Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 5:25 AM and sunset 8:17 PM, for 14h 51m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 43.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at noon, her Urban Forestry Commission at 4:30 PM, and the Library Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1673, Marquette and Joliet reach the Menominee:
On or about May 21, 1673, Fr. Jacques Marquette, fur-trader Louis Joliet, and five French voyageurs pulled into a Menominee community near modern Marinette, Mich. Marquette wrote that when the Menominee learned that he and Joliet intended to try to descend the Mississippi River all the way to the sea
“They were greatly surprised to hear it, and did their best to dissuade me. They represented to me that I should meet nations who never show mercy to strangers, but break their heads without any cause; and that war was kindled between various peoples who dwelt upon our route, which exposed us to the further manifest danger of being killed by the bands of warriors who are ever in the field. They also said that the great river was very dangerous, when one does not know the difficult places; that it was full of horrible monsters, which devoured men and canoes together; that there was even a demon, who was heard from a great distance, who barred the way, and swallowed up all who ventured to approach him; finally that the heat was so excessive in those countries that it would inevitably cause our death.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Dee J. Hall reports Wisconsin Man, Casualty Of Flawed Hair Forensics, Latest To Be Exonerated:Jennifer Rubin observes A sorry end to Paul Ryan’s speakership:A Wisconsin man who spent two decades in prison based in part on flawed FBI forensic work has been cleared of rape, battery and burglary charges, the latest in a series of exonerations around the country based on the now-discredited technique of microscopic hair comparison.
Dane County Circuit Judge Nicholas McNamara approved a motion by the Dane County District Attorney’s Office on Thursday to dismiss all charges against Richard Beranek, 59. In the motion, the prosecution said while it still has a “strong belief” in Beranek’s guilt, it was dropping the charges to spare the victim of the 1987 home invasion and sexual assault from additional trauma.
On Friday, attorneys for Beranek said the dismissal came just days after DNA testing on crime scene evidence “revealed a distinct male DNA profile that was not Mr. Beranek’s.”
Rachael Bade reports GOP builds massive shadow army in fight for the House:House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s last year in office is proving disastrous, a fitting end to the speakership of a man once considered a principled conservative reformer. His refusal to fulfill his constitutional role as leader of the House but rather play the role of presidential poodle and Republican attack dog for his increasingly unhinged caucus has had dire consequences for the GOP House majority, the intelligence oversight process and the broader conservative movement.
Among his most egregious failures has been his refusal to rein in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who, in concert with the White House, created a phony “unmasking” scandal and released a misleading memo casting aspersions on the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in connection with the warrant to conduct surveillance on suspected spy Carter Page. As Nunes’s crowd, together with the president, now threatens to reveal a secret FBI and CIA source, in an unprecedented breach of the House’s intelligence oversight responsibilities, the extent of Ryan’s reckless disregard for his oath becomes clear.
Republicans have amassed a sprawling shadow field organization to defend the House this fall, spending tens of millions of dollars in an unprecedented effort to protect dozens of battleground districts that will determine control of the chamber.
The initiative by the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), now includes 34 offices running mini-campaigns for vulnerable Republicans throughout the country. It has built its own in-house research and data teams and recruited 4,000 student volunteers, who have knocked on more than 10 million doors since February 2017.
The operation far eclipses the group’s activity in any previous election, when CLF didn’t have a single volunteer or field office. At this time last election cycle, the group had raised $2 million. As of Tuesday, CLF — which markets itself to donors as a super PAC dedicated to saving the House majority and can collect contributions with no dollar limit — had hauled in more than $71 million.
(There every day between now and November will be a hard slog.)
David Frum writes Trump Can’t Afford to Admit His Failures With North Korea (“The administration has no choice now but to carry on the pretense that the negotiations are proceeding favorably”):Sunshields & Nukes: What We Need to Terraform Venus and Mars:Think of the past few months of President Trump’s Korea policy as a drama, unfolding in multiple acts.
Act I: Trump impulsively agrees to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Perhaps unaware that the North Koreans have sought such a summit meeting for decades, Trump boasts that he has extracted a major concession.
Act II: Trump gradually comes to appreciate that he has been duped. To prove that he’s a winner, not a fool, he begins to oversell the summit, promising that the denuclearization of North Korea is at hand.
Act III: The North Koreans issue a public statement refuting Trump’s boasts. No, they will not denuclearize. And oh, by the way, it’s Trump who must pay tribute to them, not the other way around: If he wants his summit, he should cancel joint U.S.–South Korean exercises.
We’re in Act IV right now—and Act V has yet to be written.
As of midday on May 16, the Trump administration was reacting to the embarrassment of Act III by denying that anything untoward has happened. Throughout his career, Trump has coped with failure by brazenly misrepresenting failure as success.