UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Russia to task bankers with shooting down Ukrainian drones. “The draft legislation, which would see banks across Russia install electronic jamming systems while selected employees would shoot down incoming unmanned aircraft, passed in its third and final reading in the lower house Duma on Tuesday, according to the state-run TASS news agency.”

DON’T HOLD BACK NEXT TIME, JD:

WE NEED AGE LIMITS: Absent 83-Year-Old Democrat Frederica Wilson Announces Retirement From House. “Wilson previously committed to running for reelection despite missing several consecutive votes while she recovered from eye surgery. After consistently missing House votes and committee hearings, Wilson told the Miami Herald it was time for her to retire.”

Previously: One of Our Congresscritters Is Missing. “My attempts to reach her office via phone and email received no response. Whatever happened, it looks like Wilson’s staff is in lockdown mode.”

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY:

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Keep it in Your G-String, Gramps. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn that your rights of free expression end at your g-string, what not to drink before driving across a golf course, and how to pack serious heat in Connecticut.”

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:

GOOD QUESTION:

THAT SUCKS. HAS RUSSIA CONSIDERED NOT OCCUPYING TERRITORY?

And as Trent Telenko noted, “Mining roads by air & rocket was late Cold War NATO doctrine after all.”

OOPS: Mosquitoes can learn that DEET means dinner is served.

When I was in Alaska, I used the 100% DEET and just a few drops on pulse points kept me from getting a single bite, though to be fair, mosquitoes don’t particularly like me. But it was still scary. I woke up one night and there were two mosquitoes at the foot of the bed. “Do we eat him here, or should we take him home?” “We’d better eat him here — if we take him home the big guys will probably take him away from us.” Close scrape.

PRATT SUMMER:

Evergreen: Mollie Hemingway notes that “You’re not just having a debate with an opponent, but your most hostile and most rabid opponent:” 

Tweet continues, “If you understand that you’re not just having a debate with an opponent, but your most hostile and most rabid opponent; if you understand that they are propaganda and then you go into it, I think that’s one thing. If you’re just treating them like you still have this 1960s view of what the media are, that’s when you’re going to get in trouble.”

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Oregon Is a Step Closer to Outlawing Hunting and Gathering “his is the place where residents of other states come to verify that they don’t have it so bad, and where lawmakers could, if they bothered to look, find out that their great idea of the week has already been tried and failed. Indeed, in reading the West Coast, Messed Coast™ weekly update, you’ve arrived at the land where proof of concept has no expiration date and where money for every cockamamie idea is in endless supply.”

A POSTMORTEM: Cornyn’s Slaughter. “It’s pretty rare that a four term incumbent senator gets primaried out of office. Indeed, I think you’d have to go back to Alfonse D’Amato defeating Jacob Javits in 1980 for the last time it happened, back when New York was still capable of electing Republicans statewide. So it’s worth taking a deeper look at why John Cornyn got slaughtered by Ken Paxton in Tuesday’s runoff.”

NAPALM GIRL: Witnesses in Nick Ut’s Defamation Trial Against Netflix Include ‘Napalm Girl’ Herself.

The film claims that Nghe was paid a miserly $20 by the Chief of Photos in Saigon, Horst Faas, for taking arguably the greatest news photo of all time. Miss Tu, who was in the AP office when the negative arrived, says she witnessed an excited Ut handing the film over to the darkroom technician, Jackson Ishizaki.

Not only that, but Miss Tu says she was the only person in AP who paid local stringers. She kept a record of all such payments, which were sent over to AP’s New York office. In her sworn testimony, Miss Tu dismisses the claims made in the documentary and also says that Faas would never have paid such a paltry amount for a photo like Napalm Girl.

Other testimonies include those by Peter Arnett and Fox Butterfield, who were also present and involved on that fateful day over 50 years ago. As well as the sworn statements, the filings also focus on Carl Robinson, the photo editor at the center of The Stringer who says he was the one who switched the credit on the behest of Horst Faas.

“Carl Robinson opposed publication of the photograph in 1972 and harbored longstanding resentment concerning the impact of the image and the broader consequences of the Vietnam War,” Ut’s lawyers James Hornstein and Martin Pradel argue.

“The submissions further state that Carl Robinson’s wife and family were Vietnamese and that the family suffered significant consequences after the fall of Saigon. The filings argue that Carl Robinson later directed bitterness and hostility toward Nick Ut.”

As Joseph Campbell, who has been writing about the “Napalm Girl” photo for years concluded last November, after attending a screening of The Stringer: More Likely Than Not, Nick Ut Took ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo.