Aside from the death of Pope Francis (which I am covering as a news story rather than an obit), most of the news that has piled up this week involves either what wisely described yesterday as “dem outrage du jour” or criminals. The criminals’ ‘crazy eyes’ tell much of the story on their own, but I’ll use words as well…
Pope Francis dies
Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina in 1936, died on Easter Monday of a stroke that resulted in a coma and “irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse.” He had already been near death from pneumonia in February, but he made an appearance on Easter Sunday to bless the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. He was 88 and had been pope since 2013.
His funeral will be held on Saturday, and he will be buried in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, in a burial niche between the Pauline Chapel and the Sforza Chapel, by his own expressed request. This is actually outside the Vatican, and is a break with tradition, since most popes are buried in St. Peter’s Basilica. He had also specified that his “tomb should be in the ground; simple, without particular ornamentation, and bearing only the inscription: Franciscus.”
The conclave to select the next pope is expected to begin between May 5 and 10.
FSU Shooting
A campus shooting last Thursday at Florida State University’s student union was carried out by a student, Phoenix Ikner (age 20). Two men (neither of whom were students) were killed, and six other people were injured; all but one had been released from the hospital by Tuesday. Ikner refused to obey police commands and was shot, but not killed. Although his injuries were described as “not life-threatening,” he is expected to be hospitalized for “a significant amount of time.”
Although the shooter has remained silent as to a motive, college peers have described him as a “white supremacist,” having “very demeaning and belittling” attitudes toward minorities, and he had apparently been kicked out of a political discussion club. (It may be worth noting that one of the men he killed was Hispanic, while the other was likely Indian.) Reportedly he used a drawing of Hitler as a profile picture for one online account and “Schutzstaffel” as his alias for another. A classmate said that “he made derogatory comments about women and in particular women of color.” She also described him as “kind of weird,” “creepy,” “lonely,” and “extremely isolated.”
But his peers in the Leon County Sheriff’s Youth Advisory Council, of which he had long been a member, were surprised at the shooting, and one indicated that Ikner “wasn’t even political around us.” Ikner’s step-mother has been a sheriff’s deputy for 18 years. The handgun he used during the shooting was one of hers. (He initially used a shotgun, but switched to the handgun.)
Ikner was on prescription medication for “several health and mental issues, to include a growth hormone disorder and ADHD.” Investigators reported that family members said he had stopped taking some of those medicines, but it is not known yet whether that played a role in the shooting. Court documents from his biological parents’ custody battle indicate that he had “developmental delays” and “special needs” in childhood.
All reports paint his childhood as horribly tumultuous. His father, Christopher Ikner, and biological mother, Anne-Mari Eriksen, never married, but they began fighting for custody of him when he was two years old. When he was five, his father alleged that Eriksen “left him in ‘deplorable’ hygiene and failed to keep up with his speech therapy.” When he was ten, Eriksen kidnapped him—under color of taking him to Disney World—and took him to Norway (where she has dual citizenship). After Norwegian authorities returned him to his father two months later, Eriksen filed a suit for slander against the Ikner family, which was dismissed by a judge. She spent five months in jail for the kidnapping when she returned to the U.S.
When the boy was 13, a court finally gave sole custody to his father and ordered that Eriksen have no contact with him. The mental health counselor who had treated him after the kidnapping testified during that hearing that he “was displaying high anxiety at that time with panic reactions, difficulty sleeping, nightmares, difficulty with relationships, troubles in school, a lot of agitation, depressed mood,” and was afraid that his mother would “come and take him” again. When he was 15, he legally changed his name from Christian Gunnar Eriksen to Phoenix Ikner—the name Phoenix was intentionally chosen to reflect rising from the ashes of his childhood.
A Daily Mail interview with Eriksen’s mother gives an interesting picture. She alleged that “when we knew Christian he had no problems.” She also confessed to multiple attempts by her and her daughter to contact the boy, despite court orders to the contrary. She called the father and his wife “rotten bastard people” and accused them of teaching her grandson how to hunt, in addition to saying they were “bigoted.”
Kristi Noem’s purse stolen
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was at a Washington, D.C. restaurant on Sunday with her family (her children and grandchildren were visiting for the Easter weekend) when her purse was clandestinely stolen from under her chair…despite the fact that the Secret Service was supposed to be protecting her. The thief—a white male wearing dark clothing and a medical mask—appears to have “sat down at an empty table next to Noem with his back facing her and used his left foot to slide the bag away, the source said. He surveyed the restaurant before eventually picking up the bag, covering it with his jacket and leaving.”
Naturally, Leftists and the legacy media appear to be more focused on her supposed carelessness or the implied-to-be-illicit contents of the (Gucci) bag than on how this theft was carried out in front of Secret Service officers. The item of most interest is $3,000 in cash, which Noem indicated she had withdrawn to pay for various treats for her family over the weekend. Also inside were her DHS access badge and her passport, along with other items any woman might carry in her purse: her wallet (Louis Vuitton, how shameful!), her driver’s license, a checkbook, medication, a makeup bag, and her keys.
Anonymous sources claim more Hegseth chats
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is under assault again after anonymous sources—described by Hegseth as “disgruntled former employees”—went to the media with claims that Hegseth leaked information about airstrikes on Houthi positions in a Signal chat group that included his wife, brother, and personal attorney. Trump officials are dismissing the reports, and the sources have thus far declined to come forward. Do the media’s oft-asserted words, “without evidence,” apply here?
MN County Attorney says no charges for Tesla vandal
Dylan Bryan Adams (age 33) of Minneapolis vandalized six Teslas last month, including one with an anti-Trump sticker on it. Total damages caused amounted to over $20,000. The acts were caught on the vehicles’ security cameras, and Adams has admitted to the crime. But instead of charging him with a felony, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office is sending him to “diversion”—a program for “low-level offenders.”
This is not particularly surprising, considering that the Hennepin County Attorney is Mary Moriarty, a Soros-funded Leftist who has come under fire even from fellow Leftists for her lenient plea deals for murder suspects. Interestingly, she won her office in 2022 over a harder-on-crime black female Democrat. Even the Minneapolis Police Chief, Brian O’Hara, is upset about the lack of charges:
Our investigators are always frustrated when the cases they poured their hearts into are declined. In my experience, the victims in these cases often feel the same.
Adams works as a financial policy compliance lead for the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Based on the department’s wishy-washy statement, it seems unlikely that he will even lose his job:
We are reviewing the matter at this time. State employees are expected to follow our code of conduct and hold themselves to the highest ethical standards through their words and actions.
NM judge resigns after sheltering illegal
When Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano resigned last month, most assumed he was simply retiring, even though his term runs through the end of 2026. But it has recently been revealed that his resignation came shortly after the arrest of an illegal Venezuelan national and suspected Tren de Aragua member, Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, who was captured at the Cano residence by DHS agents. Ortega-Lopez had been invited to live in a “‘casita’ in the back of the residence” by Judge Cano’s wife, who had been hiring him to do various odd jobs.
In addition to photographs showing Ortega-Lopez spending time with the Cano family, there are also indicators that he was loaned firearms by Cano’s adult daughter, April Cano. He has been charged with illegally possessing a firearm, as well as being in the country illegally.
It is unclear at this point whether any members of the Cano family will be charged. But the New Mexico Supreme Court acted this week, on the basis of a complaint from the Judicial Standards Commission, to ban Joel Cano from ever again holding any type of judicial office in the state.
Wife of Bob Menendez also convicted
Nadine Arslanian Menendez (age 58) was convicted this week of a similar set of charges as her husband, former Senator Bob Menendez (age 71), including bribery, obstruction of justice, honest services wire fraud, extortion under color of official right, and conspiracy connected with those crimes, as well as conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent. Although she is of Armenian descent, she was raised in Lebanon, which apparently assisted her in their efforts to aid the governments of Egypt and Qatar. Apparently she had begun participating in the conspiracy while she and her husband were dating; they were married in 2020.
The deeper one digs, the uglier the whole Menendez situation becomes. Nadine Arslanian Menendez was involved in an accident in 2018, in which she hit and killed a pedestrian. Although she was never charged, due to the fact the pedestrian was jaywalking, security footage shows that she remained inside her car after hitting him, rather than attempting to render aid. Police dash cam footage suggests that influence peddling among present and former police officers may have been involved after the accident.
Her damaged car was replaced with a new Mercedes-Benz convertible by two of the couple’s co-conspirators in exchange for Sen. Menendez using his influence to stop a criminal investigation into one of their employees. Jose Uribe, one of those co-conspirators, eventually turned state’s evidence. Wael Hana and Fred Daibes—other co-conspirators—were convicted along with Sen. Menendez last summer.
Former Senator Menendez (D-NJ) appears to have been involved in various corrupt dealings throughout his long political career, but he was never charged with anything until 2015, and the NJ jury was deadlocked on those charges. He was finally convicted on the current set of charges in July 2024, despite his efforts to throw his wife under the bus. He did not resign from his Senate seat until August. He is supposed to report to prison for a term of 11 years in June.
