Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-one. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:45 PM, for 13h 45m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1970, the first Earth Day is celebrated: “The event was organized by a 33-member committee in Philadelphia. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson advocated Earth Day to focus national attention on ecological issues.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ The Brookings Institution presents The Life She Deserves, a new documentary short film that is an intimate portrait of Jennifer Collins and her family’s struggle to find a treatment to control her debilitating epilepsy and their fight to change medical marijuana laws:

(I’m not ill, and I don’t smoke anything, so this film doesn’t describe my situation. It’s enough to contend that the law should not deny Collins or others effective remedies for chronic conditions.)

➤ Scott Bauer reports 10 minutes at Supreme Court cost Wisconsin $60K:

Wisconsin taxpayers footed a previously unknown $60,000 bill for an attorney to argue for 10 minutes before the U.S. Supreme Court in the state’s defense of a redistricting lawsuit, records obtained by The Associated Press show.

A summary of bills provided by the Republican leaders of the state Senate and Assembly through an open records request shows the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis was paid $60,000 to make the Supreme Court arguments in October. The cost wasn’t included in original contracts signed by Republican legislative leaders in February 2017.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said when the contract was signed it wasn’t known whether Kirkland would appear in court or simply prepare legal briefs.

The Legislature asked for time to present its position during oral arguments, which resulted in the $60,000 bill on top of $175,000 paid to the law firm for other work, Fitzgerald spokesman Dan Romportl said.

The solicitor general for the Wisconsin Department of Justice had 20 minutes of time to defend the maps in the oral arguments in addition to the 10 minutes given to the attorney from Kirkland and Ellis.

The records show that another law firm that did work on the case, Bell Giftos St. John, has been paid $127,414 to date. The Legislature’s contract allowed for its attorneys to be paid $300 an hour with no limit on the total.

➤ The Committee to Investigate Russia writes of Two Curious Travel Discrepancies:

Both President Trump and his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen are telling stories of past travel that don’t seem to line up with previously disclosed information.

When McClatchy DC reported last Friday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence Cohen traveled to Prague as described in the Steele dossier, Cohen doubled down on his insistence that was not true, tweeting “I have never been to Prague.”

However, Mother Jones‘ David Corn – the first reporter to reveal the existence of the Steele memos in October 2016 – says that is not what Cohen told him in an interview Corn conducted as he was attempting to confirm parts of the memos.

Mother Jones:

The claim that Cohen met secretly with Russians seemed to be one of the tales that might be confirmable. I took a stab at that. While pursuing that angle, I called Cohen. He insisted that there had been no trip to Prague and that he had met with no Russians during the campaign.

This week I reviewed my notes from that phone call. Here’s the direct quote from Cohen: “I haven’t been to Prague in 14 years. I was in Prague for one afternoon 14 years ago.”

What’s notable? In that conversation, Cohen acknowledged he had once been to Prague—but a long time ago. In his recent denial, Cohen, whose home and office were raided last week by FBI agents seeking records related to the Stormy Daniels case and other matters (including taxi medallions), asserted he had “never” been to Prague. How significant is this discrepancy? There is no telling. But it is an inconsistency. Cohen’s lead lawyer could not be reached for a comment.

This discrepancy mirrors one that recently emerged related to Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow, when he presided over the Miss Universe pageant he then co-owned. That was the infamous trip mentioned in the Steele memos as the time when Trump cavorted with prostitutes in his hotel room.

According to the just released Comey memos, President Trump says he never spent the night in Moscow so the claims he interacted with prostitutes could not be true. However, as Corn notes, that is not what Keith Schiller told Congress.

Schiller reportedly told the House Intel committee he and Trump, while on their way back to the hotel later that evening,  laughed about an unidentified Russian’s offer to send Trump prostitutes, and Trump went to bed alone.

NBC News:

Schiller testified that he stood outside Trump’s hotel room for a time and then went to bed.

One source noted that Schiller testified he eventually left Trump’s hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night.

Two other sources said Schiller testified he was confident nothing happened.

Mother Jones:

Yet Trump did indeed stay in the hotel that night. In our new book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, Michael Isikoff and I detail Trump’s itinerary in Moscow during that visit, which lasted two days and one night. In fact, Trump’s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller has told congressional investigators that he escorted Trump to his hotel room that particular night. There is no doubt Trump was in the hotel that evening. Yet he told Comey he wasn’t? That seems odd. Especially for the man who says he has “one of the great memories of all time.”

Furthermore, BuzzFeed News points out that President Trump’s social media posts from November 2013 reveal he did spend at least one night in Moscow, if not the entire weekend. Photos show Trump in Moscow on Friday and Saturday, and a tweet Sunday night reads, in part, “I just got back from Russia.”

➤ Julia Preston writes Should America Give Refuge to Abused Women? (“Trump seems to say, not anymore.”):

Women in an exodus from Central America since 2014 have succeeded in winning asylum or other protections in the United States as victims of a pandemic of domestic abuse in that region. Because of recent cases that established fear of domestic violence as a legitimate basis for asylum, those claims often found more solid legal grounding in immigration court than claims of people who said they were escaping from killer gangs.

Now the Trump administration, determined to stop the stream of people to the border from Central America, is moving to curtail or close the legal avenues to protection for abused women like L.C. While the #MeToo movement has swept the country, bringing new legitimacy to women’s stories and consequences for men who abused, on immigration President Trump is going the other way.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, from his position as the top official in charge of the immigration courts, is leading a broad review to question whether domestic or sexual violence should ever be recognized as persecution that would justify protection in the United States.

➤ Meet the World’s Fastest (Backwards) Runner:

For most of his life, runner Aaron Yoder has been steadily moving forward. Then, he took a turn. After an injury prevented him from competing in races, Aaron searched for a way to keep up his love for the sport without impacting his knee. He discovered backwards running, finding that running in reverse put no pressure on his knee. Today, he holds the record as the fastest backwards runner in the world.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:02 AM and sunset 7:44 PM, for 13h 42m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1838, John Muir is born: “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. [Source:  Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 261]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ David Frum asks If America’s Democracy Fails, Can Other Ones Survive? (“Yascha Mounk says the rise of populism isn’t over yet.”):

Almost everyone who writes about challenges to democracy sooner or later encounters the important work of Yascha Mounk. The list of his accomplishments is a long one: The German-born scholar lectures on political theory at Harvard, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund, and is a nonresident fellow at New America’s Political Reform Program. He writes a weekly column for Slate, where he also hosts The Good Fight podcast.

His latest book, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, will be published on March 5. I spoke with Mounk earlier this month about his research, the meaning of populism, and the question of how democratic societies cope with immigration, among other things. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

…

Frum: A few moments ago, you offered some comfort: Authoritarian populism may be on the rise, but has not yet taken power in most places. There’s one conspicuous exception of course. If the United States succumbs, can others resist?

Mounk: This is really two questions. The first is about the geopolitical consequences of America abandoning its commitment to liberal democracy. Countries in Western Europe often forget to what extent America has protected them from the ill winds of world politics over the past half century. If the United States evolves toward illiberalism, the consequences would be disastrous. European democracies like France and Germany would become increasingly dependent on Russia. Japan and South Korea would become open to influence from China. This will ultimately put a lot of pressure on their domestic as well as their foreign policy.

The second question is even more important though, and it is about what it would tell us about the stability of other supposedly stable democracies if liberal democracy erodes in the United States. Despite all of America’s specific problems, it is the oldest democracy in the world. With the exception of Canada, it has the deepest experience with trying to make a multiethnic democracy work. If the forces that are pulling us apart are strong enough to make democracy fail in this country, I fear that similar reasons will also prove strong enough to make democracy fail in most other countries in the world.

➤ Maggie Haberman, Sharon LaFraniere, and Danny Hakim report Michael Cohen Has Said He Would Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore:

For years, a joke among Trump Tower employees was that the boss was like Manhattan’s First Avenue, where the traffic goes only one way.

That one-sidedness has always been at the heart of President Trump’s relationship with his longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who has said he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump. For years Mr. Trump treated Mr. Cohen poorly, with gratuitous insults, dismissive statements and, at least twice, threats of being fired, according to interviews with a half-dozen people familiar with their relationship.

“Donald goes out of his way to treat him like garbage,” said Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s informal and longest-serving political adviser, who, along with Mr. Cohen, was one of five people originally surrounding the president when he was considering a presidential campaign before 2016.

Now, for the first time, the traffic may be going Mr. Cohen’s way. Mr. Trump’s lawyers and advisers have become resigned to the strong possibility that Mr. Cohen, who has a wife and two children and faces the prospect of devastating legal fees, if not criminal charges, could end up cooperating with federal officials who are investigating him for activity that could relate, at least in part, to work he did for Mr. Trump.

(No honor among thieves.)

➤ Beth Reinhard and Emma Brown report Stormy Daniels’s former lawyer said to be cooperating with federal probe of Michael Cohen:

Keith Davidson, the former attorney for two women who were paid to keep quiet about their alleged affairs with Donald Trump, has been contacted by federal authorities investigating Trump attorney Michael Cohen and is cooperating with them, a spokesman for Davidson confirmed.

Davidson was asked to provide “certain limited electronic information” for the probe led by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, spokesman Dave Wedge said. “He has done so and will continue to cooperate to the fullest extent possible under the law,” Wedge said in a statement Friday.

Shortly before the 2016 election, Davidson negotiated a confidentiality agreement with Cohen under which porn star Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000.

Davidson also represented Karen McDougal, a Playboy centerfold, in the $150,000 agreement she struck in August 2016 with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., for the rights to her story. AMI never published the story.

Both Daniels and McDougal have filed lawsuits to get out of their non-disclosure agreements. Earlier this week, McDougal settled with AMI — whose chief executive, David Pecker, is a friend of Trump — and is no longer bound by her contract with the tabloid publisher.

➤ Dean Sterling Jones writes The Russian Troll Factory is Recruiting English-Speaking Journalists to Fight “Political Censorship” After Facebook Ban:

It’s been a rough couple of months for the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

In February, 13 members of the so-called “Russian troll factory” were indicted for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. election. Since then, the company has been banned from various social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.

But now the IRA is fighting back with the launch of its “Wake up, America!” campaign, which promises to challenge “the hegemony of the US authorities” by “promoting information and problems that are hushed up by major American publications controlled by the US political elite.”

The campaign was announced last week via the Federal News Agency (FAN), a pro-Kremlin website that has been traced back to the IRA by open-source researcher Laurence Alexander.

Russian news websites including RBK Group and The Moscow Times have also published stories linking FAN to the IRA.

“Due to the growing political censorship imposed by the United States, there remains less and less of information sources that are not under control of the US authorities,” reads an announcement on the FAN website. “In this regard, US citizens cannot receive objective and independent information about events occurring on the territory of America and throughout the world.”

(Trumpists would rather lap what Putin dishes than consume a healthful meal of American journalism.)

➤ How Birds Get Oxygen Inside Their Eggs:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:43 PM, for 13h 39m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1836, the oldest library in the state is founded: “On this date an Act of Congress created the Territory of Wisconsin and in the sixteenth and final section of that Act appropriated funds for the Wisconsin State Library to support the needs of the fledgling government. The library is still functioning but has been renamed as the Wisconsin State Law Library.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Quinta Jurecic writes Get Yer Comey Memos Here:

Earlier today [Thursday], the Justice Department provided copies of ex-FBI Director James Comey’s memos of his conversations with President Trump to the House Judiciary Committee and House Intelligence Committee, the majority leaders of which had threatened to subpoena of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and hold him in contempt if he did not provide the memos. The memos have since become public. The transmission letter, as well as the declassified memos, are available below [documents embeded at FW below].

[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/20180419-james-comey-memos.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

➤ Michael S. Scmidt reports 6 Takeaways From the James Comey Memos:

Here are six takeaways:

Trump’s Preoccupation With the Dossier

Shortly before Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Mr. Comey briefed him at Trump Tower about a dossier compiled for the F.B.I. by a former British spy that said Mr. Trump and his associates had longstanding ties to Russia. In its most salacious allegation, the document said that the Russian government had a tape of Mr. Trump watching prostitutes urinate on one another during a trip to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant.

Mr. Trump denied the episode had taken place and appeared to Mr. Comey to be defending himself. Mr. Comey replied that the allegations could have been made up, but that the job of the F.B.I. was to protect the president from efforts to coerce him.

Though Mr. Trump ended the meeting genially, the accusations clearly stuck with him, Mr. Comey’s memos showed. At least twice more in the ensuing weeks, Mr. Trump laid out a timeline for Mr. Comey and claimed that it showed that such a tape could not exist [additional takeaways in original article].

➤ Greg Sargent observes The leaked Comey memos just blew up in Trump’s face:

First, the Comey memos. When you cut through all the noise, what they really reveal is a senior law enforcement official struggling to figure out in real time how to handle efforts by the president to turn him into a loyalist devoted to carrying out his political will in wildly inappropriate fashion. Comey’s memos recount in new detail that Trump repeatedly demanded his loyalty and that Trump pressed him to drop his probe into his then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.

We already knew those things happened via dogged reporting and Comey’s previous testimony to Congress. But now that we have the memos recounting them in full, contemporaneously, the consistency and credibility of this picture become a lot firmer. Simply put, the memos confirm that Trump did, in fact, try to exert a level of control over his FBI director, and over an ongoing investigation into his and his cronies’ conduct, that is wildly at odds with norms dictating that law enforcement should be free of political and/or presidential interference.

➤ Jonathan Bernstein asks Republicans Protecting Trump? Actually, It’s Worse:

In a way, this is worse than merely seeking to protect Trump by placing party above the nation’s interests. By continuing down this path, these House Republicans are placing their True Conservative goal above the party, its president, and the national interest.

Eleven of them are urging the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and a bunch of other people. Their reasoning, let’s just say, is specious. At the same time, three House chairs and other House Republicans pressured Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to release Comey’s memos. This is almost certainly not legitimate congressional oversight, as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent detailed; it’s simply a means of interfering with the Mueller investigation. This is more of the same from the folks, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of fast-to-fizzle #releasethememo controversy.

Everyone is assuming that in doing this, the House radicals are seeking to protect Trump. But it’s very possible that they are seeking a Saturday Night Massacre type event for their own reasons. How did the release of the Comey memos help Trump, for instance? They certainly burnished the reputation of Nunes to the strong conservatives who might help him overcome a surprisingly competitive re-election campaign — both through national fundraising and district support.

➤ The Curious Case of Ferret Legging:

(Honest to goodness, it’s hard – but sadly not impossible – to believe this is a real thing.)

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:05 AM and sunset 7:42 PM, for 13h 37m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, the Revolutionary War begins with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jennifer Rubin observes Mitch McConnell is inviting a constitutional crisis:

Let’s cut through all this: Republicans are petrified of provoking Trump (“the bear”), whom they treat as their supervisor and not as an equal branch of government. The notion that Congress should not take out an insurance policy to head off a potential constitutional crisis when the president has repeatedly considered firing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein defies logic. By speaking up in such fashion, McConnell is effectively tempting Trump to fire one or both of them. That will set off a firestorm and bring calls for the president’s impeachment.

“There is evidently no limit on the complicity [McConnell] is willing to shoulder,” argued Norman Eisen, a former White House ethics counsel during the Obama administration. “Even as bipartisan support for the legislation is emerging in both houses of Congress — or perhaps because it is emerging — he stands in the way.” He added: “It is a betrayal of the rule of law for McConnell to take this position when the president has reportedly tried twice to fire Mueller, and discussed it frequently, and is now agitated over the Michael Cohen developments. McConnell will be fully as responsible as Trump if the special counsel is fired.”

At critical points during this saga, McConnell has put party over country, and fidelity to the executive branch over the concerns of an equal legislative branch. Remember, according to multiple news reports, McConnell is the one who, before the 2016 election, wanted to water down a bipartisan warning to the country about Russian interference. It was McConnell, together with Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who refused to set up a select committee or an independent commission to address possible Russian collusion. It was McConnell who pushed through the confirmation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, despite ample evidence that he had not been truthful with the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding his contacts with Russians. His refusal to consider legislation that might head off a crisis is remarkably reckless.

➤ WNYC reports on The Company Michael Cohen Kept:

If you’ve seen video or images of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, they’ve probably been set in locations that exude power and importance: Cohen berating a CNN anchor in a TV studio, for example, or striding across the sleek marbled interior of Trump Tower, or more recently, smoking cigars in front of Cohen’s temporary residence, the Loews Regency Hotel on Manhattan’s Park Avenue.

But to understand how Michael Cohen arrived in those precincts, you need to venture across New York City’s East River. There, in a Queens warehouse district in the shadows of an elevated No. 7 subway line, is a taxi garage that used to house his law practice. The office area in the front is painted a garish taxi-cab-yellow, with posters of hockey players on the wall and a framed photo of the late Hasidic rabbi, Menachem Schneerson. Cohen practiced law there and invested in the once-lucrative medallions that grant New York cabs the right to operate.

Or you could drive 45 minutes deep into Brooklyn, near where Gravesend turns into Brighton Beach. There, in a desolate stretch near a shuttered podiatrist’s office, you’d find a medical office. According to previously unexamined records, Cohen incorporated a business there in 2002 that was involved in large quantities of medical claims. Separately, he represented more than 100 plaintiffs who claimed they were injured in auto collisions.

At the same time, in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York prosecutors were investigating what Fortune magazine called possibly “the largest organized insurance-fraud ring in U.S. history.” That fraud resulted in hundreds of criminal prosecutions for staging car accidents to collect insurance payments. Cohen was not implicated in the fraud.

A distinctive pattern emerged early in Cohen’s career, according to an examination by WNYC and ProPublica for the Trump, Inc. podcast: Many of the people who crossed paths with Cohen when he worked in Queens and Brooklyn were disciplined, disbarred, accused or convicted of crimes.

➤ Kelly Weill contends Less Than a Year After Charlottesville, the Alt-Right Is Self-Destructing (“Less than a year after its deadly rally in Charlottesville, the American alt-right is splintering in dramatic fashion as its leaders turn on each other or quit altogether”):

Some have turned federal informant. Others are facing prison time. More are named in looming lawsuits. All of them are fighting.

Last summer, the American alt-right was presenting itself as a threatening, unified front, gaining national attention with a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The collection of far-right and white nationalist groups proclaimed victory after President Donald Trump hesitated to directly condemn them and instead blamed “both sides” and the “alt left” for the violence. But less than a year after Charlottesville, the alt-right is splintering in dramatic fashion as its leaders turn on each other or quit altogether.

Matthew Heimbach’s arrest in a March trailer park brawl with members of his neo-Nazi group—some of whom he was allegedly screwing—felt like a too-obvious metaphor. Heimbach was the head of the Traditionalist Worker Party, a youth-focused white supremacist group that floated to the front of media coverage and hate rallies in the run-up to Donald Trump’s election.

But by March, Heimbach and the TWP had spent the previous months embroiled in a series of online spats with other alt-right factions. On March 14, police in his Indiana hometown arrested Heimbach after he allegedly assaulted TWP spokesperson Matthew Parrott during a fight over their wives, both of whom Heimbach was allegedly sleeping with. Heimbach’s wife is Parrott’s stepdaughter.

The high-profile bust was an accelerant in what had been a slow-burning feud among the alt-right. Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said the schism started after Unite the Right, a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August. The rally turned deadly after a man affiliated with a white supremacist group plowed a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring more.

(This is all good news, of course, for democratic norms, but there’s still more to be done to bring these all of these lumpen men to their political demise.)

➤ Josh Marshall reports Trump: If Farmers Get Hit, They’ll Understand:

“When we do a deal with China – which probably we will, if we don’t they’ll have to pay pretty high taxes to do business with our country. That’s a possibility. But if we do a deal with China, if during the course of a negotiation they want to hit the farmers, because they think that hits me, I wouldn’t say that’s nice, but I tell you, our farmers are great patriots. These are great patriots. They understand that they’re doing this for the country. And we’ll make it up to them. In the end they’re going to be much stronger than they are right now.”

(Emphasis in original.)

➤ One cannot help but admire A ‘Poisoned’ City’s Spirit of Resilience:

“They poisoned the whole city and left us to fend for ourselves,” says Leon El-Alamin, a resident of Flint, Michigan, in Brian Schulz’s documentary, For Flint. “We feel like we’ve been placed in a position to die slowly.”

But die slowly Flint has not. Even as the city, which faces an ongoing water crisis, recedes from national headlines, its residents display an indomitable spirit. For Flint serves as a microcosm of this resiliency, despite the health concerns, multiple economic downturns, and dizzying crime rates that plague the city. “You would expect something like this in a third-world county, not in the United States of America,” says Valorie Horton, who parlayed a 33-year General Motors career into a second calling as an advocate for arts-deprived youth. The film profiles Horton and two other residents who are inspiring positive change in what many reports have deemed one of the “worst places to live” in America.

“Almost all of the coverage surrounding Flint focused on the hardships the city faced,” Schulz told The Atlantic, “so I wanted to give the community a positive voice that had not yet been heard. Like the many great athletes who call Flint home, the city’s residents possess the determination and grit that will push them past the hardships that they continue to face.”

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a likelihood of snow this evening, and a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:06 AM and sunset 7:41 PM, for 13h 34m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1938, eighty years ago today, Superman makes his debut in Action Comics #1:

(During the Depression, with Europe and Asia facing encroaching tyranny, Americans still had optimism, hope in the face of adversity (with far worse to come). These present times are difficult for us, of course, but as they were resilient then, we are resilient now.)

More about Action Comics #1 is available at Wikipedia:

Published on April 18, 1938 (cover-dated June),[4] by National Allied Publications,[5] a corporate predecessor of DC Comics, it is considered the first true superhero comic; and though today Action Comics is a monthly title devoted to Superman, it began, like many early comics, as an anthology.[6]

Action Comics was started by publisher Jack Liebowitz. The first issue had a print run of 200,000 copies, which promptly sold out, although it took some time for National to realize that the “Superman” strip was responsible[7] for sales of the series that would soon approach 1,000,000 a month.[8] Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were paid $10 per page, for a total of $130 for their work on this issue. Liebowitz would later say that selecting Superman to run in Action Comics #1 was “pure accident” based on deadline pressure and that he selected a “thrilling” cover, depicting Superman lifting a car over his head.[9]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Robert Costa, Sarah Ellison and Josh Dawsey report Hannity’s rising role in Trump’s world: ‘He basically has a desk in the place’:

The phone calls between President Trump and Sean Hannity come early in the morning or late at night, after the Fox News host goes off the air. They discuss ideas for Hannity’s show, Trump’s frustration with the ongoing special counsel probe and even, at times, what the president should tweet, according to people familiar with the conversations. When he’s off the phone, Trump is known to cite Hannity when he talks with White House advisers.

The revelation this week that the two men share an attorney is just the latest sign of how Hannity is intertwined with Trump’s world — an increasingly powerful confidant who offers the ­media-driven president a sympathetic ear and shared grievances. The conservative commentator is so close to Trump that some White House aides have dubbed him the unofficial chief of staff.

This portrait of the interactions between the president and the talk-show host is based on interviews with more than a dozen friends, advisers and associates of the two men, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

➤ Nicholas Confessore and David Gelles report Facebook Fallout Deals Blow to Mercers’ Political Clout:

Last month, a friend of the wealthy conservative donor Rebekah Mercer arrived at Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. His task: Find out what — if anything — could repair relations between Facebook, the world’s biggest social media company, and Cambridge Analytica, the voter-profiling firm co-founded by her father and used by the Trump campaign.

The revelation last month that Cambridge Analytica improperly acquired the private Facebook data of millions of users has set off government inquiries in Washington and London, plunging Facebook into crisis. But it has also battered the nascent political network overseen by Ms. Mercer, 44, and financed by her father, Robert Mercer, 71, a hard-line conservative billionaire.

Ms. Mercer’s standing in Mr. Trump’s circle had already declined following the departure last year of Stephen K. Bannon, her family’s former adviser and President Trump’s former chief strategist, according to Republicans with close ties to the president’s political operation. A pro-Trump advocacy group controlled by Ms. Mercer has gone silent following strategic disputes between her and other top donors. Plans to wage a civil war against the Republican establishment in the 2018 midterms have been derailed.

➤ Ken White considers Why the F.B.I. Raid Is Perilous for Michael Cohen — and Trump:

What does this tell us? First, it reflects that numerous officials — not just Mr. Mueller — concluded that there was probable cause to believe that Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room contained evidence of a federal crime. A search warrant for a lawyer’s office implicates the attorney-client privilege and core constitutional rights, so the Department of Justice requires unusual levels of approval to seek one. Prosecutors must seek the approval of the United States attorney of the district — in this case the office of Geoffrey Berman, the interim United States attorney appointed by President Trump.

Prosecutors must also consult with the criminal division of the Justice Department in Washington. Finally, prosecutors must convince a United States magistrate judge that there’s probable cause to support the search. Faced with a warrant application destined for immediate worldwide publicity, the judge surely took unusual pains to examine it. This search was not the result of Mr. Mueller or his staff “going rogue.”

Second, the search demonstrates that federal prosecutors and supervisors in the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to preserve and turn over documents voluntarily. The same regulations that require prosecutors to seek high-level approval for a warrant to search a law office also instruct them to use the least intrusive means to obtain evidence from a lawyer, and to consider requesting voluntary cooperation or serving a subpoena. Mr. Cohen’s lawyer has loudly protested that he had been cooperating. This search warrant means that prosecutors — including the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the criminal division at the Justice Department — believed that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to respond fully to a subpoena or might destroy documents.

Third, the search suggests that prosecutors most likely believe that Mr. Cohen’s clients used his legal services for the purpose of engaging in crime or fraud. Attorney-client communications are privileged, which is why it’s so unusual and difficult for prosecutors to get approval to search a law office. Justice Department regulations require federal prosecutors to set up a system to have a separate group — a so-called dirty team — review the files and separate out attorney-client communications so that the investigators and prosecutors won’t see anything protected by the privilege.

➤ Zach Epstein has 10 hidden tricks that’ll make life with your iPhone X so much easier:

Apple’s iPhone X represents a massive departure from the company’s earlier smartphone models. The tenth-anniversary iPhone is a reimagining of Apple’s smartphone in so many ways, from the look and feel of the hardware to the new gesture-based navigation users must learn in order to use an iPhone with no home button. It takes a bit of getting used to, but most Apple fans seem to enjoy the new user experience a great deal. Of course, there’s more to the iPhone X then just a few new gestures, and most users seem to be unaware of all the nifty hidden tricks that make using the iPhone X so much easier.

In this post, we’ve collected 10 lesser-known tricks that are going to be big eye-openers for many iPhone X users out there. iPhone newcomers are going to be wowed, but even advanced users are going to learn something in this post. [List of tips follows in article.]

➤ This is Taking Birdwatching to the Extreme:

In 2016, Arjan Dwarshuis took his love for birdwatching to extreme lengths. He boarded over 140 flights to 40 different countries, journeying through jungles and forests in search of the birds of the world. During his 366-day trip, he smashed the world record, observing 6,856 species of birds—that’s 65% of the global bird population. Now, he’s using his epic adventure as a way to raise awareness for conservation efforts via http://arjandwarshuis.com/donate/..

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:08 AM and sunset 7:40 PM, for 13h 31m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM, and her Common Council at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1937, Daffy Duck first appears, as a character in the animated short Porky’s Duck Hunt.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Olga Khazan reports How France Cut Heroin Overdoses by 79 Percent in 4 Years (“And the United States could, too”):

In the 1980s, France went through a heroin epidemic in which hundreds of thousands became addicted. Mohamed Mechmache, a community activist, described the scene in the poor banlieues back then: “To begin with, they would disappear to shoot up. But after a bit we’d see them all over the place, in the stairwells and halls, the bike shed, up on the roof with the washing lines. We used to collect the syringes on the football pitch before starting to play,” he told The Guardian in 2014.

The rate of overdose deaths was rising 10 percent a year, yet treatment was mostly limited to counseling at special substance-abuse clinics.

In 1995, France made it so any doctor could prescribe buprenorphine without any special licensing or training. Buprenorphine, a first-line treatment for opioid addiction, is a medication that reduces cravings for opioids without becoming addictive itself.

With the change in policy, the majority of buprenorphine prescribers in France became primary-care doctors, rather than addiction specialists or psychiatrists. Suddenly, about 10 times as many addicted patients began receiving medication-assisted treatment, and half the country’s heroin users were being treated. Within four years, overdose deaths had declined by 79 percent.

➤ Zane Anthony, Kathryn Sanders and David A. Fahrenthold report Whatever happened to Trump neckties? They’re over. So is most of Trump’s merchandising empire:

Before he ran for office, Donald Trump made millions by selling his name to adorn other people’s products. There was Trump deodorant. Trump ties . Trump steaks. Trump underwear. Trump furniture. At one time, there was even a Trump-branded urine test.

Now, almost all of them are gone.

In 2015, Trump listed 19 com­panies that were paying him to produce or distribute Trump-branded consumer goods.

In recent weeks, only two said that they are still selling Trump-branded goods. One is a Panamanian company selling Trump bed linens and home goods. The other is a Turkish company selling Trump furniture.

Of the rest, some Trump partners quit in reaction to campaign-trail rhetoric on immigrants and Muslims. Others said their licensing agreements had expired. Others said nothing beyond confirming that they’d stopped working with Trump. Their last Trump goods are being sold off, often at a discount: One cologne is marked down to $9.99 from $42 for a one-ounce bottle.

➤ Lisa Friedman and Kenneth P. Vogel report Scott Pruitt’s Idea to Update an E.P.A. Keepsake: Less E.P.A., More Pruitt:

When Scott Pruitt wanted to refashion the Environmental Protection Agency’s “challenge coin” — a type of souvenir medallion with military origins that has become a status symbol among civilians — he proposed an unusual design: Make it bigger, and delete the E.P.A. logo.

Mr. Pruitt instead wanted the coin to feature some combination of symbols more reflective of himself and the Trump administration. Among the possibilities: a buffalo, to evoke Mr. Pruitt’s home state, Oklahoma, and aBible verse to reflect his faith.

Other ideas included using the Great Seal of the United States — a design similar to the presidential seal — and putting Mr. Pruitt’s name around the rim in large letters, according to Ronald Slotkin, a career E.P.A. employee who retired this year, and two people familiar with the proposals who asked to remain anonymous because they said they feared retribution.

➤ Stephen Colbert of The Late Show has a bit of fun with Sean Hannity’s embarrassing conflicts of interest:

Sneak peek of ‘Hannity’ tonight… pic.twitter.com/qud8et2cba

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) April 16, 2018

➤ Here’s How NASA’s TESS Spacecraft Will Hunt Exoplanets:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see flurries with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 6:09 AM and sunset 7:38 PM, for 13h 28m 59s of daytime.

Whitewater’s Library Board is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1944, the USS Wisconsin is commissioned.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ The New York Times editorial board writes The President Is Not Above The Law:

Mr. Mueller’s investigation has already yielded great benefit to the country, including the indictments of 13 Russians and three companies for trying to undermine the presidential election. None of us can know if prosecutors will eventually point the finger at the president himself. But should Mr. Trump move to hobble or kill the investigation, he would darken rather than dispel the cloud of suspicion around him. Far worse, he would free future presidents to politicize American justice. That would be a danger to every American, of whatever political leaning.

The president is not a king but a citizen, deserving of the presumption of innocence and other protections, yet also vulnerable to lawful scrutiny. We hope Mr. Trump recognizes this. If he doesn’t, how Republican lawmakers respond will shape the future not only of this presidency and of one of the country’s great political parties, but of the American experiment itself.

➤ Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Anu Narayanswamy report Trump’s reelection committee has spent more than $1 out of every $5 on legal fees this year:

President Trump’s reelection campaign spent more than $1 out of every $5 on attorney fees this year as the president contended with the ongoing special counsel investigation and a new legal challenge from an adult-film star.

Of the $3.9 million that Trump’s committee spent in the first quarter of 2018, more than $834,000 went to eight law firms and the Trump Corp. for legal fees, according to new Federal Election Commission records filed Sunday.

The latest figures bring the Trump campaign’s total spending on legal fees to nearly $4 million since the president took office, records show. In the last quarter of 2017, Trump’s campaign committee spent $1.1 million in legal fees.

➤ Nicole Cobler reports Trump nominee for federal judgeship had rejected Texas lawsuit against Trump University:

An Austin lawyer who dropped the state of Texas’ investigation of Trump University in 2010 may get a lifetime post as a federal judge.

President Donald Trump named former Texas Deputy Attorney General David Morales on Tuesday to a trial bench in Corpus Christi. Morales had been recommended to the White House by Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

Morales made headlines during the presidential campaign when news outlets learned that in May 2010 the state’s consumer protection division had sought permission to pursue what it believed was a strong case against Trump and Trump University. Investigators asserted that Texas taxpayers had been bilked out of more than $2.6 million, and sought to file a $5.4 million lawsuit.

Morales rejected the recommendation. Texas dropped its investigation. Trump University voluntarily ceased operations in Texas.

➤ Adam Davidson sees Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency:

There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his phones have been tapped, and his meetings have been monitored. Trump has long declared a red line: Robert Mueller must not investigate his businesses, and must only look at any possible collusion with Russia. That red line is now crossed and, for Trump, in the most troubling of ways. Even if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then had Mueller and his investigation put on ice, and even if—as is disturbingly possible—Congress did nothing, the Cohen prosecution would continue. Even if Trump pardons Cohen, the information the feds have on him can become the basis for charges against others in the Trump Organization.

This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth. I know dozens of reporters and other investigators who have studied Donald Trump and his business and political ties. Some have been skeptical of the idea that President Trump himself knowingly colluded with Russian officials. It seems not at all Trumpian to participate in a complex plan with a long-term, uncertain payoff. Collusion is an imprecise word, but it does seem close to certain that his son Donald, Jr., and several people who worked for him colluded with people close to the Kremlin; it is up to prosecutors and then the courts to figure out if this was illegal or merely deceitful. We may have a hard time finding out what President Trump himself knew and approved.

However, I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality. In Azerbaijan, he did business with a likely money launderer for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In the Republic of Georgia, he partnered with a group that was being investigated for a possible role in the largest known bank-fraud and money-laundering case in history. In Indonesia, his development partner is “knee-deep in dirty politics”; there are criminal investigations of his deals in Brazil; the F.B.I. is reportedly looking into his daughter Ivanka’s role in the Trump hotel in Vancouver, for which she worked with a Malaysian family that has admitted to financial fraud. Back home, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka were investigated for financial crimes associated with the Trump hotel in SoHo—an investigation that was halted suspiciously. His Taj Mahal casino received what was then the largest fine in history for money-laundering violations.

➤ Watch as a Hungry, Cranky Croc Destroys Watermelon With Powerful Jaw:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see sleet and snow with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:37 PM, for 13h 26m 14s of daytime. The moon is new with .3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1861, Wisconsin receives the call: “On this date Governor Alexander W. Randall received a telegram from Washington requesting one regiment of 780 men to serve the Union for three months in the Civil War. Within a week ten companies, from Kenosha, Beloit, Horicon, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Milwaukee were ready. [Source: The History of Wisconsin, Vol. II by Richard N. Current]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Peter Stone and Greg Gordon report Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier:

The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

➤ Norman Eisen and Richard Painter contend Donald Trump’s 5 reasons to fire Rod Rosenstein reveal true aim: Obstructing Robert Mueller:

President Trump reportedly is considering firing Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller and supervises his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. To prepare the way, Trump has by our count floated five rationales internally and externally for doing so. The briefest scrutiny of these purported justifications shows that they are baseless, and makes apparent the president’s true motivation: to obstruct the investigation that Rosenstein oversees.

Trump has reportedly complained about Rosenstein being a Democrat and coming from heavily Democratic Baltimore. In fact, Rosenstein is a decades-long registered Republican who worked as a federal prosecutor in Baltimore. That was part of a long career at the Justice Department devoted to the rule of law under both Republican and Democratic presidents. He was selected from a pool of Republican lawyers and nominated by Trump for his position as deputy attorney general. [Attys. Eisen and Painter then consider remaining five of Trump’s thin bases.]

➤ Nicole Lewis and Maurice Chammah write Seven Years Behind Bars for Two Joints — And Now He’s Free (“Bernard Noble, whose case became a symbol of harsh drug laws, walks out of a Louisiana prison”):

Bernard Noble, who became a national symbol of harsh drug laws after he was sentenced to 13 years of hard labor for carrying about two joints worth of marijuana, was released from prison early Thursday morning.

Noble, 51, was freed on parole after his lawyer and a team of advocates — including billionaire New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb — spent years pressing courts, governors and lawmakers to reverse the long sentence. He ultimately served seven years in prison.

“I really felt special, seeing my family and everyone waiting for me,” Noble told The Marshall Project by phone after he walked out of Bossier Parish Medium Security Prison, where his mother, sister, and other family members awaited his release.

“I cried a lot of times in prison silently because you can’t do it out loud in a treacherous place like that. But I always said, ‘one day it’s gonna get better,’ ” he said.

His freedom marked the end of a convoluted and high-profile legal journey that began in 2010, when he was arrested while biking in New Orleans, where he was visiting family. Police said they found about three grams of marijuana in his possession.

(One shouldn’t have to smoke anything – I don’t – to grasp that these sentences are disgracefully high. Yet for it all, there’s a lumpen lobby that screams for sentences like this, as long as they are visited on a different demographic.)

➤ Judy Newman reports State of Wisconsin Investment Board employees to take home $11.6 million in bonuses:

Employees of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board — the agency that manages retirement funds for more than 600,000 current and former public workers — will share in bonuses totaling $11.6 million, the agency said Friday.

It is the fourth-highest bonus pot in the past five years.

The incentive payments, approved by the SWIB board of trustees, are based on the five-year investment earnings that exceed general market returns. That amounted to $759 million for the past five years ending in December.

…

Of this year’s $11.6 million pot, two of SWIB’s high-level employees will each get bonuses topping $500,000.

(These bonuses aren’t high for private work of a similar kind – the obvious concern is that this isn’t private work of a similar kind; these funds could be managed well by those no longer seeking career earnings, as a true public service.)

➤ Take a Tour of the Moon in 4K (courtesy of NASA):

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see a mix of rain and sleet with a high of thirty-eight. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:36 PM, for 13h 23m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.74% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, President Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Scott Clement and Emily Guskin report Post-ABC poll: Majority of Americans support Mueller’s probe of Russia, Trump campaign:

A clear majority of Americans support special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion with President Trump’s campaign, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

The results show backing for inquiries into Trump’s orbit on several fronts.

Nearly 7 in 10 adults say they support Mueller’s focus on possible collusion with Russia. Sixty-four percent say they want the special counsel investigating Trump’s business activities. And a 58 percent majority supports investigating alleged payments by Trump associates to silence women who say they had affairs with him.

➤ Prof. of Law Randall D. Eliason writes Mueller doesn’t need to talk to Trump:

So how could Mueller make his obstruction case, whether in an indictment or — as appears more likely — in a report? The key to obstruction of justice is proving corrupt intent, and Mueller would prove it the same way prosecutors typically do: through circumstantial evidence. This could include the suspicious timing of events; evidence of the president’s actions and their likely consequences; lies and conflicting explanations for the president’s behavior; testimony of those who had conversations with the president, witnessed his behavior, or who were otherwise involved; the president’s own contemporaneous statements about such things as his decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey; and any notes, emails, or other contemporaneous records that might shed light on the president’s state of mind.

No single piece of evidence makes the case, but prosecutors would string them together until there was no longer any reasonable doubt about the corrupt intent behind the president’s actions.

There is no doubt Mueller would like to interview the president. In addition to the questions about obstruction, prosecutors would love to hear what the president has to say about possible conspiracy with Russians to influence the election, as well as about other allegations swirling around his campaign and administration. But if Mueller thinks he has an argument for obstruction, he doesn’t need an interview with Trump to make that case.

➤ Ashley Parker, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger report Trump’s allies worry that federal investigators may have seized recordings made by his attorney:

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael D. Cohen sometimes taped conversations with associates, according to three people familiar with his practice, and allies of the president are worried that the recordings were seized by federal investigators in a raid of Cohen’s office and residences this week.

Cohen, who served for a decade as a lawyer at the Trump Organization and is a close confidant of Trump’s, was known to store the conversations using digital files and then replay them for colleagues, according to people who have interacted with him.

“We heard he had some proclivity to make tapes,” said one Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “Now we are wondering, who did he tape? Did he store those someplace where they were actually seized? … Did they find his recordings?”

Cohen did not respond to requests for comment. Stephen Ryan, an attorney for Cohen, declined to comment. A White House spokeswoman referred a request for comment to Cohen and his attorney.

(It’s hard to overstate how recklessly aberrant Cohen’s conduct would be to tape conversations with clients or others in his orbit.)

➤ Krishnadvev Calamur contends The Syrian War Is Actually Many Wars:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seems to have won the civil war in his country—but that doesn’t mean peace is coming. In fact, the conflict seems to be escalating—fueled by the many outside powers who have joined the Syrian battlefield with interests of their own.

“If you look at the literature on civil wars, it tends to suggest that the more foreign powers involved, the more difficult it is for a civil war to end—because most of those powers aren’t willing to quit until either they are exhausted or their claims and desires have been met,” said Christopher Phillips, author of the book The Battle for Syria: International Rivalryin the New Middle East. “And because a lot of them are backing proxies, the cost isn’t necessarily that high.”

Over the seven years of Syria’s war, it has sucked in numerous other countries, who have attempted to shape the conflict with every tool from bombing to mercenaries to special operators to weapons shipments to money. The war has grown ever more complicated and more deadly over time, and Syria’s future is now largely being determined outside of its borders. Who is fighting in Syria now, and why? [Calamur then lists roles of major fireign powers in the conflict.]

(The complexity of this conflict doesn’t excuse Assad – he merits charges as a murder and war criminal, and belongs at The Hague for trial on those charges. The question for America is how to respond effectively, and whether Trump has the needed grasp that would underlie a genuinely effective response.)

➤ See Farol de Leça da Palmeira with a Mavic Air