Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy with a four-in-ten chance of afternoon thundershowers. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 6:54 PM, for 12h 13m 13s of daytime. The moon is new, with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred fifteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Spencer Ackerman observes that Trump Uses Putin’s Arguments to Undermine the World (“If you liked the #MAGA speech that the American president just delivered to the UN, you’ll love the original version—the one spoken by the Russian president delivered in 2015”):

The leader stepped to the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, as close to a literal world stage as exists, and issued a stringent defense of the principle of national sovereignty.

“What is the state sovereignty, after all, that has been mentioned by our colleagues here? It is basically about freedom and the right to choose freely one’s own future for every person, nation and state,” he said, attacking what he identified as the hypocrisy of those who seek to violate sovereignty in the name of stopping mass murder.

“Aggressive foreign interference,” the leader continued, “has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster.”

The leader was not Donald Trump on Tuesday, but Vladimir Putin in 2015. Whatever nexus between Putin and Trump exists for Robert Mueller to discover, the evidence of their compatible visions of foreign affairs was on display at the United Nations clearer than ever, with Trump’s aggressive incantation of “sovereignty, security and prosperity” as the path to world peace. “There can be no substitute for strong, sovereign, and independent nations, nations that are rooted in the histories and invested in their destiny,” Trump said, hitting his familiar blood-and-soil themes that echo from the darker moments in European history….

Anna Nemtsova writes Here Are Just a Few of Russia’s Dirty Tricks Going Into Germany’s Elections (“Even if Chancellor Angela Merkel is re-elected by a landslide on Sunday, Moscow could get a toehold in the Bundestag through the far-right AfD party”):

….Moscow’s attempts to inflame and exploit the emotions of some 4 million Russian-speaking German citizens have been obvious.

Victor Bashkatov, a 35-year-old politician, was astonished to see a crowd of far-right and Russian-German citizens protesting outside his office in the Bundestag last year. Hundreds of people came out on that chilly gray day with banners in Russian and German, furious about immigrants allegedly kidnapping and raping a 13-year-old girl—protesters demanded an investigation into the crime against “our Russian girl.”

The older generation of German citizens from former Soviet countries tend to watch Kremlin-controlled TV channels, and the story about “Lisa,” the little girl, eventually turned out to be fake. She had run away from home, stayed with an older male friend, and made up the story. But it inspired many of the Russian-speaking Germans to support the far-right populist party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which often is compared to France’s xenophobic National Front or Geert Wilders’ anti-Muslim movement in the Netherlands….

(Putin will choose either extreme right or extreme left, or both, so long as that choice undermines the constitutional order in his target country. So in America, both Trump and Jill Stein were good picks – both pro-Putin, both contemptuous of America’s democratic traditions in their own ways.)

Reuters reports that Trump using campaign, RNC funds to pay Russia probe legal bills:

U.S. President Donald Trump is using money donated to his re-election campaign and the
Republican National Committee to pay for his lawyers in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Following Reuters exclusive report on Tuesday, CNN reported that the Republican National Committee paid in August more than $230,000 to cover some of Trump’s legal fees related to the probe.

RNC spokesperson Cassie Smedile confirmed to Reuters that Trump’s lead lawyer, John Dowd, received $100,000 from the RNC and that the RNC also paid $131,250 to the Constitutional Litigation and Advocacy Group, the law firm where Jay Sekulow, another of Trump’s lawyers, is a partner….

While previous presidential campaigns have used these funds to pay for routine legal matters such as ballot access disputes and compliance requirements, Trump would be the first U.S. president in the modern campaign finance era to use such funds to cover the costs of responding to a criminal probe, said election law experts.

See generally (on the quality of Trump’s legal team) What’s the matter with Trump’s lawyers?

(If GOP donors want to fund a criminal defense of Trump, it’s lawful to do so. Trump’s the first man to proclaim himself worth ‘TEN BILLION DOLLARS‘ (his capitalization) who felt the need to bang a tin cup.)

Chris Geidner reports More Than Seven Lawyers Working On Michael Flynn’s Defense Team:

Michael Flynn’s family has set up a legal defense fund and is now soliciting donations as multiple investigations scrutinize the actions of the former Trump national security adviser.

The family is setting up the fund because “[t]he enormous expense of attorneys’ fees and other related expenses far exceed their ability to pay,” according to a statement from Joe Flynn and Barbara Redgate, Flynn’s brother and sister, respectively.

A source familiar with his legal representation said Flynn’s “core team” is seven attorneys from Covington — including partners, counsel, and associates — with “numerous” others involved at certain points. The fees will “certainly be into the seven figures,” according to the source.

Flynn, who played key roles in Trump’s campaign and is a retired Army lieutenant general, has been under scrutiny in the various investigations relating to Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Flynn tweeted out the news about the legal defense fund first thing Monday….

Many animals losing some of their hearing over time, but not barn owls. Here’s the secret to why barn owls don’t lose their hearing:

Be jealous of barn owls: Even in old age, they don’t lose their hearing, according to a new study. In the first hearing test of its kind, researchers trained the birds (Tyto alba) to sit on a perch and fly to a second perch only after hearing a sound cue. Then, they analyzed how young and old barn owls responded to sounds at different intensities, ranging from levels that would be completely inaudible to humans to sounds corresponding to soft whispers. Older owls showed little or no hearing loss compared with their younger brethren, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. This is because, unlike mammals, birds can regenerate lost hair cells in the innermost part of the ear that is responsible for detecting sounds, the scientists say. Understanding how birds retain good hearing, they add, may lead to new treatments for humans.

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 6:56 PM, for 12h 16m 06s of daytime. The moon is new, with just 0.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred fourteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1959, during a trip to the United States, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev becomes angry when he is told that he will not be allowed to visit Disneyland. On this day in 1832, the Sauk and Fox cede Iowa lands: “On this date Sauk and Fox Indians signed the treaty ending the Black Hawk War. The treaty demanded that the Sauk cede some six million acres of land that ran the length of the eastern boundary of modern-day Iowa. The Sauk and Fox were given until June 1, 1833 to leave the area and never return to the surrendered lands. (Some sources place the date as September 21.)”

Recommended for reading in full —

Susan Hennessey, Shannon Togawa Mercer, and Benjamin Wittes assess The Latest Scoops from CNN and the New York Times: A Quick and Dirty Analysis:

CNN and the New York Times this evening published dueling scoops on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

As Jim Comey might put it: Lordy, there appear to be tapes.

First, CNN reported that U.S. government investigators wiretapped Paul Manafort, the onetime Trump campaign chairman, both before and after the 2016 presidential election. According to CNN, the court that provides judicial oversight for the administration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorized an FBI investigation into Manafort in 2014 focused on “work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine’s former ruling party.” Manafort’s firm, among notable others, had failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for work with the pro-Russian Ukrainian regime. This first investigation was reportedly halted in 2016 by Justice Department prosecutors because of lack of evidence, but a second warrant was later issued in service of the FBI’s investigation into Russian influence of the election and potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

CNN reported that interest in Manafort was “reignited” because of “intercepted communications between Manafort and suspected Russian operatives, and among the Russians themselves.” The FBI also conducted physical searches: one of a storage facility belonging to Manafort and a more widely reported search of his Alexandria home in late July. Manafort was not under surveillance when he became chairman of Trump’s campaign, CNN sources suggested, because of the gap between the two warrants….

So was Trump right to say that he was “wire tapped”?

No.

Nothing in this report vindicates Trump’s claims that he or Trump Tower were wiretapped.

Trump accused President Obama of wiretapping him.

This story reports that Manafort was a target of collection and that Trump was talking with him at the time Manafort was under surveillance. It does not report that Trump Tower, where Manafort did have an apartment, was the location of that targeting.

Press reports have indicated for months that at least one, and potentially multiple, close associates of Donald Trump were subject to FISA warrants. It is possible now—as has been noted many times since Trump tweeted his accusation in March—that if the U.S. president was in communication with these individuals, his communications might have been incidentally collected. That isn’t the same as being wiretapped—and being subject to incidental collection as part of lawful collection against a third party really is not the same thing as being wiretapped by President Obama. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has already attempted to spin incidental collection into presidential vindication in a bizarre series of press conferences unveiling intelligence revelations—which later turned out to have been fed to him by the White House itself….

Carol D. Leonnig, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg report that Facebook’s openness on Russia questioned by congressional investigators:

House and Senate investigators have grown increasingly concerned that Facebook is withholding key information that could illuminate the shape and extent of a Russian propaganda campaign aimed at tilting the U.S. presidential election, according to people familiar with the probe.

Among the information Capitol Hill investigators are seeking is the full internal draft report from an inquiry the company conducted this spring into Russian election meddling but did not release at the time, said these people who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters under investigation.

A 13-page “white paper” that Facebook published in April drew from this fuller internal report but left out critical details about how the Russian operation worked and how Facebook discovered it, according to people briefed on its contents.

Investigators believe the company has not fully examined all potential ways that Russians could have manipulated Facebook’s sprawling social media platform….

Compare Facebook Gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller More Details on Russian Ad Buys Than Congress.

Ann Ravel writes How the FEC Turned a Blind Eye to Foreign Meddling (“For years, my fellow FEC commissioners refused to apply campaign finance rules to the internet. Now Russia is running amok on Facebook”) :

….policymakers for years have ignored or outright opposed the need to hold the internet advertising industry to the same standards the country has already agreed on for television and radio. Our campaign finance rules are outdated for the internet age, and rules on the books aren’t enforced. Now, with the revelation that Russia, too, sees the political value in America’s online advertising market, the chickens have come home to roost.

I warned that Vladimir Putin could meddle in our elections nearly three years ago, as vice chair of the Federal Election Commission, the federal agency charged with not only protecting the integrity of our election process, but ensuring disclosure of the sources of money in politics. Our vulnerabilities seemed obvious: The FEC’s antiquated policies refer to fax machines and teletypes, but barely mention modern technological phenomena like social media, YouTube and bots. The inadequacy of the FEC’s current regulations makes it practically impossible for both regulators and citizens to determine if the funding for a political advertisement online came from a domestic source or an enemy abroad. We had left the window wide open for foreign interference.

I suggested to the commission that the FEC consult with internet and tech experts to discuss how the agency’s current approach may or may not fit with future innovations. Starting this conversation should have been noncontroversial, especially at an agency whose very mission is to inform the public about the sources behind campaign spending.

But my comments were greeted with harassment and death threats stoked by claims by the three Republican commissioners that increased transparency in internet political advertising was censorship. Requiring financial disclosure, they argued, “could threaten the continued development of the internet’s virtual free marketplace of political ideas and democratic debate.” One commissioner went so far as to tell me that even talking about this subject at the commission would itself “chill speech”….

(American free speech concerns would not – and indeed should not – bar inquiry into a Russian dictator’s  propaganda and electoral interference.)

Aaron Blake asks What’s the matter with Trump’s lawyers?:

They say a man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. President Trump isn’t representing himself, but sometimes it feels like he has a bunch of Donald Trumps on retainer.

While lawyers generally operate behind the scenes and try to keep their public comments limited and calculated, Trump’s lawyers have routinely done things outside the norm. They’ve gotten into spats with reporters and trolls, talked about internal deliberations and their odds of success and, most recently, discussed the Russia investigation within earshot of a New York Times reporter.

That last one is the most recent development in the increasingly strange saga of Trump’s legal team. The New York Times reported Sunday that they had overheard a conversation between Trump lawyers Ty Cobb and John Dowd last week at Washington’s popular BLT Steak restaurant, which is both near the White House and very close to the Times’s Washington bureau. Oops….

A quick recap [of other recent embarrassments]:

• Cobb asked a Business Insider reporter if she was “on drugs.”

• He later called the same reporter “insane” and mused about using a drone on her while unwittingly emailing with a prankster posing as a White House official.

• Cobb described himself and Kelly as the “adults in the room” at the White House in emails with a Washington restaurateur. “I walked away from $4 million annually to do this, had to sell my entire retirement account for major capital losses and lost a s???load to try to protect the third pillar of democracy,” Cobb told Jeff Jetton.

• When he took the job, Cobb told Law.com that he had “rocks in my head and steel balls.” He added that he took the job because it was “an impossible task with a deadline.” (Side note: So defending Trump from the Russia investigation is an “impossible task,” you say?)

• Now-former Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz threatened a random stranger in an email exchange, telling her, “Watch your back, b—-.”

• Dowd rather strangely confirmed to The Post last week that the legal team had discussed whether Jared Kushner should exit the White House.

• Jay Sekulow denied twice that Trump was involved in Donald Trump Jr.’s initial response to that Russia meeting, only to be directly contradicted by the White House itself.

• Trump’s colorful longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, responded to his contradictory denials about being involved with Russians with plenty of bluster. “I feel great,” he told HuffPost. “Which picture did The Wall Street Journal use of me? Was it good?” Cohen added: “I am in many respects just like the president. Nothing seems to rattle me, no matter how bad the hate.”

• Cohen regularly engages with critics and mixes it up on social media. Asked by Vanity Fair what that says, he responded: “It means I’m relevant.”

(Some of these incidents would be difficult to accept even from a young lawyer, and these men – they’re all men from the examples – are not young. Encountering even one of these incidents or remarks would lead me to suggest intra-firm coaching & corrective action, including a written warning before possible dismissal, as well as a more careful review – sad but needed in cases like this – of the care with which the firm’s hiring committee was choosing new associates, if these were cases among young lawyers.)

Where Did the Saying I’ll Eat My Hat Come From? Today I Found Out explains:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 6:58 PM, for 12h 18m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred thirteenth 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 there is also a meeting of the Birge Fountain Committee at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1759, the French formally surrender Quebec to Britain. On this day in 1942, a severe flood overcomes Spring Valley in Pierce County: “On the evening of September 17, 1942, after a day of heavy rain, water began rolling through the streets of Spring Valley, in Pierce Co. The village, strung out along the Eau Galle River in a deep valley, had been inundated before, but this was no ordinary flood. By 11:30p.m., water in the streets was 12 to 20 feet deep, flowing at 12 to 15 miles an hour, and laden with logs, lumber, and dislodged buildings. Throughout the early morning hours of Sept. 18th, village residents became trapped in their homes or were carried downstream as buildings were swept off foundations and floated away. One couple spent the night chest-deep in water in their living room, holding their family dog above the water and fending off floating furniture. The raging torrent uprooted and twisted the tracks of the Northwestern Railroad like wire, and electricity and drinking water were unavailable for several days. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Peter Baker and Kenneth Vogel report that Trump Lawyers Clash Over How Much to Cooperate With Russia Inquiry:

….At the heart of the clash is an issue that has challenged multiple presidents during high-stakes Washington investigations: how to handle the demands of investigators without surrendering the institutional prerogatives of the office of the presidency. Similar conflicts during the Watergate and Monica S. Lewinsky scandals resulted in court rulings that limited a president’s right to confidentiality.

The debate in Mr. Trump’s West Wing has pitted Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, against Ty Cobb, a lawyer brought in to manage the response to the investigation. Mr. Cobb has argued for turning over as many of the emails and documents requested by the special counsel as possible in hopes of quickly ending the investigation — or at least its focus on Mr. Trump.

Mr. McGahn supports cooperation, but has expressed worry about setting a precedent that would weaken the White House long after Mr. Trump’s tenure is over. He is described as particularly concerned about whether the president will invoke executive or attorney-client privilege to limit how forthcoming Mr. McGahn could be if he himself is interviewed by the special counsel as requested….

(A key question here is whether both Cobb and McGahn have the same information about Trump’s role. If one attorney – let’s say, McGahn – has more information about Trump’s role from emails & documents, then Cobb’s more liberal position on document production many be ill-informed.)

How is it that the Vogel of the times knows about a clash between Attys. Cobb and McGahn? Because, in part, Vogel sat near Cobb and another Trump attorney – John Dowd – while Cobb and Dowd discussed the matter outside on the patio of a public restaurant:

Here’s a photo of Ty Cobb & John Dowd casually & loudly discussing details of Russia investigation at @BLTSteakDC while I sat at next table. pic.twitter.com/RfX9JLJ0Te

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) September 18, 2017

Astonishingly, truly. Cobb started his role with Trump with a good reputation, but he’s since accused a reporter of taking drugs (in a written accusation Cobb leveled at 1:30 AM in the morning) and now a NYT reporter catches him loud-talking about Trump’s case at a public venue.

Brandon Patterson reports that Since Trump’s Big Photo Op With Black College Leaders, He’s Delivered on Nothing, They Say:

In early February, in a high-profile meeting with black leaders in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump promised to make historically black colleges and universities an “absolute priority.” Leaders of HBCUs left that meeting, the culmination of weeks of frequent communication with the incoming Trump administration, feeling enthusiastic. But then Trump unveiled his budget proposal in May: HBCUs got none of the financial boost leaders anticipated. Moreover, Trump planned to cut key grant programs that help a majority of HBCU students. And now, Trump has yet to make good even on the promises contained in an executive order he signed in February, including moving an HCBU liaison into the White House and convening an advisory board for the schools.

Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), a leader on the issue for the Congressional Black Caucus, offered a blunt assessment to Mother Jones of what the Trump administration has done to date for HBCUs: “Nothing.”

Beyond Trump’s unfulfilled promise to relocate the HBCU office from the Department of Education into the White House, his administration hasn’t even announced a pick to lead the office. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the White House has had difficulty finding someone willing to take the job. The advisory board, which would guide Trump on issues important to the HBCU community, has yet to convene, says Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund. “And we’ve had no real consistent communication with the White House or the Department of Education since the meeting in February,” he adds. (The White House declined to respond to questions from Mother Jones)….

Good morning.

Constitution Day in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 6:59 PM, for 12h 21m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred twelfth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1787, a majority of the delegates to the constitutional convention in Philadelphia sign the proposed United States Constitution. On this day in 1862, at the Battle of Antietam, the “2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments were in the thickest of the fighting. The 6th Infantry led a charge that killed or wounded 150 of its 280 men. Of the 800 officers and men in the Iron Brigade who marched out that morning, 343 were wounded or killed.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jim Rutenberg writes of RT, Sputnik and Russia’s New Theory of War:

….But all of this [prior incidents of Russian propaganda] paled in comparison with the role that Russian information networks are suspected to have played in the American presidential election of 2016. In early January, two weeks before Donald J. Trump took office, American intelligence officials released a declassified version of a report — prepared jointly by the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency — titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.” It detailed what an Obama-era Pentagon intelligence official, Michael Vickers, described in an interview in June with NBC News as “the political equivalent of 9/11.” “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” the authors wrote. “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency.” According to the report, “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

The intelligence assessment detailed some cloak-and-dagger activities, like the murky web of Russian (if not directly government-affiliated or financed) hackers who infiltrated voting systems and stole gigabytes’ worth of email and other documents from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. But most of the assessment concerned machinations that were plainly visible to anyone with a cable subscription or an internet connection: the coordinated activities of the TV and online-media properties and social-media accounts that made up, in the report’s words, “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine.”

The assessment devoted nearly half its pages to a single cable network: RT. The Kremlin started RT — shortened from the original Russia Today — a dozen years ago to improve Russia’s image abroad. It operates in several world capitals and is carried on cable and satellite networks across the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. RT and the rest of the Russian information machine were working with “covert intelligence operations” to do no less than “undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order,” the assessment stated. And, it warned ominously, “Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.” On Sept. 11, RT announced that the Justice Department had asked a company providing all production and operations services for RT America in the United States to register as a “foreign agent” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a World War II-era law that was originally devised for Nazi propaganda. Also on Sept. 11, Yahoo Newsreported that a former correspondent at Sputnik was speaking with the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into whether it was violating FARA….

(Putin’s Russia – ruled by a murderous imperialist – is an enemy of the United States. Americans who favor Putinism are fellow travelers, Americans who cooperate with Putinism are fifth columnists.)

Russ Choma reports that the Trump Administration Refuses to Turn Over Mar-A-Lago Records (“After saying it would release a list of visitors to the “Winter White House,” the administration broke its promise”):

A watchdog group is threatening to renew a legal fight against the Trump administration following the White House’s decision Friday to withhold the names of thousands of people who have visited the president’s exclusive Florida club since January.

Back in July, after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington first filed a lawsuit to obtain the Mar-A-Lago records, the administration seemed surprisingly agreeable, voluntarily promising to release something by September 8. That deadline was pushed back at the last minute, but at noon on Friday, the administration turned over its list of visitors: There were just 22 names, all of them members of the Japanese prime minister’s entourage. CREW and other ethics experts immediately cried foul.

At issue is the fact that the US Secret Service keeps careful track of everyone who enters the Mar-A-Lago club, dubbed the “Winter White House” by the administration. Trump has stayed there dozens of nights since he took office, holding court in the public areas, greeting members (who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in initiation and membership fees), and crashing weddings in the rented-out ballroom. The Secret Service keeps a similar set of records for visitors to the actual White House—a set of names that the Obama administration released regularly, but which the Trump administration so far has not. In January, watchdogs filed a Freedom of Information request for the Secret Service records, and then in April, CREW filed a subsequent lawsuit demanding that the Secret Service respond to the FOIA the way the Obama administration had. In July, the administration agreed that it would, at least, release any records that were “responsive” to CREW’s request….

Jason Leopold reports that Trump Advisers Secretly Met With Jordan’s King While One Was Pushing A Huge Nuclear Power Deal (“Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Steve Bannon met with King Abdullah II while Flynn was reportedly pressing for a controversial, for-profit deal to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East”):

In the days leading up to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, when his soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn was reportedly pushing a multibillion-dollar deal to build nuclear reactors in Jordan and other Middle East nations, Flynn and two other top Trump advisers held a secret meeting with the king of Jordan.

The meeting — details of which have never been reported — is the latest in a series of secret, high-stakes contacts between Trump advisers and foreign governments that have raised concerns about how, in particular, Flynn and senior adviser Jared Kushner handled their personal business interests as they entered key positions of power. And the nuclear project raised additional security concerns about expanding nuclear technology in a tinderbox region of the world. One expert compared it to providing “a nuclear weapons starter kit.”

On the morning of Jan. 5, Flynn, Kushner, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon greeted King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons hotel in lower Manhattan, then took off in a fleet of SUVs and a sedan to a different location….

Greg Fish advises Wake Up GOP: Trump Is Not An Anomaly?—?This Is Who You Are (“Republicans are no longer the conservative party and Trump is not an aberration. And conservatives need to face some hard facts…”):

….Maybe it’s because the Republican Party, the group that claims to represent them, their ideas, and their interests, is no longer their party, what it calls conservatism is just an angry hodgepodge of grievances and scapegoating, and its leader is a shiftless, amoral populist whose political career is just a publicity stunt that spiraled completely out of control. Even worse, its base seems to display an almost cultish devotion to him, hanging on his every word, ready to turn obvious missteps into tales of victorious triumph over their many enemies. And conservative leaders warning fellow Republicans of this are in denial of how it got this way and just how angry and entitled their base has become at its core….

Now, it would be one thing if this was just the opinion of a fringe. Every political movement in every nation on Earth has a small group of extremists who are very vocal, but whose votes hardly steer national policy, if they can even make a dent in their local political landscape. But there’s a disturbingly large number of voters in the Republican base which are totally fine with this and believe Trump is doing a fantastic job.

That might be surprising enough, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some 6 in 10 of them say that no matter what he does, they will never, ever stop approving of him, and after all we’ve been through so far, 96% of them say they’re satisfied with their vote. Far from reflecting on Trump’s job performance as his overall approval ratings keep sliding month after month, they’re doubling down, digging in their heels, and maintaining they didn’t make a mistake and that it’s the world that’s mistaken instead….

Great Big Story tells of Radio Free Orca: A Broadcast for World Peace:

In the 1960s, Paul Spong was a young neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia. Then, part of his job was to study orcas (or killer whales) at an aquarium. But Spong quickly understood how badly these highly sentient, intelligent creatures suffered in captivity. So he moved to a remote island six hours north of Vancouver and founded OrcaLab—a scientific outpost committed to studying orcas in the wild without disturbing them. Using hydrophones and video cameras, Spong and his team can listen to and track orcas within a 31-mile radius. Over the course of almost 50 years, Spong has learned a great deal about these wondrous ocean dwellers. It has given him a sense of inner peace. To help others understand more about orcas, OrcaLab broadcasts its audio feed live through its website, which you can see here: http://www.orca-live.net.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:03 PM, for 12h 27m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred tenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1940, Britain successfully defeated Germany’s largest raid during the months-long Battle of Britain, successfully turning the tide of the greater battle in Britain’s favor:

On Sunday, 15 September 1940, the Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated attack against London in the hope of drawing out the RAF into a battle of annihilation. Around 1,500 aircraft took part in the air battles which lasted until dusk.^[4] The action was the climax of the Battle of Britain.^[18]

RAF Fighter Command defeated the German raids. The Luftwaffe formations were dispersed by a large cloud base and failed to inflict severe damage on the city of London. In the aftermath of the raid, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion. Having been defeated in daylight, the Luftwaffe turned its attention to The Blitz night campaign which lasted until May 1941.^[17] 

On this day in 1862, the 23rd Infantry Heads south:

The 23rd Wisconsin Infantry left Madison for Cincinnati, Ohio under the command of Colonel Joshua Guppey. It would go on to fight in the battles of Port Gibson, Champion Hill, the Siege of Vicksburg, the Red River Campaign, Spanish Fort, and Fort Blakely in Alabama. The regiment concluded the war by occupying Mobile, Alabama, where it mustered out of service on July 4, 1865. It lost 308 men during service.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Julia Angwin, Madeleine Varner and Ariana Tobin report that Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’ (“After being contacted by ProPublica, Facebook removed several anti-Semitic ad categories and promised to improve monitoring”):

Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you.

Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’”

To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes….

Will Oremus and Bill Carey report that Facebook’s Offensive Ad Targeting Options Go Far Beyond “Jew Haters”:

Robinson Meyer asks Could Facebook Have Caught Its ‘Jew Hater’ Ad Targeting? (“Facebook can monitor the things it does that make it money.”):

….Last October, another ProPublica investigation revealed that Facebook allowed landlords and other housing providers to omit certain races when selling advertising, a practice that violates the Fair Housing Act.

To Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law at Harvard University, that story suggests the entire way that tech companies currently sell ads online might need an overhaul. “For categories with tiny audiences, with titles drawn from data that Facebook users themselves enter—such as education and interests—it may amount to a tree falling in a forest that no one hears,” he said. “But should anything more than negligible ad traffic begin with categories, there’s a responsibility to see what the platform is supporting”….

A twenty-mile ride turned out well for a coyote:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 6:34 AM and sunset 7:05 PM, for 12h 30m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 34.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1861, the USS Colorado sinks the Confederate private schooner Judah off Pensacola, Florida. On this day in 1888, the Great Washburn Fire (Washburn, WI) breaks out “in back of Peter Nelson’s Hardware Store in Washburn, Wisconsin. The fire spread quickly, consuming an entire block of homes and businesses, including Meehan’s Clothing Store, two local newspapers, and Beausoliel’s Meat Market.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Atty. Bradley Moss describes The Hapless Smear Campaign Against Jim Comey (“The White House is making legal arguments about the former FBI director that barely pass the laugh test”):

….These talking points were presumably provided to [WH Press Sec.] Sanders by the White House Counsel’s Office, but as a litigator with considerable experience representing government officials and contractors (including whistleblowers) of all ideological persuasions, trust me: They are nonsense.

For one thing, the Privacy Act has no clear or recognizable application here. The Privacy Act is a statutory mechanism by which individuals can secure access to records maintained in what’s known as a U.S. government System of Records that contains their personally identifiable information. It also enables individuals to sue the U.S. government in civil court if a federal agency relies on inaccurate records to render a determination concerning that individual, or if the agency disseminates an individual’s records to unauthorized third parties.

Even if President Trump were inclined to sue Comey for “leaking” one of the memoranda, it’s not clear what legal basis he would have for doing so under the Privacy Act. There is no indication the memoranda were ever maintained in an FBI System of Records, or that they contain any personally identifiable information about the president that would implicate the Privacy Act. The statute does also contain a criminal provision, but even if it somehow applied to the memorandum “leaked” by Comey (and there is no clear reason why it would), the provision itself is essentially toothless. In the 43-year history of the Privacy Act, there appear to have been only two reported cases in which the Department of Justice has ever sought to prosecute someone for violating it. The most recent case was prosecuted in 1997 and resulted in a not guilty verdict.

Although Sanders did not specifically mention it, some legal commentators have claimed that Comey could be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 641 regarding “theft” of government property. However, the Department of Justice’s own Criminal Resource Manual explicitly states that the provision shall not be used to prosecute theft of government information. The reason, according to the manual, is to protect whistleblowers from unfair prosecution….

(These talking points are useful only to dupe non-lawyers into thinking there’s a sound legal case against Comey; there isn’t.)

Barbie Latza Nadeau writes that Pope Francis Makes Everything That Donald Trump and Steve Bannon Say Sound Stupid (“The pontiff has positioned himself as the voice of reason—and of science—to confront Trump’s erratic and destructive instincts”):

….Lately, Pope Francis has been bluntly anti-Trump, essentially shooting down almost everything the American president says with, well, logic.

A perfect example occurred on the storm-tossed papal plane heading back to Rome from Colombia through the incredibly wide path of Hurricane Irma on Sunday night. Francis was asked by the traveling press about climate change. To hear those on the plane talk about it, the turbulence, timing, and flight path over the destruction felt like something just short of divine intervention.

Francis shared his disdain for climate change deniers, a group Trump associates himself with, once tweeting, “Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air – not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense.”

Francis didn’t mince his words either. “Man is stupid,” he said, quoting the Old Testament, according to those on the plane. “When you don’t want to see, you don’t see”….

Matthew Rosenberg and Ron Nixon report that Kaspersky Lab Antivirus Software Is Ordered Off U.S. Government Computers:

WASHINGTON — The federal government moved on Wednesday to wipe from its computer systems any software made by a prominent Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, that is being investigated by the F.B.I. for possible links to Russian security services.

The concerns surrounding Kaspersky, whose software is sold throughout the United States, are longstanding. The F.B.I., aided by American spies, has for years been trying to determine whether Kaspersky’s senior executives are working with Russian military and intelligence, according to current and former American officials. The F.B.I. has also been investigating whether Kaspersky software, including its well-regarded antivirus programs, contain back doors that could allow Russian intelligence access into computers on which it is running. The company denies the allegations.

The officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiries are classified, would not provide details of the information they have collected on Kaspersky. But on Wednesday, Elaine C. Duke, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, ordered federal agencies to develop plans to remove Kaspersky software from government systems in the next 90 days.

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest instance of the apparent disconnect between the Trump White House, which has often downplayed the threat of Russian interference to the country’s infrastructure, and front-line American law enforcement and intelligence officials, who are engaged in a perpetual shadow war against Moscow-directed operatives….

(This is good news for American security. See also from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen  The Russian Company That Is a Danger to Our Security.)

Justin Fishel, Brian Ross, and Jordyn Phelps report that Treasury Secretary Mnuchin requested government jet for European honeymoon:

Secretary Steven Mnuchin requested use of a government jet to take him and his wife on their honeymoon in Scotland, France and Italy earlier this summer, sparking an “inquiry” by The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General, sources tell ABC News.

Officials familiar with the matter say the highly unusual ask for a U.S. Air Force jet, which according to an Air Force spokesman could cost roughly $25,000 per hour to operate, was put in writing by the secretary’s office but eventually deemed unnecessary after further consideration of by Treasury Department officials….

(Like Trump, Mnuchin will take as much as he can get.)

The Cassini probe will end its mission tomorrow in spectacular fashion:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 7:07 PM, for 12h 33m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 46.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1759, the British defeat the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham overlooking Quebec. On this day in 1861, the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, “known as the Eagle Brigade, was mustered at Camp Randall, in Madison for service in the Civil War. The 8th Wisconsin Infantry was known as the Eagle Brigade for their mascot, Old Abe, a bald eagle that accompanied the regiment in battle for three years.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Scott Shane reports Purged Facebook Page Tied to the Kremlin Spread Anti-Immigrant Bile:

The notice went out on Facebook last year, calling citizens of Twin Falls, Idaho, to an urgent meeting about the “huge upsurge of violence toward American citizens” by Muslim refugees who had settled there.

The inflammatory post, however, originated not in Idaho but in Russia. The meeting’s sponsor, an anti-immigrant page called “Secured Borders,” was one of hundreds of fake Facebook accounts created by a Russian company with Kremlin ties to spread vitriolic messages on divisive issues.

Facebook acknowledged last week that it had closed the accounts after linking them to advertisements costing $100,000 that were purchased in Russia’s influence campaign during and after the 2016 election. But the company declined to release or describe in detail the pages and profiles it had linked to Russia….

(Here one finds Putin’s government surreptitiously advertising anti-immigrant meetings in America.)

The Washington Post editorial board contends The Supreme Court should strike down Wisconsin’s gerrymandering:

THE SUPREME COURT has long kept a distance from arguments over gerrymandering, that most American practice of redrawing the lines of legislative districts in order to tip elections toward the party in power. But early next month, the justices will hear a challenge to the 2011 redrawing of Wisconsin’s state legislative map by Republican lawmakers — a demonstration of how increasingly powerful technology allows partisan mapmakers to distort representation with ever-greater precision. Using computer modeling, Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature produced districts so unbalanced that, in 2012, Republicans won a supermajority in the state assembly even after losing the popular vote. And the state GOP continued to entrench that hold in 2014 and 2016, even after winning only slim majorities of the vote.

Given that the case, Gill v. Whitford, concerns an egregious abuse of power to the advantage of Republicans, it’s heartening to see officials of that same party condemn Wisconsin’s map. In a series of recently filedlegalbriefs before the Supreme Court, high-profile Republican politicians — including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — stand shoulder to shoulder with Democrats to report from the “political front lines” on the destructive effects of gerrymandering.

The legal arguments against extreme partisan gerrymandering focus on the practice’s offensiveness to constitutional promises of equal protection and free expression: Voters packed into skewed districts have less of a voice in the political process and are arguably penalized for their party affiliation. And in cases such as Wisconsin’s, technology allows legislators to create maps that essentially immunize the party in power from ever being voted out. The bipartisan briefs make clear how a practice designed to undercut democratic competition further degrades American politics by weakening public faith in government and pushing lawmakers away from compromise, especially in the House of Representatives. This is not an issue of one party’s advantage over another — Democrats have also used gerrymandering against Republicans when convenient, most notably in Maryland — but a matter of bipartisan concern….

 (I’d be stunned if this court found against gerrymandering in the case, however egregiously the districts have been drawn, and however clear is the case against such districts.)

David Von Drehle contends that Steve Bannon is a Swiss-cheese philosopher:

….On the evidence of this interview [with CBS], Bannon has the makings of a great pundit. But he aspires to something bigger: an encompassing political philosophy. That’s where the hangover set in. His big holey cheese was an idea he called “populist economic nationalist,” which certainly sounds impressive but in the light of morning turns out to have almost nothing to do with the Trump presidency.

Take Obamacare, for example. Bannon bitterly attacked Republican leaders of Congress for their failure to repeal the law and replace it with a new health insurance architecture — all in the ridiculously short window between the inauguration and the Easter recess. But health care is one of the least globalized industries we have. And the goal of Obamacare (however unevenly achieved) is to make access to medical care more widely available. So why would this be the urgent Job One for a supposed populist economic nationalist?

Later in the interview, Bannon evoked his grand theory to justify deportation of the “dreamers,” and called on Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay’s “American system” to back him up. But Hamilton (an immigrant) was the opposite of a populist, and Clay was the archenemy of populism’s high priest, Andrew Jackson. Clay and his disciple Abraham Lincoln — another Bannon name-check — were strong supporters of virtually unchecked immigration….

(Another way of saying all this is that Bannon’s ill-read, and often negligently or intentionally misrepresents others’ positions.)

John Hudson reports that Russia Sought A Broad Reset With Trump, Secret Document Shows:

WASHINGTON — In the third month of Donald Trump’s presidency, Vladimir Putin dispatched one of his diplomats to the State Department to deliver a bold proposition: the full normalization of relations between the United States and Russia across all major branches of government.

The proposal, spelled out in a detailed document obtained by BuzzFeed News, called for the wholesale restoration of diplomatic, military, and intelligence channels severed between the two countries after Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine and Syria.

The broad scope of the Kremlin’s reset plan came with an ambitious launch date: immediately.

By April, a top Russian cyber official, Andrey Krutskikh, would meet with his American counterpart for consultations on “information security,” the document proposed. By May, the two countries would hold “special consultations” on the war in Afghanistan, the Iran nuclear deal, the “situation in Ukraine,” and efforts to denuclearize the “Korean Peninsula.” And by the time Putin and Trump held their first meeting, the heads of the CIA, FBI, National Security Council, and Pentagon would meet face-to-face with their Russian counterparts to discuss areas of mutual interest. A raft of other military and diplomatic channels opened during the Obama administration’s first-term “reset” would also be restored….

Besides offering a snapshot of where the Kremlin wanted to move the bilateral relationship, the proposal reveals one of Moscow’s unspoken assumptions — that Trump wouldn’t share the lingering US anger over Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 election and might accept a lightning-fast rapprochement.

“It just ignores everything that caused the relationship to deteriorate and pretends that the election interference and the Ukraine crisis never happened,” said Angela Stent, a former national intelligence officer on Russia during the George W. Bush administration who also reviewed the document….

(This so-called rapprochement would have been entirely on Putin’s terms; that Russia even offered the one-sided plan shows their expectation that Trump would be compliant, indeed servile, to their desires.)

Great Big Story tells of Launching Flowers Into Outer Space: