Category Archives: Journolism

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The journolism of NBC News Can you trust anything from NBC News these days?

That’s not a typographical error in the headline! The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Though I spent two years writing for the Kentucky Kernel, I was not actually a journalism student; my degree is not in journalism. But I do know enough to recognize thoroughly biased ‘reporting’ when I see it.

So here you go: from NBC News:

Kyle Rittenhouse hospitalized following bite from venomous spider

“The communists couldn’t take me out and i’ll be damned if I let a brown recluse take me out,” said the gunman who opened fire in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 5, 2020.

By David K. Li | Thursday, May 7, 2026 | 10:42 AM EDT | Updated” 11:44 AM EDT

Kyle Rittenhouse, who gained fame for opening fire at a 2020 civil rights rally in Wisconsin, was hospitalized after a venomous spider bit him, the noted firearms enthusiast said Wednesday.

Did you catch that? In both the subtitle and the first paragraph, reporter David K Li used the description “opened fire” and “opening fire,” as though Mr Rittenhouse stood on top of a platform, put his weapon on spray and pray, and raked a (peaceful?) crowd indiscriminately, like a Philadelphia gang-banger.

Rittenhouse, 23, told his 100,000 followers on X that he fell victim to a brown recluse, posting pictures of himself in a hospital bed strapped to monitors with one close-up shot of the bite mark.

“The spider, like the commies, also thought it was a good idea to come after me while I was armed,” Rittenhouse posted. “He did not survive.”

Rittenhouse appeared to be in good spirits, joking that his only disappointment was that “I’m not Spider-Man now.”

He did not say exactly when or where the spider attack happened.

Rittenhouse’s post, predictably, drew thousands of responses — a mix of support and mockery.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was among the first and highest-profile well-wishers, telling Rittenhouse “you got this.”

“Thank you, Senator,” Rittenhouse responded Thursday.

Others came at him with body-shaming ridicule, which the shirtless, stout Rittenhouse didn’t appear to respond to.

Rittenhouse became a household name in late summer 2020 after he fatally shot two men and wounded a third during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

There’s more at the original, and though Mr Li did note that Mr Rittenhouse was tried for “killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounding paramedic Gaige Grosskreutz during the melee”, there is absolutely no mention made that Mr Rittenhouse was backing away when he was attacked by Messrs Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz. The article did note that he testified in his own defense, claimed the men were shot in self-defense, and that the jury acquitted him on all charges.

Mr Li added hyperlinks to three of his previous articles, plus a fourth, all in the paragraph above, in which he declined to note that Mr Rosenbaum had mental issues and had spent most of his adult life in prison for sexually molesting underaged boys, Mr Huber “had spent time in prison twice, first for violating probation after strangling his brother and again for kicking his sister,” same link, and Mr Grosskreutz was pointing a firearm at Mr Rittenhouse as he was shot, again, same link. The link is to an article by National Public Radio, not some evil, reich-wing source.

If Mr Li’s article was your only source of information, you might be inclined to think that yes, Mr Rittenhouse was the a perched on a platform, mowing down mostly peaceful protesters. That’s journolism, not real journalism.

Mr Li covered the trial and most of the story for NBC News, and was absolutely aware that Mr Rittenhouse was thrice attacked, in succession, by the three men, two of whom were previously convicted felons, and the third armed and pointing his weapon at the defendant at the time he was shot, but he chose not to tell his readers that. His article was not something limited by the old 750-word limit, but had the freedom of the twenty-first century, and virtually unlimited bandwidth.

Both the reporter and his editor — there are editors at NBC, right? — had to have known the article was biased, and had to have known that the case was famous enough that [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me would notice it, but apparently they just didn’t care. One thing is certain: you cannot trust Mr Li to tell the whole truth in any of his reporting, and NBC News itself must be suspect. The days of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley are in the distant past for NBC News.

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough! It's far more important to protect criminal suspects than it is to protect law-abiding people.

Русский? Я никогда не знал русского по имени Саидахмад.

I saw this tweet from Northeast Philly Degenerate, and of course I snarked, “Russian? I’ve never known a Russian named Saidakhmad.” As it turns out, the Philadelphia Police came to the same conclusion, that they are probably of central Asian descent.

At 4:52 PM EDT, two hours and twelve minutes later, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s after hours reporter, Robrt Moran, published the newspaper’s own story on the crime:

6 men rob, commit assaults at massage business near Chinatown, police say

One of the six men who fled from the roof of the business on the 400 block of North Ninth Street was arrested, police said.

by Robert Moran | Monday, April 27, 2026 | 4:52 PM EDT

Six young men robbed at gunpoint and committed sexual assaults at a massage business just north of Chinatown early Saturday, Philadelphia police said.

The men forced their way into the business on the 400 block of North Ninth Street about 4:40 a.m., police said Monday.

When police arrived, the men “fled from the roof,” the police department said.

One suspect was caught on the roof, police said.

Saidakhmad Bakiev, 18, of Northeast Philadelphia, was charged with rape, robbery, aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, burglary, false imprisonment, sexual assault, indecent assault, and related offenses.

In keeping with the newspaper’s policy of not publishing mugshots, Mr Moran did not include one of the accused. But Mr Moran did include two hyperlinks which did lead to such. One wonders if he’ll be called on the carpet for that.

The link to the Philadelphia Police Department’s press release included photos of the five suspects on the lam. The remaining suspects “are described as white males, late teens into their 20’s, dark hair, possibly Russian/Central Asian descent.” No information on their immigration status was included, but if Mr Bakiev is an immigrant, I’m sure that Will Bunch will defend him at all costs.

The 400 block of North Ninth Street is no great place, a neighborhood of low rent businesses, ill-kept sidewalks, and vacant lots with overgrown grass behind chain link fences. “Massage parlors” are not usually considered high-class businesses.

One would think that the newspaper of record for not only the city but the metropolitan area as well, my unlimited digital subscription for which is $6.99 per week, $363.48 per year, would be more concerned with the safety of the decent people in the City of Brotherly Love, be more willing to include the photos of the (alleged) malefactors, to get the aid of the public in identifying them and helping the Philadelphia Police to capture the suspects, but apparently if one did think that, he’d be wrong, wrong, wrong! It’s far more important to protect criminal suspects than it is to protect law-abiding people.

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough!

When it comes to posts on Twitter, I have gotten away from doing the easy thing and embedding them to taking screenshots and then embedding the links to them. I use them for illustrations on my site, because tweets are not copyrighted, and because they serve as a permanent record.

Well, apparently Bethany Allen, whose Twitter bio states that she is “Head of China investigations @aspi_cts. Was @axios, @foreignpolicy, @yale, @HopkinsNanjing. Author BEIJING RULES, FT Best Books 2023. bethanyallen AT aspi org au” isn’t quite as intelligent and educated as she thinks she is, because Stephen Miller did the same thing, and took a screenshot of his response to her now deleted tweet.

This site has made considerable fun of CNN’s Jake Tapper and his co-author Alex Thompson for their non mea culpa est book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, and now we’re seeing supposedly professional journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading trying to tell us that it’s not their fault that they didn’t report on the perv from the Pyrite State, Rep. Eric Swalwell and his proclivity for sexual assault. No, they knew about it, but it wasn’t their beat, you know?

Steven Tavares of the East Bay Insider admitted that he knew about it as well, since 2013, screenshot here, and also kept his mouth shut.

Well, Mr Tavares is stuck in the area around the city of my birth — Go Oakland, never Las Vegas, Raiders! — and Miss Allen lives in Taipei, far, far away from the corridors of federal power in Washington, DC, and even they had heard about what has been described as an ‘open secret’ concerning Mr Swalwell. So how is it that The New York Times — “All the News That’s Fit to Print” — and The Washington Post — “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — found news about the Distinguished Gentleman from California not fit to print, found it too dark to illuminate for democracy? Do the voters of California’s 14th congressional district not deserve to know this about their representative in Congress? Do the voters in the United States, frequently subjected to Mr Swalwell’s attacks on President Trump, and his attempts to derail the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, not deserve to know what a huge hypocrite was making those allegations?

We have previously noted the losses and layoffs at the Post, but stories about Mr Swalwell’s proclivities had been circulating long before those layoffs, and still the Post never reported on it. There were plenty of stories, including the Post’s Taylor Lorenz’s doxxing of Chaya Raichik, an attempt to expose the previously anonymous producer of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok, hoping to get Miss Raichik to lose her day job or get run out of town, or something else horrible to happen to her, Miss Raichik having done nothing more than to have exposed the idiocy of the #woke[2]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, but expose an actual predator in Congress? Maybe if he’d been a Republican, yeah, but a prominent Democrat? Nope, not happening.

But let’s tell the full truth here: former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy knew, which means most if not all Republicans in the House of Representatives knew as well, and they didn’t expose Mr Swalwell either. Either they were just fine with the pervert from the Pyrite State’s continued attacks on President Trump, or they didn’t want the light of truth shone on themselves, and both possibilities could be true.

Jeff Bezos, you’ve got some work to do! You want to revive The Washington Post, to get it back to where it was? Get your reporters on the case, get them to document and expose all of the members of Congress who are abusing their power and positions! No one will ever believe that your reporters haven’t heard the rumors about Mr Swalwell, and that there aren’t other possible abusers out there.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity.
↑2 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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Has The Philadelphia Inquirer changed its policies on publishing photos of accused sex offenders?

We noted, on April Fool’s Day, something which wasn’t foolish, that The Philadelphia Inquirer, which has a stated policy of not publishing mug shots chose to publish the photo of a woman charged with, but not yet convicted of, grooming a student for sex, something which allegedly began when the boy was only twelve.

Now we have this story:

Montco teacher who tried to coerce a teenage student to kiss him sent to county jail

John Richards IV told the 13-year-old she was beautiful, and asked if he could kiss her “at least two times” during a field trip last year.

by Vinny Vella | Monday, April 6, 2026 | 4:53 PM EDT

John Richards IV spent a decade working as a teacher, dedicating his life, he told a judge Monday, to a vocation he felt was his calling.

But Richards, 58, ruined his career and his reputation by betraying the authority granted to him, Montgomery County Court Judge Risa Vetri Ferman said as she sentenced Richards to 9 to 23 months in jail for attempting to sexually assault a 13-year-old student.

“The actions that bring us here today are horrific,” Ferman said. “He made a victim out of a girl who wanted nothing more than to be a student. There has to be a severe punishment, otherwise it would diminish the seriousness of this case.”

Richards, of Newtown Square, wrote a message in March 2025 to the girl, a student in his eighth-grade science class at Blockson Middle School in Norristown, telling her that she was beautiful, prosecutors said Monday. He asked permission to kiss her “at least two times” during a field trip to Washington he was chaperoning the next day.

So, Mr Richards was just plain stupid. He made all sorts of excuses for what he did — Mr Richards pleaded guilty to the charges — blaming loneliness among other things, but he wasn’t smart enough to look for women who were actually adults and not under his supervisory authority. Teachers cannot be unaware of what’s been happening to their fellow teachers when they try to form romantic or sexual relationships with minor students. His sentence is for stupidity as much as anything else.

“Looking back at it now, I’m appalled that I could’ve done something so reprehensible,” Richards said. “I think I was in a bad, lonely place, and I was looking to be seen in any way possible.”

Richards blamed what he called a lapse in judgment on what he described as ineffective medication to treat his ADHD diagnosis. He asked the judge for leniency, saying that his three children had already been given life sentences by the “court of public opinion.”

Well, of course he’s going to say anything he could to avoid jail!

But, what interested me more was that the newspaper published his photo[1]I chose to screen capture the newspaper’s Twitter blurb to publicize the story, rather than copy the one directly in the article, to avoid copyright issues. The Twitter feed is open to … Continue reading. The newspaper’s stated policy stated their reasons:

  • Because of longstanding racial disparities in arrest rates, mugshots disproportionately feature Black and Latinx people. Unrelenting, routine publication of such mugshots strengthens stereotypes and contributes to systemic racism.
  • Pre-conviction mugshots are inherently unfair, depicting suspects as criminals before guilt or innocence has been established.
  • Online, mugshots exist indefinitely, easily findable through search engines. Years after the alleged offense, mugshots on Inquirer.com or other news sites can make it harder for individuals to find jobs and move on with their lives.
  • Many published mugshots feature private individuals, charged with routine crimes. They are frequently published out of habit. The news value of these photos is often negligible

Mr Richards pleaded guilty, so the second reason would not apply to his case. However, Ashley Fisler, who was featured in the story we previously noted, has not been convicted, so the second listed reason should have applied.

Both Mr Richards and Miss Fisler are white; some might assume that, given the newspaper’s stated reasoning, the first reason given wouldn’t apply to them. But that third reason, that publishing the photos might make it more difficult for the accused to find new jobs and move on with their lives, certainly does apply. Mr Richards is 58, and the Inquirer’s story did not specify whether he will lose whatever retirement pension he has from the school system, but Miss Fisler is only 36; retirement is a long way away for her. Technically, neither photo is a mugshot, but shouldn’t the same reasons apply to other pictures?

It’s an obvious question: has the Inky changed its policies for accused sex offenders? If so, the newspaper should tell us!

References

References
↑1 I chose to screen capture the newspaper’s Twitter blurb to publicize the story, rather than copy the one directly in the article, to avoid copyright issues. The Twitter feed is open to retweeting, meaning that the newspaper is giving open permission to spread the story and the photo. Our regular readers — both of them — may have noticed that is our normal way of doing things. The photo used by the newspaper in the tweet is the same one published in the story, and which appeared on the newspaper’s website main page, as screen captured here on Tuesday, April 7th, at 10:55 AM EDT.
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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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I check Bluesky so you don’t have to!

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s indefatigable far-left columnist Will Bunch is still dreaming of impeaching and removing President Trump from office; this was his Monday morning skeet on Bluesky. You can click on the link to read, and laugh at, some of the comments from the leftist sycophants.

I might be the only conservative who follows the columnist on Bluesky.

The Democrats currently hold 47 seats in the Senate, and need 67 to remove the President from office; in the 2026 elections, there are twenty seats currently held by Republicans. The Democrats would have to win every Senate race in the country to reach 67 seats, and anything less than that would require the votes of Republican senators to reach 67, and no Republican senator who plans on running for re-election in 2028 would dare vote to remove the President.

Finally, if President Trump fails to complete his term, J D Vance becomes President, a huge advantage for him in the 2028 election.

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Now you know why I call it Journolism! ** Updated! 9:05 PM EST ** #FreedomOfThePress includes the right not to publish what you don't want to publish, but concealing uncomfortable facts hurts the media's reputation

In the wake of the roughly 300 layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been a lot of blame spread, both among the subscribers who quit for owner Jeff Bezos refusing to endorse Kamala Harris Emhoff in 2024, and the paper itself for it’s very liberal leanings. The Post managed to piss off both the conservatives who might have been willing to subscribe, and the liberals who cancelled their subscriptions. Mr Bezos, in trying to fix a long-ongoing problem, fouled up.

But let me be clear here: the Freedom of the Press includes the freedom not to publish something. That should be obvious: there are only so many pages a newspaper can print, though with digital publishing these days, those limits have expanded.

And now we see just what isn’t being published, when it doesn’t fit Teh Narrative. When the mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in a small town in northeast British Columbia occurred, the Associated Press told us, at 8:59 AM EST, that the (alleged) killer was a “woman” and a “female suspect.” At 9:32 AM EST, CNN simply identified the killer as “they,” being careful to not use a pronoun to specify the killer’s sex. At 9:32 AM EST, The New York Times told us nothing about the shooter.

But, as early as 6:48 AM EST, Matt Van Swol was telling us on Twitter the news which was not politically correct, that the killer was a mentally ill boy who thought he was a girl. I checked the credentialed media, and found several instances of the media concealing the knowledge that the (alleged) killer was transgender.

The killer’s name is Jesse Van Rootselaar, though initially identified as Jesse Strang, 18 years old, and yes, he’s transgender.

I don’t get it. The credentialed media want to build trust in their accuracy, so why conceal information that they know will come out soon enough?

My spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And now you know why I spell it that way.

Well, eventually even The New York Times had to admit what had previously been revealed, that young Mr Van Rootselaar was the killer, and that the “suspect” was born as biologically male and chose to identify as a female about six years ago. That acknowledgement was time-stamped at 2:45 PM EST, just three minutes short of eight hours after Mr Van Swol’s tweet. The Times also revealed that the “suspect” had quit school four years earlier, which would have meant he wasn’t in school since age 14.

From the Times at 3:19 PM EST:

“Police had attended that residence on a number of occasions over the last several years dealing with concerns of mental health with our suspect,” Dwayne McDonald, the deputy commissioner, said, referring to the home where the suspect’s mother and stepbrother were found dead. On one of those occasions, “firearms were seized.” The most recent police call to the residence was in the spring of last year.

So, the local police already knew that young Mr Van Rootselaar was just plain nuts. Isn’t being biologically one sex but believing you are the other one definition of just plain nuts?

Of course, the newspaper continued to use the feminine pronouns to refer to the killer, as did local officials, because for some stupid reason they think a guy calling himself a girl really is a girl; are the editors and writers at the Times just as nuts as Mr Van Rootselaar?

Yeah, I think that they are!

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Will Bunch and due process of law

This site’s favorite whipping boy, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far, far, far left columnist Will Bunch, who’s even crazier than Amanda Marcotte if such a thing is possible, has told us how important it is to enforce the law. We have previously noted how The Philadelphia Inquirer’s radical left columnist Will Bunch was adamant in his support for legality, railing against President Trump’s pardon of the January 6th Capitol kerfufflers, even though the vast majority of them had already been punished, already served their sentences, his indignation over the United States sinking drug trafficking boats rather than arresting the drug traffickers, and, as we reported last June, his support for illegal immigrant and accused wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia, insisting that this illegal immigrant be given the full protection of the laws. He was all about the law when President Trump was eliminating drug trafficking boats coming from Venezuela, an action that Philadelphians should at least somewhat understand given the Hellhole that the Kensington neighborhood has become with strung out junkies sleeping on the sidewalks, in alleys and the Allegheny Avenue SEPTA station.

Mr Bunch even said that he did not “like” President Biden’s final flurry of pardons “at all,” though he claimed that “they were understandable” to protect critics of then-incoming President Trump. Clearly, Mr Bunch believed the Democrats mantra of “no one is above the law,” used when they were trying to throw Mr Trump in prison.

But, when it comes to our immigration laws, all of a sudden he doesn’t want those enforced. Apprehending and deporting illegals he told us is indistinguishable from the Geheime Staatspolizei rounding up Jews to send them to the concentration camps and their deaths.

Now we have this:

Europe is holding its Epstein creeps accountable. Why can’t we?

Europeans are pushing to hold Jeffrey Epstein’s creepy pals, including billionaires like Elon Musk, accountable. The U.S.? Not so much.

by Will Bunch | Sunday, February 8, 2026 |12:56 PM EST

The slow drip of the U.S. government’s still grossly incomplete release of its files on late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has nonetheless become a who’s who of Planet Earth’s rich and famous — from billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk to cultural icons like filmmaker Woody Allen and, of course, two presidents.

You can see what the distinguished Mr Bunch did. He wants us to associate Messrs Gates, Allen, Musk, Bill Clinton, and, of course Donald Trump with Mr Epstein’s sex trafficking, because that’s for which the late financier is spectacularly infamous.

The average American paying any attention to this global bonfire of the vanities probably barely noticed this name: longtime British politico Peter Mandelson, who most recently served as the U.K.’s ambassador to the United States.

Across the pond, it was another story. The Fleet Street tabloid press went wild over revelations that Mandelson — a key insider in the ruling Labor Party, long known to have been one of Epstein’s globetrotting pals — maintained his close ties even after the American’s 2008 child-prostitution conviction, writing Epstein in 2009 to hail his release from jail as “liberation day.”

But unlike the fallout in the United States, Mandelson’s Epstein problem didn’t end with some embarrassing headlines. Back in September, when an initial batch of Epstein’s emails went public, Prime Minister Keir Starmer — Mandelson’s longtime ally — immediately fired his friend from his ambassador’s post in D.C., and the scandal has only intensified.

Mr Bunch wants Americans named in the Epstein files ‘held .  .  . accountable,’ as he sees Mr Mandelson so being. But how was the now former Ambassador held accountable? He was fired from his appointed post by the man who appointed him, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, after the British tabloids had a field day going “wild” over the revelations.

Yet, through several subsequent paragraphs, Mr Bunch mentions only resignations by prominent people mentioned in the Epstein files. Oddly enough, the columnist who so vociferously wanted due process of law and a presumption of evidence for Mr Abrego Garcia seems totally uninterested in such for the Americans he hates, which means, of course, President Trump and Mr Musk.

The time-lapsed released of the Epstein files hasn’t yet produced a smoking gun concerning his close friendship with Trump, but the fact that lurid tips to federal authorities about the two-time president don’t seem to have been really investigated speaks volumes about the utter lack of elite accountability on this side of the Atlantic.

“(D)on’t seem to have been really investigated”, huh? The Epstein files have been under the control of President Trump and his subordinates for one year and 19 days so far, but they were under the control of then-President Joe Biden and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who absolutely hates Republicans for denying him a seat on the Supreme Court for four full years. It could reasonably be argued that the Biden Administration could not do much with them until the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell was concluded, but she was convicted on December 29, 2021, leaving the previous administration, an administration determined to do all it could to put Mr Trump in prison and prevent him from ever becoming President again, all of 2022, 2023, and 2024 to pore through those files. The Democrats would like us to believe that yes, there really is incriminating evidence against Mr Trump in those files, but somehow, some way, they never went through the files.

How stupid would you have to believe something like that?

Even Mr Bunch described Mr Epstein as a “late financier and sex trafficker,” which means that at least some of his contacts were about finance rather than young girls; contact with Mr Epstein simply proves contact with him, not sexual offenses. Mr Bunch, like the rest of the #TrumpDerangementSyndrome-afflicted, want to assume that contact must mean knowledge of and cooperation with Mr Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, but that’s not the case. More, for Mr Bunch, who was so very concerned that Mr Abrego Garcia receive due process of law, wants to see punished anyone who spoke with Mr Epstein, even if such contact had nothing to do with trafficking young girls.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Sadly, some newspapers are in a heap o' trouble, too

There are times when I wonder whether the newspaper industry is bent on committing suicide. In reading the story on the capture of 37-year-old Michael Dunn in the Lexington Herald-Leader, and planning to add to my “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy” series, I was sadly amused that the newspaper had used only a stock photo of a criminal’s wrists in handcuffs. Since it is the policy of this site to print mugshots, I initiated a Google search for Michael Dunn Kentucky, and there it was, screen captured on the right, with three television stations and what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal listed as the four top stories, with three showing the now-captured fugitive’s mugshot, and the newspaper not, exactly the type of thing which would cause people searching for this story to pick a source other than the newspaper.

Missing Kentucky child, 13, found with 37-year-old man wanted for escape

By Karla Ward | Saturday, January 10, 2026 | 7:00 AM EST

A missing 13-year-old girl from Louisville was found in Knox County on Thursday in the company of a 37-year-old man who was wanted on outstanding warrants, according to the Barbourville Police Department.

The girl had been reported missing Jan. 4.

The London office of the U.S. Marshals Service’s Central Kentucky Fugitive Task Force was notified on Thursday that she was thought to be with Michael Dunn, 37, the police department said in a social media post.

Dunn had been wanted in Jefferson County since June on felony warrants including second-degree escape and tampering with a prisoner monitoring device. He also was wanted for probation violations for receiving stolen property and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, police said, as well as first-degree possession of a controlled substance.

That paragraph is important, because it informs us that Mr Dunn was not just a criminal suspect, but a convicted felon.

Dunn “was known to be armed, dangerous, and trafficking narcotics,” police said.

At about 10:50 p.m. Thursday, the U.S. Marshals, with help from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and the Barbourville Police Department, learned that Dunn and the girl were walking south on the 3100 block of U.S. 25E in Barbourville.

Task force officers, deputies and officers confronted them and took Dunn into custody, police said.

The missing child was safely recovered and taken to a local hospital. She was medically cleared and reunited with her family at about 3:30 a.m. Friday.

There’s more at the original. It will be the natural assumption that a 37-year-old fugitive with a 13-year-old girl is indicative of a perverted sexual situation, but none of the news sources indicates that is the suspicion, and at least one source has actually named the girl, complete with a link to the missing persons notification that includes her photograph, something unusual if the possible sexual assault of a minor is concerned.

That the Herald-Leader did not include the mugshot of Mr Dunn would be part of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy[1]McClatchy Mugshot Policy: Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean … Continue reading, though that policy shouldn’t really apply. The policy is meant to protect those arrested and accused but not yet convicted of a crime, as well as “the inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness,” but the accused is a white male, and has already been convicted.

We note this because, as we reported in November, the Herald-Leader has moved to print publication only three days a week, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, to be delivered not by carriers, but mail, with the Sunday edition being delivered in Saturday’s mail, because the United States Postal Service does not deliver mail on Sundays.

I am reminded of Vernon Dursley’s happiness that “there’s no post on Sunday.”[2]J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapter 1.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which had previously gone to a thrice-a-week print schedule, announced just a few days ago that it would cease all publication, print and digital, on May 3rd.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down

Earlier this week, owner Block Communications also announced the closure of City Paper, a Pittsburgh alt-weekly.

by Emily Bloch | Wednesday, January 7, 2026 | 2:41 PM EST

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will fold after nearly a century. The paper will cease operations entirely — both its digital and physical versions — on May 3.

The announcement comes on the heels of years of declining ad revenue and internal strife within the newsroom, including a yearslong labor strike.

With the paper’s closure, there are concerns that Pittsburgh could become a news desert, leaving locals without a range of diverse and credible outlets to turn to in an age of increasing misinformation.

The Post-Gazette was led by former Inquirer senior vice president and executive editor Stan Wischnowski. He resigned from The Inquirer in 2020 after a controversy following a headline after the murder of George Floyd.

That last was a mealy-mouthed way to put it. Mr Wischnowski’s ‘resignation’ was forced due to a revolt among the #woke[3]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 staffers at the Inky for writing a catchy headline, “Buildings Matter, Too” designed to catch the eye and attract people to actually read the story, but staffers apparently thought that this was downplaying the seriousness of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, a movement which was torching buildings, including black-owned businesses and residences, in the City of Brotherly Love as well as other places.

Why did I cite a story from The Philadelphia Inquirer concerning the Post-Gazette’s closure? It was because the Post-Gazette’s own story was hidden behind a paywall!

The upcoming closure of the Post-Gazette has generated all kinds of stories, including two separate ones asking if the newspaper can be saved, plus at least one calling the closure a “threat to democracy.”

Is it really a threat to democracy? As we reported on the 8th, the credentialed media were very slow and sparse in their reporting on the popular uprising in Iran. This site, and many, many others, noted how the credentialed media pointedly ignored President Joe Biden’s descent into dementia, something obvious enough that William Teach noted it in August of 2021, yet the legacy media, wholly in the bag for the Democrats, wouldn’t report anything that might have endangered Mr Biden’s re-election prospects against then-former President Donald Trump.

We saw how well that worked out for them!

If the Post-Gazette could not survive printing just three days a week, in Allegheny County, population 1,231,814, how can the Herald-Leader do so with 329,437 people in Fayette County?

McClatchy has already been cutting staff.

We previously noted how the Lexington newspaper, which has always specialized in covering University of Kentucky sports, gave scant coverage to the women’s volleyball team, which made it all the way to the national championship game, and the #6 ranked women’s basketball team, while publishing scads of stories on the middling, 9-6, and unranked men’s basketball squad and disastrous, 5-7, football team. How can a newspaper survive if it doesn’t actually print much news?

References

References
↑1 McClatchy Mugshot Policy:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures. To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print. Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

I have not been able to access the McClatchy Mugshot Policy directly, as it does not seem to have been published externally. The only reason I have it is that two McClatchy reporters tweeted it out after it was imposed in August of 2020, and it is possible that some changes have been made to it subsequently.

↑2 J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapter 1.
↑3 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.