VARIETY — Roadside Attractions-Lionsgate's faith-based "I Can Only Imagine" has crushed early box office forecasts with a surprisingly strong $17.1 million at 1,629 locations in North America. Recent estimates for "I Can Only Imagine" had been in the $2 million-$8 million range. It rang up the top per-site average by far among this weekend's wide release movies with $10,476, and it notched an A+ CinemaScore among patrons.... (more)

WASHINGTON TIMES — Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe less than two days before his retirement from the bureau. The firing, effective immediately, was announced late Friday night in a statement by the Department of Justice. Mr. McCabe was fired after a review by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz recommended the dismissal after an internal review.... (more)

NATIONAL REVIEW — Two federal law-enforcement officials who were removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation for exchanging partisan text messages conspired to set up a meeting with the presiding judge in the case against Michael Flynn, according to text messages obtained by The Federalist.... (more)

WASHINGTON EXAMINER — California high school history teacher Julianne Benzel was put on paid leave after questioning in front of her students whether school administrations would let a group of students protesting abortion walk out of class in the middle of the school day like they did with students who did so on Wednesday in protests over school shootings.... (more)

IJR — A photo of a student supposedly protesting the NRA during Wednesday's so-called "National Walkout" was going viral -- but only because of the almost unbelievable irony on display.... (more)

BOB UNRUH — The instruction and training materials used by the Broward County Sheriff's Office teach that, in the case of a school shooting, deputies arriving on the scene should immediately confront the shooter. "History shows that when a suspect is confronted by any armed individual (police, security, concealed carry person) they either shoot it out with that person or kill themselves," the materials state. "Either way, the shooting of innocent bystanders must stop.... (more)

ART MOORE — It didn't take long for the horrific, deadly collapse Thursday of a newly installed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University's Miami-Dade campus to become politicized. On Twitter, President Trump is being blamed for wanting to build a wall while "our infrastructures are falling apart, for going out of his way to loosen building regulations and passing a tax-cut bill instead of doing "some REAL work for the country."... (more)

BOB UNRUH — A scientist with expertise in climate change is lambasting a U.S. senator for casting people who question the theory of man-caused global warming as "evil voices." Thomas Sheahen, an MIT-educated physicist and author of "An Introduction to High-Temperature Supreconductivity," was reacting in an interview with Marc Morano at Climate Depot to comments by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.... (more)

GEORGE WILL — Iceland must be pleased that it is close to success in its program of genocide, but before congratulating that nation on its final solution to the Down syndrome problem, perhaps it might answer a question: What is this problem? To help understand why some people might ask this question, today's column is being distributed together with two photographs. One is of Agusta, age eight, a citizen of Iceland. The other is of Lucas, age one, an American citizen in Dalton, Ga., who recently was selected to be 2018 Spokesbaby for the Gerber baby-food company. They are two examples of the problem.... (more)

JOSEPH FARAH — The data are in on Facebook's war on "conservative" news sites, thanks to an impressive report published by WesternJournal.com. The king of social media has been making algorithm changes seemingly intended to marginalize the traffic of right-of-center online news operations, and they have been effective, the report shows.... (more)

WASHINGTON TIMES — Soaring tuition costs, degrees of dubious value and nonstop student activism have combined to bring public confidence in the ivory tower tumbling down. Even college and university presidents acknowledge that the country is becoming disillusioned with higher education. In a recent survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup, 51 percent of institution leaders said the 2016 election "exposed that academe is disconnected from much of American society."... (more)

BOB UNRUH — Amid an ongoing surge in Christianity that developed as communism created a spiritual vacuum in people's lives, China has launched a new crackdown, including rules introduced last month that further restrict the activities of unregistered house churches, according to a new report. Christians in China have been repressed ever since the People's Republic was created in 1949, with the government's control of churches and imposition of the Communist Party's atheistic values.... (more)

U.S. NEWS — Eleven Republicans stepped forward before a Thursday evening filing deadline to challenge former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the Utah Senate race, including a state lawmaker who says an "establishment insider" can't fix problems in Washington. Many of the candidates acknowledge the David-vs-Goliath nature of challenging the famous and popular Romney, but they say someone needs to keep the race to replace Republican Orrin Hatch from becoming a "coronation."... (more)

FOX NEWS — Broward Deputy Scot Peterson stands safely behind a concrete wall taking no action as high school students lay dead and wounded just feet away, newly released video of the Florida school shooting shows. The Broward Sheriff's Office released the 27-minute video Thursday of the former longtime resource officer responding to initial reports of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. Peterson, who was assigned to the school and on site when the shooting began, is seen with a civilian security monitor at the start of the video, but spends most of the video standing outside the school with his gun drawn.... (more)

WALL STREET JOURNAL — Lawrence Kudlow, a conservative economic commentator whose career included jobs in the White House, Wall Street, radio and business television, will become one of President Donald Trump's top economic advisers as director of the National Economic Council.... (more)

BOB UNRUH — The results may not be official for some time, but it appears that a Democrat, Conor Lamb, now leading by only a few hundred votes, may have won a special election in a western Pennsylvania congressional district that two years ago chose President Donald Trump by 20 points. Mainstream media regard the apparent outcome as an "unmistakable good sign" for Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterms approach.... (more)

ART MOORE — long with concluding the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Russia to influence the 2016 election, the House Intelligence Committee report by the Republican majority confirmed that President Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, leaked information about the dubious anti-Trump "dossier" that ended up being reported by CNN.... (more)

WASHINGTON TIMES — The White House's suspicions over the motives of besieged FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe go back at least to the first months of President Trump's presidency. The doubts revolved around a since-debunked February 2017 New York Times story that reported that U.S. intelligence owned numerous intercepts and phone records of Trump campaign officials communicating with Russian intelligence.... (more)

WASHINGTON TIMES — A senior Obama State Department official gave the green light to an FBI agent in 2016 to meet with dossier writer Christopher Steele, a new book says. The two met at Mr. Steele's London office, touching off a relationship that would fuel the ongoing investigation into possible Donald Trump-Russia election collusion that shows no sign of ending.... (more)

BOB UNRUH — A teenage Muslim spending the night with friends stabbed three people, killing one, "because of his Muslim faith," according to police in Florida. The suspect read the Quran "to give him courage to carry out his intentions," according to an affidavit.... (more)

WASHINGTON TIMES — Public confidence in American universities has eroded in recent years, and campus administrators have taken notice, blaming not only the high cost of a 4-year degree but the impact of liberal bias in the academy, a new survey of college presidents finds. "Asked to assess which of several factors were most responsible for declining public support, 98 percent of college and university presidents cited 'concerns about college affordability and student debt', 95 percent said 'concerns over whether higher education prepares students for careers,' and 86 percent cited the perception of liberal political bias," reports an extensive new poll from Inside Higher Ed, an independent media company and industry source which tracks higher education.... (more)

WASHINGTON TIMES — President Trump's firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was crude, rude and way overdue. The president, not the president's chief of staff, should have been the first to inform Mr. Tillerson personally and in private, that he is getting the heave-ho. Mr. Trump should have let him have time to prepare his own face-saving announcement.... (more)

WORLDNETDAILY — Even though tensions had been mounting between President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for months, a new report indicates the president abruptly fired Tillerson because he went "rogue" and tried to save the Iran nuclear deal.... (more)

NEWSMAX — President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign hired Fusion GPS to find negative information on Republican candidate Mitt Romney and hid the payments through its law firm, according to a new book published Tuesday.... (more)

BOB UNRUH — When President Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress adopted Obamacare, they required abortion coverage, with no exemptions, to the delight of the abortion industry. They later were forced to exempt a few types of organizations, such as churches. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the government to expand those exemptions when it ruled in the Hobby Lobby case, and President Trump widen the exemptions even further.... (more)