Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:32 for 15h 16m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1954, Joseph N. Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

While these years since 2016 have ruined some (Gableman comes to mind), and left others in the past (Walker), a third type has come through better in these worse times. Charlie Sykes is of that last type: an ideological transformation that has shown him to be more principled in less principled times.

Sykes writes of Ron Jonnson, Wisconsin’s ventriloquist dummy of conspiracy theories, in Sen. Ron Johnson’s claim he knew nothing about a fake electors plot isn’t believable (‘Text messages show that Johnson and his staff were told explicitly about the plot to deliver the fake electoral votes to Washington’):

On Tuesday, Wisconsin’s Department of Justice brought felony forgery charges against one of the architects of the plan, Kenneth Chesebro. That attorney already pleaded guilty in Georgia to participating in the illegal attempt in that state to overturn the election. Wisconsin prosecutors also charged Trump aide Mike Roman and attorney Jim Troupis, who represented Trump in Wisconsin during the 2020 election. Wisconsin is the fifth state to bring criminal charges in connection with the conspiracy to overturn Trump’s defeat.

The evidence supporting the Wisconsin charges is especially robust, given the volume of communications — text messages, emails, photos, videos and social media posts — that were gathered as part of an earlier civil lawsuit that unearthed more than 1,400 pages of documents related to the conspiracy. (That case was settled after the fake electors admitted they had signed a document that was “used as part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”)

….

Johnson initially said he was “basically unaware” of what was going on, dismissing the attempted handoff of the fake certificates as a “staff-to-staff exchange.” Later, however, he admitted that his staff had been in touch with Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., “about how Kelly’s office could get us the electors because they had it.”

Even so, he continued to insist that he “had no idea that there was an alternate slate of electors.” Referring to Troupis, Johnson said, “He was asking me to deliver some documents.” He said he didn’t know the document Troupis wanted him to hand off was a fake slate of Trump electors from his home state. What did he think the document could have been, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked. Responded Johnson: “I couldn’t have cared less. I’m asked by the attorney for the president of the United States to deliver something to the vice president on that day.”

But documents released as part of the civil lawsuit in March seemed to blow a hole in Johnson’s story. In a Dec. 8, 2020, email to Chesebro, Troupis wrote that he “spoke with Senator Johnson late last night about the Pence angle at the end.” Troupis wrote, “Just wanted to take his temperature.”

….

The documents also show that Troupis texted Johnson personally on Jan. 6, explicitly mentioning the electors: “We need to get a document on the Wisconsin electors to you for the VP immediately.” He added, “Is there a staff person I can talk to immediately.”

That same day, Troupis texted Chesebro, confirming that he had been “on the phone with Mike Roman and Senator Johnson’s COS [chief of staff] to get an original copy of Wi slate to VP.”

Of all the many influences of these last years on the men and women of Wisconsin, one can easily say that Sykes rose, while Johnson descended, to the occasion.

See also Wisconsin Attorney General Files Criminal Charges over Fraudulent Presidential Elector Scheme,  Wisconsin Native Kenneth Chesebro’s January 6th Instigation, and Wisconsin & Arizona Investigations into Fraudulent 2020 Presidential Electors, and the 6.4.24 criminal complaint, below:

In Paris, a 10.5-mile trail plotted out by American Boy Scout troop leaders: