Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 5:45 PM, for 11h 17m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 37.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1781, the Articles of Confederation goes into effect after being ratified by all thirteen states.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jane Chong writes of Donald Trump’s Strange and Dangerous ‘Absolute Rights’ Idea:

That claim is a favorite Trump refrain, and like a brake warning light, it tends to signal that the car is no longer safely in contact with the legal road. In May 2017, after The New York Times reported that Trump had spilled highly classified information to Russian government officials, he tweeted that he had “the absolute right to do so.” In December of that year, when asked whether the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails should be reopened, Trump invoked his “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” Six months later, in June 2018, Trump tweeted that Robert Mueller’s investigation was “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” and that if push came to shove, “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.”

….

This is a profound misunderstanding of the American constitutional system. Within that system, rights protect individuals against incursions by the state. The assertion of “absolute rights” by the country’s chief executive stands this concept on its head by purporting to insulate state conduct, however arbitrary and transgressive, from review or even critique. The idea is incompatible with the design of Article II, which vests the president with conditional, circumscribed authority to ensure that the laws are “faithfully executed.” Some of that authority is his alone to exercise—for example, only the president can grant pardons, command the armed forces, and recognize foreign states. But to the extent he misunderstands or abuses that authority, the Constitution facilitates challenge by the other branches. In extreme cases, that challenge is supposed to take the form of impeachment and removal.

Allison Keyes writes Harriet Tubman, an Unsung Naturalist, Used Owl Calls as a Signal on the Underground Railroad:

Many people are aware of Harriet Tubman’s work on the Underground Railroad and as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. Fewer know of her prowess as a naturalist.

At the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Church Creek, Maryland, Ranger Angela Crenshaw calls Tubman “the ultimate outdoors woman.” She even used bird calls to help guide her charges, eventually helping some 70 people, including her parents and four brothers, escape slavery.

“We know that she used the call of an owl to alert refugees and her freedom seekers that it was OK, or not OK, to come out of hiding and continue their journey,” Crenshaw says. “It would have been the Barred Owl, or as it is sometimes called, a ‘hoot-owl.’ ‘They make a sound that some people think sounds like ‘who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?’ ”

See link to Barred Owl at the Audubon website for information about the bird, and the bird call, Tubman so effectively used.

Everything You Didn’t Know About Eagles:

Good morning.

Leap Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 6:29 AM and sunset 5:44 PM, for 11h 14m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 28.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1944, the Allies begin Operation Brewer during which the United States Army’s 1st Cavalry Division would take the Japanese-held Admiralty Islands.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Jeramey Jannene reports DNC Host Committee Hires New Leaders:

Just over three weeks after firing two New Jersey political operatives hired to lead Milwaukee’s Democratic National Convention host committee, the organization’s board has hired two prominent local leaders to replace them.

Raquel Filmanowicz will serve as the Milwaukee 2020 Chief Executive Officer. She’ll take a leave of absence from her job as Director of U.S. Community Giving for BMO Harris Bank to lead the convention effort. Prior to joining BMO in 2012, Filmanowicz spent a decade at the Milwaukee Health Department rising to the position of health operations administrator overseeing operations in three different divisions. Her role with Milwaukee 2020 will place her in charge of fundraising, volunteer recruitment and venue organization.

Paula Penebaker who retired as head of the YWCA at the end of 2019 after 20 years, will join the host committee as Chief Operating Officer. She will be responsible for managing the host committee staff, based out of the Milwaukee Center office building.

….

Filmanowicz, 45, and Penebaker, 67,  both have served in a number of board positions with other Milwaukee organizations. Filmanowicz serves as board chair for the Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee and was appointed to the board of the Wisconsin Center District in 2018 by Barrett. Penebaker currently serves on the board of Milwaukee World Festival and previously served on the boards of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee, Public Policy Forum and Milwaukee County Federated Library System.

Vicky Hallett writes Tired of biking in the gym? Virtual reality lets you cycle in Iceland, instead:

Transporting yourself with fitness equipment is a selling point of Peloton, whose much-mocked holiday commercial featured a woman receiving a Peloton bike as a Christmas present — or maybe as a punishment. What the ad didn’t emphasize is that the same product that allows you to attend a 6 a.m. cycling class every day also offers “scenic outdoor” options, with virtual rides through places such as Paris, U.S. national parks and New Zealand.

You’ll have more company for your “outdoor” workout with Zwift, an app that works with either a bike or a treadmill. It throws users together on its virtual courses, which include routes in New York; London; Innsbruck, Austria; and Watopia — an imaginary island with an active volcano, sloths and hairpin turns. (Bicycling magazine declared it “the best place to ride this winter.”)

(I use Zwift, an app available on Apple or Android phones, tablets, or Apple TV.)

The Power of Sketching in Visual Communication:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-six.  Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 5:43 PM, for 11h 12m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1935, DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jill Lapore writes of The Last Time Democracy Almost Died (‘Learning from the upheaval of the nineteen-thirties’):

The last time democracy nearly died all over the world and almost all at once, Americans argued about it, and then they tried to fix it. “The future of democracy is topic number one in the animated discussion going on all over America,” a contributor to the New York Times wrote in 1937. “In the Legislatures, over the radio, at the luncheon table, in the drawing rooms, at meetings of forums and in all kinds of groups of citizens everywhere, people are talking about the democratic way of life.” People bickered and people hollered, and they also made rules. “You are a liar!” one guy shouted from the audience during a political debate heard on the radio by ten million Americans, from Missoula to Tallahassee. “Now, now, we don’t allow that,” the moderator said, calmly, and asked him to leave.

….

“Epitaphs for democracy are the fashion of the day,” the soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, dismally, in 1930. The annus horribilis that followed differed from every other year in the history of the world, according to the British historian Arnold Toynbee: “In 1931, men and women all over the world were seriously contemplating and frankly discussing the possibility that the Western system of Society might break down and cease to work.” When Japan invaded Manchuria, the League of Nations condemned the annexation, to no avail. “The liberal state is destined to perish,” Mussolini predicted in 1932. “All the political experiments of our day are anti-liberal.” By 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power, the American political commentator Walter Lippmann was telling an audience of students at Berkeley that “the old relationships among the great masses of the people of the earth have disappeared.” What next? More epitaphs: Greece, Romania, Estonia, and Latvia. Authoritarians multiplied in Portugal, Uruguay, Spain. Japan invaded Shanghai. Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. “The present century is the century of authority,” he declared, “a century of the Right, a Fascist century.”

Earth has a new mini-moon, temporarily – See its orbit:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 5:42 PM, for 11h 09m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

  The Whitewater Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

  On this day in 1967, a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal kills all three Apollo 1 crew members—Command Pilot Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee—and destroys their command module.

Recommended for reading in full —

Briana Reilly reports Several Wisconsin counties take initiative to test wells for contamination:

Local officials across Wisconsin are gearing up to test wells this year as they seek to gather more data about potential contaminants and how groundwater quality may have changed over time.

The testing comes in the wake of Gov. Tony Evers’ labeling of 2019 as “The Year of Clean Drinking Water” and a series of public hearings around the state held by the Water Quality Task Force that resulted in more than a dozen bills aiming to curb contamination and bolster conservation efforts.

Amid the state-level push, three southwestern counties have banded together to fund the area’s first expansive groundwater survey called the Driftless Area Water Study, while at least four others across the state are working independently on their own efforts.

Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write How to Reform the Pardon Power:

President Trump is reportedly “obsessed” with the pardon power, which he apparently understands to be the unbounded constitutional authority to dispense forgiveness as he pleases. In his recent rash of 11 pardons and commutations, Trump dispensed with the Department of Justice process for vetting pardon applications and relied instead on the advice of friends and allies, and on his own judgments about redressing “unfairness.” He has also argued he has an “absolute right to PARDON myself” (while at the same time denying the need to do so). Trump revels in the belief that his pardon and commutation decisions are his alone: His critics might not like his choices, but they have to live with them.

…

So, it appears, lawmakers unhappy with grants of clemency are left to voice dissatisfaction and to press the president to explain. And in the past, that is what they have done. After pardoning Richard Nixon, President Gerald Ford made an extraordinary appearance on the Hill to defend his decision. The Senate and House inquired into Bill Clinton’s history of controversial pardons and, in some cases, voted resolutions of bipartisan disapproval. But, barring a constitutional amendment, many people appear to believe that Congress can do nothing more to regulate the president’s “absolute” pardon power.

We disagree. As we discuss in detail in a forthcoming book on institutional reforms of the presidency, there are limits Congress may and should impose on at least some exercises of the pardon power. And by prescribing those limits, the legislature can prevent or deter the most egregious abuses, while encouraging future presidents to adhere more closely to norms of process and restraint.

Citizenship Amendment Act: Millions in India Could End Up in Modi’s New Detention Camps:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:34 AM and sunset 5:40 PM, for 11h 06m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1815, Napoleon escapes from exile on Elba.

Recommended for reading in full —

Keri Blakinger reports Newsrooms Rethink a Crime Reporting Staple: The Mugshot:

Online mugshot galleries, where news organizations post rows of people who were arrested, once seemed like an easy moneymaker for struggling newsrooms: Each reader click to the next image translated to more page views and an opportunity for more advertising dollars.

But faced with questions about the lasting impact of putting these photos on the internet, where they live forever, media outlets are increasingly doing away with the galleries of people on the worst days of their lives.

Last month, the Houston Chronicle became the latest major paper to take that plunge. At an all-hands staff meeting, the paper’s editors announced their decision to stop posting slideshows of people who have been arrested but not convicted—and who are still presumed innocent under law.

“Mugshot slideshows whose primary purpose is to generate page views will no longer appear on our websites,” Mark Lorando, a managing editor at the Chronicle, later explained in an email to The Marshall Project. “We’re better than that.”

….

A 2016 survey of 74 papers by Univision’s Fusion channel found that 40 percent published mugshot galleries. There’s no comprehensive tracking of such media practices so it’s not clear how much that figure has changed.

Sam Gringlas reports With An Election On The Horizon, Older Adults Get Help Spotting Fake News:

At the Schweinhaut Senior Center in suburban Maryland, about a dozen seniors gather around iPads and laptops, investigating a suspicious meme of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Plastered over her image, in big, white block letters, a caption reads:

“California will receive 13 extra seats in Congress by including 10 million illegal aliens in the 2020 U.S. Census.”

The seniors are participating in a workshop sponsored by the nonprofit Senior Planet called “How to Spot Fake News.” As instructed, they pull up a reputable fact-checking site like Snopes or FactCheck.org, and within a few minutes, identify the meme is peddling fake news.

“It’s right there!” 86-year-old Marlene Cianci tells the class. “Just a two-step thing and there it was!”

Researchers say classes like this one should be more widely offered, especially with the 2020 election approaching.

After Russia launched a massive disinformation campaign on social media during the 2016 election, many middle and high schools rushed to add digital literacy courses to their curriculums. Now, U.S. officials say Russia is again interfering in U.S. elections. But experts say older adults may struggle the most with identifying fake news, and classes designed to teach these skills to seniors aren’t yet common nationwide.

A recent study suggests these classes could be increasingly important. Researchers at Princeton and New York University found that Facebook users 65 and over posted seven times as many articles from fake news websites, compared to adults under 29.

Single fox rescue turns into a whole litter rescue:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 5:39 PM, for 11h 03m 28s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5:30 PM.

  On this day in 1991, the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact is declared disbanded at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from remaining Pact countries meeting in Hungary.

Recommended for reading in full —

Samantha Weller writes ‘One big crony boondoggle’: Trump’s border wall is now just a gigantic grift for his campaign donors:

The company, Atlas Tube, is run by Barry Zekelman, who donated $1.75 million to a pro-Trump PAC in 2018 to urge Trump to place tariffs and quotas on steel.

The New York Times says that there is enough evidence to suspect that he violated the law. Brendan Fischer, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, put it simply:

“Foreign nations have no right to interfere in U.S. elections and certainly do not have the right to buy the policies that benefit them.”

The other company, Fisher Sand and Gravel, is under review by the Department of Defense, who says there are “concerns about the possibility of inappropriate influence on USACE’s contracting decision,” according to ABC News.

The Washington Post says Trump has continuously pressured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to award border wall contracts to firms that are pro-Trump.

Simon Tisdale writes Putin, a criminal and incompetent president, is an enemy of his own people:

In any free and fair election, his criminal legacy of economic incompetence, abuse of power and shameless venality would be sure to sink him without trace. But free and fair elections now look ever more remote, especially following the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters in Moscow last summer.

On the contrary, Putin grows ever more intolerant of any form of actual or suspected opposition, whether it be in the form of civil society organisations, the media, or courageous, much persecuted activists such as Alexi Navalny.

Thanks to Putin’s mismanagement and neglect, Russia’s economy is in terrible shape, over-reliant on energy exports, lacking foreign investment and suffering chronic capital flight. That’s because businesses cannot rely on the rule of law to safeguard their dealings or prevent attempts at extortion, kickbacks and bribery.

Putin’s supposedly transformative national spending projects worth an eye-watering $390bn have largely failed to materialise. His promises of economic modernisation and raised living standards must be set against a consecutive five-year fall in real wages and cuts to state pensions.

At the same time, it is crystal clear Putin fears the sort of political liberalisation that might facilitate greater economic competitiveness and international investment. On the contrary, his latest proposals seek to further limit foreign influence.

The continuing drag on Russia’s development caused by western sanctions, imposed after the illegal annexation of Crimea, symbolises the broader, negative aspects of perpetual Putinism.

Putin not only refuses to get out of Crimea but actively fuels the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. And this conflict is but a smaller version of the murderous mayhem wrought by Russian forces in Syria since 2016, where killing and mass displacement continue in Idlib.

China Is Censoring Coronavirus Stories. These Citizens Are Fighting Back:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 5:38 PM, for 11h 00m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board at 6 PM in closed session, with an open session beginning at 7 PM.

  On this day in 1863, the 28th and 29th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery take part in an expedition to Yazoo Pass by Moon Lake in Mississippi.

Recommended for reading in full —

Kelly Meyerhofer reports 18 months into UW merger, small, rural campuses still struggling to find students:

The UW System’s 12 other branch campuses face a similar storm of challenges: rising costs, repeated budget cuts and a tuition freeze for 12 of the past 14 years. Mostly, though, the problem centers on enrollment, which is what [director for student enrollment at UW-Richland Center John] Poole spent his 42-year career on campus worrying about before retiring in 2013.

Seven of the System’s branch campuses this fall, including Richland Center, tallied their lowest enrollment in nearly half a century, according to preliminary data. Total enrollment at the branch campuses, about 7,300 students, marked a 46-year low.

The demographic trend shows little sign of reversing during the next decade. Projections based on the state’s birth rate show the number of students graduating from Wisconsin high schools this spring will be the lowest since 2000, according to a UW-Madison report.

Nationally, the contraction in college enrollment will worsen as an even smaller pool of students born during the Great Recession enters college between 2025 and 2030.

Dominic Rushe reports ‘America’s Dairyland’: Wisconsin’s farmers see bleak future:

Wisconsin still styles itself the dairy state. Car number plates come with the slogan “America’s Dairyland”. Last year it was also the state with the highest number of farming bankruptcies – 57, its highest total in a decade. The number of dairy farms across the state has fallen by 49% over the past 15 years.

The decline is fundamentally changing Wisconsin’s rural landscape as schools and small businesses collapse taking the rural communities that supported them with them. Wisconsin is an avatar of a wider problem in the dairy industry. America’s largest milk producer, Dean Foods, filed for bankruptcy last November. Borden, founded in 1857, filed for bankruptcy in January.

The milk industry’s woes have been a long time in the making and no single factor accounts for them. Collapsing prices, the rise of mega farms in warmer states such as Texas and Arizona, the increasingly international trade in dry milk products like whey protein, Trump’s tariffs, the fluctuations in international trade and shifting consumer habits have all played a part.

The irony is that as the number of farms in bankruptcy rises, milk sales and prices are also on the rise. Per-capita dairy consumption reached 646 pounds per person in 2018, the most popular year for dairy in the US since 1962.

How One Group Is Restoring Thousands Of Oysters To The New York Harbor: