‘Sanctuary’ policies could, and should, send those who obstruct justice to jail.

We do not normally use photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer, for copyright reasons, but this one is too important. For a newspaper which editorially supports significant immigration, maybe a picture of demonstrators in support of illegal immigrants might have thought harder about an image with three signs in Spanish.

Philly schools’ immigrant student population is booming. Advocates want the district to recommit to ‘sanctuary schools.’

The population of English learners in the Philadelphia School District is on the rise. Superintendent Watlington says he’s committed to ensuring students feel safe.

by Kristen A Graham | Monday, December 16, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

At Franklin Learning Center, Michelle Ferguson’s students, all new arrivals to the U.S., are worried.

With President-elect Donald Trump promising stricter immigration laws and mass detention and deportation of immigrants, many students at the Philadelphia School District high school that draws English learners from around the city have shared their fears with Ferguson and other staff. Continue reading

Journolism: Even now, the credentialed media try to blame their laziness on Joe Biden’s staffers

At 2:55 PM EST on December 17th, I asked the question to which The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal admitted the answer on the 19th: “Why didn’t the press play its ‘adversarial role’ when it came to Joe Biden?

How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge

Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.

Continue reading

I check Bluesky so you don’t have to

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain has frequently written, “I watch CNN” or sometimes MSNBC, “so you don’t have to. Well, I went ahead and checked out Bluesky, the liberal version of Twitter, so that you don’t have to.

As we reported on December 3rd, Bluesky suspended the account of Libs of TikTok. Given that Chaya Raichik’s modus vivendi is to search out idiocy from leftists on social media and then publish it more widely, to mock the left, it seems that Bluesky just can’t handle the truth. No one, after all, accuses Miss Raichik of falsifying what she posts.

And now she’s tweeted out this one:

BlueSky Sees Surge in New Users and Child Sexual Abuse Material

Continue reading

Democrisy: the left who concealed everything about Joe Biden’s condition, are terribly worried over Donald Trump’s bruised hand

We noted, just yesterday, how the credentialed media, which the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer told us:

(President) Trump and his allies fail to understand the adversarial role the press plays in a healthy democracy.

Of course, that supposedly-adversarial press failed to tell us that President Joe Biden was in serious physical and mental decline during his term in office, failed to tell us until it was revealed to all in that disastrous-for-him debate on June 27th, and the in-the-bag-for-the-Democrats media couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.

But now? We’re getting the latest meme from the Democrats, telling us our 45th and soon to be 47th President is sick, or injured, or something, from what appears to be a bruise on the back of one of his hands. To me, it looks like bruising from an IV stick, but I’m not a doctor or nurse. It also looks like President Trump can actually walk, unaided, an ability which is increasingly eluding our 46th President. Continue reading

Is Bill Kristol running our foreign policy?

There was a no-win question asked on the fourth-grade playground at Mt Sterling Elementary School when I attended, back in the days of quill pens and inkwells: If you were up to your neck in [insert vulgar term for feces here], and someone threw a bucket of [insert slang term for urine here] at your head, would you duck? That’s of what President Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy move reminds me:

US asks Israel to approve military aid to Palestinian security forces

By Jewish News Syndicate | Boston Tea Party Day, December 16, 2024 | 2:55 PM EST

The Biden administration has privately asked Israel to approve an urgent request for U.S. military aid to Palestinian Authority forces, Palestinian, American, and Israeli officials told Axios on Sunday night. Continue reading

President Trump needs to roll back the ATF’s regulations over the last four years

The old saw is that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency, but now New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush tells us that former and future President Trump might not nominate anyone to head it. The article headline, “A.T.F. Braces for a Likely Rollback of Its Gun-Control Efforts,” certainly caught my eye:

A.T.F. Braces for a Likely Rollback of Its Gun-Control Efforts

President-elect Donald J. Trump is almost certain to choose a gun-rights advocate as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or to simply leave the job vacant.

by Glenn Thrush | Saturday, December 14, 2024 | 1:25 PM EST

Many federal agencies are bracing for the Trump era — but few are likely to face the powerful backlash that awaits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which pursued an aggressive gun control agenda under President Biden. Continue reading

The Democrats say we need more affordable housing, but look what has happened when they were in charge of it As Ned Stark would say, "Winter is coming."

The First Street Journal reported, on December 5th, just how well the Democrats, whose current cause de jour is “affordable housing,” have done when they’ve actually been in charge of housing. We noted a story and an Editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer[1]Sadly, both stories are now behind a “subscribers Only” paywall, so if you aren’t a subscriber, you’ll just have to take my word for it. showing how a liberally-oriented “affordable housing” landlord ignored conditions in a dilapidate apartment, and the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections, noting in the Editorial that:

(Essie) Campbell filed several complaints, but no city inspectors entered her home or issued violations for the appalling conditions inside.

Well, though no one has died due to it, it’s happening again!

The Embassy Apartments, 2100 Walnut Street. Photo via Google Maps.

Some tenants in a Walnut Street apartment building say they haven’t had heat this winter

Some tenants of the 15-story Embassy Apartments say the temperatures in their units were lower than legally allowable.

by Nate File | Thursday, December 12, 2024 | 5:56 AM EST

For some people, being carried in the arms of firefighters is a kind of fantasy.

But for 83-year-old Deborah Diamond, it was misery. On Friday evening, she and the other residents of Embassy Apartments at 2100 Walnut St. were told by their building’s management to evacuate because the city deemed it unsafe after a daylong power outage had disabled the fire alarm system. Firefighters strapped Diamond, who is on hospice care, to a chair and carried her down nine flights of stairs.

“This building is in tremendous disrepair,” she said of the 15-story property built in 1900.

This building isn’t some dump in North Philly, but is located between Rittenhouse and Logan Squares. In my Google Streetscape search, I noticed two very nice nearby townhouses, one with an historic preservation plaque on it, with “Harris/Walz” signs in the windows. 🙂

Even before the outage, some residents said their apartments had not received heat this winter, or weak heating at best. Two residents said they measured temperatures inside their apartments that were far below legal temperatures.

There’s more at the link. The newspaper’s story does not say that there had been previous complaints to L&I which were ignored, but here we have a 15-story apartment building, in a city which has been run by the Democrats since the latter days of Harry Truman’s presidency, just a couple of weeks shy of 73 years ago, and there are stories like this.

More will crop up as the depths of winter hit the City of Brotherly Love, and we hear of fires caused by electric space heaters, and toxic fumes from desperate people using kerosene heaters; this happens every winter.

According to a 2021 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, roughly 30% of the city’s rental units lack a rental license entirely, and only 7% of the city’s rental units are inspected during a given year. This presents a troubling lack of clarity on how many households are renting units that fail to meet basic habitation standards.

There’s no surprise in this. Philly is both one of our oldest cities, so the existing housing stock is relatively old, and our nation’s poorest big city. But that also tells us that the Democrats and their policies for “affordable housing” are just words, not matched by deeds.

References

References
1 Sadly, both stories are now behind a “subscribers Only” paywall, so if you aren’t a subscriber, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I’ll bet that Will Bunch and Taylor Lorenz are glad now that Joe Biden’s attempt to create a Ministry of Truth failed

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far left columnist Will Bunch skeeted an editorial by the UK’s left-wing The Guardian about protecting journolists, oops, sorry, journalists.

The Guardian view on Trump’s threat to the media: time to pass the Press Act

Bipartisan legislation offers historic protections for journalists, banning secret surveillance and ensuring source confidentiality

Tuesday, December 10, 2024 | 1:40 OM EST

Fears of a press crackdown under Donald Trump’s second term deepened with his nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director – given his calls for retribution against journalists. Yet a rare chance to protect press freedom has emerged. The bipartisan Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (Press) Act, the strongest press freedom legislation in US history, is on the brink of a vote. While President-elect Trump has urged Republicans to block it, the Senate could still deliver it to Joe Biden before the lame-duck session ends in January. Continue reading

Loony Luigi is only the most visible part of a serious problem.

In an article on the American Free News Network, Mike Thiac notes the compassion and empathy of our good friends on the left concerning the assassination of Brian Thompson, the Chief Executive Officer of United Heaththcare. Many on the left believe that Mr THompson deserved to be murdered, because he was CEO of an evil health insurance company. The lovely but loony Taylor Lorenz told us that she felt “joy” when she heard he’d been killed, and we noted here how some on the left were celebrating.

There are already “Free Him” trends on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — and Bluesky, calling him a hero. The lovely but lunatic Taylor Lorenz celebrated the assassination, and has been drawing internet fire. Continue reading