Good news out of Philadelphia! A Philly cop turned an illegal immigrant over to ICE despite city's 'sanctuary city' status

Deportation machines abound at local convenience stores! 🙂

Philadelphia is like a lot of major cities, declaring itself to be a ‘sanctuary’ city for all immigrants, by which they meant illegal immigrants. The city government was not going to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Well, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported some good news on that front.

Charges against a man were dismissed. Then a Philly police officer escorted him into ICE custody.

A judge had dismissed charges against the Dominican National when, according to his lawyer, court and sheriff staff said he was wanted by ICE officers. A Philly police officer then stepped in.

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to do things right

The oh-so-noble idea behind welfare was the idea that down-on-their-luck people just need a helping hand to get themselves through a rough patch in their lives, to give them a chance to get back on their feet. The problem is that, behind that thinking, is the idea that everyone is actually willing to do the things to straighten out their lives. To the elites who have been putting together our welfare systems, the concept that some people would rather just do their own thing, not caring about getting their lives back in order as long as someone else was paying them to stay indolent was simply outside of their conceptual framework. Continue reading

Shouldn’t a professional writer who ‘wonders’ about something know enough to Google the answer?

While doing research for my previous post, Requiescat in Pace, Pope Francis, I figured that I would check on the very lovely Amanda Marcotte, a loudly self-proclaimed atheist, to see what drivel she had written. As it happens, at least as of 8:00 PM on Easter Monday, our fanatic (neveau) Philadelphian hadn’t written about the Holy Father’s passing, but in a slightly older, April 18th article, I found this commenter on religion having said this:

Do Catholics really fast on Fridays during Lent, I had to wonder.

One thing is certain: she didn’t wonder enough to actually check it out! Continue reading

Requiescat in Pace, Pope Francis

My Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — feed was full of chortling posts claiming that the Vatican denied Vice President J D Vance a meeting with Pope Francis, sending the Vatican’s second-ranking official instead, in what the left loudly proclaimed was a deliberate snub to Mr Vance.

That’s not quite what it was.

The story behind JD Vance’s unlikely visit with Pope Francis

Vance and Francis had publicly disagreed in recent months on immigration policies and other aspects of church teaching.

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Easter Monday

Our parish church, St Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, is small, with only about 24 families. We can’t afford the fancy decorations that some larger churches can, and don’t really have the room for them, but even in our small church, the Lord is present.

His Holiness Pope Francis passed away this morning, after a bout with pneumonia and a long physical decline. There is no doubt that he loved the Church, even if I disagree with some of his policies as Pope.

Could Daniel Pearson be a conservative? Are there any moderate Democrats left?

Is a member of the Right Eing Extremists of the United States of America allowed to have a favorite liberal writer who I don’t use as a blog whipping boy? I have twice asked if The Philadelphia Inquirer’s primary editorial writer, Daniel Pearson, could actually be a conservative.

He knows that I have asked that question, and certainly denies it, definitely opposed to President Trump and most Republicans, but he is at least in some ways the kind of Democrat conservatives can appreciate. He’s certainly not a loony leftist like his colleagues Will Bunch and the rest of the newspaper’s cabal of columnists! While he seems to support some silliness like the city’s silly driving while black driving equality law, he does support the enforcement of law.

Fake, expired, and obscured car tags threaten public safety | Editorial

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Bad causes attract crazy people

Robert Stacy McCain warned us about jumping to conclusions before all of the facts were in about Cody Balmer, the man charged with setting fire to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion.

As soon as Pennsylvania State Police announced that Cody Balmer had been charged with setting the fire at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, someone found Balmer’s Facebook page and a deep dive found little evidence to point to a motive. Like most other people — including Gov. Josh Shapiro himself — I immediately assumed the motive must be antisemitism. Like, you attack the residence of the Jewish governor on the first night of Passover, what else could it be?

So when I plunged into Balmer’s Facebook page, I expected to find evidence that the suspect was either (a) a neo-Nazi Jew-hater or (b) a “progressive” pro-Palestinian Jew-hater. But there was no evidence of either inclination. In fact, there was very little hint of political inclinations at all. The guy was a welder and mechanic, with a black wife and four mixed-race kids, which obviously seemed to rule out any neo-Nazi tendencies, but there weren’t any “free Palestine” messages, either, He had a couple of sarcastic posts indicating he wasn’t a big fan of Joe Biden, but there weren’t any MAGA pro-Trump messages, either. Thomas Stevenson of The Post Millennial dug even deeper than I did and discovered that Balmer described himself as a “registered socialist,” so it’s a fair surmise he was a Bernie Bro back in the day, which might explain his disdain of Biden as an “establishment” Democrat. Continue reading

Harvard University defends anti-Semitism and racial discrimination

Hahvahd University is a private school, over which President Donald Trump, the hopefully soon-to-be-closed Department of Education, and the federal government in general have no direct authority. With an endowment of $50.7 billion as of the end of its 2023 fiscal year. Founded October 28, 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, as well as the wealthiest.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Harvard Says It Will Fight Trump Administration Demands

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Thank you, Jill Biden! We owe Dr Biden a debt of gratitude which can never be fully repaid: she helped save this country from having the kook from California in the White House!

Golly gee willikers gee whiz! Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t have lost to Orange Man Bad, so someone must have sabotaged her!

Our good friends on the left were stunned, shocked, aghast, appalled that Kamala Harris Emhoff lost the 2024 election to then former President Donald Trump, and they keep looking for reasons why it happened. But the one thing that they just can’t bring themselves to consider is the notion that she was simply a rotten candidate. Continue reading