Good morning.
Mother’s Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 38m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1796, English physician and scientist Edward Jenner successfully tests a smallpox vaccine. On this day in 1953, Milwaukee brewery workers begin a ten-week strike.
Recommended for reading in full —
Philip Rucker observes that White House ‘systems failed’ with Comey firing, but Trump pushed the buttons:
In deciding to abruptly fire FBI Director James B. Comey, President Trump characteristically let himself be guided by his own instincts — fueled by his creeping anger and sense of victimhood about a probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that he considers a “witch hunt.”
The aftermath is a presidency rocked by its most serious self-inflicted crisis yet, exposing dysfunction and distrust within his West Wing and imperiling his agenda. The momentum for the health-care bill that passed the House is gone, and a week scheduled to be devoted to Trump’s preparations for a high-stakes foreign trip was overtaken by distractions and fury…
Conservative Max Boot wonders When Will Republicans Stand Up to Trump?:
If the controversy over the firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. director, has done anything, it has confirmed my decision on Nov. 9 to leave the Republican Party after a lifetime as a loyal member.
The Republican Party was once the party of small government, free trade, traditional values, principled foreign policy leadership and, most important of all, adherence to the Constitution. Republicans spent decades fulminating against activist judges like Earl Warren and activist politicians like Barack Obama, claiming they were undermining the founders’ vision of limited government.
And then, the party sold its soul to the soulless charlatan who now occupies the Oval Office and makes a mockery of every one of the party’s principles…
(I’d answer Boot by contending that they won’t stand up to him, or abandon him, regardless of what he does.)
James Fallows gives Five Reasons the Comey Affair Is Worse Than Watergate (“A journalist who covered Nixon’s fall 45 years ago explains why the current challenge to America may be more severe—and the democratic system less capable of handling it.):
So I’ve been thinking about comparisons between Watergate and the murky, fast-changing Comey-Russia-Flynn-Trump affair. As with anything involving Donald Trump, we have no idea where this will lead, what is “true,” and when the next bombshell will go off.
But based simply on what is known so far, this scandal looks worse than Watergate. Worse for and about the president. Worse for the overall national interest. Worse in what it suggests about the American democratic system’s ability to defend itself. Here is a summary of some reasons why….
Karin Bruillard writes of the path From death row to adoption: Saving animals by car, van, bus and even plane:
SAN FERNANDO, Calif. — May was supposed to be dead by now. The charcoal-and-white pit bull mix had languished for more than two months at a high-kill animal shelter in east Los Angeles County, and though she’d passed one “temperament test” required for adoption, she failed a second. That essentially put her on death row at the facility.
But a small rescue group got to May first and reserved her a spot on a school bus that would take her 840 miles north to Eugene, Ore.; there, another rescue had pledged to find her a home. And so on a sunny Saturday morning, she bounded up the steps of the red bus and quickly settled into a large crate near the back.
She had plenty of company as the wheels rolled along the highway: 105 other dogs and cats collected from crowded shelters in California and destined for the Pacific Northwest, where euthanasia rates are lower and pets are in greater demand…
Tech Insider shows how astronauts carry out simple, every day tasks in space: