Olympic champion swimmer Lilly King got a sweet surprise this week after she qualified for her third straight games, ensuring her trip to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. On Thursday, the 27-year-old Team USA Swimmer competed in the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in Indianapolis, and after qualifying for her second event, she got a different kind of gold, NBC Chicago reported. Stepping out of the pool, King was greeted by her boyfriend, former Indiana swimmer James Wells, who got down on one knee and proposed. After Lilly King qualified for her second race for the Paris Olympics, her fiancé gave her a ring of her own. ? #SwimTrials24 pic.twitter.com/UgnfeyJYgO — NBC Sports (@NBCSports) June 21, 2024 “It’s been really incredible for me to be able to watch you over the last four years both in and out of the pool and just to see you grow has been so awesome,” Wells told his girlfriend. “It has been awesome, and I’m very excited to see where this goes from here on. So, I was wondering, Lilly Camille King, will you marry me?” he added. Clearly overjoyed and without a second of hesitation, King responded, “Yes! Yes!” Wells stood up and the two embraced and kissed with everyone close to them cheering and clapping. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP On Friday, speaking to the “Today” show, King said the proposal was so special and unexpected. “I was honestly so confused he was on deck. After that I was like, ‘Why are you wearing your nice clothes? What’s going on?’ Then I realized I was like, ‘Oh, I know what’s going on,’” King said. “I was expecting it more after the Games because we’re going to go frolic around Europe after that,” she added. “But last night, I was not expecting it at all.” “It was already an unbelievable week to start off with. Making the Olympic team obviously could not be more special, and now getting married!” King continued. “So it was great. And just being able to do it in front of my friends and loved ones, my family’s all here and all of my favorite people are here this week. It’s really special.” King started off the week qualifying for the Summer Games after she won the 100-meter breaststroke at the swimming trials, and on Thursday, she qualified again after finishing second behind Kate Douglass in the 200-meter breaststroke, the New York Post noted. This summer, the champion swimmer will have a chance to add to her Olympic medal collection after already wining five Olympic medals in her career — two gold, two silver, and one bronze, NBC noted.

“Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” is a grand and intimate epic that’s a must-see on the big screen for anyone who loves Westerns. But its inability to find a truly compelling “why” for its characters or for Western expansion in general is a sign why the genre, and patriotism itself, is struggling in the modern world.  Kevin Costner returns to the Western genre that won him his Best Director and Best Actor Oscars (1991, “Dances with Wolves”) with an insanely ambitious passion project in which he also directs and stars, and for which he mortgaged his estate and poured $50 million of his own money. The film is titled “Chapter 1” because it’s the first part of a planned four-part theatrical Western epic, the second chapter arrives less than two months after the first, August 16th.  “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” follows American pioneers across the states making their way to the Wild West, only connected by their dream of a better life. Whether it’s an enigmatic cowboy (Kevin Costner) who tries to protect a woman of questionable repute (Abbey Lee) and child, a sharpshooting woman (Sellina Miller) and her family trying to survive in a new settlement despite the threat of native tribes, native tribes trying to figure out how to deal with all the pioneers coming, American soldiers (Sam Worthington, Danny Huston, Woody Harrelson) trying to keep the peace, the leader of a wagon train (Owen Wilson) trying to get difficult people to their destination — these individuals are set to shape the future of the American West. Horizon: An American Saga. Chapter 1. Sam Worthington. New Line Cinema/Territory Pictures/Warner Bros.(2024) IMDB. A big part of the film’s magic is how it feels both big and personal, achieving the idea of ordinary people making their mark on the wide open spaces of the last frontier at the heart of “Horizon.” This balance of nailing both epic scale and intense intimacy with a large cast of characters is no mean feat. That’s why so few films do it. But Costner manages to do it for several reasons. A three-hour runtime allows room to introduce and develop the characters. The deft camerawork balances the focus between the characters and wide-open spaces. And the editing and pacing of “Horizon” spends just long enough on each moment. The result feels lavish and unrushed in each scene, without feeling like we’re wasting time or padding things out, like Denis Villeneuve’s otherwise great “Dune” parts 1 and 2. Much of the credit also must be given to the all-star cast, who flawlessly bring these characters to life with the casual ease of the master performers they are. It’s clear that Kevin Costner loves Westerns. All the classic Western elements are in the story, from the very satisfying portrayal Costner gives of the rough-but-goodhearted gunslinger, to the sharpshooting single mom, to nasty villains, heartbreak, and the classic values of family, masculine chivalry and feminine kindness in a savage place and time. These elements are portrayed with a boyish enthusiasm such that they will scratch the itch of any Western enthusiast, yet tempered with an adult’s understanding of the underlying tragedy of the West, which keeps the movie from seeming shallow. Horizon: An American Saga. Chapter 1. New Line Cinema/Territory Pictures/Warner Bros.(2024) IMDB. With such a long runtime and so many characters, it would be easy for such a movie to feel like a self-indulgent and unfocused vanity project. At times it does. But what ties it all together is a very strong theme – given point blank by Col. Hough (Danny Houston) – the dream of Americans for wide open spaces to chart their own destiny despite danger to themselves and harm to others, even at the expense of the natives. This theme is then reinforced by each character thread, each subplot – from both settler and native perspectives – and each jump between wide and close-up shots throughout the film. Such unity between plot, character, theme, and aesthetics is deeply unusual, but welcome. It also prevents the film from ever losing itself or its focus in its details, the way Tarantino’s “Once Upton a Time in Hollywood” did. “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” is not without its flaws. The film ends abruptly, with a teaser for the next part in this 4-part saga, without any real feeling of catharsis. More like you’re watching a pilot of a TV show than a feature film. Of course, that’s sort of baked into the cake with a movie that has “Chapter 1” in the title and teases that “Chapter 2” is coming out only two months later. Other movies like “Fellowship of the Ring,” or “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1,” or “Dune: Part One” have all had satisfying first parts. It seems “Horizon” could have offered a more satisfying finish for a three-hour time investment. A bigger issue is that the film doesn’t quite deliver a satisfying “why” for its individual characters or for its wider story to truly make me excited to return to this world three more times. The film tells me that the settlers are going West for freedom and self-determination, but it never explains what the individual characters’ dreams or reasons for going West are. This means that the only “why” we are given for these characters is ultimately an expression of selfishness: a longing for freedom, yes, but a self-centered freedom at the expense of others, like the natives they are displacing. It’s hard to root for the characters to succeed or deeply sympathize with their suffering if the source of their suffering is, at best, morally neutral, and, at worst, contemptible. For a really well-made three-hour movie that skillfully explores these themes? Sure, I will gladly invest myself emotionally. Three more three-hour movies? Seems a bit much. Lacking a “why” is a common problem with modern film and TV in general, and makes many of our stories unnecessarily shallow. “Napoleon” never bothered to explain what drove his insane levels of ambition. “Shogun” never bothered to establish what its lead actually believed in about his culture, so that it actually mattered when he traded it in for a new one. It’s also likely a big part of why the Western genre collapsed in the late 1960s. Previous generations of Americans believed–ultimately–that American culture made the world a better place. After all, the generation that made Westerns a hit was the generation that saved the world from the Nazis during World War II. So while we would agree that the way we treated the Indians was bad, we still had an underlying gladness that America became America. But the cultural changes in the 60s and 70s meant that later generations didn’t feel that same gladness at America’s existence. It’s no coincidence that “Star Wars” became such a smash hit in the 70s since that was basically a Western (remember the gun-slinging Han Solo?) but set in a fictional galaxy that didn’t have any complicated relationship with our actual history. “Lord of the Rings,” another story about heroes set in a fantasy world, also became popular with young people, including hippies, in the same era. This may, in fact, be the very reason why sci-fi fantasy films like “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Spider-Man” and “The Avengers” have so dominated the movie landscape. If you don’t believe in heroes in your own world, you have to find them in fantasy. This is also why Westerns like “Yellowstone,” and patriotism alike have become so divided on political lines. It’s hard to say that America brought anything uniquely good to the world – such that it might give you positive feelings that we got here despite our shortcomings – without sounding like a conservative. Adam McKay called famous liberal “West Wing” showrunner Aaron Sorkin a “Right-wing version of me” because he portrays the institutions of our country as basically good, just corrupted by bad actors, rather than bad to their core like Adam McKay does. This happens in other areas too, like the issue of marriage. According to Pew Research, there is a 40% gap between on the question of whether society should prioritize marriage and kids (59% Trump supporters, 19% Biden supporters) despite the overwhelming evidence of how important marriage and kids are for society. In fact, sociologist Brad Wilcox argued on my podcast that many liberals simply don’t want to say that marriage and family are good because it makes them sound like a conservative! People might bemoan that every movie right now is a superhero movie. But until filmmakers give equally compelling heroes for fans to cheer for onscreen, and reasons to cheer for them, fans will continue to go where the heroes are. Likewise, people might bemoan the lack of trust in our institutions. But until it is bipartisan to promote and defend them – even if that makes them sound Right-wing – they can’t really complain when people walk away from them. “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” is masterful, the acting is flawless, and the scope is both vast and heartbreakingly intimate. It’s a film fans of the genre will want to see on the biggest screen possible. If it only could have dug deeper into the “why” for its characters and the Wild West in general, we could have a genuine modern classic on our hands. * * * Joseph Holmes is a New York-based film and culture critic and co-host of The Overthinkers podcast. You can find him at josephholmesstudios.com and on Twitter/X at @NormalGuy8. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire. 

'That's not true!'

'I have been briefed on the tragic shooting in Fordyce'

Mason had reportedly recently gotten his licens

Death Cab for Cutie was formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1997. The band was initially a solo project of Ben Gibbard, who expanded the project into a full band with the addition of Chris Walla (guitar, keyboards, production), Nick Harmer (bass), and Nathan Good (drums). Over the years, the lineup has seen changes, particularly with Jason McGerr replacing Nathan Good as the drummer in 2003, and later, Dave Depper and Zac Rae joining the band in 2015 as touring members before becoming full-time members. Since their inception, Death Cab for Cutie has released ten studio albums: Something About Airplanes (1998), The post Complete List Of Death Cab For Cutie Albums And Songs appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Earlier this week, I explained “parole in place,” President Joe Biden’s latest attempt to grant a back-door amnesty. Biden isn’t the first president to use flimsy pretexts and dodgy interpretations of law to force immigration policy in the absence of legal authority, but he is by far the most reckless. Here are my Five Favorite Fudges, a list of the top jerry-rigged workarounds currently used to grant amnesty or benefits to illegal immigrants that never were envisioned by Congress. 1. Parole “Parole in place” was recently in the news, so let’s start here. Congress intended immigration parole to be used by the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to allow a few hundred migrants a year into the country, in exceptional circumstances. But since 2021, Biden has used it to create a string of “McVisa” programs benefiting Afghans, then Ukrainians, and then Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Biden lets 1,450 aliens per day book an appointment on the CBP One app to show up at a port of entry and be paroled in. He paroles family members from favored countries so they can cut the line and wait here instead of at home. “Parole in place” is open to illegal aliens married to U.S. citizens for at least 10 years. It allows these aliens to avoid the penalties prescribed for living here illegally (a three- or 10-year bar to reentering the U.S.) before they may apply for a green card through marriage. Those penalties aren’t “bureaucratic hurdles,” as The Washington Post claims, but a deliberate attempt by Congress to make it harder for migrants to enter and live in the U.S. illegally with impunity. Parole in place is unlawful and unfair, and will encourage yet more illegal immigration, fraud, and access to already-stretched federal and state benefits. 2. Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals In 2011, President Barack Obama said that he could not “just bypass Congress and change the law myself …” Nonetheless, in 2012, his homeland security secretary created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, by writing a memo. DACA now protects roughly 600,000 beneficiaries from deportation, while letting them work and access federal benefits. The qualification bar is low, though many beneficiaries have lost their eligibility due to criminal convictions or gang affiliation. One Arizona study found that illegal aliens eligible for DACA made up 2% of that state’s population, but 8% of its prison population. In 2017, the Trump administration tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but the courts stopped him. In 2018, several states sued the government, arguing that Obama didn’t have legal authority to create DACA. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump couldn’t end DACA, due to procedural missteps, but didn’t rule the program legal. Fourteen years after it was conjured into existence, DACA remains in litigation. .  No matter how sympathetic some of the so-called Dreamers may be, DACA is unconstitutional administrative overreach. It encourages more illegal immigration in anticipation of future amnesties. Since the creation of DACA, the number of unaccompanied children caught entering the country from Mexico has risen dramatically, from around 20,000 in 2012 to over 140,000 in 2022. Last year, over 113,000 unaccompanied children were cared for at taxpayer expense before being released all over the country.  3. Temporary Protected Status Economist Milton Friedman said that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” He could have been talking about Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, a program authorized in 1990 that allows the Department of Homeland Security to let illegally present aliens remain in the U.S. if there are extraordinary circumstances in their home countries, such as war or natural disaster. The idea was to give the damaged country time to recover before taking back its citizens. Temporary Protected Status may be extended for six to 18 months—and usually is, again and again. During the Trump administration, DHS concluded that people from certain countries no longer needed Temporary Protected Status. That would have affected more than 240,000 Salvadorans, 76,700 Hondurans, 14,500 Nepalis, and 4,250 Nicaraguans who have been on TPS a long time. Hondurans and Nicaraguans got Temporary Protected Status in 1998 because of Hurricane Mitch. The earthquake that initially gave Salvadorans TPS was in 2001. Nepalis got TPS due to an earthquake in 2015. Beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status often argue that they should be given permanent status, saying they’ve put down roots, bought houses, or have children who are U.S. citizens. But the TPS designation doesn’t lead to “a path to citizenship,” because it’s temporary. It’s in the name. Some beneficiaries sued to prevent losing Temporary Protected Status.. They lost the case, but by that time, Biden was in charge and assigning or extending TPS left and right, as this home page shows. As of April, about 1.2 million people eligible for TPS, according to Pew Research Center—700,000 from Venezuela alone. 4. Deferred Enforced Departure Deferred Enforced Departure sounds like nonsense because it is. Imagine a criminal gets arrested for robbing a bank. He is prosecuted, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to five years in prison. Then, the judge exercises “deferred enforced judgment” and says the convict doesn’t have to go to prison for the time being, or ever. That’s what we’re talking about. After spending time and money to carry out due process on immigration cases, the administration that swore to uphold the law decides, nah, not today. In February, Biden issued a memo authorizing Deferred Enforced Departure for Palestinians—with permission t work —for 18 months. Biden said he determined “that it was in the foreign policy interest of the United States” to grant DED in this instance. It might also have been in the interests of domestic politics, given the administration’s struggle to reconcile  pro-Israel and pro-Palestine voters. Although the civil wars in Liberia ended in 2003, some Liberians in the U.S. have been protected in some way from deportation since 1991. Many got Temporary Protected Status, but that ended in 2007. President George W. Bush gave Deferred Enforced Departure to those Liberians. Obama extended it, as did Trump. The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act included a “Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness” provision that made Liberians living here since 2014 eligible for green cards. In June 2022, Biden extended Deferred Enforced Departure to Liberians, kicking the can down the road again through this June 30. I’ll wager 1,000 Liberian dollars (or $5) that DED will be renewed again. 5. Prosecutorial Discretion “Prosecutorial discretion” describes the power cops and prosecutors have to let things go instead of throwing the book at you. Like when you’re pulled over for speeding and the highway patrolman lets you off with a warning. Or when a DA declines to prosecute cases he doesn’t think he can win, or that aren’t serious enough to warrant the effort. Like all discretion, prosecutorial discretion can be abused. For instance, by “rogue prosecutors” in major cities who decline for ideological reasons to do their jobs. That’s how in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York, offenders get let go time and again, while Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg resurrects 34 time-limited bookkeeping misdemeanors and magics them into felony charges against Trump using an election law case that the feds decided wasn’t worth it. Kerry Doyle, the chief lawyer at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, issued a memo in 2022 that the Center for Immigration Studies’ Art Arthur calls “a directive to ICE attorneys to tank perfectly legitimate removal cases that don’t fit within ‘priorities’ set by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.” ICE is a subagency of the Department of Homeland Security. Under Doyle’s guidance, ICE attorneys “must first evaluate a case to assess its priority designation.” Then if “a case is designated a nonpriority … attorneys may exercise PD [prosecutorial discretion].” ICE lawyers can do this simply by not filing a charge in the first place or by dismissing the case outright. No charge, no prosecution, no crime! According to Arthur, a former immigration judge, ICE was “on track to cut loose more than 276,000 alien respondents this fiscal year … on top of more than 207,000 other dismissals and terminations“ in fiscal year 2023. There are many more fudges, but you get the idea.  It would be great to see all presidents of the United States enforce the laws on the books and, if they don’t like them, persuade Congress and voters to change the laws. But I fear a fudge-filled future. The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more. Read Other BorderLine Columns: Illegal Immigration Crisis Drives European Voters to Conservatives Let’s Talk Some More About America’s Supposed ‘Rule of Law’ Videos Uncover Illegal Immigration Realities the Media Tries to Hide Unprecedented Surge in Chinese Illegal Immigration Raises Security Concerns Reason No. 3 the Left Wants Open Borders—Extortion for Amnesty The post Biden’s 5 Favorite Fudges on Immigration Law: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Feel-Good Friday: Summer is Good for You Edition

Early Tuesday morning, singer Justin Timberlake was arrested on Long Island and charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI) following a traffic stop by a young officer who didn’t even recognize him. Also within in the last week, two illegal immigrants were charged with allegedly murdering 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray in Houston, Texas and the arrest of another illegal alien for the allegedly for raping and killing 37-year-old Maryland mom Rachel Morin. With the first case, the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC have spent 15 minutes and 18 seconds during their flagship morning and evening news shows obsessing over the arrest of arguably an A-list celebrity. But on the latter cases, the same shows haven’t spent a single second. NBC’s Today and NBC Nightly News were the worst with nearly eight minutes (7:57), showing their muscle as a boozed up celebrity network. ABC’s Good Morning America and World News Tonight were a ways back at nearly four minutes (3:57) with CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News just behind them at three minutes and 24 seconds. In contrast, these cases have received constant and substantive reports over the last week from our friends at the Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, Newsmax, and NewsNation. Starting with Nungarayu’s murder, here’s our friend Jennie Taer of the New York Post with the details (click “expand”): Police in Houston have arrested two migrants from Venezuela for the murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was lured away from home, then strangled and dumped in a bayou. One of the suspects crossed the border illegally less than a month before the shocking murder, and was released into the US after claiming he feared for his life if he was sent back to his home country, sources told The Post. Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, 21, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, were charged Thursday with capital murder. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sources said Pena Ramos crossed into El Paso, Texas, on May 28. He was released soon after his interaction with border agents. (....) The second suspect, Rangel Martinez, crossed the border at El Pas on March 14 and was released with a court date in August, sources said. Our Jorge Bonilla first wrote this up for NewsBusters Thursday night and found that, while ABC, CBS, and NBC saw no reason to cover this, Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision were all over it. As for the horrifying murder and rape in Maryland, Baltimore Fox affiliate WBFF had the correct headline (unlike this from the AP on the Houston murder): “Illegal immigrant charged in killing of Harford County mother Rachel Morin”. The piece then explained, including the revelation that Morin’s alleged killer crossed the border illegally following another murder he committed in El Salvador (click “expand”): Law enforcement have arrested Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez in Tulsa for the killing of Rachel Morin, a Harford County mother of five who was found dead near a hiking trail in August of 2023. In a press conference announcing the arrest on Saturday, Harford County Sheriff Jeffery Gahler said that Martinez-Hernandez was arrested late Friday night and booked on Saturday morning; he is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape. “Five hours after meeting with [Morin’s] family and just before midnight our time, police in Tulsa Oklahoma assisted by our federal partners located and arrested Rachel’s murderer: Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez,” Sheriff Gahler said. Sheriff Gahler went on to say that Martinez-Hernandez is a “23-year-old citizen of El Salvador.” He said that Martinez-Hernandez crossed the border into the United States in February of 2023, and that he believes that Morin was not his first victim. “It is my understanding that this suspect, this monster, fled to the United States after the murder of a young woman in El Salvador a month earlier in January of 2023,” Sheriff Gahler said. “Once in our country, he brutally attacked a nine year old girl and her mother in a home invasion in March of 2023 in Los Angeles.” Baltimore’s NBC affiliate WBAL said in a Thursday article that the suspect’s been “charged with first-degree rape and murder after Morin’s body was found on Aug. 6, 2023, along the Ma and Pa Trail in Bel Air.” Despite these horrifying details that would seem right up the alley of networks given it’s facts seem straight out of a Lifetime movie, down to the narrative of an attractive, young mother being the victim. Alas, ABC, CBS, and NBC haven’t shown a care in the world on their top shows. Outside of the flagship AM and PM shows, CBS’s Sunday morning political talk show Face the Nation had two minutes and 21 seconds on Morin’s murder with host Margaret Brennan pressing Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) on that and the broader border crisis. Further, ABC’s America This Morning – which airs in most markets in the 4:00 a.m. hour — had a full, two-minute-and-11-second report Monday from correspondent (and former CNNer) Alison Kosik.