Good morning.
Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be mild and partly sunny, with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 5:26 PM, for 10h 34m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.2% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}ninety-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1859, Oregon became America’s thirty-third state. On this day in 1819, C. Latham Sholes, one of the inventors of the typewriter, is born. Sholes lived much of his life in Wisconsin, and served in both the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate.
Recommended for reading in full —
Patrick Marley reports that Syrian man files lawsuit in Wisconsin over Trump refugee ban: “MADISON – Wisconsin was pulled into the legal fight Monday over President Donald Trump’s refugee and immigration ban, with a Syrian man filing suit over his inability to finalize asylum for his wife and 3-year-old daughter. The man – a Sunni Muslim who filed the federal lawsuit under the name John Doe to protect his family’s identity – arrived in the United States in 2014 after two military forces extorted, falsely imprisoned and tortured him. He was granted asylum in May 2016 and soon afterward sought asylum for his wife and daughter, who remain in war-torn Aleppo. According to the lawsuit, the grants of asylum for his wife and daughter were in the final stages of being processed when they were halted by Trump’s executive order that barred Syrian refugees from the United States. The order also suspended immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.”
Eric Posner asks Is Trump mentally unstable? and concludes that he’s not unstable, but rather a lifelong liar: “But if Trump’s behavior is politically pathological, it is psychologically natural. If biographic accounts are to be believed, he has spent his entire life telling lies and profiting from them. The lies helped his business, his love life, and his endless efforts at self-promoting. They helped him win the election. And not just the lies, but the incessant bloviating about things he knows nothing of. Having won the campaign, he has gained immense self-confidence in his political instincts. Three weeks in, he sees no reason (yet) to depart from his modus operandi of chattering, lying, bloviating, and tweeting, in order to provoke people, gain attention, and control the agenda. He enjoys it all too much, maybe he can’t really help it, but he has not been convinced that his lies harm him. He makes up facts to make himself look good because he is like everyone else except more so. Unlike everyone else, he is publicly contradicted by the press. When this happens, he doubles down rather than take the risk of losing face. Trump believes that the press is controlled by his enemies; he cannot afford to make concessions to it.”
Andrew Roth reports that Russian lawmakers rush to the defense of Trump’s ex-national security adviser: “MOSCOW — Leading Russian lawmakers rushed to defend President Trump’s former national security adviser on Tuesday after he resigned for misleading senior White House officials, including Vice President Pence, about his contacts with Russia. The heads of the foreign affairs committees in both Russia’s upper and lower houses of parliament chalked up Michael Flynn’s resignation to a dark campaign of Russophobia in Washington, and said it would undermine relations between the White House and the Kremlin.”
The 141st Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is under way. The Journal Sentinel has a 51-photograph slideshow.