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CHARLIE SYKES: They Are All Bannonists Now
JOE PERTICONE: Sidetracked: Norfolk Southern Cuts Big Checks as Rail Safety Bill Idles.
JUST BETWEEN US 🎧: Caligula is Returning 🔐
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LINDA CHAVEZ: America’s Second Abandonment of Afghans.
IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE THE FALL OF KABUL, when more than 124,000 Afghans fled their home after the United States withdrew its last troops. Some 76,000 Afghans eventually resettled in the United States, granted temporary humanitarian parole by the Biden administration. But most remain in legal limbo, unsure of their future, because Congress has not acted to grant them permanent status. It’s a disgrace, and a handful of Republicans are largely to blame.
The Afghan Adjustment Act would give permanent residence to Afghans who have been paroled into the United States. It’s not a heavy lift. Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced the latest, bipartisan legislation in July with four other Democrats and five Republican cosponsors; Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks introduced a similar measure in the House with two dozen cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. The Klobuchar bill includes tough vetting measures to ensure that deserving Afghans receive protection while those who may pose a security threat are weeded out.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
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BILL RYAN: William Friedkin, 1935–2023.
FILM DIRECTOR WILLIAM FRIEDKIN, who died on Monday at age 87, began his career with movies that were somewhat at odds with those he would eventually become famous for. He started with a handful of social documentaries, including, most famously, The People vs. Paul Crump (1962), about a black man on death row for killing a security guard during a robbery. As soon as he was able to break into narrative features, he did, with Good Times (1967), a sort of sketch comedy movie starring Sonny Bono and Cher. That movie would have been a curiosity no matter who directed it; it became odder still as Friedkin’s career progressed.
RON RADOSH: A Misleading New Portrait of an Atomic Spy.
PRESUMABLY HOPING TO CAPITALIZE on the publicity surrounding Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer, Magnolia Films last week released in the United States a documentary about the atomic scientist Ted Hall (1925–1999), who willingly offered the major secrets of how the atomic bomb was made to the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.
Readers familiar with the history of the Manhattan Project and the atomic spy ring that infiltrated it will already be familiar with Hall’s story, which received much publicity when he was unmasked as a Soviet spy in the 1995 release of the top-secret Venona Project files, decoded messages from KGB headquarters to its agents in the United States.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Tuesday! The storms weren’t so bad in our area, but two are dead and many are out of power in their wake. A Tornado Vortex Signature with a Meso strength of 3317 and .50'' hail was headed directly at me at 25 knots, but dissipated before it got too close.
Worse than Solyndra? I’m sure Fox News will cover the Trump administration’s $700 million loan1 to bankrupt Yellow Trucking the way they handled Obama and Solyndra… Right?
Judge orders SWA airline lawyers to take"religious-liberty training"… from a far-right conservative group.
Mike Pence’s 11th Commandment… “Thou may speak ill of Trump, but carefully” writes Tom Nichols at The Atlantic.
Why Don’t Some of Trump’s Biggest Critics on the Right… Want Him Prosecuted?
The former guy isn’t sweating it… No sir, not at all.
"We're the canary in the coal mine for the internet…” Backpage founder James Larkin, 74, took his own life before facing trial for his role with the site.
The Right Needs to Ask… ‘Why Do These Racists Keep Getting Hired by Us?’
Meanwhile, in Saint Louis… A Man who funded the anti-child kidnapping film Sound of Freedom was arrested for—wait for it— child kidnapping. But that’s not all.
…and in the “Free State of Florida™”… Parents now have to fill out a permission slip for kids to go by shortened versions of their birth name. So for me to be “Jim” or “Jimmy” as I went by until 8th grade, my parents would have needed to do paperwork. Fun times.
And tonight, in the Buckeye State… Here’s why Issue 1 is controversial.
A teen pretended to be a Muslim as he stabbed a gay man to death… Shocking nobody, that’s not true.
The GOP picks Trump… Over Democracy, Molly Jong-Fast writes at Vanity Fair.
The Bug is Back… Cleveland’s forgotten mascot, The Baseball Bug, is coming back to the Minors. He’ll appear at the Lake County Captains (A-affiliate) of the Cleveland Guardians on August 11.
Watches and planes… At EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.
The Patron Saint of forwarded emails? You’ll never guess.
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Where the Trump White House overruled The Pentagon!