Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:47 AM and sunset 8:15 PM for 14h 28m 14s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1893, Henry Perky patents shredded wheat.
By Pete Unseth – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30447764
Some have spotted a molehill and think they’ve sighted a mountain. Over at the Journal Sentinel, Molly Beck & Daniel Bice focus on a minor tale about the new Wisconsin Supreme Court majority’s possible replacement of the director of the state courts system. Beck & Bice report New liberal majority on state Supreme Court to fire director of state court system:
The new liberal majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is taking its first step by firing the director of the state courts system.
Randy Koschnick, who has held the position since 2017 when he was appointed by the outgoing conservative majority, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he received a phone call Monday afternoon from Justice Jill Karofsky informing him there were enough votes to “fire you tomorrow.”
Koschnick received the call a day before a swearing in ceremony for the court’s newest justice, Janet Protasiewicz, was set to take place in the Wisconsin state Capitol.
“It’s a wrecking ball,” Koschnick said of the move. “I’m not sure what my options are. I’m still exploring my options. I’d like to continue to serve.”
That’s not a ‘wrecking ball,’ but rather common practice to replace an appointee from time to time, and Koschnick (defeated as a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate in 2009) received his appointment in 2017 more as a consolation prize for running against Chief Justice Abrahamson in ’09 as much as anything else. (If Beck & Bice think Koschnick’s experience in Jefferson County made him the best person in the entire state to serve as court administrator they may be fooling themselves but they’re fooling no readers.)
Koschnick has been lucky, in fact, that he found a conservative majority willing to give him another six years (2017-2023) on the state payroll after he left the Jefferson County bench.
What’s in the Night Sky August 2023: