Daily Bread for 2.22.17

Good morning.

Whitewater’s midweek will be unseasonably warm with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 5:36 PM, for 10h 57m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 17.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission is scheduled to meet tonight at 6:30 PM.

George Washington was born on this day in 1732. On this day in 1922, Wisconsin experiences one of the worst ice storms on record, experiencing “ice accumulations of 1-2″, with a few reports of around 4″, built up on trees, poles, and wires. Property damage was a staggering $10 million in Wisconsin.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Annysa Johnson reports that Tony Evers, Lowell Holtz easily advance out of Wisconsin DPI superintendent primary: “Incumbent state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers easily placed first in Tuesday’s primary election, earning the right to defend his seat in the April 4 election against voucher advocate Lowell Holtz. Evers, who is seeking a third four-year term, had about 69% of the vote. Holtz, a retired Whitnall School District superintendent, had 23%. And former Dodgeville administrator-turned-part time-consultant John Humphries was third with 7%. The state’s top education post, which pays $120,111 annually, is officially nonpartisan. But Tuesday’s primary sets the stage for a quasi-partisan battle over the direction of education in Wisconsin. It pits a longtime public school advocate favored mostly by Democrats and teachers unions against a pro-school-choice, anti-Common Core candidate backed primarily by Republicans.

Michael Shear and Ron Nixon report that New Trump Deportation Rules Allow Far More Expulsions: “WASHINGTON — President Trump has directed his administration to enforce the nation’s immigration laws more aggressively, unleashing the full force of the federal government to find, arrest and deport those in the country illegally, regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes. Documents released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security revealed the broad scope of the president’s ambitions: to publicize crimes by undocumented immigrants; strip such immigrants of privacy protections; enlist local police officers as enforcers; erect new detention facilities; discourage asylum seekers; and, ultimately, speed up deportations. The new enforcement policies put into practice language that Mr. Trump used on the campaign trail, vastly expanding the definition of “criminal aliens” and warning that such unauthorized immigrants “routinely victimize Americans,” disregard the “rule of law and pose a threat” to people in communities across the United States. Despite those assertions in the new documents, research shows lower levels of crime among immigrants than among native-born Americans.”

Jenna Portnoy reports that The women got up in Brat’s grill, and then some: “BLACKSTONE, Va. — Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), who drew national notice after complaining that women were “in my grill” because he was reluctant to hold a town hall meeting, finally relented and came face to face with those women — and plenty others — at a raucous public event Tuesday night. [“The women are in my grill no matter where I go,” Brat says ] Brat held the meeting in a tiny town in Nottoway County, a rural community carried by Trump in November. It’s about an hour south of where most in Brat’s district live, but that didn’t stop a stream of people from driving into town and filling up the town hall, with scores shut out on the sidewalk. For a little more than an hour, Brat was heckled nonstop as he fielded questions on health care, President Trump’s policies and the border wall. His answers seemed to antagonize most in the crowd of 150, who yelled back at him, at points drowning him out and prompting a few of his supporters to leave early in disgust.”

Roger Cohen describes The Russification of America: “For me, the most troubling thing was finding myself unsure who was more credible — Pence or Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. The Russification of America under Trump has proceeded apace. Vladimir Putin’s macho authoritarianism, disdain for the press, and mockery of the truth has installed itself on the Potomac. Putin is only the latest exponent of what John le Carré called “the classic, timeless, all-Russian, barefaced, whopping lie” and what Joseph Conrad before him called Russian officialdom’s “almost sublime disdain for the truth.” The Russian system under Putin is a false democracy based on a Potemkin village of props — political parties, media, judiciary — that are the fig leaf covering repression or elimination of opponents. Russia runs on lies. It’s alternative-fact central (you know, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine). But what happens when the United States begins to be infected with Russian disease?”

Great Big Story explores Chicago Footwork: Music and Dance at a Whole New Speed: