionaire Coal Baron:

LEXINGTON, Ky. — It was one of the biggest games of the University of Kentucky basketball season, and Scott Pruitt had scored two of the best seats in the arena: a few feet from the action, in a section reserved for season-ticket holders who had donated at least $1 million to the university.

The special access for Mr. Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also included watching from the players’ entrance as the team streamed onto the court, and posing for a photo with a star player in the locker room area.

But there was more to the game last December than a superfan experience for Mr. Pruitt and his son, who joined him. They sat in seats belonging to Joseph W. Craft III, a billionaire coal executive who has engaged in an aggressive campaign to reverse the Obama administration’s environmental crackdown on the coal industry. Mr. Craft and his wife donated more than $2 million to support President Trump’s candidacy and inauguration.

Mitra Ebadolahi writes CBP Fails to Discredit Our Report on Abuse of Immigrant Kids:

Last week, the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project and University of Chicago Law’s International Human Rights Clinic published a reportdetailing child abuse by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The report, based on a portion of the more than 30,000 pages of government records we obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, identifies numerous cases of serious alleged misconduct by CBP officials between 2009 and 2014, focusing on the agency’s verbal, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of migrant children.

CBP responded by calling our report “unfounded.” Here, we address the false statements CBP made in its response.

“CBP . . . is greatly disappointed that [the report] doesn’t acknowledge that the [Office of Inspector General] conducted an investigation in 2014 that determined that prior claims made by the ACLU were completely unfounded.  The OIG conducted 57 unannounced visits to 41 different CBP facilities and “did not observe misconduct or inappropriate conduct by DHS employees during our unannounced visits.”  The full report is available here.”

Certain key facts are omitted here.

First, OIG conducted unannounced CBP site visits only afterimmigrants’ rights groups filed a complaint in June 2014 detailing 116 cases of child abuse or neglect. Second, the visits occurred in July and August 2014 — months after these abuses had been reported and after those children referenced in the complaint had been released. Third, in the fall of 2014, OIG announced that it would no longer conduct site inspections, without explaining why.

Perhaps most importantly, in June 2015 — almost a year after the visits touted in CBP’s response — a coalition of immigrants’ rights advocates filed a class action lawsuit challenging CBP detention conditions. The litigation, which continues today, documents former CBP detainees’ horrific experiences, including through photos showing just how bleak these facilities are. CBP fought to keep all of this information secret — and was sanctioned by a federal judge for willfully destroying video evidence about conditions in its detention. [Additional refutation of the CBP’s reply, and support for the ACLU’s contentions, follows in the full article.  Note: I am a member of the ACLU.]

Tim Johnson reports New internet accounts are Russian ops designed to sway U.S. voters, experts say:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 15h 08m 35s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the Battle of Cold Harbor begins its second day, of thirteen in full:

From May 31-June 12, 1864, more than 160,000 men clashed at Cold Harbor, Virginia, during the Wilderness Campaign. The 2nd, 5th, 6th, 7th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part. On June 1, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry arrived after a long march, barefoot and exhausted. Nevertheless, they charged enemy lines and captured a number of prisoners. By the afternoon, the 36th Wisconsin Infantry lost 140 of  the 142 men who tried to take an enemy position.

Recommended for reading in full —

General Michael Hayden, Rob Reiner, Clint Watts, and John Sipher discuss the dangers and impact of Russian propaganda and how the White House seems to be using the same tactics:

The Committee to investigate Russia writes Trump Lies Again About Comey Firing:

resident Trump tweeted Thursday that the Russia investigation had nothing to do with why he fired FBI Director James Comey even though the president told the Russians and Lester Holt the exact opposite in the days following Comey’s dismissal on May 9, 2017.

Today:

CNN:

… May 10 — Trump meets with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. In that Oval Office huddle, Trump tells the two Russians this, according to The New York Times: “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

May 11, 2017: (Russia explanation at 1:01)

In addition, Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said on television on May 2, 2018 that the president fired Comey because the FBI Director would not say the president was not a target of the Russia investigation.

Donald Trump’s Russia claim contradicts, um, Donald Trump’s Russia claim (CNN)

Heather Long writes Trump has officially put more tariffs on U.S. allies than on China:

President Trump campaigned on going hard after China for ripping off the United States on trade. Yet a year and a half into his presidency, Trump has put more tariffs on longtime U.S. allies than he has on China, his supposed “bad guy” on trade. The Trump administration announced new tariffs Thursday on the European Union, Canada and Mexico.

Almost all of the reaction has been negative. Many are calling it a political and economic mistake.

America’s allies are stunned, stocks slid on Wall Street as trade-war fears returned, and economists are warning that Americans will soon face higher prices on a wide variety of products. A slew of Republican lawmakers immediately trashed the move as bad for the economy and foreign relations.

“Europe, Canada & Mexico aren’t China. You don’t treat allies the same way you treat opponents. Blanket protectionism is a big part of why we had a Great Depression. ‘Make America Great Again’ shouldn’t mean ‘Make America 1929 Again.’ ” tweeted Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), joining an opposition that included many Republican officials and business groups.

The New York Times editorial board observes America Declares War on Its Friends:

If the president’s intent is to establish a reputation as a champion of industry and workers, he is making a hash of it. His decision to impose tariffs on American allies will only weaken American leadership while doing nothing to address the underlying problems in the steel and aluminum industries.

Why is Humpty Dumpty Always Depicted as an Egg?

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with scattered showers and a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 15h 07m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1895, John Harvey Kellogg files a patent application:

A patent for “Flaked Cereals and Process of Preparing Same” was filed on May 31, 1895, and issued on April 14, 1896 to John Harvey Kellogg as Patent No. 558,393. Significantly, the patent applied to a variety of types of grains, not just to wheat. John Harvey Kellogg was the only person named on the patent.[56] Will later insisted that he, not Ella, had worked with John, and repeatedly asserted that he should have received more credit than he was given for the discovery of the flaked cereal.[55]

During their first year of production, the Kelloggs sold tens of thousands of pounds of flaked cereal, marketing it as “Granose”. They continued to experiment using rice and corn as well as wheat, and in 1898 released the first batch of Sanitas Toasted Corn Flakes. A modified version with a longer shelf life was released in 1902.[4] By that time, both “Granose Biscuits” and “Granose Flakes” were available.[57]

Recommended for reading in full —

Peter Certo observes Actually, Trump Loves Chinese Goods — So Long as they Make Him Richer (“Trump rallied to save a major Chinese firm right in the middle of a trade war of his own making. Why?”):

Just 72 hours prior to Trump’s reversal on ZTE, The Huffington Post reports, the Chinese government—which, recall, also owns entities controlling at least a third of ZTE—made a $500 million loan to some Trump-branded properties in Indonesia. And Chinese banks promised another $500 million to the same. The Trump Organization has acknowledged the deal but refused to comment, while a White House spokesman asked about the deal said simply, “I’ll have to refer you to the Trump Organization.”

It also probably didn’t hurt that during the very same week, China approved seven new trademarks for Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter and White House advisor.

Viewed in this light, Trump’s ZTE deal feels like far less of a reversal. It’s perfectly consistent for a president who’s praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines — whose drug war has killed over 20,000 people, yet whose capital also hosts an upcoming Trump Tower (the developer, in turn, is Duterte’s special envoy to Trump). Or for a president with extensive potential conflicts in the United Arab Emirates, which happens to be enjoying U.S. support as it conducts (with Saudi Arabia) a devastating U.S.-backed war in nearby Yemen.

Or, for that matter, a president who signed a tax plan seemingly tailor-made to save himself billions of dollars.

(There’s not a foreign corporation or oligarch on the planet that doesn’t know Trump can be bought.)

Charles Davis asks What Happened to Jill Stein’s Recount Millions? (“The Green Party candidate last filed a form with the FEC since September 2017. And it looks likely that there won’t be a vote on how to use the unspent recount funds.):

Shortly after the 2016 election, Jill Stein raised more than $7 million from shell-shocked liberals eager to pursue a swing-state recount. Nearly two years later, the U.S. Green Party’s last candidate for president is still spending that money.

Ongoing litigation, travel costs, and staff salaries are also likely to eat up whatever is left, meaning those who donated to Stein are unlikely to receive a once-promised chance to vote on how the post-recount money would be spent. Nor have donors been given much of a window into how Stein is actually spending their donations.

Nathan Schneider suggests How to survive Trump: End the cult of the presidency:

In retrospect, the U.S. president seems like a particularly strong executive, compared with other democratic systems established since then, but at the time the prevailing urge was to minimize the office. In the spring of 1789, Congress debated what title should be used to address the first president, George Washington. Legislators considered such familiar options as “His Majesty” and “Highness.” The eventual choice, “Mr. President,” was again an affront to the norms of the period and to any urge the chief executive might harbor for self-aggrandizement.

A recent cover story in The Atlantic by John Dickerson chronicles our slippage. James Polk’s wife, Sarah, had to direct the Marine Band to play “Hail to the Chief” when he entered a room so that guests would know who the president was. Presidents as recent as Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were not expected to rush to the site of every natural disaster for photo-ops with the victims. But all along, presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt developed techniques for cultivating personal followings through the mass media of their time. The Cold War, and particularly the nuclear codes, rendered the U.S. president the “Leader of the Free World” in the eyes of some; the mandate to fight terrorism means micromanaging an endless war on every front. Meanwhile, the 24-hour cable news industry discovered that obsessive monitoring of the president serves as a cheap, convenient, news-like substitute for actual reporting.

Conservative Catholic Ross Douthat describes The Baptist Apocalypse:

Among Trump-supporting religious believers, the long odds he overcame to win the presidency are often interpreted as a providential sign: Only God could have put Donald Trump in the White House, which means he must be there for some high and holy purpose.

The trouble with this theory is that it’s way too simplistic about what kind of surprises an interventionist deity might have in mind. Such a God might, for instance, offer political success as a temptation rather than a reward — or use an unexpected presidency not to save Americans but to chastise them.

We’re a long way from any final judgment on God’s purposes in the Trump era. But so far the Trump presidency has clearly been a kind of apocalypse — not (yet) in the “world-historical calamity” sense of the word, but in the original Greek meaning: an unveiling, an uncovering, an exposure of truths that had heretofore been hidden.

(Douthat observes that this “unveiling has not been confined, as Trump’s providentialist supporters might like to imagine, to institutions and individuals that have arrayed themselves against him. It has come as well for figures whose style anticipated him (Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, that whole ménage) and for figures who have deliberately attached themselves to his populist revolt.”)

Tech Insider contends that these are the Best Dog Breeds For Apartment Living:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with occasional thundershowers and a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 15h 06m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1911, the first Indianapolis 500 takes place:

The first “500” was held at the Speedway on Decoration Day (as Memorial Day was known from its inception in 1868 to 1967 when Federal Law made Memorial Day the official name), May 30, 1911,[9] run to a 600 cu in (9,800 cc) maximum engine size formula.[6] It saw a field of 40 starters,[6] with Harroun piloting a Marmon Model 32-based Wasp racer — outfitted with his invention, the rear view mirror.[10] Harroun (with relief from Cyrus Patschke)[11] was declared the winner, although Ralph Mulford protested the official result. 80,000 spectators were in attendance, and an annual tradition had been established. Many considered Harroun to be a hazard during the race, as he was the only driver in the race driving without a riding mechanic, who checked the oil pressure and let the driver know when traffic was coming.[12]

Recommended for reading in full —

Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star describes Trump’s serial lying:

Great point by @ddale8 on today’s show: “Incessant dishonesty” is “a central feature of his presidency,” yet it’s too often treated as “a side show rather than THE show, rather than the central story.” https://t.co/HyPITIYCrJ

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 27, 2018

(See also Dale’s running total of Trump’s lies – now numbering over 1,600 – since becoming president.)

 The Washington Post editorial board asks Does Maria count as a ‘real catastrophe’ now, Mr. President?:

A NEW report by independent public-health researchers estimates that at least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Consider that number. Contrast it with those who died from Katrina (almost 2,000) and those killed in the 9/11 attacks (almost 3,000). Remember President Trump’s visit to the stricken island in the storm’s aftermath, tossing out paper towelsand telling Puerto Rican officials they should be “very proud” that hundreds didn’t die from Maria as in a “real catastrophe like Katrina.”

Think how many lives might have been saved if Puerto Rico’s devastation had been handled with the seriousness and urgency it deserved. Ask yourself whether Mr. Trump would have thought — or acted — differently if the American citizens who were affected had lived not in Puerto Rico but in Texas or Tennessee.

A study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine by scientists from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other institutions takes aim at the official government count of 64 dead. It suggests the actual number of deaths — many caused by interruption and delays in medical care — is more than 70 times higher than that reported by Puerto Rico officials. Researchers acknowledged their estimate, based on calculations from surveys of randomly chosen households, is imprecise and further study is needed. But the report, along with earlier reporting and analysis by the New York Times, paints a devastating picture of how people, particularly the elderly and infirm, were imperiled by long-standing losses of electricity, water and communications.

Philip Bump and Mark Berman report Federal prosecutors poised to get more than 1 million files seized from Michael Cohen’s phones:

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors investigating President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen are poised to receive on Wednesday 1 million files from three of his cellphones seized last month, according to a filing submitted to the court Tuesday night by special master Barbara Jones.

In her update to the court, Jones said investigators from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York have already been given access to nearly 300,000 pieces of potential evidence seized from Cohen’s office and residences in an April raid.

Jones was appointed by U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood late last month to review the material after attorneys for Cohen and President Trump said many seized documents and communications could be protected by attorney-client privilege.

David Frum describes The Measure of Trump’s Devotion (“On Memorial Day, as the nation turned to the president to lead its shared rituals of unity and common purpose, he revealed himself unequal to the office he holds”):

Donald Trump cares enormously about national symbols—the flag, the anthem—when he can use them to belittle, humiliate, and exclude.

Trump has called for revoking the citizenship of those who burn the flag. He has suggested that NFL players who do not rise for the Star-Spangled Banner should be deported. He scored one of the greatest victories of his presidency when the National Football League submitted to his demand to punish players who did not stand at attention for the anthem. Vice President Pence ran the victory lap for Trump on this one.

But when it comes time to lead the nation in its shared rituals of unity and common purpose, Donald Trump cannot do it. He is, at most, president of slightly more than half of white America, and often not even that.

Breathe Deep: How the Antarctic Sea Spider Gets Oxygen (“Antarctic sea spiders have no lungs or gills, so how do they get oxygen into their bodies? The answer is in their pores”):

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 15h 04m 40s of daytime.  The moon is full today.

On this day in 1953, Tensing Norgay of Nepal and Edmund Hillary of New Zealand become the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

Recommended for reading in full —

McKay Coppins profiles Trump’s Right-Hand Troll (“Stephen Miller once tormented liberals at Duke. Now the president’s speechwriter and immigration enforcer is deploying the art of provocation from the White House”):

Perched on a high-backed chair, Miller looks as if he’s posing for a cologne ad in a glossy magazine—his slender frame wrapped in an elegantly tailored suit, his arm draped over the backrest, his legs crossed at the knee just so. As President Donald Trump’s top speechwriter and senior policy adviser, the 32-year-old aide has cultivated a severe public image, his narrow features forming a kind of perma-glower when he’s on television. But in person there are glimpses of something else—not charm, exactly, but a charisma-like substance. He can be funny and self-aware one moment, zealous and hostile the next. In conversation, he slides from authentic insight into impish goading and back again. It’s a compelling performance to watch—but after an hour and a half in his office, I realize I’m still straining to locate where the trolling ends and true belief begins.

In the campy TV drama that is Donald Trump’s Washington, Miller has carved out an enigmatic role. He lurks in the background for weeks at a time, only to emerge with crucial cameos in the most explosive episodes. The one where Trump signed a havoc-wreaking travel ban during his first week in office, unleashing global chaos and mass protests? Miller helped draft the executive order. The one where the federal government shut down over a high-stakes immigration standoff on Capitol Hill? Miller was accused of derailing the negotiations. (“As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we’re going nowhere,” Senator Lindsey Graham grumbled.) To watch him in his most memorable scenes—theatrically hurling accusations of “cosmopolitan bias” at a reporter; getting his mic cut in the middle of a belligerent Sunday-show appearance—is to be left mesmerized, wondering, Is this guy serious?

Miller represents a rising generation of conservatives for whom “melting the snowflakes” and “triggering the libs” are first principles.

(Miller’s circumstances are now, of course, different from Duke.  Iny any event, those in opposition and resistance are neither snowflakes, nor many of us even liberals.  We are, however, patient, and committed to delivering coldly to Miller and his ilk an indelible political retribution.)

William J. Broad and David E. Sanger report North Korea Nuclear Disarmament Could Take 15 Years, Expert Warns:

As the Trump administration races to start talks with North Korea on what it calls “rapid denuclearization,” a top federal government adviser who has repeatedly visited the North’s sprawling atomic complex is warning that the disarmament process could take far longer, up to 15 years.

The adviser, Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, and now a Stanford professor, argues that the best the United States can hope for is a phased denuclearization that goes after the most dangerous parts of the North’s program first.

The disarmament steps and timetable are laid out in a new report, circulated recently in Washington, that Dr. Hecker compiled with two colleagues at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Dr. Hecker has toured that nation’s secretive labyrinth of nuclear plants four times and remains the only American scientist to see its facility for enriching uranium, a bomb fuel. American intelligence agencies had missed the plant’s construction.

Chris Meserole and Alina Polyakova contend that The West is ill-prepared for the wave of “deep fakes” that artificial intelligence could unleash:

Russian disinformation has become a problem for European governments. In the last two years, Kremlin-backed campaigns have spread false stories alleging that French President Emmanuel Macron was backed by the “gay lobby,” fabricated a story of a Russian-German girl raped by Arab migrants, and spread a litany of conspiracy theories about the Catalan independence referendum, among other efforts.

Europe is finally taking action. In January, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act came into effect. Designed to limit hate speech and fake news online, the law prompted both France and Spain to consider counterdisinformation legislation of their own. More important, in April the European Union unveiled a new strategy for tackling online disinformation. The EU plan focuses on several sensible responses: promoting media literacy, funding a third-party fact-checking service, and pushing Facebook and others to highlight news from credible media outlets, among others. Although the plan itself stops short of regulation, EU officials have not been shy about hinting that regulation may be forthcoming. Indeed, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at an EU hearing this week, lawmakers reminded him of their regulatory power after he appeared to dodge their questions on fake news and extremist content.

The problem is that technology advances far more quickly than government policies.

The recent European actions are important first steps. Ultimately, none of the laws or strategies that have been unveiled so far will be enough. The problem is that technology advances far more quickly than government policies. The EU’s measures are still designed to target the disinformation of yesterday rather than that of tomorrow.

To get ahead of the problem, policymakers in Europe and the United States should focus on the coming wave of disruptive technologies. Fueled by advances in artificial intelligence and decentralized computing, the next generation of disinformation promises to be even more sophisticated and difficult to detect.

  Michael Gerson writes Are these evangelicals ready to topple the idol of politics?:

If the stages of a social movement are emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization and decline, the reaction against the Trump evangelicals among other evangelicals is still in the emergence stage. But one significant act of coalescence took place recently at Wheaton College, where a group of 50?ethnically and denominationally diverse evangelical leaders met to discuss the sad state of their movement.

The setting was appropriate. Wheaton (my alma mater) was founded by abolitionist evangelicals in the mid-19th century. Its first president, Jonathan Blanchard, was an antislavery agitator and founder of radical newspapers. The college was a station on the Underground Railroad. Many Northern evangelical Christian leaders of that time were malcontents in the cause of human dignity.

[Dozens of evangelical leaders meet to discuss how Trump era has unleashed ‘grotesque caricature’ of their faith]

(Many others of us, not evangelical but of a more liturgical background, will do our part in toppling.)

 So, Are There Quakes on Mars?