Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-six. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:25 PM, for 9h 01m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 23.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1948, former Imperial Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo is hanged for war crimes (“Crimes committed by Imperial Japan were responsible for the deaths of millions, some estimate between 3,000,000^[102] and 14,000,000^[103] civilians and prisoners of war through massacre, human experimentation, starvation, and forced labor that was either directly perpetrated or condoned by the Japanese military and government with a significant portion of them occurring during Tojo’s rule of the military.^{[104][105][106][107][108]} One source attributes 5,000,000 civilian deaths to Tojo’s rule of the military.”)

On this day in 1865, the 13th Wisconsin Infantry returns home: “The 13th Wisconsin Infantry returned home to Madison to be discharged. During its service it had moved through Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee. The regiment lost 193 men during service. Five enlisted men were killed and 188 enlisted men died from disease.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Amanda Erickson reports Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands just got caught lying about the Dutch:

A Dutch journalist just asked new U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra why he said there are “no go” areas in the Netherlands, where radical Muslims are setting cars and politicians on fire.

Hoekstra denied it, and called the claim “fake news.”

The reporter then showed Hoekstra a video clip of himself at a congressional hearing in 2015 saying: “The Islamic movement has now gotten to a point where they have put Europe into chaos. Chaos in the Netherlands, there are cars being burned, there are politicians that are being burned.”

“And yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands,” he added in the clip.

Then things got extremely weird.

When the reporter pressed, Hoekstra denied using the term “fake news,” which he’d uttered moments before.

“I didn’t call that fake news,” he said. “I didn’t use the words today. I don’t think I did.”

Hoekstra was being interviewed by reporter Wouter Zwart for current affairs program Nieuwsuur. The interview is not playing well in the Netherlands. (One sample headline: “The new Trump Ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, lies about his own lies.”)

(Lies about his own lies…that’s Trump and his vile horde.)

Michael Birnbaum reports Russian submarines are prowling around vital undersea cables. It’s making NATO nervous:

BRUSSELS — Russian submarines have dramatically stepped up activity around undersea data cables in the North Atlantic, part of a more aggressive naval posture that has driven NATO to revive a Cold War-era command, according to senior military officials.

The apparent Russian focus on the cables, which provide Internet and other communications connections to North America and Europe, could give the Kremlin the power to sever or tap into vital data lines, the officials said. Russian submarine activity has increased to levels unseen since the Cold War, they said, sparking hunts in recent months for the elusive watercraft.

“We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen,” said U.S. Navy Admiral Andrew Lennon, the commander of NATO’s submarine forces. “Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations’ undersea infrastructure.”

NATO has responded with plans to reestablish a command post, shuttered after the Cold War, to help secure the North Atlantic. NATO allies are also rushing to boost anti-submarine warfare capabilities and to develop advanced submarine-detecting planes….

(Trump’s friends, the Russians…)

Ana Swanson reports Trump Promised to Protect Steel. Layoffs Are Coming Instead:

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. — At this sprawling steel mill on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the workers have one number in mind. Not how many tons of steel roll off the line, or how many hours they work, but where they fall on the plant’s seniority list.

In September, ArcelorMittal, which owns the mill, announced that it would lay off 150 of the plant’s 207 workers next year. While the cuts will start with the most junior employees, they will go so deep that even workers with decades of experience will be cast out.

“I told my son, ‘Christmas is going to be kind of scarce, because Mommy’s going to lose her job soon,’” said Kimberly Allen, a steelworker and single parent who has worked at the plant for more than 22 years. On the seniority list, she’s 72nd.

The layoffs have stunned these steelworkers who, just a year ago, greeted President Trump’s election as a new dawn for their industry. Mr. Trump pledged to build roads and bridges, strengthen “Buy America” provisions, protect factories from unfair imports and revive industry, especially steel.

But after a year in office, Mr. Trump has not enacted these policies. And when it comes to steel, his failure to follow through on a promise has had unintended consequences….

(Trump’s entire career is one of false and broken promises.)

Jennifer Rubin observes Once again, Ivanka Trump shows off her cluelessness:

She’s a walking advertisement for the danger of nepotism, an exemplar of class privilege and a perfect representative for Republican know-nothingism. She was supposed to be the brains of the family and the moral ballast; instead, she’s a self-righteous enabler.

We’re speaking of Ivanka Trump, as you might have divined. She was out talking nonsense again on Thursday: “I’m really looking forward to doing a lot of traveling in April when people realize the effect that this has … The vast majority will be [doing their taxes] on a single postcard.” Thunk. There’s no postcard. That was a prop. And the filing for the first year under the new tax code will be in 2019….

Trump leads the charmed life of one who will be able to take advantage of the reduction in the top marginal rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. She’ll have the best lawyers and accountants to make certain her income is run through a pass-through, thereby reducing the amount counted as income by 20 percent. If she has been a dutiful Trump daughter, her taxes might look a lot like her father’s — which means she and real-estate mogul husband Jared Kushner can afford even more lavish clothes, bigger homes and ostentatious jewelry. (Remember, the president’s claims notwithstanding, he’s likely to make a mint: “It is clear that President Donald Trump is set to save millions if he signs the Republican tax plan, but exactly how much? Forbes crunched the numbers: It looks like up to $11 million a year from a single rule change.”) While Republicans were pleading poverty when it comes to funding government programs in the wake of the $1.5 trillion revenue-losing tax bill, Ivanka Trump and Kushner can breathe easy, as can their children. (“Under previous provisions, married couples could leave $11 million to their heirs before handing over about 40% of their remaining assets to the government. The new rule doubles that limit to $22 million, meaning Trump’s children will likely get an additional $4.4 million tax break on their inheritance”)….

These Birds Make Amazing Black Clouds In The Sky:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset is 4:24 PM, for 9h 01m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, German commander Generalleutnant (Lt. Gen.) Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz demands American surrender at Bastogne. American Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe made a defiant reply:

When Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, acting commander of the 101st, was told of the Nazi demand to surrender, in frustration he responded, “Nuts!” After turning to other pressing issues, his staff reminded him that they should reply to the German demand. One officer, Lt. Col. Harry Kinnard, noted that McAuliffe’s initial reply would be “tough to beat.” Thus McAuliffe wrote on the paper, which was typed up and delivered to the Germans, the line he made famous and a morale booster to his troops: “NUTS!”^[99] That reply had to be explained, both to the Germans and to non-American Allies.^[g]

Recommended for reading in full —

Raphael Satter, Jeff Donn, and Nataliya  Vasilyeva report Russian hackers targeted more than 200 journalists globally:

The Associated Press found that [Russian journalist Pavel] Lobkov was targeted by the hacking group known as Fancy Bear in March 2015, nine months before his messages were leaked. He was one of at least 200 journalists, publishers and bloggers targeted by the group as early as mid-2014 and as recently as a few months ago.

The AP identified journalists as the third-largest group on a hacking hit list obtained from cybersecurity firm Secureworks, after diplomatic personnel and U.S. Democrats. About 50 of the journalists worked at The New York Times. Another 50 were either foreign correspondents based in Moscow or Russian reporters like Lobkov who worked for independent news outlets. Others were prominent media figures in Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics or Washington.

The list of journalists provides new evidence for the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Fancy Bear acted on behalf of the Russian government when it intervened in the U.S. presidential election. Spy agencies say the hackers were working to help Republican Donald Trump. The Russian government has denied interfering in the American election.

Previous AP reporting has shown how Fancy Bear — which Secureworks nicknamed Iron Twilight — used phishing emails to try to compromise Russian opposition leaders, Ukrainian politicians and U.S. intelligence figures, along with Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and more than 130 other Democrats….

Chris Strohm, Steven T. Dennis , and Shannon Pettypiece report Mueller’s Silence Cuts Through Noise of Trump Russia Inquiries:

Through all the controversy, threats and noise surrounding the Trump-Russia investigation, one person has been conspicuously silent: Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The former FBI director hasn’t uttered a single word in public since he was appointed in May to lead the probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election despite increasingly combative attacks by Republicans and their allies on the FBI, the Justice Department and the integrity of his probe.

It’s an intentional strategy meant to convey the investigation’s credibility and seriousness in an age of 24-hour noise, amplified by cable news shows and Twitter, according to current and former U.S. officials who know Mueller personally or who have followed his work.

Instead of press conferences, Mueller has spoken loudly through a series of indictments and plea deals related to various Trump associates….

(Disciplined, deliberate, methodical.)

Sam Tanenhaus reports On the Front Lines of the GOP’s Civil War (“In 2016, a group of Republicans broke ranks with their party to try to stop Donald Trump from winning the presidency. Now they’re rallying once more to keep him from destroying the country. Sam Tanenhaus reports on the Never Trumpers”):

….Well, the decades kept coming, but so did resistance, in ever-changing forms. Today, it is the Never Trumpers who are holding out against “forced collectivization”—imposed by the leaders of their own party—and feel locked in an epochal struggle, with a great deal riding on the outcome. To them Trumpism is more than a freakish blight on the republic. It is a moral test. “We’ve seen a moment before when holders of property gambled that their best hope of retaining their property was to disenfranchise fellow citizens,” [David] Frum told me. “We’ve seen before when important parts of society put their faith in authoritarianism. Because Americans have emerged safely at the other end of some pretty scary pasts, they think no one has to do anything—‘It’ll just happen automatically.’ ”

This is not the sort of thing Frum said in his former life, as a wunderkind of the American Right. But for him, as for many of the guests at his party, the rise of Trump changed the old refrain “It can happen here” into something more dire and pressing: “It’s happening now and must be stopped.” One guest, the affable conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, has called Trump a “European-style blood-and-soil nationalist.” Another, the historian Ronald Radosh, has written that when he met Steve Bannon in 2013, at the so-called Breitbart Embassy in D. C., Trump’s future Rasputin told him, “I’m a Leninist. . . . I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.” That establishment includes the Never Trumpers, and it’s a sign of how far things have come that these insiders have now become outlaws….

(The war for the GOP, and conservatism has been lost; Trump’s won that fight. The greater conflict – over the direction of America, herself, is a conflict Trump will lose. Those Republicans who still oppose him no longer truly have a party, but their role is still important: as part of a large, formidable, continental  opposition and resistance.)

Michael Gerson writes of Trump’s influence in Trump’s successes are thanks to Republicans. His failures are thanks to Trump:

Vice President Pence’s obsequiousness at a recent Cabinet meeting — “Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that is truly restoring this country…” and on, and on — might be appropriate at a Communist Party Central Committee meeting or at a despot’s birthday party. But it is not the language of any self-respecting republic.

The divestment of self-respect is a qualification for employment in the Trump administration. Praising the Dear Leader in a Pence-like fashion seems to be what the Dear Leader requires — not in the way we might need dessert after dinner, but in the way an addict needs drugs. President Trump divides the world into two categories: flunkies and enemies. Pence is the cringing, fawning high priest of flunkiness. It is hard to know whether to laugh or puke (and difficult to do both at the same time).

It is precisely the claim of miracles by mediocrities that makes it hard for some of us to judge Trump’s first-year record with any objectivity. Compared with his claims of world-historic change, Trump has accomplished little. But how does his record compare with more realistic expectations?

….It is important to count our blessings, even when they are meager. But for Republicans and conservatives, it is also important to count the costs — the tonnage on the other side of the balance….

(Gerson holds out hope for a Republican party and conservatism apart from Trump. He’s unrealistic in that hope, but not in his critique of Trump: “count the costs — the tonnage on the other side of the balance….”)

A Glacier Disappears in Alaska:

In Indonesia, more than 75% of people live within 100 kilometers of a volcano. It’s the most densely populated volcanic region in the world. As a result, Indonesians have developed a spiritual and economic symbiosis with the volatile natural phenomena. Amongst Fire, a short film from Toronto-based cinematographer Justin Pelletier, is a breathtaking portrait of life at this unique intersection of destruction and vitality.

“The production was an adventure in itself, with countless close calls and near misses,” Pelletier told The Atlantic. “One memory that really sticks out was watching locals evacuate the villages surrounding Mount Agung [which erupted in November 2017]. That was an extremely tense time for everyone. But we were consistently greeted with open arms and smiles, even during the insane event of an impending volcanic eruption.”

Good morning.

Winter begins in Whitewater under cloudy skies with a high of thirty-eight, and an even chance of afternoon snow showers. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:24 PM, for 9h 01m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 7 AM.

On this day in 1898, Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie discover radium. On this day in 1862, the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry sets out for Vicksburg: “The 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry participated in Grierson’s Raid on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad in Tennessee. This was the first engagement in a movement by Union Col. Benjamin Grierson. It led 3,500 men on a 450-mile ride from Tennessee through Mississippi, arriving in Vicksburg on January 5, 1863.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Murray Waas reports White House Counsel Knew in January Flynn Probably Violated the Law:

The White House turned over records this fall to special counsel Robert Mueller revealing that in the very first days of the Trump presidency, Don McGahn researched federal law dealing both with lying to federal investigators and with violations of the Logan Act, a centuries-old federal law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, according to three people with direct knowledge of the confidential government documents.

The records reflected concerns that McGahn, the White House counsel, had that Michael Flynn, then the president’s national security advisor, had possibly violated either one or both laws at the time, according to two of the sources. The disclosure that these records exist and that they are in the possession of the special counsel could bolster any potential obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump.

The records that McGahn turned over to the special counsel, portions of which were read to this reporter, indicate he researched both statutes and warned Trump about Flynn’s possible violations….

John Dean replies to Pam Bondi, the Trump-supporting attorney general of Florida:

Hey, Pam. You don’t have a clue about Watergate, nor does Hannity, who is not the brightest. He’s an entertainer like Trump who don’t know History, or much else. Good at faking it, however. Appropriate league for you to play in Pam. https://t.co/3FZPQ7ZF9t

— John Dean (@JohnWDean) December 17, 2017

Asha Rangappa contends that Mueller’s investigation threatens not only Trump, but Putin:

THREAD. It's worth pointing out that Mueller's investigation is as much a threat to Putin as to Trump. If it uncovers illegal acts on the part of Russians – incl financial crimes, or hacking – there could be some oligarchs who stand to go to jail (or never step foot in US again). https://t.co/RL8uDO8Bs6

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) December 17, 2017

Aaron Blake reports In Cabinet meeting, Pence praises Trump once every 12 seconds for three minutes straight:

Back in June, President Trump allowed almost his entire Cabinet to speak, one by one, in praise of him. And praise him they did, with each being more effusive than the last. They called it an “incredible honor” and a “blessing” to serve him. They said they were “humbled” and “privileged” to be part of his team. They talked about how much Americans loved Trump.

At Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Vice President Pence decided he’d just handle praising Trump for the entire team.

Over nearly three minutes, Pence offered plaudit after plaudit after plaudit, praising Trump’s vision, his words, his strategy and his results in light of the passage of tax cuts. By the end, Pence offered 14 separate commendations for Trump in less than three minutes — math that works out to one every 12.5 seconds. And each bit of praise was addressed directly to Trump, who was seated directly across the table.

Here’s the full list:

1. “Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that truly is restoring this country.”

2. “You described it very well, Mr. President.”

3. “You’ve restored American credibility on the world stage.”

4. “You’ve signed more bills rolling back federal red tape than any president in American history.”

5. “You’ve unleashed American energy.”

6. “You’ve spurred an optimism in this country that’s setting records.”

7. “You promised the American people in that campaign a year ago that you would deliver historic tax cuts, and it would be a ‘middle-class miracle.’ And in just a short period of time, that promise will be fulfilled.”

8. “I’m deeply humbled, as your vice president, to be able to be here.”

9. “Because of your leadership, Mr. President, and because of the strong support of the leadership in the Congress of the United States, you’re delivering on that middle-class miracle.”

10. “You’ve actually got the Congress to do, as you said, what they couldn’t do with [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska] for 40 years.”

11. “You got the Congress to do, with tax cuts for working families and American businesses, what they haven’t been able to do for 31 years.”

12. “And you got Congress to do what they couldn’t do for seven years, in repealing the individual mandate in Obamacare.”

13. “Mostly, Mr. President, I’ll end where I began and just tell you, I want to thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America.”

14. “Because of your determination, because of your leadership, the forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more. And we are making America great again.”

(Some men would rather crawl than walk.)

Tech Insider explains Plane De-Icing:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board is scheduled to meet today at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1803, France formally cedes its Louisiana territory to the United States.

In December 1941, large numbers of Wisconsinites begin to enlist: “After the attack on Pearl Harbor, thousands of Wisconsin citizens volunteered to fight. Roughly 320,000 Wisconsin soldiers served in the armed forces during the WWII, including more than 9,000 women. Wisconsin’s National Guard formed a substantial part of the new Red Arrow Division, helping to maintain the respected reputation of its predecessor from World War I by remaining undefeated in the Pacific theater. The majority of Wisconsin soldiers were draftees who served in units comprised of men from around the country. More than 8,000 soldiers died and another 13,000 were wounded in combat. Fifteen Wisconsin men won the Medal of Honor during WWII.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

David Frum observes – in response to a Charles C.W. Cooke article criticizing Jennifer Rubin – that Conservatism Can’t Survive Donald Trump Intact (“As reflexive support for the president redefines their movement, most conservative commentators have caved to pressure, following along”):

The most revealing thought in Cooke’s essay is his explanation for why he feels it is safe to go with the Trumpian flow: “Conservatism in this country long predated Trump; for now, it is tied up with Trump; soon, it will have survived Trump.”

This is something many conservatives tell themselves, but it’s not even slightly true. Trump is changing conservatism into something different. We can all observe that….

(I’m not a conservative, but Frum’s right. There’s more to say about Cooke’s essay another time, but Frum gets to the heart of conservatives’ problem: they won’t be able to maintain integrity while waiting Trump out.)

Jennifer Rubin writes Here are the latest games from Trump’s shoddy legal team:

The strongest indication of President Trump’s precarious legal situation is his legal team’s propensity to make political, not to mention hysterical, accusations in lieu of legal arguments. One supposes that if Trump’s lawyers had meritorious points, they would make them in a proper legal forum, as Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) suggested with regard to the lawyers’ temper tantrum over thousands of transition team emails acquired by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III from the General Services Administration….

If, of course, Trump’s legal team went to court, it would need a viable legal claim. Legal experts are flummoxed as to what the basis might be for challenging the acquisition of documents relevant to the Russia inquiry. (Fear of gross embarrassment isn’t a legitimate one.) For one thing, Trump would have to attack his own appointees at the GSA for turning over the documents, which cannot by definition be covered by presidential executive privilege because Trump wasn’t yet president. The Post quotes former prosecutor Randall Eliason as saying that the transition emails are “not your personal email. If it ends in .gov, you don’t have any expectation of privacy.” Likewise, Ben Wittes of Lawfare blog tells me, “When you use government devices you do so with the explicit understanding that you have no expectation of privacy. Moreover, if there is a complaint here, it is a complaint about GSA for overbroad production, not against Mueller for seeking materials that are obviously germane to his investigation.”

David Graham ponders The Partisan, Nihilist Case Against Robert Mueller (“Attacks on the special counsel aren’t about misconduct—instead, they’re aimed at discrediting the very idea of professionalism”):

….The opposition to Mueller is partisan, but not in that it pits Republicans against Democrats. Its partisans are loyal first and foremost to President Trump. And in the inexorable logic of fiercely loyal partisans, they can only interpret other people’s actions through the same lens. Hence they have decided that Mueller, despite no real evidence in favor of the proposition and plenty of circumstantial evidence against it, must also be entirely partisan. (The same partisan impulse is at work in support for Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate race in Alabama.)

Gone by the wayside are some of the earlier critiques. Back in May, when Mueller started his work, Trump partisans could still argue with a straight face that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, there was no evidence of collusion, and there would never be any evidence of collusion. Even if it eventually emerges that there was no criminal act involving collusion, it has become impossible to claim that the special counsel’s probe is purely a fishing expedition. The July revelation of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer established that if there was no collusion, it was not for want of trying. Trump and others abandoned the talking point that there was no collusion and adopted a new one: Collusion is totally normal and appropriate! George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn have since both pleaded guilty to lying about their contacts with Russian officials—in the former case, contacts that occurred during the campaign. Carter Page testified to the House about extensive contacts with Russians….

Ruth May reports How Putin’s proxies helped funnel millions into GOP campaigns:

….Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.

An example is Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik’s family emigrated to the U.S. in the late ’70s from the U.S.S.R. and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late ’80s….

The International Space Station is An Out of This World Research Lab:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1777, Gen. Washington and the Continental Army arrive at Valley Forge:

Washington’s poorly fed, ill-equipped army staggered into Valley Forge, weary from long marches. Winds blew as the 12,000 Continentals prepared for winter’s fury. Only about one in four of them had shoes, and many of their feet had left bloody footprints from the marching.^[4] Grounds were selected for brigade encampments, and defense lines were planned and begun.

The first properly constructed hut appeared in three days. One hut required 80 logs, and timber had to be collected from miles away. A hut could go up in one week with the use of only one axe. These huts provided sufficient protection from the moderately cold and wet conditions of a typical Pennsylvania winter. By the beginning of February, construction was completed on 2,000 huts. They provided shelter, but did little to offset the critical shortages that continually plagued the army.^[5]

On this day in 1862, the Wisconsin 1st Light Artillery prepares for Vicksburg Campaign.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig  report Trump team’s meeting with Mueller’s office poised to ratchet up tensions:

White House lawyers are expected to meet with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office late this week seeking good news: that his sprawling investigation’s focus on President Trump will soon end and their client will be cleared.

But people familiar with the probe say that such assurances are unlikely and that the meeting could trigger a new, more contentious phase between the special counsel and a frustrated president, according to administration officials and advisers close to Trump.

People with knowledge of the investigation said it could last at least another year — pointing to ongoing cooperation from witnesses such as former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as a possible trial of two former Trump campaign officials. The special counsel’s office has continued to request new documents related to the campaign, and members of Mueller’s team have told others they expect to be working through much of 2018, at a minimum….

(Trump will either have to expect a lengthy, properly thorough inquiry or precipitate a constitutional crisis.)

Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Barnes report Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination:

The president worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” one of the people said, and told aides that he was tempted to pull Gorsuch’s nomination — and that he knew plenty of other judges who would want the job….

Trump was especially upset by what he viewed as Gorsuch’s insufficient gratitude for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court, White House officials said. The judge sent the president a handwritten letter dated March 2, thanking him for the nomination and explaining how grateful he was, according to a copy obtained by The Post.

“Your address to Congress was magnificent,” Gorsuch wrote. “And you were so kind to recognize Mrs. Scalia, remember the justice, and mention me. My teenage daughters were cheering the TV!”

(Thank goodness Gorsuch’s fawning note – “magnificent” – turned up – he might have been out of an appointment otherwise.)

Susan Glasser writes ‘He Would Probably Be a Dictator by Now’ (“Two charter leaders of the #NeverTrump movement assess Year One”):

Last year, Eliot Cohen rallied dozens of fellow veterans of Republican administrations, people like him who had served in the upper reaches of the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council, to warn against Donald Trump winning the White House. He would become, the group open letter Cohen organized said, “the most reckless president in American history.”

A year later, Cohen, a top official in President George W. Bush’s administration, and another charter #NeverTrump proselytizer, his fellow conservative Max Boot, hardly back down when asked whether their predictions of global gloom and doom had been proven right in the first year of the Trump presidency. Both men, lifelong Republicans and historically minded policy intellectuals, offered unequivocal yeses in a joint interview for this week’s Global Politico podcast – and castigated former friends inside the party they’ve both now renounced as “Vichy Republicans” for collaborating with a president they believe is not fit to hold office.

Boot pronounced Trump both “incredibly erratic and unpredictable,” though he allowed that “some of the worst-case scenarios that we imagined have yet, mercifully, come to pass.” Just because Trump has not yet destroyed NATO, launched a trade war with China or torn up NAFTA, lifted sanctions on Russia in a grand bargain with Vladimir Putin, or started a war with North Korea, Boot argued, does not mean he won’t.

“It’s true, they haven’t started World War III yet,” Cohen added. “That’s a pretty low bar.”

(Opposition was right during the campaign, is right now, and will be right until Trump meets his political ruin. Autocratic, bigoted, ignorant, conflicted, and fawning of America’s enemies merits only opposition.)

Jason Stein reports State of Wisconsin’s spending on private workers up 57% since 2010:

MADISON – From laundry and legal services to computer upgrades and health care, state taxpayers spent $653 million last year on private workers, part of a growing reliance on outside firms to do public business.

In the final term of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, these payments dropped, falling from $490 million in 2006 to $417 million in 2010, according to figures from the state Department of Administration.

But under the first six years of GOP Gov. Scott Walker, spending on contractors rose by 57%, or several times the rate of inflation for that period. Contractors are often more expensive than state employees — but not always, officials said….

Overall, state jobs haven’t been cut under Walker — they’ve actually risen by nearly 3% during his time in office to 70,400 full-time positions, according to the Legislature’s budget office.

But outsourcing has risen more quickly. The Walker administration says the increase has been driven in part by a once-in-a-generation overhaul of state computers and by a shortage of state workers in some jobs….

(Wisconsin’s not spending less – she’s increasing and redistributing spending.)

Here’s How Sloths Use Their Slow Motion To Their Advantage:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 01m 50s of daytime. The moon is new, with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School Board at 6:15 PM (closed session at 6:15 PM, open session beginning at 7 PM).

On this day in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment goes into effect. On this day in 1863, the Milwaukee Sentinel calls for better pay for soldiers: “If any men deserve to be well paid it is the men who are enduring the hardships and running the risks of a war like this.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jennifer Rubin considers The final straw: Rupert Murdoch needs to go:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock — or are the aging executive chairman of News Corp. —  you know that Fox News has been ground zero in the epidemic of sexual assault scandals in which powerful men have abused younger, more vulnerable women. Fox, of course, has been slammed by a series of sexual harassment cases that cost the company tens of millions in settlement money and ended the careers of Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Eric Bolling and Fox News co-president Bill Shine (who  was accused of covering up a culture of sexual predation).

So it was more than a bit stunning that News Corp.’s executive chairman Rupert Murdoch chose to brush off the epidemic of sexual harassment that has bludgeoned his company — especially during a cultural firestorm in which star news personalities, entertainment moguls and politicians have been forced out of their jobs (and in a few egregious cases now face criminal investigations) for accused sexual misconduct. Everywhere the code of silence that protected abusive men is crumbling — but the elderly news tycoon seems oblivious….

(He does need to go, but he won’t, and even if he does go, Lachlan Murdoch – likely to run the news side of things – will prove no better.)

