Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-five.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 5:30 PM, for 10h 44m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School Board meets at 6 PM and Whitewater’s Library Board at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1885, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published in the United States.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Conor Friedersdorf writes of The Snowflake in Chief:

To support President Trump is to be complicit in the rule of a thin-skinned authoritarian who denigrates the free-speech rights of people who criticize him.

The latest illustration: his weekend outburst against Saturday Night Live, a sketch-comedy show that has regularly poked fun at every American president for 40 years. The most powerful snowflake in America was triggered by Alec Baldwin. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” Trump tweeted. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”

….

Trump’s SNL tweets are of a piece with a larger, disturbing pattern of behavior in which he violates his oath to protect and defend the Constitution by calling for First Amendment freedoms to be abridged by bureaucrats and legislators; and by calling the press a public enemy and a target of his “drain the swamp” agenda.

 Stephanie Mencimer reports Trump Judicial Nominees Are Refusing to Endorse Brown v. Board of Education (“In normal times, it would be unthinkable. Under Trump, it’s become a trend”)”

There’s no Supreme Court decision more widely celebrated than Brown v. Board of Education, the unanimous 1954 ruling that abolished school segregation. But this month, when Neomi Rao appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on her nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, she refused to say whether she thought the case had been correctly decided.

Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) whether the court had made the right decision in Brown, Rao replied, “As a judicial nominee, I think it’s not appropriate for me to comment on the correctness of particular precedents.” Blumenthal asked her for a yes or no, but Rao would say only that Brown is “an incredibly important decision of the Supreme Court”—a dodge she twice repeated when pressed further.

….

Rao is one of at least 10 Trump nominees to the federal courts in the past year who have refused to offer an opinion on Brown. Several of those nominees have been confirmed or approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and set for a full Senate vote.

….

Both of former President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and archconservative Justice Samuel Alito, had no trouble answering the question in the affirmative during their confirmation hearings, nor did Justice Elena Kagan when she was nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama.

  Inside the ant lab – Mutants and social genes:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 5:29 PM, for 10h 41m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1801 (following a tie electoral college vote between Jefferson and Burr), the House of Representatives on the 36th ballot elects Thomas Jefferson as the third president of the United States.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Shamane Mills reports Wisconsin Trails Nation In Offering School Breakfasts:

The number of Wisconsin students who received breakfast at school through a federally subsidized nutrition program decreased slightly in the 2017-18 school year. And while about 83 percent of schools in the state participated in the School Breakfast Program, that actually puts Wisconsin near the bottom nationally.

“If a school is not offering the school breakfast program, then children cannot access it,” said Crystal FitzSimons of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), which released its School Breakfast Scorecard on Wednesday.

Schools in Wisconsin that don’t offer breakfast for low-income students tell the state Department of Public Instruction they can’t afford to.

“The biggest barrier to providing breakfast is funding,” said DPI spokesman Thomas McCarthy.

On top of federal money, Wisconsin has a school reimbursement rate for free and reduced breakfast of 15 cents a meal. But the state hasn’t paid schools that statutorily set rate since 2006. Because of a shortfall in the account that pays schools for providing breakfast, the reimbursement has fallen to about 7 cents, said McCarthy.

(One would prefer conditions in which no student needed subsidized meals, but we’ve not those conditions, and in any event expenditures of this kind are slight – and far more valuable – as against any number of needless business subsidies or capital projects.)

See also Food Research & Action Center, School Breakfast Scorecard, School Year 2017–2018:

 Corri Hess reports DNR Considering We Energies Proposal To Increase Mercury Limits Released Into Lake Michigan:

Utility company We Energies wants to increase the amount of mercury it can release into Lake Michigan from its coal-burning power plant in Oak Creek.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing earlier this week to discuss the proposal, drawing more than 100 people opposing the plan.

We Energies spokesman Brendan Conway said the new limits wouldn’t cause a health risk to humans or wildlife.

“We are not asking to be asked to be treated differently than anyone else along the lake,” Conway said. “Other permitees along Lake Michigan have received similar or higher mercury variances. People should also understand this variance we are talking about is allowed by the EPA and the DNR so this is not an imminent public health risk.”

(That’s some spokesman We Energies has – he contends it’s not an imminent health risk. This begs the question of whether it might be an intermediate or long-term risk. The question of dumping mercury isn’t answered sensibly because others dump it, but by an assessment of cumulative effects.  Conway offers a mush-for-brains level of reassurance.)

 Tour These 6 Capitals of European Craftsmanship:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 5:28 PM, for 10h 38m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 86.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1923, Egyptologist Howard Carter opens the burial chamber of Tutankhamun.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Glenn Kessler and Meg Kelly write Fact-checking Trump’s announcement of a national emergency:

Where to begin with President Trump’s rambling news conference to announce he was invoking a national emergency to build a border wall? It was chock-full of false and misleading claims, many of which we’ve previously highlighted, either in our database of Trump claims or our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. Here’s a summary of 14 of the most noteworthy claims, starting with immigration ones first. [The full article addresses each claim.]

 The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Stone Case Definitely Tied to Russian Hacker Case:

In arguing against a change of judge for Roger Stone, special counsel prosecutors reveal search warrants on accounts related to the 12 indicted Russian hackers turned up Stone communications with WikiLeaks. Not only does this explain the relevance of Stone appearing before the same judge assigned to the Russian hacker case, but it also presents the possibility Stone’s outreach was more than just the one exchange we already know for certain.

Although Zachary Basu of Axios reports Mueller says Paul Manafort should serve 19-24 years in prison, that’s a misreading of the government’s sentencing memorandum.  In fact, the Special Counsel’s Office doesn’t expressly make any recommendation of its own:

As an initial matter, the government agrees with the guidelines analysis in the Presentence Investigation Report (PSR) and its calculation of the defendant’s Total Offense Level as 38 with a corresponding range of imprisonment of 235 to 293 months, a fine range of $50,000 to $24,371,497.74, a term of supervised release of up to five years, restitution in the amount of $24,815,108.74, and forfeiture in the amount of $4,412,500.

Second, while the government does not take a position as to the specific sentence to be imposed here, the government sets forth below its assessment of the nature of the offenses and the characteristics of the defendant under Title 18, United States Code, Section 3553(a).

(Emphasis added.  This is very clever – agreeing with the PSR is less than taking a position on a specific sentence.  The court may decide not to impose so lengthy a sentence in any event.)

Hope Kirwan reports Wisconsin Counties Hopeful New Money For Groundwater Will Help Address Causes:

Gov. Tony Evers announced he was directing the state Department of Natural Resources to allocate $75,000 to the Southwest Wisconsin Groundwater and Geology (SWIGG) study in a statement released Wednesday.

The SWIGG study focuses on private wells in Grant, Lafayette and Iowa countries. An initial round of testing found 42 percent of tested wells were at unsafe levels of bacteria or nitrates, a compound linked to a variety of health problems.

Helping Kids With Cerebral Palsy Walk with Wearable Robots:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighteen.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 5:27 PM, for 10h 36m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 76.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, at the Battle of Congaree Creek, South Carolina, the 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery participates in the Union victory over elements of the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Peter Schuck writes of The Real Problem With Trump’s National Emergency Plan:

President Trump is verging on a declaration of national emergency — purely in order to fund his wall. And if he does, the courts may — or may not — reject his gambit.

But the fact that he may actually possess the legal authority to require agencies to waste billions of dollars simply to fulfill a foolish campaign promise he thinks won him the election is itself scandalous. The theatrics surrounding his petulant threat to do so obscure a vital question for our democracy going far beyond this (non)crisis, a question to which Congress should immediately turn: Who decides what constitutes a national emergency?

In hundreds of laws, Congress has given the president the power to decide. (The Brennan Center for Justice has compiled an exhaustive list.) But by failing to define crucial terms, legal standards and accountability rules, Congress has handed presidents an all-too-handy tool of tyranny commonly used by autocrats to amass more power, crush dissent and eviscerate democratic institutions. In Mr. Trump’s case, it has handed an unguided missile to an ignorant, impetuous man-child.

Congress should have known better. After all, it enacted the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which purported to regulate such declarations, only two years after President Richard Nixon’s abuses of power forced his resignation. The act actually made matters worse in a key respect: It defined a national emergency as “a general declaration of emergency made by the president.” This circular definition, of course, is no constraint at all. Or as Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

 Robert Costa, Rachael Bade, Josh Dawsey, and Seung Min Kim report ‘Off the rails’: Inside Trump’s attempt to claim victory in his border wall defeat:

“We thought he was good to go all morning, and then suddenly it’s like everything is off the rails,” said one senior Republican aide.

By midafternoon, however, Trump was back on board — agreeing to sign the legislation with the caveat that he would also declare a national emergency in an attempt to use existing government funds to pay for wall construction. It was an option that Republican leaders had urged him to avoid but eventually accepted as necessary to escape the corner in which Trump — and his party — were trapped. McConnell promised Trump he would encourage others to support the emergency in a bid to get the president to sign, according to people familiar with the conversations.

  Why Valentine’s Day Isn’t 1-800-Flowers Busiest Day:

Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 5:25 PM, for 10h 33m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1819, an inventor is born:

On this date, the inventor of the modern typewriter, C. Latham Sholes, was born. Sholes moved to Wisconsin as a child and lived in Green Bay, Kenosha, and Milwaukee. In 1867, in Milwaukee, he presented his first model for the modern typewriter and patents for the device were taken out in 1868. Sholes took the advice of many mechanical experts, including Thomas Edison, and so claims that he was the sole inventor of the typewriter have often been disputed.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Dan Friedman reports Paul Manafort Lied to Robert Mueller About Russian Contacts, Judge Rules:

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Paul Manafort lied to prosecutors about his contacts with a colleague who had suspected ties to Russian intelligence, activity that occurred while Manafort ran President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and continued into 2018.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that Manafort violated an agreement he reached in September with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office to cooperate fully with their inquiry into Trump campaign contacts with Russia. Jackson’s ruling, which came during a sealed hearing Wednesday, will likely bring Manafort a longer prison term when Jackson sentences him next month on charges including money laundering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, to which he pleaded guilty last year.

The ruling also underscores a key allegation from Mueller: Manafort lied to cover up contacts he had with a suspected proxy for the Russian government while serving as head of Trump’s campaign.

Jackson agreed that prosecutors had shown that Manafort misled prosecutors about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik—a longtime Manafort employee in Ukraine—who prosecutors have said retains active ties to Russian military intelligence, known as GRU. Federal prosecutors charged agents of the same agency with carrying out hacks of the Democratic National Committee and other Democrats as part of an effort to help Trump win the presidency.

See also Document: Judge Rules Manafort Lied While Under Cooperation Agreement:

 Shawn Johnson writes Report: Special Ed Funding Gap Grows To $1B:

A lack of new state funding for special education has forced school districts across Wisconsin to find that money elsewhere, according to a new report by a public policy think-tank.

That discrepancy between what schools need and what the state gives them has grown to more than $1 billion per year.

“The takeaway is it doesn’t only affect special education kids,” said Anne Chapman, a senior researcher at the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which issued the report. “Because of the way Wisconsin chooses to fund both regular education and special education, this sort of what you might call underfunding of the costs of special ed cascades to affect all the school districts in the state.”

  3D printing with light: ‘The replicator’ is here:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-six.  Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 5:24 PM, for 10h 30m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 56% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1935, Wisconsin sets a floor on gasoline prices: “in an effort to stop gasoline price wars, the state of Wisconsin established a minimum price of 16 cents per gallon for gasoline.”

Recommended for reading in full:

 Bruce Murphy examines Walker and the Russian Connection:

Yesterday Urban Milwaukee published new data by Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC) on the state’s top 20 individual donors and on the list was the Russia-connected business man, Leonard Blavatnik, of New York City, who gave $100,000 to the state Republican Party in August 2018, at a time when the party was controlled by Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker had earlier received $1.75 million for his run for president from Blavatnik’s company Access Industries.

Why the donations? That involves a murky mystery that might make a good John LeCarre novel. Blavatnik, you see, is a Soviet-born and Russian-raised American citizen who co-owns businesses in Russia with two oligarchs there, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, who are close to Vladimir Putin, as the Dallas News has reported

….

Blavatnik gave a $250,000 donation to Walker’s Our American Revival fund (supporting his run for president) just days after Walker met with accused Russian spy Maria Butina, who has pleaded guilty to attempting to infiltrate Republican political circles and influence US relations with Russia before and after the 2016 presidential election. Butina had developed a friendship with officials with the National Rifle Association and used that connection to meet Republican candidates for the 2016 election. She met with officials in the campaign of Donald Trump and with Walker himself. 

 Molly Beck reports Scott Walker’s ‘Open for Business’ welcome signs will soon be detour markers:

Signs championed by former Gov. Scott Walker that welcomed visitors to Wisconsin as a state “Open for Business” are being turned into detour signs.

An official in Gov. Tony Evers’ administration said in a letter this month that the signs donning Walker’s economic development mantra will be turned into signs used for detours and directions in emergency situations.

“Therefore, the old signs will be cut in half with no material wasted,” said the Feb. 1 letter from Department of Administration enterprise operations administrator James Langdon to Republican Rep. John Macco of Ledgeview.

Amy Wang reports Top dog? It’s King, a wire fox terrier who won best in show at Westminster:

Breed after breed took turns in the spotlight, getting judged against their competitors. Over the course of two days, the field of about 2,800 dogs from 203 breeds was whittled to dozens, as one dog emerged from each breed contest victorious, to a mix of whoops, polite clapping and a few tears. By Tuesday night, only one dog remained: best in show.

King, a wire fox terrier, ultimately won the top award.

  Sites On Mars That Humans Should Visit: