Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Mikie Sherrill Hedberg believes you can’t handle the truth! The candidate will not address an issue she sees as a vote loser

Remember the kerfuffle over former Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff’s admission that she considered then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, but decided against it because he is openly homosexual? Mr Buttigied admitted to being “surprised” to read that.

The divergence comes as their party is grappling with its approach to diversity, as the Trump administration slashes through diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Democrats disagree about how much to emphasize such values after the GOP successfully painted the party as too “woke” — and now face new questions over how to field winning candidates.

Now The Philadelphia Inquirer is telling us how one candidate is handling that. The Editorial Board endorsed Representative Mikie Sherrill Hedberg (D-NJ) in her campaign for Governor of the Garden State, but now the newspaper is telling us not to worry, she’s #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading enough, but she has to keep that on the down-low to get votes:

These parents wish Mikie Sherrill would defend their transgender kids. They understand why she doesn’t.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill has been quiet on transgender rights in the New Jersey governor’s race as Republican Jack Ciattarelli has spoken out against protections for trans youth.

by Aliya Schneider | Sunday, October 16, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

C.B. can’t even comprehend her transgender daughter being required to use the boys’ bathroom at her South Jersey school.

That’s OK, because most of us cannot comprehend how “C.B.” or any other rational human being could think that her son is actually a girl, or how the newspaper can use terms to pretend that he is a she.

“If you went into her classroom and someone said, ‘Pick out the trans kid out of these 25 kids,’ you would not be able to,” C.B. said. “You might very well get it wrong.”

So, “C.B.” is saying that her son can ‘pass’ as a girl

C.B., who asked to be identified by her initials to protect the privacy of her child, said she loves the Garden State. She has a “very Jersey family.”

But, like other parents of trans children, she’s considering packing her family’s bags depending on the results of the Nov. 4 election, and whether the next governor maintains the state’s LGBTQ+ friendly policies.

As opposed to getting her son mental help, to accept that he’s really a boy and learn how to be a male.

The stakes of the election are stark for C.B. and other parents. Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee for New Jersey governor, opposes state policies implemented under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy meant to protect transgender children. Ciattarelli says he would require schools to tell parents about their children’s gender identity and stop transgender girls (sic) from participating in girls’ sports. He also opposes gender-affirming care for minors and believes parents should be able to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ related topics in school.

Shocking! You mean that Mr Ciattarelli believes that public schools should not be able to conceal a child’s mental illness from his parents? You mean that the Republican candidate believes that parents should have the choice to opt their children out of lessons they consider to be immoral and contrary to their religious beliefs?

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee, has largely voted in support of transgender rights throughout her nearly seven-year legislative career. She was endorsed by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups as well as her friend U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D., Del.), the first openly transgender member of Congress. But Sherrill has not publicly defended trans rights when criticized by Ciattarelli and has declined to answer reporters’ questions on the matter.

Of course, “U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride” is actually Tim McBride, yet another male who thinks he’s a woman, whom the good people of the First State foolishly elected to Congress, but the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. would never tell you that, because you can’t handle the truth.

Reporter Aliya Schneider noted that former and future President Donald Trump attacked Mrs Emhoff for supporting the strange notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, and that Mr Ciattarelli is doing the same thing in his campaign.

Sherrill has not just ignored the attacks. She has avoided talking about the issue altogether.

The article continues, and it is pretty heavily biased in favor of ‘transgenderism,’ so don’t be surprised if you choose to follow the link and read more of it, but it all boils down to one thing: the ‘transgender’ lobby believe that Mrs Hedberg will closely toe their line, but just can’t say so, because she needs the votes. The Democratic candidate won’t address the issue at all, because doing something really radical like telling voters the truth about her beliefs is a vote loser. Perhaps, if she loses, she’ll admit the truth as Mrs Emhoff did in her silly book, but the sad part is that, if she wins, she’ll tell you the truth about her policies with state action.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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Shouldn’t a journalist be aware of basic facts?

Did you know that the United States Army, in fact all branches of our Armed Services, has standards for grooming and physical fitness? I knew, but apparently Will Bunch, the far-left columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, does not.

The distinguished Mr Bunch wrote:

Hegseth also declared an end to “fat” generals and overweight troops (apparently the Texas National Guard didn’t get the memo), and, OK, maybe that’s required for certain types of combat soldiers. But the broader message from the Pentagon is clear: that the new regime wants a sea of troops who look alike. Beardless, slimmed down, and, evidently — given the ouster of so many women and Black top commanders — as white and male as possible in 2025 America.

Mr Bunch just doesn’t get it. “(M)aybe that’s required for certain types of combat soldiers”? A clue: every soldier is trained to be a rifleman, and every soldier, male and female alike, is required to perform as a rifleman in combat if the situation arises. My older daughter, a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army Reserve, is still required to pass her Physical Fitness Test and her weapons qualifications, even though her MOS — Military Occupational Specialty — is 12T, Technical Engineer, basically a surveyor. She is required to make weight, as is every soldier, though those soldiers who are more heavily muscled can “make tape,” rather than weight, to prove that they are in good physical shape.

The military also have personal grooming standards. It was only in May of 2021 that the Army authorized females to wear their hair in neat ponytails rather than the older tight buns.

The Army has also long required that soldiers on duty be clean-shaven, though this was sometimes relaxed during combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the necessity of blending in amongst a bearded male population. The Navy allowed well-trimmed beards while Admiral Elmo Zumwalt was Chief of Naval Operations, but that didn’t last much beyond his retirement.

Does the Army want “a sea of troops who look alike”? Yes, of course, because that is part of military good order and discipline. The military have always striven for that, though the poorly informed columnist doesn’t seem to understand that. The US is hardly the only country which does that.

Naturally, he blames President Trump, as he does with all things; the President could walk on water and Mr Bunch would complain that he stomped on the poor little fishies! But it’s also true that Mr Trump selected J D Vance to be his running mate, and shock! Mr Vance wears a beard. Mr Bunch declares that the President wants an America that is lily-white, but Usha Vance, the Vice President’s wife is, yet another shocker, ethnically Indian, what some people would call “brown,” though she’s no darker complected than I get in the summer.

Sadly, when a (purported) journalist is afflicted with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome as badly as Mr Bunch is, checking the facts is not really part of the process.

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The left really, really hate your #FreedomOfSpeech What they say is gospel; what conservatives say is forbidden

My good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove, who sometimes pinch hits on this poor site when I’m on vacation, uses as his blog ‘tagline,’ “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” And thus we have, in our good friends on the left, the ones championing freedom of speech and their right to protest our Evil Orange Overlord in the ‘No Kings’ rallies, showing us just how much they support freedom of speech for the people they don’t like.

KKK propaganda found in Central Kentucky city. Police ask for camera footage

By Christopher Leach | Wednesday, October 22, 2025 | 10:09 AM EDT

The Frankfort Police Department is investigating after Ku Klux Klan propaganda was found in the community overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.

Police did not say specifically where the propaganda was found, but asked those in the area to share security camera footage with investigators. Allowing investigators to review footage could help identify those who spread the propaganda, officials said.

“The Frankfort Police Department does not tolerate hate in any form,” the agency said in an Oct. 22 Facebook post. “This behavior goes against the values of our community, and the Frankfort Police Department is taking this matter very seriously.”

Anyone with information can contact Frankfort police at 502-875-8582.

“The Frankfort Police Department remains committed to the safety of the Frankfort community and continues to support a thriving and diverse community,” police wrote in the Facebook post.

That’s it, that’s the whole story. Normally I’d crop part of the story, but I wanted you to see the whole thing, along with the linked Facebook post, so that you could see that in no place was it indicated that whatever the Ku Klux Klan propaganda said, there are no indications given that it contained any illegal threats to any specific individuals.

Similar ‘incidents’ in Midway and a neighborhood in Lexington have been reported by Christopher Leach as well, though they do not specify that the fliers distributed were by the Klan.

So, I have to ask: if there are no indications reported that the “propaganda” contained any illegal threats, why is this a concern of law enforcement in the state capital? Do the Klan somehow not have freedom of speech and of the press? What actual crime was committed by the Klan distributing their message? The Frankfort Police Department called it an “appalling act of littering,” which Mr Leach did not include in his news story, so apparently the city’s police department is devoting great resources to investigate the distribution as littering, not to investigate any actual threat.

Well, apparently asking such a question was enough for what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal to ‘deactivate’ my comment, screenshotted at the right. I wrote:

The Herald-Leader certainly celebrated the Freedom of Speech expressed by the attendees at the No Kings rally last Saturday, but now we’re hearing that “Ku Klux Klan propaganda”, another expression of freedom of speech, has led to “the Frankfort Police Department is taking this matter very seriously.”

What actual crime has been committed here? Just because people don’t like what the Klan are saying doesn’t mean that it is illegal for them to say it.

We have documented, many times, how much our good friends on the left, including in the credentialed media, hate the freedom of speech and of the press when it comes to those with whom they disagree. The New York Times itself told us how much they don’t like freedom of speech when it comes to Donald Trump or conservatives using Twitter. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s hard-left columnist Will Bunch loves using his freedom of speech and of the press to attack conservatives but absolutely hates it when anyone departs from the leftist line, attacking the very liberal Morning Joe hosts Joe and Mika Scarborough for having the unmitigated gall to interview Donald Trump after he had won the 2024 election.

The Klan? Yeah, they’re an extreme example, but so what? Do the left believe that they should not be allowed to express their opinions?

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Hold them accountable! How many officials' inactions and ineptitude contributed to the murder of Kada Scott?

Communications between Philadelphia law enforcement agencies.

Given that warrants and communications between the courts, the District Attorney’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department are done via quill pens and parchment paper, and sent between each other by messengers on foot, it is perfectly understandable that sometimes messages just don’t get delivered in a timely manner. And if the days are cloudy, sometimes it’s difficult for the recipients to read their ledger books clearly by just the light of their oil lamps. All of that makes what happened in the Keon King/Kada Scott case completely understandable!

Months before Kada Scott’s killing, Keon King was wanted for kidnapping his ex, but no one arrested him — even in court

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, October 23, 2025 | 4:35 PM EDT

A month after Keon King was charged with breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s home and attempting to strangle her, police say, his violence escalated: In January, he returned to her home with a gun, then kidnapped and assaulted her.

A warrant for his arrest was issued days later.

In the weeks that followed, King twice appeared in Philadelphia court and stood before a judge in the initial strangulation case. But no one in the courtroom seemed to know he was wanted for kidnapping.

So both times, King walked out.

Clearly, the city was at fault for relying on messengers on foot, rather than providing a horse on which the messengers could get their pieces of parchment to the right people in a timely manner.

In February, despite the warrant for King’s arrest, prosecutors — seemingly unaware that police said he had recently attacked their key witness — withdrew the burglary and strangulation case when the victim failed to appear in court.

Police did not go to either hearing to take him into custody, and do not appear to have alerted the prosecutor about the new arrest warrant.

The messenger on foot must not have made it to the District Attorney’s Office on time.

And King was not formally charged with the kidnapping until April, when, for reasons that are unclear, he turned himself in.

Turned himself in to whom? Normally, a criminal suspect would have turned himself in at a police station, but reporter Ellie Rushing was not specific about that. But, regardless of where he surrendered, he was out on the streets again twenty days ago.

The shortcomings in those earlier cases came into focus this month after police said King abducted Kada Scott from outside her workplace Oct. 4, then killed her and buried her body in a shallow grave behind an East Germantown school. The death of Scott, 23, of Mount Airy, has unnerved a community and drawn national attention.

Naturally, in his attempt to win re-election, the District Attorney tried to shift blame onto someone else:

District Attorney Larry Krasner has said it was a mistake for prosecutors to withdraw the charges in the alleged kidnapping of King’s ex — and his office has since refiled them. He said the decision not to proceed with the case was made by a young assistant district attorney who was new at handling such prosecutions and who saw the victim’s absence as a fatal flaw, even though there was video evidence of the attack.

Also read: Ben Mannes, “Ideology over justice — How Larry Krasner’s policies failed Kada Scott“

Can we really say that the distinguished Mr Krasner threw a “young assistant district attorney” under the bus, given that there were no buses during the days of quill pens and inkwells?

Or perhaps it was the Republicans who control the state Senate who are to blame, for not funding SEPTA and its buses adequately?

If this “young assistant district attorney . . . was new at handling such prosecutions,” shouldn’t the District Attorney himself, or at least one of his more senior prosecutors have been supervising the “young assistant district attorney”? Shouldn’t someone more senior in that office been teaching him what he ought to do, for what he ought to check? Shouldn’t someone in the District Attorney’s Office other than the “young assistant district attorney” now squished under the wheels of a SEPTA bus he held accountable for his mistakes? Shouldn’t the DA himself bear the responsibility for the “missteps” which put Mr King out on the streets to (allegedly) have kidnapped and murdered Miss Scott?

Kada Scott, victim, and Keon King, alleged murderer. Photos via WPVI TV, because, naturally, the Inquirer would never publish them.

The rest of Miss Rushing’s article details the missteps and miscommunications between the police and prosecutors, something the District Attorney blamed on “their digital information systems (being) decades old.” Really? Microsoft stopped support for Windows XP a couple of decades ago; is the DAO still using that? I was using dispatching systems in the 1990s, the early 1990s, when our Dispatch office was able to send delivery tickets to satellite plants via modems. That was over thirty years ago.

But it needs to be said: if the accusations against Keon King are accurate, then a lot of other people contributed to Miss Scott being murdered. Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §2504(a), “A person is guilty of involuntary manslaughter when as a direct result of the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, or the doing of a lawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, he causes the death of another person.” Were the inactions of the District Attorney’s Office, including the District Attorney himself grossly negligent?

I’m dreaming, of course: no judge would allow a charge of involuntary manslaughter against a government official for gross neglect of his duty, because such could be turned around against the judge himself. But it’s clear that somebody, a lot of somebodies, need to lose their jobs over this. Mr Krasner himself doesn’t have enough of a sense of shame to resign over this, but he should be overwhelmingly defeated in the upcoming election. Whoever was supposed to supervise the “young assistant district attorney” needs to resign or be fired. Whoever is responsible for communication between the police and prosecutors, at both ends of that, needs to join the unemployment line. Should the Police Commissioner, Kevin Bethel, resign? And whoever is responsible for informing judges of other judges’ cases and acts needs to start tending bar somewhere on South Street.

At least as of this writing, the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer have not yet published their endorsement for District Attorney. We can only hope they endorse Pat Dugan and not again support soft-on-crime Larry Krasner.

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Christians cannot hate Judaism without hating themselves

You know, this really pisses me off. No, not Vice President J D Vance visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a place where I have been and found amazing and inspiring, but the utterly asinine comments of (supposedly) good Americans, some of whom even profess to be Christians.

I have seen several different tweets about this, and they are absolutely filled with haters in the comments. Some are from Protestants, bemoaning the fact that the Vice President is Catholic, even though the Church is managed jointly by Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Christian authorities. I saw one which slammed him for having married a Hindu, and many which berated him for also visiting the Western Wall, the holiest site for Jews.

But the Western Wall is also a site for Christians. It is the exposed remnants of the second Temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus himself walked and taught and prayed. How can it be wrong for any Christian to appreciate a place where Jesus was?

There is much of the Old City which is lost to time, deeply buried under two millennia of accumulated debris. The Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross through the Old City, is paved with stones on which Jesus never trod, and the buildings you can see are primarily Byzantine, not from the first century. But the Western Wall, though the ground is paved, has been excavated to the level of the first century.

Christianity is built on the foundation of Judaism. Our Old Testament books are the ancient Jewish scriptures. We don’t ignore them, and at least in a Catholic Mass — I cannot write knowledgeably about how our Separated Brethren conduct their services — we have one reading from the Old Testament along with a responsorial song from Psalms, much of which are the writings of King David, roughly a thousand years before Jesus.

That Jesus was Jewish is attested to in the Bible, which tells us that the Holy Family made the annual pilgrimage to the Temple for Passover. We know that must have been a common thing for Jews in the first century, because the Holy Family had to have travelled by some sort of caravan, or they couldn’t have returned to Nazareth without knowing their 12-year-old son wasn’t with them. We know that Jesus told the crowd, in the Sermon on the Mount, that not a single letter of the old Jewish law would be wiped away.

Jesus himself frequently referenced the Jewish scriptures, and was a Jew from a Jewish family; Christians cannot (rationally) hate Judaism without hating themselves. No real Christian can visit the Old City and not be moved.

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That thing that never happens has happened again At least ten high school varsity teams have chosen to forfeit games to protest presence of a boy on a girls' volleyball team

We noted, on September 26th, that six schools had forfeited games against the Jurupa Valley High School’s girls’ varsity volleyball team because a mentally ill male, A B Hernandez, plays on the girls’ team. Fox News has just reported how much the real girls are sacrificing:

California girls’ volleyball team with trans player sees 10th match forfeited amid controversy

The team can clinch first place in its league on Wednesday

By Jackson Thompson | Wednesday, October 15, 2025 | 3:45 PM EDT

Jurupa Valley High School’s girls’ volleyball team in California has now seen at least 10 games on its 2025 schedule forfeited amid a national controversy involving one of its players, who is transgender.

Los Osos High School forfeited a tournament game against Jurupa Valley on Saturday, while Patriot High School forfeited its Monday varsity match, marking its second forfeit to JVHS this season. Patriot High School previously forfeited a Sept. 26 match to Jurupa Valley.

Maribel Munoz, the mother of Jurupa Valley player Alyssa McPherson, provided Fox News Digital a copy of a message sent by JVHS head coach Liana Manu, announcing that the varsity match against Patriot was forfeited. The JV and freshman games were still played.

So, the schools are still playing the sub-varsity games, the games in which young Mr Hernandez is not participating.

It appears that by using a male player on the girls’ team, Jurupa Valley is in position to win the league title. However, JVHS is playing without Hadeel Hazameh and Alyssa McPherson, real girls who are refusing to play while Mr Hernandez is on the team.

Two of Jurupa Valley’s senior players, McPherson and Hadeel Hazameh, stepped away from the team this season in protest of trans teammate AB Hernandez.

McPherson and Hazameh have also filed a lawsuit against the Jurupa Unified School District citing their experience playing and sharing a locker room with Hernandez the previous three seasons. McPherson’s older sister and former JVHS girls’ volleyball player Madison McPherson is the third plaintiff in that lawsuit.

So, Misses McPherson and Hazameh, both of whom are minors according to the lawsuit filed — the age of sexual consent in the Pyrite State is 18 — wound up playing and sharing a locker room with young Mr Hernandez, though obviously uncomfortably, in previous seasons. Here we have to give credit to Riley Gaines Barker, who has been leading the effort against allowing males to compete on women’s athletic teams, and the several colleges which forfeited against San José State University last collegiate volleyball season, for showing the way. Because none of the actual adults would do the right thing and protect women’s sports, it has been left to teenagers and young twenty-something athletes to sacrifice willingly to make the point.

But I keep wondering what young Mr Hernandez is doing. I get it: he really, really, really thinks he’s a girl. Yet, a volleyball team is supposed to be a team, and even if he thinks that Misses McPherson and Hazameh are being ridiculous in not accepting him as a girl, he has also cost his team at least ten opportunities to play against competition. The forfeits are wins for the team, but they are not wins that the team has earned. Brayden “Blaire” Fleming did the same thing for San José State University.

If Mr Hernandez really wants to be seen and thought of as a girl, why is he doing things to draw ever more attention to the fact that he’s male? He recently competed in and won the girls’ triple jump track competition by eight feet! He won races by margins which left the other girls in the dust. At least Will “Lia” Thomas had enough sense to, after he won an NCAA championship in one event, to pull back and let real women win the others. Mr Fleming kept his ‘transgender’ status a secret, and, to be honest, he could actually ‘pass’ as a girl, where Mr Thomas could not.

Can someone explain this stuff to me, because I guess that I’m just not smart enough to figure it out on my own. If the ‘transgendered’ really want to be seen as the sex they claim to be, why do things to point out that they really are not?

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Well, how ’bout that? It seems that President Trump’s tariff ideas are starting to work.

Tariffs are generally disfavored by economists, and, of course, by every Democrat, since the use of tariffs to stimulate American industrial employment is President Trump’s policy. But, what if they actually work as Mr Trump says he wants them to work? From The New York Times:

G.M. to Stop Making Electric Vans in Canada, in Another Hit to a Key Industry

The announcement, which will eliminate about 1,200 jobs, came less than a week after the carmaker Stellantis said it would move production of a new vehicle to Illinois from a Toronto suburb.

by Ian Austen | Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | 3:13 PM EDT

General Motors said on Tuesday that it was ending production of its electric van in Ontario, a move that will mean the loss of about 1,200 jobs. It was the second major blow to Canada’s automobile industry in less than a week.

G.M. cited low demand for its BrightDrop delivery van, as well as the end of tax credits for electric vehicles in the United States.

But Unifor, the Canadian union that represents auto workers, blamed the company’s move on President Trump’s trade battle with Canada, which has made exporting cars to the United States more expensive.

While I don’t celebrate Canadians losing their jobs, if that’s what happens to create more jobs for Americans, I say, America First!

Last week, the automaker Stellantis announced that it would move production of a new Jeep model from an idle factory in the Toronto suburb of Brampton to a plant in Illinois. The company shut down the factory in 2023 and laid off its roughly 3,000 workers so that it could retool the facilities, but now the fate of those employees is unclear.

General Motors was the recipient of roughly CDN$1 billion, or roughly $714 million in real American money, to retool the factory, and now the government is up in arms, and threatening legal action. But GM ceased production of the total electric vans because few companies were buying the silly things. Without government mandates requiring X percentage of vehicles sold to be total electric, people are taking decisions based upon what is more practical for them.

There’s more at the Times original.

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer Our good friends on the left somehow believe the barbarians in our country can become good, civilized men.

I will admit it: I have not always been charitable when it comes to our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, The Philadelphia Inquirer and it’s journolism. No, that’s not a typo: The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

In a story about Sherrilyn Hawkins, who pleaded guilty to starving her 21-year-old disabled son to death, reporter Vinny Vella chose to use terms like “allowing him to waste away to just 59 pounds,” rather than tell readers the direct truth. Mr Vella responded, “I’m sorry you’re having trouble with your reading comprehension, Dana. Keep trying; I know you’ll get it someday.”

We continued our Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — discussion a bit further, but it was the newspaper’s main editorial that really got to me:

Lessons must be learned after criminal justice system fails Kada Scott | Editorial

Hindsight is 20/20, but a series of prosecutorial and judicial miscues may have enabled the young woman’s death.

by The Editorial Board | Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

The killing of Kada Scott is tragic on many levels, but hopefully, some lessons can be learned to honor her life.

Scott’s death is all the more painful for her family and friends because it could have been prevented. That’s because it appears District Attorney Larry Krasner and the Philadelphia court system failed her.

The man accused of abducting Scott had been previously charged with assaulting an ex-girlfriend twice in the last year, but prosecutors withdrew the charges after the victim did not show up for court.

After Scott’s disappearance, Krasner’s office admitted its handling of the earlier cases was a mistake. If the district attorney’s office had instead prosecuted Keon King, 21, then perhaps Scott, 23, would still be alive.

Kada Scott, victim, and Keon King, alleged murderer. Photos via WPVI TV, because, naturally, the Inquirer would never publish them.

There’s much more at the original, the next few paragraphs detailing the “miscues” which led to Keon King being a free man when he, allegedly, murdered Kada Scott. Then we come to this:

But once again, the victim and her friend refused to cooperate with prosecutors, so the charges were withdrawn in May.

This is not unusual, as victims of domestic violence often live in fear of the perpetrators. Reviewing the period between 2010 and 2020, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that 70% of victims of domestic violence cases failed to appear in Philadelphia’s courts.

A big part of the problem is that the accused are often out on bail and still threatening the victims. In King’s case, after the second set of assault charges, prosecutors requested bail of $1 million, but the magistrate lowered it to $200,000.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits the setting of “excessive bail,” so the magistrate did have to set a bail that Mr King could reasonably meet, something the newspaper reported that he was able to post immediately. But if the magistrate required Mr King to be fitted with a GPS monitor, none of the Inquirer stories I could find on the case mentioned it. An ankle monitor might have at least deterred Mr King, if he actually is the assailant, or provided more evidence to convict him if he was not deterred. Ankle monitors might provide the victims with a little more of a sense of security when their (alleged) assailants are released.

If all of the allegations against Mr King can be proven, he needs to spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars, with no possibility of parole. He is clearly a menace to the decent people of the City of Brotherly Love, and will almost certainly never change.

The Editorial Board said that “Lessons must be learned” from Mr Krasner’s and his minions’ inept handling of this case, but it’s hardly the first time that the District Attorney and his lenient and lax treatment of criminals have been noted. Despite all of the evidence of his lenience, the Editorial Board endorsed him for re-nomination in both 2021 and this year. Though the newspaper has yet to make its endorsement for the general election, I would be stunned if they endorsed moderate Democrat turned Republican Pat Dugan, despite the Board’s knowledge of Mr Krasner’s failures. After all, the Board does love Mr Krasner’s attempts to prosecute and imprison police officers!

There is a lesson to be learned alright, but it isn’t the lesson the Editorial Board would like. The lesson should be that American civilization must be protected and defended, even from those Americans in our cities who choose savagery over civilization. In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” in which Captain Kirk and three others from his crew were transported to a mirror universe in which savagery was the rule of the day, when the transport was finally undone, Mr Spock said that it was far easier for the Captain and crew, civilized people, to play savages than it was for the savages from the alternate universe to behave as civilized men. Our good friends on the left don’t quite seem to have taken that lesson, and somehow believe that the barbarians in our country can become good, civilized men.

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Democrisy! Nancy Pelosi, who has been in government for 38½ years, rips up a crown saying Donald Trump is no king

The very lovely Nancy Pelosi comes from what is as close to royalty as we have in the United States. Her father was Thomas D’Alesandro Jr, who spent a lifetime in political jobs. From 1926 to 1933, he was a member of the Maryland state House of Delegates, followed by two years as General Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue. Following that, he was elected to the Baltimore City Council, and then, in 1938, to the United States House of Representatives, where he served for eight years.

Following his service in Congress he was the Mayor of Baltimore for 12 years from May 1947 to May 1959. D’Alesandro served on the Federal Renegotiation Board from 1961 to 1969 after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy. On September 21, 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s assistant Mildred Stegall requested a routine FBI name check on D’Alesandro. FBI records released on January 6, 2021 showed D’Alesandro had been the subject of a Special Inquiry investigation in March and April 1961, revealing numerous allegations of association with criminals in Baltimore.

His son, Mrs Pelosi’s brother Thomas D’Alesandro III, continued the D’Alesandro political dynasty in Maryland, elected President of the Baltimore City Council in 1963, and, in 1967, he ran for and won the office of Mayor.

Mrs Pelosi, after serving in Democratic Party positions, was elected to the United States House of Representatives in a special election in 1987. Facing little opposition in subsequent re-election efforts, she has served in the House ever since. She filed papers to run for the House again in the 2026 election just two weeks after the November 2024 elections. Mrs Pelosi just turned 85 years old.

So, it is with some amusement that I saw that the Speaker Emerita, as she refers to herself, had herself filmed ripping up a paper crown in Saturday’s “No Kings” silliness. Video below the fold. Continue reading →