Good morning.

After a night of stormy weather, Whitewater’s Thursday will be cloudy with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:14 PM, for 14h 46m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.5% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the {tooltip}one hundred ninety-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM this evening.

On this day in 1804, the Sénat conservateur vested the powers of the French First Republic in an emperor. Napoleon’s coronation, and acquisition of effectively absolute power, would follow later that year. On this day in 1863, the Union Siege of Vicksburg begins, with “[s]seventeen different Wisconsin regiments involved in the assault that began the next day (8th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 27th, 29th and 33rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st, 6th and 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries as well as the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry).”

Recommended for reading in full —

Rick Romell reports that For third straight year, Wisconsin ranks last in business startup activity:

Another year, another last-place ranking for Wisconsin on the business startup front.

For the third year running, Wisconsin has placed 50th among the 50 states in startup activity as measured by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, one of the country’s leading entrepreneurship advocacy and research organizations.

Not only was Wisconsin last; the gap between Wisconsin and the next-lowest states widened significantly from 2016 and 2015. While other states are clustered with relatively small differences from one state to the next, Wisconsin stands as an outlier – on the low end.

“It just feels like such a broken record,” said Joe Kirgues, co-founder of gener8tor, a company with offices in Milwaukee and Madison that runs a respected training program for startups. “We’ve played this song so many times in terms of we’ve been dead last and dead last and dead last.”

The New York Times Editorial Board writes of The Special Counsel America Needs:

If President Trump thought that by sacking the F.B.I. director, James Comey, he could kill off the investigation into his associates’ ties to the Russian government and its attempt to deliver him the White House, he was wrong.

The investigation will go on, now under the leadership of a former F.B.I. director — and this one the president can’t fire on his own. Robert Mueller III, who was named special counsel on Wednesday to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation, is charged with revealing the truth about suspicions that reach into the highest levels of the Trump campaign and White House.

Given the “unique circumstances” of the case, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in making the appointment, a special counsel “is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome” of the investigation.

Mr. Rosenstein is absolutely right, and he has done the nation a service in choosing Mr. Mueller, one of the few people with the experience, stature and reputation to see the job through….

Michael Kranish observes that As president, Trump’s legacy of lawsuits and minimal briefings isn’t helping:

the tactics that Trump believed served him so well in business may be adding to his self-inflicted wounds as a special counsel prepares to launch an investigation into allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 election.

Trump’s family has no government background, and most of his most trusted advisers never worked in a White House. His demands to government officials for personal loyalty are superseded by their loyalty to the Constitution. His threats — such as tweeting that fired FBI Director James B. Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” — have often backfired. Comey’s associates provided quotes from a memo about the conversation that appear to support Comey’s version of events.

And Trump’s famous aversion to in-depth analysis — he once wrote that “The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience” — has led to concerns that he doesn’t absorb complicated briefing material from intelligence agencies and other sources.

Where Trump is gluttonous, rambling, egomaniacal, and undisciplined—the leader of the free world as an unmade bed—Yates is a human laser beam, focused on her target.

And also, despite all that, immensely likable.

That’s the persona that emerged from the lengthy sit-down, presented in multiple segments on AC 360, that covered her decisions not only to oppose the president’s anti-Muslim executive order that was later adjudged unconstitutional by a series of federal trial and appeals courts, but also to alert the White House that retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s trusted national security adviser, had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador and then lied about it to the vice president and the FBI, opening himself up to criminal prosecution by U.S. law enforcement authorities and blackmail by the Kremlin.

How fast are F1 cars? Really fast —

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a four-in-ten chance of afternoon thundershowers and a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset is 8:13 PM, for 14h 44m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred ninetieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1954, the United States Supreme Court hands down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education.  On this day in 1673, the Jolliet and Marquette expedition gets underway.

Recommended for reading in full —

The staff of the thorough, respected Lawfare website (Helen Klein Murillo, Jack Goldsmith, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Paul Rosenzweig, Benjamin Wittes) collectively offer Initial Thoughts on Trump Asking Comey to Kill the Flynn Investigation:

Historically, obstruction of justice articles of impeachment do elaborate a pattern of conduct. The first article of impeachment against Richard Nixon, for instance, included making false statements to investigators, withholding evidence, counseling witnesses to lie or give misleading testimony, and “interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States [and] the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The critical point is that impeachment for obstruction of justice is ultimately not just a legal question; it’s also a political question, albeit a political question highly inflected by the law and often discussed in the language of the law. The boundaries of the impeachable offense are not coextensive with the boundaries of the criminal law. There are things that are not criminal that are certainly impeachable, and there are crimes that are generally regarded as too trivial to trigger the Constitution’s standard in Article II § 4  of “Treason, Bribery, and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The great constitutional scholar Charles Black, in an excellent volume entitled, Impeachment: A Handbook written during the Watergate era, describes this point in vivid detail.

Michelle Goldberg offers Free Advice to Trump Aides: Quit While You Can:

Out in America, Mr. Trump still has plenty of genuine admirers, people who view him as a brilliant, iconoclastic businessman. But there is scant evidence of such respect among the people who actually work with him in Washington. The New York Times recently reported that there are “deep resentments among his scarred staff,” and The Washington Post writes of aides “bewildered and alarmed by how Trump arrives at his decisions.” These men and women are suffering personally while propping up a presidency they appear to hold in contempt. They are allowing themselves to be permanently tarnished through their association with a man whose name is destined to become the root of a political epithet signifying disgrace, like McCarthyite or Nixonian.

They aren’t just selling out their country. They’re selling out themselves.

Andrew Roth reports that so deep is Trump’s connection to Russia that Putin offers to provide Congress with details of Trump disclosures to Russian envoys:

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he would be willing to provide the U.S. Congress a record of President Trump’s meeting with top Russian envoys, bringing scoffs on Capitol Hill that the Kremlin could help shed light on the disclosures of reportedly highly classified intelligence.

The provocative offer for the Kremlin to share evidence with U.S. oversight committees about the Oval Office meeting came with the caveat that the request for the transcript would have to come from the Trump administration….

(So Trump needs Putin to bail him out, and Putin thinks there are Americans stupid or deluded enough – other than Trump, himself – to think Russia’s offer could possibly be an honest, accurate one.)

Daniel Bice reports that Walker’s commission bankrolled by Bradley Foundation:

When Gov. Scott Walker laid out a plan in his state budget address urging people to take steps to avoid welfare, it mirrored a platform of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has pushed for greater personal responsibility and more stringent welfare requirements.

Documents hacked from the Bradley Foundation’s computer server show the connection is not just philosophical — it’s financial.

A Bradley Foundation staffer sat on the Future of the Family Commission, which came up with Walker’s plan. Two experts who advised the state panel are major Bradley grant recipients, with one running a center that has received $11 million over the years. A key study used by the commission was paid for by Bradley.

The foundation even awarded a $100,000 grant to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to underwrite the commission itself — an unusual, if not unique, step in government. Neither the source of the commission’s money nor the foundation’s stake in the outcome was disclosed. The state spent about $62,000 of the grant before making its recommendation to the governor.

So, of what are Velveeta and Kraft Singles are actually made?

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:29 AM and sunset 8:12 PM, for 14h 42m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 2001, federal agent Robert Hanssen was indicted on charges of spying for Moscow. He is now serving life without parole. On this day in 1913, bandleader Woody Herman is born in Milwaukee.

Recommended for reading in full —

Louis Nelson reports that Trump claims he has ‘absolute right’ to share intelligence with the Russians:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning claimed he has “the absolute right” to share intelligence with the Russian government, while doing little to deny that he allegedly divulged highly classified information to a foreign adversary during an Oval Office meeting last week.

“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism,” Trump wrote on Twitter, breaking his message up into two posts.

Eliot A. Cohen explains The Terrible Cost of Trump’s Disclosures:

To a remarkable degree, the United States relies on liaison relationships with other powers with whom it shares information. If Trump has indeed compromised a source of information, it is not merely a betrayal of an ally’s trust: It is an act that will jeopardize a whole range of relationships. After all, the Director of Central Intelligence cannot very well say, “Don’t worry, we won’t share that with the president.” So now everybody—even our closest allies like the United Kingdom—would be well-advised to be careful with what they share with us. That is a potential intelligence debacle for us, but the danger goes beyond that. If any foreign government harbored lingering illusions about the administration’s ability to protect any information, including sensitive but non-intelligence matters like future foreign-policy initiatives or military deployments, they no longer do. They will be even more apprehensive about sharing sensitive information of any kind because…

Bob Cesca observes that Trump’s Russia scandal keeps getting deeper: At this point, campaign collusion might be the least of his problems:

Anyone with even a remedial understanding of politics and public relations understands that Trump is bungling the White House reaction to the ongoing investigation, turning an already harrowing treason probe into a harrowing treason probe made far more toxic by an obvious coverup.

It’s still unclear exactly what’s wrong with the president that he continues to botch and fumble the political reaction to the widening Russia scandal. We should definitely rule out, with prejudice, any argument that the president is practicing “three-dimensional chess” — that is, the “crazy like a fox” theory suggesting that Trump is working his way through a twisty Machiavellian strategy that we mere mortals are incapable of understanding. There’s nothing like that going on here. Chances are, Trump is being perpetually stymied by a combination of his desperation to kill the Russia probe; his clinical delusions, in which he believes certain things are real that clearly aren’t; his political ignorance; and, of course, his erratic knee-jerk style of blurting out gibberish and lies without any message discipline or self-censorship.

David Roberts contends that We overanalyze Trump. He is what he appears to be:

We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him. It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next.

But what if there’s nothing to understand? What if there’s no there there? What if our attempts to explain Trump have failed not because we haven’t hit on the right one, but because we are, theory-of-mind-wise, overinterpreting the text?

In short, what if Trump is exactly as he appears: a hopeless narcissist with the attention span of a fruit fly, unable to maintain consistent beliefs or commitments from moment to moment, acting on base instinct, entirely situationally, to bolster his terrifyingly fragile ego.

We’re not really prepared to deal with that…

Woody Herman entertains with the Woodchopper’s Ball:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be fair in the morning with an even chance of afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:11 PM, for 14h 40m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 82% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Library Board meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1930, Ellen Church becomes the first female flight attendant, when “she embark[s] on a Boeing 80A for a 20-hour flight from Oakland/San Francisco to Chicago with 13 stops and 14 passengers. According to one source, the pilot was another aviation pioneer, Elrey Borge Jeppesen.”  On this day in 1911, Janesville, WI proposes “ordinances banning fortune tellers and prohibiting breweries from operating bars in the city. ”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Greg Miller observes that Political chaos in Washington is a return on investment for Moscow:

…the Kremlin has collected a different return on its effort to help elect Trump in last year’s election: chaos in Washington.

The president’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey last week was the latest destabilizing jolt to a core institution of the U.S. government. The nation’s top law enforcement agency joined a list of entities that Trump has targeted, including federal judges, U.S. spy services, news organizations and military alliances.

The instability, although driven by Trump, has in some ways extended and amplified the effect Russia sought to achieve with its unprecedented campaign to undermine the 2016 presidential race.

In a declassified report released this year, U.S. spy agencies described destabilization as one of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s objectives.

“The Kremlin sought to advance its longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order,” it said.

Thomas Erdbrink reports that Iranians See Little Hope Elections Will Alleviate Economic Strain:

TEHRAN — As a college student studying mechanics, Hamidreza Faraji had expected after graduation to land a steady job with a fixed salary, a pension plan and the occasional bonus. He envisioned coming home at 6 p.m. to his family and vacationing at a resort on the Caspian Sea.

But Mr. Faraji, 34, has long since given up on all that. These days, he said, the only people who lead such predictable lives are government employees. Their jobs are well paid and offer security, but are hard to get in part because older employees stay on well past retirement age, limiting opportunities for the next generation.

So millions of Iranians, particularly younger ones, find themselves caught like Mr. Faraji in a vicious cycle of hidden poverty, an exhausting hustle to stay afloat, working multiple jobs and running moneymaking schemes just to keep up. The youth unemployment rate is 30 percent.

Anna Fifield reports that Experts fear North Korea getting closer to developing intercontinental ballistic missile:

TOKYO — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un celebrated a test of the “perfect weapon system” ­after his engineers launched what they said was a new kind of intermediate-range ballistic missile system capable of carrying “a large-size heavy nuclear warhead.”

The missile, launched Sunday morning, appeared to show substantial progress toward developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the mainland United States, U.S. rocket scientists said.

“North Korea’s latest successful missile test represents a level of performance never before seen from a North Korean missile,” said John Schilling, an aerospace engineer who specializes in rockets. This means North Korea might be only one year, rather than the expected five, from having an ICBM, he said.

Laura Vozzella reports that White nationalist Richard Spencer leads torch-bearing protesters defending Lee statue:

“What brings us together is that we are white, we are a people, we will not be replaced,” Spencer said at an afternoon protest, the first of two rallies he led in the town where he once attended the University of Virginia.

At the second rally, dozens of torch-bearing protesters gathered in a city park Saturday evening and chanted “You will not replace us” and “Russia is our friend,” local television footage shows. Spencer was not shown addressing that gathering, but he tweeted a photo of himself standing in the crowd carrying what appeared to be a bamboo tiki torch.

The evening protest was short-lived. About 10 minutes in, an altercation between Spencer’s group and counterprotesters drew police to the scene, and the crowd quickly dispersed, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported.

Sometimes beekeepers make serious mistakes, and when they do, Honey bees attack!:

Good morning.

Mother’s Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 38m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1796, English physician and scientist Edward Jenner successfully tests a smallpox vaccine. On this day in 1953, Milwaukee brewery workers begin a ten-week strike.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Philip Rucker observes that White House ‘systems failed’ with Comey firing, but Trump pushed the buttons:

In deciding to abruptly fire FBI Director James B. Comey, President Trump characteristically let himself be guided by his own instincts — fueled by his creeping anger and sense of victimhood about a probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that he considers a “witch hunt.”

The aftermath is a presidency rocked by its most serious self-inflicted crisis yet, exposing dysfunction and distrust within his West Wing and imperiling his agenda. The momentum for the health-care bill that passed the House is gone, and a week scheduled to be devoted to Trump’s preparations for a high-stakes foreign trip was overtaken by distractions and fury…

Conservative Max Boot wonders When Will Republicans Stand Up to Trump?:

If the controversy over the firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. director, has done anything, it has confirmed my decision on Nov. 9 to leave the Republican Party after a lifetime as a loyal member.

The Republican Party was once the party of small government, free trade, traditional values, principled foreign policy leadership and, most important of all, adherence to the Constitution. Republicans spent decades fulminating against activist judges like Earl Warren and activist politicians like Barack Obama, claiming they were undermining the founders’ vision of limited government.

And then, the party sold its soul to the soulless charlatan who now occupies the Oval Office and makes a mockery of every one of the party’s principles…

(I’d answer Boot by contending that they won’t stand up to him, or abandon him, regardless of what he does.)

James Fallows gives Five Reasons the Comey Affair Is Worse Than Watergate (“A journalist who covered Nixon’s fall 45 years ago explains why the current challenge to America may be more severe—and the democratic system less capable of handling it.):

So I’ve been thinking about comparisons between Watergate and the murky, fast-changing Comey-Russia-Flynn-Trump affair. As with anything involving Donald Trump, we have no idea where this will lead, what is “true,” and when the next bombshell will go off.

But based simply on what is known so far, this scandal looks worse than Watergate. Worse for and about the president. Worse for the overall national interest. Worse in what it suggests about the American democratic system’s ability to defend itself. Here is a summary of some reasons why….

Karin Bruillard writes of the path From death row to adoption: Saving animals by car, van, bus and even plane:

SAN FERNANDO, Calif. — May was supposed to be dead by now. The charcoal-and-white pit bull mix had languished for more than two months at a high-kill animal shelter in east Los Angeles County, and though she’d passed one “temperament test” required for adoption, she failed a second. That essentially put her on death row at the facility.

But a small rescue group got to May first and reserved her a spot on a school bus that would take her 840 miles north to Eugene, Ore.; there, another rescue had pledged to find her a home. And so on a sunny Saturday morning, she bounded up the steps of the red bus and quickly settled into a large crate near the back.

She had plenty of company as the wheels rolled along the highway: 105 other dogs and cats collected from crowded shelters in California and destined for the Pacific Northwest, where euthanasia rates are lower and pets are in greater demand…

Tech Insider shows how astronauts carry out simple, every day tasks in space:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 36m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Quick note: the next post in my Janesville series will be Sunday, May 14th (post 12 in the series).

On this day in 1918, the Lusk murder trial begins: “On this day Grace Lusk, a Waukesha high school teacher, began her trial for the murder of Mary Roberts. Prosecutors alleged a tragic love triangle had resulted in the murder after Lusk’s pleas for Roberts to give up her husband were rebuffed. The trial, a national sensation in the early days of mass media, resulted in a guilty verdict on May 29, 1918. Lusk was sentenced to 19 years in prison but served only five before being pardoned by the Governor. After her release she jealously guarded her privacy; the identity of her husband, known only as “Mr. Brown,” was never determined. [Source: Capital Times 5/13/1918, p.1]”

Recommended for reading in full —

Benjamin Mullins reports that Mother Jones is raising $500,000 to go after the Trump-Russia story:

To raise money for the project, which Mother Jones is calling “Trumpocracy: The Russia Connection,” the bimonthly magazine is trying to sign up at least 1,000 new sustaining donors at $15 per month. They’ve already lined up a $200,000 grant from The Glaser Progress Foundation, and the foundation is set to kick in an additional $50,000 once they reach their goal.

Mother Jones will use the money to hire fact-checkers, editors, researchers and staffers who will conduct legal reviews, said Monika Bauerlein, Mother Jones’ CEO. They’ve already lined up one investigative reporting heavy hitter for the team: Bill Buzenberg, the former executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, who will be writing a weekly newsletter on the story.

Mother Jones has been on this story since before the election. In October, Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief David Corn reported that a veteran spy had given the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to compromise Donald Trump. That story has since been matched by CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other outlets, Bauerlein said, and ballooned into a storyline that touches nearly every corner of D.C. politics.

(A description of their project is available online @ Now It’s About Much More Than Trump and Russia. Disclosure: I’m a donor to the project. One can make a one-time contribution or monthly contributions. Private investigative efforts will assure that significant questions are explored. Mother Jones, by the way, is named for Mary Harris “Mother” Jones.)

David A. Graham observes that If There Are White House Recordings, They Could Be Subpoenaed:

Maybe there are recordings from the Trump White House; maybe there aren’t. On the one hand, President Trump seemed to threaten the former FBI director in a tweet Friday morning, writing, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Later on Friday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly refused to comment on the tweet and whether or not tapes exist….

The first important fact about recordings is that if they did exist, post-Nixon, an administration would be required to preserve them as a public record, in accordance with the 1978 Presidential Records Act. The recordings would theoretically become subject to Freedom of Information requests five years after a president left office, though that can be staved off to as much as 12 years. The entire recordings wouldn’t necessarily become available, because there are carve-outs for personal information about the president’s life, as well as “political” activities. If recordings did exist, it would be a crime to destroy them.

(It’s worth noting, relatedly, that Trump has a long history of secretly recording calls, according to former associates.)

Peter Whoriskey writes that The labels said ‘organic.’ But these massive imports of corn and soybeans weren’t:

A shipment of 36 million pounds of soybeans sailed late last year from Ukraine to Turkey to California. Along the way, it underwent a remarkable transformation.

The cargo began as ordinary soybeans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Like ordinary soybeans, they were fumigated with a pesticide. They were priced like ordinary soybeans, too.

But by the time the 600-foot cargo ship carrying them to Stockton, Calif., arrived in December, the soybeans had been labeled “organic,” according to receipts, invoices and other shipping records. That switch — the addition of the “USDA Organic” designation — boosted their value by approximately $4 million, creating a windfall for at least one company in the supply chain.

Jim Robbins reports that a Rare White Wolf Killed in Yellowstone Park Was Shot Illegally:

A rare white female wolf that hikers found as she lay dying last month on the north side of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming was shot illegally, officials have determined.

The wolf had to be euthanized by park officials because of the severity of her wound.

She was the only white wolf living in the park, though there had been two others before her. She was 12 years old when she was killed, twice the average age of wolves in Yellowstone.

Great Big Story tells of Barn Owls: The Secret Saviors of Napa Valley’s Vineyards:

Barn Owls: The Secret Saviors of Napa Valley’s Vineyards from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 34m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred eighty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Florence Nightingale, English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing, is born this day in 1820. On this day in 1864, the 2nd, 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fight during the  Spotsylvania Campaign (May 8-21,1864); the 36th Infantry fights at Spotsylvania from May 18-21,1864 (“The fiercest fighting in the Battle of Spotsylvania occurred in pouring rain on May 12, 1864. For 23 hours the two sides fought hand-to-hand along lines known as the Bloody Angle. When the battle ended, the trenches were filled with bodies. Colonel Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry left a vivid memoir of this day’s fighting.”)

Recommended for reading in full —

Rick Rommel reports that Retail just keeps getting tougher, as Kohl’s, Macy’s show:

The department store blues continued Thursday, with investors punishing Kohl’s, Macy’s and their competitors amid yet another round of downbeat financial results.

Even with a nearly four-fold increase in first-quarter profit that easily bested Wall Street expectations, Kohl’s stock shares fell 7.8%.

Compared with some, that was a good day. Macy’s stock plunged 17%. The stock of Dillard’s, a 293-store chain based in Little Rock, Ark., dropped 17.5%.

One reason: Ongoing erosion in sales at existing stores, a key measure of retailer health.

Same-store sales fell 2.7% at Kohl’s, 5.2% at Macy’s and 4% at Dillard’s.

It was further evidence of the continuing troubles of mainline department store retailers, which have suffered as discounters and internet giant Amazon thrive.

Rebecca Ruiz reports that the Attorney General Orders Tougher Sentences, Rolling Back Obama Policy:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors late Thursday to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against crime suspects, reversing Obama administration efforts to ease penalties for some nonviolent drug violations.

The dramatic shift in criminal justice policy, foreshadowed during recent weeks, is Mr. Sessions’s first major stamp on the Justice Department, and it telegraphs his priorities to target drug dealing, gun crime and gang violence. The Justice Department released the new directives on Friday.

In an eight-paragraph memo to the nation’s prosecutors, Mr. Sessions returned to the guidance of President George W. Bush’s administration by calling for more uniform punishments — including mandatory minimum sentences — and directing prosecutors to pursue the strictest possible charges. Mr. Sessions’s policy, however, is broader than that of the Bush administration, and will be more reliant on the judgments of United States attorneys and assistant attorneys general.

(No drug warrior like an old drug warrior.)

Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian write that the Acting FBI director contradicts Trump White House on Comey, Russia probe:

Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe on Thursday rejected the Trump White House’s characterization of the Russian meddling probe as a low priority and delivered a passionate defense of former director James B. Comey — putting himself squarely at odds with the president while the bureau’s future hangs in the balance.

McCabe, who had been the No. 2 official in the FBI until President Trump fired Comey this week, said that the bureau considered the probe of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump team during the 2016 election campaign a “highly significant investigation” and that it would not be derailed because of a change in leadership.

“You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution,” McCabe said.

(One will have to wait – and it may not be a long wait – to see if McCabe keeps his job.)

Michael Schmidt reports that In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred:

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.

Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense….

Mr. Comey described details of his refusal to pledge his loyalty to Mr. Trump to several people close to him on the condition that they not discuss it publicly while he was F.B.I. director. But now that Mr. Comey has been fired, they felt free to discuss it on the condition of anonymity.

(Trump’s expectation of loyalty, seen in this account but in others, too, is more like that of a third-world autocrat or mafia boss.)

In Orange County, the sheriff’s department found itself with the task of telling swimmers that there were about fifteen great white sharks nearby. The announcement comes at about 3:50 on the video: