Category Archives: Culture

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The seriousness of the surge in Catholic conversions

As a somewhat frequent participant in Catholic discussions on Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏, the dumbest rebranding of the 21st century — I’ve been seeing a ton of posts about the surge in Catholic converts. Apparently, the algorithms see what we like, and send more of the same our way!  Many tweets about people’s individual conversions cheered me, but the one by Chrissie Mayr, screen captured at the right, seemed far more important to me. Miss Mayr pointed out what not everyone knows: unlike our Protestant brethren, who basically welcome everyone into their churches as members as soon as they walk in the door, conversion to Catholicism is a process, one which involves serious time and education into the beliefs held and requirements of becoming Catholic.

Miss Mayr told us that she initially found the process of OCIA, Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, intimidating, and it certainly can be.  OCIA is not meant to be intimidating, but I suppose I can see where some might see it that way. But it is intended to show aspiring Catholics what being Catholic really means, and to what they planned to commit. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the sacrament of Reconciliation — confession and absolution — and the need for an examination of conscience. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and Apostolic Succession. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the real reverence of the Eucharist, the heart of every Mass. We want aspiring Catholics to not only be proud of being Catholic, but to understand why they should be proud of it.

I’m old enough to remember the surge of “Jesus freaks” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were, essentially, non-denominational Protestants, and the passion and fad of such soon faded. The recent surge in conversion to Catholicism entails as orderliness that the Jesus freaks never had, and we hope that OCIA brings that orderliness and with it, a more durable commitment.

OCIA is a process which has the catechumens coming to Mass every Sunday, not only for the Mass, but for their instruction. This is a subtle, or perhaps not-so-subtle means of instilling in them the habit of getting out of bed on Sunday morning and coming to church. One thing too infrequently acknowledged is that attendance at church is a habit, and the more often you do get up rather than sleeping in, the easier it is to get up the next Sunday. For me, especially during colder weather, there are some Sundays that it’s really hard to get out of our nice, warm, comfortable bed, but it’s a habit, and I do it anyway. On both Palm Sunday, when the bedroom was cool due to the window being open, and Easter, when it was just plain cold, our bed was just so very nice, but yes, I got up anyway, and went to Mass. There’s a point at which you are more encouraged to get up and go to Mass because you want to keep your attendance record spotless.

Will the recent surge in Catholic conversions hold? Will our Church see more Catholics staying Catholic, more Catholics in the pews every Sunday morning? Only the Lord knows the answer to that, but I believe we have reason to hope.

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Citius, Altius, Fortius Girls can't be boys and boys can't be girls, no matter how much a few of them don't like it

The Nation is one of our oldest political commentary journals, dating from 1865, and these days it is charitably described as “progressive,” though far-left and #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 would be more accurate. They’re just another bunch who’ve fallen for the idiocy that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

The Olympics Is Repeating One of Its Worst Mistakes

The IOC’s new anti-trans testing regime revives some of the most discredited and discriminatory policies in the history of the games.

Michael Waters | Holy Thursday, April 2, 2026

In 1967, a Polish sprinter named Ewa Kłobukowska sat for a mandatory DNA test. Kłobukowska, a rising track star, had won a gold and a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Now, a new policy required all women track-and-field athletes to be screened for the presence of X chromosomes. Kłobukowska was probably shocked to learn that the test had placed her on the wrong side of the gender binary. Exactly what happened is hazy—news reports claimed that Kłobukowska was discovered to have “one chromosome too many,” without further explanation—but the consequences were immediate. Kłobukowska was banned from the Olympics. Her sporting career was over.

Now why would the Olympics be running DNA tests back in the mid 1960s, before there was any such thing as “transgenderism”? It’s simple! Female athletes in international competition from the Soviet bloc nations, the USSR and the satellite countries in the old Warsaw Pact, sure looked as though there were some men in drag competing in women’s sports. They were cheating, no surprise during the Cold War and the Soviets’ attempts to persuade the civilized world that Communism was somehow superior.

Track-and-field officials framed this as an unmitigated triumph, proof that DNA testing had weeded out an athlete who was “not truly female.” But even at the time, some onlookers could see that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was going down a dark road of gender policing, weeding out women who had always understood themselves as female based on some arbitrary biological marker. The head of the Polish Olympic Committee, perhaps radicalized by the dismissal of one of his top athletes, called DNA testing a “form of discrimination” as well as something of a gender delusion: How could the IOC hope to split up athletes into biological binaries when “there are no generally accepted criteria of sex for woman athletes”? Sex, after all, is a spectrum.

These critiques did not stop the IOC from expanding its testing requirements. From 1968 on, all women athletes had to sit for chromosome exams ahead of the Olympics. Only at the end of the 1990s, when the chorus of critical voices became unavoidable, did the IOC ditch this sex testing regime.

Translation: when Communism in the USSR fell and their attempts at cheating ended, genetic testing to see if women were actually women was no longer needed. But author Michael Waters revealed his point of argument when he wrote, “Sex, after all, is a spectrum.”

No, it isn’t. Sex falls into two major categories, males and females, and one minor one, those unfortunate individuals who suffer from genetic or developmental defects which make them “intersex.” Our #woke friends on the far-left sometimes claim that gender is a spectrum, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone claim that sex is. Even the World Health Organization, which buys into the gender spectrum idea, differentiates it from sex:

Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs. Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.

It would seem that Mr Waters is attempting to move the goalposts to make his argument!

Sadly, the article falls behind the paywall just a bit after the parts I’ve already quoted, but, not to worry, I had first found it in my morning feeds from another source, which has the entire article here.

After a couple of paragraphs whining about the tests, Mr Waters continued:

Just as it did in 1968, the IOC is insisting that the new regime is about preventing men from breaching the barriers of women’s sports, saying that “it is absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.” And, just as was true all those decades ago, this excuse doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Instead, the IOC is playing a linguistic jiu-jitsu with us, lumping intersex and trans women into the categories of “biological males,” even though they are not men and do not have the same athletic advantages as men.

We have previously noted how Will Thomas, a very much middle-of-the-pack male swimmer, vaulted to the top of the ranking after he decided he was really a woman and started calling himself “Lia.” We pointed out how, in the Zippy Invitational he was not only utterly destroying the real women in the pool, but his times were in the middle of the pack for the male swimmers. We noted how the last place male swimmer in the 500-yard freestyle had a time 7.21 seconds faster than the first real female finisher in that race.

But, don’t take my word for it: Swimming World magazine ran the numbers in an article entitled “A Look At the Numbers and Times: No Denying the Advantages of Lia Thomas.”

Clearly, this new policy has little to do with science or fairness—and everything to do with the metastasizing right-wing panic against trans women. Instead of dealing with the occasionally messy work of including gender-diverse athletes in a binary sports infrastructure, the IOC seems to have decided that it’s more convenient simply not to try. That the global right has made trans women athletes into a fixation, a proxy for their much wider-ranging campaign to disenfranchise trans people, has proven to be a convenient cover for a return to the 20th century. It’s also only the latest example of the regressive gender politics that have defined the Olympics for their entire history.

Ahhh, it’s not really science but Mr Waters’ view of fairness, fairness for “trans women” rather than fairness to real women, which is his bugaboo, and what he calls “right-wing panic.”

Michael Waters, from his website.

Sports does not really care about sensible conservative or whacko leftist politics; sports simply measures, by various means, strength, speed, quickness, and other physical metrics. The Olympics motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter”, which is Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”, and there is absolutely no denying that, overall, males are faster, can jump higher, and are stronger than females. Through rigorous training, some women will be able to run faster, jump higher, and be stronger than most men, but when it comes to athletic competition the subject is not the males in the middle, but the top women’s performances versus the top men’s performances. As Mr Thomas so well proved, a mid-level male collegiate swimmer is going to outperform a top-level female swimmer. A simple look at the men’s records versus women’s records in track and field demonstrates the physical advantages men have.

The real panic is among our good friends on the left, who are adamant that men and women are equal. That can certainly be true under the law, and in some areas, we are seeing women’s achievements in things such as medical school admissions and collegiate admissions in general outpacing those of men. The top surgeons are heavily men, but as the surge of women in medical schools persists, the time and experience of women in medicine might change just who are at the top surgeons.

But physically? Sorry, Mr Waters, but biology will not be mocked. Not only are males, in general, taller, larger, and stronger than females, the structural differences between the hips of males, optimized for strength and speed in running, versus the hips of women, which have to have larger internal openings to permit babies to pass through, lead to real differences, differences which make a difference when it comes to sports and many other physical activities. The last player on the Washington Wizards team would absolutely dominate in the WNBA. 5’7″ “Spud” Webb once won the NBA dunk contest; very few WNBA players can dunk the ball.

Sexual dimorphism is a real thing, and it’s not subject to politics. Mr Waters actually knows this, but chooses to ignore it over politics. Girls really can’t be boys, and boys really can’t be girls, no matter how much a few mentally ill people think they can.

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.
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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! I'm sure that he only crossed the border to build a better life for himself!

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Lexington Herald-Leader, now under the leadership of Executive Editor Jeremy Chisenhall, chose not, in two separate stories, to publish the mug shot of Jorge Luis Martinez Ulloa, 31, charged with:

  • one count of kidnapping a minor;
  • two counts of first-degree rape of a victim younger than 12;
  • two counts of first-degree sodomy of a victim younger than 12; and
  • two counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a victim younger than 12.

Fortunately, the Department of Homeland Security has no qualms about publishing photos of illegal immigrants apprehended for serious crimes!

Man accused of kidnapping, sexually abusing minor in Lexington has ICE detainer

By Christopher Leach | Monday, March 30, 2026 | 3:45 PM EDT

Court documents indicate Martinez Ulloa is not a U.S. citizen and was born in Mexico. No other information about his immigration status was available.

Perhaps reporter Christopher Leach didn’t have more information about Mr Martinez Ulloa’s immigration status, but Homeland Security’s tweet stated that he had entered the US at least four times during the Obama and Biden Administrations, and a fifth time at an unknown date.

Lexington police said they were dispatched to the 1300 block of Davenport Drive, in the Cardinal Valley neighborhood, for a juvenile assault victim. Martinez Ulloa was arrested and booked into the Fayette County Detention Center.

Davenport Drive, spelled Devenport on Google Maps, is a neighborhood of mixed single-family homes and smaller apartment buildings. Parts of the Cardinal Valley neighborhood are also known, colloquially, as Little Mexico.

Court documents say Martinez Ulloa grabbed the victim by her arm and neck, trapped her inside his apartment and raped her. The girl was a stranger to Martinez Ulloa and told officials the only way out of his apartment was through a window.

The victim was sent to a local hospital for treatment, police said.

Martinez Ulloa was arraigned in Fayette District Court Monday afternoon. He appeared virtually from the jail. Fayette District Judge Melissa Murphy left Martinez Ulloa’s bond unchanged at $100,000. A preliminary hearing in his case has been scheduled for April 7.

Mr Martinez Ulloa has not been convicted of anything, but it appears than simply being previously deported means nothing to him other than the annoyance of taking another trip north of the border.

Under KRS §510.040, the first degree rape of a child under 12 is a Class A felony, which, under KRS §532.020 carries a sentence of at least twenty and not more than fifty years, or possibly life in prison. Under KRS §510.070, the first degree sodomy of a child under 12 is a Class A felony as well.

If Mr Martinez is guilty of the crimes of which he has been accused, he should spend the rest of his miserable life in the worst prison the Commonwealth has. If the evidence against him is solid, his attorney, the Department of Public Advocacy, will undoubtedly seek some sort of lenient plea bargain; this must be rejected! If he is guilty, he should never see the light of day again as a free man.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!

Color me shocked that The Philadelphia Inquirer published the photo of an accused criminal. Technically, it isn’t a mugshot, so perhaps it’s allowed under a very narror interpretation of the newspaper’s stated mugshot policy. but I couldn’t find the newspaper’s Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — blurb, so I screen captured the image from the article itself. Since the photo caption states it was from a New Jersey state Supreme Court video, there isn’t a copyright issue.

Former South Jersey teacher charged with sexual assault began grooming student when he was 12, prosecutor alleges

Ashley Fisler was charged last week with sexually assaulting a former student at Orchard Valley Middle School in Washington Township.

by Melanie Burney | April Fool’s Day, 2026 | 3:33 PM EDT

A former Washington Township middle school teacher began grooming a student for a sexual relationship when he was 12 and abused him for years, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

The allegations against Ashley Fisler, who was charged last week with sexually assaulting a former student at Orchard Valley Middle School, were detailed during a detention hearing to determine whether she should be released pending trial. Superior Court Judge William Ziegler said he would issue a decision Thursday.

Note that Miss Fisler has been charged but not yet convicted. The newspaper stated that “Pre-conviction mugshots are inherently unfair, depicting suspects as criminals before guilt or innocence has been established.”

Fisler, who is no longer working as a teacher, is charged with six counts of sexual assault of a minor and one count each of endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct of a public servant.

“This was more than just six isolated acts of sex abuse against a minor,” said Kylie Finley, an assistant Gloucester County prosecutor. “This was a pattern of six years of grooming, manipulation, and abuse by this defendant as a middle school teacher against one of her active and former students.”

Miss Fisler, now 36, left the school system in 2023.

Teachers are all college educated, with at least a bachelor’s degree, and are normally pressured to be working toward their master’s as well. They really can’t be unaware of the scandal by Mary Kay Letourneau, and the fact that Mrs Letourneau spent years behind bars for it. Public schools have orientation lessons for all teachers, and inappropriate relationships are surely discussed. The news of Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in 2019 was national news, and Miss Fisler couldn’t have missed it. You just can’t expect this s(tuff) to stay hidden forever.

Well, if the allegations are true, she’s in a heap o’ trouble.

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Pennsylvania just became a little less safe

Well, of course.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat of course, opposes capital punishment, as do I, but the Governor of the Keystone State does not have arbitrary power to issue pardons or sentence commutations on his own. The most Mr Shapiro could do, as his predecessor Tom Wolf did before him, was to decline to sign any death warrants. But now, the Governor is happy that the state Supreme Court held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for second-degree murder violate the state constitution.

We have previously noted this case.

Under Title 18§2502(b), murder of the second degree is a criminal homicide which is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or accomplice in the perpetration of a felony. That’s pretty simple: the murderer is already committing a crime, so even if he wasn’t necessarily planning on killing someone, he was already on the scene, already planning on committing a crime, and prepared to kill if he thought it necessary.

Whether you’re the guy who fires the fatal shot or not, you’re still a really bad guy, and there’s no good reason for you to ever be put back out on the streets with decent people again.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story on the case can be found here. The opinion of the court can be found here. From the newspaper:

One of the lead lawyers in the case, Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, said the decision “will have profound ramifications” for the state’s criminal justice system, and that it “represents the culmination of decades of movement-building by incarcerated people and their families and communities.”

Ben Grote, huh? How unserious is Mr Grote? He couldn’t even be bothered to clean up his beta male beard before going before the state Supreme Court. But, alas! he won his case.

Image from main page of Abolitionist Law Center website, screencaptured on October 9, 2024.

Mr Grote works for the Abolitionist Law Center, which we have previously mentioned. What is not mentioned is that the Abolitionist Law Center is opposed to incarceration for anything, opposes all prison sentences, and would, if they could, free every murderer, every rapist, every drug dealer, and every assailant locked up in Pennsylvania’s prisons.

We challenge every point on the criminal punishment conveyor belt including policing, courts, jails and prisons, and various forms of legal supervision, as well as other aspects of the carceral machine.

Boldface in the original.

I might have ignored this story, especially since I was eating the very delicious lamb chops my wife made for supper, were it not for a very lovely lady on Twitter. Miss Long has in her Twitter bio a background illustration saying:

Roses are red,
No lives are blue,
Defund the Police,
Abolish ICE too.

Miss Long posted a series on Twitter, beginning here, praising the Abolitionist Law Center for its work. We already know that the Abolitionist Law Center wants to abolish prisons completely, to give dangerous predators some cockamamie “restorative justice” bovine feces.

Some people are beyond redemption, some people are simply evil and can never be trusted in society. Miss Long and the Abolitionist Law Center would see the gates of prisons thrown open and deranged killers like Wesley Cook let back out on the streets. They don’t even like, as noted above, “legal supervision,” which means probation and probation officers. Miss Long wants to see criminal illegal immigrants, some guilty of murder and rape, left free to terrorize innocent people.

I assume that Miss Long and the others believe that people are just innately good, and if the people we now see as bad guys are just left alone and shown sweetness and light, they’ll all be great people and credits to their communities.

Well, that’s just plain bovine feces. Some people simply need to be removed from society, for society to remain safe and secure for the people who are actually good citizens. I can’t even understand how some people can think differently.

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The rise of anti-Semitism by recent Catholic converts

It has been said that Catholic converts are among the most zealous of all. And so it is with Carrie Prejean Boller, or, as I prefer to call her, Carrie Prejean Hez-Boller, because she has been extremely vocal in her support of the ‘Palestinians’ and their war against Israel.

On March 23, she tweeted:

Israel is a terrorist state committing an absolute death camp in Gaza, and Lebanon. This evil regime must be called out. Zionists want you to think these are “God’s chosen people” causing mass murder of innocent life, all while justifying it.

Absolute blasphemy!

These are God’s enemies.

This is the woman who lost her crown as Miss California over a leaked masturbation tape of herself she sent to her then-boyfriend when she was 17 — something which was technically dissemination of child pornography — and now she is whining that she lost a seat on a ‘religious liberty commission’ due to her continual anti-Semitic remarks.

How, I have to ask, can she be entrusted with any position on ‘religious liberty’ when she calls the Jews of Israel “God’s enemies”?

Now she’s trying to pick a fight with two Catholic bishops, Timothy Cardinal Dolan and Robert Barron which led Richard Hanania to tweet, “This woman seems to think the Catholic Church is some kind of global Walmart where you can just keep demanding to see the manager and yell at him for not being antisemitic enough.” 🙂

It turns out that I am not the only one to notice this:

The Catholic Convert Boom Is Real But A Troubling Pattern Is Emerging

Some new Catholic voices are using the faith for something else entirely.

By Ryan Girdusky • Tuesday, March 24, 2026 • DailyWire.com

As we approach the holiest day of the year for the Catholic Church, tens of millions will prepare to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans across the country are preparing to join the faith I have belonged to since birth.

Converts to the faith have played a crucial role over the last two millennia, from St. Paul’s journey to Damascus, to St. Augustine’s departure from a life of debauchery that would make Hugh Hefner blush, to G.K. Chesterton, whose writings still speak to millions nearly a century later, to St. Elizabeth Seton, the first American-born saint.

I firmly believe the Catholic Church is the greatest civil institution ever created. Since its founding, the Church has clothed the naked, educated the young, fed the hungry, tended to the sick, and through divine mercy provided the path to salvation for billions of people.

During the darkest times in human history, the Catholic Church was the only institution that separated the West from barbarism. The very fabric of Western civilization is tied to the history of the Church.

This is absolutely true! Catholicism spurred Western civilization, but Catholicism specifically, and Christianity in general, are dependent upon Western civilization for survival. Christianity is fractured these days, and has been since the rise in Protestantism. Religious tolerance did not come easily with the Reformation, with King Henry VIII persecuting Catholics, and his successor and elder daughter, Queen Mary I, turning right around and persecuting Protestants. Queen Elizabeth I was famously Protestant, but while she was no friend of the Catholics, she didn’t take working against Catholicism to nearly the extent of her father. Tolerance for various Christian denominations grew, albeit slowly. As part of the restoration of the monarchy, King Charles II promised religious tolerance, meant to be between Anglicans and Presbyterians, but it was a policy that included Catholics.

While it’s easy for me to wax poetic about a church I have repeatedly fallen in love with over the years — even with all of its shortcomings — other high-profile converts appear to be using their newfound membership in the Catholic faith as nothing more than a political prop.

It is true, the vast majority of new converts join for all the right reasons. But a small, vocal cadre of political influencers are using their Catholicism to build social media platforms, feigning purity as an E-girl or, even worse, promoting antisemitism. It is people doing the latter who pose the most credible threat to the integrity of all Catholics and create a widespread erroneous belief that Catholicism has an issue with Jews.

More specifically, people like Mrs Boller and Candace Owens Farmer, someone initially conservative and sensible, who then fell into anti-Semitism, and then went full bananas into conspiracy theories — I wonder if she’s fallen into 9/11 Trutherism yet? — are convinced that the Jooooos run the world

Mira Fox wrote:

“As a Catholic, I don’t agree that the new, modern state of Israel has any biblical prophecy meaning at all,” (Mrs Boller) said in the hearing. Later, she doubled down on X. “I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy,” she wrote.

What she was referring to was the idea of Christian Zionism — the theological belief among some Christians that the Bible supports the existence of the modern state of Israel. Some forms of Christian Zionism support the Jewish state as a necessary, prophesied precursor to Jesus’ return; all Jews must return to Israel before the end of days. Others may simply support Israel because they believe it shares their “Judeo-Christian” biblical foundations. But whatever the reasons, there has historically been widespread political support for Israel among American Christians. And that support has been core to Israel’s relationship with the U.S.

Zionism.

Theodor Herzl was a Hungarian Jewish journalist and lawyer who was the father of modern political Zionism, with his book Der Judenstaat. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine, which, in the late 19th century was part of the Ottoman Empire, in an effort to form a Jewish state.

Zionism exists because we good Christians forced it on the Jews.

While European Jews might have supported Theodor Herzl’s ideas, few of them actually chose to emigrate to the Holy Land. The ending phrase of the traditional Passover seder, “next year in Jerusalem,” expressed a hope, but it wasn’t one that the Jewish diaspora in Europe took seriously enough to make aliyah — emigrate to Israel — themselves. But then the good Christians in Germany voted for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Even before the outbreak of war in Europe, those same good Germans went along with the despoilation of the Jews. Little by little, their property was confiscated, their businesses driven out, their jobs taken away.

After the war in Europe started, and the Third Reich overran much of Europe, our good Christian ancestors of just two generations ago willingly helped the Nazis find those Jews who were in hiding, in Germany and the occupied countries, helping to load them in the boxcars and be shipped off to a (supposedly) unknown but nevertheless dreaded fate.

Remember: Cuba, the United States, and Canada all denied entry to the MS St Louis, a ship with over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis in 1939, just before the war began. The surviving Jews in 1945 could count on no more help from the Western Hemisphere than they could from Europe. Many private colleges in the United States imposed Jewish quotas, because ‘too many’ Jews were winning admissions without them.

After the war ended, the surviving Jews chose to make aliyah because there was no place else for them to go! Their homes and property were destroyed and gone, and their surviving old neighbors were frequently the same people who identified them to the Gestapo. The good Christians of Europe had proven to the Jews, once again, that they could not count on their Christian neighbors to help and protect them; the Jews could count only on themselves.

Then, as they tried to make their way to the Holy Land, the British, who were siding with the Arabs because the Arabs had oil, put many of them in ‘displaced persons’ camps, and tried their best to keep the surviving Jews out of the Holy land.

What other conclusion can be drawn? The surviving Jews could count on no one but themselves, and that turned Theodor Herzl’s Zionist dreams into hard-nosed reality. We good Christians created the Zionism of the post-war years, and which continues today!

Like so many other people, now 81 years after World War II, I’ve always found it difficult to understand how the Nazis were able to get so many good and decent Europeans to go along with their round-up of the Jews. I could see how people submitted at the point of a gun, but there were so many Europeans who helped voluntarily, under no compulsion other than their own decisions.

But now? Now I can see it, I can understand it. We have good Americans, citizens of this country, which was a major contributor to winning World War II against both Germany and Japan in part by bombing them back to the Stone Age, whining about Israel’s destruction in Gaza while never mentioning that Hamas and their supporters in Gaza started the war.

I can also understand how some people, including a lot of sensible conservatives, didn’t like or want the United States bombing attack against Iran. I didn’t like it either, though I am certainly happy that the Islamist leadership have mostly been sent to their 72 bacha bazi boys. I want to see us out of that war as soon as possible, and wouldn’t support any ground troops being used there for anything other than the purpose of seizing all of Iran’s fissile material and destroying all of their nuclear armament equipment.

But this ridiculous anti-Semitism, this hatred of Jews and Israel, our easternmost outpost of Western civilization, and our bulwark against the hordes of seventh-century Islamist barbarism, is the ultimate in stupidity. We can argue about the wisdom of the American involvement in attacking Iran, but the notion that we’re somehow controlled by the Jooooos and puppets of Israel is ridiculous and ignorant and just plain stupid.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Hold them accountable

One would have thought that Abdimahat Bille Mohamed would have been in a heap o’ trouble when he was arrested on charges of having raped a child and sexually assaulted another woman in Hennepin County, Minnesota, but if one would have thought that, one would have been wrong. From Minnesota Public Radio, on December 9, 2025:

Mohamed pleaded guilty in April to state charges of criminal sexual conduct for the rape of the child victim and the sexual assault of another woman in 2024, but he avoided prison as part of a plea deal with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. County prosecutors also pledged not to prosecute him for a 2018 rape in which he was suspected.

Emphasis mine.

What? Prosecutors gave him a sweetheart plea deal which allowed him to escape prosecution for the rape of a minor? How the Hell does that work?

Oh, wait, I know how it works: the same source tells readers that Mr Mohamed is not an American citizen, but a foreign national “is living in the country as a legal permanent resident.” As you might guess with this being Minneapolis, he is Somali.

The local prosecutor tried to make excuses. From the Minnesota Star-Tribune:

Attorneys on both sides of the plea deal rejected the notion that Mohamed avoided prison because Minnesota’s judicial system is too willing to give violent criminals a pass.

The Justice Department comments are “a clear attempt to politicize a sexual assault prosecution to inflict further harm on our entire Somali community,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement. “Those who actually prosecute sexual assault cases every day know there are significant evidentiary hurdles to obtaining a prison sentence.”

Moriarty pointed out that her office “overcame the loss of critical witnesses to secure felony convictions against Mr. Mohamed earlier this year. Because our case was substantially weakened, we could not get the prison sentence we wanted.”

Thomas Beito, Mohamed’s attorney who negotiated the earlier plea agreement, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that “the prosecution did not give us anything out of the goodness of their hearts.” He said there were “serious problems with the credibility of the [teenage] victim.”

In the second case under the plea deal, he said, “we had a great consent defense. … We turned up a video of the act itself showing that this was consensual. That’s why [prosecutors] gave him what they did.”

Except, of course, the state had actual DNA evidence! From the United States Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs:

Minor Victim 1 was forced—at gunpoint and in fear for her life—to perform oral sex on Mohamed. He then raped her vaginally. After the group sexually assaulted the girl, they let her out of the car. Minor Victim 1 ran, hid, and called the police. The police took Minor Victim 1 to the hospital, and she consented to a sexual assault exam. On September 17, 2024, after Mohamed’s DNA was taken in connection with another sexual assault, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) laboratory matched Mohamed’s DNA to the swabs taken from Minor Victim 1’s body, excluding more than 99.99% of the general population.

“Minor Victim 1” was 15 years old when she was raped. Under Minnesota state law, the age of sexual consent is 16, but persons between the ages of 14 and 15 can consent to sex with someone not more than 24 months older, the old “Romeo and Juliet” exception which exists because people do not want to send high school juniors to prison for f(ornicating) with their sophomore girlfriends. Mr Mohamed, now 28, would have been 19 in 2017, four years older than his victim, so Mr Beito’s claim that there had been consent in the latter case would not have held water in the rape of a minor girl.

Miss Moriarty? She’s openly queer and was the county’s chief public defender before becoming prosecutor. She has a soft spot in her heart for criminals, refusing to try as adults two 15 and 17 year old brothers guilty of murder, saying “Our goal is to treat kids like kids,” and “We know that kids that age are impressionable, they are impulsive, they’re easily manipulated and subjected to peer pressure.”

Now the federal Department of Justice has gotten involved.

In September 2025, Mohamed committed another kidnapping and rape. On September 15, 2025, Mohamed picked up an adult woman (Victim 5) in Mankato, Minnesota. Victim 5 met Mohamed that night and Mohamed was supposed to take Victim 5 to get food and then bring her back home. Instead, after Victim 5 was in Mohamed’s car, he kidnapped her. After Victim 5 asked Mohamed to bring her home, Mohamed kept driving and said, “you are not going home.” Mohamed drove Victim 5 approximately 70 miles to a hotel in Bloomington, where he kept her for nearly a week. When Victim 5 tried to leave on the first day, Mohamed grabbed her by the hair, slapped her face, and told her she could not leave. Mohamed raped Victim 5 twice. Mohamed choked Victim 5 while he raped her. Victim 5 was able to text her sister, that “I think I’m getting kidnapped” and needed help, but Mohamed took her phone away. Victim 5’s sister contacted the police, who worked to find Victim 5. On September 21, 2025, Victim 5 jumped out of Mohamed’s car and told a nearby man, “Can you help me? I am being kidnapped.” The man called 911 and police responded to the scene. Police took Victim 5 to the hospital, where she consented to a sexual assault exam. The DNA profile obtained from Victim 5 matched to Mohamed’s known sample.

But Miss Moriarty wanted to treat Mr Mohamed leniently, to not lock him in a cage, and possibly see him shipped back to his [insert slang term for feces here]hole country. This is what happens when leftists try to shield criminals from the consequences of their crimes: innocent people get punished instead as those criminals stay out on the streets committing even more crimes. According to the New York Post, the distinguished Mr Mohamed committed his last (known) rape after the state had already released him in his sweetheart deals. Whoever the unnamed rape victim was, she received the punishment, she paid the penalty for Mr Mohamed’s previous crimes.

I wonder how we can hold Miss Moriarty accountable, because she is just as responsible for the ‘extra’ rapes Mr Mohamed committed as he is. She could have at least tried to have him locked up, but didn’t.

As for the local media cited, the Star-Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio, they had long stories, but neither of them noted that the state, and now the federal government had the DNA evidence, irrefutable evidence, concerning Mr Mohamed’s crimes. I wonder why that is.

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Electric heat is fine, as far as it goes, but I always want a backup

That rascally rodent, Punxsutawney Phil projected six more weeks of winter, something which should have expired on Monday, but Tuesday sure was cold as well. We know that the groundhog’s projections are scientific, because the Weather Channel sends very scientifically-minded Meteorologist Jen Carfagno to cover it.

Alas! Not only did we not get an early spring, but winter in the eastern half of the United States was colder than usual for much of the season, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Erin McCarthy researched how much it was costing Philly-area residents to heat their homes.

Philly-area residents share how much they paid to keep warm this winter

As the region experienced one of its coldest winters, see how much it cost to heat a Chester County farmhouse, a Fairmount condo with electric, an Ardmore twin, and more with different fuel sources.

by Erin McCarthy | Wednesday, 18 March 2026 | 5:01 AM EDT

If you’re getting burned by high heating bills this winter, you’re in good, and equally stressed, company.

U.S. households are expected to pay more than $1,000 on average to heat their homes this winter, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association’s projections, which were updated last month. That’s about $100 more than households paid last year, according to the association, which advocates for federal funding for low-income ratepayers.

Consumers are paying more whether they heat their homes with electricity, natural gas, or heating oil. Residential propane costs are on par with last year.

And customers usually pay more in freezing temperatures, when more energy is required to keep their homes comfortable.

Miss McCarthy gave us several examples, and, as expected, it cost more to stay warm, even though a couple of the respondents said that they kept their thermostats at 65º Fahrenheit.

I confess: our thermostat was set at 72º F!

The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source.

As I have mentioned previously, our fixer-upper house was all-electric when we moved in, in July of 2017, and that meant our heat was entirely dependent upon our heat pump-based HVAC system. We had some very cold weather in January of 2018, and the heat pump couldn’t quite keep up. During our remodel in 2018, we added propane, because my wife wanted a gas range, and added not only that range, but a propane water heater and fireplace.

During the bitterly cold days, we supplemented the HVAC system with the fireplace. On Sunday, January 25, the electricity went out, though fortunately for only three hours. The propane fireplace works without electricity, so we stayed nice and warm, on a day which was right around freezing.

Other customers were not so lucky, and hundreds were without electricity for a few days, as the weather dumped two inches of snow, followed by 1½ inches of rain, and temperatures plummeting into the teens the following day. Last December 29th, we lost power for 6½ hours.

Our good fortune continued as we did not lose electricity as a major cold front, with some serious winds, came through on Monday of this week, but a lot of Jackson Energy Cooperative’s customers did. That simply drives home the need for an alternative heat source, something the global warming climate change warriors do not want you to have; they want total electric homes, to save Mother Gaia.

I ordered another propane delivery on Tuesday, as the tank got down to 30% of capacity; our previous delivery was on December 15, 2025, so I can’t complain. When the delivery came, it cost me $336.00, not too terrible for propane usage through winter. Once I turn off the propane to the fireplace, a full tank of propane will last us until next winter!

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Were I to write this the way my good friend Robert Stacy McCain would, I’d start by saying, “Say hello to Israel Flores Ortiz, and while you’re at it, say goodbye to him as well,” but, alas! if the Democrats in northern Virginia have their way, he’ll be back among decent people fairly soon. Young Mr Ortiz, just shy of his 19th birthday, is a junior at Fairfax High School who allegedly thinks it’s cool to sneak up behind the girls in his school and grope between their legs, but, just a few years removed from #MeToo, it seems that the Democrats don’t want this illegal immigrant shipped back to his native El Salvador, and would rather see him out on the streets, taking his particular kink to whatever other levels it goes.

From the New York Post:

‘Schoolboy’ charged with groping nine 11th grade classmates is exposed as adult illegal migrant released under Biden

By Adam Silverstein | Saturday, March 14, 2026 | 5:46 AM EDT

An 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador allegedly groped 12 female classmates at a Virginia high school — and was allowed into the US under the Biden administration.

Israel Flores Ortiz, who is almost 19 but a junior at Fairfax High School, has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery after he was accused of repeatedly creeping up behind the students in crowded hallways and grabbing them between the legs.

Ortiz, who entered the country illegally in 2024, was released under a federal government policy during the Biden administration, according to local outlet 7News.

I can understand how some of our good friends on the left have tremendous sympathy for the illegal immigrants who just came here for a better life, and have been working hard in our economy, trying to become good members of their communities. But surely such sympathies would not extend to someone who thinks he can molest teenaged girls, right?

Meanwhile, a Fairfax County judge denied Ortiz bail this week — even though prosecutors did not oppose his release — after reviewing surveillance video and determining the proposed conditions did not adequately protect the public.

ICE lodged a detainer seeking custody of Ortiz for deportation, but the agency said the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office failed to honor it.

“Unfortunately, sanctuary politicians like Gov. (Abigail) Spanberger are outlawing cooperation with ICE and choosing to RELEASE criminal illegal aliens from their jails back onto their communities to create more American victims,” an ICE spokesperson said.

“We are calling on Fairfax County to honor our detainer to ensure this violent criminal is removed from our country so he can never claim another victim again.”

Ortiz’s charges — misdemeanor assault and battery, not sexual assault — carry a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

I omitted much of the middle of the Post article, which details how there had been complaints about young Mr Ortiz for months, and how the school district tried to “diminish” what had happened. The article is not behind a paywall, so you can read it freely if you wish.

When I lived in Virginia, the Old Dominion was a reliably Republican state in presidential elections, but northern Virginia has seen such growth in the population of federal government employees that the Democratic presidential candidates can reliably count on Virginia’s electoral votes. Abigail Spanberger campaigned for Governor as a more moderate Democrat last year, but went hard left once she won.

Fairfax County borders Loudoun County, about which we have written several times in the past. Loudoun County was where the public schools protected a boy who frequently dressed in skirts who raped one girl in the girls’ bathroom, quietly transferred him to another school, where he did the same thing. The story only came to public knowledge when the victim’s father was demanding answers from the school board, and then dragged to the floor and arrested. It was all a big right-wing myth, the credentialed media told us:

The media’s defense of transgenderism fell apart quickly when the rapist was found guilty.

And now, here they go again, defending an (alleged) sexual assailant, throwing women and teenaged  girls under the Woke Bus, all to defend criminals, criminals! because it somehow goes against conservative policies, opposition to ‘transgenderism’ then and the enforcement of our immigration laws now. Thankfully, young Mr Ortiz hasn’t gone as far as rape, but who can know to what crimes he will graduate if he isn’t seriously punished for what he’s done and is then released back into unsuspecting communities?

Are the Democrats so adamantly opposed to President Trump that they’d rather let a predator loose than eventually deport a criminal?

I’ve reused my frequent title, “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!” — this is the 51st time I’ve used it — for this article, but the fact is that the left do not want to see young Mr Ortiz in too much trouble, all because they hate Donald Trump so much. And if Mr Ortiz gets a slap on the wrist, and then released, what will they say if his sexual fetishes and assaults become more serious?