Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:33 PM, for 13h 15m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 52.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

John Locke is born on this day in 1632. On this day twelve years ago, Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in Louisiana.

Recommended for reading in full —

Ryan Goodman asks Did Trump Campaign Collude with Russia to Defeat Republican Opponents in GOP Primary?:

Russia’s election interference began well before the general election. It started during the GOP primaries and clearly in support of Donald Trump over his GOP opponents. Thanks to investigative reporting by the New York Times, we now know, at the very least, the Trump campaign was open to support from the Russian government by early June 2016 when senior campaign members met with Russians purporting to have information from the Kremlin that would harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, discussed timing for implementing Russian support, and failed to report any of this to U.S. authorities. Many have raised the question whether the Trump campaign’s knowledge of Russian government support and these kinds of exchanges began before June 2016. Yet to truly understand the scope of Russian interference in the U.S. election, we must ask a more specific question: did the Trump campaign know about, accept, or work with the Russian government when the Kremlin interfered in the GOP primary?

The publicly available information on this matter should prompt Congress, Robert Mueller, news media, and others to pursue that question with utmost concern. Let’s take a closer look….

Rosalind S. Helderman, Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger report that a Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal:

A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.

The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled….

Manu Raju reports on How a request about Russians made its way from West Virginia to Trump’s team:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:34 PM, for 13h 18m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 42.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission is scheduled to meet at 4:30 PM, and her Library Board at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King delivers his ‘I Have a Dream Speech.’

On this day in 1862, the Iron Brigade fights its fights its first battle: “The unit was composed of the 2nd Infantry, 6th Infantry, 7th Wisconsin Infantry, and the 19th Indiana Infantry, 24th Michigan Infantry, and Battery B of the 4th U.S. Light Artillery and was well known for its valor at such Civil War battles as Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Carol D. Leonnig, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman report that Trump’s business sought deal on a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for president:

While Donald Trump was running for president in late 2015 and early 2016, his company was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow, according to several people familiar with the proposal and new records reviewed by Trump Organization lawyers.

As part of the discussions, a Russian-born real estate developer urged Trump to come to Moscow to tout the proposal and suggested that he could get President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump, according to several people who have been briefed on his correspondence.

The developer, Felix Sater, predicted in a November 2015 email that he and Trump Organization leaders would soon be celebrating — both one of the biggest residential projects in real estate history and Donald Trump’s election as president, according to two of the people with knowledge of the exchange.

….the details of the deal, which have not previously been disclosed, provide evidence that Trump’s business was actively pursuing significant commercial interests in Russia at the same time he was campaigning to be president — and in a position to determine U.S.-Russia relations. The new details from the emails, which are scheduled to be turned over to congressional investigators soon, also point to the likelihood of additional contacts between Russia-connected individuals and Trump associates during his presidential bid….

Meanwhile, here’s Trump in January 2017, lying on Twitter yet again:

It was November 9th, 2016. The mood was joyous in the Kremlin as President Vladimir Putin, along with Russian officials, celebrated the election of Donald J. Trump as 45th President of the United States. Champagne was literally popped and toasts were made, as this foreign adversary celebrated American democracy.

Russian Governor, Viktor Nazarov

What we have here is an orchestrated effort by Russia, a hostile foreign power, to undermine American democracy and prop up Donald Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy involved complex espionage and coordinated propaganda campaigns designed to damage Hillary Clinton, chipping away at her support from both the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum.

Russia’s intentions have been widely debated. Some say they never truly expected Trump to win, and were merely trying to weaken Clinton politically, whom Putin has accused of sowing discord in his own nation after Clinton questioned the legitimacy of Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections. Putin wanted Clinton to come into office beleaguered by congressional investigations and a divided United States [cheat sheet follows]….

Elizabeth Randol explains Why Government Can’t Be Allowed to Make You Pay for Free Speech:

Imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., future Congressman John Lewis, and their compatriots in the civil rights movement had been stuck with the bill for Sheriff Bull Connor’s harassment, beatings, and arrests. Under a proposal before the Pennsylvania Senate, people who take to the streets to express their political views would face exactly that if they end up on the wrong side of the law.

On August 16, Senator Scott Martin (R-Lancaster) introduced a bill that could hold protesters liable for public safety costs associated with demonstrations.  The primary trigger for this proposed legislation was the protest of the  Dakota Access Pipeline, though it was introduced just four days after the white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Under Senate Bill 754[2], courts could hold individuals convicted of protest-related misdemeanors or felonies liable for all public safety costs associated with demonstrations. This is most certainly unconstitutional and would likely be struck down in federal court, but only after a costly legal fight….

David Haynes warns of The risk of believing in Foxconn:

Even under the best conditions, Wisconsin taxpayers won’t break even for 25 years, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. But it might be a lot longer if more workers than expected drive up from Illinois or if Foxconn automates more work than expected and creates fewer jobs. In a globally competitive industry, Foxconn will automate extensively, which is why predictions of 13,000 jobs in a few years at the Wisconsin plant sound wildly optimistic. Points for [WEDC leader] Hogan for trying to mitigate that risk. The fact is we really don’t know where the break-even point is. The Fiscal Bureau notes that the way Gov. Scott Walker’s administration accounted for the capital tended to reduce the cost to taxpayers. Using a more typical accounting method “could push the break-even point for the project further into the future,” the Fiscal Bureau warns.

But there is a more basic question that has to be answered: Can Foxconn be trusted?

I’d love to believe the story that Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou is spinning. I’d love to imagine a sprawling, new industry emerging in southeastern Wisconsin, an operation that includes thousands of good-paying factory jobs making next-generation flat-panel LCD screens (Hogan says the median wage would be nearly $54,000). I’d love to see scores of smart technical people working at a cutting-edge research and development facility.

But then the dream bubble over my head bursts, and I remember Harrisburg, Pa.

And India and Brazil.

And Vietnam and Indonesia.

In all of those places, Foxconn talked big and failed to deliver. Walker has blamed the collapse of a factory deal in central Pennsylvania on a transition in state government. (A Democrat took office). But how to explain the others?….

Here’s a map shows every upcoming solar eclipse until 2040:

Good morning.

Whitewater will see thunderstorms today with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:36 PM, for 13h 21m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa erupts, causing tidal waves in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait that would claim some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra. On this day in 1864, the 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments remained entrenched around Petersburg, Virginia.

Recommended for reading in full —

David Frum observes that Trump Won’t Back Down:

….Trump has bolted himself back to his political base, defying all mainstream opinion. It’s not just a matter of appealing to nativist voters, although Donald Trump always is glad to do that. Many conservative voters who are not especially nativist will rally to the Arpaio pardon too. Conservatism has been leaking its ideological contents for a long time now, and the Trump experience has ejected whatever little remained. Yet conservative voters remain passionately attached to Donald Trump, at least as compared with anyone else in politics, as a recent poll from George Washington University demonstrates. Among Republicans in Republican districts, 53 percent complained their member of Congress was not doing enough to support President Trump; only 4 percent complained that the representative was doing “too much”….

If it weren’t for the atavistic hatreds—and of course the micro-targeted paybacks to favored lobbying constituencies—not much would remain in the Trump era of the party of Reagan and the Bushes. But the hatreds still rage hot and fierce, and having been powered into the presidency by them once, Donald Trump hopes he can do it again. After all, what other choice does he have? Not only because he has accomplished nothing better, but because it’s not in his nature even to imagine what that “better” could look like.

(Frum’s right, as Trump’s course is unsurprising. This is why it’s true, as it has been since the beginning of Trump’s rise, that our present conflict will end only when Trump meets his complete ruin.)

Adam Liptak explains Why Trump’s Pardon of Arpaio Follows Law, Yet Challenges It:

Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard, argued before the pardon was issued that such a move “would express presidential contempt for the Constitution.”
“Arpaio didn’t just violate a law passed by Congress,” Professor Feldman wrote on Bloomberg View. “His actions defied the Constitution itself, the bedrock of the entire system of government.” By saying Mr. Arpaio’s offense was forgivable, Professor Feldman added, Mr. Trump threatens “the very structure on which his right to pardon is based.”

It was the first act of outright defiance against the judiciary by a president who has not been shy about criticizing federal judges who ruled against his businesses and policies. But while the move may have been unusual, there is nothing in the text of the Constitution’s pardons clause to suggest that he exceeded his authority.

(Trump will abuse powers granted to him to undermine lawful authority – such as that of the judicial branch – that remains outside his grasp.)

Edel Rodriguez writes that As a boy, I fled despotism in Cuba. Now I’m fighting it here in America:

….At 19, I became an American citizen, one of the highlights of my life. Throughout high school, I had become a devoted student of U.S. history and cherished this country’s democratic system. I came to feel that this was truly my country.

Over the past year, though, I’ve sometimes strained to differentiate my adoptive country from the dictatorship I fled. Violence at political rallies, friends watching what they say (and noting who is in the room when they say it) and a leader who picks on society’s weakest — this has felt all too familiar. I began making art about what I saw, to bear witness. I wanted to hold up a mirror to the president’s daily abuses of the Constitution, test the rights given to me by that Constitution. I wanted to find out if this is really the land of the free, the home of the brave.

The work has been published on magazine covers worldwide and on street posters, and has appeared at numerous political rallies. I’ve been interviewed by television shows and been the subject of news articles. I would give all of that up for a return to normalcy. A return to the idea that the magic of America lies in the fact that it is a country of immigrants and will always be. I love going to Chinatown and not understanding a thing, eating new food in Koreatown, speaking Spanish with the guys in the taco truck and dancing to Arabic music with the Egyptian falafel cook on the street. One of the great things about America is having a genuine international experience without having to travel.

Immigrants have made America a shining example to the world, have renewed this country and will continue making it great.

Michael Cavna reports on The next Pokémon Go? Star Wars unveils a massive ‘Last Jedi’ augmented-reality game:

If it can work for Pokémon, then why not for the world of Obi-Wan?

An augmented-reality experience as real-world physical hunt is being rolled out next month by another global entertainment franchise, with the next Star Wars film, “The Last Jedi,” on the near horizon.

Last summer, as the AR scavenger hunt from Pikachu’s universe exploded — spurring a $7.5 billion market-value surge for maker Nintendo — The Washington Post’s Comic Riffs asked: “Now, what’s to keep the Comcasts and Apples and Amazons and Disneys of the world from making our naturally 3-D world the exciting new area of augmented exploration on a scale as massive as Pokémon Go?”

The short answer from Disney, one year later: Apparently nothing. Because the Mouse House is unveiling its promotional stunt of a free “treasure hunt” on a rather massive scale, the company announced early Thursday.

The campaign’s basics, by the numbers: As the first wave of “Last Jedi” merchandise lands Sept. 1 (a.k.a. “Force Friday II”), the “Find the Force” AR game — involving about 20,000 stores in 30 countries — will let participants hunt down 15 Star Wars characters, two are which are new. (Is that the Admiral Ackbar you’re looking for?)….

Today I Found Out describes the sad fate of the passenger pigeon in From Billions to Zero in 50 Years:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:38 PM, for 13h 23m 58s of daytime. The moon is waxing crescent with 23.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninetieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1863, the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry is among the Union forces that assault Confederate-held Perryville, Oklahoma.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Judd Legum relates The inside story of how TMZ quietly became America’s most potent pro-Trump media outlet:

Trump was the ideal vehicle for TMZ to break into political coverage. A reality TV host and a creature of celebrity culture pursues the most powerful position in the world?—?all while dishing out TMZ-friendly sound bites on a daily basis.

As Trump has risen, TMZ has quietly emerged as, arguably, the most important pro-Trump outlet in America. Fox News is the largest and best known, but its audience is older and already inclined to support Trump. Breitbart is the most aggressive and strident, but its connection to white nationalism limits its appeal. TMZ attracts a large and diverse audience?—?precisely the folks Trump needed to reach to stitch together a winning coalition.

Stories on TMZ not only gain a wide audience online but also appear on two nationally syndicated daily television shows (TMZ and TMZ Live) that, in most markets, are aired multiple times each day.

Jennifer Rubin asks Is the GOP a lost cause?:

….Consider the following: If Trump is still president in 2020 and still enjoys a strong majority of support among Republicans, what hope would there be for a devoted anti-Trump Republican? He or she would be running in a party convinced that there are “fine people” in league with neo-Nazis, that the press is the enemy of the people, that white working-class people are victims of foreigners, that Christianity is under attack, that Russia isn’t so bad after all, etc. It seems unlikely that a decent, rational person could win the nomination of a party gone (politically speaking) stark-raving mad….

It would seem that those Republicans contemplating a challenge to Trump –as Ohio Gov. John Kasich reportedly is — have to consider the possibility that the GOP is a lost cause. If they would be blocked from running as an independent under so-called “sore loser” rules, then it would make far more sense to run for president as an independent or leader of a new third party. Preparation for that possibility should start sooner rather than later.

Kristen Soltis Anderson contends that Data show that Trump’s real base is 24 percent of the electorate:

….The data – on issues and on Trump himself — keep pointing back to “one-in-four” as the true size of Trump’s base. It is around one in four who like the tweeting, like the insults, the things other people say are mean or unproductive behavior.

If Trump’s job approval erodes to down to this level, that would almost certainly spell electoral doom for Republicans. On the eve of the Pelosi wipe-out of GOP House control in 2006, former President George W. Bush had an approval rating that looked a lot like Trump’s does now, to say nothing of how bad things could get if they fall further.

But one-quarter of the 160 million registered voters in America is still 40 million people. That’s not enough to win re-election, but it’s enough to pack a lot of arenas donning red MAGA hats — and that may be good enough for Trump’s tastes.

Jane Coaston writes that ‘Virtue Signaling’ Isn’t the Problem. Not Believing One Another Is:

….The real problem, of course, isn’t the signaling part: Everyone is signaling all the time, whether it’s about social justice or their commitment to Second Amendment rights or their concerns about immigration law. Those who accuse others of virtue signaling seem angry about the supposed virtues themselves — angry that someone, anyone, appears to care about something they do not. Another Twitter user, defending Donald Trump after the infamous ‘‘Access Hollywood’’ tape, wrote: ‘‘Stop virtue signaling. It doesn’t work. Are you saying you never talked dirty in a [private] conversation?’’ The logic here is not that Trump or his actions were morally correct, but that no one else is, either, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying….

But of course many people do care, about all sorts of things that you or I might disagree with. People on low-lying islands in the Pacific care about climate change. Members of the armed forces care about military spending. Transgender people care about their ability to access public facilities, gay people care about whether they can adopt children and evangelical Christians care about their ability to live out their faith in the workplace. These people have families and friends, and next-door neighbors and dog walkers, who most likely care, too. This caring is not a crime; it is an argument, about what people should value in the first place. And accusations of ‘‘virtue signaling’’ are, more than anything, a way of walking out on that argument and dismissing it altogether — a quick and easy solution for those moments when engaging and listening, agreeing or disagreeing, seem too hard, too challenging, too personal, too dangerous.

(When Trumpists criticize others for virtue signaling, they’re running from the powerful argument that Trump is a living expression of vice.)

Great Big Story tells of The Dog Lifeguards of Italy:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:39 PM, for 13h 26m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred eighty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1944, the Allies liberate Paris from the Nazi occupation. On this day in 1864, the 36th Wisconsin Infantry takes part in the Second Battle of Ream’s Station, Virginia: “Of 175 enlisted men and 11 officers who went into the fight, only 48 reported for duty the next day. The majority had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Aaron Blake enumerates 7 times Trump tried to call off the dogs on Russia:

In a must-read piece, Politico reports that President Trump appeared to pressure two Senate Republicans to back off their Russia-related efforts. Josh Dawsey and Elana Schor report that Trump vented frustrations about Congress’s Russia sanctions bill to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and tried to get Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to back off a planned bill to protect Russia special counsel Robert S. Mueller III from being fired.

Add them to the list.

Trump’s attempts to influence actions related to Russia and the investigation that is now focused on him personally constitute a growing volume. Last weekend, in fact, the New York Times reported on another example that some may have missed.

Below, we recap all of them. If I missed one, email me [list of seven attempts folows]….

Judd Legum writes that Roger Stone promises a violent response if Trump is impeached:

Roger Stone, one of President Trump’s oldest and most-trusted advisers, warned that any politician who voted to impeach Donald Trump “will endanger their own life.”

Stone began by taunting members of Congress who were calling for Trump’s impeachment. “Try to impeach him, just try it!,” Stone exclaimed. He then promised that, if Trump was impeached, there would be a violent, armed response.

“You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection, like you’ve never seen,” he promised. “The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician that votes for it will endanger their own life”….

(Having spent these hundreds of days in correspondence with scores of Trump opponents, there’s not the slighest chance that they will relent. How their representatives will conduct themselves, one cannot say.)

Abigail Tracy reports that a New Russia Revelation Highlights the Big Lie at the Center of Trump’s Campaign (“A previously unreported e-mail reveals yet another Trump staffer discussing contact with Russians”):

In the last several months of his campaign, Donald Trump and his aides repeatedly denied that anyone in his orbit had any contact with anyone connected to the Russian government. “That’s absurd,” then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort said when asked about any ties. Donald Trump Jr. said that the idea that Russia may have helped his father is “disgusting” and “phony.” Both men, of course, had met with a Russian lawyer and a former Soviet intelligence officer just weeks earlier, alongside Jared Kushner, after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of an explicit Russian government effort to aid their campaign. Still, the charade continued for months, even as Trump’s talking points drifted from claims that there was no “contact” to simply no “collusion.”

That lie, which was central to the Trump campaign’s messaging on Russia throughout 2016, was thrown into harsh relief again Wednesday when CNN reported on yet another potential point of contact between a member of Trump’s team and the Kremlin. Last summer, Rick Dearborn, who served as a top policy aide during the campaign and is now the president’s deputy chief of staff, sent an e-mail informing Trump campaign officials about an individual who sought to arrange a meeting between the presidential hopeful and Vladimir Putin. Discovered by congressional investigators, the e-mail may provide further evidence of the Kremlin’s effort to interfere in the presidential election, and of Trump’s associates’ efforts to conceal those efforts.

Dearborn sent the e-mail in June of last year, around the time of Donald Jr.’s rendezvous with the Russian lawyer. According to sources that spoke with CNN, the person seeking the meeting was only identified as being from “WV”—believed to be a reference to West Virginia. It is unclear why they sought the meeting and whether Dearborn or other Trump campaign officials acted upon the request….

Jennifer Rubin reminds that We cannot forget the unrepentant moral cowards on the right:

Scores of Republican politicians, activists and operatives who have supported and defended President Trump will be defined by the choices they made. If they choose to run for office again or be considered for future positions in government or maintain positions of leadership in political life, we think an appropriate series of questions must be asked:

Did they, from the get-go, spot Trump for what he was — a racist, a charlatan and a narcissist? (#NeverTrump Republicans and the Bush family did.)

If they didn’t spot him as such from the get-go, did they at least refrain from endorsing him? (A significant list of GOP members of Congress and senators, including Jeff Flake of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, as well as Ohio Gov. John Kasich, did.)

If they endorsed him, did they at least pull back their endorsement after he attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel in textbook racist terms or went after the Gold Star Khan family?….

NASA describes The Hunt for Asteroids:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:12 AM and sunset 7:41 PM, for 13h 29m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred eighty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupts, destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum. On this day in 1970, a car bomb explodes outside Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus, killing research scientist Robert Fassnacht.

Recommended for reading in full —

Isaac Arnsdorf reports that Pro-Russian Bots Take Up the Right-Wing Cause After Charlottesville (“Analysts tracking Russian influence operations find a feedback loop between Kremlin propaganda and far-right meme”):

Angee Dixson joined Twitter on Aug. 8 and immediately began posting furiously — about 90 times a day. A self-described American Christian conservative, Dixson defended President Donald Trump’s response to the unrest in Charlottesville, criticized the removal of Confederate monuments and posted pictures purporting to show violence by left-wing counterprotesters.

“Dems and Media Continue to IGNORE BLM and Antifa Violence in Charlottesville,” she wrote above a picture of masked demonstrators labeled “DEMOCRAT TERROR.”

But Dixson appears to have been a fake, according to an analysis by Ben Nimmo, a fellow with the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council think tank. The account has been shut down. Dixson’s profile picture was stolen from a young Instagram celebrity (a German model rumored to have dated Leonardo DiCaprio). Dixson used a URL shortener that is a tell for the sort of computer program that automatically churns out high volumes of social media posts whose authorship is frequently disguised. And one of her tweets attacked Sen. John McCain for his alleged support of Ukrainian neo-Nazis, echoing language in tweets from Russian outlets RT and Sputnik….

John Amato writes that CNN Debunks Latest Right Wing Conspiracy On Charlottesville:

CNN’s Alisyn Camerota helped uncover and debunk the conspiracy theory that Charlottesville was a staged protest by actors to cause trouble —

Samantha Michaels reports that A Federal Judge Put Hundreds of Immigrants Behind Bars While Her Husband Invested in Private Prisons (“Judge Linda Reade’s husband bought more prison stock five days before one of the nation’s biggest immigration raids”):

Nearly 400 workers were arrested in the bust, which cost $5 million and was then the biggest workplace immigration raid in US history. They were driven to the National Cattle Congress, a fairground in Waterloo, where several federal judges would handle their cases over nine business days. Hearings were held in trailers and a dance hall. Cots were set up for the defendants in a nearby gymnasium. At the time, undocumented immigrants caught in raids like this were usually charged with civil violations and then deported. But most of these defendants, shackled and dragging chains behind them, were charged with criminal fraud for using falsified work documents or Social Security numbers. About 270 people were sentenced to five months in federal prison, in a process that one witness described as a “judicial assembly line.”

Overseeing the process was Judge Linda R. Reade, the chief judge of the Northern District of Iowa. She defended the decision to turn a fairground into a courthouse, saying the proceedings were fair and unhurried. The incident sparked allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and led to congressional hearings. Erik Camayd-Freixas, an interpreter who had worked at the Waterloo proceedings, testified that most of the Spanish-speaking defendants had been pressured to plead guilty. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the unconventional process seemed “like a cattle auction, not a criminal prosecution in the United States of America.”

Yet amid the national attention, one fact didn’t make the news: Before and after the raid, Reade’s husband owned stock in two private prison companies, and he bought additional prison stock five days before the raid, according to Reade’s financial disclosure forms. Ethics experts say these investments were inappropriate and may have violated the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.

Emily Atkin delivers the bad news that America Is on the Verge of Ratpocalypse:

….Most cities know rat woes well. Washington, D.C., for instance, has burned through countless plans to stymie its longstanding “rat problem” or “rodent crisis,” in which disease-ridden critters are not only growing in number but ballooning to the size of human infants.

What they don’t know is how this all will end. Houston, Texas, is seeing a rat spike this year, and so is New York City. In Chicago, rodent complaints for the early part of the summer have increased about 9 percent from last year, forcing city officials to start sprinkling the streets with rat birth control. Philadelphia and Boston were recently ranked the two cities with the most rat sightings in the country. And it’s not just this year; as USA Today reported last year, major cities saw spikes in rodent-related business from 2013 to 2015. Calls to Orkin, the pest control service, were reportedly “up 61 percent in Chicago; 67 percent in Boston; 174 percent in San Francisco; 129 percent in New York City; and 57 percent in Washington, D.C.”

It’s no surprise that rats thrive in cities, where humans provide an abundance of food and shelter. But experts now agree that the weather is playing a role in these recent increases. Extreme summer heat and this past winter’s mild temperatures have created urban rat utopias….

Is it possible that Snowstorms could happen nightly on Mars?: