Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:25 PM, for 9h 01m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred seventy-fourth day.
On this day in 1865, the victorious 13th Wisconsin Infantry returns home:
The regiment lost 193 men during service. Five enlisted men were killed and 188 enlisted men died from disease.
Recommended for reading in full:
Eliot A. Cohen writes You Can’t Serve Both Trump and America:
The departure of Jim Mattis from government service is proof that you cannot have it all. You have to walk if you are to remain the human being you were, or conceived yourself being, before you went in.
….
Henceforth, the senior ranks of government can be filled only by invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and careerists. If they had policy convictions, they will meekly accept their evisceration. If they know a choice is a disaster, they will swallow hard and go along. They may try to manipulate the president, or make some feeble efforts to subvert him, but in the end they will follow him. And although patriotism may motivate some of them, the truth is that it will be the title, the office, the car, and the chance to be in the policy game that will keep them there.
Jennifer Rubin writes Republicans are responsible for the Trump fiasco:
Let’s put aside for the moment the question of whether President Trump committed crimes in obtaining the presidency (conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws by hush-money payments or receipt of assistance from a foreign power) or since his election (in obstructing justice, witness-tampering, etc.). Let’s for now not dwell on the closure of his foundation, which the New York state attorney general foundto have engaged in a “shocking pattern of illegality.” Let’s not argue whether attacks on the courts, the First Amendment, the FBI and the Justice Department violate his duty to “take care” that the laws are faithfully executed, nor on whether his receipt of foreign emoluments, ongoing conflicts of interest and hiring of a series of ethical miscreants have debased his office.
At present let’s address “just” the obvious, frightening reality that this president is incapable of performing the basic functions of the office (e.g., keeping the government open), attending to our national security (e.g., not handing geopolitical gifts to our enemies) or truthfully relating intelligence (e.g., not lying about Jamal Khashoggi’s killers). He no longer has the advice of any respected, competent senior adviser nor the trust of members of his own party, who profess (suddenly!) to be worried about the conduct of foreign policy.
We have gotten to this sorry stage of events because Republican lawmakers shielded him from scrutiny and indulged his lies, racist rhetoric and attacks on democratic norms. To make matters worse, Republican senators refused to reject unqualified or extreme nominees.
It’s Corgi v. Coyote: