“The murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by masked federal agents earlier this month shocked our consciences. But it is important to understand these killings were the inevitable result of a culture of violence and lawlessness at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in which masked DHS agents have been routinely engaging in brazenly criminal acts across the country for months with no accountability or oversight. To be clear, punching someone in the face because you don’t like the sign they are holding is a crime. Same with pulling a gun on or spraying bear mace at a peaceful bystander. And yet we have seen literally thousands of clearly documented crimes like these committed by DHS agents over the past year with no consequences or even investigations. This is part of a broader culture of lawlessness and contempt for accountability that permeates DHS and ICE.” (02/01/26)
“Football taught me rich people could be stupid. Even as a kid, I’d seen plenty of movies and TV shows where rich people were greedy, cruel, vain, and unlikable. But stupid? Obviously, rich people are smart! Otherwise, how did they become rich? But as any NFL fan knows, some franchises are just always bad. Superstars wilt when traded to these teams; top draft picks fail to live up to their billing. No coach can fix their problems. And when you look under the microscope at these teams, to understand why they never win or get their act together, there’s often a common answer: a billionaire, convinced of his own brilliance, swerving the team into a ditch over and over again.” (02/02/25)
“What are we to do with the fact that Christians, like myself, claim to believe in what pastor-theologian Francis Schaeffer once called ‘true truth’ and yet seem to be no less likely to fall into the traps of political tribal thinking and even conspiracy theories? On the one hand, many evangelicals like myself were raised to believe in ‘absolute truth’ and were warned against threats of creeping secular ‘relativism’ and ‘postmodernism.’ But on the other hand, Christians (of all political persuasions) regularly promote ideologically driven propaganda, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and untruths. In fact, according to one survey by the American Enterprise Institute, white evangelical Republicans are more likely than nonevangelical Republicans to believe a host of conspiracies, including something as farcical as the QAnon conspiracies.” (02/01/26)
“The so-called Justice Department issued another tranche of emails from the Jeffery Epstein trove known colloquially as ‘The Epstein Files.’ I imagine that, like previous emissions, Justice has redacted most of the references to the best friend of the infamous serial child-rapist and sex trafficker (who is our current and temporary president Don Trump, in case you didn’t know). And I imagine that, like before, a bit of the tip of Trump’s culpability iceberg will manage to break through to the surface, because when you’re dealing with an iceberg of such magnitude there’s only so much hiding you can do.” (02/01/26)
“The 20th century was an era of consolidation and centralisation. Power shifted away from localities, communities and families, moving ever higher up the political food chain. In the ultimate shift, power flowed towards transnational bureaucracies – most notably in Europe, in the form of the EU. Today, we may be seeing the emergence of a counter-trend: one that seeks to return control to local bodies, closer to where people actually live. The internet and social-media platforms, though destructive in many ways, have also empowered local communities, who now enjoy access to much the same information as those in Brussels or Washington, or in the corporate towers.” (01/31/26)
“On January 29, secret federal police (‘Homeland Security Investigations’) arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for covering, and activists Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy for planning and organizing, a protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota church. Arresting two journalists for covering an event most Americans correctly condemned — if you want to hold a protest during a religious service, hold it somewhere other than in the church — is a great way to create a ‘chilling effect’ on journalism … and distract the public’s attention from other events.” (01/31/26)
“The recent killing of Alex Pretti by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in Minneapolis has generated a new wave of fury on the part of Americans upset about the mounting abuses that federal law enforcement personnel are committing. The alarm is fully warranted. ICE, the FBI, and other government entities increasingly both look and behave like ruthless military combat units. Unfortunately, too many people who are alarmed about the recent incidents seem to believe that the problem originated with Donald Trump’s presidency and that removing him from that post would end the ominous threat to civil liberties. That belief is delusional.” (01/30/26)
“[Gregory] Bovino, a longtime law enforcement official with a penchant for theatrics, answers to a boss who shares that weakness: Kristi L. Noem, the secretary of homeland security, whose self-dramatizing gestures frequently backfire. This appeals to our reality-star-in-chief for obvious reasons, but at least Trump has some political cunning and a keen sense of what audiences like. Noem, by contrast, believed she could somehow appeal to the American public by reminiscing about shooting her own dog. Instead it may well have knocked her off Trump’s vice president shortlist. Putting theater kids in charge of a sensitive law enforcement operation was a mistake. That error was compounded by who was sent to carry out their orders.” (01/30/26)
“When I wrote regularly about police use-of-force issues for this newspaper, I encountered two types of officers: those admirable ones who de-escalated situations and those who escalated them. Thanks to a lack of hiring standards, purposeful federal policy, poor training and a lack of accountability or punishment for bad behavior, ICE is going all in on the second approach. This bodes ill for the safety and liberty of all Americans. The administration no doubt is doing this because it believes most Americans will instinctively back law and order. Notice all those blue-striped flags and bumper stickers.” (01/30/26)
“Donald Trump is seeking to execute the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the same way that his thugs gunned down Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good. The arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for doing their jobs as journalists and covering a public protest at a church in Minneapolis is a violent assault on freedom of the press in the United States of America, one of the most egregious we have ever seen from a U.S. government.” (01/30/26)
