Daily Bread for 2.25.21

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 39.  Sunrise is 6:34 AM and sunset 5:40 PM, for 11h 05m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

 On this day in 1933, America launches the USS Ranger, the first purpose-built aircraft carrier to be commissioned by the US Navy.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Molly Beck reports Tension is growing in the Wisconsin State Capitol as some Republican lawmakers refuse to wear face masks:

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, Wisconsin lawmakers are still debating face masks.

Republicans who control the state Legislature are pushing their colleagues to debate and vote on legislation in person but won’t require everyone to wear face masks — an environment Democrats are warning could put those who visit and work in the state Capitol at risk.

The inconsistent mask-wearing while the coronavirus pandemic persists is emerging as a flashpoint between Democratic lawmakers who want all members to wear face coverings at all times until everyone is vaccinated and some Republicans who refuse to wear them.

The tension spiked last week on the Senate chamber floor when Republican leaders of the state Senate refused to allow Democratic members to participate virtually and did not require the body to wear masks while sitting and bellowing together in one space.

….

Over the last two floor sessions in the state Senate, about 10 Republicans did not wear masks while participating in floor sessions — or about 30% of the chamber. Both Senate leaders and the chairman of the health committee were among them.

At one point, Democratic Sen. Chris Larson pointed out the Senate has a rule for male members to wear jackets but not face masks after Senate President Chris Kapenga asked him to change his attire.

“Just to be clear, we have a requirement for a jacket but we don’t have one for a mask — is that accurate?” Larson responded. “Correct,” Kapenga replied.

Andrea Salcedo reports South Dakota AG pushed by critics to resign over new evidence in fatal car incident: ‘He knew what he hit and he lied’:

Days after South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg fatally struck a man while driving in September, detectives told the Republican official they had found a pair of broken reading glasses inside his Ford Taurus. They belonged to the man he killed.

That was a problem, detectives said, because Ravnsborg, 44, said he didn’t know he had hit a man until the following day, when he returned to the scene and found the body of Joseph Boever, 55, in a ditch.

“They’re Joe’s glasses, so that means his face came through your windshield,” one of the detectives said in an interview released by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety on Tuesday.

The interviews raise questions about the conduct of the state’s top law enforcement official in the Sept. 12 incident, giving fuel to a chorus of lawmakers demanding he leave office. On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers filed two articles of impeachment against Ravnsborg, who has since been charged with three misdemeanors, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) called for his resignation.

But Ravnsborg said that he will not step down. “At no time has this issue impeded his ability to do the work of the office,” Mike Deaver, his private spokesman, said in a statement to the Argus Leader.

(If it should be true that a state attorney general can lie during an investigation without impediment to his job, then his job has no connection to law and justice.)

What’s Wrong With The Unemployment Rate?: