Gunplay: Actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun during rehearsals for a Western he was filming in New Mexico, killing the movie’s director of photography, and wounding the director.

  Cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, 42, was killed, and the director, Joel Souza, 48, was injured on the set of “Rust,” being filmed in Santa Fe County.

  Investigators were determining what kind of round was in the gun.

  A photograph of Baldwin shows him bent over, appearing to be distraught.

  On Hutchins’s website she described herself  a “restless dreamer” and an “adrenaline junkie” whowas from Ukraine and grew up on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle. 

  Gun safety on movie sets has been extremely tight since the 1984 death at 26 of Jon-Erik Hexum, a rising and devastatingly handsome actor who played played Russian roulette with a blank gun and was killed by the wadding from the round.

In Command: President Biden said last night on CNN that he is open to ending the Senate filibuster so Democrats could pass voting rights legislation, raise the federal debt limit, and possibly achieve other parts of his agenda blocked by Republicans.

  But Biden said he would lose “at least three votes” on his social policy bill if he pushed an end to the filibuster now 

  Speaking at a CNN town hall meeting, the president also expressed optimism about passage of his infrastructure and social safety net bills even as he offered candid descriptions of closed-door negotiations with two Democratic holdouts.

  Defying his Republican critics who say he’s mentally diminished, Biden was in full command of the facts and his agenda. He has had to do a lot of negotiating with Democratic moderates. He joked that in the US Senate, “When you are President of the United States and you have 50 Democrats, every one is a President.” 

Bannon Vote: The House of Representatives voted yesterday to charge Donald trump’s ally and former adviser Steve Bannon with criminal contempt for refusing to testify about the January 6^thinsurrection.

  This throws the question to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who will make the final decision on whether to prosecute Bannon.

  The vote was 229 to 202 with only nine republicans crossing the party line to vote in favor of finding the truth about the events of January 6^th. The vote shows that the majority of Republican representative are fine with glossing over and forgetting the attempt to overthrow the legal election of Joe Biden to the presidency.

  Among the Republicans in favor were House Select Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Rep. Greg Pence, the brother of the former Vice President, did not vote.

  Rep. Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, “We live in an age where apparently some put fidelity to Donald Trump over fidelity to the Constitution. I find that disgusting.”

Bad News: The American newspaper industry has been struggling for years in the age of digital media and advertising, but The Atlantic published in its November issue a depressing obituary for big city newspapers under the ownership of the vulture capitalist Alden Capital, a hedge fund ripping through newspapers like Sherman’s march to the sea.

  Among Alden’s acquisitions are the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and New York Daily News. They own 200 newspapers and their interest is not journalism.  McKay Coppins writes, “The model is simple: Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring as much cash as possible out of the enterprise until eventually enough readers cancel their subscriptions that the paper folds, or is reduced to a desiccated hulk of its former self

  Coppins writes, “When a local newspaper vanishes, research shows, it tends to correspond with lower voter turnout, increased polarization, and a general erosion of civic engagement. Misinformation proliferates. City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction.”

  And that brings us to our next item. 

Truth or Consequences: Former President Donald Trump, who is banned from several social media platforms for being a lying liar and political information terrorist, announced this week that he’s launching his own platform to be called “Trump Truth.” It sounds like a creation of Aldous Huxley.

  Trump is already valuing the parent company, Trump Social, at $875 million with a potential upside of $1.75 billion. Were he gets those numbers from, we don’t know, but where does he get anything he states as fact?

  In the meantime, banned by Twitter, Trump has been posting through his spokesperson, Liz Harrington. In a recent example of his online vitriol, Trump wrote about the late general and secretary of state, Colin Powell; “Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday.”

  Only on his own social media network.

The Spin Rack: The remains found in a Florida swamp have been confirmed to be those of Brian Laundrie, the man wanted for questioning in the death of his fiancee, Gabby Petito. — The Haitian gang that kidnapped 17 missionaries, including five children, is threatening to kill them all if ransom is not paid. The gang leader said in a video, “I prefer that thunder burns me, if I don’t get what I need. You see those Americans, I will prefer to kill them and I will unload a big weapon to each of their heads.” — Syria has executed 24 people convicted of terrorism for igniting last year’s wildfires that killed three and burned thousands of acres of forests. — Pressured by the former President, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appointed as secretary of state a lawyer who briefly joined Donald Trump’s challenge to the 2020 results in Pennsylvania. John Scott, is expected to conduct a limited review of the 2020 Texas results. 

Over The Fence: Los Angeles Dodger Chris Taylor hit three homers last night to keep his team alive in the National League series. But with the crowd chanting for him in the eighth, he struck out.

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