SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

SCREWBALLS – FROM BBC:  Sheffield's Lord Mayor has "banned" US President Donald Trump from visiting the city.  Magid Magid made the announcement while chairing a Sheffield City Council meeting and donning a sombrero "in solidarity" with Mexico.  The Green Party councillor tweeted Mr Trump was a "wasteman" and "henceforth banned from the great city of Sheffield".  Elected in May, the 28-year-old is the city's youngest ever mayor.  A "wasteman" is apparently slang for a person of minor merit, an apt description of the mayor.

FOX ROMPS – FROM FOX:  Fox News Channel dominated cable news during the second quarter of 2018, leading all of basic cable among total viewers for the eighth straight quarter and thumping CNN in the process, according to Nielsen Media Research.  FNC has been the most-watched cable news network for 66 consecutive quarters.  Fox News averaged 1.4 million total day viewers compared to 930,000 for MSNBC and only 658,000 for CNN. During the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m., Fox averaged 2.4 million total viewers compared to 1.7 million for MSNBC. CNN failed to surpass the one-million viewers plateau during primetime – averaging an audience of only 929,000 viewers.  FNC also won both categories among the key demo of adults age 25-54, averaging 286,000 a day of those viewers and 480,000 during primetime. In the process, Fox News was home to 10 of the top 15 cable news programs in total viewers and eight of the top 15 in the coveted demo.  Fox News has gone through several convulsions in recent years, and is routinely vilified by the mainstreamers.  But it remains at the top.  Be impressed.

NICE FIND – FROM AFP:  London (AFP) - A rare parchment copy of the US Declaration of Independence found at a British archive among the papers of an aristocrat who supported the rebels has been authenticated, officials said.  The manuscript was discovered last year at the West Sussex Record Office in the southern English city of Chichester by a team of researchers led by two Harvard University academics.
Tests supported the hypothesis that it was produced in the 1780s, West Sussex County Council said earlier this week -- just a few years after the declaration itself was issued in 1776.  The document "is the only other contemporary manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence on parchment apart from the signed copy at the National Archives in Washington DC," known as the Matlack Declaration, a council statement said earlier this week.  Good find.  I'd like to know more about the aristocrat who supported our rebellion.

July 4, 2018