Elon Musk helps get information out of Iran and to the rest of the world

The New York Times is finally paying real attention to the situation in Iran. THis is a screen capture from their website front page on January 13, 2026. Click to enlarge>.

As we have previously noted, the credentialed media has been publishing rather little on the popular uprisings in Iran. Slightly more has been coming out, but information has still been sparse. More information has been coming out over social media, though, interestingly enough, far less on Bluesky than on Twitter, at least as far as I’ve personally seen. Iran has been fighting that, with a curious number of accounts, including some which were pro-‘Palestinian,’ supporting the theocratic regime over the human rights of the Persian people rising against that tyranny.

Now, Elon Musk is helping the protesters. From The Wall Street Journal:

Iran Is Hunting Down Starlink Users to Stop Protest Videos From Going Global

Video from the streets is one of the few ways of getting information out about the scale of the protests and authorities’ actions

By Benoit Faucon | Monday, January 12, 2026 | 11:00 AM EST

With the government shutting down the internet and throttling phone services, Iranians are leaning heavily on Elon Musk’s Starlink service to share videos of growing protests and the regime’s escalating crackdown with the world.

But Iran has intensified efforts to jam the service, which is banned in the country, and users are being hunted.

If the Journal‘s paywall is stopping you from reading the original, it can be read here for free.

Over the weekend, authorities began searching for and confiscating Starlink dishes in western Tehran, said Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at Miaan Group, a U.S. nonprofit opposed to internet censorship.

“It’s electronic warfare,” Rashidi said. He said disruptions are worst in parts of Tehran where protests are taking place and in the evening, when the demonstrators gather.

The battle over information—while secondary to the confrontations taking place nightly in dozens of cities across Iran—has potentially serious consequences. President Trump has threatened to intervene in response to a crackdown by the regime.

Let me stress at this point that I do not support any American military action to support the protesters. Yes, I want them to succeed, I want the whole Iranian government to fall, but this needs to be done by the Iranian people themselves, and not something which the Islamists can say was pushed by the United States. Iranians themselves need to Make Iran Great Again!

Video from the streets is one of the few ways of getting information out about the scale of the protests and the actions of Iranian authorities.

That has always been a problem: with the cutoff of communications by the Iranian government, the credentialed media have far fewer ways to verify stories which come from a single source.

More than 500 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran. Another rights group, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, circulated video footage Sunday showing a large number of bodies at a morgue in south Tehran.

Trump is scheduled to be briefed Tuesday on his options. One under discussion is to send in more Starlink terminals. Trump said he would ask Musk about the possibility.

“We may get the internet going if that’s possible,” Trump told the reporters.

Iran shut down most internet connections for the country’s 90 million inhabitants late last week, after protests over a crippling economic crisis exploded into large-scale unrest with demonstrators chanting for an end to the regime. The government has also made it difficult to connect calls or send text messages.

The only exceptions are the government itself, its media services and regime loyalists who are registered on a “whitelist” of internet addresses, said diplomats and others communicating with some of those with uninterrupted access.

Well, of course, and I’m seeing that junk on Twitter, gobs of it. The Iranian government and their propagandists have been blaming the uprisings not on the collapsing economy or severe water shortages, but on the United States and Israel; the Great Satan and the Jooooos are always the ones responsible! To the leaders of the Islamic Republic, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have diverted rain clouds, and the US and Israel have manipulated the weather.

We don’t know yet how this will turn out. It’s clear that huge numbers of Iranians are displeased with their government, but the government has guns, and has not been afraid to use them. We can all hope that the theocratic regime will be overthrown, though there’s no way of telling how that will work out for a new government.

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 (/ˈwk/) 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.

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” ― William F. Buckley

I will admit it: there was a strong feeling of amusement among sensible people when the simpleton from Sweden was arrested for protesting in support of the British pro-terrorism group. Greta Thunberg had made a name for herself as a climate kook, but has branched out in support of Hamas, Palestinian terrorism, and against Western civilization defending ourselves from the forces of barbarism, even though it is Western civilization itself which gave her the luxury to protest against anything rather than having to spend her time and energy scratching the dirt in hopes of feeding herself and the three or so kids she’d have popped out by now in a subsistence lifestyle.

But there is a more important point which needs to be made: our British forebears and other European ancestors have been criminalizing the freedom of speech which we take for granted.

Amy Coney Barrett Issues Free Speech Warning

Wednesday, December 24, 2025 | 9:41 AM EST

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has warned about threats to free speech in the United Kingdom.

Coney made the remarks during an interview with Bishop Robert Barron for an episode of his podcast, Bishop Barron Presents, which was released on Sunday.

“Think about what’s happening with respect to free speech rights in the U.K.,” Barrett said during a discussion about the purpose of law. “Contrary opinions or opinions that are not in the mainstream are not being tolerated, and they’re even being criminalized. Because of the First Amendment, that can’t happen here.”

It can’t? it wasn’t until Associate Justice Ruth Ginsberg went to her eternal reward and Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed that the Supreme Court took freedom of religion into account when it came to the restrictions that states put on churches to fight the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error; panicdemic was exactly how I intended to spell it, because panic is exactly how governments reacted.

It was under the Administration of President Joe Biden that an FBI “Analyst” submitted a proposal to monitor traditional Catholics who prefer the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass, “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics,” or RTEs, he called them, because “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists,” or RMVEs might be interested in using Latin Mass Catholics to spread their goals.

Someone leaked a hand-redacted, redacted by magic marker, copy of the “FBI internal use only” document, and the Bureau decided, rather quickly, that they ought to withdraw the document entirely.

FBI retracts leaked document orchestrating investigation of Catholics

By Tyler Arnold and Joe Bukuras | Thursday, February 9, 2023 | 3:15 PM EST

The FBI says it is retracting a leaked document published on the internet Feb. 8 that appears to reveal that the bureau’s Richmond division launched an investigation into “radical traditionalist” Catholics and their possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”

In response to an inquiry from CNA, the FBI said it will remove the document because “it does not meet our exacting standards.”

Really? The document is ‘sourced’ citing far-left political sources, including Salon, The Atlantic, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. If there are less biased sources, they were redacted from the document. It’s so bad that it makes me wonder: if it was a great departure from the Bureau’s “exacting standards,” why wouldn’t the document author have realized it, and the Bureau have flagged it before it was leaked? Or is the document not really that great a departure from those “exacting standards,” which calls into question just how “exacting” those standards really are.

Can we tell the truth here? The document was retracted because it was leaked, and the FBI were embarrassed. But without our First Amendment, not only would a government investigation of “radical traditionalist Catholics” be perfectly legal and not questionable at all, but the fact that the “FBI internal use only” document was leaked and published could have been illegal.

Barrett’s comments come as Britain has faced increased scrutiny over its policing of speech, including from Vice President JD Vance, in recent months.

Some critics have focused on the Online Safety Act, rolled out this year, which requires social media companies to remove illegal content on their platforms. Critics say is being implemented too broadly and has resulted in the censorship of legal content.

Even with our First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press, our good friends on the left have waxed apoplectic over the freedoms which allow non-liberal, non-leftist news and opinions to be disseminated, as Michael Tomasky, editor of the New Republic blamed those freedoms for Kamala Harris Emhoff’s defeat, even as his own magazine was using those very same freedoms to publish.

The New York Times has published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence, and that Twitter’s bans on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes freedom of speech. The Times told us how wonderful it was that Jeff Bezos was able to deplatform Parler, but lamented that some of those who lost their speech on Parler migrated to Gab and Rumble.

The left were predictably aghast when Mr Musk did buy Twitter and imposed a much broader freedom of speech regime. When it comes to the American left, and how the Biden Administration tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and that very liberal hater of free speech, Nina Jankowicz.

One thing has been made clear: our First — and Second! — Amendment rights have been under attack even here, not by sensible conservatives, but by the left. Under President Biden, himself (purportedly) a Catholic, we’ve seen attacks on the freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and peaceable assembly, because the left absotively, posilutely hate that their great truths can be challenged.

Thus, while we can chuckle at the fact that a crackpot was arrested for demonstrating in support of the pro-Palestinian British hunger strikers — most of whom have given up their hunger strike anyway — we need to remember that the threats to our freedoms come from the left, and the Biden Administration proved that the plain words of the Constitution mean nothing more than an inconvenient impediment to their goals and them, not a absolute block. We need to support Miss Thunberg’s freedom of speech and peaceable association not because we agree with her, but because we strongly disagree, because that is how we defend ourselves.

References

References
1 No, that’s not a typographical error; panicdemic was exactly how I intended to spell it, because panic is exactly how governments reacted.

Twitter has become a go to site for left-wing propaganda! But not to worry, conservatives still have their voices there as well.

Sensible people and patriotic Americans were all very, very glad when Elon Musk bought Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏 — and installed a (mostly) free speech environment. Freedom of Speech is a good thing, a great thing, something enshrined as a constitutional right in our First Amendment.

But, alas! as we have noted many times previously, the American left are not quite so supportive. Michael Tomasky, Editor of The New Republic, blamed Kamala Harris Emhoff’s defeat on those poor, ignorant, unedumacated saps who don’t get their information exclusively from the mostly liberal credentialed media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and the other approved credentialed media outlets. We noted previously, that, before being bought out by Elon Musk, Twitter had already taken sides on the issue of ‘transgenderism,’ and bans ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering,’[1]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a … Continue reading as though the issue is settled, no dissent can be tolerated, and dissention could result in the suspension of your Twitter account. Robert Stacy McCain lost his old @rsmccain account, which had something like 10,000 followers, and his newer The Patriarch Tree account has only 2,522, because he said politically incorrect things.

The New York Times has published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence, and that Twitter’s bans on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes freedom of speech. The Times told us how wonderful it was that Jeff Bezos was able to deplatform Parler, but lamented that some of those who lost their speech on Parler migrated to Gab and Rumble. The newspaper has never really liked that Freedom of Speech and of the Press actually applies to people other than themselves.

The left were predictably aghast when Mr Musk did buy Twitter and imposed a much broader freedom of speech regime. When it comes to the American left, and how the Biden Administration tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and that very liberal hater of free speech, Nina Jankowicz.

One thing Mr Musk did not do, though Mr Tomasky claimed he would, was turn Twitter into a right-wing site. What Mr Musk did was to end (most) of the censorship of conservatives, but he didn’t rein in liberals. I’m still seeing the same bovine feces from the left that I always did, but now we have something new: the pro-‘Palestinian’ bots are flooding Twitter with messages about the poor, poor ‘Palestinians,’ suffering because Israel destroyed much of Gaza, in a war that the ‘Palestinians’ started. We previously reported on how the bots were using AI to create scenes that were not real. The tweet screen captured to the right is just one of hundreds, if not more than hundreds, aimed by the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas sympathizers and bots trying to pull on our heartstrings, at the plight of the poor, poor Palestinians, and the children! to generate relief aid and, of course, hatred of the Jooooos. I have little doubt that, had ubiquitous cell phones and social media existed in 1944, there’d be people telling us that the Germans were surely defeated by the end of the year, and that we didn’t really need to cross into the Third Reich, killing more innocents, and that we should offer Adolf Hitler and his cronies a ceasefire, to avoid more tragedy.

And now, we’re getting something new. Several pro-Palestinian idiots from Palestine Action, a governmentally proscribed terrorist organization, in the United Kingdom staged a riot, attacking a weapons plant, which, in one instance had a rioter hitting a downed policewoman in the spine with a sledgehammer. The rioters are demanding to be released, but are being held on remand, being detained prior to trial. Eight of the prisoners have decided that a hunger strike would force His Majesty’s Government to release them, but they haven’t gotten their way, and the hunger strikers are now in the upper forties to fifty days of refusing to eat. Most are in rough physical shape right now, and could die at any time.

