No Bill: The local prosecutor in Elizabeth City, North Carolina said the police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. was justified and none of the officers involved will be charged. 

  R. Andrew Womble, the district attorney for North Carolina’s First Judicial District, said Brown used his car as a “deadly weapon” against the cops as he tried to escape arrest. Womble said the facts of the case “clearly illustrate the officers who used deadly force on Andrew Brown Jr. did so reasonably, and only when a violent felon used a deadly weapon to place their lives in danger.”

  Twenty seconds of police video released yesterday does not seem to support that. Brown was driving away when officers fired and his family has called the shooting “an execution.” 

  On April 21^st a squad of sheriff’s deputies arrived at Brown’s home in tactical gear to serve a drug warrant. Brown tried to drive away and three deputies opened fire, firing 14 shots.

No Peace: With as many as 58,000 Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombing and shelling of Gaza, France is leading diplomatic efforts to reach a cease fire between Israel and Hamas militants.  The NY Times reports that both sides have expressed a willingness to stop shooting, but the conflict drags on.

  The Biden administration says it is working toward ending the conflict, but has not condemned the severity of the Israeli bombardment. President Biden is juggling a long relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s been unable to form a government after recent elections and is fighting for his political life. The White House now says Biden was tougher in a recent phone call than described in the read-out given to the press. 

  Nonetheless, a growing number of Democrats are saying Biden is not being tough enough on Israel. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian American to serve in Congress, gave President Biden an earful on the tarmac in Detroit. According to an aide, Tlaib told Biden, “The U.S. cannot continue to give the right- Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with US-supplied weapons.”

See No Evil: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he will not support an investigation into the January 6^th insurrection carried out by supporters of Donald Trump because the current proposal doesn’t not include an inquiry into left wing violence. 

  The bill to create an investigation panel is expected to pass the House without him.

  Republicans have been deflecting and re-writing the history of the insurrection. One tactic is to conflate the MAGA riot with other protests around the country. McCarthy has been pushing for a look into violence by anti-fascists, known as Antifa, and Black Lives Matter. He said in a statement, “Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation.” 

  He is also dodging the likelihood that he will have to answer  questions about his telephone conversation with President Trump the day of the riot.

Natural Selection: The famed Darwin’s Arch in the Galápagos Islands, a natural stone arch in the shape of The Arc de Triomphe formed by millions of years of wind, waves, and erosion, has collapsed into the sea.

  The arch has been the subject of countless photographs and the waters around it have become a recreation area for divers looking to swim among sharks, turtles, manta rays, and dolphins. 

  The arch stood less than a mile from Darwin Island where the naturalist Charles Darwin studied native species in 1835 while forming his theory of natural selection and evolution. 

The Obit Page: Charles Grodin, the deadpan actor who starred in the movies “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Heaven Can Wait,” and “Midnight Run” has died at age 86.

  Grodin had been a theater actor and worked in television, which in the 1960s was not a great place to launch a movie career. But he won a leading part in the 1972 “The Heartbreak Kid,” playing a befuddled young Jewish man on his honeymoon with his neurotic bride who falls in love with another woman played by Cybill Shepherd.

  Grodin was also a writer who did a number of plays and books, one of which was titled, “It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here.” He was also a popular talk-show guest. Grodin was on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” 36 times and appeared with David letterman on more than 40 shows. 

The Spin Rack: Heavy rains brought flash flooding to southeast Texas and more heavy weather is on the way. — Florida Rep. Val Demings says she will run for the US Senate next year to knock out two-term Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. She used to be the Orlando police chief. — Tennessee is the first state in the country to have a law requiring businesses and government facilities open to the public to post a sign if they let transgender people use multi-person bathrooms, locker rooms, or changing rooms associated with their gender identity. — Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, announced that he’s running for governor of the state in 2022 despite never have held elective office. He held a patronage job under Donald Trump. — President Biden yesterday in Detroit took a drive in the first all-electric Ford F-150 truck. He said, “This sucker’s quick.”

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