The Price of Lies: A Texas jury awarded $4.1 million in damages to a Connecticut couple suing the conspiracy monger Alex Jones for defamation. They had asked for $150 million.

  A separate and shorter trial will start today to determine punitive damages.

  Jones had claimed for years that the 2014 Sandy Hook school massacre was a fraud staged by actors seeking stricter gun control. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, who lost their 6-year-old son Jesse in the shooting, said Jones’s lies had made their life “a living hell.”

  In a separate development, the House January 6^th committee has asked for the Alex Jones cellphone data mistakenly sent by Jones’s lawyer to the plaintiff attorney in the defamation case. Attorney Mark Bankston had revealed in court two days ago that Jones’s lawyer mistakenly sent him two years of cellphone data  that allowed Bankston to prove Jones had lied in his testimony.

  Jones complained on his radio show, “It’s just so incredibly sick that I sit there and give the damn lawyers all the text messages… my lawyers give them the raw text messages of six months.”

Slammed and Dunked: A Russian court yesterday found WNBA star Brittney Griner guilty on charges of drug smuggling and possession, sentencing her to nine years in labor camp. The max could have been 10 years.

  Before sentencing, Griner told the court, “I made an honest mistake and I hope that in your ruling that it doesn’t end my life here.” President Biden called the sentence “unacceptable,” but there isn’t much he can do about it. 

  Griner was arrested in February at the Moscow airport with cannabis vape cartridges in her luggage. She pleaded guilty weeks ago, but under the Russian system the trial continued. Russian courts have a 99 percent  conviction rate.

  President Biden and Griner’s supporters have said she is “unlawfully detained,” but she did the crime and Russian law is harsh. The US administration has offered a swap deal, trading a Russian arms dealer for Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan.

Police Beat: Federal officials yesterday charged four current and former Louisville police officers with committing civil rights crimes in the infamous raid that left Breonna Taylor dead. 

  The police killings of Taylor and George Floyd, both of them Black, in the spring and summer of  2020 set off nationwide protests. US Attorney General said, Breonna Taylor should be alive today.”

  During the nighttime raid on Taylor in March 2020, the cops crashed through the  door and Taylor’s boyfriend shot and wounded one of them, thinking intruders had broken in. The officers fired volleys, killing Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician. 

  The two officers who killed Taylor have never been charged or named in the new indictments. The feds are accusing three other officers with falsely claiming  on their warrant affidavit that Taylor’s former boyfriend had been receiving package of drugs at Taylor’s apartment. The fourth former officer charged with recklessly shooting.

A Pox Upon Us: The Biden administration has declared the monkeypox outbreak to be a public health emergency. Since mid-May, more than 6,600 probable or confirmed cases have been detected in the US, and it’s spreading fast, primarily among gay men.

  The administration has been under criticism for not acting immediately to get vaccines after the first case was detected.

  Monkeypox is a viral disease spread by close contact between humans. It’s usually not dangerous but it can be fatal. Symptoms include rashes, bumps, or blisters on or around the genitals or in other areas like hands, feet, chest, or face. It can be accompanied by fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, and fatigue. 

  The disease was first discovered in research monkeys in 1958.

China Syndrome: China today sent warships and aircraft into waters near Taiwan during continued military exercises as China throws a hissy fit over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the independent island country. 

  Taiwan said China launched 11 ballistic missiles yesterday into waters around the country’s north-east and south-west coasts. 

  Japan also said five Chinese missiles landed in its waters and called for an “immediate stop” to the exercises.

  China’s Eastern Theater Command said in a statement, “The exercises focus on key training sessions including joint blockade, sea target assault, strike on ground targets, airspace control operation.” In effect, it’s a rehearsal for invading.

Aborted: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended the top prosecutor in Tampa, the elected state attorney, accusing him of incompetence and neglect of duty for vowing not to prosecute people who seek or provide abortions.

  “When you flagrantly violate your oath of office, when you make yourself above the law, you have violated your duty, you have neglected your duty and you are displaying a lack of competence to be able to perform those duties,” DeSantis said to cheers at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, in the company of  uniformed sheriffs and police chiefs.

 Warren is a prominent Democrat and critic of DeSantis. He said in a statement that his suspension “spits in the face of the voters.” He said, “The people have the right to elect their own leaders — not have them dictated by an aspiring presidential candidate who has shown time and again he feels accountable to no one.”

The Spin Rack: Residents of Georgia can now claim an “unborn child” as a dependent on their state taxes, the state’s Department of Revenue announced. — Four people were in critical condition last night after they were struck by lightning in a park just north of the White House. — Former Vice President Dick Cheney issued a television ad in support of his daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney, condemning Donald Trump. Wearing a cowboy hat, Cheney looks directly at the camera and says, “In our nation’s 240 year history there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters rejected him.”

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