It’s worth noting that ex-Sen. Menendez’s son, Rob Jr., is a (D) Congressman for NJ’s 8th district, and his daughter, Alicia, is a co-host on MSNBC.
Lori Daybell convicted on conspiracy charges
What appears to be the final legal chapter in a horrifying case is now beginning to close, as Lori Daybell was convicted on Tuesday of conspiracy to murder her ex-husband, Charles Vallow. Vallow was shot inside his own home by Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, in July 2019, allegedly in self-defense. Cox died in December 2019, supposedly from natural causes. Daybell will also shortly be tried for masterminding another conspiracy to attempt (unsuccessfully) to kill her niece’s ex-husband, Brandon Boudreaux.
Text messages between Daybell and her brother show her making religious references that suggest she was urging him to kill Vallow. Text messages between Daybell and her present husband, after learning that she was no longer the beneficiary of Vallow’s $1 million life insurance policy, noted that the beneficiary had been changed “before we got rid of him.” Adam Cox, another brother of Daybell, testified for the prosecution that he had “no doubt” that his siblings had plotted to kill Vallow.
Daybell was convicted in 2023 of first degree murder in the deaths of her children, Joshua “J.J.” Vallow (then age 7) and Tylee Ryan (then age 16) in September 2019. Her (fifth) husband, Chad Daybell, was convicted in 2024 of the children’s deaths, along with the death of his then-wife, Tammy Daybell (then age 49) in October 2019. Evidence suggests that it was either Alex Cox or Chad Daybell who actually killed the children, although it was Chad Daybell who buried them on his property. Their bodies were not discovered until June 2020. Chad Daybell was sentenced to the death penalty, while Lori Daybell got life in prison without parole.
Chad and Lori Daybell were married in November 2019 (two weeks after Tammy’s death), but they had known each other since October 2018 and she had admired his writings since 2015. Although both were originally LDS, both had drifted very, very far from those beliefs, developing radical views surrounding ‘doomsday’—which Chad said would occur in 2020—and their own supposedly divine roles in it. (Lori was initially deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.) The couple had developed a concept in which some people (particularly those they wanted to get rid of) were possessed by evil spirits and had therefore become ‘zombies,’ a condition from which they could only be freed by killing them. This appears to have given them the rationale for committing the murders while feeling no guilt for doing so.
Florida man seized with guns in NJ train station
In a case that seems to have far more questions than answers, a man from Florida—Jeffrey O. Kennerk (age 34)—who was arrested in early January in Trenton, NJ was finally indicted last week on charges of “aggravated assault, possession of a weapon for unlawful purpose and causing or risking widespread injury or damage.”
Kennerk left one of his two bags unattended when he went to an Amtrak ticket window in Penn Station in Newark and—whether because transit police had already approached it as being suspicious or for unknown reasons of his own—did not return for it. Inside, police found a Glock, an AK-47, and a significant amount of ammunition. Security footage allowed them to determine that Kennerk had boarded a train heading for Virginia.
Law enforcement caught up with him at the train’s next stop, in Trenton. There it was discovered that his other bag contained an AR-15, more handguns, and more ammunition. Also inside the bag was “what appeared to be a booby-trapped rifle wrapped in handkerchiefs that discharged without anyone pulling the trigger.”
What remains altogether unclear is why a man from Ft. Lauderdale was in New Jersey, which has notoriously strict firearms laws. Why was he going to Virginia with this arsenal? Why has it taken over three months for him to be indicted? A TwiX user purports to have tracked down Kennerk’s social media accounts, which paint a picture of a man living in filth but possessing and possibly dealing in very high-end merchandise, including drugs.
Yet another Tesla firebombing
A University of Massachusetts-Boston student who was home on spring break has been arrested on federal charges for the firebombing of a Tesla dealership in Kansas City in March. Owen McIntire (age 19) was connected via video surveillance footage and DNA to the arson attack, which damaged two Cybertrucks and two charging stations.
Although no media outlets have identified McIntire as transgender, he appears to have worn women’s clothing during the firebombing. Various photos show McIntire with long hair and gender-ambiguous clothing. A selfie from Facebook appears to have had a feminizing filter applied to it.
Dashcam/bodycam shows truth about “Michigan community leader”
The narrative: a black “community leader” who had turned his life around and was helping others do the same was unjustly gunned down by State Police.