The left are whining about this, but the hunger strikers have chosen this course of action themselves. The left want the government to do something, but the only something the government could do is force-feed, or provide total parenteral nutrition, TPN, to provide nutrition intravenously, though I’d guess it wouldn’t be easy to get an IV line on these prisoners in their condition. The left are not advocating that; they only want the terrorists released.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is among those pushing this.

Of course, there’s plenty of conservative-leaning stuff on Twitter, and I follow several other accounts which aren’t political in the slightest.

I suspect that I get all of these tweets since I have responded to some of their silliness, because, to the surprise of absolutely no one who knows me, sometimes I just can’t shut up.

But that’s freedom of speech and of the press for you, and Mr Musk has been pretty good about allowing in to continue. I completely support the freedom of speech and of the press of the ‘Palestinian’ supporters, even though I believe their ’cause’ to be rubbish.

References

References
1 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.

The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ralph Cipriano of Big Trial Blog sent out the message to the left on Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏 — stating that The Philadelphia Inquirer scrubbed the story about Paul George, one of the George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner’s top minions, being disbarred from the federal court system.

Since we had already noted the newspaper’s article in a previous story, it was easy for me to check: the cited article remains available . . . but only if you know where to look. The newspaper has a Crime & Justice section, and if you type that in — the section does not appear linked on the website main page this morning, though it does occasionally — your will find the story listed, but not near the top. As of 9:00 AM EST on Sunday morning, there are five stories at the top of the Crime & Justice page, with a single column list of other article below that. The story on Messrs Krasner and George is the fifth one down on that list.

A site search of the newspaper’s website for “Krasner” brings up the story, the second story listed as of 9:06 AM EST. A site search for “Paul George” yields the story as well, seven stories down the list, but with the Philadelphia 76ers having a player with the same name, it’s unsurprising that the story about the Assistant District Attorney is down the list a bit.

We have noted the journolism — not a typographical error, but deliberate as seen in the image to the right — of The Philadelphia Inquirer previously. We reported recently on how the newspaper chose not to cover the felony arrests of eight “youth football players” in Polk County, Florida, reported both nationally and, in the Philadelphia media market by WPVI-TV, the ABC affiliate on Channel 6, as well as Chennel 10, the NBC affiliate, but the Inquirer chose to ignore a Philadelphia story. Website searches for “Thoroughbreds“, “youth football“, “Polk County“, “Davenport“, the town in which the arrests occurred, and “Grady Judd” conducted earlier and then reconducted as this article was being written turned up nothing on the story. The editors of the newspaper simply chose to ignore a story that they couldn’t have missed.

This is what my $6.99 per week digital subscription delivers? News censored by the political correctness and “anti racist news organization” publisher Elizabeth Hughes and the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism mandated for our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper?

As much as our credentialed media denigrate and hate Twitter since Elon Musk bought it and removed most of the constraints and censorship — the left really do hate freedom of speech and of the press — without Twitter I would never have heard of the Polk County case, and if I had missed logging into the newspaper’s website on the 11th, I’d have missed the story about Messrs Krasner’s and George’s utter failures.

The Inquirer’s masthead, in 1955, proclaimed the newspaper to be a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. These days, I’d suggest that they should use the logo I created to the left, because that’s what they publish.

“No one is above the law.” — Joe Biden Unless, of course, it's immigration law, and then our good friends on the left support breaking 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.

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 now, it seems that Mr Bunch has changed his tune. To him, some people clearly are above the law, those people being ones who have violated our immigration laws:

In New Orleans and across U.S., anger over ICE raids sparks a 2nd American Revolution

Everyday folks are rising up to resist immigration raids with whistles, car chases, and noisy protests. Revolution is in the air.

By Will Bunch | Pearl harbor Day, December 7, 2025 | 2:24 PM EST

NEW ORLEANS — In a city of frayed nerves over an invasion by more than 200 masked, tactical-gear-wearing federal immigration agents, a chaotic scene suddenly broke out right in front of the altar at First Grace United Methodist Church on Canal Street, just a couple of miles from the Superdome.

There follow several paragraphs noting that this was not the real thing, but a rehearsal for activists to disrupt actual immigration law enforcement.

This was a play-acting, casual-dress rehearsal during an emergency training session organized by the immigration-rights group Union Migrante. The activists were planting more seeds for what is rapidly sprouting as the most important American uprising of the 21st century.

It took about 66 hours to go from basic training to frontline action. On Friday afternoon, in a heavily Latino neighborhood near the New Orleans airport, the cartoon-villainous, strutting Border Patrol commander of the Louisiana immigration raids named “Catahoula Crunch,” Greg Bovino, struggled to conduct a sweep through blocks of low-slung apartments.

Word that Bovino and his masked secret police were in suburban Kenner spread quickly on a series of chat groups of activists who’ve played cat-and-mouse with his agents ever since their op began Wednesday, tailing government SUVs across superstore parking lots and down boulevards lined with strip malls.

Eventually, according to the local newspaper, The Times-Picayune, the caravan of citizen resisters following the agents grew to as many as 30 vehicles, until Bovino-friendly cops from the Kenner Police Department formed a blockade to stop them. That didn’t deter other neighbors who, as captured on video, chased the masked feds across lawns while filming with cell phones and blowing shrill whistles, a signal for immigrants to stay indoors.

In other words, the activists were attempting to disrupt and interfere with a legitimate immigration law enforcement action. Some people apparently are above the law!

You can feel the sheltering impulses of the antebellum Underground Railroad, combined with the righteous fervor of 1964’s Mississippi Freedom Summer. I spent much of last week in and around New Orleans, the resiliently rebellious heart of one of America’s reddest states. I watched everyday folks protest on street corners, create “Know Your Rights” pamphlets, and learn how to legally confront masked, armed law-enforcement officers. Nearing the end of a year that began with the grim inauguration of authoritarianism, I left here convinced I’d seen the green shoots of a second American Revolution.

Heaven forfend! “(A) second American Revolution”? I suppose that Mr Bunch would be in favor of anything that might get rid of our freely and legally elected President, but revolutions frequently do not turn out quite the way people expected. Our first, and hopefully only, American Revolution brought forth a nation of individual rights, freedom, and democracy, but most recent revolutions have produced authoritarianism, suppression of dissent, and dictatorship. Remember: our previous President tried to impose mandatory administration of a vaccine approved only on an emergency basis, pushed social media such as (pre-Elon Musk) Twitter and Facebook to censor posts the Administration didn’t like, and tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board. Even The Grey Lady, our nation’s most famous newspaper, The New York Times, was giving OpEd space to those who wanted to restrict Other People’s — certainly not their own! — Freedom of Speech and of the Press.

However, I followed Mr Bunch’s link to the Times-Picayune, and found something somewhat different than the Inquirer columnist told his readers:

In Kenner, Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino faces mixed reactions and police backup

By Lara Nicholson, Staff writer | Friday, December 5, 2025

As the U.S. Border Patrol conducted their third day of immigration raids in the New Orleans area, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, the agency’s leader, toured the streets of Kenner Friday to mixed reaction from the public, taking photo ops at one point to fielding protesters at another before ultimately using a Kenner Police blockade to leave the area.

Bovino and a team of at least six agents conducted operations at gas stations and in neighborhoods along Williams Boulevard, the main corridor of the city lined with Latin American restaurants and department stores. At one point Bovino’s team approached a vehicle at a gas station to question a passenger before letting him go. It’s unclear if they detained anyone on Friday.

Bovino and his entourage wore green uniforms and face coverings, and he dismissed a request Friday from New Orleans Mayor-Elect Helena Moreno, a Democrat, that federal agents remove masks as part of a broader demand for more transparency.

“I think this is about as transparent as it gets right here,” Bovino told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in response to Moreno’s demands.

But in Kenner, a suburban city of about 65,000, the political landscape is much different from its more progressive anchor. While having the largest Hispanic population per capita of any Louisiana city at 30%, its government is almost entirely Republican. Its police chief, Keith Conley, has in recent years complained about the increase in undocumented immigrants and is one of the only officials in the parish that’s been a vocal supporter of Border Patrol’s efforts in the city.

While New Orleans/Orleans Parish, the murder capital of the United States, gave 130,749 votes, or 82.16%, to then-Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff in 2024, and only 24,119, 15.16%, to then-former and now current President Donald Trump, Mr Trump carried Jefferson Parish, in which Kenner is the largest city, 98,810, or 55.45%, to 75,731, 42.50%, for Mrs Emhoff. Overall, Mr Trump carried Louisiana 1,208,505, 60.22%, to 766,870, 38.21%. Note that Mr Bunch reported that the activists were training at First Grace United Methodist Church on Canal Street, just a couple of miles from the Superdome, in New Orleans itself; the activists protesting in Kenner were mostly not from Kenner.

The Times-Picayune again:

At a Star Gas Station on Williams Boulevard where Bovino’s team stopped for a break, customers asked to take pictures with him while he waited to purchase pork cracklins and an energy drink. He offered to buy one of them their coke while a gaggle of photojournalists took pictures.

In the parking lot outside, a man in a camouflage jacket and a red “Make America Great Again” hat held up a makeshift metal sign saying “THANK YOU I.C.E ❤︎ U D.H.S. U.S.A!” in blue paint.

“We love you and we work for you,” Bovino told the man before entering his SUV.

Our frantic Philadelphian somehow didn’t include that in his column; perhaps he didn’t actually read all of the news report he cited?

Freed of the old constraint of 750 words, Mr Bunch continued, but if you read it, you’ll see that he was reporting on ‘resistance’ from New Orleans, which even he noted was but a “Democratic dot in a state that Trump won with 60% of the vote in 2024.”

One last bit from him:

In Charlotte, the Bovino-led operation dubbed “Charlotte’s Web,” which was also met with widespread community opposition, was abruptly cut short after just four-and-a-half days.

As my good friend and occasional website pinch hitter William Teach reported Monday morning, a previously, 2018 under President Trump, deported illegal immigrant who sneaked back in in 2021, under President Biden, was just arrested for stabbing a man in the chest on Charlotte’s light rail system, the same public transportation system in which Decarlos Brown — not an illegal immigrant, but a mentally ill man with dozens of previous arrests — (allegedly) murdered Iryna Zarutska.

Perhaps Mr Bunch never heard of the murder of Miss Zarutska, given that a site search of the Inquirer’s website foe “Iryna Zarutska” turned up zero results. Had Mr Brown been white and Miss Zarutska black or Hispanic, you can bet your last euro that it would have been all over the Inky.

Perhaps if our friends on the left in general, and Mr Bunch specifically, included our immigration laws and street crime under “no one is above the law” we’d have a safer society.
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The left really, really hate your #FreedomOfSpeech What they say is gospel; what conservatives say is forbidden

My good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove, who sometimes pinch hits on this poor site when I’m on vacation, uses as his blog ‘tagline,’ “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” And thus we have, in our good friends on the left, the ones championing freedom of speech and their right to protest our Evil Orange Overlord in the ‘No Kings’ rallies, showing us just how much they support freedom of speech for the people they don’t like.

KKK propaganda found in Central Kentucky city. Police ask for camera footage

By Christopher Leach | Wednesday, October 22, 2025 | 10:09 AM EDT

The Frankfort Police Department is investigating after Ku Klux Klan propaganda was found in the community overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.

Police did not say specifically where the propaganda was found, but asked those in the area to share security camera footage with investigators. Allowing investigators to review footage could help identify those who spread the propaganda, officials said.

“The Frankfort Police Department does not tolerate hate in any form,” the agency said in an Oct. 22 Facebook post. “This behavior goes against the values of our community, and the Frankfort Police Department is taking this matter very seriously.”

Anyone with information can contact Frankfort police at 502-875-8582.

“The Frankfort Police Department remains committed to the safety of the Frankfort community and continues to support a thriving and diverse community,” police wrote in the Facebook post.

That’s it, that’s the whole story. Normally I’d crop part of the story, but I wanted you to see the whole thing, along with the linked Facebook post, so that you could see that in no place was it indicated that whatever the Ku Klux Klan propaganda said, there are no indications given that it contained any illegal threats to any specific individuals.

Similar ‘incidents’ in Midway and a neighborhood in Lexington have been reported by Christopher Leach as well, though they do not specify that the fliers distributed were by the Klan.

So, I have to ask: if there are no indications reported that the “propaganda” contained any illegal threats, why is this a concern of law enforcement in the state capital? Do the Klan somehow not have freedom of speech and of the press? What actual crime was committed by the Klan distributing their message? The Frankfort Police Department called it an “appalling act of littering,” which Mr Leach did not include in his news story, so apparently the city’s police department is devoting great resources to investigate the distribution as littering, not to investigate any actual threat.

Well, apparently asking such a question was enough for what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal to ‘deactivate’ my comment, screenshotted at the right. I wrote:

The Herald-Leader certainly celebrated the Freedom of Speech expressed by the attendees at the No Kings rally last Saturday, but now we’re hearing that “Ku Klux Klan propaganda”, another expression of freedom of speech, has led to “the Frankfort Police Department is taking this matter very seriously.”

What actual crime has been committed here? Just because people don’t like what the Klan are saying doesn’t mean that it is illegal for them to say it.

We have documented, many times, how much our good friends on the left, including in the credentialed media, hate the freedom of speech and of the press when it comes to those with whom they disagree. The New York Times itself told us how much they don’t like freedom of speech when it comes to Donald Trump or conservatives using Twitter. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s hard-left columnist Will Bunch loves using his freedom of speech and of the press to attack conservatives but absolutely hates it when anyone departs from the leftist line, attacking the very liberal Morning Joe hosts Joe and Mika Scarborough for having the unmitigated gall to interview Donald Trump after he had won the 2024 election.

The Klan? Yeah, they’re an extreme example, but so what? Do the left believe that they should not be allowed to express their opinions?

That thing that never happens has happened again

Hiring a 48-year-old, 5’7″, 210 lb ‘transgender woman’ to drive a school bus full of young kids? What could possibly go wrong?

Male bus driver who goes by ‘Ms Sharon’ charged with sexually abusing multiple boys

By Alex Oliveira | Sunday, October 5, 2025 | 2:27 PM EDT

A North Carolina school bus driver who calls himself “Ms. Sharon” has been charged with sexually assaulting several boys whom he lured to his house, cops say.

Leetwain Darrell Tate — a 48-year-old a male also known as just “Sharon” — was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of statutory rape and six counts of indecent liberties with a minor, according to Charlotte-Mecklenberg police.

He is accused of assaulting at least four boys age 14 and 15 years old, but officials said there could be more victims.

The children were found to be staying at his house, and one of them claimed Tate offered him money in return for sex, an arrest affidavit obtained by WCNC read.

The New York Post noted that the police said none of the ‘incidents’ occurred while Mr Tate was working for the school or on school property.

The WCCB news story doesn’t give us any more information than did the Post. Oddly enough, I was unable to find anything on this story in The New York Times, where they tell readers about All the News That’s Fit to Print.

The Charlotte Observer did report on the story, but of course the newspaper used the feminine pronouns to refer to Mr Tate. The Observer reported this:

In a letter to families about the allegations, Sugar Creek Charter School Superintendent Celeste Sundo said Tate met all of the necessary background requirements to get hired.

