Good morning. 
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 09m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand one hundred fifty-second day.
On this day in 1923, Milton College president A.E. Whitford bans dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public places such as confectionery stores.
Recommended for reading in full —
Fred Imbert reports Manufacturing economy weakest in a decade as December ISM index comes in at 47.2:
Manufacturing activity in the U.S. contracted to its lowest level in more than a decade last month even as China and the U.S. showed progress on the trade front.
The Institute for Supply Management said Friday that its manufacturing index fell in December to 47.2. That’s its lowest level since June 2009, when it hit 46.3. Economists polled by Reuters expected a reading of 49 for December. Anything below 50 represents sector contraction.
December also marked the fifth straight month of contraction for the U.S. manufacturing sector.
Jack Goldsmith writes The Soleimani Strike: One Person Decides:
The U.S. drone strike in Iraq against the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, raises once again the question of legal constraints—under domestic and international law—on the president’s power to use force unilaterally. I have written a legal opinion in government and many, many pieces out of government on this issue, and over the years I have grown very cynical about the supposed legal constraints on those war powers. The general thoughts that follow, which build a bit on this Twitter thread, are born of that cynicism.
First, with the exception of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which has always been a very weak constraint, practically all of the law in this area has been developed by executive branch lawyers justifying unilateral presidential uses of force. Unsurprisingly, executive branch lawyers view unilateral presidential power very broadly. The three most recent published opinions concern Libya (2011), Iraq (2014) and Syria (2018).
Second, Congress has done practically nothing since the War Powers Resolution to push back on these ever-broader constructions of executive power. Indeed, it has gone along with these constructions through appropriating for an ever-bigger and more powerful military. It has consistently and specifically appropriated money in support of the military operations under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with the full knowledge that the executive branch (starting under President George W. Bush and continuing under President Obama) was using the AUMF as a justification for uses of force in multiple countries—and the knowledge that Obama interpreted the AUMF to apply to the Islamic State. Congress has continued to appropriate in support of U.S. military operations in several Middle Eastern countries even as those operations increasingly bumped up against Iranian proxies.
Third, the domestic-law basis for the killing of Soleimani is maddeningly complex, factually and legally. The law governing U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East rests on a combination of the 2001 AUMF; the 2002 AUMF, which authorizes force to address “the continuing threat posed by Iraq”; various appropriations; and Article II. And once we are there, Article II provides the president with very broad self-defense powers.