Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see a likelihood of an afternoon snow shower and a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 5:06 PM, for 9h 56m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}eighty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1919, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, a citizen who challenged the legality of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Japanese Americans. While the EO was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States,  Korematsu’s conviction was overturned decades later after the disclosure of new evidence challenging the necessity of the internment, evidence which had been withheld from the courts by the U.S. government during the war. On this day in 1866, the 9th Wisconsin Infantry musters out after serving in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas, they lost 191 enlisted men during service.

Recommended for reading in full —

Alia Dastagir reports that Outrage over Trump’s immigrant ban helps ACLU raise more money online in one weekend than in all of 2016: “The American Civil Liberties Union shattered fundraising records this weekend after taking the White House to court over President Trump’s executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The ACLU said it has received more than 350,000 online donations totaling $24 million since Saturday morning. The non-profit organization that aims to protect individuals’ rights and liberties guaranteed in the Constitution typically raises about $4 million online in a year, according to Executive Director Anthony Romero. “It’s really clear that this is a different type of moment,” Romero said. “People want to know what they can do. They want to be deployed as protagonists in this fight. It’s not a spectator sport.”

Janna Remes of Brookings considers Aging and urban divergence [reflections on a report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Urban world: Meeting the demographic challenge in cities] : “How cities cope with demographic change matters, not only for their economies but also for their politics and societies. Pessimism and optimism among voters—and the political choices those voters subsequently make—appear, more than ever, to depend on where they live. In the U.S. presidential election, Clinton voters were heavily metropolitan (and from areas with high economic output) while Trump voters tended to be in (lower-output) suburban and rural areas, as shown by Mark Muro and Sifan Liu. As the demographics of cities—and the strategies they deploy to cope with change—diverge, so too do perceptions of economic opportunity. The divide between rural and urban communities is already evident in the election results. As demographics create an ever-more-differentiated urban landscape, the divide between citizens of different cities is set to widen too.”

Brian Nyhan of Dartmouth has updated his solid reference guide, a Reading list: Understanding the authoritarian turn in US politics.

Bob McGinn writes that Ted Thompson’s formula for success fizzles: “the Packers have squandered still another realistic chance in the era of Aaron Rodgers to capture their 14th NFL championship. They’ve had enough talent to win the Super Bowl nine times in 11 seasons under Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy, and just once have they claimed the Lombardi Trophy. Thompson’s aversion to signing players that have been with other teams is holding hostage McCarthy and his coaches, Rodgers and his teammates and members of his own personnel department. None of them like it but they can’t do one thing about it. Packers President Mark Murphy, the one man who can do something, goes about praising Thompson whenever the opportunity presents itself for the wonderful job he has done and the wonderful job he is doing. Thompson is a good general manager with a long list of admirable qualities. If he were a great general manager, the Packers would have been in the Super Bowl more than once in his 12-year tenure, especially considering his quarterbacks have been Favre and Rodgers.”

Could this be the loneliest whale in the world?

Somewhere in the North Pacific Ocean there is a whale. There are, of course, many whales, if rather fewer than there were a couple of hundred years ago. But this whale is different. It is a male and vocalizes during mating season in a way that only male whales do. Its species, however, is uncertain. It may be a fin whale, or perhaps a blue whale, the largest whale of them all. It may even be a hybrid — an unusual but not unheard-of scenario.

Nobody is certain because nobody has claimed to have seen it. But several people have heard it. And many more have heard of it. And what this latter group has heard about it has turned the whale into an unwitting celebrity, a cultural icon and a cypher for the feelings of many unconnected people around the globe. It is, allegedly, the Loneliest Whale in the World.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will bring an even chance of snow showers and a high of twenty-seven. Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset is 5:05 PM, for 9h 54m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}eighty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1845, Poe’s The Raven is first published in the Evening Mirror. On this day in 1865, 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery fights a skirmish at the Combahee River, and the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry fights another one 50 miles west at Robertsville, both cities in South Carolina.

Recommended for reading in full —

David Barstow describes how ‘Up Is Down’: Trump’s Unreality Show Echoes His Business Past: “As a businessman, Donald J. Trump was a serial fabulist whose biggest-best boasts about everything he touched routinely crumbled under the slightest scrutiny. As a candidate, Mr. Trump was a magical realist who made fantastical claims punctuated by his favorite verbal tic: “Believe me”….But for students of Mr. Trump’s long business career, there was much about President Trump’s truth-mangling ways that was familiar: the mystifying false statements about seemingly trivial details, the rewriting of history to airbrush unwanted facts, the branding as liars those who point out his untruths, the deft conversion of demonstrably false claims into a semantic mush of unverifiable “beliefs”….Deception, dissembling, exaggeration — what Fortune magazine called his “astonishing ability to prevaricate” — has deep roots in Mr. Trump’s business career. In innumerable interviews over the years, Mr. Trump glibly inflated everything from the size of his speaking fees to the cost of his golf club memberships to the number of units he had sold in new Trump buildings. In project after project, he faced allegations of broken promises, deceit or outright fraud, from Trump University students who said they had been defrauded, to Trump condominium buyers who said they had been fleeced, to small-time contractors who said Mr. Trump had fabricated complaints about their work to avoid paying them.”

Jennifer Rubin describes how Trump and America lose again: The Mexico blunder: “Trump is the perfect storm when it comes to foreign policy. He lacks knowledge of the world, his White House staff and children have no diplomatic training and in advance of Rex W. Tillerson’s confirmation he has scared off the top echelon at the State Department, as my colleague Josh Rogin reports. (“Suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, [undersecretary for management Patrick] Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.”)….One might expect resignations to continue in the State Department and elsewhere as veteran public servants decide that the Trump circus is not something they want any part of — not even during the extended transition phase as a new team gets up to speed. Running the State Department is hard enough in normal times; running it when the president apparently strikes career diplomats as erratic, self-destructive and clueless will be a struggle.”

Robert P. Jones reports that Not Even the Reddest States Support Deportation: “But lost amid the anti-immigrant bluster of his campaign, the flurry of executive orders, and the whirlwind of partisan politics in Washington, is a stubborn fact: Very few Americans, and even few Republicans, say their preferred policy solution to the country’s illegal immigration problem is the deportation of an estimated 11 million people. That is the clear result of a study based on over 120,000 interviews with Americans—including 40,509 conducted during the 2016 campaign—that was conducted by my organization, PRRI, over the last three years. Through the ups and downs of immigration-reform legislation and even under the darker shadows of the 2016 election season, American opinions about concrete policy solutions have remained remarkably stable. When asked about how the immigration system should deal with immigrants who are currently living in the country illegally, the new study found nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans say we should allow them a way to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements, and another 15 percent say we should allow them a way to become permanent legal residents but not citizens. Only 16 percent of Americans, and only 28 percent of Republicans, say their preferred policy option is to identify and deport those who are living in the country without legal documentation.”

(N.B.: I would expect that there certainly are communities within America where nativist residents will turn on others, gleefully so. See, Neither Shocked Nor Awed (Some “small, rural towns will offer the Trump Administration the advantage of many collaborators who will aid federal authorities, and many residents who will identify neighbors as targets for deportation. Almost no one in these places will say a word in public opposition; outspoken residents will hail deportation as a necessary part of Making America Great Again.”)

Alan Yuhas reports that White House defends Trump Holocaust statement that didn’t mention Jews: “The White House has defended its omission of Jews and antisemitism from a statement remembering the Holocaust by saying that Donald Trump’s administration “took into account all of those who suffered”. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, the White House made no mention of Jews, Judaism or the antisemitism that fueled Nazi Germany’s mass murder of six million Jews in the 1940s. The head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, wondered aloudabout the “puzzling and troubling” statement, and its break with the precedent. The executive director of the Anne Frank Center, Steven Goldstein, similarly scolded the president: “How can you forget, Mr President, that six million Jews were murdered because they were Jews? You chose the vague phrase ‘innocent people.’ They were Jews, Mr President.”

Here’s Smoked Salmon the Old-School Way:

Sheepshead Bay on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way are stunning and picturesque. It’s the setting for Declan McConnellogue’s The Haven Smokehouse, which is a quaint throwback to the way people used to smoke salmon—with care, attention, and time. “Each Haven Smokehouse salmon is treated with the respect it deserves, carefully honoring our finest Irish traditions,” reads the smokehouse’s website. This short film, Turf Salmon Smoke, follows Declan’s process of using 10,000-year-old turf to smoke salmon in the way he remembers from his childhood. It comes to us from the world-traveling web series The Perennial Plate. To learn more about this series, visit its Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset is 5:03 PM, for 9h 51m 49s of daytime. It’s the lunar new year, and the Chinese year of the Fire Rooster.

Recommended for reading in full —

Deadspin’s Diana Moskovitz reports on the allegations in a Lawsuit: Baylor Football Players Committed 52 Rapes In Four Years Under Art Briles: “Baylor football players committed 52 rapes in four years, the majority at off-campus parties hosted by football players, including five gang rapes; the university paid off one woman who said she was raped by giving her free tuition; and football staff arranged for women to have sex with recruits on their campus visits, according to a Title IX lawsuit filed today in federal court in Texas. The 26-page lawsuit—filed against Baylor on behalf of Elizabeth Doe—goes into immense detail about both a specific report of gang rape at the center of the complaint as well as how, it says, “football and rape became synonymous” under former football coach Art Briles, aided by a policy for football players described as “show ’em a good time.”

Keegan Kyle reports that Wisconsin’s State senators [are] up for 31 percent per-diem raise: “MADISON – After legislators in Wisconsin’s Assembly hiked how much cash they can pocket for working in Madison, their Senate peers plan to take a similar step. Most state senators last year were allowed to claim up to $88 for each day they worked in Madison, on top their $51,000 annual salary, under a decades-old benefit called per diems. This year, Senate leaders are interested in hiking the maximum rate to $115 a day, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald confirmed Friday. “As a result of input from members of both parties, several updates are being made to the Senate policy manual including a shift in per diem rates,” Myranda Tanck wrote in an email to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.”

Daniel Drezner cautions Never underestimate the staying power of autocratic rulers: “One of the few correct themes of my public writing is that incompetent autocrats tend to stay in power far longer than pundits predict that they will stay in power. I have written that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro would continue to rule their countries despite their abjectly awful economic policies. Back in 2011 I wrote that “Kim Jong Un will hold power for longer than any Western analyst expects him to hold power,” and the North Korean leader continues to be large and in charge….The trouble with buffoonish autocratic personalities is that there is a natural psychological bias to focus on the clownish parts of what the Dear Leader is doing and not enough on the consolidation of political power.”

Luz Gonlazez describes Going Rogue: “9 federal government agencies have gone rogue, I suspect largely in response to Trump and his administration’s determination to disrespect the value of its work, spread a false narrative of their mission and goals, and create a toxic environment of mistrust, misinformation, and uncooperative discourse.  In other words, federal employees are doing for the American people what the Republican majority will not do, stand up to an authoritarian President and administration who do not even remotely resemble or represent the American people.

On January 26, all the senior staff at the United States Department of State resigned.  Since Trump took office on January 20 (has it really been only 6 days) federal employees have created twitter accounts and tweets in defiance to the new administration’s attacks on truth and science.  Showing courage and conviction. Days old rogue accounts @rogueNASA, @AltNatParkSer, @ActualEPAFacts, @Alt_NASA, and @WhiteHouseLeaks have tens of thousands of followers.”

Alexandra Horowitz describes How dogs can tell time with their noses:

Good morning.

Thew work week’s end in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-two. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset is 5:02 PM, for 9h 49m 33s of daytime. The moon is new, with .3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}eightieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp is liberated. On this day in 1862, the 9th Wisconsin Light Artillery Battery musters in at Burlington, Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full —

Nico Savidge reports that a UW-Madison student trying to start ‘alt-right’ group was convicted of arson at black churches: “A UW-Madison student seeking to start what he calls a “pro-white student club” was convicted in 2005 of setting fires at predominantly black churches in a racially motivated arson attack, officials confirmed Thursday. Chancellor Rebecca Blank said the university was not aware of student Daniel L. Dropik’s conviction when he was admitted to UW-Madison because the university is barred from asking about or considering an applicant’s criminal history. Dropik, 33, was sentenced to five years in federal prison after authorities said he set fires at two churches in predominantly black neighborhoods in Milwaukee and Lansing, Michigan, in April 2005. According to court documents, Dropik set out from his home in Oconomowoc specifically looking for black churches “as racial retaliation” for earlier incidents between him and African-Americans. Dropik, who also works as a student hourly employee, has handed out slips of paper at UW encouraging students to “fight anti-white racism on campus” by joining a Madison chapter of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, according to The Badger Herald. The flier included the hashtag #UWAltRight, using a common term for the ideology that mixes racism and white nationalism.”

Mirah Curzer describes four good tips for How to #StayOutraged Without Losing Your Mind: “Professional organizers and veteran activists have strategies for staying sane during a long fight. If you’re serious about sticking it out in the picket lines for the duration of the Trump presidency, you’re going to have to learn these strategies….”

Masha Gessen describes The Styrofoam Presidency: “On Saturday it emerged that the inaugural-ball cake that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence cut with a sword was a knock-off of President Obama’s 2013 inaugural-ball cake. Obama’s was created by celebrity chef Duff Goldman. Trump’s was commissioned from a decidedly more modest Washington bakery than Goldman’s, and the transition-team representative who put in the order explicitly asked for an exact copy of Goldman’s design—even when the baker suggested creating a variation on the theme of Goldman’s cake. Only a small portion of Trump’s cake was edible; the rest was Styrofoam (Obama’s was cake all the way through). The cake may be the best symbol yet of the incoming administration: much of what little it brings is plagiarized, and most of it is unusable for the purpose for which presidential administrations are usually intended. Not only does it not achieve excellence: it does not even see the point of excellence.”

Chico Harlan reports that In these six American towns, laws targeting ‘the illegals’ didn’t go as planned: “HAZLETON, Pa. — Starting a decade ago, a group of small U.S. cities began passing laws to block undocumented immigrants from living within their borders. They were a collection of mostly white exurbs and faded manufacturing towns whose populations suddenly were transforming. More Latinos were arriving in search of jobs, and the towns’ leaders complained of burdened schools and higher crime. Here in this northeastern Pennsylvania city, then-Mayor Lou Barletta said he would do what he could to restore “law and order” and take back his city. It was time, Barletta said, for a “war on the illegals.” And while that sentiment is shared among some advisers to President Trump, the experiences of these towns show how measures targeting undocumented immigrants can leave lasting and bitter racial divisions while doing little to address the underlying forces that often determine where newcomers settle. The laws in most cases aimed to make it illegal for landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants and threatened fines for employers who hired them. But among the six most high-profile towns that tried to pass such laws, all have been foiled by court rulings, settlements or challenges with enforcement. Several have been ordered to pay the legal fees for the civil rights groups that brought suits. And in five of the six towns, the Latino population — legal or illegal — has continued to grow, attracted by a continued rise in low-paying jobs. “It wound up costing our city $9 million in attorney’s fees,” said Bob Phelps, the mayor of Farmers Branch, Tex., a Dallas suburb that saw its ordinance defeated in court after a seven-year legal battle. “And we accomplished zero.”

Here’s a bird’s eye view of the Abbaye du Bec-Hellouin:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s Thursday will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 5:01 PM, for 9h 47m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1788, the first European settlers in Australia landed at what’s now Sydney. On this day in 1925, a fire destroys the Whitewater Hospital, with losses estimated at $20,000.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jeet Heer writes that Donald Trump Is Becoming an Authoritarian Leader Before Our Very Eyes: “Turning a speech at an intelligence agency [at the CIA] into a political rally is a deep betrayal of political norms. But it is very much in keeping with Trump’s disturbing habit of claiming the armed wing of the state, including the military and law enforcement, as his political allies. He said early in the CIA speech that “the military gave us tremendous percentages of votes. We were unbelievably successful in the election with getting the vote of the military. And probably almost everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to raise your hands if you did.” At the end of his speech, Trump sounded like a pathetic suitor making his final pitch: “I just wanted to really say that I love you, I respect you. There’s nobody I respect more.” While Trump’s antics might have impressed his fans watching from home, they seem to have done little to assuage worries in the agency. The New Yorker interviewed a variety of intelligence experts, including John MacGaffin, a high-ranking veteran of the agency. “What self-centered, irrational decision process got him to this travesty?” MacGaffin told the magazine. “Most importantly, how will that process serve us when the issues he must address are dangerous and incredibly complex?”

David Zirin writes about his experiences at the inauguration in I Was at Trump’s Inauguration. It Was Tiny: “Walter, a Trump supporter from Virginia, said to me, “This isn’t what I thought it would be. I thought this was going to be like our version of Woodstock. Instead I’m just cold.” Susan from West Virginia said to me, “On the plus side, I guess it can’t get worse. And I’m still glad we’re going to get the Supreme Court. But today—this is sad.” Raymond from West Virginia shrugged his shoulders and said, “I thought it would be like one of his rallies. Instead, it’s this.” (Raymond then asked if I was Jewish. I said yes and he said “Just checking.” I said, “C’mon Raymond! Even your anti-Semitism sounds demoralized.” He looked down, sadly.) In addition, the Secret Service and TSA personnel in charge of the checkpoints, both groups maligned by this administration, were cracking jokes about the president-elect as we were going through the metal detectors. One TSA agent even took a button from me that said, “Solidarity Trumps Hate.” He wasn’t confiscating the button. He took it to wear (“later,” he told me). If it wasn’t for the thousands of protesters who came out for both permitted and non-permitted demonstrations, the day would’ve had no life at all.”

Conservative Peter Wehner explains why he’s opposed to Trump in Why I Cannot Fall in Line Behind Trump: “…Mr. Trump has continued to demonstrate impulsivity and narcissism, an affinity for conflict and vindictiveness. Which leads to my main worry about Mr. Trump: His chronic lack of restraint will not be confined to Twitter. His Twitter obsessions are a manifestation of a deeper disorder. Donald Trump is a transgressive personality. He thrives on creating disorder, in violating rules, in provoking outrage. He is a shock jock. This might be a tolerable (if culturally coarsening) trait in a reality television star; it is a dangerous one in a commander in chief. He is unlikely to be contained by norms and customs, or even by laws and the Constitution. For Mr. Trump, nothing is sacred. The truth is malleable, instrumental, subjective. It is all about him. It is always about him. In “The Abolition of Man,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” Donald Trump has not only spent much of his life stepping outside of traditional morality; he seems to delight in doing so. If I am right about Mr. Trump, and Lewis is right about history, then it is unlikely that President Trump will use his power benevolently. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Aaron Blake reports that ‘Eight years. Eight years.’: Donald Trump and his team are already assuming a 2020 reelection win: “Trump and his advisers have increasingly taken to speaking not just about what they’ll do over the next four years, but what will happen over the next eight — a premise that takes for granted that he will be reelected in 2020. Call it confidence or call it presumptuousness, it’s increasingly a part of the talking points. “The White House and the media are going to share joint custody of this nation for eight years,” Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday night on Fox News’s “Hannity.” “And we ought to figure out how to co-parent.” The day before, during a White House ceremony swearing in his new aides, Trump promised that “we are going to do some great things over the next eight years.” And then he repeated, for good measure: “Eight years.”

Thinking about a plant? Here are some tips on plant selection —

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will see freezing rain and a probability of light afternoon snowfall, with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:59 PM, for 9h 45m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 6.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}seventy-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1959, the jet age really takes off (of course it does) on 1.25.1959 with an transcontinental flight (New York to Los Angeles) of an American Airlines Boeing 707.   On this day in 1932, Janesville, Wisconsin continues its probition of dancing on Sundays.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Brian Stetler and Frank Pallotta report that Publisher printing more copies of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ after spike in demand: “The book publisher Penguin is printing more copies of George Orwell’s dystopian classic “1984” in response to a sudden surge of demand. On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning the book was #1 on Amazon’s computer-generated list of best-selling books. The list reflects hourly book sales. The 68-year-old novel appeared on the list on Monday, hovered around the #6 spot for much of the day, rose to #2 by Tuesday afternoon and then hit #1. Lower down on Amazon’s best sellers list are two other classic novels with similar themes: “It Can’t Happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis, and “Brave New World,” by Aldous Huxley. It is hard to say for sure how much of the interest is related to Donald Trump’s inauguration and the rise of “alternative facts,” a term coined by Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday.”

Dylan Byers reports that Trump’s Chicago tweet is another response to cable news: “When President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday night and said he would send federal agents into Chicago if the city failed to address its growing violence, the threat seemed to emanate from nowhere. But like so many of Trump’s tweets, it appeared to be inspired by cable news. The 45th President of the United States is known to be an avid cable news consumer, and his tweets often seem to be in direct response to something he’s just seen on television. In this case, Trump appeared to be responding to a segment on Fox News. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor” ran a segment about violence in Chicago that included the following statistics: “228 shootings in 2017 (up 5.5% from last year” and “42 homicides in 2017 (up 24% from last year).” One of the show’s guests, Horace Cooper, an adjunct fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, said, “I don’t know another word besides ‘carnage’ to describe the devastation that’s been taking place.” Just over an hour later, at 9:25 p.m. ET, Trump took to Twitter using the same statistics Fox News had used and the same language as Cooper. “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” Examples of Trump seemingly reacting to cable news abound.”

Jennifer Rubin explains that Trump’s actions will invite nonstop litigation: “Ironically, for a man who loved to bring litigation to torment opponents and squash criticism, President Trump will likely face nonstop litigation for his entire term. Lawyers contesting him on everything from the emoluments clause to the lease for his Washington hotel with the federal government say, in essence, that he has no one to blame but himself. Instead of divesting entirely of his businesses, Trump chose to keep ownership. “This will be in play for the length of the Trump presidency,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said to me in a telephone interview on Monday.”

Matt Velazquez reports that it was MU 74, Villanova 72: Golden Eagles stun AP No. 1 Wildcats: “Marquette has played men’s basketball for more than 100 years. There have been plenty of memorable games and historic moments in that time, but never before had Marquette knocked off the top-ranked team in the Associated Press top 25 during a regular-season game. That changed Tuesday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. After trailing by as many as 17 points and staying behind by double digits for most of the second half, the Golden Eagles finished with a 19-4 run to claim a 74-72 victory over reigning-champion Villanova, the No. 1 team in the AP poll and No. 2 in the USA Today coaches poll. The victory was Marquette’s second in 12 meetings with the AP No. 1 team, with the other coming against Kentucky in the Elite Eight of the 2003 NCAA Tournament.”

BRIC TV describes One Man’s Search for Meaning in the Rhythm of Tap: