In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

As Ludwig Wittgenstein would put it, the solution to the problem is seen in the disappearance of the problem. I was drawn to Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene's announcement of her resignation , in particular that she mentions Epstein prominently: I never changed or went back on my campaign promises and only disagreed in a few areas like. . . demanding the release of the Epstein files. Just last Sunday, she said the growing animosity between her and Donald Trump “has all come down to the Epstein files.” “I have no idea what’s in the files. I can’t even guess,” Greene added. “But that is the question everyone is asking is why fight this so hard?” Greene, a former close ally of Trump, has come under fire from the president in recent weeks over her push to release federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein files, a trove of documents presumably detailing the disgraced financier’s crimes, including who may have known about or been involved in those crimes. It appears th...

On Tuesday, Pope Leo made a statement that endorsed the "Special Message" the USCCB issued the week prior. According to the USCCB , Pope Leo told reporters in Castel Gandolfo that the pastoral message is "a very important statement. I would invite especially all Catholics, but people of goodwill, to listen carefully to what they said." "No one has said that the United States should have open borders," the pope said. "I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter." However, he said, in enforcing immigration policy "we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have." "If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that," he said. "There are courts. There's a system of justice," but the system has "a lot of problems" that should be addressed. The video I saw strongly suggested Leo...

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...