Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 6:07 AM and sunset 7:40 PM, for 13h 32m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 68.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred sixtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1951, Baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle makes his major-league debut with the New York Yankees. On this day in 1897, author and playwright Thornton Wilder is born in Madison, Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full —

Brittany Carloni reports that Milwaukee Catholic school keeps it all in the family as grads return as staff, volunteers: “Gracing the lobby of the middle school at Notre Dame School of Milwaukee is a colorful mural created by the school’s Class of 2007, with painted representations of girls dressed in school uniforms, graduation gowns, lab coats and traditional dresses called vestidos folkloricos. One girl is Christian Oliva, who stands in her uniform of a plaid skirt and navy blue sweater next to her classmate Crystal Serna. Ten years later, the two 24-year-olds work side-by-side in a classroom at Notre Dame — Oliva as a teacher’s aide and marketing coordinator, Serna teaching first grade. “We never planned that we were going to come back here and we are also in that mural,” Oliva said. The two graduates are among 10 alumnae who have returned to Notre Dame School to teach in the classroom, work in school offices or volunteer in some way.”

Patrick Kingsley reports that Erdogan Claims Vast Powers in Turkey After Narrow Victory in Referendum: “ISTANBUL — A slim majority of Turkish voters agreed on Sunday to grant sweeping powers to their president, in a watershed moment that the country’s opposition fears may cement a system of authoritarian rule within one of the critical power brokers of the Middle East. With nearly 99 percent of votes in a referendum counted on Sunday night, supporters of the proposal had 51.3 percent of votes cast, and opponents had 48.7 percent, the country’s electoral commission announced. The result will take days to confirm, and the main opposition party said it would demand a recount of about 37 percent of ballot boxes, containing around 2.5 million votes.”

Maria Sacchetti reports that ICE immigration arrests of noncriminals double under Trump: “Arrests of immigrants with no criminal records more than doubled to 5,441, the clearest sign yet that President Trump has ditched his predecessor’s protective stance toward most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Advocates for immigrants say the unbridled enforcement has led to a sharp drop in reports from Latinos of sexual assaults and other crimes in Houston and Los Angeles, and terrified immigrant communities across the United States. A prosecutor said the presence of immigration agents in state and local courthouses, which advocates say has increased under the Trump administration, makes it harder to prosecute crime. “My sense is that ICE is emboldened in a way that I have never seen,” Dan Satterberg, the top prosecutor in Washington state’s King County, which includes Seattle, said Thursday. “The federal government, in really just a couple of months, has undone decades of work that we have done to build this trust.”

David Frum considers Trump’s foreign policy in On Military Upsurge: ‘If It Were Good Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Would Not Be Doing It’: “David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, argued that Trump won the Republican nomination for president because he promised to “fight and win wars.” “But now he’s embarked again on one of these open-ended conflicts,” Frum said. “There’s no plan that one can see. How does he even psychologically cope with the commitment that’s undertaking on behalf of us all?” Frum also said that it was a mistake to reflexively support Trump’s missile strikes in Syria. “I think a good rule of thumb is, if it were good foreign policy, Donald Trump would not be doing it,” Frum insisted. “There was no process, no deliberation,” he noted. “There was no inter-agency process because there are no agencies, there are no deputies meeting because there are no deputies. It seems to have been done fitfully and impulsively with no answer to the question, “Okay, so what do you do the next day?'” “Could he do anything that could change your mind?” [CNN’s Fareed] Zakaria asked. “He’s him,” Frump replied. “He’s never going to stop being him.”

Bret Israel writes about the Shoe-string theory: Science shows why shoelaces come untied: “A new study by mechanical engineers at UC Berkeley finally shows why your shoelaces may keep coming untied. It’s a question that everyone asks, often after stopping to retie their shoes, yet one that nobody had investigated until now. The answer, the study suggests, is that a double whammy of stomping and whipping forces acts like an invisible hand, loosening the knot and then tugging on the free ends of your laces until the whole thing unravels. The study is more than an example of science answering a seemingly obvious question. A better understanding of knot mechanics is needed for sharper insight into how knotted structures fail under a variety of forces. Using a slow-motion camera and a series of experiments, the study shows that shoelace knot failure happens in a matter of seconds, triggered by a complex interaction of forces.”

Good morning.

Easter Sunday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 6:09 AM and sunset 7:39 PM, for 13h 29m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred fifty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1962, at Gerde’s Folk City, Bob Dylan first performs a version of Blowin’ in the Wind. On this day in 1944, the the USS Wisconsin battleship is put into active duty for service during the Second World War.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Eric Lipton, Ben Protess, and Andrew Lehren report that With Trump Appointees, a Raft of Potential Conflicts and ‘No Transparency’: “WASHINGTON — President Trump is populating the White House and federal agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who in many cases are helping to craft new policies for the same industries in which they recently earned a paycheck. The potential conflicts are arising across the executive branch, according to an analysis of recently released financial disclosures, lobbying records and interviews with current and former ethics officials by The New York Times in collaboration with ProPublica. In at least two cases, the appointments may have already led to violations of the administration’s own ethics rules. But evaluating if and when such violations have occurred has become almost impossible because the Trump administration is secretly issuing waivers to the rules.”

Avi Sek reports that Trump says he can’t be sued for violence at his rallies because he won the election: “Last year, protesters from a campaign rally sued Donald Trump — claiming the future president urged his supporters to assault them. Now Trump is the president, of course. And while the lawsuit grinds on, with more accusations added last week, he claims he won immunity along with the election. “Mr. Trump is immune from suit because he is President of the United States,” his lawyers wrote Friday, rebutting a complaint filed by three protesters who claimed Trump incited a riot against them at a Louisville event in March 2016. Trump’s team challenged the accusations — negligence and incitement to riot — on many other grounds, too. But a federal judge already rejected their attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out earlier this month. And in another new filing in the same case, a Trump supporter accused of assaulting protesters agreed with the plaintiffs that Trump wanted a riot — while denying he actually harmed anyone.”

Bourree Lam writes that The Fight Over Trump’s Tax Returns Isn’t Over: “The release of Trump’s tax returns is an issue Americans of both parties seem keen to hang on to. In January, a poll by ABC News and The Washington Postfound that 74 percent of Americans believed that Trump should release his returns. Another poll found that 64 percent of Republicans want to see Trump’s tax returns too….With that level of interest, it’s no wonder that Rachel Maddow’s tax scoop in March, a few pages from the president’s 2005 tax returns, was a nonevent that still received immense media and public attention. Anna Chu, one of the organizers of the Tax March who works at the National Women’s Law Center, told DCist that the leak didn’t show what the public needs to see. And a one-page leak of Trump’s record to The New York Times only whet the public’s appetite. The speculation that his returns might turn up concerning revelations is amplified by ongoing worries that Trump hasn’t taken adequate measures to distance himself from his businesses while in office, resulting in myriad conflicts of interests.”

Kristine Phillips reports that Congressman [James Sensenbrenner, whose district includes Whitewater, WI] tells constituents that nobody has ‘got to use the internet’: “During the meeting in Wisconsin on Thursday, the attendee asked about the recent decision by Congress to wipe away an Obama-era policy that sought to limit what Internet service providers, such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, can do with customers’ Internet browsing history. The concern is similar to one raised by consumer activists: Not all Internet users have options to switch to a different company if they don’t agree with their current provider’s privacy practices….

In response, Sensenbrenner, who voted to scrap the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules that were set to take effect at the end of this year, said:

“Nobody’s got to use the internet. … And the thing is that if you start regulating the Internet like a utility, if we did that right at the beginning, we would have no Internet. … Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now. The fact is is that, you know, I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising for your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it, and then you take it upon yourself to make that choice. … That’s what the law has been, and I think we ought to have more choices rather than fewer choices with the government controlling our everyday lives.”

(Sensenbrenner’s shown he’s out-of-touch before, and is a poor fit to represent a college town. He’s every aged, well-off man who becomes complacent, thinking that what he did thirty years ago justifies his carrying on forever. Enlarged and entitled is no way to go through life; each day demands a renewal of one’s understanding of current conditions.)

Here’s a story about a little bunny that could:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:38 PM. The moon is a waning gibbous with 83% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred fifty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, British and Canadian soldiers liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp: “The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the BBC‘s Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied them: “…Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which… The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them … Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live … A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.”

On this day in 1861, Governor Alexander W. Randall receives 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, Horican, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Milwaukee were ready.)

Recommended for reading in full — 

Julie Hirschfeld Davis reports that the White House to Keep Its Visitor Logs Secret: “WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The White House announced Friday that it would cut off public access to visitor logs revealing who is entering the White House complex and which officials they are meeting, breaking with the Obama administration’s practice and returning a cloak of secrecy over the basic day-to-day workings of the government….The announcement was another turnabout for Mr. Trump after a week of changing course on an array of domestic and foreign policy matters. In a 2012 posting on Twitter, he chided Mr. Obama for failing to release certain records, including college transcripts, as President George W. Bush had. “Hiding something?” Mr. Trump wrote then. Mr. Trump has rejected other basic standards of presidential disclosures, like the release of his tax returns, leading to questions over whether he would reveal who comes and goes at the White House.”

Alan Feuer reports that At Choate, Decades of ‘I’d Rather Let It Go at That’: “That attitude — letting it go at that — typified the response of the school’s administration toward the sexual misconduct of teachers for decades, according to the report, which was prepared for the school by an investigator at an outside law firm. The response continued through the administrations of three headmasters, one of whom remains a trustee for life at Choate. Since at least the 1960s, not only did at least a dozen Choate instructors prey upon their students, but a long list of administrators helped to keep the sexual abuse under wraps, rarely telling other members of the faculty and almost never alerting the authorities.”

T.R. Reid asks that Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not Here?” “Parliaments and revenue agencies all over the world have done what Congress seems totally unable to do: They’ve made paying taxes easy. If you walk down the street in Tel Aviv, Tokyo, London or Lima, Peru, you won’t see an office of H & R Block or a similar company; in most countries, there’s no need for that industry….What’s going on in these countries — and in many other developed democracies — is that government computers handle the tedious chore of filling out your tax return. The system is called “pre-filled forms,” or “pre-populated returns.” The taxpayer just has to check the numbers. If the agency got something wrong, there’s a mechanism for appeal. Our own Internal Revenue Service could do the same for tens of millions of taxpayers. For most families, the I.R.S. already knows all the numbers — wages, dividends and interest received, capital gains, mortgage interest paid, taxes withheld — that we are required to enter on Form 1040….Questions like that have prompted some members of Congress — including Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon; Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts; and Dan Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana — to champion pre-filled forms. But their bills never went anywhere because the tax-preparation industry lobbies strenuously against them. The “Tax Complexity Lobby,” as it has been called, includes big national preparers like H & R Block and tax-prep software companies.”

Gal Beckerman describes How Soviet Dissidents Ended 70 Years of Fake News: “True internal pushback against the Soviet regime began to emerge only in the 1960s, at the moment when the political temperature inside Russia was moving from post-Stalinist thaw back to chilly. The suppressions began with the trial of the satirical writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in early 1966. As protests and further trials followed, the dissidents were faced with an interesting dilemma: how to fight back most effectively in light of the information that was coming their way. Almost daily, they would hear the details of interrogations, stories passed around about life in the labor camps, and the drumbeat of searches and arrests. The dissidents could have presented their own form of propaganda, hyping the persecution and turning that rich Soviet lexicon of “hooligans” and “antisocial elements” into bitter screeds against the state itself. But they didn’t. They chose instead to communicate it all as dispassionately and clinically as possible. They reached for what we might call objectivity.”

So, why is Area 51 called Area 51?

Good Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with an even chance of afternoon thundershowers, and a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:36 PM. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one 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 1775, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (then the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage) becomes America’s first abolition society. On this day in 1865, Pres. Lincoln is shot while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre (and passes away the next day). Former Wisconsin governor Leonard Farwell was in attendance and rushed to warn Vice President Andrew Johnson of an impending attack.

Recommended for reading in full —

Karen Madden writes that a Wisconsin Mega-dairy’s future in question after ruling: “SARATOGA – An appeals court has blocked key parts of a proposed large-scale dairy farm that has been the subject of controversy for years in central Wisconsin, leaving both sides of the 5-year-old issue wondering what happens next. The owners of the proposed farm, known as Golden Sands, do not have the right to use more than 6,000 acres of land for agriculture and manure spreading, according to the Wisconsin District IV Court of Appeals in a ruling issued Thursday morning. The ruling overturns an earlier decision by a Wood County Circuit Court judge, which found the Wysocki Family of Companies’ application for dairy buildings on 100 acres of Saratoga land allowed it to use additional land associated with the proposed dairy for agricultural purposes. The appellate judges who issued the ruling found that Golden Sands “fails to support” its legal claim to use the land as proposed.”

Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall consider Four Decades and Counting: The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs:

Proponents of drug prohibition claim that such policies reduce drug-related crime, decrease drug-related disease and overdose, and are an effective means of disrupting and dismantling organized criminal enterprises.

We analyze the theoretical underpinnings of these claims, using tools and insights from economics, and explore the economics of prohibition and the veracity of proponent claims by analyzing data on overdose deaths, crime, and cartels. Moreover, we offer additional insights through an analysis of U.S. international drug policy utilizing data from U.S. drug policy in Afghanistan. While others have examined the effect of prohibition on domestic outcomes, few have asked how these programs impact foreign policy outcomes.

We conclude that prohibition is not only ineffective, but counterproductive, at achieving the goals of policymakers both domestically and abroad. Given the insights from economics and the available data, we find that the domestic War on Drugs has contributed to an increase in drug overdoses and fostered and sustained the creation of powerful drug cartels. Internationally, we find that prohibition not only fails in its own right, but also actively undermines the goals of the Global War on Terror.

See, full study, Four Decades and Counting The Continued Failure of the War on Drugs.

Historian Rick Perlstein writes I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong: “A puzzle remains. If Donald Trump was elected as a Marine Le Pen-style — or Hiram Evans-style — herrenvolk republican, what are we to make of the fact that he placed so many bankers and billionaires in his cabinet, and has relentlessly pursued so many 1-percent-friendly policies? More to the point, what are we to the make of the fact that his supporters don’t seem to mind? Here, however, Trump is far from unique. The history of bait-and-switch between conservative electioneering and conservative governance is another rich seam that calls out for fresh scholarly excavation: not of how conservative voters see their leaders, but of the neglected history of how conservative leaders see their voters.”

David Graham observes that Press Secretary Sean Spicer Throws In the Towel: “Why had the president decided the Ex-Im Bank wasn’t such a bad idea? “Let me get back to you on the Ex-Im bank. It’s a very complex issue and I would like to get back.” Why does Trump no longer believe China is devaluing its currency, even though he has said so as recently as February? “It’s a very, very complex issue and I’m gonna leave it to the president to specifically answer it,” Spicer offered. There’s an element of comedy to this: Spicer’s job is to explain the president’s positions to the press and the public. And sure, the press secretary can’t be expected to be an expert in every topic. Except that Spicer knows a thing or two about trade policy, having served as a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the George W. Bush administration.”

John Bacon explains Stuff you should know if you find a bat in your salad: “If you do find a bat in your salad, don’t touch it! The CDC says data suggest that transmission of the rabies virus can occur from minor, seemingly unimportant or unrecognized bites from bats. “Human and domestic animal contact with bats should be minimized, and bats should never be handled by untrained and unvaccinated persons or be kept as pets,” the CDC says. A warning most of us probably don’t really need. If there is direct contact with a bat, unless you are certain there was no bite or scratch, the CDC recommends a delightful little regimen it calls “post-exposure prophylaxis.” Translation: a series of shots over two weeks. Also, if you are wondering whether you may have eaten salad from the recalled production line, fear not. “People who have eaten the recalled salad product and did not find animal material are not at risk and do not need to contact their health department,” the CDC cheerfully reports.”

Good morning.

Whitewater will see a rainy Thursday with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:35 PM, for 13h 21m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one 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 1743, Thomas Jefferson is born. On this day in 1864, the 14th, 29th, 33rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments help repulse Confederate troops attacking Union transport ships headed upstream on the Red River Expedition.

Recommended for reading in full —

Mike McIntire reports that After Campaign Exit, Manafort Borrowed From Businesses With Trump Ties: “Aug. 19 was an eventful day for Paul Manafort. That morning, he stepped down from guiding Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, after a brief tenure during which Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination, Democrats’ emails were hacked and the campaign’s contacts with Russia came under scrutiny. Dogged by revelations about past financial dealings in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort retreated from public view. But behind the scenes, he was busy with other matters. Papers were recorded that same day creating a shell company controlled by Mr. Manafort that soon received $13 million in loans from two businesses with ties to Mr. Trump, including one that partners with a [pro-Russian] Ukrainian-born billionaire and another led by a Trump economic adviser. They were among $20 million in loans secured by properties belonging to Mr. Manafort and his wife.”

Kelsey Sutton reports that GAO says it’s investigating Trump transition team: “The Government Accountability Office will investigate whether members of President Donald Trump’s transition team followed federal guidelines and ethics rules during the presidential transition, following complaints lodged by Democratic lawmakers in November. In a letter dated April 5 to Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the GAO confirmed that it would examine the transition team, including reviewing its use of federal funds and looking into the team’s communications with foreign governments. The letter was posted to Warren’s website this week and reported by The Associated Press on Wednesday.”

Jay Elwes conducts an interview with Richard Dearlove, the fomer head of Britain’s MI6, for Interview: Richard Dearlove—I spy nationalism: “…the allegations that members of Trump’s staff had illegal contact with the Russian government during the election campaign are “unprecedented,” said Dearlove. As for the president’s personal position, he said, “What lingers for Trump may be what deals—on what terms—he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the west apparently would not lend to him.” I also asked Dearlove about Trump’s suggestion that the US National Security Agency (NSA) or British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had bugged Trump Tower on the instructions of Barack Obama. This allegation was flatly rejected by both organisations and also by James Comey, Director of the FBI, who told Congress in a March hearing that “we have no information to support” Trump’s claim. “This is simply deeply embarrassing,” said Dearlove, “for Trump and the administration, that is. The only possible explanation is that Trump started tweeting without understanding how the NSA-GCHQ relationship actually works.”

Kaitlin Menza writes that Audience Laughs as Kellyanne Conway Complains About Liars: “She spoke at D.C.’s Newseum during an all-day examination of journalism in the Trump era. Other speakers included recent Pulitzer winner David Farenthold of the Washington Post and press secretary Sean Spicer. What does Conway, the woman who coined the term “alternative facts” to describe the information that President Trump relayed to the country regarding his inauguration crowd size, have to say about honesty in the media? “You can turn on the TV—more than you can read in the paper because I assume editors are still doing their jobs in most places—and people literally say things that just aren’t true,” Conway said with no trace of irony. The crowd at the Newseum promptly laughed in her face, to which she nodded and smiled as if to note she was in on the joke.”

 

Some laughs as @KellyannePolls says “You can turn on the TV…and people literally say things that just aren’t true.” pic.twitter.com/9CKVQV7fJM

— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) April 12, 2017

Watch as a bald eagle protects her eaglet in during storm that spawned tornado in Washington:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be increasingly partly cloudy with a high of sixty-three. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:34 PM, for 13h 18m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets today at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1861, Confederate forces begin the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter. On this day in 1864, the 14th, 29th, and 33rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments help repulse Confederates attacking Union transport ships heading upstream on the Red River Expedition.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous report that the FBI obtained FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page: “The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said. The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.”

(On 11.7.16, Louise Mensch reported about the existence of FISA warrants in this regard, more generally, in EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia.)

Meg Jones reports that a Civil War group files a lawsuit to get Wisconsin city to mow grass around graves: “A Civil War group upset over conditions at a Muskego cemetery that contains Civil War veterans’ graves filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to get the city to mow the grass. The Sons of Union Veterans asked Muskego officials last year to clear weeds and debris from the graves at a tiny cemetery at the southwest corner of Ryan and North Cape roads. The city refused because the small plot is a plant sanctuary and the last native prairie in Muskego. Muskego clears away some of the plants in the spring with a controlled burn but that also concerns members of the Wind Lake chapter of Sons of Union Veterans. “From their periodic burnings that they do, it’s degraded the (burial) stones where they’re about ready to fall apart and tip over,” said Bob Koenecke, the group’s commander. “We’d like them to stop the burning and we’d like them to clean up the cemetery.” Under Wisconsin law, veterans’ graves must “receive proper and decent care” from cemetery owners. The lawsuit filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court Tuesday is seeking a declaratory judgment on whether the way Muskego is caring for the cemetery is proper and decent.”

Heidi M Przybyla writes that Republicans avoid town halls after health care votes: “The migration away from public forums has been going on for months, despite complaints from constituents and local media. There have been roughly 30 recent newspaper editorials slamming lawmakers for avoiding town halls and calling on members to face their voters, not only in bluer portions of the country like New York but also in critical battlegrounds like Pennsylvania’s 6th and 7th districts, represented by Reps. Pat Meehan and Costello. Costello’s office screened participants for his Saturday town hall through the online reservation site Eventbrite and forbid videotaping, leading the local Democratic Party chair to call the event “staged.” Others lawmakers are holding question-and-answer events over the phone or Facebook Live, a social media tool allowing them to speak to a camera while avoiding uncomfortable public exchanges with the citizens they represent.”

Tom Daykin writes that Journal Sentinel block to be redeveloped for newspaper’s offices, other uses: “A preliminary deal has been reached to sell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s longtime downtown headquarters to a Michigan development firm that plans to renovate it into offices for the newspaper and other businesses as well as street-level restaurant?space. ProVisions LLC, led by Murray Wikol,?also has conceptual plans to demolish a portion of the property, the old Milwaukee Sentinel building, and develop an 18-story office tower at the site….Gannett Co. Inc., which owns the Journal Sentinel, and Troy, Mich.-based ProVisions,?have reached a preliminary sale agreement. The companies hope to complete the transaction by June, Wikol said. “This better supports our business needs moving forward — it will allow us to improve our space for the future, including an emphasis on digital capabilities and collaboration,” said Chris Stegman, Journal Sentinel president. “It reinforces our commitment to the community and will be part of reinvigorating the west side of downtown.” Gannett plans to lease back space on the historic Milwaukee Journal building’s fourth and fifth floors, Wikol and Stegman said.”

(The headline should have read Gannett sells Journal Sentinel Building, Will Lease Back Only Part.)

A Great Pyrenees makes a break for it (but was found safe fifteen hours later sleeping in a nearby yard) —