Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of sixty, with a likelihood of thunder showers later in the day. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 5:51 PM, for 11h 31m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1912, the first Oreo cookie is sold to a grocer in Hoboken, New Jersey. On this day in 1862, the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry (then an infantry unit) embarks to join the “Army of the Gulf.” It later arrives below New Orleans on March 12th, and lands in New Orleans on May 1st.
Recommended for reading in full —
Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker report Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations: “Trump’s young presidency has existed in a perpetual state of chaos. The issue of Russia has distracted from what was meant to be his most triumphant moment: his address last Tuesday to a joint session of Congress. And now his latest unfounded accusation — that Barack Obama tapped Trump’s phones during last fall’s campaign — had been denied by the former president and doubted by both allies and fellow Republicans.”
Michael Schmidt and Michael Shear report that Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim: “WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement. Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said. A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment. Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness.”
Jennifer Rubin asks of Trump: Bonkers, paranoid or trapped?: “There are several explanations — not necessarily mutually exclusive — for the latest outburst from the president. First, he is increasingly out of touch with reality. Just as he obsessed over the crowd size at his inauguration and the fictional illegal voters upward of 3 million, Trump’s mammoth ego cannot take the daily drumbeat of attacks and accusations. When adversity strikes — as it did with new allegations concerning Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was forced to recuse himself from any campaign-related investigation — he becomes unhinged and paranoid. He can stick to a teleprompter speech for an hour, but soon reverts to form. A variation on the first possibility would be that Trump correctly realizes the intelligence community has a good deal more information on what contacts his associates had with Russians than he does. A New York Times story last week confirmed that the intelligence community also has intercepts of Russian officials discussing their contacts with Trump associates. Trump, under this theory, is panicked.”
Jeff Potrykus reports on UW 66, Minnesota 49: Koenig leads second-half surge: “UW, having lost five of its last six games, had just capped off its second consecutive solid practice. Gard believed if the Badgers took that energy and execution to the court Sunday against Minnesota, they would have an outstanding chance to close the regular season with a critical victory. Gard’s assessment was spot on as the Badgers stayed within striking distance over the first 20 minutes and then, led by senior guard Bronson Koenig, dominated the second half en route to an impressive 66-49 victory in front of a roaring crowd of 17,287. “As I told the team, it’s been a rough two weeks,” Gard said. “But I couldn’t be more proud of a group of 17 young men that stuck together, circled the wagons, had each other’s back and had to come through some tough times.”
It’s not just a model of a fruit bat, it’s a Lego Bat: