Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with blowing snow, and a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:51 PM, for 9h 31m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred first day.
On this day in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe is born.
Recommended for reading in full:
Robert O’Harrow Jr. reports A $450 dinner, $45 whiskey: Political appointee, aide ring up the expenses:
They are federal financial regulators who filed for expenses like corporate CEOs, seeking reimbursement for limos, deluxe air travel and meals in posh restaurants.
There was an UberBlack ride from the District to neighboring Alexandria, Va., for $250, according to internal records obtained by The Washington Post. Two airline tickets to a meeting in Vienna came in at more than $11,000 each, even as a staffer found a way to the same event for a fraction of the price. A meal for three at Joe’s Seafood near the White House cost $450 — including $45 for a dish of Dover sole and $43 for halibut, according to receipts for the meal.
J. Mark McWatters, head of the National Credit Union Administration, and his chief of staff, Sarah Vega, and their guests also showed a fondness for wine and top-shelf liquor, including, in one instance, a $45 glass of 18-year-old single-malt whiskey, records show. In 2016 and 2017, they expensed more than $2,500 worth of alcoholic beverages — most of it under Vega’s account — despite a written policy prohibiting reimbursement for the purchase of alcohol.
(The transgression isn’t the meal’s cost; the transgression is expecting taxpayers to pay for it. McWatters and Vega may do as they wish, on their own time, with their own money.)
Patrick Marley reports Judge finds Republicans violated free speech rights by blocking liberal group on Twitter:
MADISON – A federal judge ruled Friday that three Wisconsin Republicans violated the First Amendment rights of a liberal group by blocking it on Twitter.
U.S. District Judge William Conley found in a 30-page ruling that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and two others had acted unconstitutionally by blocking One Wisconsin Now on Twitter “because of its prior speech or identity.”
One Wisconsin Now — an advocacy group that frequently tweaks Republicans online — in 2017 sued Vos, Rep. John Nygren of Marinette and then-Rep. Jesse Kremer of Kewaskum for blocking it on Twitter.
By blocking One Wisconsin Now, the three lawmakers prevented the group from responding to their posts and offering its own — often snarky — point of view.
Conley, who was appointed to the bench in 2010 by President Barack Obama, determined the three Republicans ran their Twitter accounts as public officials. By operating those accounts, they chose to participate in an interactive forum open to the general public, he wrote.
“Having opted to create a Twitter account … and benefit from its broad, public reach, defendants cannot now divorce themselves from its First Amendment implications and responsibilities as state actors,” he wrote.
Orca Calf Offers Hope for a Fading Group in the Pacific Northwest: