The Worst Leftist Judge Ever (posted 2/25/26)

I’m writing this before the SOTU, on a topic that I’ve previously written about: the way that misdirected empathy influences leftists’ attitude toward crime and criminals.

Blue states pass laws with much more lenient sentences, and leftist prosecutors and DAs prosecute less, and offer easy plea bargains.  Hence the many stories of horrific crimes committed by recidivists with decades-long rap sheets in dysfunctional blue cities.

Red states usually take the opposite approach.  They support their police, prosecute criminals under stricter laws, and put them away for longer.  The more conservative the state, the more it encourages armed citizens to defend themselves and their homes.  The more liberal the state, the more it restricts citizens’ ability to defend themselves, and the more benefit of the doubt it gives to criminals who attack over citizens who defend. 

If the worst impulses of the elite left could be distilled down into one person and one case, that one person would be leftist judge Tracy Davis, and that one case would be the criminal sentencing of Christopher Thompson, which took place on February 2nd in Kentucky.

Thompson (24) had already been convicted by a jury of robbery, kidnapping, sodomy and sexual abuse in a series of what Louisville police called “heinous offenses.”  The jury had recommended a sentence of 65 years in prison, which was at the stronger end of the legal guidelines.

Because: red state!

Enter Judge Davis, who was determined to give Thompson a much lighter sentence.  Davis stated that Thompson “fell through the cracks and [first] ended up before this court as an 18 year old.”  She said that she “does not believe that Mr. Thompson, if given the [proper] resources is beyond rehabilitating.” 

She also mentioned that he was “an African-American young man…who had to experience this society,” apparently alluding to the vicious racism of American society as a mitigating factor in multiple violent, sexual crimes.  [Both the judge and the criminal are black, which shouldn’t matter in this context, but all too often does.]

I know what you’re thinking: This gullible judge probably fell for a slick defense attorney’s tactic of presenting his client as an angelic victim.   Thompson probably stood before her in a nice suit, feigning remorse while apologizing and begging for mercy.

But no!  Thompson sat in the courtroom in prison orange, glowering at the judge and looking exactly like the evil thug that he is.  When the judge began by saying, “Before we [start], I’m gonna need you to be respectful,” Thompson cut her off by snarling, “I ain’t doin’ nuttin’.  Eat my d**k.”

He really said that.  In front of a judge who held decades of his life in her hands!

What followed was the saddest performance of a judge I’ve ever seen or heard of.  Instead of the logical response to Thompson’s opening insult – “Fine.  You can start your 65 years right now.  Get this creature out of my sight.” – the judge displayed a caricature of woke stupidity in the face of evil. 

And I swear I’m not making any of these quotes up:

Judge: Well, it’s fine.  Okay?

Thug: [grunt]

Judge: That’s fine.

Thug: If I could spit on you I would.

Judge: At the end of the day, I’m the one with the pen. 

Thug: I don’t care.

Judge: I know you don’t.  And it’s a sad, sad scenario.

Then Thompson called her several sexual slurs, while the judge was undeterred, and repeatedly tried to explain that she was going to be reducing Thompson’s sentence.

But he kept interrupting her, saying, “I don’t have sympathy for nobody.  I don’t have sympathy for you, the victim, the victim’s family.  I don’t care.  Boo hoo.”

Again, those are direct quotes.  He actually, sarcastically said, “boo hoo.”   

And after he showed a complete lack of remorse and demonstrated that he is a danger to everyone, that delusional judge cut his sentence by more than half, reducing it to 30 years!

That idiotic decision caused a lot of outrage, as well it should have.  The state Attorney General immediately appealed it to the state Supreme Court, and local citizens and politicians are furious, though I couldn’t find any mention of attempts to impeach the judge. 

Thankfully, there aren’t many judges as stupid as Tracy Davis, and most criminals are not much smarter than Christopher Thompson. 

I’ve read that many cops and prosecutors had gotten very worried when the Miranda ruling came down in 1966, because they thought it would mean the end of criminals incriminating themselves when they were first caught.  And you can see why they thought so.

Because who would be stupid enough to listen to a cop say, “You don’t have to talk to me, we’ll pay for a lawyer who will help you get away with your criminal acts.  And by the way, I can and will use anything you do say against you in court.  So…would you like to really screw yourself over by talking to me now?”

But the cops and prosecutors underestimated the stupidity of the average criminal, because morons listen to that warning every day in America, and then go on to incriminate the hell out of themselves!

The same is true for prison phones.  Prisoners awaiting trial are notified that prison phones are monitored, and there are big signs ABOVE EACH PHONE in prison saying the same thing. 

And still, if you watch any kind of legal tv shows you’ve heard hundreds of cases where the bad guy calls his mom, or his baby mama, or his thug relatives and buddies and fellow criminals, and says all kinds of incriminating things. 

While on the prison phone. 

Right in front of the sign that says, “Your call is being monitored, dumbass!”

Where was I?  Oh yeah.

I applaud Christopher Thompson’s honesty.  He may be an evil, violent, unrepentant scumbag who deserves to die in prison.  But he’s no hypocrite.

And I deplore the leftist judges and politicians who bend over backwards to excuse and show leniency to criminals, at the expense of their victims.  Unlike Christopher Thompson, they are also hypocrites.  Because while they routinely let actual criminals off the hook, they fabricate crimes as a pretext to prosecute their political opponents.

Or, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, “A Communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent.”

Sound familiar?

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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The Ladies of the View & New Yorkers Get What They Deserve (posted 2/20/26)

Okay, today is officially Schadenfreude Friday.  (Because “Schaden-Friday” was just a little too cute.)  That’s when I only cover stories in the news that give me joy from the well-deserved karmic arse-whoopings received by bad actors in our society.

First up is Whoopi Goldberg and the round table of ten-cent heads at the View.  That televised Mensa Meeting had a field day last year, when Trump’s name turned up many times in the Epstein files.  While many people’s names appeared because they were sleazebags who were chummy with Epstein for many years and implicated in his bad behavior, many were there in non-incriminating contexts.

For example, while Trump was photographed with Epstein numerous times before Epstein’s crimes had gone public and he was charged, he also kicked Epstein out of Mar-A-Lago, called the cops on him, and eventually arrested him.  Also, something like a thousand of the references to Trump were from Epstein, who hated him and constantly badmouthed him. 

Legal and PR tip: If your name ends up in a criminal sleazebag’s files, you don’t want it to be in the context of what a great guy and a close friend you were.

Anyway, the gals of the View had a lot of theories about why Trump was in the files, and all of them were in the “What does he have to hide?” and “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” vein of innuendo.  If Trump’s name was there, it proved that he was guilty of very bad things.

Annnndddd…a few weeks ago one tranche of the Epstein files included Whoopsie Goldberg’s name 21 times.

Unexpectedly!

Now I’m not going to act like them and say that Whoopi is automatically guilty.  But at best, she’s a colossal hypocrite.  The only reference to her I’ve seen quoted is a perfect distillation of lefty privilege, as she requested the use of one of Epstein’s private jets: “Whoopi Goldberg needs a plane to get to Monaco.  John Lennon’s charity is paying for it.  They don’t want to charter so they are looking for private owners.” 

Before you can ask, no, Goldberg wouldn’t think of flying commercial, not even in first class.  And no, a chartered plane wouldn’t be acceptable either.  She needed to go private, and at no cost to her Predator-looking arse.  Because: Leftist Woman of the People!

When the news of her appearances on the list first came out, Whoopi tried the ol’ Leftist 101 response: She denied it.  “There is a fake list.  And I’m on it.”  She went on to lie-splain that there are a lot of “satire sites” out there, and “that people don’t realize that they can be harmful.”

When that explanation collapsed like a chair that Whoopi or Ana Navarro sat in, she revisited the issue this week: “In the name of transparency, my name is in the files.”

Transparency!   Once you get caught lying and then admit what can no longer be denied, that’s apparently being “transparent” now.

Joy-less Behar tried to help Goldberg, pointing out that “anybody can be on this list.”  Gee, that’s not what you harpies said when Trump’s name was reportedly on the list, was it?

But Whoopi couldn’t leave bad enough alone, because she couldn’t even stop lying once she was obviously caught.  She made it sound like Epstein tried to trick her into taking his plane – “So they’re trying to get me on a plane to get to this thing for Julian Lennon” – instead of HER asking HIM for use of the plane. 

“And no,” she continues, “I didn’t get on the plane because you know what I would have to do to get on the plane.”

Actually, it appears that Epstein turned her down, because she was never offered the use of his plane.  I guess Epstein didn’t want his reputation to be sullied by being associated with Whoopsie.

Oh, and one more thing: Trump kicked Epstein out and called the cops on him before he was charged and pled guilty in 2008.  And Whoopi asked to fly on Epstein’s plane in 2013, five years after he was a convicted felon.   

Perfect!

Next up is New York City, where Dem voters are getting a taste of that sweet Mamdani-mania that the commie jihadist promised.  Or is he a jihadi communist? 

Either way, the schadenfreude sandwich with a schadenfreude salad is being served, and the gullible leftist voters are already having second thoughts. 

First, it turned out that the “warmth of collectivism” actually results in homeless Dem voters freezing to death.  (Oh, the irony.)  On inauguration day Zohran nixed the practice of forcing mentally ill addicts inside during winter.

Annnnddddd…six weeks and 16 deceased meth-sicles later, Mamdani sheepishly reversed course.

Unfortunately, when another one of his promises – blowing out the city’s already profligate spending – proved to be equally stupid and painful, Mamdani stayed the course, at least so far. 

His first choice was to add yet another ruinous tax on the richest New Yorkers to pay for free buses, driving out the Jews, giving illegals benefits, and seizing the means of production. 

But NY Governor Hochul is apparently smarter than she looks, because she quickly said no bueno to “taxing for the sake of taxing.”  (Could she be the rare lefty who realizes that rich people who are already paying the lion’s share of taxes can always move, rather than staying and being victimized by greedy Dem politicians?)

So Zohran slapped on his Marxist blinders and declared that there is only one other possible choice: raising already high property taxes on all New Yorkers by another 9.5%   As he put it, “[T]he city will be forced down a second, more harmful path.  Faced with no other choice…we would have to raise property taxes.” 

Yes.  They would be forced.  There’s no other choice.  They couldn’t possibly cut any current spending – say, the estimated $5 billion they’ve been spending on illegals – or cut back on any of their bold, new, cash-incinerating programs.  Nope.  They must raise the mortgage and rent payments of every single New Yorker…so that they can make things more affordable.

If only there was a certain Free State, with the Best Damn Governor in America™, to give them a few pointers. 

Oh wait.  There is.

Within a few hours after Zohran gave his dire budget warning, Ron DeSantis released a few helpful facts.  To wit, Florida has over 23 million residents, and the budget for the entire state is $117 billion this year. By comparison, NYC has 8 million people, and Mamdani just proposed a budget of $127 billion. 

So if Zohran gets his way, he’ll spend more than 3 times as much per resident as Florida is spending.  And for that money, New Yorkers get frozen homeless, millions of rats, bad roads, worse schools, armies of illegals, high crime, and more bureaucrats with their hands out than there are rats and criminals.

It’s going to be fun watching Zohran sell this plan to his naïve voters. 

Buckle up, Bolsheviks!

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Mom is Gone, but Political Numbskulls Will be with us Always (posted 2/18/26)

I’m back at home after mom’s funeral in Tennessee.  It was a tough long weekend, but at the same time it was great to see family, and mom’s church family too. 

I knew a lot of those folks from when I was up there for the better part of four months when dad was dying in 2014, and the ones who are still with us were as sweet as always.  Those southerners know how to bombard you with love and food, and my sister and her husband have a lot of both to live on for a while!

My sister and I each spoke for a few minutes, and she held up well.  I, on the other hand, had written a tight five minutes – half of which were fond jokes about mom.  And I turned that into a flabby ten minutes, when time for choking up and breaking down were figured in.

But other than my blubbering, it was a fine send off for mom, with many stories about how loving and sweet she was, and how she’ll be missed until we see her again.

Meanwhile, our ridiculous public continued to unfold, in ridiculous ways.  Before we left for TN I’d made a few notes for myself on two stories in particular.

The first one dealt with Reason 12,378,439 why we don’t hate the media enough.  This story came from Canadian “journalist” Mark Slapinski, whom I’d never heard of.  But he clearly needs a very hard slapinski across his lying face.

He posted a tweet headlined, “An autopsy revealed that a Canadian not only DIED in ICE custody, but his death was PREVENTABLE.  Trump must be impeached!” 

The capital letters were his, which you might guess because of how they just scream “theater kid.”  (And by the way, shouldn’t it be, “Trump must be IMPEACHED!” Or at least “Trump MUST be impeached!”)

I know that any readers who just awoke from a decades-long coma – or who are fresh from a CT protocol after falling from a great height onto their head – might think that a noble Canadian wrongly held by ICE who died in their custody from a preventable cause is a gigantic scandal.

But for everyone else, experience has taught us to wait for the real story.

Annndddd… it turns out a correction on X shows the lie: “Johnny Noviello was a convicted drug trafficker that died in federal custody from ingesting Ethylene Glycol prior to his detention, which he did not disclosed to authorities, and is not easily treatable without that information.” 

The only surprising detail is that Johnny was not an illegal; he was a permanent legal resident in the US.  And yet he still used the privilege of being allowed to live in the US to traffic drugs that hurt US citizens.

So yes, committing suicide by drinking anti-freeze is preventable. Other related things that are preventable?  Becoming a low-down dirty drug trafficker.  And deciding to practice your evil drug trafficking in America, instead of just staying home and hurting Canadian citizens by your low-down dirty drug trafficking. 

I told my lefty buddy this a while ago: The next time you start getting riled up over a MSM story about what terrible thing Trump or ICE or conservatives have done now, just take a deep breath, and wait an hour, because that will save you from having to sheepishly backtrack later, when the truth comes out. 

For example:  No, Trump didn’t call white supremacists “fine people on both sides.”  And no, he didn’t pee on Russian hookers.  And no, Hunter’s laptop wasn’t a Russian hoax, and Joe Biden wasn’t sharp as a tack, and Robin Good wasn’t just a mom who was dropping her kid off at daycare when the Gestapo murdered her for no reason.  And Michael Brown wasn’t a gentle giant, and Alex Pretti wasn’t just a good Samaritan nurse whom the Gestapo murdered for no reason.

And that adorable 5 year old kid whom ICE “arrested?”  His POS illegal dad ran off and abandoned him in freezing weather to avoid getting arrested for the crimes he had committed, and ICE didn’t arrest him – they took care of him, much more than his dad did. 

And no, Johnny Noviello wasn’t a blameless Canadian victim, and 86% of arrested illegals have not been saints who have done no wrong upon the earth.      

The second idiotic story also involves our pathetic media.

Unexpectedly!

It focuses on a female Swedish skier named Elis Lundholm, who believes that she is a man.  She skied against actual women, though.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?  Lots of dudes pretending to be women love to compete against actual women, and stomp them.  But no women pretending to be men are real sticklers about competing with actual men.  Which was a good thing for Elis, since the male skiers would have wiped the slopes with her.

Anyway, when some commentators from NBC covered her, they called her “she” several times during her run.  As one does, when talking about a woman.

Unless one is a woke idiot working for NBC news.  Because the Peacock network – not the Peahen network, you juveniles! – was mortified that one of their talking heads acknowledged that the gal is a gal. 

The uh-oh squad immediately leapt into action.  NBC sent out an apology saying that “NBC Sports takes this matter seriously,” before they rhetorically whipped themselves in penance.  “We streamed a feed…[which] misgendered Elis Lundholm.  We apologize to Elis and our viewers, and we have removed the replay of that feed.” 

To add to the absurdity, Lundholm isn’t even one of the dysmorphia sufferers who has done anything to herself in service of her fantasy maleness.  Her team’s representative said that she “does not take any hormonal treatments and has not had any surgeries.”

Good for her. Because if she ever comes to her senses, at least she won’t have to deal with the life-long medical deficits that come from inflicting hormonal or surgical damage on herself.

On the other hand…really?  She can just say she’s a man, do nothing else, and still have NBC yammering on about how they take this matter seriously? 

So if I just said I was a rhinoceros, I wouldn’t have to put on a couple of tons, have a surgical horn implant, and live in a mud puddle in Africa or Southeast Asia?  I could just walk into a local Home Depot, and wait for someone to call me “sir,” so I could throw a fit and launch a “you mis-specied me!” lawsuit?  

NOW you tell me. 

If you’ll excuse me, I need to call my plastic surgeon to cancel my RHIP.  (Rhino Horn Implant Procedure.  Duh.) 

He better not tell me that the deposit I paid is non-refundable! 

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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In Case You are Wondering Whether We Hate the Media Enough…NOPE! (posted 2/13/26)

Because I don’t want to write yet another column about the events in Minnesota right now, I thought I’d hit some of the stories I’ve noticed but haven’t commented on during my deep dive on the legal issues and vigilantism in the frozen north.

Under the heading of, “We Don’t Hate the Media Enough,” three stories jumped out at me.

Two of them came from the same source – Axios – and appeared within 24 hours of each other.   To produce two such transparently biased and dishonest stories in one day is quite an accomplishment, so congrats, you weasels.

The first story is about the SAVE Act, which requires people to prove that they’re citizens when they register to vote, and to present a photo ID to prove their identity when they vote. 

I know: the horror!   

Just for fun, I tried to find another country that doesn’t require their citizens to provide ID when voting, and I couldn’t do it.  Mexico requires voter ID.  So does El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.  So does the Congo.  Every country from Algeria to Zimbabwe requires voter ID.   

Guess who else?  Freaking Somalia! 

That’s right, the nation where the two leading occupations are “Pirate” and “Learing Center Fraudster” requires Voter ID.

But American Democrats say that doing what all other nations do – including those who can’t feed their people or provide a modern sewer system, and who burn dung for warmth – cannot be required in America, because their voters could not handle it. 

Speaking of burning dung, Chuck Schumer.

Oh sorry.  Let me finish that sentence. 

Speaking of burning dung, Chuck Schumer says requiring voter ID would be “Jim Crow 2.0.”  And as one of the leaders of the party who invented “Jim Crow1.0” (they call it “Classic Jim Crow”), Chuckie should know. 

Let’s play a quick round of Adam Carolla’s “Stupid or Liar” game, in which we have to guess whether a politician saying something ridiculous is one or the other.  But for this round, I think we need to modify that to “Racist or Liar.”

Because anybody who claims that black people are such mouth-breathing dullards that they couldn’t secure an ID are either bald-faced liars, or the kind of Democrat racists who would make even the old school Democrat racists in the KKK say, “Damn, them boys are RACIST!”

Full disclosure: I do believe that Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg, Jasmine Crockett, Hank Johnson and Ketanji Brown-Jackson might actually be too imbecilic to get an ID for themselves.  But that is because they each have a ten-cent head.  It has nothing to do with the color of their skin.  

Anyway, the Axios story in question adds a big ol’ helping of sexism to the Dems’ usual racism stew, because it argues that it’s not only black people who can’t manage to get an ID.  It’s ladies too.

Axios puts it this way:  If the SAVE Act passes, “millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports” will face extra barriers to voting. 

And that’s why, every time you get on a plane you can always stretch out over several empty seats, because of all those gals who would otherwise be flying here and there, except that they got married several decades ago, and they’ve been trapped at home ever since.  Foiled by the insurmountable task of updating their ID.   

How does Axios try to get away with saying something so outlandishly sexist and racist?  By going to one of the favorite tricks that profs in J-school teach their students: always attribute your own bigotry and propaganda to unnamed experts.

The tagline for the story says, “President Trump’s push to “nationalize” elections including his backing of a bill that could be a “nightmare” for voters, election experts told Axios.      

Yes.  Those dastardly “election experts.”  The entire story is full of them.  They attribute the “women can’t overcome the married-name conundrum” to “researchers.” When they do cite somebody claiming that “21 million Americans lack ready access” to ID, it’s a “Brennan Center analysis.”

If you don’t know them, the Brennan Center is the kind of hard-core leftist advocacy group that puts the “anal” in “analysis.”  Every “finding” by their “analysts” just happens to be one of the talking points of the DNC.

Unexpectedly!  

Immediately after posting the “women and minorities are too incompetent and dumb to get an ID” story, the crack staff at Axios went to work on their next scoop.  This one demonstrated another trick right out of the J-School 101 Playbook: AMCE (Always Misunderstand Cause & Effect).

A famous example of this technique was a story from decades ago claiming that “despite a record number of Americans in prison, crime continues to drop.” 

Axios is reporting on a similarly mysterious drop, and they start out so promisingly: “Violent crime dropped sharply across America’s biggest cities in 2025, according to new data.”  They even show a chart that documents crime rates dropping in many cities between 25 to 58%.

Now you don’t have to be Einstein – or Sherlock Holmes, or me – to deduce a blindingly obvious cause that might explain this effect.  Trump came to office at the beginning of 2025 promising to close our borders and start mass deportation of millions of unvetted illegal aliens.  Over the course of the year, nearly 2 million people either self-deported, were caught and deported, or were caught and detained pending deportation.

Some insightful types might anticipate that removing several million illegal renters from the competition for rental housing might decrease rents.   (Because: supply and demand.)  And that removing many competing illegal workers might cause wages to rise. (Because: ditto.)  And that removing several million criminals might result in a drop in crime.  (Because: duh.)

So a restless nation sat on the edge of their seats, having read the Axios tagline, and having seen their chart documenting the drop in crime over the last year.  The anticipation was killing us!  Would Axios actually stumble into the obviously right conclusion?

Annnndddd…they titled their chart, “Crime plunges in major cities despite Trump’s crackdown rhetoric.”

Despite!   Trump promised a crackdown, then he implemented a crackdown.  But crime went down ANYWAY?!

Good lord.  With brains like these, is it any wonder that they are continually surprised when raising taxes on the rich makes the rich move to a lower-tax state, or when hateful, dimwit celebrities tell their audience that they hate their guts and then 14 people watch the Grammys?

My final item today isn’t about a story written by journalists, but a story about them.  Specifically the fired journalists at the Washington Post.  (“Where Democracy gets beaten to death with tire irons in the Darkness.”) 

Jeff Bezos bought the struggling WAPO a while ago, but he kept nearly all of the same journalists who had been doing the kind of work that resulted in a paper that was struggling. 

Annndddd… it lost nearly 90% of its readers in the past 4 years.  Last year alone it lost $100 million.   

Now most sentient mammals, when confronted those facts, might say something like, “Yikes! This can’t go on!” 

But the lefty genius reporters at WAPO said, “This can go on forever!”

I’m not making that up. One retired journalist said that with all of Bezos’ billions, he could afford to lose $100 mil a year “indefinitely.”  Veteran WAPO writer Sally Quinn was shocked at the layoffs Bezos just announced, reflecting that when Bezos first bought the paper, he was great.  “He was wonderful.  He was smart and funny and kind and interested.  He was joyful.  He was a person of integrity and conscience….And now I don’t know who this person is.” 

I’ll tell you who he is: a guy who has been taking giant financial groin kicks for years.  He bought the paper in 2013 for $250 million, and he’s lost $274 million on it in just the last three years!

You know what’s consistently pretty close to the top of a list of “Things Billionaires Don’t Do With Money?”

Continue to drop $100 Mil Per Annum on a Failing Freaking Business!!  OH! OHHHHHH! (Surprise Billionaire Kinison Insert)

But do you know what the schadenfreude cherry on top of the “learn to code” sundae is?

On Monday, a bunch of WAPO workers threw a tantrum – er, held a protest – at the WAPO building.  Led by a guy in a Where’s Waldo hat, the protest was meant to, “Show management that they can’t trample our rights.”  He said that even though “today is a scary day,” the fired WAPO workers were going to “demonstrate our collective power” and “to show our right to work.”

He finished with a stirring statement that, “Management has locked us out.  Let us show them that they can’t just do that.”

And then, several dozen fired workers walked inside and up to the glass-partitions in the lobby that function like subway turnstiles.  And one by one, each worker slid his or her employee badge over the scanner.

Annnnnddddd…nothing happened.  Each worker swiped, then frowned, then turned dejectedly away.  Followed by another worker, and another worker.  Some of them seemed to be surprised when their badges didn’t work, stepping confidently forward, then swiping the badge several more times.   

Afterwards, Waldo said that the workers deserve to work at the Post and have a right to work at the post.  Then they all went outside and waved at the building, engaged in the saddest little chant I’ve ever heard: “We’ll be back.  We’ll be back.”

Um.  You just “demonstrated your collective power,” and were defeated by a piece of glass.  I don’t think that failing, and then chanting that you’ll be back at some point in the future to fail again, is quite the blood-curdling message that you think it is. 

I know that it’s a tough thing to lose your job, especially when you’re in a grim, declining business like newspapers, where finding a new gig is going to be hard.  And I know that a lot of the workers – especially the non-journalist staff – are suffering because of forces beyond their control. 

But the journalists at WAPO have been lying – continually, consistently, and without remorse – for many decades.  You could fill a book with the many outrageous smears they’ve pushed, from the Russia Hoax to the healthy Biden hoax to the “America is horrible” slanders. 

And when blue collar folks – from the workers on the Keystone Pipeline to farmers to everybody fired because they wouldn’t take the experimental covid vax – lost their jobs, the WAPO elitists sneered, “Learn to code,” and went on to the next attack on conservatives.  

I generally hate to see anybody lose their jobs.

But for the “journalists” at the WAPO, I can make an exception.

I won’t have a column on Monday, because we’re going up to Tennessee this weekend, and my mom’s funeral is Monday.  Have a great weekend, and I’ll be back next week.   

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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The Godfather, Vigilantism, & anti-ICE Protests, Part 2

In the last column I discussed the opening scene of The Godfather, and how leftist protesters wrongly see themselves as the good kind of vigilantes when they are quite the opposite.  But I left two groups out of that category.  Because it’s not just the protesters, but elected politicians and many judges who are also acting as vigilantes, IMO.

Which seems counter-intuitive, to say the least.  How can elected leaders – Mayor Small Frey and Governor Jazz Hands – become vigilantes who rebel against the government when they run the government?  And how can judges – Boasberg and the hundreds of Boasberg clones throughout the nationwide district and (sometimes) appellate courts – be circumventing the laws when they are in charge of upholding the laws?

The answer is simple: the politicians and judges are local officials who are opposed to the federal laws of the land – embodied in our Constitution, our immigration laws, and the sections of the U.S. Code that deal with interfering with federal officers in the performance of their duties, etc.

So yes, elected officials and local judges can be insurrectionist vigilantes in 2026, just as their Democrat forebearers were in the Southern slave states in 1861.

Having said that, I’d like to turn to the potential for right-wing vigilantism, if the current administration isn’t able to stop the lawless anti-ICE protests occurring in various blue states and sanctuary cites around the country.  I hope it doesn’t come to that, because vigilantism is always fraught with dangers for a society. 

But as I discussed in the last column, it can also sometimes be a proper course of action. 

Let’s briefly revisit the Godfather.  The mortician comes to Vito as a patriotic American citizen.  “I believe in America,” he says, in the words that open the movie.  “America’s made my fortune.  And I raised my daughter in the American fashion.”

He is, in other words, the kind of legal immigrant we would like to see.  He appreciates the country and the blessings it’s given him, and he has assimilated.  When his daughter is attacked, he goes through the proper, legal channels (the cops and the courts).  

But it’s significant that his name is “Amerigo Bonasera,” meaning “America, good night.” Because the American government betrayed him in his hour of need.  So now, the proper (though morally problematic) course of action is to go to the Godfather for the justice that the justice system did not provide.

Vito knows that, even though his initial words demonstrate why mob justice (in this case, literally “mob” as in Mafia) was his preferred first choice: “Why did you go to the police?” he asks. “Why didn’t you come to me first?”

The answer is clear for all of us conservative, law-and-order types: Because we SHOULD go to the police.  They’re supposed to protect us from criminals and give us justice.  And in a society in which the justice system is functioning properly, all vigilante action would be disordered and wrong.

