Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see a morning thundershower and a high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1215, King John of England agrees to, and so places his seal on, the Magna Carta.
Recommended for reading in full —
Keegan Kyle reports Wisconsin county left 26 rape kits untested when Attorney General Schimel was the DA:
WAUKESHA – As Waukesha County district attorney, Brad Schimel allowed at least 26 rape kits to remain untested, adding to a statewide backlog he is now vowing to clear out as Wisconsin attorney general.
In one case with an untested kit, a 3-year-old girl’s parents worried she was molested at a party. In another, a teen reported falling asleep and waking up to a friend raping her. In a third, a homeless mother reported being raped at a motel near popular shopping centers.
USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin identified the 26 kits by obtaining more than a dozen documents from Waukesha County police agencies under state open records laws. They are among 86 rape kits left untested in Waukesha County since 2002.
See also, from Keegan on 6.14.18, Delays, blunders and police neglect in Wisconsin’s response to rape kits.
Garry Kasparov ponders World Cup 2018 and the ugly side of the beautiful game:
It’s just as clear why FIFA and the IOC like having their events hosted by autocratic regimes, despite their tired pabulum about ideals. In the wake of the Sepp Blatter-era corruption scandals, FIFA is moving to make the World Cup bidding process more transparent. This is laudable, although my personal experience battling the international chess federation, FIDE, taught that these transparency initiatives are often designed to buy time to find better ways to hide the money. International sports organizations often exploit a legal limbo between jurisdictions, a quasi-diplomatic status that is easily abused.
What is to be done? As a sportsman who represented my country for decades, the Soviet Union and then Russia — and yes, chess is sport if you’re doing it right — I have trouble with boycotts that unfairly punish athletes. Had a unified international response against Russia hosting the World Cup come early enough it might have been possible to relocate it. Qatar is still scheduled to host the Cup in 2022 despite numerous abuses and scandals, and after North Korea’s propaganda coup at the PyeongChang Winter Games this year, it’s clear that collective response is a lost cause.
Everyone moves on to the next event, the next crisis. Russia has already been forgiven for the worst doping scandal in history. FIFA’s massive 2015 corruption case is still in the courts.
In Sochi, activists used the international media presence to expose Russia’s anti-LGBTQ laws, although Putin was quick to clamp down as soon as the Games were over. An environmental activist arrested during the Games was put in prison for two years for spray-painting a protest message on a fence.
But during the World Cup, the police might be relatively cautious in handling foreign visitors and journalists. The bold should exploit this to peek behind the curtain and report truthfully on the dire conditions in Russia.
We can support the beautiful game without supporting the world’s ugliest regimes.
Michael E. Miller, Emma Brown, and Aaron C. Davis report Inside Casa Padre, the converted Walmart where the U.S. is holding nearly 1,500 immigrant children:
BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — For more than a year, the old Walmart along the Mexican border here has been a mystery to those driving by on the highway. In place of the supercenter’s trademark logo hangs a curious sign: “Casa Padre.”
But behind the sliding doors is a bustling city unto itself, equipped with classrooms, recreation centers and medical examination rooms. Casa Padre now houses more than 1,400 immigrant boys in federal custody. While most are teenagers who entered the United States alone, dozens of others — often younger — were forcibly separated from their parents at the border by a new Trump administration “zero tolerance” policy.
On Wednesday evening, for the first time since that policy was announced — and amid increased national interest after a U.S. senator, Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, was turned away — federal authorities allowed a small group of reporters to tour the secretive shelter, the largest of its kind in the nation.
Matt Wilstein writes ‘Daily Show’ Exposes Sean Hannity’s Trump-Kim Hypocrisy:
Fox News host Sean Hannity has been as enthusiastically supportive of President Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as you would expect. And the president rewarded him handsomely with an interview from Singapore that will air Tuesday night.
But as The Daily Show expertly demonstrated in an online-only video that hit Twitter just as Hannity’s broadcast began, he was not quite as supportive of handing diplomatic victories to murderous dictators when Barack Obama was in office.
For instance, Hannity said Trump “deserves a lot of credit for being willing to talk to somebody that everybody thought would be a bad idea.” And yet, after Obama shook hands with Raul Castro for the first time in 2013 at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa, Hannity asked, “Is it just me or does it look like President Obama is more willing to give his time to our enemies than our allies?”
Sean Hannity EVISCERATES Sean Hannity pic.twitter.com/EOxp0FSrAR
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) June 13, 2018