Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fourteen.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 5:25 PM, for 10h 32m 52s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960, Sen. Kennedy campaigns in Fort Atkinson.

Recommended for reading in full —

Ishaan Tharoor writes Trump’s authoritarian style is remaking America:

The president’s demagoguery has left a deep mark on American society. An investigation by my colleagues sifted through 28,000 reports of bullying in U.S. schools and found hundreds of incidents in which Trump-inspired rhetoric was used to harass children, especially students from Hispanic, black or Muslim backgrounds.

“Since Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America,” my colleagues wrote. “Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.”

This unsettling trend speaks of a deeper malaise and entrenched divisions. David Roberts at Vox argued that the United States is in the grips of an “epistemic” crisis: A decades-long right-wing project to create its own media bubble cemented a polarized political reality in which rival camps can’t even agree on the facts of their disagreements.

“That is what a tribalist like Trump wants: for communication and compromise across tribal lines to become impossible, so that loyalty becomes the only measure and everything is reduced to pure struggle for dominance,” Roberts wrote.

….

“The Republican Party is betraying democracy, and these are historical times,” Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor and author of “How Fascism Works,” told Business Insider. “The Republican Party has shown that it has no interest in multi-party democracy. … They are much more concerned with power, with consolidating power.”

Michael Brice-Saddler reports Attorney General William Barr condemned by 39 prosecutors for ‘dangerous and failed’ approach to criminal justice:

Thirty-nine elected prosecutors in a joint statement condemned Attorney General William P. Barr for recent his rhetoric that attacked progressive policies, arguing that his “dangerous and failed” approach to criminal justice disproportionately punished poor people and racial minorities while diverting resources away from more serious crimes.

“Sadly, we are perceived as a threat by some who are wedded to the status quo or, even worse, failed policies of past decades,” the 39 state, county and city prosecutors wrote. “Critics such as Attorney General William P. Barr seek to bring us back to a time when crime was high, success was measured by how harsh the punishment was, and a fear-driven narrative prevailed.”

In their letter, the signatories warned against returning to a “‘tough on crime’ era” that ignored facts and encouraged mass incarceration. Instead, they argued, evidence shows that a data-based approach is not only more effective, but also strengthens community trust.

“We know policies based on fear don’t work; they simply deepen divides and promote a false narrative,” the letter read. “For too long communities were told that locking up poor people for crimes like shoplifting and drug possession would make them safer, when time and time again all it resulted in was the fracturing of families, intergenerational cycles of incarceration, a destabilization of communities and a growing distrust of law enforcement.”

  Red supergiant star Betelgeuse’s ‘apparent shape is changing’:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be snowy, with a high of twelve.  Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 5:24 PM, for 10h 30m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960,  France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons after a successful nuclear test codenamed Gerboise Bleue.

Recommended for reading in full —

McKay Coppins writes The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President (‘How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election):

Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and misdirection, but this year’s contest promises to be different. In conversations with political strategists and other experts, a dystopian picture of the general election comes into view—one shaped by coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both parties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous.

The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable.

The campaign is run from the 14th floor of a gleaming, modern office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Glass-walled conference rooms look out on the Potomac River. Rows of sleek monitors line the main office space. Unlike the bootstrap operation that first got Trump elected—with its motley band of B-teamers toiling in an unfinished space in Trump Tower—his 2020 enterprise is heavily funded, technologically sophisticated, and staffed with dozens of experienced operatives. One Republican strategist referred to it, admiringly, as “the Death Star.”

Bruce Thompson describes The Republicans’ Gerrymander Scheme:

In recent weeks there has been widespread speculation that the Republican-dominated Legislature would try to exclude Governor Tony Evers from a say in redistricting the state following the 2020 census. GOP legislators would do this by passing revised districts in a joint resolution from the state Assembly and Senate rather than a bill. Unlike a bill, a joint resolution cannot be vetoed by the governor.

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The idea of cutting the governor out of this normal legislative process has come up before: In a 1961 decision, Reynolds v. Zimmerman, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a previous attempt to use a joint resolution process for redistricting. Fundamental to this decision was the consideration that, while individual legislators represented the interests of their districts, only the governor represented the interests of Wisconsin as a whole.

The behavior of the present conservative majority on the state Supreme Court has led to concerns that the court might be willing to reverse Reynolds v. Zimmerman and allow Republican legislators to adopt a new gerrymander through a joint resolution rather than a legislative bill. This concern reflects both the majority’s willingness to ignore stare decisis—the principle that the court should be reluctant to overturn past decisions. It also reflects a perception that where the court comes down is influenced by what would help Republicans.

  Birds gliding through bubbles reveal an aerodynamic trick:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with occasional snowfall, and a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 5:22 PM, for 10h 27m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

Mikhaila Fogel, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes write The President Tweets and the Justice Department Complies:

Corruption of the justice system has two major elements. The first—at issue in the Ukraine scandal—is the use of state power to go after one’s enemies. The other is the ability to restrain government power to reward one’s friends and allies.

A dramatic display of this latter power took place today, Feb. 11, when the U.S. Department of Justice, having articulated in court its view of an appropriate sentence for President Trump’s associate Roger Stone—convicted recently on multiple felony counts—confronted an angry presidential tweet and then meekly reversed course in a second filing.

The action prompted multiple career prosecutors to withdraw from the case.

….

We don’t know exactly what might have gone on within the Justice Department during the hours between when the first Stone memo was filed and when the department decided it had made an egregious error. But it is highly irregular for the department to act as it did today, intervening to overrule career prosecutors to urge leniency for a presidential friend. To act as it did in the immediate wake of a presidential statement decrying the handling of the case and in the face of the withdrawal from the matter of the prosecutors in question creates a heavy presumption of irregularity.

Nor is this the first time that the Justice Department has backtracked on a sentencing recommendation in a high-profile Mueller-related case. In December 2018, nearly two years after former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding his contacts with Russian officials prior to the Trump inauguration, the special counsel’s office filed a sentencing memo suggesting a downward departure from the zero to six months of prison time recommended by the guidelines—meaning that Flynn would get no custodial sentence at all.

Julia Davis reports Russians Think Triumphant Trump Is More Their Man Than Ever:

Russian state media have welcomed enthusiastically the recent U.S. Senate acquittal of President Donald J. Trump. Having predicted this outcome for his impeachment trial, Russian experts and state-media pundits are anticipating beneficial side effects for the Kremlin as Trump is more Trump—and more Russia’s Trump—than ever.

Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russia’s popular Sunday news program Vesti Nedeli, said, “Democrats are openly raging, but while they’re licking their wounds, Trump can now objectively afford to pursue a more positive course of action toward Russia—just as he planned all along while being elected for the first term.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent invitation to Trump to attend Victory Day festivities in Moscow this spring is designed to bring the U.S. president ever deeper into the Kremlin fold. Appearing on Sunday Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, politician Sergey Stankevich asserted, “Donald Trump has to come to Moscow in May, no doubt about it. He is obligated to be here.”

Standard Poodle ‘Siba’ Walks Away With Best In Show @ Westminster:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 5:21 PM, for 10h 24m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 93% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Schools’ Policy Review Committee meets at 8 AM, and Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1842, one Wisconsin Territorial legislator shoots another during a debate.

Recommended for reading in full —

Melissa del Bosque reports A Group of Agents Rose Through the Ranks to Lead the Border Patrol. They’re Leaving It in Crisis:

The group had overseen or witnessed crises in the past — including lawsuits over excessive use of force and revelations of corruption within the patrol’s own ranks. But the last three years, catalyzed by ever-harsher Trump administration policies, had thrust the insular agency into unprecedented turmoil. The arrival of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers at the border had forced agents into new roles, for which they had little training. A series of high-profile scandals had focused scalding attention on the agency: Children died in its custody. Reporters uncovered a racist, misogynist private Facebook page with some 9,500 current and former Border Patrol members, including, at one point, Provost. Misconduct charges rose and a longtime agent was even prosecuted as a serial killer.

The Border Patrol they’d guided was experiencing not just a crisis of confidence among legislators and the public, but from within.

Some senior agents said they can’t help but blame the current state of the Border Patrol on the Douglas agents for fostering a culture that favored loyalty over competency. “I still believe in our mission. But we need restructuring, we need change,” said one longtime senior agent from Texas, who asked to remain anonymous because he’s not authorized to speak to the media. “It’s a group following each other on their coattails with the same ideas, because everyone thinks the same way. And a lot of people skipping rank based on who they know, not on their experience.”

Robert Tracinski describes The Closing of the Conservative Mind:

In the early days of Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican party, and of the conservative movement, many of us assumed that it was happening in complete defiance of the movement’s intellectual leadership.

Trump was aggressively anti-intellectual and routinely displayed a contemptuous indifference toward the ideas to which many intellectuals on the right have devoted their lives: small government, free markets, fiscal responsibility, moral character.

Many of them had previously lined up against him, drawing a line in the sand “Against Trump.”

Yet only a few years later, Trump’s takeover of the conservative movement is nearly complete. You could interpret this one of three ways: That nobody ever really listened to the right’s intellectuals; that the intellectuals never really believed their own supposed ideals; or that there was some hidden weakness on the part of conservative intellectuals that made them vulnerable to Trumpism.

How Urban Farming Saved a Dallas Community: