Category Archives: Culture

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A Catholic parish commits a crime Church policies on immigration do not supersede American law

That the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a proud member, supports far less restrictive transnational immigration is well known, and His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has been pushing hard on the subject. Thus, the following article comes as no surprise to me:

UPDATE: ICE deported Minnesota church employee, surveilled parish during Mass, mayor says

ICE’s presence outside the church impedes parishioners’ free exercise of religion, said the pastor of St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota.

By Kathleen Murphy · DC Bureau · Friday, January 9, 2026 · 3:01 PM EST

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveilled St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, on Epiphany after deporting the parish’s beloved maintenance worker to Mexico five weeks earlier.

The Trump administration last year eliminated a federal policy that generally prohibited immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches, and hospitals. Attendance at St. Gabriel’s Spanish Mass has dropped by half since the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and parishioners have expressed fear of churchgoing about eight miles from where an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good on Jan. 7.

Father Paul Haverstock, pastor of St. Gabriel’s, said he had vested for the 1 p.m. Spanish Mass Jan. 4 when a parishioner told him about men wearing ski masks in a car outside the church. He said he was disturbed to receive the report, went to the sacristy to get his cellphone, and placed it next to his chair in the sanctuary.

“If there is an incident of agents coming in, I want to make sure that it’s recorded, and I want a clear recording of me letting the agents know that we’re in the middle of a religious service,” Haverstock said.

Two of the hyperlinks in the quoted story above were not in the original, but researched and added by me.

It has to be asked: why were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside the church?

Church employee Francisco Paredes, 46, who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years with one conviction for driving under the influence, was handcuffed by ICE Dec. 4, 2025. Eight federal vehicles pulled into a large parking lot adjacent to St. Gabriel’s on 13th Avenue South after Paredes picked up coffee on his way to work, Paredes said, and he was driven to a processing facility. . . .

Until Paredes’ arrest and before ICE parked outside St. Gabriel’s, more than 400 people had usually attended the Spanish Mass, Haverstock said. Haverstock said he is considering offering a temporary Sunday Mass dispensation in his parish for those who are afraid.

So, St Gabriel’s holds well-attended Masses in Spanish, and the church previously employed an illegal immigrant; the article stated, in its mealy-mouthed way, that Mr Paredes “lacked legal permission to live in the U.S.” It is reasonable to suspect that significant numbers of illegal immigrants live in the area and attend those Masses.

Father Haverstock stated that Mr Paredes was a great employee, fully bilingual, and a tremendous help around the parish. That’s fine, but then there’s this:

Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, requirements come out of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). IRCA prohibits employers from hiring and employing an individual for employment in the U.S. knowing that the individual is not authorized with respect to such employment. Employers also are prohibited from continuing to employ an individual knowing that he or she is unauthorized for employment. This law also prohibits employers from hiring any individual, including a U.S. citizen, for employment in the U.S. without verifying his or her identity and employment authorization on Form I-9.

The IRCA was passed in 1986, which was 40 years ago; Mr Paredes has been in the United States for a stated 25 years, which means that he was hired by the parish church well after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 became law.

Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Engaging in Fraud or False Statements, or Otherwise Misusing Visas, Immigration Permits, and Identity Documents

You may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years if you:

  • Make a false statement or attestation to satisfy the employment eligibility verification requirements;
  • Use fraudulent identification or employment authorization documents; or
  • Use documents that were lawfully issued to another person.

Other federal criminal statutes may provide higher penalties in certain fraud cases.

For Mr Paredes to have been employed by St Gabriel’s, at least one of these things had to have happened:

  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without a reasonable effort at verifying the documents provided; or
  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without checking his documents at all or filling out Form I-9; or
  • Mr Paredes presented false or fraudulent documents good enough to have passed a reasonable inspection by Pastor.

All of these are crimes!

The article provided by EWTN News does not tell us how long Mr Paredes was an employee of St Gabriel’s. The parish staff page tells us that Fr Haverstock first became Parish Administrator in 2020, and assigned as Pastor on Independence Day of 2021, so, if Mr Paredes was hired before those dates, Fr Haverstock could not have been the person who hired him. However, if he became aware that his employee was an illegal immigrant after he became Administrator, but before Mr Paredes was detained, yet continued to employ Mr Paredes, he would be in violation of the law. Fr Haverstock would not be required to report the illegal immigrant’s presence in the United States, but he would have had to discharge him.

There are no exemptions for churches or church employees under our immigration laws. Church policy, even coming from the Pope himself, does not supersede American law.

Perhaps article author Kathleen Murphy did not realize it when she wrote, but she published the report of a crime. And while this is the documentation of one crime in one parish, who would be surprised if this hasn’t happened widely throughout the thousands of parishes and hundreds of dioceses in the United States?

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(Purported) canon lawyer is very upset that infants can be baptized without their consent

Sunday, January 11, 2026, is in the calendar of the Catholic Church, the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, our remembrance of when Jesus chose to be baptized by his cousin, St John the Baptist. Today’s Gospel reading was from Matthew 3:13-17:

3:13 Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.
14 But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have the need to be baptized by You, and yet You are coming to me?”
15 But Jesus, answering, said to him, “Allow it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he *allowed Him.
16 After He was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him,
17 and behold, a voice from the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Hardly an offensive passage, but naturally that was the day The Irish Times chose to print an essay from Dr Mary McAleese, who claims to be an “academic civil and canon lawyer, (and the) author of Children’s Rights and Obligations in Canon Law: the Christening Contract (Brill 2019),” to claim that the Catholic practice of infant baptism is evil, evil, evil!
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Baptism denies babies their human rights

Rite & Reason: No one is Catholic by birth and the notion of ‘Baptismal promises’ is risible

by Dr Mary McAleese | Sunday, January 11, 2026

Throughout the world, there continues a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion. This warrants, but has yet to receive, serious examination. It impacts Ireland in a special way and contemporary circumstances make Ireland an ideal place to conduct that examination.

Let me set the scene with a couple of brief, inter-related stories. They concern the relationship between children’s rights and religion in Ireland, and certain unchallenged aspects of the canon law of Ireland’s major Christian denomination and provider of education, the Latin Catholic Church.

It restricts children’s rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, to which both Ireland and the Holy See – which governs the Catholic Church and is effectively the author of canon law – are State Parties.

Good heavens! Baptism “restricts children’s rights”? Which rights? It certainly does not prevent those baptized as Catholic from joining most Protestant churches, nor does it somehow drag reluctant people to Mass on Sundays. More, the Catholic Church accepts most baptisms conducted by Protestant churches as valid. Muslims do not accept baptism as valid for anything, because they have no equivalent ritual. Jews have ritual cleansing, the Tevilah, but it is not the same under Judaism as baptism is for Christians.

Atheists? Buddhists? Whateverists? Being baptized as a Catholic does not prohibit anyone from joining another religion, or deciding that they have no faith at all.

If you are a Christian, baptism means a great deal to you; if you are not Christian, baptism means nothing to you, and as either a sprinkling or an immersion in water, it has done you no harm.

The distinguished Dr McAleese is very concerned that baptism means you are irreversibly a Catholic according to canon law, and that’s true enough, but my response is: so what? The Church cannot force you to go to Mass, and cannot force you to believe anything. The Church has no gendarmerie which can arrest you if you walk into a Pentecostalist or Baptist church on Sunday, nor the authority to show up at your door on a wintry Sunday morning in which you chose to stay under the covers.

Attempts to leave the Church or change religion or challenge Church teaching or magisterial authority, constitute canonical crimes of heresy, apostasy, schism. Among the punishments attached to such acts is the much-misunderstood penalty of excommunication, which in fact leaves membership intact but subject to restrictions.

It should be obvious that, if someone does wish to change religion, to not be a Catholic any longer, the penalty of excommunication is meaningless. It means, in effect, that you can’t go to church in the church where you didn’t want to go.

I suppose that for “an academic civil and canon lawyer,” that might be of overwhelming concern, but out in the real world, it’s pretty much meaningless.

There are many things that parents can command as they rear their children, from going to church to eating their hated peas for supper, a mortal sin in my mind.

There’s more at Dr McAleese’s original, but really, it’s silliness. Baptism, and membership in the Catholic Church is voluntary, even if the Church already has someone listed in its rolls.

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Larry Krasner beclowns himself Philly's chief law enforcement officer doesn't want our immigration laws enforced

Remember when Philadelphia’s criminal-loving, police-hating, George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner previously made a fool of himself with his spittle-flecked declaration that he would seek to find state charges against the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers who were pardoned by President Trump, despite the fact that the vast majority had already served their sentences?

Then we have this gem from the Philly persecutor. That’s right: Mr Krasner wants to go after anyone who might have been involved with the late Jeffrey Epstein. But, let’s tell the truth here: if Mr Krasner found anyone connected to Mr Epstein who has “ties back to (his) jurisdiction,” which is the confines of Philadelphia County — Philadelphia city and county are co-terminus — Mr Krasner wants to throw the book at them, but only if they are Republicans. As with his previous mentioned threat, nothing came of that, either. The late Mr Epstein’s homes and businesses were not in the City of Brotherly Love.

And now, here he goes again!

DA Krasner condemns fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, says officers who commit crimes in Philly will ‘be convicted’

Krasner said the actions of the ICE agent who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good were unlawful.

by Jesse Bunch | Thursday, January 8, 2026 | 3:50 PM EST

District Attorney Larry Krasner, responding to the killing of a 37-year-old woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, vowed to prosecute law enforcement officers who commit crimes in the city of Philadelphia.

“You will be arrested, you will stand trial, you will be convicted,” Krasner said during a news conference Thursday.

His remarks came a day after a masked ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good multiple times in her SUV.

In widely circulated videos of the incident, Good appears to be driving away from a group of immigration agents as they order her to get out of her vehicle.

The District Attorney does not seem nearly as concerned with the law when it comes to our immigration laws. From the Tampa Free Press:

Shortly after entering office in 2018, the liberal prosecutor created the Immigration Counsel position in order to provide consultations on cases specifically involving foreign nationals. Krasner initially stated the position would work to achieve “immigration-neutral” outcomes, which in practice means evaluating and possibly lowering charges against migrants, including illegal immigrants, to ensure their conviction would not result in their deportation.

Krasner’s office repeatedly suggested early on that the Immigration Counsel would only focus on cases involving “low-level” offenders, but a case list obtained by a conservative immigration group in 2021 revealed that his office consulted in a myriad of cases involving foreign nationals accused of gruesome crimes, such as rape of a child, rape, sexual assault, arson and murder.

An additional case list released in 2024 revealed the Immigration Counsel has continued to be involved in serious criminal cases. Krasner’s office consulted with or worked on 21 aggravated assault, domestic violence and other crimes of violence cases; 26 possession of drugs with intent to distribute cases; 12 firearm cases; nine rape and indecent assault and sexual assault on a child cases, nine robbery or burglary cases and one vehicular homicide case, according to a case list for the 2023 calendar year.

Translation: Mr Krasner loves him some illegals, and would rather keep those who commit serious crimes other than those connected with their immigration status in the United States.

Mr Krasner said during the press conference.

I will charge you with those crimes. You will be arrested. You will stand trial. You will be convicted. Donald Trump cannot pardon you for a state court conviction. Do you hear me, ICE agents?

Arrests can get messy if the subjects being apprehended resist, and it looks to me as though Mr Krasner is encouraging illegals to resist arrest. And he’s attempting to intimidate ICE agents from coming to Philadelphia to enforce our immigration laws.

I would suggest that ICE do a deep dive into the members of Mr Krasner’s staff, to see if any of them might be here illegally.

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You will own nothing and you will like it. The Communists want you to be poor, so you will be dependent upon the government for your survival.

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain wrote about new New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointing Cea Weaver to be Director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. It seems like the lovely Miss Weaver wants people like you and me to be poor and dependent upon the government, a government she said on May 30, 2017, should have no more white male members.

This Activist Has Long Been Polarizing. Mamdani Is Standing by Her.

Cea Weaver, a tenant advocate named to a high-profile role in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, is facing criticism for past comments calling homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy.”

By Dana Rubinstein, Sally Goldenberg and Mihir Zaveri | Wednesday, January 6, 2026 | Updated: Thursday, January 7, 2026 | 8:47 AM EST

For the second time in three weeks, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing intense scrutiny for the years-old social media behavior of a high-level appointee — an episode that has once again forced him to answer for his vetting processes.

Mr. Mamdani named Cea Weaver, a housing activist, to run the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants on Jan. 1, during his very first news conference on his very first day in office.

In past social media posts that have since been deleted, most of which predate 2020, she called homeownership a “weapon of white supremacy” and said that it was important to “impoverish” the white middle class. That rhetoric had played a role in raising her profile within New York housing circles, even as it seemed to hobble her 2021 bid to join the city’s powerful Planning Commission. Her calls to “elect more Communists” and “seize private property” had been well documented in The New York Post.

Heaven forfend! The New York Times actually cited the New York Post as a source? I am shocked, shocked! I say.

I suppose that Miss Weaver hates her own family, given that the New York Post reported:

The mother of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new woke renters’ rights honcho — who’s dubbed homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy” — is a professor at a prestigious college and owns a beautiful Nashville home worth $1.6 million.

Celia Applegate — whose daughter Cea Weaver is the director of Mamdani’s Office to Protect Tenants — teaches German studies at Vanderbilt University and owns a pricey classic Craftsman home just south of the main strip in Nashville, Tennessee.

Applegate bought the property with her partner, David Blackbourn, in July 2012 for $814,000 and real estate websites now list the pad’s value at more than $1.6 million, records show.

This article continues below the fold, because I have embedded a video of Comrade Kaprugina in Dr Zhivago spouting the line, “There was living space for thirteen families in this one house!” Continue reading →

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The progressive ‘urbanists’ just don’t quite understand things

I will admit to being something of a very amateur architecture aficionado; I love great looking buildings, even though I’m in no position to afford one for our family. I follow people like Coby — “Working on creating better, more beautiful places to live in. Developer, Writer, Urbanist, Professor, Optimist. Check out my writing below!” — Alicia, the Courtyard Urbanist, Architectolder, who specializes in photography and who is a strong conservative, and Architecture & Tradition, along with other similar accounts on Twitter.

And these are great people, people who appreciate nice architecture and art, but most of them — not Architectolder! — have a bit of a blind spot. They praise urban living, and show many examples of really great urban housing, but, as in Coby’s tweet shown to the upper right, they don’t seem to appreciate the fact that most Americans cannot afford the places they’ve shown.

I once remarked how the houses in one of the Philly “Main Line” suburbs were great, but not only couldn’t I afford one of them, I couldn’t even afford one of their driveways!

Sure, I prefer the small farm on which we live, I prefer that I don’t have to walk the dogs every day, but can simply open the door and let them out to play on our 7.92 acres of property, and I prefer the fact that there are few other people out here, only one of whom I could actually call a neighbor. And yeah, I would certainly like to be able to walk five blocks to the Votre supermarché at 12 Avenue Baquis in Nice to pick up freshly baked croissants for breakfast, but not being able to do that is a small price to pay for having our own land.

But one thing about living in very poor Estill County, I can see what is around me. We bought our property very cheaply, just $75,000 in 2014: decent land, a livable if nevertheless fixer-upper house, which yes, we have been fixing up, and are still fixing up. I previously noted how we bought a second house, a two bedroom, one bath single family home, not for ourselves, but to rent to my wife’s sister. I didn’t mention the price, but it was just $70,000, and it, too, was a fixer-upper. You can see photos of my nephew and me remodeling the junked bathroom. These were cheap, eastern Kentucky houses, the last one bought just before Bidenflation struck interest rates.

This is what some of the urbanists just don’t understand. They see some real gems in the cities, but don’t seem to understand that most people can’t afford those really nice places. We have previously noted some of the urban houses and streets in which people have to live in Philadelphia because that’s all they can reasonably afford. When my good friend Alicia posts images of her favorite residential architectural style — much of the photos are from Europe — she’s posting images of places she might like to live, but places most working-class Americans couldn’t afford, nor residences which Americans could build for any affordable prices.

While Alicia hasn’t mentioned it at all in anything of hers I’ve seen, that courtyard living she champions looks to me like a version of the gated community, to keep out the poorer people and the bad guys and the riff-raff. But perhaps that’s what the urbanists really want, for themselves and their friends; the denizens of Strawberry Mansion and the Philadelphia Badlands can stay outside. A “pharmacy on your block, a farmer’s market that comes to the plaza out your front door, and a courtyard in your backyard” sure would sound nice to people, but in a lot of neighborhoods in the City of Brotherly Love, what the residents would see more useful are streets not run by criminals and gangs, and sidewalks not slept on by junkies.

 

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When a raging anti-Semite feels comfortable enough to go on a tirade.

Lower Gwynedd Township was established in 1698 by William Penn, a very well-to-do township in what is now mostly well-to-do Montgomery County, one of the collar counties of the City of Brotherly Love. I have done a couple of projects in Lower Gwynedd, and not only could I not have afforded a home there, I couldn’t even afford some of their driveways! In the 2024 election, the residents of Montgomery County gave 317,103 votes, 60.62% of the total, to then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, and only 198,311 votes, 37.91% of the total to our then 45th and now 47th President, Donald Trump. Only neighboring Delaware County, 61.15%, and Philadelphia itself, 78.57%, gave Mrs Emhoff a higher percentage of their votes in the Keystone State.

Perhaps that’s why Philip Leddy, the principal of Lower Gwynedd Elementary School felt it safe to go on an anti-Semitic rant, even in private, as so many of our nation’s good Democrats have decided that they hate Jews for defending themselves following Hamas’ October 7th massacre.

Well, he shouldn’t have felt too safe, because he’s now the former principal!

Pennsylvania principal axed after ranting about ‘Jew money’ in voicemail to parent

By David Spector | Saturday, December 27, 2025 | 9:33 AM EST

Philip Leddy, photo by Wissahickon School District, and is a public record.

A Pennsylvania principal whose antisemitic tirade about “Jew money” was inadvertently recorded has been fired.

Lower Gwynedd Elementary School Principal Philip Leddy was axed Tuesday by the Wissahickon School Board.

Leddy, 45, was returning a call from a parent when he got the dad’s voicemail and left a message, but then apparently failed to end the call, Philadelphia’s ABC 7 reported.

That’s actually ABC 6, not ABC 7, but the link is accurate.

Leddy allegedly accused the parent of having “Jew money” and could be heard muttering “they control the banks,” according to recording, which was posted by the advocacy group StopAntisemitism.

”They go to Jew camp . . . everyone at the camp hates that family . . . ,” he was also caught saying, according to the group’s recording.

Parents in the district have accused the school board of attempting to paper over their longstanding issues with antisemitism by hanging Leddy out to dry.

“It was an easy one for them because it was old school anti-semitism versus more modern, like anti-Zionism antisemitism,” Beth Ages, who has two kids in the district, told The Post.

Jewish parents in the district noted a mural in Wissahickon Middle School which depicts the rabid anti-Semite Linda Sarsour.

Perhaps the anti-Semites are achieving their mostly unstated goals:

“Jewish families are leaving in droves,” said Lynn Simon, who has two kids in the district.

I was unable to find Mr Leddy’s credentials, but he must have at least a Master’s degree to have been a principal in a Montgomery County school district. He has to be an educated man, at least as far as education in education goes. He had to have gone to college, and, at his age, 45, it had to have been several years ago. He became principal in 2023, presumably before the October 7, 2023 attack.

But this was the funniest point of all, from the 6ABC news story: he had “previously chaired an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee in another district, according to his school bio.” Looks like being all in on DEI doesn’t cover inclusion of Jooooos.

The School District leaders said that Mr Leddy wasn’t just talking to himself, but was apparently speaking with another district employee at the time. No action has been taken against that employee, who contributed nothing anti-Semitic to Mr Leddy’s tirade, but left unreported is the fact that the now former principal felt comfortable enough to engage in that tirade with another school employee.

And that’s the part that gets to me. Unless Mr Leddy is an absolute moron, he had to have known that an anti-Semitic rant was the kind of thing that could get him fired, yet he felt secure enough to do it anyway in front of another school district employee. That tells me that not only did Mr Leddy not think his rant was wrong, but he seemingly didn’t think that whomever the other school employee was wouldn’t find it a problem either. Just how anti-Semitic is wealthy Lower Gwynedd that this could have occurred?

Fortunately, with the ongoing strike, there should be plenty of available positions as baristas at Starbucks, so maybe he won’t starve. But, then again, he probably won’t be able to afford to live in Montgomery County.

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Perhaps we should start telling the unvarnished truth instead of hiding behind euphemisms

It was with some amusement that I saw the screen blurb screen captured to the right in Wednesday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer “Newsletters” section of their website main page.

When schools move ‘tough-to-teach’ kids | Morning Newsletter

by Paola Pérez | Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 6:00 AM EST

It’s not unusual for students to switch schools after the school year begins. However, some Philly principals point to one “concerning” trend behind a bump in transfers from charters.

The Inquirer spoke with a dozen current and former district administrators who say some pupils with behavior problems are pushed by charters out to Philadelphia School District schools. Charter leaders dispute claims that kids are sent to district schools over disciplinary issues. . . . .

Deep frustration: The bar is much higher for district administrators to remove students; they “can’t turn kids away,” another principal said. Making matters more difficult is a lack of additional funding to attend to more students.

Notable quote: “It’s just not fair,” said a third principal. “We’re not getting their best kids.”

Reporter Paola Pérez newsletter referenced a larger Inquirer article:

It’s an open secret that some charter schools push out kids with behavioral problems, Philly principals say

Principals say students offloaded from charters to Philadelphia School District schools are often “counseled out,” while they can’t remove students from traditional public schools for those reasons.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, December 17, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated 12:16 PM EST

The trickle begins in the fall, some principals say: Students with a history of behavior or disciplinary problems or other issues show up in Philadelphia School District schools, often from city charters.

“(A) history of behavior or disciplinary problems,” huh? Is that the 21st century formulation of what those of us from the quill-pen-and-inkwell era referred to as juvenile delinquents? At least it’s better than “tough to teach.”

“(N)ot getting their best kids”? Nope, the public schools are getting their worst kids!

But at times, it seems like some students are off-loaded from charters because they’re tough to educate, according to interviews with a dozen district administrators. In district schools, administrators can’t remove students for such issues.

We also used a term, “reform school,” which AI defined as:

A reform school, an outdated term for juvenile correctional or therapeutic facilities, housed troubled youths for behavior change through discipline, education, and vocational training, aiming to reform rather than just punish. Today, these institutions are typically called residential treatment centers, therapeutic boarding schools, or youth correctional facilities, focusing on mental health and specific behavioral issues with modern therapeutic approaches, though historical ones featured strict discipline, labor, and sometimes harsh conditions.

Maybe the name and ideas of reform schools are what’s needed. Instead of sending juvenile delinquents those youth with behavioral or disciplinary problems to regular public schools, perhaps we need to send them to old-fashioned reform schools, perhaps we need to get them and their disruptive-to-other-students behaviors away from normal kids.

But, like the kerfuffle over President Trump calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded,” you’re just not allowed to use the politically incorrect words, and “reform school” and “juvenile delinquent” are just as politically incorrect as “retard.” Perhaps, just perhaps, if we admit that the delinquents are delinquents, and put them in real reform schools, rather than warehousing them in mainstream public schools, the vast bulk of our students would wind up being better educated than they have been.

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Killadelphia: Crimes of absolute stupidity

It was a good day for law enforcement, and a bad day for bad guys. Tyvine Jones, the (alleged) hitman for the Blumberg gang was arrested without incident by Federal Marshals in Lansdowne:

A North Philly gang hit man, ‘the very worst’ of society, taken into custody for three killings, officials say

U.S. Marshals arrested Tyvine Jones early Wednesday in Lansdowne. Investigators say he is tied to three murders in the city.

by Vinny Vella | Wednesday, December 10, 2025 | 2:33 PM EST

A North Philadelphia street-gang hit man wanted in connection with three killings, including the execution-style shooting of a 16-year-old boy, was taken into custody Wednesday morning in Delaware County, officials said.

Tyvine “Blumberg Eerd” Jones, 25, was apprehended by U.S. marshals in an apartment where he had been hiding at the Stratford Court complex in Lansdowne, authorities said. Jones was considered one of the city’s most wanted fugitives, and in October, marshals issued a $5,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

Eric Gartner, the United States marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said Jones’ “unrestrained existence serves only to diminish our great city,” and his arrest demonstrates the agency’s commitment to keep Philadelphians safe.

Investigators say Jones is a suspect in three slayings that took place between 2020 and 2022: the killings of Heyward Garrison, 16, Wesley Rodwell, 20, and Ryan Findley, 23.

No, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer did not include Mr Jones mugshot, just as the newspaper has had zero coverage of the eight Philly juveniles busted for shoplifting in Florida. The newspaper article did include an arrest photo, showing the back of the (alleged) murderer, just enough to show his long dreadlocks, which makes me wonder: if the newspaper’s mission, as defined by Publisher Elizabeth Hughes, is to make it an “anti racist news organization” and “Examining (their) crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media,” why publish a photo which did not inform readers what the suspect looked like, but one which let readers know that he is black?

However, if it’s a good thing that an (alleged) hit man is off the streets, two more Philadelphians were sent untimely to their eternal rewards in another crime gone bad:

A man and teen were killed during attempted sale of a Rolex in Germantown, police say

The attempted sale erupted in gunfire Tuesday, leaving Tyree Ware and Quaneef Lee dead.

by Ellie Rushing and Jillian Kramer | Wednesday, December 10, 2025 | 4:03 PM EST

A man and teenager were killed Tuesday night in Germantown when investigators believe a meeting for the sale of a Rolex watch turned into a robbery, and a shoot-out erupted.

Tyree Ware, 30, drove to the 500 block of West Queen Lane to sell a Rolex he’d listed for sale online, police said. Quaneef Lee, 16, arrived with an acquaintance to purchase it, they said.

Detectives believe Lee and the other male then attempted to rob Ware of the watch at gunpoint, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Rolex watches are ridiculously expensive, and are status symbols for the men who wear them. They are supposed to say, “I’m successful and wealthy and better than you” to other men, and “I’m successful and wealthy and you should go to bed with me” to women. Police recovered the Rolex from Mr Ware’s vehicle, and one of three guns used in the shooting.

We don’t know young Mr Lee’s intentions in attempting to buy acquire a Rolex; he may have had a second buyer for it, may have wanted it for status, or a number of possible reasons. But whatever his reason, he’s now stone-cold graveyard dead over (allegedly) attempting to steal a watch from a man who was willing to sell it to him. All three parties to this incident were armed, which one assumes means they were anticipating trouble. If so, trouble found them! Police recovered eleven bullet casings from the scene.

One last paragraph from the story:

The shooting comes as Philadelphia is on pace to record the fewest number of homicides in 60 years. Still, violence persists. Lee is one of at least 12 children shot and killed in the city this year.

Yes, violence persists, and two men are now dead over a watch, while Tywine Jones is possibly going to spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars, for (allegedly) killing three other people. These are all crimes of violence, but they are also crimes of absolute stupidity.

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The promotion of gambling by professional sports leagues is dangerous

Athletes like Pete Rose and Paul Hornung and Alex Karras have been suspended or banned from their sports over gambling, Mr Rose’s suspension lasting until after his death. The “Black Sox scandal” of 1919 occurred when eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, allegedly for a payment from gamblers betting on the outcome. Commissioners like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Pete Rozelle were determined to keep their sports untainted by any connection with gambling.

But now we see all sorts of gambling information being put out by the major professional sports leagues. The NFL Network, owned by the National Football League, has plenty of sports gambling commercials, and I have also seen such in NBA and WNBA broadcasts. The NFL requires individual teams to publish injury reports and statuses during the week prior to the next game, and who needs that besides gamblers?

And so we get this:

Philly is now the No. 1 market for online gambling companies — and addiction helplines are ringing off the hook

Advertisers spent $37 million on the Philadelphia market in 2025. Online gambling help calls and texts have more than doubled in Pennsylvania and New Jersey since Mar 2021.

by Max Marin and Lizzie Mulvey | Wednesday, December 10, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST

One man, buried under $20,000 in online gambling debt, became homeless. A woman lost $13,000 and missed her last five mortgage payments. A mother gambled away her son’s college tuition, piling up over $100,000 in debt.

Such dire stories — shared with gambling helplines in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in recent years — are on the rise. And for the growing number of people, the problem isn’t the casino, but the apps on their phones that let them gamble anywhere, 24/7.

“My family is hosting fundraisers for my son who had a stroke, and here I am, gambling on my phone,” one caller said. “What’s wrong with me?”

The Philadelphia media market — which encompasses the city, southeastern Pa., central and southern New Jersey — has become an epicenter of online gambling in the United States. In 2024, internet gaming and sports wagering revenues alone topped $6 billion in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, up from about $3.6 billion in 2021.

The last play field goal by the Las Vegas Raiders, which changed their loss to the Denver Broncos from ten points to seven points, certainly looked like a play to do nothing but change winners and losers on the betting line.

As it happens, I finished Mario Puzo’s book The Godfather just a week or so ago. In it, Don Vito Corleone declined the opportunity to go into narcotics, saying that he’d lose his political friends and protection if he did, while the police pretty much looked the other way when it came to gambling, which they viewed as a harmless vice. But while gambling doesn’t leave junkies sleeping on the sidewalks and doorways of Kensington, the way narcotics do, there is damage nonetheless.

In the same period, the amount of calls and texts to 1-800-GAMBLER rose in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two of only six states in the U.S. where both sports betting and online casino games are legal. But calls about online gambling problems rose significantly more – 180% in Pennsylvania and 160% in New Jersey in that period. In 2019, only about one in ten Pa. callers said online gambling was their main issue. By 2024, it was every other caller.

My paternal grandparents, living in Antioch, California, would save their money, and occasionally take a trip to Reno, Nevada, to gamble. When they ran out of money, they were done. Now the casinos have ATMs all around, so that when gamblers run out of money, they can draw more out of their checking or savings accounts.

Unfortunately, the cited Philadelphia Inquirer article did not tell us whether there was evidence that gambling problems were greater in poorer areas than wealthy ones.

Having lived in the Keystone State, I sort of laughed at what had happened to the gambling ‘industry,’ Originally exclusive to Nevada, New Jersey saw the money that was being made, and legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City. Donald Trump and others built casinos, and flourished. Me? I thought that Atlantic City had wasted their greatest natural resource, their beaches, to promote gambling, and let the beaches go, if not completely to seed, to not very good.

Then Pennsylvania authorized casino gambling, and surprise, surprise, surprise, the Atlantic City casinos suffered, some going out of business, as Pennsylvanians stayed home to gamble. Now it seems as though every state has some form of legalized gambling, even if it’s only state-run lotteries.

I referred to the gambling ‘industry’ above, because this is an ‘industry’ which produces nothing; its sole purpose is to move money from some people to other people, with the state and the gambling ‘hosts’ getting their percentage, regardless of who wins.

The libertarian — not Libertarian! — in me says that if people want to gamble, it’s their business, not the state’s, but I know just as certainly as anyone can that out-of-control gambling destroys people and destroys families. Perhaps gambling shouldn’t be banned, but I cannot argue that we’re better off today than we were when only the Silver State had legalized gambling.