Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:29 PM, for 13h 05m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred eightieth day.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1865, Battle of Spanish Fort, Alabama, ends:
While the main Union army was chasing Robert E. Lee across Virginia, other Union forces, including the 8th, 11th, 14th, 20th, 23rd, 27th, 28th, 29th, 33rd, and 35th Wisconsin Infantry regiments, captured Spanish Fort and seized control of Mobile Bay, Alabama.
Recommended for reading in full:
John Weaver, a Republican opposed to Trump, observes of departing Trump cabinet officer Kirstjen Nielsen:
Under no circumstances feel sorry for
@SecNielsen She defended the policy desires of two psychopaths: Trump & that Miller, upping the ante to keep her job by putting children in cages, losing them in a “system,” & separating families. No major company can or should hire her.
(Her only economic and social prospects will come from disreputable organizations and people; she will live the rest of her life despised by normal society.)
Stephanie Baker reports Where Rudy Giuliani’s Money Comes From (“While he represents the president for free, he travels the world consulting, giving speeches, and building his brand”):
Long lauded as the prosecutor who skewered the New York Mafia and once known as “America’s mayor” for leading New York after Sept. 11, Giuliani is still courting clients for security contracts such as the one in Kharkiv. He’s made millions of dollars while acting as Trump’s unpaid consigliere—$9.5 million in 2017 and $5 million in 2018, according to disclosures from his ongoing divorce proceedings with his third wife, Judith Nathan. At the age of 74, Giuliani has eschewed a quiet retirement in favor of life in the limelight. “If I retired, I would shrivel up,” he said. “What I do is enormously exciting.” In addition to Ukraine, in the past two years he’s given speeches and done consulting and legal work in Armenia, Bahrain, Brazil, Colombia, Turkey, and Uruguay, among other countries.
Much about the Trump presidency is unprecedented, but Giuliani’s role is particularly unusual. His work abroad led seven Democratic senators in September to request that the U.S. Department of Justice review whether he should be disclosing his activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires registration by individuals and organizations acting as agents of foreign principals “in a political or quasi political capacity.” FARA was rarely a hot topic until 2017, when Mueller indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates for failing to register as foreign agents as required.
“As President Trump’s personal attorney, Mr. Giuliani communicates in private with the president and his senior staff on a regular basis,” the senators wrote to the Justice Department. “Without further review, it is impossible to know whether Mr. Giuliani is lobbying U.S. government officials on behalf of foreign clients.”