Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighteen.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 5:03 PM, for 9h 51m 54s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1959, Vince Lombardi is named Packers coach.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Alex Ward reports Biden had his first call with Putin. He said everything Trump wouldn’t: 

Biden pressed Putin on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which many suspect was an assassination attempt ordered by the Kremlin, as well as the government’s arrest of hundreds of protesters who demonstrated in support of Navalny last weekend.

Earlier on Tuesday, the US and six other G7 nations released a statement condemning the Kremlin for the poisoning, the protest crackdown, and for detaining Navalny last week on seemingly bogus charges.

During the call, Biden also affirmed America’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, which has been under threat since Russia invaded the country in 2014. During his confirmation hearing to be secretary of state last week, Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Biden administration would continue to support Kyiv with lethal aid.

Biden also brought up three major issues related to Moscow’s belligerence toward the United States: Russia’s interference in the 2020 election; its alleged ties to the hacking of dozens of US government agencies and Fortune 500 companies by infiltrating SolarWindssoftware; and reports that Russia had offered cash bounties to Afghan militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

See also Whitehouse.gov, Readout of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Oliver Darcy writes of Zuckerberg’s Big Decision:

Mark Zuckerberg built one of the world’s most powerful — if not the most powerful — radicalization engines in history. For years and years, his platform has algorithmically pushed people into ideological political bubbles and reinforced their existing worldviews. It has enabled and rewarded media organizations profiting off of hyper-partisan trash and outright disinformation. And it has looked the other way as conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, flourished on the site

All the while, Zuckerberg was aware. But he defended his platform’s practices, while making a fortune, repeatedly hiding behind a commitment to free expression as reason to allow for poison to be injected into the American political conversation. But on Wednesday, Zuckerberg announced what can only be viewed as an about-face.

The Facebook chief observed on a call with investors — in which the company posted an $11.2 billion profit in Q4, an increase of more than 50% from the year prior — that “there has been a trend across society that a lot of things have become politicized and politics have had a way of creeping into everything.” (Hmm, I wonder what might have contributed to this!) “One of the top pieces of feedback that we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” Zuckerberg added.

As a result, Zuckerberg said Facebook is now considering steps it can take to reduce the volume of political content shown to users in News Feed. Additionally, Facebook will continue a practice of not recommending civic and political groups to users, a move that had been implemented ahead of the 2020 presidential election…

(Emphasis in original.)

Teacher Cathy Cluck goes on road trip to teach students from historical sites across U.S.:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of twenty.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 5:02 PM, for 9h 49m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 10:30 AM, and the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1967, Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 David Leonhardt writes Why is there a big debate over the filibuster? Because it benefits one political party much more than the other: 

If you examine the history of the filibuster — a Senate rule requiring a supermajority vote on many bills, rather than a straight majority — you will quickly notice something: It has benefited the political right much more than the left.

In the 1840s (before the term “filibuster” existed), Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina used the technique to protect slavery.

Over the next century, Southern Democrats repeatedly used the filibuster to prevent Black Americans from voting and to defeat anti-lynching bills.

From the 1950s through the 1990s, Senate Republicans, working with some conservative Democrats, blocked the passage of laws that would have helped labor unions organize workers.

Over the past two decades, the filibuster has enabled Republicans to defeat a long list of progressive bills, on climate change, oil subsidies, campaign finance, Wall Street regulation, corporate offshoring, gun control, immigration, gender pay equality and Medicare expansion.

Jennifer Rubin writes 50 things that are better already:

1. You can ignore Twitter

2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies

3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism

4. We are not paying for golf trips

5. There are no presidential relatives in government

6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious

7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots

8. We have a first lady who engages with the public

9. We have not heard a word from presidential children

10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses

11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders

12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around

How Dala Horses Are Handmade in One of the Last Factories in Sweden:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning snow with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 5:01 PM, for 9h 45m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM.

It’s a snow day for the Whitewater Schools. Play responsibly.

On this day in 1915, an act of Congress establishes Rocky Mountain National Park.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Antonia Noori Farzan reports Wealthy couple chartered a plane to the Yukon, took vaccines meant for Indigenous elders, authorities said:

Located deep in Canada’s Yukon, the remote community of Beaver Creek is home to only about 100 people, most of them members of the White River First Nation.

So when an unfamiliar couple who claimed to work at a local motel showed up at a mobile clinic to receive coronavirus vaccines, it didn’t take long for locals to become suspicious. Authorities soon found that the couple were actually wealthy Vancouver residents who had chartered a private plane to the isolated outpost so that they could get shots intended to protect vulnerable Indigenous elders.

….

Canadian media outlets have identified the couple as casino executive Rodney Baker, 55, and his wife, Ekaterina Baker, a 32-year-old actress whose recent credits include the 2020 films “Fatman” and “Chick Fight.” Each faces fines totaling the equivalent of about $900 for violating quarantine guidelines. Neither could immediately be reached for comment late Monday, and it was not clear if they have attorneys.

Investor disclosures show that Baker earned more than $10.6 million in 2019 as CEO and president of the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, which owns more than 20 casinos across Canada and isthe subject of a separate money laundering probe. He resigned Sunday after charges were filed. A spokesman said that Great Canadian “has no tolerance for actions that run counter to the company’s objectives and values.”

Ramenda Cyrus writes A Year Ago Today, Trump Said COVID Would “All Work Out Well”:

One year ago, on the same day that the CDC announced a test for COVID-19 and a day after Wuhan had gone into lockdown, Donald Trump tweeted the following:

China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!

The relevant context for this tweet isn’t just the disease that would soon become a pandemic. Trump had struck a trade deal with China just days before, and this tweet was part of the political effort to maintain an air of sunny relations with a country that only four months earlier he’d called “threat to the world,” a country he would be demonizing again by spring.

It will all work out well. The English language is not yet evolved enough to accurately describe what Trump managed to do on Twitter during his presidency. He loved walking the line between lying and misleading, between sincerity and insincerity, the bullshitter-in-chief who sometimes seemed to bullshit himself most of all. This case was no different. His optimism was unfounded, unrealistic, and ultimately self-serving, and that was clear even then, when we had no idea how the coronavirus would unfold.

Harriet Tubman $20 Bill in the Works Under Biden Admin:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:59 PM, for 9h 45m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM, Downtown Whitewater’s board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM in closed session and 7 PM in open session.

On this day in 1945, the Battle of the Bulge ends in an Allied (principally American) victory. 

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jacqueline Alemany writes Distance from the Jan. 6 Capitol riots may ultimately prove to be a double-edged sword:

It can provide GOP leaders with some space to navigate tricky terrain, but it also gives Democrats more time to investigate.

“As the days go on, more and more evidence comes out about the president’s involvement in the incitement of this insurrection, the incitement of this riot, and also his dereliction of duty once it was going on,” House impeachment manager Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro.

“I think we’re going to get more and more evidence over the next few weeks, as if it’s not enough that he sent an angry mob down the Mall to invade the Capitol, didn’t try to stop it and a police officer was killed,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said, pointing to the bombshell New York Times story about Trump’s desire to install an attorney general sympathetic to nullifying Biden’s legitimate election. “I don’t really know what else you need to know. The facts were there.”

 Glenn Kessler writes Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims as president. Nearly half came in his final year:

For more than 10 years, The Fact Checker has assessed the accuracy of claims made by politicians in both parties, and that practice will continue. But Trump, with his unusually flagrant disregard for facts, posed a new challenge, as so many of his claims did not merit full-fledged fact checks. What started as a weekly feature — “What Trump got wrong on Twitter this week” — turned into a project for Trump’s first 100 days. Then, in response to reader requests, the Trump database was maintained for four years, despite the increasing burden of keeping it up.

The database became an untruth tracker for the ages, widely cited around the world as a measuring stick of Trump’s presidency — and as of noon Wednesday it was officially retired.

Whether such a tracker will be necessary for future presidents is unclear. Nonetheless, the impact of Trump’s rhetoric may reverberate for years.

“As a result of Trump’s constant lying through the presidential megaphone, more Americans are skeptical of genuine facts than ever before,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said.

How Bioplastic Is Made From Avocado Waste:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see morning snow with a daytime high of thirty-one.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:58 PM, for 9h 43m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1984, Apple Computer places the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Jason Breslow reports Protests Swell Across Russia Calling for the Release of Kremlin Critic Alexei Navalny:

Tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets in protest on Saturday to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, braving the threat of mass arrests in what were some of the largest demonstrations against the Kremlin in years.

From the port city of Vladivostok in the east to the capital of Moscow seven time zones away in the west, protesters swept across the country in open defiance of warnings from Russian authorities that the demonstrations have been deemed illegal.

In Moscow, protesters gathered in Pushkin Square for what appeared to be the largest of the day’s protests. They were met by police trucks and city buses filled with riot officers, who blared messages from a public-address system warning them that the protest was unlawful. In all, Navalny supporters said that protests were planned across 90 cities, including the Siberian city of Yakutsk, where temperatures plunged to minus 60 Fahrenheit.

 Elizabeth Dias reports In Biden’s Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity:

Mr. Biden, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century, regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies.

And with Mr. Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.

His arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms. Their devotion to former President Donald J. Trump was so fervent that many showed up in Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the election results.

Mr. Biden’s leadership is a repudiation of the claim by many conservative leaders that Democrats are inherently anti-Christian.

Canadian Inuit Dogs Get Their Wilderness Chops from Wolves:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be clear in the morning, partly cloudy in the afternoon, with a high of twenty-three.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:57 PM, for 9h 40m 53s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1556, the deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Katie Benner reports Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General:

The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

 Keith E. Whittington writes Is There a Free Speech Defense to an Impeachment?:

The First Amendment does not shrink the scope of the impeachment power or alter what conduct would fall within the terms of high and misdemeanors. When drafting the Bill of Rights, James Madison took care to include only provisions that he thought were compatible with the existing body of the Constitution drafted in 1787. The adoption of the First Amendment, from Madison’s perspective, would reaffirm what was already true about the Constitution, not carve out new exceptions to it. It is inconceivable that Madison would have thought that his proposed affirmation that the freedom of speech may not be abridged by the new federal government meant that an exception was being carved out of the power of Congress to impeach and remove officers for high crimes and misdemeanors. That which was impeachable before the adoption of the First Amendment was still impeachable after.

….

If a civil service employee in the Department of Justice had done the things contained in the article of impeachment, he could be justly terminated from his federal employment despite the First Amendment. If the attorney general had done the things alleged by the House of Representatives, the president could justly fire him despite the First Amendment. There are many things that could get a government employee or a Cabinet secretary fired that would not rise to the level of impeachable offenses, but there is nothing that would otherwise be an impeachable offense for which the First Amendment would shelter an officer from Senate conviction and removal.

There is only one impeachment power and one standard for impeachment. That standard for impeachable offenses applies equally to all the government officials subject to it, whether judges, executive branch officers or presidents.

Launch-a-palooza — SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, and China lifted-off this week: