Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 5:39 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 14h 44m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1974, in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), the  United States Supreme Court handed down a “unanimous 8–0 ruling against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver presidential tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to the District Court. Issued on July 24, 1974, the ruling was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal, when there was an ongoing impeachment process against Richard Nixon. United States v. Nixon is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president to claim executive privilege.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jack Gillum and Aaron C. Davis report that Local governments keep using this software — but it might be a back door for Russia:

Local and state government agencies from Oregon to Connecticut say they are using a Russian brand of security software despite the federal government’s instructions to its own agencies not to buy the software over concerns about cyberespionage, records and interviews show.

The federal agency in charge of purchasing, the General Services Administration, this month removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from its list of approved vendors. In doing so, the agency’s statement suggested a vulnerability exists in Kaspersky that could give the Russian government backdoor access to the systems it protects, though they offered no explanation or evidence of it. Kaspersky has strongly denied coordinating with the Russian government and has offered to cooperate with federal investigators.

The GSA’s move on July 11 has left state and local governments to speculate about the risks of sticking with the company or abandoning taxpayer-funded contracts, sometimes at great cost. The lack of information from the GSA underscores a disconnect between local officials and the federal government about cybersecurity.

Eli Hager explains How Fake Cops Got $1.2 Million in Real Weapons (a federal sting reveals lax oversight in the Defense Department’s gear giveaway program):

….The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.

And in less than a week, they got it.

A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess material. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.

Lachlan Markay reports that GOP Campaigns Recall a Self-Dealing Leaker in Scaramucci:

….aides to 2016 presidential candidates whom Scaramucci endorsed before coming around to Trump say he was suspected of leaking internal information, and left out of some internal discussions for fear that he would pass along those sorts of details to reporters—or that he already had….

He threw his weight behind the Trump campaign only after his first two preferred candidates, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, dropped out. Between his stints raising money for those campaigns, he was in talks with a third, that of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Former senior aides on all three of those campaigns say Scaramucci gave the impression of a hanger-on trying to methodically get in the good graces of whichever candidate he saw as most likely to prevail. Only when Trump had the nomination all but secured did Scaramucci sign on with his campaign.

Rosie Gray writes about The Man McMaster Couldn’t Fire:

Just 24 days into his tenure as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, Michael Flynn was forced to resign, having reportedly misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. When Flynn departed, the men and women he’d appointed to the National Security Council grew nervous about their own jobs, and with good reason. The new national-security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, promptly began clearing out Flynn’s people, among them Dave Cattler, the deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst on loan from the Pentagon, and KT McFarland, Flynn’s deputy, who was eased out with the ambassadorship to Singapore. Even Steve Bannon, among the most powerful people in the White House, was removed from the meetings of the NSC Principal’s Committee, where he had been installed early on in the administration.

There was one person, however, who McMaster couldn’t get rid of: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence programs. McMaster tried to remove him in March, but President Trump, at the urging of Bannon and Jared Kushner, told McMaster that Cohen-Watnick was staying, as first reported by Politico. According to a senior White House official, the two men had a sit-down meeting the following week in which McMaster acknowledged that he hadn’t been able to do what he wanted to do, and that they would keep things as they are and “see how they go for a while.” That was over four months ago. That Cohen-Watnick, 31 years old and largely unknown before entering the administration, has become unfireable reveals how important he has become to the Trump White House, where loyalty is prized.

Here’s a video about The Greatest Scientist of the 20th Century You’ve Probably Never Heard Of:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 45m 59s of daytime. The moon is new today. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, (Henri) Philippe Pétain goes on trial for treason for his role as leader of Vichy France. He was convicted on all counts, and lived his final years imprisoned on the Île d’Yeu, where “his memory lapses were worsening and he was beginning to suffer from incontinence, sometimes soiling himself in front of visitors and sometimes no longer recognising his wife.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Sean Illing writes President Trump is considering pardoning himself. I asked 15 experts if that’s legal:

President Trump’s lawyers are exploring the potential uses of presidential pardons — including whether the president can pardon himself — as part of an effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, according to a new Washington Post report.

I reached out to 15 legal experts and asked them if the president has the constitutional authority to pardon himself. As it turns out, this is something of a legal gray area. The overwhelming consensus was that Trump could make a plausible legal argument that his pardoning powers extend to himself, mostly because the Constitution isn’t clear about this — and, frankly, because this is just not a situation the framers expected.

All the experts agreed about one other fact: Even if Trump does pardon himself, that would not shield him from impeachment hearings. And most believe if he did make a move like this, it would be both an admission of guilt and a potential constitutional crisis [experts’ replies follow]….

Laurence H. Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen contend that No, Trump can’t pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so:

Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree.

The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.

The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.

Jane Chong writes To Impeach a President: Applying the Authoritative Guide from Charles Black:

The most important book ever written on presidential impeachment is only 69 pages long. Charles Black, Jr.,’s Impeachment: A Handbook was published in the summer of 1974, at the height of the Watergate crisis, and reissued in October 1998, two months before Bill Clinton became the second president in U.S. history to be impeached.

If the pattern holds, the book could enjoy a third printing under the Trump presidency. But I wouldn’t want to prematurely speculate on the point. Black too persuasively urges against it….

Today marks the first time the core chapter of Black’s book—on what he called the “heart of the matter”—is available in its entirety online. We are providing this resource because amidst a tidal wave of 140-character screeds, Black’s analysis of what actually constitutes “the impeachable offense” is pure signal in the noise.

David A. Graham describes The Inadvisable President:

This demonstrates another reason why Trump is an impossible boss: He expects absolute personal loyalty from his aides, but aides cannot expect that the president will return the favor. Perhaps no humiliation is as great as Sessions—the long-time backer thrown to the wolves in an interview with the press—but Trump has repeatedly undercut other top aides.

For example, Trump has repeatedly made public statements at odds with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort to broker a resolution between Qatar and several other Gulf States.

When Trump fired Comey, the administration initially claimed that he had been fired for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Comey’s approach had been widely criticized as improperly harsh, but Trump had said it was unduly easy, making the excuse nonsensical. Nonetheless, Vice President Pence went out and publicly insisted that Comey was fired because the Justice Department had recommended it in light of the Clinton case. The following day, Trump told Holt that actually he’d decided to fire Comey on his own, because of the Russia case.

Diver Craig Capehart recorded as a 40 Ton Humpback Whale Leaps Entirely Out of the Water:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with isolated afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 47m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1934, bank robber John Dillinger meets his end outside a movie theater in Chicago. On this day in 1864, the 1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 31st Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery continue their engagement in the Battle of Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jane Chong, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes consider How White House Threats Condition Mueller’s Reality:

So now put yourself in Mueller’s shoes. You are both a highly-experienced investigator (you’ve run the FBI for 12 years) and a highly-experienced prosecutor (you’ve headed the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, served as a U.S. Attorney, and prosecuted murder cases as perhaps the most overqualified assistant U.S. attorney in American history). You have staffed your investigation with a group of lawyers of remarkable depth and range of experience. You have on your staff Russian language capability. You have truly remarkable appellate capacity. And you have first class expertise in money laundering, campaign finance, organized crime, and other relevant areas.

But it all may not matter, because the President may decide either to issue a bunch of preemptive pardons or to try to either fire you or rein in your jurisdiction. And the talent you have collected is under attack.

How do you play it? Here are six broad areas to which Mueller may be giving some thought as he considers how to do his job under these highly unusual conditions. To be clear, the following is not based not on any communication with Mueller or his staff but on our own assessment of the law, the problems Mueller faces, and the incentives the White House’s activities create for someone in his position. We assume in everything that follows that there are serious matters under investigation. If, by contrast, L’Affaire Russe is all nonsense, the situation is far easier: Mueller can wrap up the investigation and go back to his law firm [detailed assessment follows]….

Marcin Goettig and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk report that a Polish court overhaul meets growing wave of criticism, protests:

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s ruling party on Saturday dismissed a growing wave of criticism from abroad and worries at home that an overhaul of the Supreme Court would undermine judicial independence.

In the early hours of Saturday senators of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party approved a bill that would end all the terms of Supreme Court justices except those hand-picked by the justice minister.

Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered in Warsaw and cities across Poland for candle-lit vigils, chanting “Free Courts” and demanding that President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the PiS, veto the bill. More protests were planned during the day on Saturday.

Mitch Smith reports that Minneapolis Police Chief Forced Out After Fatal Shooting of Australian Woman:

The Minneapolis police chief, Janee Harteau, resigned on Friday at the mayor’s request, less than a week after one of the city’s officers fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman who had called 911 for help….

The fatal shooting of the Australian woman, Justine Damond, last weekend by Officer Mohamed Noor led to outpourings of grief in Minnesota and outrage in Ms. Damond’s home country, where the prime minister condemned the shooting and Ms. Damond’s family members have expressed frustration with how little they have been told about what happened.

Last Saturday, Ms. Damond, 40, called 911 twice to report a possible sexual assault near her home. Officer Noor and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, arrived at the scene in a dark alley several minutes later. Officer Harrity told state investigators that he had been startled by a loud noise just before Ms. Damond approached their cruiser. Officer Noor then shot her through the open window.

Mike Wall reports that it’s Not Aliens: Weird Radio Signal from Star Likely Has Duller Explanation:

A strange radio signal that seemed to emanate from a small nearby star probably came from Earth-orbiting satellites, astronomers say.

Late last week, researchers announced that, on May 12, the 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected a bizarre radio signal in the vicinity of Ross 128, a red dwarf star that lies just 11 light-years from Earth….

“The best explanation is that the signals are transmissions from one or more geostationary satellites,” Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, wrote in a statement today (July 21). (Geostationary satellites circle Earth at an altitude of about 22,300 miles, or 35,800 kilometers.)

Smokin’ Ed Currie brings the heat:

Fear the Reaper: Breeding the World’s Hottest Pepper from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

In the competitive world of hot pepper breeding, one man is smoking the competition. Meet “Smokin’” Ed Currie. He’s the man behind the world’s hottest pepper—the “Carolina Reaper.” For the past three decades, Currie has been pushing the limits of the Scoville scale—breeding hotter and hotter peppers. We went behind the scenes at his South Carolina farm, where he’s bred a number of secret, unreleased specimens that he claims are even hotter than his famous Reaper. You may want to have some milk ready for this one.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with an even chance of afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-eight. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 14h 49m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1949, the U.S. Senate advised Pres. Truman that it favored the North Atlantic Treaty. On this day in 1921, Gen. Billy Mitchell offers confirmation of his theory that “development of military air power was not outlandish. He flew his De Havilland DH-4B fighter, leading a bombing demonstration that proved a naval ship could be sunk by air bombardment. Mitchell’s ideas for developing military air power were innovative but largely ignored by those who favored development of military sea power. Mitchell zealously advocated his views and was eventually court martialed for speaking out against the United States’ organization of its forces. [Source: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Division of Archives & Special Collections].”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Carol D. Leonnig, Ashley Parker, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger report that Trump team seeks to control, block Mueller’s Russia investigation:

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

(All of this is predictable, first as a futile effort to intimidate Robert Mueller, and if effectuated then as a lawless pardon of Trump, by Trump, for Trump.)

Congressmen Elijah E. Cummings & John Conyers contend that An unchecked presidency is a danger to the Republic:

In the absence of any meaningful investigation by House Republicans, Democratic members have sent requests for information on our own. Our efforts have been met with months of stonewalling. The Trump White House recently told government agencies “not to cooperate [with any oversight] requests from Democrats,” and issued a contrived Justice Department legal opinion that such queries are “not properly considered to be oversight requests.”

We will continue to press for answers because the information we seek goes to the central question of the Trump presidency: Is the administration acting in the public interest, or merely to benefit the private interests of President Trump?

….An unchecked presidency — such as that of Richard Nixon or Donald Trump — represents a clear and present danger to the Republic. We have taken this series of steps in an attempt to provide at least a measure of independent scrutiny and to mark how Republicans in Congress have repeatedly failed in this responsibility. We do not have the right to remain silent. Our investigations must continue separate from, and in addition to, the special counsel’s work.

James Fallows observes that Trump’s Latest Interview [NYT] Highlights Four of His Greatest Flaws (with details for each element):

And what makes this exposure to Trump’s mind and mood different from what we’ve seen over his past two years in political life and his previous decades in the public eye? For me it’s the accumulation of these elements:

A rare degree of deluded self-regard….

The unselfconscious display of gaping, consequential holes in his general knowledge….

The meaning of the Constitution….

Absolutes….

Emily Badger and Kevin Quealey write that Trump Seems Much Better at Branding Opponents Than Marketing Policies:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-seven. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 51m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 11.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The City of Whitewater’s Finance Committee is scheduled to meet at 7 AM.

On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the moon.

Recommended for reading in full —

Rosie Gray writes that A Top Rohrabacher Aide Is Ousted After Russia Revelations:

Paul Behrends, a top aide to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, has been ousted from his role as staff director for the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that Rohrabacher chairs, after stories appeared in the press highlighting his relationships with pro-Russia lobbyists.

“Paul Behrends no longer works at the committee,” a House Foreign Affairs Committee spokesperson said on Wednesday evening.

Behrends accompanied Rohrabacher on a 2016 trip to Moscow in which Rohrabacher said he received anti-Magnitsky Act materials from prosecutors. The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 bill that imposes sanctions on Russian officials associated with the 2009 death in prison of  lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had been investigating tax fraud. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian attorney and lobbyist who met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower last year, reportedly brought up the Magintsky Act during the meeting.

Rohrabacher’s meeting in Moscow was an object of concern for embassy officials, who had warned the delegation about FSB presence in Moscow—warnings Rohrabacher brushed off.

(Behrends and Rohrabacher are at the least fellow travelers with Putinism, and at the wost – and quite possibly – fifth columnists.)

The Washington Post editorial board explains Why Trump’s chat with Putin is not just a chat:

Talk isn’t bad; what’s key is the nature of the talk. To carefully calibrate messages to world leaders, presidents usually rely on an elaborate bureaucratic machine, including the interagency process and the National Security Council staff. Mr. Trump’s dinner chat showed once again his proclivity to act alone, and he undoubtedly created headaches. With no U.S. note-taker or interpreter, the U.S. national security structure was left without a record of the exchange, except for Mr. Trump’s memory. Mr. Putin will have a better record.

But the deeper problem is the epidemic of mistrust Mr. Trump has created about his ties to Russia, which sensationalizes contacts that might otherwise be unremarkable. The doubts began during the campaign with his failure to release his tax returns, which could show the origins of his income, and grew worse when Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Mr. Trump refused to accept U.S. intelligence community warnings of Russian interference during the election, and his family and his campaign associates have repeatedly been negligent or untruthful about their contacts with Russian officials — most recently, in the accounts of a meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Ms. Clinton. In his first meeting as president with Russia’s foreign minister, Mr. Trump blurted out classified information. It’s reasonable to worry about what he might have told Mr. Putin.

Mike McIntire reports that (former Trump campaign chairman) Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show:

Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.

The money appears to have been owed by shell companies connected to Mr. Manafort’s business activities in Ukraine when he worked as a consultant to the pro-Russia Party of Regions. The Cyprus documents obtained by The New York Times include audited financial statements for the companies, which were part of a complex web of more than a dozen entities that transferred millions of dollars among them in the form of loans, payments and fees.

(Emphasis added.)

Political scientist Brendan Nyhan explains Why Trump’s Base of Support May Be Smaller Than It Seems:

A new working paper by the Emory University political scientists B. Pablo Montagnes, Zachary Peskowitz and Joshua McCrain argues that people who identify as Republican may stop doing so if they disapprove of Trump, creating a false stability in his partisan approval numbers even as the absolute number of people approving him shrinks. Gallup data supports this idea, showing a four-percentage-point decline in G.O.P. identification since the 2016 election that is mirrored in other polling, though to a lesser extent….

When the Emory political scientists use the Gallup data to account for Republicans who have stopped identifying with the party since the election, they find that partisan support for Trump could be substantially lower than it appears. The lower bound is often from 70 percent to 80 percent instead of the 80-to-90 range that Gallup polls typically show. Given the decline in Republican identification since last November, they find, “the lower bound on Trump’s partisan approval rate is much lower” than partisan approval at a comparable point in the Obama presidency and is lower than it was even during Mr. Obama’s second term.

(A copy of the full working paper is online.  Whether Trump has many supporters or few, the principal objects of opposition will always be Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders. I’ve no doubt that Trump’s support is waning, and in the way that the working paper suggests, but in any event, when Trump meets political ruin – as he will – so will his movement.)
Tech Insider reports there’s a new theory that The T. Rex couldn’t actually sprint like it does in ‘Jurassic Park’:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 53m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 20% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1961, TWA was “the first American airline with movies aboard its aircraft when it showed By Love Possessed, starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. in the first-class section of a Boeing 707 flying New York to Los Angeles.”  On this day in 1832, General James Henry & Colonel Henry Dodge found “the trail of the British Band and began pursuit of Black Hawk and the Sauk Indians. Before leaving camp, the troops were told to leave behind any items that would slow down the chase. The troops camped that evening at Rock River, 20 miles east of present day Madison. [Some sources place this event on July 18, 1832.]”

Recommended for reading in full — 

David A. Graham writes of The Other Putin-Trump Meeting:

When President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin went for more than two hours, well past the scheduled half-hour, it was a major news event. But it turns out that wasn’t even the end of the conversation between the two men.

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, first reported the second meeting Tuesday. Other outlets also reported the news, and the White House confirmed it to Reuters. (BuzzFeed journalist Alberto Nardelli had previously reported about a meeting.) Trump reportedly met with the Russian leader for an additional hour of informal chats after a dinner of G20 leaders—though the White House in a statement reported late Tuesday by NBC’s Hallie Jackson called the encounter “brief” and denied it constituted a second meeting. While the first meeting was small—the only attendees were Trump, Putin, the Russian foreign minister, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and one interpreter from each country—this was even smaller: just Trump, Putin, and a Russian interpreter. Trump did not have his own interpreter….

It’s all the more significant because it is the second time in less than two weeks that Trump and those close to him have been less than forthcoming about meetings with Russians. As Trump returned to the country, news broke that his son Donald Trump Jr. had met with a Russian lawyer. Trump Jr. initially claimed the meeting had been to discuss adoptions, but he later released emails showing that he believed he was meeting with a Russian government lawyer offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton. “If it’s what you say I love it,” Trump Jr. told an intermediary, though he now says it wasn’t: The lawyer didn’t deliver any dirt, he complained. Since then, the public has learned there were at least eight people present, including Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, now a White House senior adviser, and Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.

James Kirchick explains How the GOP Became the Party of Putin:

What I never expected was that the Republican Party—which once stood for a muscular, moralistic approach to the world, and which helped bring down the Soviet Union—would become a willing accomplice of what the previous Republican presidential nominee rightly called our No. 1 geopolitical foe: Vladimir Putin’s Russia. My message for today’s GOP is to paraphrase Barack Obama when he mocked Romney for saying precisely that: 2012 called—it wants its foreign policy back.

I should not have been surprised. I’ve been following Russia’s cultivation of the American right for years, long before it became a popular subject, and I have been amazed at just how deep and effective the campaign to shift conservative views on Russia has been. Four years ago, I began writing a series of articles about the growing sympathy for Russia among some American conservatives. Back then, the Putin fan club was limited to seemingly fringe figures like Pat Buchanan (“Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?” he asked, answering in the affirmative), a bunch of cranks organized around the Ron Paul Institute and some anti-gay marriage bitter-enders so resentful at their domestic political loss they would ally themselves with an authoritarian regime that not so long ago they would have condemned for exporting “godless communism.”

Today, these figures are no longer on the fringe of GOP politics. According to a Morning Consult-Politico poll from May, an astonishing 49 percent of Republicans consider Russia an ally. Favorable views of Putin – a career KGB officer who hates America – have nearly tripled among Republicans in the past two years, with 32 percent expressing a positive opinion.

Garry Kasparov writes of Donald’s Pravda: Trump and his apologists spookily echo Vladimir Putin:

There is a clear parallel here to what we have experienced in Russia for the past 17 years under Putin: the intentional conflation of the private interests of the few with the public good. When Putin talks about what’s best for Russia, he always only means what is best for him and his cronies — what keeps them wealthy and in power.

There is now a similar dynamic with Trump, especially where Russia is concerned. His Hamburg meeting with Putin was a great gift to the Russian dictator, who needs prominent photo-ops to reassure his gang back home that he’s still a big boss who can protect their investments abroad.

Meanwhile, the U.S. needs nothing from Russia. No, despite Trump claims to the contrary, we’re not really on the same side in Syria. And U.S. sanctions are locked to Russia’s exit from Crimea, which is not going to happen any time soon.

So why the meeting? It’s a case of “Ask not what Russia can do for America, ask what Putin can do for Trump — and what has he been doing for him already?”

Trump also loves photo ops and feeling like a big man on the international stage, especially with his domestic agenda of health care, tax reform, infrastructure and immigration foundering.

John Dickerson considers All the Presidents’ Dirty Tricks (describing several adminsitations):

Whatever one may think of how Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner should have behaved in accepting the June 2016 meeting, President Trump has updated its relevance to the present. It is now a moral benchmark for the president and his team. Despite the moral and national security reasons to be wary of such a meeting, by the president’s rules of politics it was still a fine thing to do.

NASA has now released the closest-ever images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 14h 55m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 30.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5:45 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1865, successful in their defense of the Union, the 3rd and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st and 6th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries muster out.

Recommended for reading in full —

The Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has been pro-Trump, but even that editorial board now addresses The Trumps and the Truth:

Don’t you get it, guys? Special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate intelligence committees are investigating the Russia story. Everything that is potentially damaging to the Trumps will come out, one way or another. Everything. Denouncing leaks as “fake news” won’t wash as a counter-strategy beyond the President’s base, as Mr. Trump’s latest 36% approval rating shows.

Mr. Trump seems to realize he has a problem because the White House has announced the hiring of white-collar Washington lawyer Ty Cobb to manage its Russia defense. He’ll presumably supersede the White House counsel, whom Mr. Trump ignores, and New York outside counsel Marc Kasowitz, who is out of his political depth.

Mr. Cobb has an opening to change the Trump strategy to one with the best chance of saving his Presidency: radical transparency. Release everything to the public ahead of the inevitable leaks. Mr. Cobb and his team should tell every Trump family member, campaign operative and White House aide to disclose every detail that might be relevant to the Russian investigations.

That means every meeting with any Russian or any American with Russian business ties. Every phone call or email. And every Trump business relationship with Russians going back years. This should include every relevant part of Mr. Trump’s tax returns, which the President will resist but Mr. Mueller is sure to seek anyway.

Then release it all to the public. Whatever short-term political damage this might cause couldn’t be worse than the death by a thousand cuts of selective leaks, often out of context, from political opponents in Congress or the special counsel’s office. If there really is nothing to the Russia collusion allegations, transparency will prove it. Americans will give Mr. Trump credit for trusting their ability to make a fair judgment. Pre-emptive disclosure is the only chance to contain the political harm from future revelations.

(This editorial position, of course, assumes that Trump’s Russia contacts are politically manageable; this will come to matter less as a political problem than as a legal and moral one. Stains of that kind, to be sure, will prove indelible. The editorial is significant mostly because it shows that even defenders of Trump see his situation as dire.)

Benjamin Wittes observes that A New Front Opens in L’Affaire Russe:

Don’t look now, but a new front has opened in L’Affaire Russe. It will be a quiet one at first, but I suspect it won’t stay quiet for long.

The new front is civil litigation.

Last week, a group called United to Protect Democracy filed suit against the Trump campaign and Roger Stone on behalf of three people whose emails and personal information were among the material stolen by the Russians and disclosed to Wikileaks. The suit alleges that the campaign and Stone conspired with the Russians to release information about the plaintiffs—who are not public figures—in a fashion that violates their privacy rights under D.C. law. and intimidates them out of political advocacy.

See, also, a copy of the complaint at Invasion of Privacy Suit Filed against Trump Campaign over Leaked Emails.

Hannah Levintova, Bryan Schatz and AJ Vicens write that Four Spy Experts on Trump Blackmail, WikiLeaks, and Putin’s Long Game:

Steven Hall, who retired in 2015 after a decorated career at the CIA, ran the agency’s Russia operations.

Mother Jones: If you were involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, who or what would you hone in on?

