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The Islamic Terrorists are still a threat Philly teenager arrested for trying to produce terrorist bombs, in contact with Syrian terrorist group.

One would think that a 17-year-old being arrested in the City of Brotherly Love for attempting to make bombs for terrorist use would make the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, but if one thought that, one would be wrong. At least as of 9:48 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 15th, it just wasn’t there. Readers had to look on the newspaper’s specific crime page to find the story . . . if they even knew that the crime page existed.

For those who get and read the print edition? Middle of page B-1!

Philadelphia teen accused of buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of foreign terror group

Authorities did not release the 17-year-old’s name, citing his status as a juvenile but said they would seek to try him as an adult.

by Jeremy Roebuck and Chris Palmer | Monday, August 14, 2023 | 5:46 PM EDT

A 17-year-old from West Philadelphia has been charged with buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of a foreign terrorist group, state and federal authorities announced Monday.

The teen, whom prosecutors declined to name because he is a juvenile, was arrested Friday at his home in the Wynnefield section of the city, said Jacqueline Maguire, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office.

Investigators say he’d purchased materials including chemicals, wiring, and tactical equipment associated with improvised explosive devices and conducted “generalized research” on potential targets. The teen had also been “taking steps to travel overseas for the purpose of joining or supporting terrorist activity,” Maguire said, though she declined to offer specifics.

The teen faces state felony charges including possessing weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy, arson, and causing or risking a catastrophe — the most serious of which carry prison terms of up to 20 years. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said his office was required by law to charge the teen in juvenile court, but that prosecutors would seek to move his case into the adult system.

There’s more at the original.

Perhaps I am not the smartest person in the room — well, I am at the moment, since, as I type this, I’m the only person in the room! 🙂 — but one talent I have is noticing things. At least in the Microsoft Edge browser that I use, when you hold the cursor over the page tab, it gives you the original page title, which in this instance was “Philly teen accused of building bombs in support of Syrian terror group”, something a bit more specific than the article headline now, “Philadelphia teen accused of buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of foreign terror group,” and the print edition’s “Teen accused of testing bomb parts for terrorism.” Note that, in the headlines used, the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. reduced specificity so readers wouldn’t automatically think Muslim terrorists. But once you start reading the names mentioned in the article, you’ll know.

The unusual url for the article is https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-terrorism-qawi-abdul-rahman-katibat-al-tawhid-wal-jihad-20230814.html. Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad is a Syrian group, designated by the State Department as “a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) pursuant to Executive Order 13224”, so the Inquirer reporters had to have known

So, who is the 17-year-old suspect? His name was not released, because he is a juvenile, though District Attorney Larry Krasner has said that he will move to have the charges brought in adult court.

(S)ources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the arrest occurred on the 5900 block of Woodbine Avenue at the home of Qawi Abdul-Rahman, a Philadelphia defense attorney who unsuccessfully ran in this year’s Democratic primary for Common Pleas Court judge.

Mr Abdul-Rahman has been publicly reprimanded by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The Inquirer reported last March that challenges to Mr Abdul-Rahman’s candidacy had been filed, and when it was reported that Philadelphia Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz had been representing criminal defendants, in an apparent violation of regulations, and someone who ran unsuccessfully for District Attorney in 2017, the newspaper stated:

In January 2022, El-Shabazz entered an appearance in another gun case being prosecuted by the Philly DA’s Office. In December, a new lawyer took over the case, Qawi Abdul-Rahman. Abdul-Rahman’s law office address and phone number are the same as El-Shabazz’s.

While the newspaper did not state or imply that the suspect is Mr Abdul-Rahman’s son, Philadelphia Magazine reporter Victor Fiorillo, who is certainly no evil reich-wing conservative, wrote:

Several sources have alleged that the person arrested is the son of Abdul-Rahman. On Monday, just after the press conference, I asked Abdul-Rahman via text if the person arrested is, indeed, his son. He called me right away. “You wanna find out what I’m really about?” he told me. “Text or call me one more time, and you’ll find out what I’m really about.”

While Mr Fiorillo wasn’t quite able to give us Mr Abdul-Rahman’s voice inflection, that sure sounds like a warning!

Back to the Inquirer. After investigating contacts the suspect made with terrorist groups, more was discovered:

But the investigation into the teen entered a new phase over the past several weeks after he began amassing equipment including tactical gear, wiring, chemicals, and devices often used as detonators, Maguire said.

FBI agents surveilled him as he bought materials to make homemade bombs on Aug. 7, and on Aug. 8, U.S. Customs and Border Protection “provided records revealing 14 international shipments of military and tactical gear” to his house, prosecutors said in a statement. They added that he’d also taken steps toward assembling them into explosives and testing them in recent weeks.

“These purchases quickly escalated this case into a threat and a priority for our office,” Maguire said. “This was now a situation where we believe public safety was at risk.”

As agents descended on his home Friday, they found what Maguire described as a “significant number” of firearms but no completed bombs in the house. She declined to elaborate on whom those guns belonged to or where they were stored.

Let’s be clear here: if the suspect, who might be the elder Mr Abdul-Rahman’s son, but was, at any rate, living in his house, received “14 international shipments of military and tactical gear” to his house, those shipments were received at the elder Mr Abdul-Rahman’s house! Mr Abdul-Rahman is an attorney, and had to know that receiving such shipments was probably illegal.

Did the elder Mr Abdul-Rahman know that there were a “significant number” of firearms in his home?

If the juvenile suspect is Mr Abdul-Rahman’s son, it’s hardly a surprise that a father would be protective of his son. But as an attorney, he must also be aware of the limitations involved in that, and the fact that the evidence recovered was recovered in his own home. Was he stupid? Was he clueless? Was he ignorant of what someone living in his own home was doing?

There’s more to be learned, and revealed in this case, but one thing is clear: Islamist terrorism isn’t somehow restricted to the Middle East!

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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The left want poorer, minority neighborhoods to have nicer things, but fret that them having nicer things will attract more white people to move in!

Gentrification can be defined as the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. We have reported, many times, on how the left are really opposed to gentrification.

But the left have often complained about “disinvestment,” and how poorer neighborhoods suffer from it. Yeah, it’s not exactly a surprise that people would take their money out of the combat zone or open-air drug market neighborhoods.

How can Philly build green without displacing residents?

Some research suggests that green development causes gentrification. But experts and community advocates say it’s not inevitable.

by Nate File | Thursday, August 10, 2023

When Debbie Robinson steps out of her apartment, she loves looking at the trees. “We got all these beautiful trees. Red trees, all these different yellow trees, all these beautiful trees,” Robinson, 59, said of her apartment complex in Grays Ferry.

[Sigh] Sadly, today’s journalists have forgotten the old reporter’s maxim that the 5Ws + H needed to be at the beginning of the story, to get the most information to the readers quickly, before some of the readers dropped out, or, in newspapers, didn’t turn to the continuation of the story on page A-15, or “below the fold,” so I’m having to make a bug cut here to get to the meat of the article.

Last month in Philadelphia, it felt like 105 degrees in the shade. With cooler days ahead, it may be easy to forget that the effects of climate change go beyond the rising temperature; environmental pollutants are shortening people’s lives in Philadelphia and water is flooding their neighborhoods.

And as tends to be the case with many of the problems affecting the city, low-income communities of color often experience those affects most acutely. North and West Philly are measurably hotter than the rest of the city.

Well, of course there’s always a racial angle; it is, after all, that “anti-racist news organization,” The Philadelphia Inquirer!

But while climate change is a global problem that is mostly driven by large corporations and wealthy individuals, Philadelphia can still build climate-supporting improvements that make the environment more tolerable for its people.

And it’s all the fault of the Evil Rich and Wealthy Corporations, even though those Wealthy Corporations produce the goods that even poor and minority consumers buy. But here we get to the heart of the problem:

These projects can be both large and small, from the construction of sprawling parks like Philly’s proposed Rail Park, to a row of trees along a street, or the creation of new bike lanes.

Building new green infrastructure may seem like an entirely beneficial move for Philadelphians, especially those who live in the hottest and most flood-prone areas. But community advocates and academics alike are warning against a rush to build new parks and plant trees without seriously thinking about one potential consequence: displacement.

“Folks are absolutely thinking about gentrification. I think when community members … hear about any kind of development, they think it’s for someone else,” said Jerome Shabazz, the executive director of the Overbrook Environmental Education Center, and an original member of the city’s Environmental Justice Advisory Commission. “That is an apathy that is not ill placed. It’s the tradition.”

In a 2020 study of the city’s new public green spaces, Temple University’s Hamil Pearsall and Jillian K. Eller found that “public green spaces may anchor gentrification processes. Additionally, new spaces in wealthy neighborhoods were more publicly accessible than parks in gentrifying neighborhoods.”

Simply put, to get the greener, nicer spaces the “hottest and most flood-prone areas” deserve means to increase costs to live in those areas, and that means the poorer residents who currently live in those areas will see housing costs rise to levels that they cannot afford, pushing them out. We’ve seen this before:

In a plan for a safer, vibrant 52nd Street, worried West Philly neighbors see gentrification looming

Angst is roiling minority neighborhoods as they struggle to balance the opportunities and the threats created by gentrification. “West Philly is the new Africa,” one resident warned at a community meeting. “Everyone wants the property that’s in West Philadelphia.”

by Jason Laughlin | February 21, 2020

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher.

Morris’ declaration opened the floodgates of fear and anger that recent night at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library. Maciunas and Jesse Blitzstein, director of community and economic development for the nonprofit Enterprise Center, which is spearheading the project, were peppered with skeptical questions ranging from the validity of surveys showing community support for the improvements to the maintenance of trees that would be planted.

Let’s be blunt here: the black residents of West Philly don’t want nicer neighborhoods, because, Heaven forfend!, then more white people might move in! As we have previously noted, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer have told us that racial segregation is very much part of the problem in city residents feeling unsafe, and Philadelphia is one of the United States’ most internally segregated big cities. But, rather than the evil White Supremacists about which the left keep warning us, it’s not white Americans who want to keep neighborhoods racially segregated, but black Americans, or at least the black Americans in West Philly.

While Philadelphia and the Inquirer haven’t been so blatant as to say so directly, the liberal city of Lexington[1]Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. has. As we have previously noted, Lexington said, directly, that it was concerned about gentrification, and, “Most new owners being more affluent and differing from the traditional residents in terms of race or ethnicity.” The city was concerned about white people moving into heavily black neighborhoods.[2]Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger neighborhoods, though there is a “Little Mexico” area.

Philadelphia is not concerned about black residents moving in and integrating nearly all-white neighborhoods, and that is what the Inquirer’s Editorial Board said ought to happen. But somehow, liberal cities don’t seem to want that to happen in reverse, don’t seem to want white people moving into majority black neighborhoods.  Yet, as the Inquirer noted:

Neighborhoods like Graduate Hospital, Fishtown, and University City — where years of reinvestment have ushered in more wealth and opportunity — are just a few minutes’ drive from shooting hot spots. But they rarely experience gun violence.

Gentrification seems to reduce violence!

Gentrification ought to be something every city wants. Not only do revitalized properties raise property values around them, but when white ‘gentrifiers’ move into a majority black neighborhood, they are clearly white people who have no racist attitudes toward blacks, people perfectly willing to have black neighbors.

Is that not a good thing?

In the originally cited article, author Nate File cites some left-leaning academics and proposals for what amounts to welfare and price controls to prevent making neighborhoods nicer from making them more expensive, and attracting all of those evil white folks!

It’s a wryly humorous situation. We have the white liberals leading one of our more leftist newspapers, saying that poorer minority neighborhoods should have more assistance, to keep them cooler during the hot summer months — though there seems to be less concern about eliminating the ‘urban heat island effect’ that would keep them a bit warmer during a nasty, cold Philly winter — but fretting that making them nicer will lead to more racial integration, in a city in which the Editorial Board have already complained is too internally segregated! 🙂

Can things really get more stupid than that?

References

References
↑1 Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
↑2 Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger neighborhoods, though there is a “Little Mexico” area.
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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain An Anglican priest really, really doesn't want you to see Sound of Freedom

One thing is certain: the movie Sound of Freedom sure has the left tied up in knots! As we reported previously, the movie, which stars Jim Caviezel, who had played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, is about Tim Ballard, a former U.S. government agent who embarks on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia. It is produced by Eduardo Verástegui, who also plays a role in the film. The plot centers around Mr Ballard’s Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-sex trafficking organization. As we noted then, Kathleen Parker Cleveland[1]Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The … Continue reading, of The Washington Post, knows that no decent person can support child sexual abuse and trafficking, but, gosh darn it, the movie Sound of Freedom just has too many supporters on the wrong side of the political divide. Mrs Cleveland thought it important enough to stress Mr Caviezel’s role as Jesus, just to let readers know that, why, he must be a Christianist kook, so maybe don’t take the movie too seriously!

Now comes this, from Canada’s The Globe and Mail. The author, Michael Coren, is an Anglican priest.

The far right’s fixation on pedophilia is dangerous

by Michael Coren | Friday, August 11, 2023

I’ve just experienced another attack on social media. The harassment on X, as Twitter now calls itself, usually lasts around 36 hours, and while most of the nasties are trolls and bots, I can’t pretend that the hundreds of comments don’t have an effect. I’m a priest, progressive, outspoken. No point in complaining. But a disturbing new aspect of these bombardments are the repeated and constant false accusations of pedophilia – not a libellous dribble, but a flood.

Normally, I prefer not to copy and paste the photographs which come with articles, but this one is important. Online, it falls right between the headline and byline, and the first paragraph of the Rev Coren’s article, and the caption, long for a photograph, makes certain that you know that Mr Caviezel is connected to QAnon:

Actor, Jim Caviezel who currently stars in the film Sound of Freedom speaks during a Catholics for Catholics anti-abortion ‘rosary rally’ on Aug. 6, 2023, in Norwood, Ohio. Caviezel frequently endorses a QAnon-based conspiracy theory where abducted children are seen to be victims of ‘adrenochroming’, a fictional practice of extracting adrenochrome from adrenal glands in a living human.

Mrs Cleveland did the same thing; are you turned off about the film now?

Then there’s the “anti-abortion ‘rosary rally'”, a reference to reference to an article by Daniel Panneton in The Atlantic, originally entitled “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol“, about which I have previously written.

The Atlantic got plenty of pushback about it, and twice changed the article headline and subheading — the title “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary: The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement” isn’t shown in the screen captures tweeted by Taylor Marshall — imaged to the left, but the internet is forever.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her, but people can become good friends over Twitter these days — Christine Flowers used to have in her Twitter biography, that she has an “open carry permit for (her) assault rosary.” 🙂

Back to the Rev Coren’s original:

It’s not really about me of course, and I’m in good company. Last month in Belleville, Ont., when Justin Trudeau was swarmed by a right-wing mob, one of the hysterical shouts clearly heard was that he was a child molester. It’s grotesque nonsense about the Prime Minister that swamps social media. In fact, there aren’t many politicians and activists on the left who haven’t been accused of this awful crime.

Well, it’s true enough that Mr Trudeau was mocked when he announced that his wife and he were separating, with some people speculating that both of them found new boyfriends. But the Rev Coren wrote that he was accused of pedophilia, though he didn’t state why the accusations were leveled; perhaps it’s just because he’s a priest.

And with a horribly convenient timing, a new movie, Sound of Freedom, is currently the talk of the far right. Jim Caviezel (who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ) stars as Tim Ballard, a former government agent who rescues children from sex traffickers. As the critic Sam Adams wrote perceptively for the online magazine Slate, it “arrived in theatres surrounded by a cloud of innuendo put forth by its star and its noisiest right-wing supporters – conspiratorial insinuations about who doesn’t want this story to be told and what real-world traffickers are really up to.”

Rescuing children is one thing, and entirely admirable, but this phenomenon goes much further than that. Mr. Caviezel himself has spoken of “the whole adrenochrome empire,” describing the substance as “an elite drug that they’ve used for many years” that is “10 times more potent than heroin” and “has some mystical qualities as far as making you look younger.”

Adrenochrome, zealots claim, can only be obtained from adrenal glands in a living human body, thus the need to abduct children. It’s obscene and dangerous quackery, but that doesn’t help convince the cult of the credulous. This rubbish has its origins in a QAnon belief that powerful, international figures intent on resetting the world, controlling people and destroying religious freedom are also kidnapping little boys and girls.

That was the lunacy behind Pizzagate in 2016, when thousands believed that a pedophilia ring led by those at the highest levels of the Democratic Party was operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant. More than a million messages were sent on Twitter supporting the fantasy, eventually leading to employees being harassed, followed by a shooting and then an arson.

Has the Rev Coren managed to turn you off of seeing the movie yet? Sure, he tells us that “Rescuing children is one thing, and entirely admirable,” but immediately continues to tell readers what a kook the actor is.

There’s always been a strong dose of homophobia involved, through the venomous old canard of gay men being groomers, in spite of all the facts and evidence. Facts and evidence, however, are the last things relevant in all this. The trans issue magnified the paranoia, and it’s been pushed into the mainstream by a new generation of right-wing politicians.

And here we go again! The left want so very much to tell us that homosexuality has nothing to do with “grooming” the young, saying that “all the facts and evidence” tell us otherwise.

But as an Anglican priest, one who, according to Wikipedia,

In an interview with the National Post on 1 May 2015, .  .  . cited the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality and contraception as some of the reasons for his conversion to Anglicanism.

he has to know about the famous John Jay Report, concerning sexual abuse by Catholic priests and deacons, all of whom are male, which noted that rather than prepubescent children, abusers targeted older children:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

Only willful, deliberate ignorance could contend that such numbers don’t indicate a problem with homosexuality among priests.

It isn’t just evil reich-wingers who are ignoring “facts and evidence”; the Rev Coren has just done so.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco is about to declare bankruptcy, as now we have this news:

Archbishop Cordileone: Chapter 11 bankruptcy for San Francisco ‘very likely’

by Daniel Payne | Washington, D.C. Newsroom | Saturday, August 5, 2023 | 12:22 PM EDT

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Friday revealed that it was “very likely” that the archdiocese would be filing for bankruptcy in the near future due to the hundreds of clerical abuse lawsuits that have been filed against it.

The prelate revealed the news in an announcement on the archdiocesan website Aug. 4 in which he noted that, following a 2019 California law that lifted the statute of limitations on certain sexual abuse claims, the archdiocese was ultimately served with “more than 500 civil lawsuits” related to clerical sexual abuse.

The “vast majority of the alleged abuse occurred in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and involved priests who are deceased or no longer in ministry,” Cordileone noted, while others involved “unnamed individuals or named individuals who are unknown to the archdiocese.” The archdiocese has been “investigating the best options for managing and resolving these cases,” Cordileone said.

“After much contemplation and prayer, I wish to inform you that a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization is very likely,” Cordileone said.

Don’t be fooled: the Archbishop is one of the good guys, who supported the Tridentine Mass, opposes homosexual ‘marriage’ and allowing Catholics in homosexual relationships to receive the Eucharist, and is strongly pro-life. But for decades and decades, our bishops swept accusations of sexual offenses by priests under the rug, paying off victims quietly and rather than reporting them to law enforcement just moved them around to other, unaware parishes. But in San Francisco, of all places, you know that the victims have mostly been boys.

We also recently noted that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia just settled, for $3.5 million, a sexual abuse case in which a now-deceased priest, who was shuffled from parish to parish to sweep his abuse under the rug, molested, you guessed it, a boy. And outside the Catholic Church, a Fayette County high school teacher, and “youth volunteer” at Faith Lutheran Church in Lexington, has just been charged with producing media of a 9-year-old boy in a sexual performance.

This was all in just the past week.

Scratch the surface of modern conspiracy theory and antisemitism often appears, but today the accused are usually singled out not by race but ideology, and that includes politicians and public figures considered to be left-of-centre, or even people who support vaccinations, abortion rights, LGBTQ equality, or climate justice policies. This might sound fanciful, but the evidence is sadly abundant.

Naturally, along with QAnon, the Rev Coren wants to link this concern about child trafficking to anti-Semitism, just another ploy to get people to not watch the movie. Heaven forfend, if you go to see it, you are literally Hitler!

It’s particularly tragic as children increasingly suffer under a culture of poverty, food insecurity and forced migration. Ironically, those roaring about pedophile rings tend to ignore all of this and are often downright opposed to legislation that may help children. As well, child abuse and human trafficking are genuine issues and have to be taken extremely seriously; baseless and hateful hyperbole only worsens the situation.

That’s nothing but a sop, to let you believe that yes, the Rev Coren really, really is worried about child trafficking, but he doesn’t want you to get too incensed about it, because what about other problems.

Even the National Institutes for Health, in 2021, under President Joe Biden, not the evil conservative Donald Trump, wrote:

Our meta-analysis results suggest that political conservatives are significantly more charitable than liberals at an overall level, but the relationship between political ideology and charitable giving varies under different scenarios.

Conservatives see private efforts to help the poor as preferable and are more opposed to government action to do so.

Don’t be fooled here. The Rev Coren, who has a wife and children of his own, so I assume that he is sexually normal, wants to defend homosexual males from accusations of “grooming”, to let people know that heterosexual males can be just as guilty. Jerry Sandusky, after all, was married to a woman, even though he liked 10-year-old boys’ butts. But the “facts and evidence,” to use the Anglican priest’s formulation, indicate an outsized number of boys being molested by adult men, when, if homosexuality were not a risk factor, we should see fewer than 5% of sexual abuse victims of adult males being boys.

I am not a psychologist, I am not a sociologist, I am not a behavioral expert of any kind. But what I do know and understand, and know and understand well, are numbers, and the numbers say that the last thing a priest, a priest of any Christian religion, should run his keyboard about is the notion that homosexuality has no relationship to child sexual abuse.
_______________________________________

That was the part I finished last night, but scheduled for publication at noon on Saturday. But the Rev Coren used Twitter to publicize his article, and soon got the negative responses you’d expect, and quickly started blocking people who questioned him . . . including me.

I am trying to figure out his thinking, and quite frankly failing at it. As a priest, even an Anglican one, he had to know that any article written by a priest which in any way tried to minimize the response to child sex trafficking and child sexual abuse would draw plenty of negative response. His Twitter handle reads “Reverend Michael Coren,” and not everyone who read his tweet clicked on the article — which is now paywalled, though perhaps not a first time Globe and Mail visitor — and saw that he is an Anglican priest, not a Catholic clergyman, and many mocked and dismissed his article as somehow justifying sexual abuse among Catholic priests. It doesn’t do that, and it does not somehow excuse child sex trafficking and sexual abuse, but it definitely shows that he sees those as lesser problems than children reared in poverty or opposition to the homosexual and transgender agendas.

Then there was this tweet by Frank Rizzo (@FrankRi68868220):

MAPs are a stigmatized community, thank you for taking a stand in support.

MAPs are “minor attracted persons”. Mr Rizzo — no, not the former Police Commissioner and later Mayor of Philadelphia, who has long since gone to his eternal reward — has no indication that he actually is a minor attracted person, and I assume that his tweet was meant sarcastically, but this is the kind of response that the Rev Coren should have expected.

There are some things about which a person should just keep his mouth, or keyboard in this case, closed, and the Rev Coren has just found his. You cannot defend, or even minimize, child sex trafficking as somehow not that serious, because no matter how nuanced your point, no matter how well you write, you will not truly make your point, and just draw criticism and scorn.

References

References
↑1 Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The First Street Journal does not similarly show such disrespect.
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The Feds believe that conservative Catholics are an extremist threat FBI Director Christopher Wray flat out lied to Congress about Bureau's surveillance of Catholics

We reported, last February, on the story that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was targeting “Radical Traditionalist Catholics”, with a memo from the FBI office in Richmond, Virginia:

Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com.

A priest elevates the Eucharist after consecrating it during a Latin Mass. Photo by Andrew Gardner/Creative Commons

“In making this assessment, FBI Richmond relied on the key assumption that [racially or ethnically motivated extremists] will continue to find [radical-traditionalist Catholic or RTC] ideology attractive and will continue to attempt to connect with RTC adherents, both virtually via social media and in-person at places of worship,” the document from January 23 states.It adds that “RTCs are typically categorized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology. Radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from ‘traditionalist Catholics’ who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.”

Once this was disclosed, the FBI quickly told us that this was the product of one field office, and was withdrawn because it didn’t meet the Bureau’s standards of quality. Director Christopher Wray said:

We do not conduct investigations based on religious affiliation or practices, full stop. We have also now ordered our inspection division to take a look at how this happened and try to figure out how we can make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Yeah, uh huh, right.

From The Wall Street Journal:

The FBI and ‘Radical’ Catholics

New evidence suggests the bureau probe was wider than director Christopher Wray said.

by The Editorial Board | Wednesday, August 9, 2023 | 12:02 PM EDT

Remember the tempest this year when the Federal Bureau of Investigation was found to be targeting some Catholics as “extremists?” The bureau cast it as the work of a single rogue field office. Well, it looks like the effort was more widespread than our G-men admitted to the public.

That’s the news from a less-redacted internal FBI document released Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee. Chairman Jim Jordan wants more information from the FBI on how broad this investigation really was.

This story began in February when a whistleblower leaked a heavily redacted January report from the FBI’s Richmond office: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”

The document defined “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as those who attend the Latin Mass and who frequently adhere to “anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.” The agents relied on half-baked “open-source” reporting from liberal outlets to justify more bureau investigation.

“Open source” reporting, huh? Brittany Bernstein noted that the FBI report was sourced from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left source which supports just about every #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 position out there, and calls the Moms4Liberty extremists because they don’t want the public schools pushing the homosexual and transgender agendas. A screen capture of the Catholic organizations that the SPLC considers to be “Radical Traditional Catholic Hate Groups” in the United States can be found here.[2]Full disclosure: Yes, I am Catholic, but have little opportunity to attend a Tridentine Mass. Due to my significant hearing loss, a Traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass, in which the priest … Continue reading

FBI headquarters quickly said the report didn’t meet its “exacting standards” and had been withdrawn. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Judiciary Committee in July that the report was “a single product by a single field office.” He added that “as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems,” and he said he began an internal probe.

On July 25 the FBI finally provided the committee with a less-redacted version of that Richmond document. The report says that its information on Catholics was “primarily derived” from an “FBI Richmond contact”; an “FBI Portland liaison contact” who informed on a subject who “gravitated to” traditionalist catholicism; and an “FBI Undercover Employee” who reported on a subject who attended a Catholic church in California.

It also says the FBI’s Los Angeles field office “initiated an investigation” into a subject, and that the Richmond office “[c]oordinated with” FBI Portland to prepare the field report. In other words, this was a widespread bureau effort. Why was this suspicion about religion so widespread at the FBI?

The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal might not be able to answer that question, because the answer involves their own culture. The federal government, including the FBI, are dominated by the same Ivy League, northeastern elites as the Journal, and, to them, there’s a frightening issue. Remember the exchange between Center For American Progress fellow John Halpin and Hillary Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri, in the e-mails hacked by Wikileaks:

Mr Halpin: Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) …they must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations.

Miss Palmieri: I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.

It’s all the same thing to them: Catholicism is ‘acceptable,’ as long as it is the go-along-to-get-along Catholicism of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, attending Mass on Sunday, but with political positions completely subservient to the Democratic Party. Actual Catholicism, with its prohibition on homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion, scare the poop out of them, and must be not just conservate but actually threatening. That the ‘radical traditional Catholics’ are becoming a stronger, if nevertheless in the distance, voice in the Church worries them that, Heaven forfend!, they might just become politically stronger.

Also troubling is the FBI’s decision to redact the Portland and Los Angeles roles from the original version of the Richmond document it provided Congress in March. In a letter with the less-redacted version, acting assistant FBI director Christopher Dunham said the redactions had been necessary to protect “information specific to ongoing criminal investigations.”

What “ongoing criminal investigations”? What crimes were the FBI investigating that tied them in with Catholics who prefer the Tridentine Mass? Have any of those investigations resulted in charges against anybody?

Well, we may not know the answers to those questions, but we do know one thing: the Director of the FBI deliberately lied to Congress! What is going to be done about that?

Of course, we know the real reasons: while the Catholic Church is opposed to prenatal infanticide, those wicked ‘radical traditional Catholics’ tend to be more intensely devout, and more politically conservative, and we can’t have that, can we? President Biden is both a Democrat and a Catholic, but we have seen just how much he prioritizes the former over the latter.

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.

↑2 Full disclosure: Yes, I am Catholic, but have little opportunity to attend a Tridentine Mass. Due to my significant hearing loss, a Traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass, in which the priest celebrates the Eucharist ad orientem, with his back to the people, I would be completely lost.
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Teri Carter wants “common sense gun legislation”, but that will only inhibit the law-abiding Criminals will still get firearms, because they are one of the tools of their trade

Teri Carter, of Anderson County, Kentucky, describes herself in her Twitter biography as a “Kentucky Columnist — Fighting for common sense gun laws — Rescue dogs rule”. She tweeted at 9:14 AM EDT on Thursday, August 10, 2023:

I’m going to a conference to discuss common sense gun legislation. But I can’t tell you where I’m going for safety reasons. I didn’t even know where I was staying until a few weeks ago, which I have to keep private.

What kind of civilized society lives like this?

Naturally, I asked her just where she was going to this conference, because I rather doubt it would be held someplace in which she would be in any real danger. After all, even if this conference is in Chicago or Philadelphia or Washington, it’s unlikely to be in any of the combat zone areas. Not a lot of nice hotels and conference centers in Tioga-Nicetown!

I further asked Mrs Carter:

Just what do you consider to be “common sense gun legislation”? Remember: the vast majority of shootings are being committed by people already legally prohibited from owning firearms due to their age or a past felony conviction.

Whether she’ll answer my questions I do not know. I wouldn’t be surprised if she blocked me on Twitter, but since she states that she is also a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, a newspaper to which I subscribe, I’ll be able to see whatever she publishes there.

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, August 10th, there have been 258 ‘official’ murders in Philadelphia in 2023, and if that seems like a horrible number, it’s actually down from the past three years, and Philly might actually see fewer than 500 homicides this year. Lexington has seen 13 murders as of July 25th, which is just half of the number at the same week in 2023.

I would note at this point that the Lexington Police are not including in that number the murder of an unborn child, even though Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, 24, is charged with Fetal homicide, first degree. (KRS §507A.020), which is a capital offense.

Just after noon on Thursday, Captain Joseph Busa of the Philadelphia Police Department’s 39th District reported that his officers had arrested a 13-year-old for attempting to carjack a vehicle and in possession of stolen firearm. We noted on Monday that 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr, had been arrested for the attempted carjacking which resulted in the murder of 50-year-old Michael Salerno in South Philly. Those boys were legally prohibited from possessing handguns, but did anyway, and at least in one case, the weapon in question was stolen.

So, what “common sense gun legislation” does Mrs Carter believe would have stopped young Mr Banks, or the unnamed 13-year-old, who were not only in possession of firearms they were legally barred from having, but willing to use them to try to steal someone else’s car?

It seems so simple, so simple that even the most kind-hearted leftist could understand it: criminals don’t obey the laws! They don’t care if it is illegal for them to have firearms, because firearms are one of the tools of their trade, and something they find necessary to have to ply their trade.

What will “common sense gun legislation” do if passed? Such would make it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to purchase firearms, while doing virtually nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.

But that’s all part of it: today’s left, which abhor the notion that ordinary citizens can own firearms, know that there’s virtually nothing that new legislation can do to stop the bad guys from getting weapons, but feel that they have to Do Something, so they’ll try to pass laws which will disarm the people who do obey the laws. The quaint notion that the best thing that could be done to reduce crime is to prosecute crime to the fullest extent of the law, and incarcerate criminals for as long as the law allows, seems not to have occurred to people like the George Soros-sponsored, police hating prosecutors who have been elected in some of our major cities, though, to be fair, I do not know if Mrs Carter feels that way.

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Chickenhawks in the Church

Pedophilia is defined as a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children, while hebephilia is that attraction to children in the early stages of puberty, approximately ages 11 to 14, and ephebophilia is the attraction to teenagers in the later stages of puberty, approximately 15 to 19.

Archdiocese of Philadelphia agrees to $3.5 million settlement in priest sexual assault lawsuit

The lawsuit alleged that Pastor John Close raped a boy at St. Katherine’s of Siena in Wayne in 2006.

by Nick Vadala | Wednesday, August 9, 2023

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia will pay $3.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that one of its priests sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy in Delaware County nearly two decades ago.

Filed in 2020, the lawsuit alleges that Pastor John Close raped the boy at St. Katherine’s of Siena in Wayne in 2006. The plaintiff, whose name was withheld in court filings, was attending a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine program there, and Close was the head of the parish.

During a class, the boy became upset, fearing eternal damnation. He was sent to Close’s office, the pastor took his confession, and then raped him, according to the lawsuit. Afterward, the lawsuit says, Close told the boy that he was absolved of his sins, but he would be eternally damned if he told anyone about the assault.

While the age of the victim at the time of the assault was not given, he is 31 years old today, and the rape was 17 years ago. That means the victim was 13-to-15 years old at the time. Was that hebephilia, or was it ephebophilia? You know what? It doesn’t really matter, because urban slang gives us a far better definition: a chickenhawk, older males who prefer younger boys as sex partners.

Close, who was ordained in 1969, worked at several parishes and Catholic schools in the region throughout his 42 years in the ministry, including Christ the King parish, Cardinal O’Hara High School, Archbishop Wood High School, and the Cathedral of Basilica Saints Peter and Paul. He was placed on administrative leave in 2011 in connection with the reinvestigation of another alleged case and retired the following year. He died in 2018. . . . .

Spokesperson Kenneth A. Gavin said in a statement that the archdiocese “acknowledges settlement in this matter and the resolution it brings.” He added that the organization had no knowledge of the allegations against Close until the plaintiff’s lawyers reported them in July 2019, after the pastor’s death.

“In accordance with policy, the archdiocese reported the allegation to law enforcement,” the archdiocese said.

Is that true? Not according to the plaintiff!

The lawsuit argued that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was notified of a pattern of behavior from Close that put children in danger as early as 1976. That year, a pastor at Blessed John Neumann parish in Bryn Mawr (now known as St. John Neumann parish) reported that Close had teenage boys in his room at the rectory at odd hours, including overnight. As a result, Close was transferred to another parish, and “the archdiocese did not warn that next parish of this past behavior,” according to court documents.

Another alleged victim came forward several times starting in the late 1990s, reporting that Close had sexually abused him in 1969 when he was an altar boy at Christ the King parish in Philadelphia. The Archdiocesan Review Board investigated but could not substantiate the allegation, and it was dismissed, court documents say.

In 2011, following the release of a second scathing grand jury report that accused the church hierarchy of harboring more than two dozen priests suspected of abuse, a third alleged victim of Close came forward. That person said Close sexually assaulted him while he was a student at Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster in the early 1990s, when Close was the principal. The Archdiocesan Review Board again found the accusations could not be substantiated.

According to court documents, the archdiocese learned of at least two additional allegations. A woman in 2011 reported that a friend had told her that Close “messed around” with him at Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield in the 1970s. The review board found this to be unsubstantiated. And in 2014, a boy alleged that Close sexually abused him at Christ the King in the 1970s, but archdiocesan investigators were unable to make contact with the boy, court documents said.

We know of over $80 million in Church settlements, and there are other cases in which settlements were reached, but the amounts were not disclosed, and the vast majority of it is due to the Church sheltering chickenhawks.

Homosexuality has been a huge problem within the Catholic priesthood, and that problem has spilled out in the form of predator priests. while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. The John Jay Report noted that, of the abuse cases it studied, between 1950 and 2002, stated:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

Despite attempts by the politically correct, you cannot explain that huge disparity by saying that boys were simply more available to priests years ago. This isn’t a matter of random selection, but of chickenhawk priests deliberately choosing which victims to groom and then assault.

How many parishioners have we lost over this? How many previously devout, Mass-attending Catholics have left the Church over the thoroughly disgusting cases of bishops — some of them predators as well — simply moving the abusers to another parish, without informing the new parish that the priest had ‘problems’? How many parishes have we had to close because there were no longer enough parishioners to keep them open? How many priests could have been moved into positions in which there was almost no contact with minors? And how many could and should have been referred to law enforcement, but were not?

This is what happens when you sweep things under the rug: as you keep doing that, the lump of material under the rug becomes more noticeable, and the debris under the rug became so large that the Church started tripping over it.

It isn’t just the Catholic Church, of course. We reported on Wednesday morning how a 49-year-old Henry Clay High School English teacher and Lutheran Church ‘youth volunteer’ was arrested for sexual offenses with children, and noted over a year ago how a Philadelphia high school teacher had groomed and started sexually abusing a teenaged girl, and others in the school knew about it and did nothing. But if it isn’t just the Catholic Church, the Church has definitely gained a negative reputation for having let it happen, and is often the first ‘suspect’ in people’s minds when they turn to the subject.

Pope Benedict XVI, in 2005, had the subject addressed, and the Congregation for Catholic Education released an instruction stating that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries to study for the priesthood. Naturally, the left went bonkers, with one former priest asking Why Isn’t Celibacy Enough? The answer, of course, is that celibacy would be enough if the chickenhawk priests actually remained celibate! The sexual abuse scandals which have rocked the Church occurred because too many priest could not remain faithful to their vows of celibacy.

What Pope Benedict recognized, that the oh-so-politically-correct left couldn’t stand, is that homosexuality among priests was, while not the sole contributor to the sexual abuse scandals, certainly the largest part. What about 81% of the victims were boys, and the two most abused age groups were, in order, 11-to-14-year-old boys, followed by 15-to-17-year-old boys can’t they understand?

Pope Benedict was right: admitting those with “homosexual tendencies” to the priesthood is a recipe for disaster, and had already been a disaster.

There is only one real solution, and that is to admit heterosexual married men to the priesthood. Not only will they not be preying on young boys, but they will have a sanctified outlet for their sexual drives, and can have a normal family life. We already have married priests, both in the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, but a few hundred married former Anglican priests who converted to Catholicism, and it hasn’t somehow been a disaster for the Church.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! * Updated! * Stupid is as stupid does.

Kevin Lentz, photo by Fayette
County Detention Center, and is a public record.</span<

As we are all aware, the teachers unions in our country, including the Fayette County Education Association, have nothing but the best of intentions when it comes to students in our public schools. Nothing, nothing! can stop them in the pursuit of a top notch education for students!

Lexington high school teacher charged with 17 sexual offenses involving minors

by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Tuesday, August 8, 2023 | 4:01 PM EDT | Updated: 5:32 PM EDT

A Lexington teacher charged with multiple counts of sexual offenses involving minors was placed on leave by the Fayette County district Tuesday, according to officials and records.

Kevin Lentz was an English teacher at Henry Clay High School, Fayette County Public Schools spokesperson Dia Davidson Smith told the Herald-Leader.

The 49-year-old Mr Lentz faces these charges:

  • KRS §531.310(2)(b), 7 counts: Use of a minor in a sexual performance, which is a Class B felony if the minor us under 16 years of age. Under KRS §532.060(2)(b), the sentence for a Class B felony is imprisonment “not less than ten (10) years nor more than twenty (20) years”. The sentence shall include an additional five (5) year period of postincarceration supervision which shall be added to the maximum sentence rendered for the offense.
  • KRS §531.030(2), 10 counts: Distribution of obscene matters to minors, which is a Class A misdemeanor if a first offense, and which is how Mr Lentz is charged. Under KRS §532.090(1), the sentence for a Class A misdemeanor shall not exceed twelve (12) months.
  • KRS §524.100, 6 counts: Tampering with physical evidence, which is a Class D felony. Under KRS §532.060(2)(d), the sentence for a Class D felony is imprisonment “not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years.”

The charge of tampering with physical evidence requires that the accused believes “that an official proceeding is pending or may be instituted,” so to be guilty of this, Mr Lentz had to know that the police suspected him of the other offenses, that he knew the authorities were closing in.

Mr Lentz has been employed by the Fayette County public schools for 18 years, since August 11, 2005, which leads me to wonder: is this something he (allegedly) recently started, or has this been going on for years and years?

Public school teachers are (supposedly) not stupid, and Fayette County requires that teachers of Mr Lentz’s seniority have attained a Master’s degree. If you are a teacher, you just can’t not know that this kind of thing means a very long and unpleasant stay in the state penitentiary. As Leroy Jethro Gibbs said, to some college students he was interrogating, “Believe me, son, you will not do well in prison.” Just how can someone be that stupid?

These are the kinds of charges that the Commonwealth’s Attorney should not allow to be the subject of any lenient plea bargain; if convicted of use of a minor under 16 in a sexual performance, he should get the maximum sentence of twenty years, which will almost certainly be run concurrently rather than consecutively, as I would prefer — keep him locked up for 140 years! — which would keep him in prison until he’s 69 years old, something he might not survive anyway.
_____________________________
Update! 11:05 AM EDT

I had wondered, even though I didn’t include it in my original, which was posted at 8:47 AM, whether Mr Lentz’s alleged victims were male or female, since Mrs Spears’ original never mentioned the sex of the victim or victims at all. Now, we know.

Henry Clay teacher exchanged obscene photos in texts with 9-year-old boy, citation alleges

by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Wednesday, August 9, 2023 | 9:24 AM EDT | Updated: 9:59 AM EDT

A Henry Clay High School teacher induced a 9-year-old boy to send photos of his genitals in a text and also sent the boy adult pornography, a police citation alleges.

Kevin Lentz, 49, asked the boy to delete the conversations “so his parents wouldn’t know,” according to the Lexington Police Department citation. Lentz reportedly sent the child more than 10 images of pornography.

The incident occurred in July, the citation said.

There’s more at the Lexington Herald-Leader original.

Yeah, Mr Lentz, if convicted, will not do well in prison.

More, while part of Mrs Spears original that I did not quote stated that the county schools’ spokeswoman simply referred reporters to the police as far as to whether the alleged victim was a Henry Clay High School student, if he is a nine-year-old boy, the victim is too young to have been in high school. It turns out that he was also a church ‘youth volunteer,’ and though Mrs Spears did not identify at which church it was, it has been reported elsewhere that it was at Lexington’s Faith Lutheran Church.

Fayette District Judge Lindsay Thurston set a $50,000 bond and ordered Lentz to not have contact with minor children as a condition of his release, according to court documents. He remained in the Fayette Detention Center Wednesday morning.

Mr Lentz is innocent until proven guilty, so a reasonable bail amount had to be set; In Kentucky, only those accused of murder can be denied bail. Now that this information has been exposed, I suspect that Mr Lentz time at the Fayette County Detention Center will be disagreeable if he doesn’t make bail quickly.

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Will Larry Krasner send this case to juvenile court?

We previously reported on the identification of 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr, as the alleged killer of Michael Salerno during a carjacking attempt, and pointed out that The Philadelphia Inquirer had not covered that story. A check of the newspaper’s website shows that they never did catch up to reporting on that.

However, now that young Mr Banks has been captured, the Inky has covered it:

15-year-old suspect arrested in fatal attempted carjacking in South Philadelphia

On July 12, Michael Salerno, 50, attempted to prevent a carjacking of his vehicle on the 1100 block of Porter Street when he was shot in the head.

by Robert Moran | Monday, August 7, 2023

Authorities on Monday arrested the 15-year-old boy wanted in the fatal shooting of a 50-year-old man during an attempted carjacking last month in South Philadelphia.

Rasheed Banks Jr. was apprehended in Camden by Philadelphia agents of the U.S. Marshals and members of a regional New York and New Jersey fugitive task force, the U.S. Marshals Service Philadelphia announced.

Naturally, the Inquirer did not publish the photo that Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News used in his tweet, nor young Mr Banks’ mugshot, which the Philly television media had and published.

Why not? Remember: publisher Elizabeth Hughes has mandated that the newspaper will be an “anti-racist news organization,” and would censor the news if the news happened to be too politically incorrect.

But what, exactly, is the Inky trying to hide? Yes, they did not publish young Mr Banks’ photo, but let’s tell the truth here: simply publishing his first name, Rasheed, tells every reader that the suspect is black. The newspaper isn’t fooling anyone!

The real question now is: will the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating ‘progressive’ Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Krasner, charge Mr Banks as an adult? I have heard that Mr Krasner has never offered up a juvenile for an adult charge, though I can’t document that. But if young Mr Banks is indeed the murderer — and he is innocent until proven guilty — and is charged as a juvenile, the longest he could be held in juvenile confinement is until he reaches age 21; then he would have to be released, and his juvenile record sealed.

That’s six years, six years for wanton, willful murder.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer does some good reporting . . . and then they hide it

We have previously noted some articles in The Philadelphia Inquirer marked as exclusive for paid subscribers. The newspaper has a digital paywall which allows non-subscribers a limited number of articles a month before it descends and blocks access to all articles, but even if you haven’t tried to open an Inky article for months, the subscribers only block will stop you from accessing those stories. Nevertheless, the story below is one that should have been available to more Philadelphia readers!

Yes, the Inquirer does have to make money to stay in business, and the economic condition has been serious enough that the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism has sent out begging letters to subscribers at least thrice that I have documented, so perhaps the $285.48 that I’ve been paying still isn’t enough.

Jim Kenney raised money to boost progressive candidates but spent it on consultants and restaurant tabs

Of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns. The money has also gone to political operatives and miscellaneous expenses.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Monday, August 7, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In early 2020, things were looking good for Mayor Jim Kenney, who had just coasted to reelection after a productive first term and was eyeing statewide office.

In June of that year, he launched Kenney PAC, a political action committee that he said would “help progressive candidates in the forthcoming legislative races in Pennsylvania defeat extremist pro-Trump Republicans.”

Giving money to Democrats across the state would have built goodwill for a mayor little known outside Southeastern Pennsylvania, and news of the PAC helped fuel speculation that Kenney might run for U.S. Senate or governor in 2022.

Well, those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” haven’t had much success in the Keystone State, but the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sure hasn’t benefitted under those ‘progressive’ Democrats! Under Mayor Kenney, the City of Brotherly Love, the town he was (supposedly) running, in 2020, the year he launched Kenney PAC, went from 356 homicides — which the Philadelphia Police have now revised down to 353 — to 499, and there are serious reasons to believe that the number was actually 502, as initially reported.

We have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

2020 was the year of the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd in Minneapolis, and riots broke out in many cities, including Philly, but the change in attitudes continued far beyond 2020; Philly saw a whopping 562 homicides in 2021, a number which blew the old record completely apart, along with 190 deaths marked ‘suspicious’. 2022 saw an improvement of sorts, with the official number of homicides down to 516, which was still second all time.

Why, it’s almost as though Philly could have used those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” running the city!

Back to the Inky:

But of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns, according to an analysis of campaign finance reports. Instead, the PAC’s money has primarily gone to benefit operatives close to Kenney — who abandoned his hopes of higher office after his popularity tanked starting in 2020 — and to pay for miscellaneous expenses, such as events, hotel rooms, and restaurant bills.

You know what that is? That’s actually good, investigative reporting, which makes me wonder why the newspaper’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar decided to restrict the article to subscribers only. If there’s anything in the Inquirer’s reporting which should draw in new subscribers, it’s the “high-impact journalism“, “speaking truth to power“, and “high-impact election reporting” the Leftist Lenfest Institute told us the newspaper delivered, yet that’s just what Mr Escobar, or possibly one of his minions, restricted.

I’ve quoted a lot of the article, and cited my sources, as always, but unless you are a subscriber, you can’t even check to see if I’ve lied to you; that bothers me.

I can’t simply quote the whole thing, and I really wish that more people could read it for themselves, but I’ll note briefly here that reporter Sean Collins Walsh pointed out that the top ten donors to Kenney PAC, roughly $399,000 out of $850,000, were all building trade unions; the unions had also been the primary contributors to the Mayor’s two campaigns. Mayor Jim Kenney has just plain checked out, marking time until he’s no longer in the job. The members of those very same unions are the working men of the city who are at risk from the bullets flying around town, especially in the working-class neighborhoods.

What the unions bought with their support of Mr Kenney is greater danger for their members and their families! Perhaps some of those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” could have done a better job? After all, it hardly seems that they could have done worse!