In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

On November 12, the USCCB issued a "Special Message" from its Baltimore Plenary Assembly "addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States." The video embedded above contains one reaction from Fr Robert McTeigue, SJ to an Instagram post featuring some of the bishops drawing attention to the Special Message. CatholicVote also issued a response to the bishops' message stressing that "properly speaking, there is no such thing as an official ‘Catholic position’ on the practical details of immigration policy." Instead, it frames individual Catholics’ stances on immigration enforcement as "a matter of prudential political judgment," which it says is "an area of responsibility that belongs properly to Catholic laypersons rather than the bishops." CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt told Fox News Digital the group "wants to foster a more complete conversation on immigration...

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse makes a worthwhile, though not a stunnningly insightful, point: [W]hen AI was launched on the various platforms being used by the larger public, the inputs which frame the AI results are controlled by the same people who built the AI systems. When you engage with AI, you are engaging with a system that only has “approved information” behind it to deliver the outputs. In other words, if you ask any public AI platform a question about any current topic, you're going to get an answer based on a pre-digested body of conventional wisdom, pretty much the same thing you'd get going to Real Clear Politics. I use Chrome AI mode, which I don't have to pay for, and the answers are worth what I pay for them. ChatGPT and Grok are overpriced and ought to charge nothing. But given public AI's limitations, you can at least get a good take on conventional wisdom. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What was last week's conventional wisdom about Tr...

It has now been confirmed that attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks used they/them pronouns, had a deep interest in furries, and was exploring gender identity. Add it to the list: - Charlie Kirk’s assassin Tyler Robinson had a furry obsession and lived with transgender… pic.twitter.com/JyAK9qO8ix — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 17, 2025 The idea that Thomas Crooks, the Butler, PA shooter, was trans isn't new. Just as I started a web search, Google AI hastened to set me straight: The person identified by the FBI as the shooter in the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump was Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old cisgender man who was a registered Republican. Following the shooting, a false online conspiracy theory spread rapidly, claiming the shooter was transgender. This was based on a misidentification using a photo of an unrelated transgender woman named Rose, an artist who was falsely targeted in the smear campaign. Fact-checking organizations, incl...

Just this morning, via Time Magazine : Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky went against the most powerful leaders of his party to push forward with a vote to release more Jeffrey Epstein investigation files. Except that last night , President Donald Trump called for House Republicans to take a “vote to release” files relating to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, explaining that it is time for the nation “to move on from this Democrat Hoax.” . . . “As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,'” Trump said in his post. According to Wikipedia , The term "Epstein files" refers to documents collected as evidence in th...

Via The Catholic Herald : The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was briefly unsettled this week when Bishop Joseph Strickland intervened against Fr James Martin over a recent confirmation liturgy involving an openly “married” homosexual couple. The exchange occurred during the Committee on Doctrine’s consideration of Action Item #03, which concerns updated Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. Bishop Strickland spoke briefly and drew attention to images widely circulated online of a recent liturgy involving a well-known American broadcaster. “Since we’re in the area of doctrine,” he said, “I don’t know how many of us have seen on social media, priests and others gathered celebrating the confirmation of a man living with a man openly. And it just needs to be addressed.” Bishop Strickland continued, stating, “Father James Martin once again involved. Great pictures of all of them smiling. Here we are talking about doctrine. I just thought I need to...

Biden showered half a billion dollars on @USCCB for resettling his foreign invasion force. Trump took office and stopped it, and now @USCCB is doing a PR campaign condemning Trump’s immigration policies. We all know what’s happening here. https://t.co/V1KwTEfkZa — Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) November 14, 2025 Yesterday , As The New York Times reported, the United States’ Conference of Bishops sharply rebuked the Trump Administration over its mass deportation policy of illegals during the bishops’ annual conference in Baltimore. In a statement, the bishops slammed the Trump Administration for creating “a climate of fear,” vilifying illegals, and not granting lawbreakers access to pastoral care. . . . The statement overwhelmingly passed, with 216 anonymous votes in favor. Five bishops voted no, and three abstained. I asked Chrome AI mnode, "What are major catholic NGOs that support migrants, and has the trump administration withdrawn funding?" It rep...

Let me start by saying I don't think "gait analysis" had much to do with identifying either Osama bin Laden or alleged J6 pipe bomber Shauni Kerkhoff. I'm sure there is such a thing as "gait analysis", but I don't think it's used independently without a lot of other pointers, and something else, including human sources, put investigators on the track in both cases. In fact, I think "gait analysis" is being used here mostly as a cover to protect human informants. Next, the basic investigative tool these days is camera footage. Cameras are everywhere, something the putative bomber apparently neglected to keep in mind on her bomb planting expedition, even though she was allegedly in law enforcement. If there was so much footage of her as she circumnavigated Capitol Hill for nearly an hour on January 5, 2021 -- this is beyond dispute -- investigators must have other footage of her entering and leaving the area in that distinctive outfit. ...