[FoxNews] Former New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Ronal Serpas is criticizing what he described as New Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson's "checkered past" after 10 inmates escaped a parish jail last week.
Since the inmates escaped from a hole behind a toilet in a jail cell the morning of May 16, authorities have recaptured five and arrested one correctional officer in the jailbreak.
"Sheriff Hutson has had a very checkered past in the last 15 years in the city of New Orleans, with multiple complaints of administrative failures as the [former] independent police monitor, multiple complaints as the sheriff and the consent decree management and multiple complaints of ethical violations that have resulted in findings by the Louisiana Ethics Board," Serpas told Fox News Digital.
[American Thinker] America isn't a democracy but a constitutional republic designed to limit majority rule and protect individual rights. This distortion enables narratives that label dissent as dangerous, especially in portraying Trump as a "threat to democracy" -- a claim pushed by institutions caught spreading falsehoods about him. What appears as consensus is actually assigned opinion enforced by media and political power, as "conspiracy theories" used to silence dissent are proving to be true.
What follows is not just a list of lies -- it’s a pattern of systemic deception that reveals where the real threat lies.
The Concealment of President Biden’s Cognitive Decline: A Betrayal of Voters
For years, concerns about Joe Biden’s mental acuity were dismissed as partisan attacks or "conspiracy theories." The White House physician declared him fit for office. Staffers claimed he "ran circles around them." Meanwhile, public appearances were tightly controlled, questions were pre-approved, and scripted answers were passed off as spontaneous.
But in 2024, the dam broke. Biden’s debate performance made his decline undeniable. Millions had already cast primary ballots for a man clearly unfit to serve -- yet instead of outrage over the scale of the deception, voters watched passively as Kamala Harris stepped in as the de facto candidate.
It was an unconstitutional transfer of candidacy that the media refused to acknowledge. This wasn’t spin -- it was a deliberate, coordinated effort to deceive the American public about who was actually running the country.
All while, the same media complex screamed that Trump was the dictator.
[BusinessInsider] No coincidence at all. While the Republicans started replacing their country club Republicans like Mitt Romney in 2007 with first TEA Partiers and then MAGA Trumpsters, the Democrat Old Guard were holding tight to power — leaving only when carried out by six, including a state funeral attended by all the former presidents except Donald Trump, who was openly told his presence wasn’t wanted.
Eight sitting members of Congress have died since November 2022.
Every single one of them was a Democrat.
The party has been wrestling with age and gerontocracy for years.
In the last two and a half years, eight sitting members of the House or Senate have died in office. Every time, it's been a Democrat.
Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, died on Wednesday at 75, after a battle with esophageal cancer.
He's the third House Democrat to die in the last three months. If Democrats had gained a narrow 1 or 2-seat majority in 2024, they would have lost it by now.
The streak of Democratic deaths could just be something of a coincidence. After all, there are plenty of elderly and diminished Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including former Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
But Democrats do tend to be older than Republicans, on average. A report from FiscalNote found that in the last Congress, the average House Democrat was six years older than the average House Republican, while the gap was seven years in he upper chamber.
There are some potential structural reasons for this as well, including the seniority system, which Democrats tend to employ more than Republicans.
The deaths are just another data point in a long-running conversation that's been raging within the Democratic Party for years about age and gerontocracy, which culminated last year in President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the presidential race after a disastrous debate performance.
Since then, Democrats in particular have been taking age more seriously, including when it comes to who's serving in important committee positions. Connolly notably beat back a challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in December for the Oversight position he's now vacated.
Here's the full list of Democratic lawmakers who have died in office since November 2022:
#3
The party has been wrestling with age and gerontocracy for years.
They do not "wrestle with age" they selfishly embrace it while despising youthful vigor, intelligence, and enthusiasm.
"I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving."
~ Robert E. Lee
[Jpost] How much damage can words do? Israel’s internal rhetoric is intensifying global condemnation and playing into the hands of those fueling anti-Israel sentiment.
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
— H.L.Mencken
The barrage this week came fast, hard, and from all directions.
But it wasn’t missiles from Lebanon or drones from Iran that pounded Israel this time. Instead, it was a diplomatic onslaught: waves of condemnation, sanctions, and outrage from capitals across the globe, most notably in Europe.
The trigger: images of hungry children in Gaza flooding the airwaves, a wildly exaggerated claim by a senior UN official that 14,000 babies would die in Gaza if aid did not reach them in 48 hours, and Israel’s vow to intensify the fighting to free hostages and destroy Hamas.
A harsh statement signed by the leaders of Britain, France, and Canada, punitive threats – some already acted upon – and the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington all underscored a dangerous reality: Israel is not only fighting the war in Gaza but also a battle for legitimacy on the world stage.
The UK froze trade negotiations, the EU initiated a review of its association agreement with Israel, and foreign ministers queued up to censure. Yet, ironically, some of the sharpest blows came not from Israel’s enemies but from Israelis themselves.
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu tried to project calm at his first press conference since December.
“European countries will not influence us or cause us to abandon our core objectives: securing Israel’s future and safety,” he said. Israel, he asserted, would continue to aggressively pursue its war aims until Hamas is dismantled, the hostages are returned, and Gaza no longer poses a threat.
“We will do what is necessary to complete the war,” he said, adding that, in the end, Israel will have complete security control over the enclave.
Even as he dismissed European pressure, Netanyahu acknowledged the power of another force: images. Specifically, the images of hungry Gazan children and food lines that are dominating global headlines and eroding US political support.
Despite Hamas still holding 58 hostages, 20 of whom Netanyahu said were alive, and even with ongoing concerns about aid being intercepted by terrorists, Netanyahu reversed a policy in effect since March 2 and authorized renewed humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Why the shift? Because the White House requested it –
I would vote for Donald Trump again, but this particular triangulation is shameful. Cowardly. He knows the situation and the ramifications, but chose to put his thumb on the scale for the side that created Elias Rodriguez, refusing to stand up against the lies.
and because, as Netanyahu conveyed, even Israel’s closest allies could not bear the optics.
Cowards.
“Our best friends in the world,” Netanyahu said in a short video Monday explaining the new policy, “senators I have known as unstinting, enthusiastic supporters, who I have known for dozens of years, are coming to me and saying this: We give you all the assistance to complete the victory – arms, support to destroy Hamas, defense in the UN Security Council. There is one thing we cannot stand: We cannot take pictures of starvation, mass starvation. We won’t be able to support you.”
To retain international backing, Israel had to confront the humanitarian crisis; Netanyahu said: “To achieve victory, we have to solve the problem.”
IT’S A SOBERING message. Even in a war started by Hamas with its barbaric October 7 attack, optics and false narratives (such as 14,000 babies dying within 48 hours) are shaping the battlefield.
If the original logic in withholding the aid was to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages, the new approach suggests the opposite: resuming aid is essential to preserving international support needed to sustain military pressure on Hamas.
However, as the statements from some European capitals and Canada made clear – statements issued, ironically, the very day aid resumed – the intensified military campaign does not enjoy international legitimacy. But the move may help temper US criticism.
Critics on Netanyahu’s Right called the reversal capitulation. Critics on his Left said it was yet another example of incoherent policy. Both may have a point. But there’s another way to interpret it: tactical recalibration in a shifting geopolitical landscape.
At the core lies a truth too often ignored abroad: Hamas could end the humanitarian crisis immediately by releasing the hostages. It chooses not to because, for Hamas, the suffering of its own civilians is a weapon, not a liability.
“People have forgotten October 7,” said President Donald Trump during his Mideast tour, which ended last Friday in the UAE. “It was one of the most violent days in world history.” He’s right. And many have also forgotten that Gaza’s agony continues because Hamas refuses to yield, free the hostages, and surrender.
This war isn’t fought only in Rafah’s tunnels and in the alleys of Khan Yunis. It is also being waged in Washington’s corridors, at the UN, and on the world’s television screens.
Israel may have the upper hand militarily, but in Europe’s halls of power and in the court of global opinion, it is faltering. Some are arguing – with no small degree of justification – that Israel’s minimal public diplomacy suggests it has all but abandoned that front.
Adding to the public diplomacy challenge is that some of the damage is self-inflicted.
On the Left, Yair Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and head of the Democrats Party, accused his own country this week of “killing babies as a hobby.”
On the Right, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke at a conference earlier this month of postwar Gaza where its “desperate” civilians will all be in the south, “understanding there is no future, no purpose, and nothing left for them in Gaza” but to seek relocation and start new lives elsewhere.
These voices may lie on the ideological fringes, but their words shape how the world sees the conflict.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
