Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 7:30 AM and sunset 5:46 PM, for 10h 16m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred twenty-third day.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet at 6 PM.
On this day in 1863, George Safford Parker is born:
On this date George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg. While studying telegraphy in Janesville, he developed an interest in fountain pens. In 1891 he organized the Parker Pen Company in Janesville. The company gained world-wide acclaim for innovations like the duo-fold pen and pencil. Parker served as president of the company until 1933. Parker died on July 19, 1937.
Recommended for reading in full — a roadmap for Mueller, the law(s) on collusion, why Trump cannot tone it down, using an executive order to violate the Constitution, and video on choosing a landing site on Mars —
Spencer S. Hsu writes U.S. archivists release Watergate report that could be possible ‘road map’ for Mueller:
U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation — the backbone of a long-sealed report used by special prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress evidence in the legal case against President Richard M. Nixon.
The release of the referral — delivered in 1974 as impeachment proceedings were being weighed — came after a former member of Nixon’s defense team and three prominent legal analysts filed separate lawsuits seeking its unsealing after more than four decades under grand jury secrecy rules. The legal analysts argued the report could offer a precedent and guide for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as his office addresses its present-day challenge on whether, and if so, how to make public findings from its investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including any that directly involve President Trump.
The legal specialists said they and Watergate veterans sought to have the Jaworski report made public because of the historical parallels they see to the current probe and the report’s potential to serve as a counterexample to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s report before President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
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“There were no comments, no interpretations and not a word or phrase of accusatory nature. The ‘Road Map’ was simply that — a series of guideposts if the House Judiciary Committee wished to follow them,” Jaworski wrote in his 1976 memoir, “The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate.”
Elizabeth Sablich writes Considering collusion: A primer on potential crimes:
As we explain in a new report, “collusion” is not the name of a codified crime.[1] Nevertheless, the term has come to be shorthand for the possibility that the Trump campaign, its advisors or the president himself coordinated with Russia to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and to prosecute federal crimes arising from that investigation.[2]
The president and his proxies have frequently advanced the claim that such coordination, even if it occurred, would not be unlawful. Their refrain that “collusion is not a crime” is in one sense correct. Collusion is not a single crime. It is instead a rubric that encompasses many possible offenses. We detail some of the principal ones in this report.
All turn on the possibility that Trump or his associates took action in connection with Russia’s attempts to impact the outcome of our country’s presidential election. The criminal nature of the Russian effort is already well-known. The special counsel’s 191 charges brought against 35 individuals and companies spell out some of the crimes allegedly committed in furtherance of the Russian attack on our democracy. Those include indictments of Russian individuals and entities for their participation in conspiracies to hack into the computer and email systems of Trump’s political opponents and release damaging information and to engage in a social media disinformation campaign using fake identities.
It logically follows that if the president or his campaign aides worked with the Russians in connection with those efforts, they too may be liable. That is not just common sense—it is also the law. The specific “collusion” crimes that may be implicated by any coordinated efforts between the president or his campaign aides and Russian operatives principally fall under the rubric of conspiracy: an agreement to further illegal action. The core federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, would be implicated if there was any agreement between members of the Trump campaign (or Trump himself) and Russian agents to do something that the law prohibits.
See also CONSIDERING COLLUSION: A PRIMER ON POTENTIAL CRIMES, October 31, 2018.
Jennifer Rubin explains Why Trump cannot tone it down:
His refusal to give up the divisiveness, some might say, is simply evidence that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. That may be, but the problem is deeper. If Trump did not divide, lie, boast and incite, what would he possibly have to talk about?
Seriously, here are the topics he would have to avoid if he wanted to cut down on hateful language and stop dividing the country:
- The Clintons
- George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer
- Possible 2020 opponents
- The Russia “hoax”
- The deep state (including agencies and department for which he appointed leaders)
- The Fed’s pace of interest-rate hikes
- President Obama
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
- “Socialism”
- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
- The caravan, the wall and the imaginary crime wave caused by immigrants
- Allies ripping us off
- The money we “owe” to trading partners (his misconception of the trade deficit)
- The media
- NATO taking advantage of us
- The epidemic of voting fraud (of which there is none)
- Globalism, nationalism
That takes up, what, like an hour of his campaign speeches? With the stock market now so erratic (can’t talk about his stock market being better than Obama’s) and attempts at Obamacare a failure (so now he’s the big defender of protections for preexisting conditions!), I honestly don’t think he would have more than 15 minutes of material for his rallies if he cut out all the items above.
Stavros Agorakis writes Trump wants to executive-order his way out of the Constitution:
In an exclusive interview with Axios, President Trump said he plans to sign an executive order that removes birthright citizenship to children of non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants in the US. [Axios / Jonathan Swan and Stef W. Kight]
Through this order, Trump essentially wants to change the US Constitution, which was amended 150 years ago to include these words: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” This clause came to become part of the 14th Amendment in 1868. [CNN / Kevin Liptak and Devan Cole]
Experts widely agree that this cannot be done. Not only is the 14th Amendment considered one of the driving laws that govern the US, but Trump’s executive order would be invalid under a longstanding Supreme Court precedent. [Vox / Sean Illing]
Trump told Axios that the order to revoke birthright citizenship is still in the works; it’s unclear how such an executive order would work or what the timeline would be. Not long after, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wrote that he’ll introduce legislation in Congress along with the president’s proposed reform. [BBC]
News of this comes just one week before the midterm elections, for which Trump has been campaigning by strongly advocating against illegal immigration. One of his key points during rallies for Republican candidates has been stopping the Honduran migrant caravan, which crossed Mexico and is traveling to the US border. [Vox / Dara Lind]
This is just the latest move in Trump’s proposed hardline immigration reform. During his tenure in the White House, he’s upheld a Muslim ban, suggested a multibillion-dollar investment in security at the US-Mexico border, and demanded an end to so-called chain migration. [NPR / Susan Davis and Scott Detrow]