The reality: Deshawn Leeth (age 30)—after having “racked up 13 felony home invasion charges and 10 felony convictions” and ending up in prison for 7 years at age 18—had, in fact, become a community outreach worker and founded UnderDawg Nation (which claims to be a non-profit youth assistance organization, but is not registered as a non-profit).
But on April 4, 2025, he somehow crashed a car—a “single-car rollover”—on the Ohio Turnpike near the Pennsylvania state line.
An officer who stopped to offer assistance was attacked by Leeth, who kept yelling “in the name of Jesus” and threatening the officer. Then, bizarrely, Leeth fled on foot down the highway, only to turn around, run back, and attack the officer again. The officer attempted to tase Leeth at this point, but it proved ineffective. The restraint exercised by this officer (seen in dashcam/bodycam footage sourced here) is amazing to behold:
After punching the officer multiple times and knocking him down, Leeth stole his police cruiser. A chase into Pennsylvania ensued for about 11 minutes, with Leeth reportedly saying, as per the dashcam, “Hey, car, I rebuke anything that gets behind me, I rebuke anything that’s in front of me.” After crashing the police cruiser, Leeth remained inside, continuing to talk to himself. When the pursing officers attempted to pull him from the crash, he began fighting with them. One of the officers he was fighting shot and killed him.
Rubio kills program that was believed to be already dead
When funding for the State Department’s censorship program—the Global Engagement Center—was shut off at the end of 2024, many assumed the program was dead. Instead, the Biden Administration renamed it as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office. The GEC is said to have cost taxpayers over $50 million per year.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that the rebranded program is ending:
With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration. Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.
Media panics as U.S. measles cases rise to 800
Although most of the measles cases in the 2025 outbreak are among the unvaccinated in Gaines County, on the far western edge of Texas, the legacy media is having a meltdown. They are playing up hospitalizations, despite that number being less than one in ten. And Leftists have been blaming the outbreak on HHS Secretary Kennedy, despite the fact that he had not yet even been confirmed when the outbreak began. Also despite the fact that recent vaccine skepticism has been driven by distrust in health officials resulting from Leftist policies surrounding Covid.
Nor, of course, does the legacy media mention that measles is skyrocketing in Europe, with 127,350 cases in 2024—double the number in 2023. It’s also worth noting that as recently as 1991, U.S. cases exceeded 9,000 (there were over 27,000 in 1990). The 1989 outbreak was the third major one since the vaccine was licensed in 1963, with two others occurring in the 1970s. (My own childhood case of measles was connected to the 1971 outbreak, despite having been vaccinated twice.)
Judge awards ND $28 million for costs of pipeline protest
U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor ruled yesterday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was liable for nearly $28 million for damage caused by the Dakota Access oil pipeline protests. He wrote:
United States had a mandatory procedure, it did not follow that procedure, and harm occurred to the state of North Dakota. The law allows reimbursement for this harm. More than that, the rule of law requires this Court to hold the United States liable to remind it of its role in the larger picture of ensuring peace, not chaos.
The protest in 2016 and 2017 centered around the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s objection to the placement of the pipeline where a spill might contaminate their water supply. But the protest camps grew to such an extent that it ultimately took the government four full days to haul away the millions of pounds of trash that the ‘environmentalist’ protesters left behind.
The state’s attorney had argued:
Although the unlawful protest was burgeoning before everyone’s eyes and the damages and dangers were so apparent, the federal government refused to offer assistance and enforce the legal obligations on the people who were encamped.
The government’s attorneys asserted that the COE had “limited options at their disposal.”
It should also be noted that Greenpeace has been found liable by a jury for $660 million for “defamation and other claims” connected to the protest.
Thoughts?
"It’s worth noting that ex-Sen. Menendez’s son, Rob Jr., is a (D) Congressman for NJ’s 8th district, and his daughter, Alicia, is a co-host on MSNBC"
Shouldn't it be perfectly clear by now that the entire Democrat Party is nothing more than a criminal enterprise? A web of NGOs, unions, contractors, law firms and other entities designed to siphon off taxpayer funds in grift that would make a Tammany Hall operative blush.
Thank you Celia
Today is Yom Hashoah- Holocaust Memorial Day
The jihadi Islamic palestianism culture are the wearers of the Nazi mantle in today’s world
They tell us exactly what they intend to do to the rest of us
They gunned down a group of Hindu tourists in Kashmir two days ago - after pulling down the pants of the men to “ make sure” they were Hindus
They are coming for all of us- Jews, Christian’s, Hindus
We must figure out how to defeat them and their hateful nihilistic ideology.
Allowing them to use our tolerance to destroy us is the epitome of insanity