Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of twenty-five.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 02m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 86.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1846, voters reject the first draft of a constitution for Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full:

Kyle Farris reports Accuser says ex-UW-La Crosse professor preyed on many women, and got away with it for years:

Caycee Bean says two dozen women have come forward with stories about former UW-La Crosse art professor Joel Elgin sexually harassing, assaulting or preying on them during his two decades with the university.

Bean, the former student who publicly accused Elgin of sexual misconduct this fall, said she has been overwhelmed by the number of messages she has received from women who say they were also victimized by the once-popular professor.

While most of the stories were shared by students, Bean said, some were offered by faculty. One involves a woman who had been silent for 17 years.

“He’s been doing this for a very long time and has been getting away with it for a very long time,” Bean said at a press conference with her attorneys Thursday. “I’m here today to let victims know we no longer need to feel intimidated. I want them to know it’s OK to come forward. We’re here for you. The community is here for you.”

Bean also responded to a recent statement from Elgin’s attorney, Cheryl Gill, who called the other accusers Bean’s “minions” and said UW-La Crosse faculty should be “afraid, very afraid” of bogus misconduct claims from students.

….

“I laughed when I first read that — it’s so ridiculous,” Bean said of the “minion” comment. “These girls aren’t my minions. I do not know these women. These are complete strangers who heard … about this guy finally being caught and have a story to share.

“Joel and his attorney’s words were meant to hurt and intimidate me and many others who have come forward. This is a textbook case of why so many victims don’t come forward.”

John Diedrich and Kevin Crowe report A Milwaukee hospital is turning away ambulances, despite agreeing not to except in emergencies:

By getting hospitals to reform their operations and stop turning away ambulances, Milwaukee County put itself at the forefront of a push to ensure patients get the best, fastest care.

But experts warn voluntary agreements like the one in Milwaukee and other cities can be fragile and easily discarded, in part because there is little regulatory oversight to ensure hospitals follow them.

The approach also leads to a peculiar patchwork, where hospitals in neighboring counties continue to turn away ambulances, even though other facilities within the same health care system have stopped doing so.

In fact, new figures show diversions by some hospitals in the Milwaukee area — particularly those belonging to Ascension Wisconsin — have crept up this year, despite the ban local hospitals agreed to three years ago.

The Best Home-Cooked Meals From Grandmas:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1896, Frederick Jackson Turner delivers his “Significance of the Frontier in American History” address at the forty-first annual meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full:

Bruce Vielmetti and Patrick Marley report Judge orders state to purge more than 200,000 Wisconsin voters from the rolls:

Lawyers for the League and for the Wisconsin Elections Commission indicated they will appeal and asked Malloy to stay his ruling pending those appeals, but he declined.

At issue is a letter the state Elections Commission sent in October to about 234,000 voters who it believes may have moved. The letter asked the voters to update their voter registrations if they had moved or alert election officials if they were still at their same address.

The commission planned to remove the letter’s recipients from the voter rolls in 2021 if it hadn’t heard from them. But Malloy’s decision would kick them off the rolls much sooner, and well before the 2020 presidential election.

Three voters sued the commission last month with the help of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. They argued election officials were required to remove voters from the rolls 30 days after sending the letters if they hadn’t heard from them.

They asked Malloy to issue an injunction that would require election officials to purge their rolls. Kaul, commissioners and others say that would lead to some people getting knocked off the rolls who shouldn’t be.

But Malloy went further than issuing an injunction. In granting a writ of mandamus — essentially a court order that a government official or agency do its job — he said he was convinced the commission had a clear, positive, plain legal duty to purge the voter rolls within 30 days.

Nick Miroff reports Pentagon inspector general to review $400 million border wall contract given to firm Trump favored:

The Defense Department’s inspector general’s office will audit a $400 million border wall contract that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded to a North Dakota construction company run by a GOP donor whom President Trump repeatedly urged military officials to hire.

Glenn A. Fine, the top official at the Pentagon office, authorized a review of the contract in response to a Dec. 4 letter from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, asking inspectors to take a closer look. Fine informed Thompson of the audit in a letter Thursday.

[Read the Defense Department’s inspector general’s letter]

“You raised concerns about the possibility of inappropriate influence on USACE’s contracting decision, and questioned whether the bid submitted by Fisher Sand and Gravel Co. met solicitation standards,” Fine wrote in his letter to Thompson. “You also questioned whether USACE made the award in accordance with federal procurement law and regulations.

What Happened to SPAM?:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the 3rd Wisconsin Light Artillery arrives at the front lines for the Battle of Savannah, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full:

Rex Huppke writes Exhausted by Trump World’s lies? Hold fast to the truth. It’s the only path:

So I have two things to tell you, one good, one bad.

First, the good: Facts still matter, and truth still exists.

Second, the bad: You can’t feel exhausted. You have to cling to the truth, tighter than ever before, because an entire political party, a massive news network and the leader of the free world are trying to pull it away.

Consider how the president, his Republican cronies and the right-wing media reacted to the release this week of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Even a cursory review of the report reveals a thorough debunking of many of the president’s favorite conspiracy theories. It clearly states there is no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” the decision to launch an investigation into contacts between Russians and Trump campaign members.

The report shows the FBI had an “authorized purpose” for starting the investigation, meaning it was not, as Trump claims ceaselessly, a “witch hunt.” The report even shows that while screams of bias have been leveled ad nauseam at certain investigators who were texting anti-Trump comments, there were also investigators texting pro-Trump comments. There was no evidence either form of bias had bearing on the investigation.

Kayla Epstien reports Defeated GOP governor pardoned violent criminals in a spree lawyers are calling an ‘atrocity of justice’:

Matt Bevin is no longer the governor of Kentucky, but his decisions continued to send shock waves through the state’s legal system this week after he issued pardons for hundreds of people, some of whom committed violent offenses.

Bevin issued 428 pardons since his defeat to Democrat Andy Beshear in a close election in November, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. His list includes a man convicted of reckless homicide, a convicted child rapist, a man who murdered his parents at age 16 and a woman who threw her newborn in the trash after giving birth in a flea market outhouse.

He also pardoned Dayton Jones, who was convicted in the sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy at a party, Kentucky New Era reported.

It is not unusual for governors to issue pardons as they leave office, but Bevin’s actions boggled some of the state’s attorneys, who questioned his judgment.

Watch Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket Launch and Land:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty.  Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 04m 25s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM. 

On this day in 2000, the United States Supreme Court hands down its decision in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).

Recommended for reading in full:

Chris Rickert writes Lafayette County resolution that sought to prosecute reporters began at the top:

Lafayette County resolution that sought to dictate, under threat of prosecution, what media can report about a controversial water-quality study had its origins in the elected leaders of two of the three rural counties where the study is being conducted, records show.

According to emails released through a state public records request, Iowa County Board chairman John Meyers on Oct. 31 sent Grant and Lafayette county officials suggestions for the resolution, including to stress to the media that “under no circumstances are they to be allowed to glean information and selectively report it in order to twist results.”

“Maybe make the press sign a cooperation agreement,” Meyers wrote to Lafayette County economic development director Abby Haas and Grant County Board Chairman Bob Keeney. “Threaten to prosecute them for slander.”

His suggestions also included censuring board members “caught distorting information intentionally.”

The resolution, which surfaced in early November, drew widespread condemnation from open government and First Amendment advocates for likely being illegal, unenforceable and unconstitutional. The Lafayette County Land Conservation Committee approved a modified version of the resolution on Nov. 12 and it was stripped of other controversial provisions and tabled by the full County Board later that night.

(Government restricting a lawful discussion of environmental quality – these officials are as ignorant as they are autocratic. See public records requested by the State Journal, below. A publication that receives public records should publish them. The links in the low-quality newspaper chain in the Whitewater area – Janesville Gazette, Daily Jefferson County Union – don’t do so.)

Bruce Vielmetti reports DMV made a woman walk without her cane before it would renew her license. She fell and broke her wrist:

A Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles worker told a 78-year-old woman she had to walk across the room without her cane before she could renew her license.  Under protest, the woman complied, and in the process fell, broke her wrist and was denied renewal.

Was it illegal discrimination or careful screening of a potentially dangerous driver? A federal court may decide after the woman’s estate filed a civil rights lawsuit over the incident.

Before she went to renew her driver’s license in West Bend last year, Mary Wobschall visited an optometrist to make sure her 78-year-old vision was still fine. Diagnosis: No corrective lenses required for driving.

But she hadn’t expected a DMV worker to make her walk across the lobby without her cane, which she used since double knee replacement years earlier.

Her husband, Ronald Wobschall, objected and asked the examiner how walking without her cane related to his wife’s license renewal. The examiner insisted, and Mary got up, without her cane, and tried to follow orders.

She fell and broke her wrist.

How Video Games Saved Star Wars:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s University Technology Park Board meets at 8 AM. 

On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt incorporates his institute for spiritualism (Pratt had built the institute in Whitewater thirteen years earlier, in 1888).

Recommended for reading in full:

David Corn writes William Barr’s War on Reality, Truth, and the Law:

This is how it works. The big lie. The endless spin. The outright denial of facts. Again and again and again. The complete destruction and devaluation of truth for political gain. Overwhelm reality with fiction, concoctions, and false narratives. Embrace deceit and duplicity.

For rogues, scoundrels, tyrants, princes and princesses of corruption—and their henchmen—the truth is a threat. It must be crushed. It must be vanquished. Abuse of power cannot exist alongside accountability. Malefactors cannot survive within an atmosphere of truth. It is a suffocating poison for them. So they must deceive, and they must dissemble. That is what the United States’ top law enforcement officer demonstrated this week.

Following the release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins and management of the Trump-Russia investigation, Attorney General William Barr went into full Oceania  war-is-peace mode to erase truth in order to protect and soothe his dear leader, Donald Trump. Moments after the report appeared—it concludes the FBI had been right to open an investigation of interactions between Trump associates and Russia in 2016, as Moscow was attacking the US election to help Trump win the White House—Barr challenged the findings. He declared that he knew better than the IG and that the FBI had launched the probe “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” Barr noted that his own hand-picked federal prosecutor, John Durham, would be conducting a separate review and have the final word. And the next day, Barr continued his brazen campaign of disinformation. In an interview with NBC News, he called the FBI investigation “completely baseless.” Barr depicted the probe as a “danger” to civil liberties and the American political system. He was twisting up into down.

Jared Bernstein writes Trump’s China Trade War Is Failing. Democrats Should Campaign Against It:

Is Your Plastic Actually Being Recycled?: