Our parish church, St Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, is small, with only about 24 families. We can’t afford the fancy decorations that some larger churches can, and don’t really have the room for them, but even in our small church, the Lord is present.
His Holiness Pope Francis passed away this morning, after a bout with pneumonia and a long physical decline. There is no doubt that he loved the Church, even if I disagree with some of his policies as Pope.
Is a member of the Right Eing Extremists of the United States of America allowed to have a favorite liberal writer who I don’t use as a blog whipping boy? I have twice asked if The Philadelphia Inquirer’s primary editorial writer, Daniel Pearson, could actually be a conservative.
He knows that I have asked that question, and certainly denies it, definitely opposed to President Trump and most Republicans, but he is at least in some ways the kind of Democrat conservatives can appreciate. He’s certainly not a loony leftist like his colleagues Will Bunch and the rest of the newspaper’s cabal of columnists! While he seems to support some silliness like the city’s silly driving while black driving equality law, he does support the enforcement of law.
Fake, expired, and obscured car tags threaten public safety | Editorial
Robert Stacy McCain warned us about jumping to conclusions before all of the facts were in about Cody Balmer, the man charged with setting fire to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion.
As soon as Pennsylvania State Police announced that Cody Balmer had been charged with setting the fire at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, someone found Balmer’s Facebook page and a deep dive found little evidence to point to a motive. Like most other people — including Gov. Josh Shapiro himself — I immediately assumed the motive must be antisemitism. Like, you attack the residence of the Jewish governor on the first night of Passover, what else could it be?
So when I plunged into Balmer’s Facebook page, I expected to find evidence that the suspect was either (a) a neo-Nazi Jew-hater or (b) a “progressive” pro-Palestinian Jew-hater. But there was no evidence of either inclination. In fact, there was very little hint of political inclinations at all. The guy was a welder and mechanic, with a black wife and four mixed-race kids, which obviously seemed to rule out any neo-Nazi tendencies, but there weren’t any “free Palestine” messages, either, He had a couple of sarcastic posts indicating he wasn’t a big fan of Joe Biden, but there weren’t any MAGA pro-Trump messages, either. Thomas Stevenson of The Post Millennial dug even deeper than I did and discovered that Balmer described himself as a “registered socialist,” so it’s a fair surmise he was a Bernie Bro back in the day, which might explain his disdain of Biden as an “establishment” Democrat. Continue reading
Also see: William Teach, “Trump Admin Cancels $2.3 Billion In Funding To Harvard“
From The Wall Street Journal:
Harvard Says It Will Fight Trump Administration Demands
Golly gee willikers gee whiz! Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t have lost to Orange Man Bad, so someone must have sabotaged her!
Our good friends on the left were stunned, shocked, aghast, appalled that Kamala Harris Emhoff lost the 2024 election to then former President Donald Trump, and they keep looking for reasons why it happened. But the one thing that they just can’t bring themselves to consider is the notion that she was simply a rotten candidate. Continue reading
It was thanks to Robert Stacy McCain that I saw this tweet from the Defender of the Republic.
Britney Spears has a guesstimated net worth of $60 million, according to Forbes, or perhaps a paltry $40 million, estimated by Celebrity Net Worth. The Defender wondered why no one could help a clearly wealthy and attractive woman. I know virtually nothing about Miss Spears, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is that no one has helped her because she doesn’t want to be helped.
Which brings me to the more serious:
Only two people have successfully completed the Kensington ‘wellness court’ so far. The Parker administration wants to expand it.
Nearly two-thirds of the more than 40 people brought before the court since late January have dropped out of treatment within days, and then failed to appear at follow-up hearings.
Thanks to former city councilwoman Helen Gym Flaherty’s failed campaign for the 2023 Democratic nomination for Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, this site has reported several times on the Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle Schools, noting something that The Philadelphia Inquirer never bothered to tell readers as Mrs Flaherty, who campaigned on her educational record, used that school as a backdrop for her campaign, proudly telling the voters that she helped keep the school from “going charter.” What didn’t the newspaper tell its readership? That the school had an absolutely abysmal academic performance. That school is ranked 1193th out of 1591 in Pennsylvania Elementary Schools and ranked 656th out of 875 in Pennsylvania Middle Schools. Schools are ranked on their performance on state-required tests, graduation, and how well they prepare their students for high school. In the current rankings, 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and 2% of students who scored at or above the proficient level for math. Continue reading
We reported, on April Fool’s Day, on Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Susan Snyder‘s fawning story on Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania swimmer who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” giving Mr Thomas’ explanation that he performed so much better competing against women than men because he was so much happier and “that happiness translated into feeling better in the water and being able to give my all in a way that I wasn’t able to before and that showed in my results,” not because he is a 6’2″ or 6’3″ tall male, who had gone through male puberty and had male musculature, shoulders, and hips.
I guess that Zachary Rose must be much happier, too!
Trans track athlete wins varsity girls competition after previously placing last against JV boys: report
Elena Bardin and her husband, via the New York Post.
This story was in the Lexington Herald-Leader, but, adhering to the McClatchy mugshot policy, the Kentucky newspaper didn’t print the mugshot of the accused. Fortunately, the New York Post did.
Police: Kentucky teacher had sexual contact with minor, asked him to kill her husband
By Bill Estep | Updated April 4, 2025 | 11:31 AM EDT Continue reading