But when the government has failed (or even intentionally abandoned) its core function of protecting citizens from criminals – I’m looking at you, Democrat party! – many people see vigilante justice as a viable option. During the dark days of the Biden maladministration, as we watched millions of foreigners lawlessly pouring over our border, day after day for years, many of us on the right and center felt a kind of growing desperation and despair. 

A few states took small steps toward taking the law into their own hands, Texas being one example.  When Governor Abbott pleaded with the feds to enforce the border in his state, he proposed that Texans secure their own border, if the feds wouldn’t.  When Biden forbid Texans from protecting themselves – immorally forcing Texan citizens to suffer the ongoing harm from the flood of illegals – Abbott appealed that to higher courts, while in the meantime defiantly maintaining his own barriers at the border.

Fortunately, there is a sane but narrow majority on SCOTUS that allowed Texas to reinforce their border, even if only on a watered-down technicality, i.e. the barriers that Biden started destroying were on municipal or private land, not federal land. 

But that was a terrifyingly close-run thing.  If Hillary had been able to appoint a couple of SCOTUS judges, or if Trump hadn’t won in 2024, who knows how badly things would be going right now? 

This is why I think conservatives are being ever more tempted to explore dramatic alternatives to resist the cascade of illegitimate power grabs by national Democrats, which are still going on. The left has relentlessly attacked the integrity of our democratic republic in multiple and critical ways. 

• They’ve illegally declared sanctuary territories, in blatant contravention of the Supremacy Clause and other parts of our Constitution.

• They’ve admitted tens of millions of illegals and tried to give them the vote, and thus an insurmountable lock on all future national elections.

• They’ve resisted all attempts to ensure the integrity of our elections (through no ID requirements, unrestricted mail-in voting, vote harvesting, unvetted vote counting, etc.)

• They’ve pursued widespread judicial insurrection, via partisan local judges who transparently rule based on their political priors instead of our laws.

• They’ve allowed massive fraud networks in their states, which steal from all American citizens, since the lion’s share of the stolen funds come from the federal taxes we all pay.

For these reasons and more, we cannot allow the feds to back down, and allow insurrectionist mobs in Minnesota – or Portland, or LA, or anywhere else – to drive them out and get away with it.  That’s what happened when the Democrats started the Civil War.  Just like Small Frey saying, “ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis,” they said, “Federals, get the f**k out of the South.”

That time, a Republican president marshalled some forces and went down and militarily disabused them of their insurrectionist notions.  After some false steps with some 19th century versions of RINOS – I’m looking at you, McClellan! – he got himself a future GOP president in the form of bad-ass Grant, and achieved some good old fashioned “peace through strength” by 1865. 

But the Dems didn’t completely get the message.  They formed the KKK, and they passed Jim Crow laws, and after some more decades of their insurrectionist schemes, more Dem governors (the Tampon Tims of their day, except without the effeminate Jazz Hands demeanor) once again defied the feds.  They stood in the doorway of schools and harassed worshippers at churches, until another GOP president sent the National Guard to kick their arses and restore the law and the constitution.

Now we’re in the same position, and we’ve got to make the dishonest hypocritical Dems eat their own words.  For years they’ve demanded that “nobody is above the law” and “insurrection must be punished.”  We agree.  And now they need to find themselves on the pointy end of those particular sticks. 

Otherwise, the eternal call of vigilante justice, as embodied in the Godfather, might one day be listened to by American citizens who are not going to tolerate mobs of violent criminals – foreign AND domestic – taking over their cities with impunity.

Because we don’t want to see Amerigo go silently into that Bonasera. 

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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The Godfather, Vigilantism & anti-ICE Protests, Part 1 (posted 2/9/26)

Last week I was pleasantly surprised by how many readers were interested enough to follow my 3-column series on the illegalities of the anti-ICE protesters’ tactics.  Those pieces were the most widely shared of any of my past columns, so thanks for that.

This week I’ve got another 3-part series, this one discussing the role played by vigilantism in these protests – today on the left, but in the future, potentially, on the right.  This idea came to me when I was thinking about the Godfather – which as a straight man over the age of 40, I naturally do at least once a week.     

I’m going to assume that all of you have seen the Godfather. 

If you haven’t, hang your head in shame, and then immediately remedy that by watching at least the first 10 minutes before you read this column. 

Sidebar: “Diversity is our strength” is one of the most wrong-headed ideas in modern life.  Cultural unity is our strength, and there is a core list of cultural high points with which all Americans should be familiar, among them the Declaration and Constitution; the King James Bible; the heroism of our military and its history; the music of Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, John Prine and Tom Waits; American football, etc.  The Godfather I and II are on that list.  On this point I will tolerate no disagreement!

Okay, so the movie opens on Vito Corleone’s daughter’s wedding day, and there is a tradition that people can ask for favors from the Godfather on that day.  A nervous Italian undertaker tells Vito how his daughter was assaulted by some American boys, and the courts gave them a slap on the wrist – three years in jail, but with a suspended sentence.  “They went free that very day!” the mournful father says.  So he says that he has come to the Godfather for justice, and he asks him to have the criminals killed. 

Vito says, “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first?  Let’s be honest.  You never wanted my friendship, and you were afraid to be in my debt.”

The undertaker says, “I didn’t want to get into trouble.”

Vito says, “I understand.  You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living.  The police protected you, and there were courts of law.”  But now, after the justice system failed him, the Godfather offers him a solution grounded in ethnic solidarity and an authentic – though extra-legal – justice.  “If you had come to me in friendship, the scum who ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day.  And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.”

I taught this scene in a course I designed called “Analyzing Propaganda.”  I used it to introduce the idea of competing political narratives out of which grows most propaganda, and I prefaced the class discussion with the definition of a typically contentious political term, “vigilante.”

We use the term “vigilante” to mean someone who takes the law into his own hands, usually when he thinks a government’s legal system has failed to deliver justice.  The Godfather broadens that idea from a person or small group of people to a network of close relationships grounded in a shared ethnicity or tribal identity. 

We usually think of “vigilante” in negative terms, as a stand-in for mob “justice.”  But the word comes from the same root as “vigilant,” and vigilantism can take two forms, only one of which is negative.  The evil form of vigilantism is when the people are wrongly defying or resisting a legitimate government.  The first example that comes to mind is Democrat lynch mobs in the south, killing blacks out of racial animus, regardless of whether they had committed a crime or not.    

But when a government or legal system has become corrupt, abusive or lawless, people who want real justice are morally justified in taking action against it, including (in some cases) vigilantism and violence.  Examples would be any of the uprisings against communist and other dictatorships, or partisan raids and sabotage against a conquering force. 

Even our own revolution could be seen as partaking in vigilantism – e.g. the Boston Tea Party, or various occasions when Scots-Irish proto-Simpsons retreated into the woods with their Kentucky long rifles and started picking off Redcoats – though our brilliant Founders soon transformed and codified a chaotic uprising into a new legal framework, and the best damn country in the whole freaking world.  (USA!  USA!)   

So what does this have to do with the anti-ICE protests/riots in Minnesota and elsewhere?

The leftists clearly believe that they are the good kind of vigilantes, heroically standing up for real justice against a corrupt and evil government.  Hence all the references to “Nazis” and “Gestapo” and “fascists.”  The protesters see themselves as similar to the partisans who conducted resistance and sabotage missions against the Nazis in occupied Europe. 

They also consider themselves the moral equivalent of the civil rights protesters of the 1960s, which gives them that extra intoxicating frisson of irresistible self-righteousness.  They’re not just heroes fighting for justice.  They’re super-heroes fighting for racial justice!  Hence all the talk of the black and brown people being persecuted for their skin color, rather than being legally detained and deported for their criminal acts.

Unfortunately for them, and as with all leftist racial melodramas, the truth stubbornly contradicts their preferred narrative. (Not to mention their entire political worldview.)  Their two currently prominent martyrs are Robin Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were – so inconveniently! – white.  I mean, not as white as Grandma Squanto Warren.  Because who is?  (#wemustneverstopmockingher) 

But still: very white.

Even worse, the fascist agents of the ominously Nordic Gestapo (i.e. the Border Patrol and ICE) are disproportionately…I’m not making this up… wait for it… Hispanic!  (Cue the sad trombone.)

When I heard that reported, I looked it up.  (As opposed to just making things up, like a MSM “journalist.”) I found that at least 24% of ICE agents (the highest numbers I saw were 30% and “approximately 1/3”) are Hispanic, and more than 50% of Border Patrol agents are also Hispanic!  Since 20% of Americans are Hispanics, these numbers are both disproportionately high. 

It was fun to discover that, because when I confirmed those numbers on several left-leaning, anti-immigration-enforcement websites, their authors scrambled to find any explanations that would confirm their political priors.  One typical flop-sweating leftist admitted that Latinos make up more than half of Border Patrol, but quickly insisted that “it’s not self-hatred that drives them to work for agencies that often target their communities.” 

Um, what community is that, buddy?  The “American citizens of Hispanic descent” community, which the Border Patrol agents belong to?  Because spoiler alert, that’s NOT who Border Patrol targets.  In fact, they don’t “target” anyone, you bad-faith-arguing dope.

They focus on finding, detaining and deporting people who have broken our immigration laws, be they white, black, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Patagonian, Middle-Earthian, Wakandan, or (yes), Hispanic. 

But leave it to Notre Dame political science professor (shame on you, Notre Dame!) David Cortez to put it best. If by “best” you mean, “most dishonestly,” or “most propagandistically.”  Or just “worst.”

Because: political science professor.

Saith the miserable, credentialed hack: “How do Latinos do this to their own people?  Is it self-hatred?  A denial of their ethnic identity?  Or… [to strengthen] their own claim to belonging in America – even to whiteness?”

Ugh.  

Hey Davy, I’ve got one more possible reason why Hispanics might join law enforcement that’s beyond your ability to imagine: Because they are law-abiding Americans who don’t like watching people of any ethnicity breaking our laws and then falsely crying ‘racism’ when they are caught and are held accountable for their own criminal behavior?

But nope.  Davy knows the truth: “For Latino agents, it’s primarily about the money.”

Like all damnable lies, this has one tiny bit of truth in it.  Because of course, everybody who works does so partly for money.  For example, even political science professors who know better will still shamelessly prostitute themselves (via dishonest “research”) to their political co-religionists in return for cash and a generous benefits package. 

Right, Professor Dave?

But Cortez’s creepy conclusion is even creepier if he actually believes the racist politics he espouses.  He claims that Hispanic LEOs have chosen their profession for a reason that he thinks exonerates them for their otherwise unacceptable (to him) choices, i.e. they do it for the money that will allow them to support themselves and their families.   

But his claim actually damns them even more.   If true, it would make them cowardly, treacherous collaborators, betraying their brethren in the service of a corrupt and evil Vichy puppet state for cash. That would make them even more despicable political wh*res than David Cortez himself!    

So while the leftist protesters have been envisioning themselves as the moral kind of vigilantes, fighting for a good cause against a bad government, they are actually the bad guys in this scenario. 

You’d think that they’d have realized that when they found themselves aligned with Somali fraudsters, tattooed antifa thugs calling for murder in the streets, and arrogant creeps who burst into church services to scream at the meek (as in, “blessed are the…”) and terrify children.  Or when they discovered that they’ve been defending people who turn out to be gang bangers, human smugglers, and woman-beaters.  (Or in the case of “Maryland dad” Kilmar Garcia, all three!)

But contemplative self-reflection has never been their strong suit, has it?  

Tomorrow: the potential for future vigilantism on the right, if the left stays on their current, radical path.  

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Part 3: What Laws Have the Anti-ICE Protesters Been Breaking? (posted 2/6/26)

This is the last of three columns of legal analysis of the anti-ICE protests.  I had feared that these would be too dry for most people, but more people have read these than my typical columns… so that’s good, right?

Some of the following info I first came across when I was teaching a Writing for Pre-Law course.  I looked back through my notes to refresh my memory, and then looked at a bunch of legal websites to reinforce and update my knowledge.  There might still be some errors here, and as always, I would appreciate corrections or fuller explanations from any lawyers in the audience.

My goal today is to look at the most common actions of the protesters, and explore what laws they might be violating.

As we know, the First Amendment protects the right to protest, though only peacefully.  To the extent that at least some of the protesters are exercising their free speech rights – castigating ICE officers without interfering with their actions – they’re good.

However, it’s become very clear that most of the protesters have been interfering with ICE officers, so that’s the best place to start.  The most commonly committed infractions would be covered by 18 U.S.C 1501 and 18 U.S.C. 111, which are parts of the US legal code addressing “the crime of interfering with federal officers while they are performing their duties.”  The key language describes action that “obstructs, resists or opposes” officers in that context.

The code “covers both direct physical acts and indirect methods of obstruction.”  Examples of physical acts would include blocking officers’ movements, making physical contact with or using any physical force on them.  The code also mentions “standing in front of an officer to prevent an arrest or shielding another person from apprehension.” 

The above actions probably make up at least half of what happens at many anti-ICE protests.  Protesters routinely surround cops, blocking them in on foot or in vehicles; they also try to get between officers and illegals to prevent their arrest.

This statute also forbids “threatening behavior,” which doesn’t have to be explicitly violent.  The test is whether the behaviors “create a reasonable fear of harm or intimidation,” and the code also mentions “verbal statements, gestures or electronic messages implying danger.”

Good lord!  Wouldn’t that encompass about 90% of the rioters on video in Minneapolis?  If everybody who posted threatening emails to ICE officials, or threatened to dox, injure or kill them were arrested, there’d be more un-F-able jailed leftists in Minnesota than there are fraudulent Somali Learing Centers!

If those weren’t enough, the code also makes clear that interference doesn’t always require direct threats or physical contact.  Activities like creating a diversion, refusing lawful orders and providing false information are also illegal.  Some of those would be charged under other codes.

For example, lying to federal law enforcement during an investigation falls under 19 U.S.C. 1001, and creating a distraction to aid an illegal falls under 1501. 

As a broad group, these offenses can be misdemeanors or felonies, depending on context.  Misdemeanors can be penalized by a year in federal prison and a fine up to $100K; felonies can draw long prison sentences (up to decades) and higher fines.    

More serious actions like use of a deadly or dangerous weapon (not just a gun, but also bricks or other thrown objects, fireworks, or striking with sticks or bats, etc.) or force that results in bodily injury are covered in Section 111.  Those are felonies, and could draw up to 20 years in prison. 

My general sense is that misdemeanors get escalated to felonies when they happen in conjunction with other illegal acts, or are repeated.  (For example, just entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor, but re-entry after being previously deported is a felony.)  But some charges can be surprisingly harsh; just intentionally touching an officer can be charged as a felony, with a penalty of up to 8 years in prison.  (Though I think that is almost never charged for touching alone.)  And spitting on an officer is considered touching/assault, and can be similarly charged.    

One legal summary concluded this way: “In protest settings, the moment someone makes physical contact – shoving, grabbing, pulling an officer, yanking a door, striking a hand/arm, trying to “un-cuff” a detainee – can jump to felony territory.”    

I looked up the constant, near-deafening blowing of whistles, and found mixed interpretations.  In some contexts those can apparently count as permissible (if rowdy) speech, while in others they can constitute harassment/obstruction or even threat of harm (as they can create pain and at least potential longer-term hearing impairment).

I would argue – and I’d like to see this tested in court – that the loud whistling must constitute a form of impeding/obstructing, because its obvious purpose is to harm officers’ ability to carry out their duties.  It prevents them from hearing or giving orders or warnings, and agitates and disorients them, degrading their situational awareness.  As I wrote in a previous column, I’m almost certain that the whistling contributed to Alex Pretti’s death, because the cop who recovered his gun right before Pretti was shot would have yelled out that he had the weapon, as cops are taught to do in that situation.  But the whistling idiots kept that knowledge from the other cops, thus facilitating Pretti’s shooting.  (So great job, whistling idiots!)

In addition to all of those infractions, many protests involve a lot of property damage and trespassing, too.  Property damage can be a misdemeanor (usually if the damage done is under $500 or $1000) or a felony (for larger amounts).

Trespassing is entering government or private property, and also remaining after being told to leave; the former would include ICE or police facilities and courts, while the latter would include hotels or restaurants (which violent leftist dopes often enter and damage because they think ICE agents are staying there or dining there).

Don Lemon and the Morons (worst cover band ever, by the way) are in deep trouble, because they definitely trespassed in that church.  But they’ve been charged with the much more specific and serious FACE act and/or Klan act violations.

Two other crimes are also constantly in play during protests: resisting arrest (for those who are told they are being detained) and disobeying a lawful order (for virtually everyone, when told to get back, or get out of the way, or to stop assaulting our senses with your hideous ugliness).  Of the hundreds of protesters whose arrests I’ve seen on video, I can’t remember more than a small handful who didn’t resist arrest.  (Usually while screaming “I’m not resisting!” over and over, as they wriggle and struggle and fight with the cops.)    

Finally, I researched one legal issue that I haven’t seen discussed much in the media, and that is conspiracy.   The current wave of anti-ICE protests – just like the BLM and Antifa mass riots before them – have been characterized by extensive, sophisticated, coordinated planning.  Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people join various ICE watch groups, use Signal chat to collect intelligence about where ICE are staying, or eating, or carrying out raids and arrests, and then relay that information to a network of co-conspirators who show up and commit all of the crimes listed above.

This is a textbook example of a wide-ranging conspiracy, which one of the legal sources summarized this way: “Conspiracy: the multiplier that turns group activity into felony time.”

If only!  I’m not sure why Homan or anyone else in the Trump administration has not brought this up, but I hope that they start throwing resources at it, pronto.  Because as satisfying and proper as it is to start making mass and individual arrests and prosecutions of the useful idiot foot-soldiers in these protests, the biggest progress will be made when we start hitting the organizers and funders with huge criminal penalties.

Conspiracy violations are covered in a variety of US codes.  Section 372 deals with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer by force, intimidation or threat,” and carries up to 6 years in prison. 

Section 371 covers coordinating to obstruct lawful government functions.  Examples would include communications such as, “We’re going to meet at X, track vehicles and physically stop transport,” and action such as participating in group chats with coordinated roles, and arranging pre-planned timing and movements.

Section 1071 describes harboring and helping someone evade government officers such as ICE agents (with a possible 1 to 5 years for each act), and Sections 2232 and 1519 deal with destroying property or evidence to prevent seizure, or giving “tip-offs” about ICE activity (up to 5 years) and “destroying/altering records” (up to 20 years).  

Though I’ve been following all of these protests (and the antifa and BLM protests) pretty closely, doing this research has opened my eyes on several issues I’d not realized:

1. The vast majority of the anti-ICE protesters and protest organizers have routinely been committing more crimes than I’d thought, both misdemeanors and felonies.  (There are probably a handful of protestors who have not been violating at least one of the crimes listed above, but they are the exception to the rule, and I’d be shocked if they were more than 1-2% of the protesters.)

2. Virtually all of the leftist talking points about these protests are false: 

  • The First Amendment does NOT permit protests that are not peaceful, and these aren’t.
  • The Supremacy Clause dictates that local politicians and citizens CANNOT legally declare their cities sanctuaries and ban ICE (or any federal agency). 
  • Our legitimate, democratically passed immigration laws clearly state that immigrating here illegally is a crime; there’s no such thing as a non-criminal, “undocumented,” “legal” illegal alien, and ALL illegals are subject to deportation. 
  • Very few asylum claims – and none of them that have been pursued outside of legal channels – are valid.
  • And no American law enforcement agencies or actions are in the same moral universe as the Gestapo, you lying, hypocritical jackasses!

3. I had no idea how many legal weapons there are in our arsenal; we can use any of several dozen laws to charge and convict the protesters and their leaders.

As much as I’d love to see us charge thousands (or tens of thousands?) of protesters with thousands of crimes, and try all of them, that is logistically impractical.  It would take many years and tie up half our legal system, and to the extent that we’d need to depend on some local (and left-biased) judges and juries, we’d likely see a wave of destructive jury nullification verdicts.

We’ll be better off focusing on the leaders, and the worst of the bad actors among the protesters – maybe 100-150 of them – and go after them on federal charges, using the same intensity with which the Democrats pursued every Midwestern grannie who walked through the capitol on January 6th, took a selfie, and peacefully left. 

The reason the Antifa and BLM protests spread and grew into riots in 2020 – and the anti-ICE agitators have metastasized and escalated over the last year – is that almost nobody has been punished.  So we need to send a message, and make an example of these people “pour encourager les autres,” as the French say. 

If we can legally and morally put the worst 150 through what the Democrats illegitimately put the peaceful J6ers (not the brawlers) through – harassing them, bankrupting them, and sending them to jail for at least a few years – that would establish a powerful deterrent.

Especially if we focused on the conspiracy angle. These coordinated groups seem to be perfect targets for a RICO approach, and after the first couple of street-level and then coordinator-level creeps went down, we’d probably be able to flip some to use against the commie Colombos who were the bosses.  (Boom!  Mafia-Leftist alliterative analogies for $1000, Alex.) (We would also have accepted “the bolshevik Bonannos,” or the “leftist Luccheses.”)  

The one thing we can’t do is back off and let the insurrectionist protesters think they’ve won something.  I don’t think Homan will let that happen, but I’m a little concerned that the draw-down of agents from MN might be premature, especially if Small Frey and Jazz Hands start crowing about it.

I understand political realities, and I know that we can’t just go Roman on the protesters, as would be my own arch-conservative desire. 

But if we can’t go Roman, we should still be able to at least go Homan on their arses.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Part 2: The Laws that Determine the Legitimacy of Deporting “Non-Criminal” Illegals (posted 2/5/26)

Yesterday I gave a brief overview of the national laws (the Constitution and our various immigration laws) that should determine issues such as sanctuary jurisdictions and the types of protests that are legal and those that aren’t. 

Today I’m going to delineate the propriety of deporting illegals who have committed no crimes other than immigration-related offenses.

One constant refrain from well-meaning lefties (and not-so-well-meaning ones) is that “undocumented” aliens who commit no crimes unrelated to immigration are not criminals, and that Trump lied when he promised to deport ONLY the “worst of the worst” who commit other, non-immigration related crimes.

Taking the second point first, they are either mistaken or lying.  Because while Trump and many other administration figures have repeatedly said that they are prioritizing and going after the worst first – which is pragmatic and wise – they’ve also repeatedly said that everybody who is here illegally has to go back to their home countries. 

To the extent that other illegals get caught up in raids or arrests that target the doubly-criminal ones, that was not the immediate intent, but it’s also fair and justified.

Which leaves us with the assertion that entering the country illegally is not a crime.  (I think it was the scholar and Mensa member AOC who said that to Tom Homan in a congressional hearing.  And promptly got her juicy booty smacked with facts, rhetorically speaking.) (Also, her words, not mine.)

Of course, coming here illegally – by coming in anywhere but at a designated port of entry, or with fraudulent documents, etc. – is a crime, under 18 U.S.C. 1325.  Specifically, it is a federal misdemeanor, which is punishable by a fine of up to $250 and a maximum sentence of 6 months in jail, followed by deportation.  (In the vast majority of cases, the illegal immigrant has usually just been detained/jailed for long enough to deport him, since that is logistically much easier and quicker.)  If anyone re-enters after having once been deported, their violation is then raised to a felony.

So no, there are no “non-criminal” “undocumented” illegal aliens, no matter how many times a pink-haired zealot screams that at an ICE agent, or on TikTok, or at the sky.

A common refrain is that illegals who get caught and then claim asylum in America are here legally.  This is also untrue in the vast majority of cases.

There is a legal process for claiming asylum.  Although they are supposed to make that claim at a designated port of entry when they arrive, illegals can also make that request (using form I-589) after they’ve come in, though they MUST do so within a year of their illegal entry.  In other words, in the tens of thousands of cases in which an illegal who has been here longer than one year (and in many cases, for decades) gets caught and THEN claims asylum, those claims are illegitimate, and the immigrant is subject to immediate deportation.

The Biden administration, as part of their “Flood the Nation with Illegal Democrat Voters” program, created the CBP One app to allow every illegal in the country to claim asylum.  But the reality is that the vast majority of asylum claims are unsuccessful, since they require that the immigrant was being persecuted in their home country for one of five specific reasons (race, religion, etc.).  Those are very hard to prove, and in fact are almost never successful.

(Biden added an extra layer of slimy duplicity to the system through the CBP One dodge. Instead of the traditional process of meeting with the asylum seeker immediately and then making a decision promptly, Biden routinely gave CBP One users an appointment for anywhere from three to five years or more in the future, and then waved them in. 

Of course the Dems knew that almost no illegals would ever show up for those appointments.  And they didn’t want them to.  They  allowed them to melt into the country and stay for years, after which a future Dem administration (and some spineless RINOs) would weep over the cruelty of deporting people who had been here for years, and then grant a blanket amnesty.  We didn’t hate the Biden administration enough.)    

Ironically, one of the few groups who have a bulletproof case for asylee status in recent years is the small number of white South Africans who applied after suffering a wave of vicious criminal attacks because of the color of their skin.  This has been clearly documented through many recordings of the racist songs (“Kill the Boer!  Kill the [white] farmer!”) at political rallies of the racist majority government, and in the official, written policies of that government.

And boy was it fun to watch the furious apoplexy of the whitey-hating leftist American radicals when those few South Africans were allowed into America!

Back to asylum claims: the reality – which everyone knows but which the left will go to great lengths to avoid admitting – is that the vast majority of asylum claims are invalid.  Because the vast majority of immigrants want to come here because this is a wealthy country that offers many opportunities and benefits, which can be gained by either pursuing your own dreams through hard work and grit, or by living on our suicidally generous welfare benefits, which were never intended to go to foreigners.    

Both are understandable motivations, but neither are legal reasons to receive asylum.

I sympathize with the former group and have no hard feelings toward them, even though they still need to go home, and then apply for legal, vetted entry, which is neither an entitlement nor a guarantee.  But I have contempt for the second group, and would like to see them immediately tossed out of the country like they were low-down four-flushers being tossed out of swinging saloon doors by John Wayne.

Having said all that, the constant claims that “the ‘non-criminal’ ‘undocumented’ have broken no laws except for their illegal entry” are in reality never true.  Because once you come here illegally (again, a misdemeanor that makes you legally deportable by itself), you can’t avoid committing further and repeated crimes.  

In fact, most of the basic aspects of modern life – buying a home, driving, and working – are criminal acts when done by illegals.

Legal foreign residents can own a home in America (as they can’t in most other countries), but quasi-legal or temporarily legal foreigners (such as asylum seekers, green card holders and DACA recipients) have to wait to close on a house or mortgage until their claims are legally granted.  But illegals cannot get a mortgage for a house, and if they attempted to buy with cash, the source of that money would have to be legally vetted by the government. 

In other words, no Kilmars – i.e. “Maryland dads” hoping to buy with cash from their gang activities and human and drug smuggling – can legally buy a home in America.   

If illegals drive (which most do), they are committing multiple other crimes in the process.  What do cops always ask for when they pull you over?  License, registration and proof of insurance.  

In most states you can’t get a driver’s license if you’re here illegally.  Even if you’re in a blue state which shadily gives you a license, most other states don’t recognize it, so you’ll be driving without a license if you drive in any of those states.  (And there are tons of cases of blue states fraudulently giving non-English-speaking illegals drivers licenses and even CDLs, only to have them injure or kill Americans on the highways of all of our states.)

You also can’t legally buy and register a car if you’re here illegally in most states.  And of course if you don’t legally own it and can’t register it, then you can’t insure it either.  So any illegal who drives is almost certainly committing at least 3 additional crimes. Plus, if you’re ever caught speeding, that’s usually just a traffic infraction, but that escalates when you add no license, insurance or registration. 

If illegals work here, they are either working on a stolen or fraudulent social security number (which are crimes), or working under the table.  The latter involves several crimes, including tax evasion, facilitating non-payment of tax by their employers, and violating other legal requirements such as getting proper permits, licensing, submitting to proper inspections regarding safety, cleanliness and etc.

If they don’t work, they are exactly the kind of financial burden on our society that our legal immigration system was designed to exclude.  But they are also almost certainly either committing crimes to make money to survive on, or else illegally collecting various forms of welfare, such as housing benefits, SNAP benefits, Medicaid and/or free health care, (plus cash benefits in many blue states) – all of which are at least misdemeanors, often bumped up to felonies when committed in conjunction with other violations/crimes. 

Some illegals do work by getting an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) in lieu of a social security number (which they cannot legally get). But that is a gray area at best, and widely abused.  The IRS created the ITIN in 1996, without any congressional legislation or executive branch approval, which doesn’t seem proper, considering how much illegal behavior the ITIN facilitates.

It was supposedly intended “to address the need for tax compliance among individuals who do not have a valid Social Security number,” specifically “foreign nationals and other individuals who are not eligible for a SSN.”  I can’t blame the illegals for taking this option, but I can blame our federal government, for setting up a greedy and unfair way to profit from illegals, while creating a magnet to draw more of them here.

Unexpectedly!

The ITIN collects millions in social security-esque taxes from illegals, without giving them any entitlement to social security benefits later.  Lefties often complain about the unfairness of this situation, and as much as it pains me, I have to agree with them, up to a point. 

That point is the part where I say, “If illegals think the ITIN exploits them, there’s an easy way to fix that.  [begin Kinison filter] STOP BREAKING OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS AND GO BACK TO YOUR OWN COUNTRY! OH!  OHHHHHH!!! [end Kinison filter]    

Regardless of the initial reasons for creating the ITIN, it has now become an illegal-enabling disaster and an unethical governmental money grab, and should be drastically reformed. 

There is a legitimate reason for taxing foreigners who are here and working legally, and they should be required to pay the same income, sales and other taxes that citizens pay.  It also makes sense to subject them to an additional tax that would pay for their use of our emergency medical care, educational system etc. – as long as they are here and working her legally. 

But there is NO reason to give ITINs to illegals, thus helping them to circumvent and flout our immigration and employment laws.

Tomorrow in part 3, I’ll analyze the legality (or illegality) of the tactics most commonly employed by anti-ICE protesters.

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Looking at the Actual Laws – and Lawlessness – of the anti-ICE Protests, Part 1 (posted 2/4/26)

Many people have filled the air with claims about our immigration laws and the legitimacy of the anti-ICE protests.  Most of them claim to know the law, and to have it on their side. 

In this column and the next, I’m going to lay out the relevant laws and legal principles as I understand them, to try to counter a lot of what I think are false statements coming from the open borders and anti-ICE left.

Regular readers will know that I’m not a law-talkin’ guy (“Obscure Lionel Hutz references to lawyers on the Simpsons for $100, Alex”), but rather a humble retired English professor.  But I’ve followed a lot of legal writing and SCOTUS cases, and taught writing for pre-law students, so I think I’ve got at least a basic, informed amateur’s understanding of this topic.

Of course, I welcome any corrections or extra information from any actual lawyers among my readership.

I’m going to go from big picture to the small, starting with the Constitution and our national immigration laws.

On this topic, the most relevant parts of the constitution are the Supremacy Clause, which appears in Article 6, and the First Amendment.  The supremacy clause established that whenever a state law on an issue that affects the other states conflicts with the national law as embodied in the Constitution, the Constitution trumps the state law. 

Famous examples would be when Ike or Truman called out the National Guard into southern Democrat states who had passed Jim Crow laws infringing on the rights of black Americans.  The Guard forced blacks’ access to schools and other segregated businesses and institutions, because constitutional law trumped the state Democrats’ racist laws.

One question I’ve had for 10 years or more is why cities and states have been allowed to declare themselves to be “sanctuary” locations, and thus defy the federal government and break our immigration laws?  That would necessarily make them insurrectionists, wouldn’t it?  (Remember when the Democrats used to pretend to take that VERY seriously?)  

The supremacy clause clearly forbids sanctuary cities, and I’m not sure why Trump and conservatives in the GOP haven’t pushed back on this issue, and stopped that open defiance of federal law.

I’ve written elsewhere that at the very least, the feds should stop all federal funds from going to sanctuary cities, to force their compliance with our laws.  If the feds could cut off all federal highway funds to force states to lower their speed limits to 55 in the 1970s, they can certainly cut off funds to end illegal sanctuary policies.   Especially when you consider that lower speed limits hadn’t existed before, and higher limits didn’t break any laws – which local sanctuary ordinances clearly do. The feds just wanted the states to change their behavior, and used the power of the purse to force them to do so. 

The First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion are also crucial in the ongoing disputes.   The freedom of religion is more rarely contested, because until recently, most protestors weren’t stupid enough to intentionally disrupt worship services.  (Rumors that most of the protestors cannot tolerate being in the presence of a cross, lest they burst into flames and run shrieking into the darkness have not been confirmed.)

That is, until Don Lemon and a couple of radical activists led a platoon of morons into the church in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.  The charges against them are an easy legal call – always with the caveat that they get a judge or jury who feels bound to actually rule according to the law.  (Sadly, we can no longer take that for granted anymore.)  They violated many laws that day, starting when they forcibly entered the church, disrupted the service and interfered with the congregants’ freedom of worship, and they have no substantive legal defense.

Freedom of speech is the elephant in the room when it comes to the legality of protests.  Protestors of all political persuasions routinely claim constitutional approval for any and all actions they feel like taking, but that’s not what the First Amendment grants. As with many contentious constitutional issues, the essential distinctions often hang on very specific wording.

In this case, the amendment establishes “the right of the people PEACEABLY to assemble, and to petition the Government for the redress of grievances.”  Obviously, the capital letters are mine, and highlight the crucial point: peaceful protest is allowed and protected; violent protest is not.

A lot of con law jurisprudence has grown out of defining the kinds of protests that are disallowed.  The first (and easiest) was violent protests.  “Violence” is defined by various laws that establish various types and levels of criminal behavior, from property damage to assaults, throwing objects, spitting on people, etc.

Other restrictions developed over time to codify legal and logical definitions.  One such set of limitations involve “time, place and manner” restrictions.  “Time” encompasses limits to protests in the middle of the night or early morning.

 “Place” limits where protests can occur: you can’t go into private property (like a church or business), or a secure military base or other government facilities. Often the government can establish specific protest zones that balance the right of protesters to be heard and the right of others not to have the protests forced on them.  You also can’t protest in front of a judge’s home or a courthouse. 

I know: Technically, the scumbags who harassed Kavanaugh and other SCOTUS justices at their homes were breaking the law, and many activists protesting inside or right up against courthouses are too.  Enforcement, please!

“Manner” covers many issues, such as noise restrictions and decibel levels; capping the number of protestors allowed into a venue; requiring permits to allow road closures or other accommodations; restrictions based on threats to safety (e.g. protests can’t legally spill into roads and block traffic, or create overcrowding that could result in trampling or crushing injuries, etc.).  Protestors also can’t harass their targets, or interfere with legal activities such as going into a place of business, or carrying out legitimate governmental responsibilities such as investigating a crime, or detaining, questioning or arresting someone.

After reading that list, you’re thinking what I am: the anti-ICE mobs have been constantly violating a ton of those laws.  They routinely use constant, ear-splitting whistles, which can induce physical pain and injury, and are necessarily psychologically disorienting and aggravating.  They regularly block traffic, and box LEOs vehicles in.  Their entire raison d’etre is to illegally interfere with any enforcement of our immigration laws.    

The only possible justification I can see for this systematic and blatantly illegal behavior would be if our immigration laws were somehow illegitimate, not democratically passed, or violative of the Constitution.  And that is also just as clearly NOT the case.

I’ve written a previous column summarizing the overall development of our immigration laws from the Founding to the 1960s.   If you’d like to see the details, I posted that column on 4/2/25, and you can find it by scrolling back through my archives on the right side of the screen.

To summarize my summary… The first major immigration law was the Naturalization Act of 1790, and the two major laws in the next century were the Immigration Acts of 1882 and 1891.  My main takeaway from analyzing those acts is that even though we didn’t yet have a vast, bloated welfare system, we were still picky about who we let in, and we purposely chose those who would clearly benefit America.  (We rejected those who were physically or mentally sick, criminals, and those who would be financial burdens on the country, for example.)  In the early 20th century, after decades of booming immigration, we tightened our laws and dramatically decreased the number of immigrants from the ‘20s through the early ‘60s.

But in the 1960s and afterwards, we began to allow more people in, and our goals for immigration underwent an ideological drift to the left.  But initially, we did partially maintain our early, conservative focus on enlightened self-interest, prioritizing immigrants who would be most likely to contribute to our society.  We offered many visas and green cards to allow seasonal workers and students to come in temporarily.  The goal was that this would be a win-win; the seasonal worker immigrants would get better wages and working conditions than they could get in their home country, and the students would get an education that increased their skills and value.  

All of them would be expected to leave the country when their temporary status expired, but the cream of the crop of both white- and blue-collar immigrants would have a chance – after careful vetting – to apply for citizenship, and bring added value to America.

But even as that was going on, the leftist march through the institutions produced more intellectuals and government leaders who took a darker and darker view of America. They saw us as exploitative colonizers and capitalists who had victimized the Third World, so it was only fair that we generously take in more and more immigrants from the Third World, almost as a form of indirect reparations.

They felt guilty and selfish about choosing immigrants based on how they could benefit America, and they moved more toward allowing people in based on “compassion” and “empathy.”  The poorer and more dysfunctional your country was, the better the liberal “saviors” felt about letting you in.   

And, of course, race played a larger and larger role.  Because: leftism. 

Since previous waves of immigration had been drawn predominately from Europe, those immigrants had been mostly white. Which made the ascendant lefties feel really icky, and white-guilt-y.  So they started preferentially admitting more non-white people.  Which dove-tailed nicely with the fact that non-whites tend to vote heavily Democratic. 

To top that off, the leftist attraction to multiculturalism and disdain for traditional/conservative American culture meant that this latest wave of immigration broke from all earlier waves in one crucial way: we no longer insisted that immigrants assimilate to our culture.  Because our leftist betters know that all foreign cultures are morally superior to ours, it would be bigoted and xenophobic of us to expect them to adapt to us.  We need to accommodate them, and allow them to set up defiantly non-assimilating outposts of their own native cultures within our borders.

Annnnnddddd… we get the Muslim call to prayer blasted out of loudspeakers daily in Dearborn, Michigan; angry, racist Latinos burning the American flag and waving the Mexican flag in LA; and piratical fraudster Somali Muslims creating Mogadishu-St. Paul.

This leftist drift on immigration produced an addictive mix of power and pleasures which lefties found irresistible.  They could grow their own political power by admitting millions of morally superior racial victims who will vote for them forever, while also damaging their hated political enemy (conservative whitey!), and simultaneously experience the near-orgasmic pleasure of self-righteously virtue signaling while profiting from the whole mess.       

By the time Biden got control, they had weakened our immigration so much that they were emboldened to drop all pretenses – along with the border – and wave unvetted illegal immigrants in by the millions, for four long years.

Okay, that’s a lot of background.  Next up: I’ll look at the alleged non-criminal status of most illegal immigrants (spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist), and rebut the MSM claims about the legality of the anti-ICE protests one by one.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Fatal Empathy (posted 2/2/26)

I talked to an old friend of mine the other day.  Regular readers have heard of him, because he’s one of a couple of lefties I’ve been close to for years. 

Many readers from the CO site – which I’m still hoping to be able to revive with CO, so please be patient – have commented to the effect of, “How can you be friends with a leftist, after everything they’ve done and everything you’ve said about what they’ve done?”

Which is a rational question to ask.  Though an even better question might be how can he be friends with me, after everything he thinks conservatives have done?  Especially since lefties are usually pretty quick to cut off and cancel anyone on the other political side, IMHO. 

The answer is that even though I think his politics are wildly wrong, and he thinks the same about mine, deep down we both know that there are some things more important than politics.  I’ve known him for 40 years, and he’s got a good heart.  I was godfather to one of his kids, and he introduced me to my smokeshow wife, and for that I will forever be in his debt.

I love him like a brother.  A lovable but addled and confused brother.  😊

The reason I mention all that is that since our conversation, I’ve been thinking about the chaos in Minneapolis, and I’ve come to the conclusion that good lefties are wrong about immigration and ICE for two main reasons: they’ve misunderstood the law, and they’ve misunderstood and/or misapplied empathy.

Empathy first.  The first time I heard the term “toxic empathy” was not very long ago, but it has become a hotly debated topic since then.   At first glance, the concept would appear to be oxymoronic – how could “empathy” ever be “toxic?”  But you don’t have to think very long to come up with tons of examples to prove that it often is.

Anyone who has been in or observed human relationships – watching one spouse enable another by making excuses for abuse; loaning money to somebody with a gambling problem; giving $20 to a homeless guy who uses it to buy the fentanyl that kills him; parents spoiling a child until he’s a 30-something basement-dweller – recognizes that reality.

The same negative results ensue on a political level, when government programs that are meant to help people actually incentivize bad behaviors that gravely damage the recipients.  Giving women welfare benefits only if there is no man in the house produces sky-high fatherlessness, and traps them in dysfunctional dependence, which is an unmitigated disaster.  Guaranteeing college loans to people to get worthless grievance studies degrees produces bitter 30-somethings with $200K in debt and a minimum wage job.  Etc.

But aside from the toxicity issue, empathy is very often only selective, on both the right and the left.  Some on our side empathized with the nonviolent people among the J6 protestors way more than we empathize with the non-violent among leftist protestors, because we basically agree with the former and disagree with the latter. 

But the lefties in Minneapolis and around the country have taken that to an extreme, IMHO.  I haven’t heard any lefties express empathy for Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, or any of the thousands of Americans who did nothing wrong, but were attacked or murdered by unvetted illegals.  But they have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments over illegals who broke our laws (including wife-beating human smuggler Kilmar), and legal immigrant citizens who were briefly detained to confirm their legal status before being released.

The elite leftists have used a cloak of lies to try to turn the five-year-old boy with the cute backpack into a tiny, photogenic victim of cruel ICE, claiming that ICE “arrested” him.  The truth, of course is that ICE took care of the kid after they tried to take his criminal dad into custody, and the creepy POS fled, leaving the boy behind in freezing weather.

Yet the leftists condemn the ICE agents who cared for him, rather than the criminal dad who abandoned him.  Unexpectedly!

Speaking of kids, it’s been widely reported that around 300,000 illegal children have been snuck in and given into the custody of others – some probably relatives or friends of their parents, but many fraudsters posing as their parents to improve their chances of getting in, and many others either cartel-associated or cartel-coerced people who facilitate the sexual and other abuse of those children.

Anyone who actually cares about kids has to be horrified by the prospect of a third of a million small, powerless victims of the left’s pitiless policy of opening the border to unvetted waves of uncontrolled immigration and human smuggling.  And yet the elite left has been utterly silent about this massive crime. 

And when Homan announced last week that this administration has located and rescued around 145,000 of those victimized kids, the silence of those who can’t stop virtue signaling about, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” has been deafening. 

Not one word of celebration or relief.  Not even a grudging “good job” from the armies of those who claim to be the champions of “undocumented” children.  

Compare that to the tsunami of grief for Robin Good and Alex Pretti.  I know that many good lefties actually do grieve for those two, just as I and many other conservatives feel some sympathy for the tragic ending that their own disordered ideology led them to.  But I also know that many in the leftist elite are more than happy to exploit the deaths of those two for their own propagandistic political gain.

That much is clear from the way they’ve relentlessly lied about both cases.  They claim that Robin Good was an innocent mother who stumbled into an ICE action, and died while trying to flee the murderous agents, through no fault of her own. (The truth was that she and her partner had trained at an organized anti-ICE boot camp, went there to illegally interfere with agents, and was killed in the process of committing multiple crimes, including driving her car toward an agent who had already been hit and dragged by one of her political co-religionists previously.)

They claim that Alex Pretti was a noble nurse, murdered by ICE agents for the “crime” of trying to help a woman they were victimizing.  (The truth was that he was a repeated assaulter of ICE agents who went there to attack and interfere with their legal actions in a chaotic situation, and died in the process of committing multiple crimes.)  

Ironically, misplaced and toxic empathy played significant roles in both of their deaths.  Because one of the best examples of toxic empathy in government is the policy of going soft on crime, which both of the dead protestors had learned to expect.

Nationwide anti-ICE protests routinely violate a great many of our laws, and yet almost none of those in the mobs of protestors/agitators/rioters ever face legal consequences for their actions.  They aren’t arrested, or if they are, they are quickly released with all charges either dropped, or reduced to the equivalent of a traffic ticket.  (And that amounts to an actual reward, since they gain admiration and praise from their disordered companions for heroically “standing up to the fascists.”)  

Thus the protestors – exhilarated by an intoxicating mix of political hatred and a sense of their own moral superiority and the righteousness of their cause – see some of their companions screaming at the LEOs, and throwing the first objects or fireworks at them. And nothing happens to them.  So they join in, and things accelerate.

And soon, they end up believing that their opponents are basically powerless against them, and they will never face any consequences for their crimes, which they don’t even recognize or acknowledge ARE crimes.  

That process ends with Robin Good dead, and her partner wailing, “Why are they using real bullets?!”  (Anyone not drunk on an ideological fervor involving delusions of invulnerability can clearly see the obvious answer: When you attack armed LEOs and try to run over them with a real car, you can expect to catch a lot of real bullets.)

That process also ends with Alex Pretti’s death.  If law enforcement had arrested him shortly before, when he committed multiple crimes at a previous protest (interfering with an arrest, spitting at cops and damaging one of their vehicles, then fighting with one of them), he would still be alive today. 

But because he didn’t face an arrest 10 days earlier, he was emboldened to escalate his criminal behavior until he faced the end of his life 10 days later. 

And ironically, the actions of his comrades also played a huge role in his death.  One of their tactics has been to constantly blow whistles at an ear-splitting volume, which is obviously disorienting and extremely aggravating and even painful to the LEOs carrying out their legal tasks, as it is intended to be.

Because Pretti was carrying a gun – which he could legally do – to a legitimate law enforcement action where he intended to commit crimes – which he could NOT legally do – he had already put his life at great risk.  In the ensuing confusion, when one of the cops saw his weapon and called out, “Gun!” things instantly escalated, as they must.

Tragically, one cop had already gotten Pretti’s gun away from him when other cops – because he was struggling with them (which one cannot legally do), and because they were almost certainly not aware that he no longer had his gun on him – shot him.

Typically, in that situation a cop will let the other cops know when he has removed and secured the weapon from the criminal.  And it is very likely –to say the least – that the cop in this case tried to do that.

But because a mob of insurrectionist a-holes surrounded the cops and Pretti, blowing their deafening whistles, no one could have heard the information that would almost certainly have saved Pretti’s life.

And so Alex Pretti – just like Robin Good, and (as sad as this is to say) Ashli Babbitt – died, almost entirely because of his own reckless actions.

Next up: I’ve researched and will try to summarize the main legal issues underlying the anti-ICE and pro-illegal immigration wave that is sweeping the country.          

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est! 

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