"The only known surviving Italian issue poster for the classic movie Casablanca has sold for $478,000 in Dallas at a public auction of vintage movie posters," AP reports.
Should "American taxpayers pay for your poor medical decisions?" Of course not. Claire Hawks explains at American Thinker.
Terry Jeffrey reports at CNSNews.com:
Texas, the nation's second most populous state, had the fastest growing economy in the nation in the first quarter of this year with its state GDP growing at a real annual rate of 3.9 percent, according to data released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis [BEA].
By contrast, California, the nation's most populous state, ranked 42nd out of 50 states for first quarter economic growth, with its GDP growing at a real annual rate of just 0.1 percent.
"The Texas economy, according to BEA, was driven up by a boom in the mining sector and by a large increase in manufacturing," Jeffrey continues.
California's economy was dragged down by the arts, entertainment and recreation sector; finance and insurance; retail trade; and agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting," according to CNSNews.
Read more.
Lloyd Billingsley writes at Frontpagemag.com:
Those working on health reform in the USA can learn a lot from the ordeal of Connie Yates and Chris Gard. The brave parents fought the good fight, but the government prevented them from doing their utmost for their beloved child. That's the injustice inherent in the kind of government monopoly system Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want.
Adoption of that kind of system in America could be a point of no return for the people's freedom of choice in health care. In cases of infants with rare conditions, it could be a matter of life and death. That is the enduring lesson of Charlie Gard, born on August 4, 2016.
Read the entire column.
Cartel Chronicles reports from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, for Breitbart:
A week-long manhunt led authorities to arrest a man wanted for kidnapping, raping, murdering, and disposing the body of a 12-year-old girl in this border city.
The case began two weeks ago in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, when the parents of 12-year-old Yuliana Rubi Hernandez Barrera reported her missing. Mexican authorities issued an alert and searched for the girl for five days until authorities found her decomposing body in an open field.
An autopsy carried out by Coahuila investigators revealed that the victim had been sexually assaulted prior to the murder.
Read more.
Peter Barry Chowka writes at American Thinker:
It now seems abundantly and shockingly clear: Great Britain's kangaroo High Court and the country's National Health Service system of socialist medicine are trying to kill baby Charlie Gard. [emphasis added]
These two entities -- the National Health Service, or NHS, backed up by the legal authority of the British courts -- hold total power over innocent little Charlie. His life and death are in their hands. But are they ethically and judiciously employing that power?
Under a system of government-controlled, socialized medicine, the state does have the authority to determine the life and death of every individual who resides within the country's borders. The Charlie Gard case is the perfect illustration of that power and how it can be wickedly wielded.
We've heard the term Death Panels, and here they are for all to see. . . .
"Look out, America," Chowka concludes. "When single-payer socialized medicine arrives on our shores, it will be the last nail in the coffin of our precious individual liberty and freedom -- and many of us will, like Charlie Gard, find ourselves helplessly waiting for the end of life to come, at the dirty hands and the arrogant say-so of some bureaucrats or a judge, long before it should."
Tre Goins-Phillips reports at The Blaze:
Officials in a South Texas school district have approved an old-school method of discipline for misbehaving students: Paddling.
The Three Rivers Independent School District administrators approved the paddling policy Tuesday, which allows either the principal or the campus' behavior coordinator to administer corporal punishment for misbehaving students, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported.
Corporal punishment is defined as "deliberate infliction of physical pain by hitting, paddling, spanking, slapping or any other physical force used as a means of discipline," according to the Texas Classroom Teachers Association.
The district voted 6-0 in favor of paddling, with one trustee absent. Three Rivers students, whose parents have provided written or verbal consent, will receive one paddling for his or her infraction after misbehaving in the classroom.
Next question: When will parents in Minnesota rise up to paddle the extremist Minnesota public schools, which has adopted a regressive "transgender" toolkit for kindergartners?
"Educators" so confused as to think that allowing boys into the girls' bathrooms promotes "safety" deserve a big schwack to their foolish posteriors.
If that doesn't work, try a 2-by-4 between the eyes, to get their attention. I hear that works for mules.
Then replace these posteriors and head-cases with liberated learners who will bring salt and light, accountability and wisdom, to the high honor fo serving parents by helping to educate their children.
Fox News reports:
Scott Naff, an officer for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, reportedly paid for his food in the drive-thru line, but was allegedly refused the food when he got to the window. Naff’s wife, Cathy, told the newspaper that the employee saw the uniform and told her husband: "I ain't serving no police."
She posted the story on her Facebook page to inform her close friends about the incident, and the story went viral, the report [at Richmond.com] said.
"He was in uniform and [in] his police vehicle. He paid for his food and drove forward to the next window," she wrote, according to Fox 8. "The young man who was working that window looked at him and backed away from the window mouthing something to my husband."
"The guy finally walked to the window and slid it open," Cathy reportedly said. "The guy said, 'I ain't serving no police' and closed the window. The guy proceeded to tell everyone in McDonald's, including the manager, that he was not going to serve the police."
"Cathy said it was not her husband's intention to cost someone [his] job, but she wanted to bring to light what police officers go through while interacting with the public," Fox News reports.
"Cathy updated her Facebook status to say a manager at the McDonald's had told her and Scott the employee in question had been let go," according to Fox News.
Joseph Klein writes at Frontpagemag.com:
After declaring that Christians have "been horribly treated" by the refugee program under former President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump has reversed the Obama administration's disgraceful discrimination against Christian refugees.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. State Department refugee data, during the period from January 21, 2017 -- President Trump's first full day in office -- through June 30, "9,598 Christian refugees arrived in the U.S., compared with 7,250 Muslim refugees. Christians made up 50% of all refugee arrivals in this period, compared with 38% who are Muslim."
From April through June 2017, Iraq was "the only Muslim-majority nation among the top six origin countries." The number of Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. from January 21, 2017 through June 30, 2017 was 1,779. Comparing the number of refugee admissions from Syria for the entire month of January with the entire month of February 2017, the number dropped by nearly half. By June 2017, the number of refugees admitted from Syria was about 26 percent of the already low number of 673 admitted in February.
"By contrast" Klein continues, "Pew Research Center reported that in fiscal year 2016 -- Barack Obama's last full fiscal year as president -- 'the U.S. admitted the highest number of Muslim refugees of any year since data on self-reported religious affiliations first became publicly available in 2002.' Overall," Klein writes, "the number of Muslims admitted as refugees exceeded the number of Christians who were admitted."
With regard to Syria, Kelin states that, "of the 12,486 refugees from Syria admitted to the United States during that same fiscal year by the Obama administration, about 99 percent were Muslim and less than 1 percent were Christian. Estimates of the Christians' proportion of the total population of Syria have ranged from 5 to 10 percent since the onset of the Syrian civil war. Muslims made up 87% of Syria's total population."
"Christians and other religious minorities seeking refuge from genocide and persecution in Syria and other Muslim-majority countries are clearly the most at risk today if they are forced to remain in those countries," Klein states.
"Any just refugee policy for the United States," Klein writes, "must be based on the principle that those most at risk receive the highest priority in admission decisions. President Trump has tried valiantly to correct the misdeeds of the Obama administration by following that principle, which explains at least in part his administration's reversal of the number of Christian versus Muslim admissions."
Klein concludes: "When refugee admissions to the United States resume after President Trump's temporary suspension order expires, President Trump should continue to undo the Obama administration's inexcusable discrimination against Christian victims of Muslim jihadist persecution."
Read the entire Joseph Klein column.
"Nothing illustrates the miserable state of the Caricuao zoo more than the dozen vultures circling above the pen of Ruperta, a 46-year-old African elephant who was once the animal park's star attraction," the LATimes reports.
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Thomas D. Williams reports at Breitbart:
In the latest instance of lethal violence against Christians in India, two masked gunmen on motorcycles shot a Christian pastor to death on Saturday night as he was standing outside the Temple of God church in Punjab state.
The 50-year-old Rev. Sultan Masih was standing outside the church talking on his mobile phone around 8:45 on Saturday evening when two armed youths with their faces covered drove by on a motorcycle and fired multiple shots at the pastor from a close range, according to police. . . .
"The pastor sustained a bullet wound to the head and two more to the chest and was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors pronounced him dead on arrival," Breitbart reports.
"Rev. Masih had been serving at the Temple of God Church for more than two decades and reportedly had no enmity with anybody," according to Breitbart. "The pastor also ran a school for poor children inside the church. He is survived by his wife and two children."
"Shocked customers at a Texas ATM got more than cash from the money machine when a technician trapped behind it slipped notes through the receipt slot begging for help, police said," Fox News reports.
Read more.
"Maine state Rep. Scott Hamann said he regrets a since-deleted Facebook post in which he appeared to threaten violence against President Trump and berated the president and his supporters," Jay LeBlanc reports at Circa.com.
"'Trump is a half-term president, at most, especially if I ever get within 10 feet of that p----,' the South Portland Democrat wrote in a post that began making the rounds on social media Tuesday night," Circa reports.
"Making threats against the president is a crime," LeBlanc continues.
"The Secret Service is aware of Hamann's post but has not opened an investigation, David Watson, resident agent in charge of the Secret Service's Maine field office, told the Bangor Daily News," according to Circa.
Read more.
Paul Crookston reports at the Free Beacon:
The FBI and federal prosecutors have interviewed another half-dozen people as part of a federal investigation into a land deal made by Jane Sanders, wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), while she was president of the now defunct Burlington College.
Prosecutors in recent months have obtained boxes of college records, conducted interviews, and even brought a Vermont official before a grand jury to testify, the Washington Post reports. Former trustees of the now-closed college also said that Jane Sanders' lawyers interviewed them to find out what potential witnesses may be saying to federal investigators.
Sanders' spokesman called the allegations "baseless" and implied that the investigation is politically motivated.
"My wife is about the most honest person I know," husband Bernie said, according to the Free Beacon. "When she came to that college, it was failing financially and academically. When she left it, it was in better shape than it had ever been."
"The college closed in 2016 after it was unable to reverse the financial difficulties over which Jane Sanders resigned as president," the Free Beacon reports.
Read more.
In "Trump's War on the Big Boss of Fake News," Daniel Greenfield writes at Frontpagemag.com:
When CNN brought in Jeff Zucker, it wasn't for his journalistic acumen. Zucker was best known for his work on the Today Show. After billions in losses at NBC, his new Comcast bosses wanted him gone.
CNN and Zucker were perfect for each other. Both were sinking ships looking for an easy way out.
Zucker's plan for CNN was simple. Get out of the news business.
Or as he put it, "news is how you define it." Fake, real; it's all a matter of definition.
And Zucker was going to "broaden" the definition of what news is. And the definition was reality shows . . . .
"Before President Trump called out CNN as fake news, its new boss had already turned it into fake news," Greenfield writes.
Read more.
Related
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Intelligence Revolts Against Less-Than-Zero-Credibility National Media
"International pro-life activists arrived in London today, where they will be joining baby Charlie Gard's parents for an important meeting with hospital officials at 5:00 p.m. local time" in London, LifeSiteNews reports. This would be 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time in the U.S.
Meanwhile, "Please Mrs. May, give Charlie this chance," headlines the U.K. Daily Mail as "Charlie Gard's emotional mother pleads with the PM ahead of meeting with Trump at G20 as she reveals FIVE doctors now agree there's a '10% chance' treatment could work."
For more information on baby Charlie and his parents' struggle to get care for their son, see their Facebook page here.
Susan Jones reports at CNSNews.com:
In a statement released at 10 p.m. Wednesday night, the Medstar Washington Hospital Center said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), shot and seriously wounded at a baseball practice on June 14, is back in intensive care.
"Congressman Steve Scalise has been readmitted to the Intensive Care Unit at MedStar Washington Hospital Center due to new concerns for infection. His condition is listed as serious. We will provide another update tomorrow, July 6."
Read more.
Because of the documented moral and legal misbehaviors of parents Bill and Hillary Clinton, daughter Chelsea inhabits an all-too-apparent glass house. Thus, as Chris Enloe writes at The Blaze:
Chelsea Clinton was recently rebuked on Twitter after she implied that President Donald Trump's controversial CNN tweet makes him unpresidential. [emphasis added]
Trump ignited controversy on Sunday when he tweeted a short video of him body-slamming "CNN."
The video was from an appearance Trump made at a WrestleMania event in 2007 and the CNN logo was superimposed over the face of a WWE wrestler that Trump slammed to the ground and then began beating. . . .
To continue reading Chris Enloe's "Chelsea Clinton Bashes Trump Over CNN Tweet -- Then Twitter Reminds Her She Has No Room to Talk," go here.
To view first-hand the 28-second Trump Tweet that launched a thousand reactionary migraines at CNN, go to @realDonaldTrump on Twitter.
To understand how "CNN Has Fallen Into Trump's Pro-Wrestling Trap, and It Can't Get Up," visit the venue at American Thinker.
And see The American Spectator to ponder "How Is CNN Not Embarrassed?"
By the way, as we go to press this afternoon, the Trump Wrestling CNN tweet has garnered 342,480 retweets and 570,138 Likes.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
"Qatar has joined Lebanon and Tunisia to become the latest state to ban the screening of the hit movie Wonder Woman starring Israeli actress Gal Gadot," Simon Kent reports at Breitbart.
"As Breitbart Jerusalem reported," Kent continues, "Gadot, who served in the IDF during the 2006 Lebanon war, has come under fire for her open support of Israel, in particular for a tweet during 2014's conflict with Gaza in which she prayed for the safety of Israel's citizens."
According to Kent, Doha News is now reporting that the "presence of the Israeli star in the blockbuster is enough for authorities in Qatar to ban the screening. Wonder Woman was initially scheduled to premiere in Doha last Thursday across local theater chains VOX Cinemas Qatar and Novo Cinemas."
"I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens," the actress wrote on her Facebook page in 2014. "Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children . . . We shall overcome!!! Shabbat Shalom!"
