Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with an occasional afternoon shower and a high of seventy-one.  Sunrise is 5:56 AM and sunset 7:48 PM, for 13h 52m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM and the Fire Department Board in closed session at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1996, Gov. Tommy Thompson signs W-2 (Wisconsin Works) into law.

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The Washington Post editorial board writes Sorry, Mr. President. Congress has every right to investigate you: 

“THERE IS no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress,” President Trump told Post reporters Tuesday, explaining why he was preparing to stonewall congressional requests for administration documents and testimony, possibly by invoking executive privilege. “We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” Trump said on Wednesday. “These aren’t like impartial people.”

If that were the standard, then Congress could never investigate anything. Mr. Trump’s Republican colleagues must remember the battles they fought with President Barack Obama over transparency only a few years ago when they ran the House. Mr. Obama asserted executive privilege to prevent then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. from turning over documents on the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme. Republicans held Mr. Holder in contempt of Congress.

As we said at the time, “No doubt a lot of congressional investigations are partisan fishing expeditions. For better or worse, that comes with the democratic territory. Absent very strong countervailing considerations — stronger than some of those the administration has asserted in this case — Congress is generally entitled to disclosure.” Democrats, too, are entitled to disclosure, particularly as they ask weighty questions about the potentially severe abuse of power in the top reaches of the White House.

Law professor J.W. Verret writes The Mueller Report Was My Tipping Point (“I was a Trump transition staffer, and I’ve seen enough. It’s time for impeachment”):

Depending on how you count, roughly a dozen separate instances of obstruction of justice are contained in the Mueller report. The president dangled pardons in front of witnesses to encourage them to lie to the special counsel, and directly ordered people to lie to throw the special counsel off the scent.

This elaborate pattern of obstruction may have successfully impeded the Mueller investigation from uncovering a conspiracy to commit more serious crimes. At a minimum, there’s enough here to get the impeachment process started. In impeachment proceedings, the House serves as a sort of grand jury and the Senate conducts the trial. There is enough in the Mueller report to commence the Constitution’s version of a grand-jury investigation in the form of impeachment proceedings.

The Founders knew that impeachment would be, in part, a political exercise. They decided that the legislative branch would operate as the best check on the president by channeling the people’s will. Congress has an opportunity to shape that public sentiment with the hearings ahead.

India’s Elections Last For 39 Days. Here’s Why:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty-six.  Sunrise is 5:57 AM and sunset 7:47 PM, for 13h 49m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1977, the Morris Pratt Institute of Spiritualism Moves from Whitewater to Waukesha.

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Margaret Sullivan writes Mueller’s report proves why Trump loves Fox News — and why he needs it now more than ever:

It’s no secret that Fox News and the Trump administration are deeply entwined: They are the conjoined twins of misinformation.

So it hardly raised an eyebrow when the president took to Twitter on Thursday to urge everyone to tune in to Fox for Attorney General William P. Barr’s (misleading) prelude to the release of the report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The results were predictable: Fox’s early news coverage was somewhat straight — kept so largely by the presence of Fox’s designated truth-teller, Chris Wallace.

The follow-up coverage and commentary, though, was outlandishly one-sided, led by Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was allowed to spin frenetically for what seemed like endless minutes, offering such gems as “there’s not a single surprise” in the report.

….

Trump will need Fox News more than ever to fend off the undeniable truths of the report, which Dahlia Lithwick in Slate called a “highlights reel of things even the most casual observer already knew.”

To wit: “The Russians tried to steal the election. Some members of his campaign were happy to help. The president wanted to protect Michael Flynn. The president wanted to kill the special counsel investigation. The president materially and significantly tampered with witnesses to that investigation. The president lied and told others to lie.”

We knew this. As my colleague Paul Farhi documented, the Mueller report “largely validated news accounts that Trump dismissed or disparaged,” often with his favorite insult — that those accounts were nothing but fake news.

Jay Rosen describes the kind of ecosystem Trump wants – needs:

“It’s as if one-third of the public has been broken off from the rest of the electorate and isolated in an information system of its own.” @JayRosen_NYU calls this an “authoritarian news system” and says “we don’t always have the language we need to talk about it.”

How an Abandoned Whaling Station Turned Into a Penguin Paradise:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-four.  Sunrise is 5:59 AM and sunset 7:46 PM, for 13h 47m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 7 AM and the Whitewater Board of Review meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1934, the FBI rousts gangster John Dillinger from the Little Bohemia Lodge in Vilas County.

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Bess Levin reports Dow Chemical Donates $1 Million to Trump, Asks Administration to Ignore Pesticide Study:

Chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion are a group of pesticides that are a big money-maker for Dow Chemical, with the company selling approximately 5 million pounds of chlorpyrifos in the U.S. each year, according to the Associated Press. Dow Chemical, however, has a small problem on its hands, and it’s not the fact that the pesticide was “originally derived from a nerve gas developed by Nazi Germany,” per the AP, though that’s certainly not great for marketing materials. In this case, it’s the fact that studies by federal scientists have found that chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion are harmful to almost 1,800 “critically threatened or endangered species.” Historically, groups like the Environmental Protection Agency would want to avoid killing frogs, fish, birds, mammals, and plants, which is why the regulator and two others that it works with to enforce the Endangered Species Act are reportedly “close to issuing findings expected to result in new limits on how and where the highly toxic pesticides can be used,” the AP reports.

Luckily for Dow, the E.P.A. is now run by climate-change skeptic and general enemy of living things Scott Pruitt, who last month said he would reverse “an Obama-era effort to bar the use of Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide on food after recent peer-reviewed studies found that even tiny levels of exposure could hinder the development of children’s brains.” Plus, Dow Chemical C.E.O. Andrew Liveris is good buddies with President Donald Trump. So, you can see how the company, which the AP reports also spent $13.6 million on lobbying last year, might feel like it is in the clear.

According to the AP, lawyers representing Dow and two other companies that manufacture the pesticides in question (known as organophosphates) have sent letters to the heads of the E.P.A, the Department of Commerce, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, asking them to “set aside” the results of the studies, claiming that they are “fundamentally flawed.” Not surprisingly, the scientists hired by Dow “to produce a lengthy rebuttal to the government studies” have come up with diverging results.

….

Dow also donated $1 million to underwrite Trump’s inaugural festivities, the AP reports, but God help the person who dares to wonder aloud if the check was some sort of an attempt to curry favor with the administration. As Rachelle Schikorra, Dow’s director of public affairs, told the AP, any such suggestion is “completely off the mark.”

How Pinterest Makes Money:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:45 PM, for 13h 44m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM, with an open session beginning at 7 PM.

On this day in 1954, the televised portion of the Army-McCarthy hearings begins:

Chaired by Senator Karl Mundt, the hearings convened on March 16, 1954, and received considerable press attention, including gavel-to-gavel live television coverage on ABC and DuMont (April 22–June 17). The media coverage, particularly television, greatly contributed to McCarthy’s decline in popularity and his eventual censure by the Senate the following December.

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Abigail Tracy reports The “Red Line” Investigations that Will Haunt Trump’s Presidency:

For Donald Trump, perhaps the most chilling moment in the Mueller report occurs on page 446, where the special counsel reveals that he has referred a total of 14 potential cases to other prosecutors. Because while Robert Mueller was given a limited mandate to investigate the Trump-Russia affair, special counsel investigations have a habit of unearthing other, unrelated criminality in the process. Perhaps that is why, when Trump first learned that Mueller had been appointed, according to the report, he slumped back in his chair and exclaimed, “I’m fucked.”

What flashed through Trump’s mind in that moment—his sprawling business empire, his byzantine taxes, his hush-money payments to a porn star—is unknown. Indeed, 12 of the 14 referrals that Mueller outsourced were redacted and remain shrouded in secrecy. (The two public referred cases involve Michael Cohen, the president’s former fixer, and a false-statement case against Democratic attorney and lobbyist Gregory Craig.) But, with investigations churning in Congress, in New York, and in Washington, D.C., it is clear that Trump’s nightmare is just beginning. Below is an accounting of the known legal threats Trumpworld has yet to grapple with. [Tracy lists all 14.]

Lachlan Markay reports Russian State Media Binges on Fox Prime Time and Sean Hannity Reruns:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report implicated the Russian government in a widespread campaign of hacking and political disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Russian state media is nonetheless trumpeting the reaction of U.S. conservativesto the report, which found that the Trump campaign was not complicit in those election-meddling efforts, as evidence of a broad anti-Russian conspiracy in the U.S. And it’s using at least one prominent American conservative voice to do so.

The Russian government-owned Rossiya 1 news channel recently broadcasted excerpts from Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity’s on-air monologue, which hammered “media hysteria” over the report and allegations of campaign “collusion” with the Russian government.

In its own editorializing, Rossiya 1 described the report as “bestseller about the absence of collusion between Trump and Russia,” and blamed the political press and U.S. intelligence agencies for “hounding Trump” over the allegations, according to a translation by journalist and Daily Beast contributor Julia Davis.

 Protecting the Future of Rock Lobster Fishing:

Good morning.

Easter in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 6:02 AM and sunset 7:44 PM, for 13h 41m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1838, John Muir is born:

On this date John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland. He immigrated with his family to Wisconsin in 1849 and spent his youth working on his father’s farms in Marquette County, experiences that are recounted in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913). In 1868 he moved to Yosemite Valley, California, where he became a conservationist and leader in the forest preserve movement. His work led to the creation of the first national parks, the saving of California’s redwoods, and the founding of the Sierra Club.

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Jake Rudnitsky and Ilya Arkhipov write Mueller Exposes Putin’s Use of Tycoons as Trump Emissaries: 

Shortly after news emerged that Hillary Clinton had phoned Donald Trump to concede the presidential election early on November 9, 2016, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund received a message from New York: “Putin has won.”

The exchange recorded in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, in which the name of Kirill Dmitriev’s contact has been redacted, captures the jubilation among Kremlin insiders over Trump’s victory following what U.S. intelligence said was a campaign of Russian interference designed to help the underdog. The win set in motion what the report called a “flurry of Russian activity” among businessmen to establish contact with the president-elect’s team.

Mueller’s report, which includes details of Dmitriev’s private correspondence and an interview with billionaire investor Petr Aven, offers a rare glimpse into how President Vladimir Putin uses leading businessmen to act as informal Kremlin emissaries, meeting regularly with them to give directions.

….

“It’s an open secret that oligarchs are an important tool not only domestically but in Russia’s foreign policy,” Valery Solovei, a political scientist at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, said. “The merit of the Mueller report is that he exposes this, showing how it functions.”

  Scott Simon reports Helvetica, The Iconic Font Both Loved And Loathed, Gets Its 1st Redesign In 36 Years:

It’s been used by brands such as American Airlines, Panasonic and Toyota. It’s all over the signage in the New York City subway system. Even Google, Apple and Netflix used it for a time.

Helvetica is ubiquitous around the world, but despite its popularity, the typeface has some issues: letters scrunch together at small sizes and the space between them can be uneven.

Now, after 36 years, the widely used — and widely controversial — font is getting a makeover.

The upgrade was designed by the the Massachusetts type giant Monotype, which controls licensing for Helvetica. The company has updated each of Helvetica’s 40,000 characters for the digital age, offering three new sizes designed to work on everything from billboards to the tiny screens of a smartwatch. The updated font even has a new name: “Helvetica Now.”

Helvetica® Now:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of sixty-six.  Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:43 PM, for 13h 39m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.4 of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1836, the oldest library in Wisconsin is founded.

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Conservative David French writes Donald Trump Is Weak and Afraid. The Mueller Report Proves It:

It’s difficult to overestimate the extent to which Trump’s appeal to his core supporters is built around the notion that — regardless of his other flaws — he possesses a core strength, a willingness to “fight” and an ability to strike a degree of fear in the hearts of his opponents. I live in the heart of Trump country in Tennessee, and I have consistently heard the same refrain from his most loyal supporters. Trump, as they say, “kicks ass.” He was the ultimate alpha male, a political version of Tony Soprano, a formidable boss who commands an army of loyal consiglieri. Cross him at your peril.

But now, thanks to the Mueller report, his “fights” look more like temper tantrums, and those closest to him — including low men like Lewandowski and far-more-noble men like former White House counsel Donald McGahn — understand that his fury is passing and his directives are unreliable, seemingly transitory and easily forgotten or disregarded.

Moreover, his vaunted personal judgment — an image cultivated through years of careful television production on The Apprentice — has been exposed as well. When one reads Robert Mueller’s account of Trump’s own campaign chair’s extraordinary efforts to maintain an encrypted connection to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, it’s plain that Trump was played. Paul Manafort used Trump’s gullibility as a business opportunity.

….

As the Mueller report stated, Trump’s attempts to influence the investigation “were mostly unsuccessful,” but it’s “largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” He’s not strong. He’s not wise. He’s not honorable. And sometimes, when his subordinates disregard is orders, he’s not even truly the president. Regardless of his potential criminality, there is nothing revealed in the report that is admirable — or alpha — about Donald Trump.

David A. Fahrenthold reports ‘I have no recollection’: Trump turned to familiar refrain in response to Mueller questions:

President Trump has bragged that he has “one of the great memories of all time.”

But — when faced with questions from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about the 2016 campaign — Trump said his memory failed him.

When did Trump learn that his aides had met with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on rival Hillary Clinton?

“I have no recollection,” Trump wrote in written responses to Mueller’s team.

Did anyone tell Trump during the campaign that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin supported Trump’s candidacy?

“I have no recollection of being told,” Trump wrote back.

In at least 37 instances, Trump responded to Mueller’s questions — about his campaign’s contacts with Russians and about Russian interference in the 2016 election — by saying he couldn’t recall.

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