Steven Hall: Mike Flynn, no doubt. It’s fun to think about what I would do if I was a Russian intelligence officer in charge of running these various operations. Not just the influence operation, which it’s quite clear now was pretty successful in increasing the likelihood that Donald Trump would be elected. But if I was the SVR [Russian foreign intelligence] guy who was told, “Okay, your job is to try to find whether there are members of the campaign who would be willing to play ball with us,” No. 1 on my list would be Flynn. First of all, he’s a former chief of the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency]. He’s an intelligence officer, so he understands how discreet and clandestine you need to be if you’re going to cooperate on that level. And then, there’s the future: He’s probably going to land a pretty good job, assuming Trump wins. So it’s a win-win-win in terms of targeting Flynn. Furthermore, he’s come to Moscow. He’s accepted money from Russian companies, and he’s tried to conceal that. So on paper, he’s a really good-looking candidate for a spy.

MJ: Is there any parallel to this moment that you saw in your 30-plus year career with the CIA?

SH: The short answer is no. There have certainly been big spy cases in the past—Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen. But I can’t think of one that would be as senior a guy as somebody like the national security adviser, or even more unprecedented—if it turns out that the Trump camp had the go-ahead from the big dog to talk to the Russians prior to the election.

Did the Kremlin likely try to collect dirt on Trump? “I think the answer is yes.”
MJ: How likely is it that the Kremlin has collected kompromat on Trump?

SH: I can absolutely tell you that the FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Service] are rigged up to collect as much compromising information against any target they consider to be valuable. So when Trump was there in Russia, would they have collected against him? I think the answer is yes. I think they would have seen Trump for what he was at the time, which to the Russian lens would have just been an American oligarch—a rich guy with considerable power who you might need something on at some point…He’s a good guy to have at your beck and call.

If there was compromising material that had a shot at actually making Trump behave the way the Russians wanted him to, I would imagine it would be something financial—illegal, dirty dealings, or something with legal import.

MJ: Do you think Congress is able to investigate the Trump-Russia allegations effectively?

SH: I don’t think so, given where Congress is right now in terms of partisanship. There might have been a time historically—15, 20 years ago. Short of having an independent investigator or some other mechanism that can get rid of some of the partisanship, I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

Michael Shear and Karen Yourish report that Trump Says He Has Signed More Bills Than Any President, Ever. He Hasn’t:

In fact, as he approaches six months in office on Thursday, Mr. Trump is slightly behind the lawmaking pace for the past six presidents, who as a group signed an average of 43 bills during the same period. And an analysis of the bills Mr. Trump signed shows that about half were minor and inconsequential, passed by Congress with little debate. Among recent presidents, both the total number of bills he signed and the legislation’s substance make Mr. Trump about average.

President Jimmy Carter signed 70 bills in the first six months, according to an analysis of bills signed by previous White House occupants. Bill Clinton signed 50. George W. Bush signed 20 bills into law. Barack Obama signed 39 bills during the period, including an $800 billion stimulus program to confront an economic disaster, legislation to make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, a bill to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco and an expansion of the federal health insurance program for children.

Mr. Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt both had signed more bills into law by their 100-day mark than Mr. Trump did in almost twice that time. Truman had signed 55 bills and Roosevelt had signed 76 during their first 100 days.

Sarah Kaplan writes that America’s greatest eclipse is coming, and this man wants you to see it:

Mike Kentrianakis is launched. He’s here at the Hayden Planetarium as an emissary of the American Astronomical Society, and his mission is to spread the word: On Aug. 21, the moon will pass between the sun and Earth, casting a shadow across a swath of the United States. The spectacle will be like nothing most people have ever seen….

Kentrianakis would know. He has witnessed 20 solar eclipses in his 52 years, missing work, straining relationships and spending most of his life’s savings to chase the moon’s shadow across the globe. The pursuit has taken him to a mountaintop in Argentina, a jungle in Gabon, an ice field north of the Arctic Circle — exposing him to every type of eclipse there is to see, on every continent except Antarctica. Last year he watched one from an airplane 36,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean. The video of his rapturous reaction went viral, cementing his status as a “crazy eclipse guy,” as he jokingly calls himself. “Oh, my God,” Kentrianakis exclaims 21 times in the 3½ -minute clip. “Totality! Totality! Whooo, yeah!”

Chasing the dark: The man who’s spent a lifetime pursuing solar eclipses presents Kentrianakis’s fascination: