Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 0.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 5:26 PM, for 10h 34m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Hope Kirwan reports UW-Platteville Receives Approval For What Will Be Wisconsin’s Largest State-Owned Solar Array:

The university received approval from the State Building Commission this week to build a 2.4-megawatt solar array. The array will be located on 5 acres in the campus’ Memorial Park.

Amy Seeboth-Wilson, UW-Platteville’s sustainability coordinator, said construction will begin this spring, and the project is scheduled to be operational by October.

….

The project is expected to offset campus electricity use by 17 percent, saving the university $217,000 annually and reducing carbon emissions by 2,300 tons per year.

Seeboth-Wilson said the current largest state-owned solar project is a 47.1-kilowatt array at UW-Oshkosh’s Sage Hall. The new array at UW-Platteville will be 50 times larger than that project.

Sam Levin and Lauren Gambino report Trump acquittal: Biden urges vigilance to defend ‘fragile’ democracy after impeachment trial:

US president Joe Biden has urged Americans to defend democracy following the acquittal of Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial, saying: “This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile.”

In a statement on Saturday night, Biden said the substance of the charge against his predecessor over the Capitol riot on 6 January in which five people died was not in dispute, and noted the seven Republicans who voted guilty.

“Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate minority leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and ‘practically and morally responsible for provoking’ the violence unleashed on the Capitol,” he said.

Remembering those who fought to protect democratic institutions that day, he added: “This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant … Each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”

 Waverly Long reports University reviewing Uline contract after CEO funded PAC that supported U.S. Capitol insurrection:

The University [Northwestern] is reviewing its contract with Uline and will make a decision on “how to best move forward” after connections surfaced between the company and the Capitol invasion, a University spokesperson told The Daily.

After seeing a WBEZ report that Uline CEO Dick Uihlein contributed over $4 million to the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative political action committee that supported the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a Northwestern alum emailed administrators, calling on NU to end its contract with Uline.

“Northwestern competitively bids and negotiates agreements for the goods and services needed regularly by departments and schools on campus,” the University spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily. “We have a vendor screening process that we follow for each contract, and when we become aware of concerns about the social responsibility of companies we partner with, we review that information to determine what next steps may be warranted.”

Uihlein, a billionaire businessman from the Chicago area, is the single biggest donor to the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The PAC participated in the “March to Save America” rally that preceded the violent attack at the Capitol and was also part of the “Stop the Steal” coalition, according to WBEZ.

(Northwestern is a private school.)

One Billion Flowers:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 5.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 5:25 PM, for 10h 32m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1981, a series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Kelly Myerhofer reports UW System looking at consolidation between UW branch campuses, technical colleges:

[UW System Pres. Tommy] Thompson has added another item to his agenda, one that could reshape public higher education in Wisconsin: Exploring the possibility of consolidation between the System’s branch campuses and Wisconsin Technical College System institutions.

What the consolidation would entail — whether it be physical buildings, academic programs, administrative services or some other combination — isn’t clear. Thompson said all options, including declining to pursue anything, are on the table, stressing that the idea is in its infancy.

“We have a lot of buildings, lot of duplication and I want to sit down, discuss it and come up with a solution,” he said in an interview. “I’m not saying one (system) is better or one should be the only survivor. I’m saying let’s discuss it before the problem gets any worse.”

….

Thompson is pitching the possibility as the System’s branch campuses operate under existential threat because of rising costs, declining state support and tuition that has been frozen for 13 of the past 15 years.

A 2018 restructuring placing the campuses under the authority of various four-year institutions has kept the campuses afloat but done little to stem the steep decline in student enrollment. At UW-Platteville Richland last fall, total headcount was 108 students.

Mary Spicuzza reports Kenosha County says it’s cracking down on Illinois residents crossing the border for vaccine appointments:

Kenosha County says it’s cracking down to make sure out-of-state line jumpers aren’t getting shots of COVID-19 vaccine at clinics in the county, which is located along the Illinois border.

“Our vaccination clinics are for Kenosha County residents 65+ and in the 1A category, or people in those categories who work in Kenosha County,” Kenosha Health Officer Jen Freiheit said in a statement. “We are trying our best to discourage non-residents and some might have slipped through, but we are working to crack down on that going forward.”

Freiheit added: “While we want to get as many shots in arms as possible, Kenosha County residents are our priority.”

Freiheit’s comments come after a woman contacted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to report some family members, including a couple in their 50s who live in the Chicago suburbs — and don’t work in Wisconsin — were able to book appointments with the Kenosha County Division of Health and get doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in Kenosha.

Philip Bump reports Once impeachment is over, the threat to Trump shifts to real courtrooms:

For example, we learned this week that investigators in Georgia were beginning the process of potentially bringing charges against Trump for another facet of his impeachment: his effort to get Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes in the state to give Trump a victory there in the 2020 presidential contest. (Secretary Brad Raffensperger declined to do so.)

It’s unlikely that this will result in charges, but it’s not a casual investigation. Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) explained that her office’s probe extends beyond the recorded call with Raffensperger first obtained by The Washington Post last month. The investigation being led by Willis is also separate from a similar one initiated at the state level.

 Mars arrivals, ‘Farfarout’ object and more this week:

Martian moon projected into night sky over UAE, China enters Mars orbit and captures footage, ‘Farfarout’ is now the farthest observed object in our solar system, and a collection of black holes is discovered by Hubble.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 8.  Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 5:23 PM, for 10h 29m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1932, Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected for a full term to the United States Senate.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Patrick Marley reports Businesses tied to Speaker Robin Vos and other lawmakers could see taxes cut after they took PPP loans:

Businesses owned by Wisconsin lawmakers stand to benefit from legislation they will take up as soon as next week that would cut taxes for employers who received Paycheck Protection Program loans.

At least six legislators or their families have an ownership stake in businesses that received PPP loans, records show.

Among them are Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and Republican Sen. Joan Ballweg of Markesan, who as a member of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee voted in favor of the tax cut on Wednesday.

 Todd Richmond reports Wisconsin biologist charged with lying about caviar scheme:

Prosecutors charged the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ top sturgeon expert [Ryan Koenigs] Thursday with obstructing an investigation into allegations that his employees have been funneling the valuable fish’s eggs to a network of caviar processors under the guise of a scientific study.

….

Investigators interviewed Koenigs in January 2020. He told them that DNR registration workers collect eggs as part of a fertility study. If a spearer wants the eggs back, the workers won’t collect them or they’ll return them after they’ve been studied, Koenigs said.

Investigators asked him why workers at a registration station were putting eggs in a cooler marked for a caviar processor. Koenigs said he didn’t know the processor, that staff shouldn’t be taking custody of eggs and that he didn’t know the processor kept a cooler at the station.

He said he had never called the processor. When the investigators showed him phone records confirming that Koenigs had in fact done so in May 2018, he said he didn’t know what he and the processor discussed, but that he was sure it wasn’t sturgeon eggs.

Alan Feuer reports Oath Keepers Plotting Before Capitol Riot Awaited ‘Direction’ From Trump, Prosecutors Say:

The new accounts about the Oath Keepers’ role in the Capitol assault came on the third day of former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial and included allegations that a member of the militia group was “awaiting direction” from Mr. Trump about how to handle the results of the vote in the days that followed the election. “POTUS has the right to activate units too,” the Oath Keepers member, Jessica M. Watkins, wrote in a text message to an associate on Nov. 9, according to court papers. “If Trump asks me to come, I will.”

….

In a pair of court papers filed on Thursday, prosecutors offered further evidence that the three Oath Keepers planned the attack, citing text messages reaching back to November. In one message from Nov. 16, prosecutors say, Mr. Crowl told Mr. Caldwell, “War is on the horizon.” One week later, court papers say, Mr. Caldwell wrote Ms. Watkins saying he was “worried about the future of our country,” adding, “I believe we will have to get violent to stop this.”

Similar themes were also being struck around the same time by the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, who told the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Nov. 10 that he had men stationed outside Washington prepared to act at Mr. Trump’s command.

French village inherits 2 million euros from Austrian Jewish man it sheltered during WWII:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 8.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 5:22 PM, for 10h 26m 51s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1842, there is a shooting in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature when Rep. Vineyard draws his revolver and shoots Rep. Arndt.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Corrinne Hess reports Community-Based Vaccine Clinic In Rock County Aims To Reach People Without Regular Health Care Access:

Wisconsin is opening its first community-based coronavirus vaccination clinic aimed at reaching people who don’t have access to regular health care. It’s set to start operating at Blackhawk Technical College in Rock County on Tuesday.

The state Department of Health Services is partnering with Virginia-based AMI Expeditionary Healthcare, which will run the clinic. DHS is hoping to work with AMI on six to 10 additional community vaccination clinics across the state as more vaccine becomes available.

On Wednesday, Gov. Tony Evers toured Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, praising the new initiative as a “labor of love.” But Evers said the clinic will start slow, much like many of the 1,500 existing vaccine sites across the state.

“The ability to have supply is critical,” Evers said. “There are lots of people in the state to vaccinate, and we need the supply. If doses stay flat, that’s a problem. We’re opening this great facility, and (doses) come from the state allocation.”

Catharine Smith reports ‘The sewage is in plain sight’: the majority-Black town fighting a sanitation crisis:

For decades, residents of Centreville, a nearly all-Black town of 5,000 in southern Illinois, just a 12-minute drive from downtown East St Louis, have been dealing with persistent flooding and sewage overflows. The smell of it is in the air all over town after a rain, and bits of soggy toilet paper and slicks of human waste cling to the grass in neighborhoods where children used to play on warm days, locals said. Kids don’t play outside any more. Gardens don’t grow.

Like Smith, other locals say their water tastes odd and refuse to drink from their taps, relying on donated shipments of bottled water. They worry about the long-term health effects of living under such conditions, and they say that for years elected officials and local utility companies inadequately addressed their cries for help.

Residents and environmental justice advocates also believe that these issues persist because the town is one of the poorest in America, with a median household income of less than $15,000 a year and almost half of residents living below the poverty line. They contend that authorities at the local and state level might have addressed wastewater problems long ago if the area was wealthier and more influential.

Michael Scherer reports State and local GOP committees attack any Republicans who dare turn on Trump:

The Louisiana Republican Party sharply denounced Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) when he surprised the state by voting Tuesday to support the constitutionality of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

In an unsigned statement, the party declared itself “profoundly disappointed” that its own elected leader, the most senior Louisiana Republican in Washington, would support a “kangaroo court” that amounted to an “attack on the very foundation of American democracy.”

But Cassidy, who just started a six-year term after being reelected by a 40-point margin, did not appear bothered by the threat of grass-roots anger back home, joining a growing list of lawmakers who have decided, for politics or principle, to buck the infrastructure at the lowest rungs of the party.

“As an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job,” he said of the Democratic arguments he had heard in trial proceedings.

Explaining the icy mystery of the Dyatlov Pass deaths:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 11.  Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 5:21 PM, for 10h 24m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1861, Jefferson Davis is notified by telegraph that he has been chosen as provisional president of the Confederate States of America.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mary Spicuzza, Madeline Heim, and Guy Boulton report Thousands of Wisconsin vaccine appointments have been canceled or delayed because of uncertainty over vaccine supply:

David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire report ‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants:

Dozens of heavily armed militiamen crowded into the Michigan Statehouse last April to protest a stay-at-home order by the Democratic governor to slow the pandemic. Chanting and stomping their feet, they halted legislative business, tried to force their way onto the floor and brandished rifles from the gallery over lawmakers below.

Initially, Republican leaders had some misgivings about their new allies. “The optics weren’t good. Next time tell them not to bring guns,” complained Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, according to one of the protest organizers. But Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican came around after the planners threatened to return with weapons and “militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn.”

“To his credit,” Jason Howland, the organizer, wrote in a social media post, Mr. Shirkey agreed to help the cause and “spoke at our next event.”

Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.

 Texas lawyer boldly declares: ‘I’m not a cat’:

“Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings,” Judge Roy Ferguson, presiding over the case, begins by telling Mr. Ponton in the video.

“Augggh,” an exasperated Mr. Ponton responds, as his kitten face looks forlornly at the corner of the screen, its eyes seeming to be full of terror, shame and sadness. “Can you hear me, Judge?” he asks, although the audio was never at issue.

H. Gibbs Bauer, another lawyer on the call, puts his glasses on and leans forward to better examine the wonder on his screen. He adjusts his tie, as if subconsciously aware of his supporting role, but keeps a straight face.

As does a stone-faced man in another box, identified as Jerry L. Phillips, seemingly unfazed by the cat.

Mr. Ponton continues.

“I don’t know how to remove it,” he said. “I’ve got my assistant here and she’s trying to.”

To get the hearing moving, he offers: “I’m prepared to go forward with it.”

Then, crucially, he clarifies: “I’m here live. I’m not a cat.”

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 7.  Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 5:19 PM, for 10h 21m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1950, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy made the first of many baseless claims to have a list of 205 names of known communists working for the State Department.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Isiah Holmes reports Evers pushes for $165 million recreational cannabis market:

Cannabis is in Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed 2021-23 biennial budget, with the governor pushing legalization and regulation of the plant. If approved, Wisconsin would begin taxing cannabis similar to alcohol, joining 15 other states, including all of its neighbors, in legalizing a recreational market.

“Legalizing and taxing marijuana in Wisconsin,” said Evers, “just like we do already with alcohol, ensures a controlled market and safe product are available for both recreational and medicinal users and can open the door for countless opportunities for us to reinvest in our communities and create a more equitable state.”

The governor added, “frankly, red and blue states across the country have moved forward with legalization and there is no reason Wisconsin should be left behind when we know it’s supported by a majority of Wisconsinites.”

This marks the Evers administration’s second attempt at putting cannabis in the budget. Republicans in the legislature shot down the proposal for the 2019-21 budget. Since then, some within the GOP have introduced their own proposals to legalize medicinal cannabis, or reduce existing fines for possession.

(Note well: I don’t smoke and seldom drink, but would not stop others. Regulate cannabis like wine.)

Michael M. Grynbaum reports Lawsuits Take the Lead in Fight Against Disinformation:

In just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media.

Fox Business canceled its highest rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on Friday after its host was sued as part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit. On Tuesday, the pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax cut off a guest’s rant about rigged voting machines. Fox News, which seldom bows to critics, has run fact-checking segments to debunk its own anchors’ false claims about electoral fraud.

This is not the typical playbook for right-wing media, which prides itself on pugilism and delights in ignoring the liberals who have long complained about its content. But conservative outlets have rarely faced this level of direct assault on their economic lifeblood.

 Kari Paul writes Facebook bans misinformation about all vaccines after years of controversy:

Facebook has banned misinformation about all vaccines following years of harmful, unfounded health claims proliferating on its platform.

As part of its policy on Covid-19-related misinformation, Facebook will now remove posts with false claims about all vaccines, the company announced in a blogpost on Monday.

These new community guidelines apply to user-generated posts as well as paid advertisements, which were already banned from including such misinformation. Instagram users will face the same restrictions.

“We will begin enforcing this policy immediately, with a particular focus on Pages, groups and accounts that violate these rules,” said Guy Rosen, who oversees content decisions. “We’ll continue to expand our enforcement over the coming weeks.”

Groups on Facebook have been known to create echo chambers of misinformation and have fueled the rise of anti-vaccine communities and rhetoric. Under the new policy, groups where users repeatedly share banned content will be shut down.

Koala gets behind wheel of car after being rescued from Australian freeway: