Good morning.
Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:06 PM, for 14h 30m 16s of daytime. The moon is full today, with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1933, Nazi-inspired students and others in Berlin burned 25,000 supposedly ‘un-German’ books (with other book burings take place thereafter). On this day in 1865, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry was sent to search for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Along with a Michigan unit, they captured the Confederate president in Irwinville, Georgia.
Recommended for reading (or re-reading) in full —
Jennifer Rubin asks key questions around The one thing we know for sure about Comey’s firing:
“If Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, how and why did he make the recommendation to fire Comey?
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein laid out a convincing case as to why Comey acted improperly and unfairly to Clinton last July. However, Trump thought Comey should have prosecuted her, so why would Trump now object that Comey had been unfair to his nemesis?
How is Trump to select the person who will be investigating whether his campaign colluded with Russia during the campaign without invalidating the entire process?
When was the decision to fire Comey made: before or after this week’s testimony?
Will Comey be able to preserve evidence he collected so as to defuse suspicion this is a giant coverup?
Will Comey testify about the status of his investigation as of Tuesday?
….The only thing we can say with any confidence is that this will never be a “normal” presidency without controversy, scandal and a fair amount of mayhem.”
Sarah Kendzior, via sarahkendzior.com and @sarahkendzior, for her work on authoritarianism, both for a general audience (sarahkendzior.com/opinion) and for her academic publications (sarahkendzior.com/scholarly_publications).
Brendan Nyhan, via brendan-nyhan.com, dartmouth.edu/~nyhan, and @BrendanNyhan, for his work for a general audience (brendan-nyhan.com) and for his academic publications (dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/).
David Frum, How to Build an Autocracy.
Sometimes courage makes the difference, as when a Dog Chases a Large Bear: