EARLY EDITION: Five Quick News Stories For Your Water Cooler Chat (Fri. Feb 3)

1. Spy balloon floats over Montana

A high-altitude Chinese spy balloon was detected floating over Montana and has been tracked since since it was noticed on Wednesday or Thursday. Biden had suggested shooting it down but military advisors were concerned about falling debris.

McCarthy is calling for a Gang of Eight briefing on what we know about it.

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2. Another victory for Trump’s Abraham Accords

Israel and Sudan — one of the original countries to accept the Abraham Accords — finally sign peace treaty.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen took a secret trip to Sudan to complete the deal, which is expected to pave the way for normalization of relations between Israel and other African nations.

(Still no word of a Peace Prize for Trump’s role in helping broker the ‘impossible’ peace in the Middle East.)

3. SCOTUS Makes 2A ruling on domestic violence case

Can domestic violence restraining orders eliminate your right to own a firearm? The highest court has said ‘no’.

A restraining order prohibiting a Texas man from bothering his ex included a clause forbidding gun ownership. Police found him to be in the possession of a pistol and a rifle, violating the restraining order.

He pled guilty to owning the gun but challenged the state’s right to place that limitation on his Second Amendment rights. That case went before SCOTUS who ruled in his favor, with a quote from the Bruen decision calling it an: ‘outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted’.

4. Biden invokes Christian theology at Prayer breakfast to encourage polytheism

At first prayer breakfast since Congress took it over, Joe Biden quoted Christ in encouraging ‘diversity’, including diversity of religion and sexual expression.

Curiously, he invoked the passage in which Christ said to love the Lord with all your heart, strength, soul, and mind’ to encourage generalized multi-faith religious expression as well as respect for various sexual proclities, despite Jesus coming here to turn hearts back to the One God, to bear the judgement for all sin, including the worship of false gods, and call us to worship in spirit and in truth.

He sure does have a curious idea of what it means to be a ‘devout’ Catholic.

5. Judge makes ruling against men accused of sodomizing adopted disabled children

William Zulock and Zachary Zulock stand accused of sexually abusing and trafficking disabled children they had adopted. New evidence suggesting they have shared videos of the abuse to others has further complicated their case.

The prosecution has requested (and been granted) that their charges be tried separately, meaning the lawyer they shared at the outset cannot represent them both.

A judge has ruled that, in this instance, legal immunity protecting someone from testifying against a spouse will not apply.

The DA has argued that it was a ‘matter of public interest’ that the two be obligated to testify against one another. The judge ruled in the DA’s favor.