Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a high of eighty-five, and a likelihood of evening thunderstorms. Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 17m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
The Downtown Whitewater Board meets at 8:00 AM, the CDA Board at 5:30 PM, and the Parks & Recreation Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 2007, the iPhone first went on sale. On this day in 1862, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry and Co. G of the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters take part in the Battle of Savage’s Station, Virginia.
Recommended for reading in full —
Dan Friedman writes Sorry, Fox News: Legal Experts Say Trump Collusion With Russia Could Be a Crime:
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump’s defenders have been pushing a curious new line: Even if Trump and his presidential campaign colluded with Russia’s secret operation to subvert the 2016 campaign, that would not be illegal. Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume made this argument during a panel Sunday, saying, “Collusion, while it obviously would be alarming and highly inappropriate for the Trump campaign…it’s not a crime.” He added, “Can anyone identify the crime?”
Well, yes, somebody can. Ten lawyers queried, including academics, former prosecutors, and defense attorneys familiar with federal election and hacking laws, cite more than a dozen federal statutes that prosecutors could use to charge someone who collaborated with Russian intelligence to influence the 2016 election.
“There is a whole plethora of areas of potential criminal liability,” says Tor Ekeland, a defense attorney who has represented clients in high-profile hacking cases in federal and New York courts. “To say that there is none is just willful ignorance in the service of propaganda.”
Kevin Delaney writes that Sally Yates says the US needs more than a special counsel to get to the bottom of the Trump-Russia affair:
Sally Yates, the former acting US attorney general, says she has deep confidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between president Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. But she cautions that Mueller’s team has a narrow remit.
“Bob Mueller is going to be deciding whether or not crimes were committed, to be used for prosecution or impeachment,” Yates said onstage at the Aspen Ideas Festival today. “Surely that’s not our bar. That’s not the standard of conduct we’re looking for from our president or our administration. It shouldn’t just be whether you committed a felony or not. It should also be whether or not you’re observing the kind of norms that we’ve been talking about that are so essential to really the fabric of the rule of law.”
Philip Bump reports that Trump’s pledge to keep the world from laughing at us hits another setback:
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was supposed to attend this week’s Economic Council of the Christian Democratic Union meeting in Berlin, but suddenly canceled his travel plans on Tuesday. Ross was scheduled to give an address at the conference immediately before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, so he instead gave his remarks by teleconference from Washington.
Ross was allotted 10 minutes to speak. After he spoke for more than 20, the conference organizers cut his feed mid-sentence. The audience “laughed and clapped” in response, according to Bloomberg News. Merkel then rose and, during her remarks, disagreed with one of Ross’s points….
Nicole Perlroth and David Sanger report that Hacks Raise Fear Over N.S.A.’s Hold on Cyberweapons:
Twice in the past month, National Security Agency cyberweapons stolen from its arsenal have been turned against two very different partners of the United States — Britain and Ukraine.
The N.S.A. has kept quiet, not acknowledging its role in developing the weapons. White House officials have deflected many questions, and responded to others by arguing that the focus should be on the attackers themselves, not the manufacturer of their weapons.
But the silence is wearing thin for victims of the assaults, as a series of escalating attacks using N.S.A. cyberweapons have hit hospitals, a nuclear site and American businesses. Now there is growing concern that United States intelligence agencies have rushed to create digital weapons that they cannot keep safe from adversaries or disable once they fall into the wrong hands.
Here’s an answer to the odd but intriguing question Does the UK Really Experience Massive Power Surges When Soap Operas Finish from People Making Tea?