Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:24 AM and sunset 7:28 PM, for 13h 04m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 19.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1827, John Walker, an English chemist, sells the first friction match that he had invented the previous year.
Recommended for reading in full —
Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman, and Nicholas Fandos report Matt Gaetz, Loyal for Years to Trump, Is Said to Have Sought a Blanket Pardon:
Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, was one of President Donald J. Trump’s most vocal allies during his term, publicly pledging loyalty and even signing a letter nominating the president for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Gaetz sought something in return. He privately asked the White House for blanket pre-emptive pardons for himself and unidentified congressional allies for any crimes they may have committed, according to two people told of the discussions.
Around that time, Mr. Gaetz was also publicly calling for broad pardons from Mr. Trump to thwart what he termed the “bloodlust” of their political opponents. But Justice Department investigators had begun questioning Mr. Gaetz’s associates about his conduct, including whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old that violated sex trafficking laws, in an inquiry that grew out of the case of an indicted associate in Florida.
Alexandra Petri writes This should not happen more than once:
There are several details of the Matt Gaetz story that keep sticking in my head, but the one that sticks in it most is the report that the Florida Republican used to wander around and show his colleagues nude photos of people he had slept with. There’s a kind of grim weirdness to the idea of these interactions (which Gaetz denies) — a very “I Read On eHow.com That Men Bond Over Conquests” bewilderment. The callousness and the violation involved are enough of a sock to the gut. But the fact that this was allegedly known about him is what keeps getting to me. The fact that this, or something in this neighborhood of bad, occasioned senior staff from then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) office to have a talk with Gaetz about professional behavior.
….
To me, this is something you do, ideally, zero times. You never experience the impulse to do it, and you lead a pleasant life. You travel. You eat lunchmeat sandwiches. Maybe you do a marathon, or climb something. You lead a blithe existence for many decades, you die in your bed in your mid-nineties surrounded by your cherished relatives, and in all that time, you never walk up to a colleague on the floor of the House of Representatives and out of nowhere present him with a nude photograph of someone you claim to have had sex with.
But if you can’t do it zero times, then ideally it happens only once. It happens only once, because the moment you do it, the person you show it to responds the way a person should respond. You produce your photograph to your colleague, and your colleague looks at you and says, “Never show that to anyone, ever again. Go home and rethink your life. I do not feel closer to you. If anything, I want to have you removed forcibly from my presence by strong gentlemen whose biceps are tattooed with ‘MOM.’The fact that you thought this would make us closer makes me question every decision in my life that has led me to this point. Leave now and never come back.”