“All Sugar Creek Charter School candidates undergo a multi-step hiring process, including a national background check and reference checks, before an offer of employment is made,” Sundo said.

Yeah, that’s what the Des Moines board of education said about Ian Roberts, too, and look how that turned out! Apparently being a 5’7″ ‘transgender woman’ meets the ‘necessary background requirements’ for Mecklenburg County public schools! Normally when you hire crazy, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get crazy.

Whenever There Is a Truth You Cannot Tell, That Is a Truth You Must Tell! Our Credentialed Media: All the News That's Politically Correct!

I have previously suggested that it was Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s devilishly clever scheme to let the thugs get away with ‘smaller’ s(tuff) until they graduated to a crime which could keep them locked up forever, and if that crime happened to eliminate other thugs, it was a win-win for the DA, getting two or more bad guys off the streets for good. Robert Stacy McCain was less charitable:

Democrats are objectively pro-crime. It is the de facto policy of the Democratic Party that mentally ill criminals should be turned loose on the streets until they stab somebody in the neck. Democrats are the psycho killer party, and the people who vote for Democrats don’t care how many people get killed as a result of their policy.

The Democrats would deny that, of course, but is there any evidence, any evidence at all that Mr McCain’s statement isn’t true? Forget what the left say; look at what they do, and Mr McCain’s statement makes perfect sense.

My good friend Matt Van Swol tweeted a list of major news sources, the credentialed media writ large, which did not cover this story, so I checked my primary newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a site search for the (alleged) killer’s name, Decarlos Brown, returned nothing. I didn’t check Mr Van Swol’s list in its entirety, but doing site searches of the websites of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN resulted in just what Mr Van Swol said, nothing.

Remember: bandwidth is ridiculously cheap, and there are no real limitations on space for those news organizations.

It was an old joke that New Yorkers riding the subway would have the Times very visible, while actually reading the New York Post hidden inside, and yup, the Post covered the murder with three separate stories.

I guess this story wasn’t part of the news that’s fit to print.

We’ve seen this before. The Inquirer’s publisher specifically said that, to achieve her goal of making the newspaper an “anti-racist news organization,” she was establishing guidelines that would reduce the newspaper’s coverage of crime, because it often “stigmatized” certain “Philadelphia communities”. Decarlos Brown is black, and he (allegedly) stabbed a white woman to death, for no known reason other than he is just plain crazy.

But there’s more. Mr Brown is a career criminal, with a rap sheet which dates back to his juvenile years, but while there are many arrests noted, only one actual criminal conviction is listed; he’s been let go without any serious action several times since he got out of prison. This is exactly the thing about which sensible people have been complaining, and liberals ignoring, in their zealous attempts to not ‘stigmatize’ black Americans.

Thus there are two problems for the credentialed media when it comes to Mr Brown:

  1. Mr Brown is black, while his victim was a very pretty white woman, and the media certainly don’t want to point out that; and
  2. The Brown case demonstrates what liberal law enforcement yields.

With President Trump’s actions to send in National Guard troops to help with law enforcement in our more dangerous communities, the left are saying that it’s raaaaacist to do that, because it disproportionately impacts black communities.

Imagine this story in 1985! Because the credentialed media didn’t want you to know about it, it wouldn’t have been published much beyond the local Charlotte Observer, so for the vast majority of the nation, that crime didn’t happen. It’s only due to social media and this internet thingy that Al Gore invented that this is a story at all, because as far as The New York Times is concerned, it never happened.

The Inquirer? That august newspaper is all-in on demanding new funds for SEPTA, and a story about an innocent woman stabbed to death for seemingly no reason at all certainly won’t push more Philadelphians to take public transportation!

Mr Brown should never have been out on the streets, and should have been in the loony bin, but no one wants to say that. It took the sacrifice of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska to bring this to the fore.