Erik Wemple ridicules Murdoch’s judgment in Rupert Murdoch expertly returns the sexual harassment spotlight to Fox News:

There’s a certain corporate mind-set that allows a sexual harassment culture to germinate and thrive for decades. And it was on display Thursday, as 21st Century Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by Sky’s Ian King about the company’s deal to sell its entertainment assets to Walt Disney Co. for $52 billion. When King asked whether Fox News’s troubles with sexual harassment over the past two years had harmed the company, Murdoch riffed:

“All nonsense, there was a problem with our chief executive, sort of, over the years, isolated incidents,” replied Murdoch. “As soon as we investigated it he was out of the place in hours, well, three or four days. And there’s been nothing else since then. That was largely political because we’re conservative. Now of course the liberals are going down the drain — NBC is in deep trouble. CBS, their stars. I mean there are really bad cases and people should be moved aside. There are other things which probably amount to a bit of flirting.”

What a grasp of history: Under the always-vigilant supervision of Murdoch himself, that chief executive, the late Roger Ailes, spent two decades at Fox gathering accusers. The stories ranged from the merely gross — like the time he went after Megyn Kelly in the 2000s: “He tried to grab me three times. Make out with me, which he didn’t. But I had to shove him off of me. And he came back. And I shoved him again, and he came back a third time. And then when I shoved him off a third time he asked me when my contract was up,” said Kelly — to the barbaric, like the psychological torture he visited upon a Fox News booker….

Kathy Lally writes of The two expat bros who terrorized women correspondents in Moscow:

There’s more than one way to harass women. A raft of men in recent weeks have paid for accusations of sexual harassment with their companies, their jobs, their plum political posts. But one point has been overlooked in the scandals: Men can be belittling, cruel and deeply damaging without demanding sex. (Try sloughing off heaps of contempt with your self-esteem intact.) We have no consensus — and hardly any discussion — about how we should treat behaviors that are misogynist and bullying but fall short of breaking the law.

Twenty years ago, when I was a Moscow correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, two Americans named Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames ran an English-language tabloid in the Russian capital called the eXile. They portrayed themselves as swashbuckling parodists, unbound by the conventions of mainstream journalism, exposing Westerners who were cynically profiting from the chaos of post-Soviet Russia.

A better description is this: The eXile was juvenile, stunt-obsessed and pornographic, titillating for high school boys. It is back in the news because Taibbi just wrote a new book, and interviewers are asking him why he and Ames acted so boorishly back then. The eXile’s distinguishing feature, more than anything else, was its blinding sexism — which often targeted me….

(Taibbi and Ames: Americans in Moscow who behaved like the worst of Russia – and of America – to their fellow Americans living abroad.)

Dr. William Barber and Dr. Liz Theoharis write Poverty in America is a moral outrage. The soul of our nation is at stake:

In March of 1968, as part of a tour of US cities to shine a light on poverty and drum up support for the recently-launched Poor People’s Campaign, the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr visited the northwest Mississippi town of Marks. He saw a teacher feeding schoolchildren a meager lunch of a slice of apple and crackers, and started crying.

Earlier this month, officials from the United Nations embarked on a similar trip across the US, and what they observed was a crisis of systemic poverty that Dr King would have recognized 50 years ago: diseases like hookworm, caused by open sewage, in Butler County, Alabama, and breathtaking levels of homelessness in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, home to 55,000 people….

The morally troubling conditions Dr King witnessed across the country cemented his call, along with leaders in the labor movement, tenant unions, farm workers, Native American elders and grassroots organizers, for a campaign to foster a revolution of values in America.

Half a century later, the conditions that motivated the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign have only worsened, making the need for a new moral movement more urgent than ever. Compared to 1968, 60% more Americans are living below the official poverty line today – a total of 41 million people. The gap between our government’s discretionary spending on the military versus anti-poverty programs has grown from two-to-one at the height of the Vietnam war to four-to-one today….

Recall That Time a 61 Year Old Farmer Won One of the World’s Most Grueling Athletic Competitions:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 01s of daytime. The moon is new, with .03% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1903, the Wright Brothers successfully achieve controlled, human-powered flight:

the Wrights finally took to the air on December 17, 1903, making two flights each from level ground into a freezing headwind gusting to 27 miles per hour (43 km/h). The first flight, by Orville at 10:35 am, of 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds, at a speed of only 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h) over the ground, was recorded in a famous photograph.^[41] The next two flights covered approximately 175 and 200 feet (53 and 61 m), by Wilbur and Orville respectively. Their altitude was about 10 feet (3.0 m) above the ground.^[76] The following is Orville Wright’s account of the final flight of the day:

Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just about 12 o’clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down, as before, but by the time three hundred ft had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The course for the next four or five hundred feet had but little undulation. However, when out about eight hundred feet the machine began pitching again, and, in one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over the ground was measured to be 852 feet; the time of the flight was 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder was badly broken, but the main part of the machine was not injured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in condition for flight again in about a day or two.^[77]

European doubts about their achievement turned into effusive praise after their 1908 public exhibition:

The brothers’ contracts with the U.S. Army and a French syndicate depended on successful public flight demonstrations that met certain conditions. The brothers had to divide their efforts. Wilbur sailed for Europe; Orville would fly near Washington, D.C.

Facing much skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a “bluffeur”, Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only one minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Blériot. In the following days, Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights, including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pioneering aircraft and pilots of the day.^[103][104]

The French public was thrilled by Wilbur’s feats and flocked to the field by the thousands, and the Wright brothers instantly became world-famous. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. L’Aérophile editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights “have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly …”^[105] Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, “For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff … They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure … to make amends.”^[106]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Chris Geidner reports Key Officials Push Back Against Trump Campaign’s Claim That A Federal Office Illegally Turned Over Emails To Special Counsel:

A lawyer for the Trump transition team on Saturday accused a federal agency of illegally and unconstitutionally turning over thousands of emails to the Special Counsel’s Office.

Specifically, the General Services Administration (GSA) turned over emails written during the transition — the period between Election Day 2016 and Inauguration Day 2017 — and the Trump campaign is claiming in a letter that the decision to do so violated the law.

Officials with both the Special Counsel’s Office and GSA, however, pushed back against the Trump campaign lawyer’s claims in the hours after the letter was issued….

Loewentritt read to BuzzFeed News a series of agreements that anyone had to agree to when using GSA materials during the transition, including that there could be monitoring and auditing of devices and that, “Therefore, no expectation of privacy can be assumed.”

[GSA Deputy Counsel Lenny] Loewentritt told BuzzFeed News that the GSA initially “suggested a warrant or subpoena” for the materials, but that the Special Counsel’s Office determined the letter route was sufficient.

As to whether the Trump campaign should have been informed of the request, Loewentritt said, “That’s between the Special Counsel and the transition team.”

Asked about Langhofer’s letter and Loewentritt’s statements — and after publication of this story — a spokesperson for the Special Counsel’s Office, Peter Carr, told BuzzFeed News, “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”

Renato Mariotti nicely sumarizes this issue:

If Mueller didn’t follow the law, a court would suppress the evidence so it couldn’t be used. The reason Trump’s lawyers are writing letters to Congress instead of Mueller or a court is because their legal arguments have no merit. https://t.co/6Vy7jwKcY4

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) December 17, 2017

(Trump doesn’t have a valid legal position: he has a rabid ideological one.)

Brian Stelter describes How Fox News and President Trump create an anti-Mueller ‘feedback loop’:

The right-wing commentary and President Trump’s criticism of the FBI are part of a vicious circle. The TV hosts encourage Trump, then Trump supplies sound bites for their shows, and then the hosts are even more emboldened.

With Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election reaching closer to Trump’s inner circle, Fox hosts like Sean Hannity continue to demand Mueller’s firing. Every night, Hannity tells millions of viewers that Mueller’s probe is a corrupt plot to take down Trump and reverse the outcome of the election. Trump is a big fan of Hannity’s show, and the two men speak on a regular basis.

“The anti-Mueller rhetoric in conservative media right now is part of a feedback loop,” Nicole Hemmer, the author of a book about conservative media, “Messengers of the Right,” told CNNMoney.

“Conservative media personalities know Trump hates the investigation and wants it shut down,” she said in an email. “They bash the investigation and Mueller, and when Trump sees that happening (say, on ‘Fox & Friends’) it reinforces his belief that the investigation is illegitimate and that he should do something to end it. The likely consequence is that this increases the odds of Trump attempting to fire Mueller.”

Hemmer added: “We’ll have to wait and see whether internal restraints within the White House — lawyers and advisers — are enough to stop him from doing that.”

(One’s best, reasoned guess is that Trump will not exercise restraint, but will plunge America into a constitutional crisis. The question afteward: Which side was one on?)

Carrie Johnson lists 3 Ways Trump Or His Allies Might Try To Disrupt The Mueller Russia Probe [her article lists each in detail]:

From the airwaves of conservative media to the hearing rooms of the House of Representatives, Republican allies of the White House are attacking the Department of Justice investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

GOP voices are accusing the team assembled by special counsel Robert Mueller of bias against President Trump — and they’re appearing to set the stage for some action. Senior Justice Department officials are defending the investigation, which has already secured indictments or guilty pleas against four people with ties to the Trump campaign.

Here, we consider a few ways the White House or its allies could disrupt the special counsel probe.

1. Find a way to replace the attorney general….

2. Fire Justice Department officials who refuse to dismiss the special counsel, until you find one who will….

3. Pressure the Justice Department to investigate the investigators….

(Each method would be an onstruction of justice.)

The Washington Post‘s editorial board writes of The unchecked threat from Russia:

THE CACOPHONOUS and frequently confusing debates over the Russia investigations by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and several committees of Congress tend to obscure some big and virtually uncontested truths: that the regime of Vladi­mir Putin intervened in the 2016 election with the intention of harming U.S. democracy; that it will almost certainly seek to do so again; and that there has been no concerted effort to defend the country from this national security threat.

We say “virtually uncontested” because the principal dissenter from this consensus, which unites U.S. intelligence agencies and a large bipartisan majority in Congress, is President Trump — who continues to shove away the conclusive proof about Russia’s actions compiled by American intelligence professionals and to obstruct efforts by his Cabinet and staff to respond to them.

A comprehensive report by Post reporters Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe and Philip Rucker contains dismaying evidence of the resulting dysfunction. Mr. Trump has never held a Cabinet-level meeting on the Russian intervention or on how to prevent its recurrence. At the National Security Council, it is understood that to bring up the Russian threat is to risk enraging the president. The same goes for the CIA officials who conduct Mr. Trump’s daily intelligence briefing; they sometimes leave material on Russia out of the oral session, so as not to send the session “off the rails,” in the words of a former senior official.

Watch Blue Origin Rocket Launch of Crew Capsule 2.0:

On December 12, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin launched a rocket test out of its base in West Texas. The launch included its Crew Capsule 2.0, which Blue Origin has adorned with giant windows for viewing. Following is a transcript of the video.

This is Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Blue Origin launched the rocket out of West Texas. This is the first time the company has launched this capsule.

On top of the rocket is Crew Capsule 2.0 with giant windows. There was a crash test dummy in this flight. The rocket touched down on a landing site. The capsule used parachutes to land in the desert.

The flight peaked 61 miles above Earth. Blue Origin plans to launch tourists to space in a similar capsule by 2019.

  more >>

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset is 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1773, the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts hold the Boston Tea Party. On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites fight in defense of the Union: “the 8th, 14th, 24th, 33rd, 44th, and 45th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 6th Wisconsin Light Artillery were engaged in the Battle of Nashville, Tennessee. By the end of the day, 6,000 Confederate troops were killed, wounded or missing and Union forces had largely destroyed the Confederate ability to wage war in the region.”

Recommended for reading in full ––

Lena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin report CDC gets list of forbidden words: fetus, transgender, diversity:

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered….

Fr. James Martin’s observation on this federal prohibition is spot on:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it,” George Orwell, “1984.” https://t.co/sz8GwsggwF https://t.co/OJDPVhvp7f

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) December 16, 2017

Mieke Eoyang, Ben Freeman, and Benjamin Wittes write The Public Isn’t Buying It: Confidence in the FBI is Very High:

Memo to the President: Your attacks on the FBI aren’t working.

President Trump has apparently decided that attacking federal law enforcement is a good defense strategy in L’Affaire Russe. Conservative media outlets have picked up the cry, devoting hours of air time to the absurd proposition that the FBI is corrupt and biased in favor of Hillary Clinton—and against the President.

The other day, curious about the impact of such attacks on public opinion, we put a very simple poll in the field using Google Surveys. It asked one question, polled between December 5-7: “How Much Confidence Do You Have in the FBI?”

The answer was striking:

The average confidence rating for the FBI in this poll measured in at 3.34. That compares favorably to any other institution we poll on, save the military, which had an average confidence score of 3.78. The question polled here is subtly different from our other polls, which measure confidence in institutions as protectors of national security. This one asks about confidence in general—on the theory that the President’s attacks on the Bureau have been general attacks, not limited to the national security function. That said, the FBI’s rating was notably higher than the next highest institution, the intelligence community more broadly, which had an average confidence measure of 3.04. Forty-seven percent of respondents give the FBI higher confidence ratings, either 4 or 5. And fully 74 percent repose at least some confidence in the Bureau—that is, give it at least a rating of 3. By contrast, only 26 percent give the FBI lower confidence ratings, that is a rating of only 1 or 2.

(It’s important, however, that Trump only needs the support of politicians and Fox News to create a feedback loop in which the FBI is demonized to precipitate action against the bureau or Special Counsel Mueller. Afterward, an American majority will be left to respond to Trump’s actions. )

William Booth writes of The new U.S. embassy in London: A crystalline ‘sugar cube’ worth a billion dollars:

LONDON — At $1 billion, it is the most expensive embassy ever constructed. But its designers say the new American chancery on the Thames River marks a paradigm shift: The U.S. Embassy here will exude openness while hiding all the clever ways it defends itself from attack.

After decades of building American embassies that look brutalist or bland, like obvious fortresses, the soon-to-be-opened chancery in London is a crystalline cube, plopped down in the middle of a public park, without visible walls.

The building does not shout, “Spies work here!” or “Stand back!” even though this city has been subjected to terrorist attacks. Instead, the vibe is modernist museum, which also happens to issue visas and might have a few hidden bunkers somewhere.

Instead of blast walls, there is a perimeter pond, with recycled-water waterfalls and deep trenches — and on the roof, arrays of solar panels that will produce enough juice to run the building and give extra watts back to the grid….

(A billion is a vast sum, but if it should be a billion, then at least an open design, to match the character of our people. Long after everything of Trump has been swept away, we will yet be a free and welcoming society.)

Matthew DeFour reports Fiscal bureau: Foxconn roads could draw $134 million from other state highway projects:

….The fiscal bureau memo to Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, now reveals the previously unknown cost of local road improvements on top of the $252.4 million in state bonding that was authorized to pay for the nearby expansion of Interstate 94.

“It’s really concerning that we’re going to be taking $134 million from rehab projects around the state of Wisconsin and we’re going to be paying for local road projects around the Foxconn project,” Hintz said. “A memo like this today highlights the absolute absence of transparency, accountability and credibility on this project.”

It’s unclear which statewide road projects would be affected if money is used instead to improve roads in Racine County.

But fiscal bureau analyst John Wilson-Tepeli explained in the memo that because the roads in Racine County were local roads when the 2017-19 budget was adopted it is “unlikely” that the work was accounted for in the state highway rehabilitation fund during the budget debate.

“Therefore, the use of state highway rehabilitation funding to complete this work near the Foxconn site would likely result in the delay of other, previously planned rehabilitation projects on state highways,” Wilson-Tepeli wrote….

Meet the Dog Protecting Planes From Bird Strikes:

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, cooler than a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce, it’s Piper the Aviation Bird Dog, ready for duty. Alongside his handler Brian Edwards, the dynamic duo protects the planes at Cherry Capital Airport from bird strikes. Birds can pose a huge threat to flight safety, but when they see Piper on his way, geese, ducks and gulls flee the runways. It’s an important job, but not one without its share of fun.