GUILTY AS CHARGED: And …… we’re back. If you haven’t heard, Presidential son Hunter Biden was convicted yesterday in federal court of three counts of lying about his drug use on a federal firearms application in 2018. The jury took just three hours and five minutes to reach what seemed to be an obvious conclusion.

   On the books, the 54-year-old Biden faces up to 25 years in prison although first time offenders who don’t use a gun in a violent crime usually don’t get jail time.

  The verdict is a blow to the Biden family both personally and politically. Hunter Biden, his business dealing and personal behavior have been a focus of Republicans trying to smear the President with the scandals of his wayward son. President Biden has said he will not pardon his son. Hunter’s conviction also undermines Donald Trump’s claim that the judicial system is rigged.

  President Biden altered his travel schedule and flew home to be with his son after the verdict.

  The trial laid bare the years of Hunter Biden’s crack addiction, his divorce, and his brief messy romance with the widow of his late brother Beau. Despite his embarrassing troubles, Biden’s family has stuck by him. His step-mother, First Lady Jill Biden, was in court nearly every day.

  Hunter Biden’s legal troubles are not over. He still faces more serious federal tax charges in California for failure to pay during his years of blowing money on crack, alcohol, and personal pleasures.

BANANA REPUBLIC: The Chiquita banana company was found liable in a Florida court for financing a Colombian paramilitary group and ordered to pay a total of $38.3 million to the families of eight victims killed by the far-right paramilitary group. The lawsuit claimed Chiquita paid the paramilitaries to help expand their land holdings, but the company said the payments were extortion. 

  Chiquita, which was formerly known as the United Fruit Company, is also a defendant in a suit filed in Medellín, Colombia claiming that payments Chiquita made to the paramilitary amounted to involvement in criminal activities.

THE WAR ROOM: Hezbollah militants fired about 150 rockets into northern Israel today, targeting military bases and an arms factory in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed one of its senior commanders.

  The Israeli military said that it had struck a Hezbollah command and control center, killing a commander named Taleb Abdallah and three other Hezbollah fighters. They said Abdallah one of Hezbollah’s top commanders in southern Lebanon.

JUDICIAL IMPARTIALITY: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, already in the news for politically-oriented flags he said were flown over his two homes by his wife, was secretly recorded at a Supreme Court gala agreeing with a woman who said the nation needs to return to “godliness.”

  The woman, Lauren Windsor, is an activist who pretends to agree with people to get them to expose what they really think. She said to Alito, “Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

  Alito replied, “I agree with you, I agree with you.” 

  Windsor struck out with Chief Justice John Roberts who did not agree that the US should be a Christian nation, or that it’s the job of the courts to create a more moral country.  “That’s for people we elect,” Roberts said. “That’s not for lawyers.”

  Windsor, however, scored with Alito’s wife, who complained about having to look at a Pride flag in view of her Virginia home. She said, “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”

  Justice Alito said, “Oh, please, don’t put up a flag.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Morrie Markoff, a blogger and scrap-metal sculptor who was believed to be the oldest man in the US, died earlier this month at his home in downtown Los Angeles. He was 110 years old.

  Markoff’s old but unusually sharp brain has been donated for research on super-aging. Until recent months he read The Los Angeles Times every morning, kept up with world events, and wrote about his life on his blog. His daughter said. “He believed that if he kept active, he would live, and he really wanted to live.” 

  Born in East Harlem to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Markoff moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s. He worked for a vacuum cleaner company and during World War II for a company that made artillery shells.

  Markoff believed you had to keep moving to live.  He and his wife, who made it to 103, walked miles every day into their 90s. He rarely drank alcohol and avoided water in plastic bottles.

THE SPIN RACK: The European Union has placed tariffs of up to 38 percent on electric vehicles made in China. — A federal court has blocked Florida from enforcing its law that bans gender-affirming care, specifically puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for minors and restricting it for adults. —Sixty survivors of the notorious 2004 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut are graduating from high school today without 20 of their childhood friends and classmates. — Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, 40, who has won the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest every year since 2015, says he will not compete this year because of a contract dispute in the world of professional eating. Yes, there are professional eaters. At last year’s contest Chestnut jammed down 62 hotdogs and buns in 10 minutes.

BELOW THE FOLD: Denmark, where it gets cold, has recalled several Korean-made instant spicy noodle bowls because they are too hot.  The government’s decision has sparked online discussion that could be described as “heated.”

-30-