Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of nineteen. Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 5:19 PM, for 10h 17m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 18.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred twenty-second day.
On this day in 1870, Pres. Grant signs a joint resolution authorizing a national weather service, long a dream of Milwaukee scientist Increase Lapham:
Lapham, 19th-century Wisconsin’s premier natural scientist, proposed a national weather service after he mapped data contributed over telegraph lines in the Upper Midwest and realized that weather might be predicted in advance.
Recommended for reading in full:
David Glovin and Andrew Martin report Manafort Prosecutors Have Questions About $1 Million Condo Loan:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to know more about a $1 million loan made to Paul Manafort’s family in the days after the FBI raided his home.
Mueller’s prosecutors on Thursday told a court they needed to know more about the August 2017 loan, from a Nevada company called Woodlawn LLC. Manafort, the onetime chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign, guaranteed the loan, which was secured by the family’s interest in a Manhattan condominium, according to court papers.
As Manafort’s legal problems escalated, Woodlawn installed a Hollywood bit player named Joey Rappa as its “managing member” in public filings. The investor or investors funding the loan wanted to remain anonymous given the potential for embarrassment, according to a lawyer for the lender.
Now that prosecutors are seeking to seize the condo after Manafort’s conviction on tax- and bank-fraud charges, Woodlawn is staking a claim to it in order to collect on the debt.
But one riddle remains: Who actually funded the $1 million loan?
Aaron Blake assesses What we learned from the Matthew G. Whitaker hearing:
Whitaker might not have revealed anything disastrous, but he was an unsteady witness. At the start of the hearing, he decided to tell the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), that Nadler had exceeded his allotted five minutes for questions, earning gasps and laughter from those assembled. He repeatedly told members that this was an oversight hearing and not a confirmation hearing, even though they were generally asking him about the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III (over which he has oversight). He repeatedly and obviously stalled by avoiding easy yes-or-no questions or not answering at all. He often referred to how little fun he was having during the hearing and how little time he had left in his job, given Barr has a confirmation vote next week.
None of it inspired much confidence from the nation’s active leading law enforcement official. There are ways to deftly maneuver these things without giving away too much (as Barr showed us in his confirmation hearing). But Whitaker seemed to be holding on for dear life, intent to run out the clock — both during questioning and on his time as acting attorney general.