Gabriona Currency: Arrested for allegedly operating a vehicle with no insurance, drive/allow motor vehicle with no registration, resisting public officer, fail to reduce speed, no liability insurance,…

Khosrow I's seige of Antioch ended with him moving the entire city. Click to read the full fact. The post WTF Fun Fact 13744 – The Capture of Antioch appeared first on WTF Fun Facts.

Not what they were known for. The post “Too wimpy”: the Aerosmith song that the band initially hated first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The recent Benedictine College commencement speech delivered by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, an outspoken Catholic, has stirred much controversy over the past week — in no small part due to consistent, willful misinterpretations and even misquotes of the football star’s rousing exhortation extolling the virtues of both motherhood and fatherhood. One particular (and unsurprising) target of feminists’ ire has been Butker’s devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). One such feminist was Sara Haines, a professional chatterbox on The View. Catholic truth…. is oppressive, in the same way that a railing on a high balcony is oppressive to those who wish to leap to their deaths. In her diatribe, Haines alleged that Butker is “not just a devout Catholic.” She continued, “This is someone who’s practicing something called the Traditional Latin Mass, which is divergent from the majority of Catholics. It’s compared to being cult-like and extremist, like some religions in the Middle East and Asia. So this is a very extreme religion.” (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Bogeyman: The Leftists’ Hatred of the Catholic Church) The first claim proffered by Haines, that the TLM is “divergent from the majority of Catholics,” is demonstrably weak, so she isn’t starting out well. What is today referred to often as the TLM (but also called the Tridentine Mass or the Extraordinary Form of the Mass) is simply the Mass that Catholics have been celebrating for over a century. The earliest references to this particular form of the Mass are found in the writings of the late sixth-century Pope St. Gregory the Great. Nearly a thousand years later at the Council of Trent, Pope St. Pius V formalized and standardized the Roman rite of the Mass. The name “Tridentine” is derived from the Council of Trent. This form of the Mass was the most commonly celebrated liturgy right up until the 1970s, when Pope St. Paul VI introduced the Novus Ordo Mass. In the 1960s, the English Catholic author Evelyn Waugh wrote in defense of the TLM: This was the Mass for whose restoration the Elizabethan martyrs had gone to the scaffold. Saint Augustine, St. Thomas à Becket, St. Thomas More, Challoner and Newman would have been perfectly at their ease among us; were, in fact, present there with us…. Their presence would not have been more palpable had we been making the responses aloud in the modern fashion. In short, over a thousand years’ worth of Catholics attended and celebrated the TLM. Martyrs died for that Mass. They are just as much a part of the Catholic Church (in Catholic theology, they are called the Church Triumphant) as those now sojourning across the face of the earth (called the Church Militant). Haines later insisted that only “a small, small percentage” of Catholics attend the TLM, but the ranks of Heaven insist otherwise. Haines then levels further allegations against Catholics devoted to the ancient form of the liturgy: cultishness and extremism. As far as extremism is concerned, the professional chatterbox is correct in declaring Catholicism “a very extreme religion.” The life and death of Christ Himself is evidence of this, compounded by the lives of countless saints and deaths of countless martyrs. Catholicism is not a hobby, it is not a field of study, it is an all-encompassing, all-consuming sacrifice. As the Catholic Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor put it, “What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.” As for the allegation of being “cult-like,” this also just may be true, but it would be no truer of Catholics or TLM attendees than of anyone else. In a way, everyone is in a cult and everyone offers worship. In the TLM, worship is offered to God; the faithful present join their minds and souls and bodies to the expiating sacrifice of Christ crucified and offer themselves entirely to God. Other cults worship sex, worship money, worship self. In some, sacrifice consists of morals or principles, family or friends, and sometimes even the lives of innocent children, offered on the altar of abortion. So everyone is in a cult, really, it just happens that Catholicism is the right cult. Not content with trying to demonize the age-old faith held by Butker and countless others, Haines concluded: What bothers me about that, as a Christian, is that when people abuse Christianity, they often not only cherry-pick from the Bible, they misinterpret and lie by omission, by taking out parts that would have explained something a little better. So what I can say to [Butker], as a Christian, is if you’re using this [presumably Christianity] to oppress a people or hold them down, you’re not walking with Jesus. If you are more obsessed with the religious rituals and practices than you are with the word of Jesus, then you’re not walking with Jesus. And if you’re using it for the judgement of others and as a weapon to beat people down, you’re also not walking with Jesus. So I would really encourage [Butker], really encourage him to find the best parts of faith and not diverge into extremist beliefs. What began with stoking fear against something ancient and not at all understood quickly devolved into pernicious accusations of lying, oppressing, obsessing, and weaponizing. Once again, such accusations are nothing new to Catholics. The Catholic Church boldly declares that she alone holds the fullness of Christian truth, and Haines simply serves to remind us that those who reject or depart from truth have little else to guide them. But what we recognize as an inerrant guide, truth, is resented as a restraint by those who reject it. This rejection and resentment of truth is why Catholics were persecuted by the Jews and Romans in the first centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection; it is why we were oppressed by medieval heretics and tortured by medieval Muslims; it is why English priests were hunted down and hanged under the reign of Elizabeth I; it is why French revolutionaries beheaded bishops; it is why communist agitators desecrated the graves of nuns and lined priests up before the firing squad; it is why Hitler and Stalin tossed Catholics into their camps and gulags; and it is why the secular culture of the 21st century treats Catholics with such rabid disdain. (READ MORE: Speak Boldly, Not Softly: Pope Francis and the Absence of Moral Clarity) Of course Haines will deride Catholic truth as “oppressive.” It is oppressive, in the same way that a railing on a high balcony is oppressive to those who wish to leap to their deaths. For his part, Butker seems to have found the “best parts of faith,” and just like those who have gone before him championing the best parts of faith, he is facing the wrath of a world that does not want to be burdened and oppressed by truth. The post The Pernicious Persecution of Traditional Catholics appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — When MGM Resorts International fell victim to a cyberattack in September 2023, Nevada’s largest employer responded the way you would want a big corporation to respond. MGM cooperated with the FBI and did not pay ransom to the hackers even as its systems — including slot machines and hotel room keys — went down for days. Alas, the feds did something you wouldn’t want your government to do. The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into MGM — the victim of the cyberattack — and demanded that MGM, which suffered an estimated $100 million loss from the hack, provide information about the breach. In a saner world, the regulatory agency’s move would be slammed as blaming the victim. In this world, MGM filed a lawsuit against the FTC in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop the investigation. The FTC can maintain that it is working to protect consumers, whose data was breached during the cyberattack. Except that it appears the agency is not investigating MGM competitors, such as Caesars Entertainment, which was hacked last summer but paid a ransom to prevent system outages and the release of company data. Then there’s the issue of FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, one of President Joe Biden’s more controversial hires. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist has called Khan “the avatar of Bidenomics.” In the Washington Examiner last year, Norquist accused Khan of believing “regulators should disregard consumer welfare and sue businesses large and small whenever they wish and for any reason.” It so happens that Khan was checking into an MGM property in Las Vegas when the cyberattack and resulting systems crash occurred. As Bloomberg reported, “When Khan and her staff got to the front of the line, an employee at the desk asked them to write down their credit card information on a piece of paper. As the leader of the federal agency that, among other things, ensures companies protect consumer data wrote down her details, Khan asked the worker: “How exactly was MGM managing the data security around this situation?” Later, the FTC put MGM under its microscope. It’s personal, the lawsuit argues, and Khan should recuse herself from the probe. As evidence that Khan is personally invested in the outcome, MGM’s lawyers note that Khan participated in the FTC’s decision to not disqualify her. That’s not what you do when you want the public to believe you have no interest in an investigation. MGM’s lawsuit against the FTC argues that MGM is not a “financial institution” and hence doesn’t fall under the FTC’s bailiwick. The lawsuit also contends the agency violated the company’s Fifth Amendment right to due process. I reached out to the FTC press office with questions. What prompted the investigation? Has the FTC ever investigated this type of business in the past? What is the status of the probe? The FTC responded, “We have no comment.” I reached out to Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen and Rep. Dina Titus for their take on this. Titus was the only Democrat among the three to respond by my deadline. Here is her statement: “Since the cyberattack on MGM last fall, I have been focused on ensuring that federal agencies and companies work together to protect consumer and employee data and prevent future cyberattacks.” She has been in contact with the FTC, Titus added, which she asked to keep her informed. I have a comment: MGM worked with the FBI and refused to give in to the extortionate practices of the dark web. But after irritating Khan, the FTC put MGM under investigation. It’s just wrong.   READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Marjorie Taylor Greene Went After GOP Speaker. Guess Who Lost? Federal Spending: Where Are D.C.’s Fiscal Watchdogs? Protest Much? An Academic Reckoning Is Overdue. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM   The post MGM Fights Dark Web … and Federal Bureaucracy appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Let’s cut to the chase: The DOJ/FBI response to the events of January 6, 2021, represents the single greatest mass injustice against American citizens since Japanese internment. As I suggest in my new book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, if the GOP does nut run towards this issue, they’re fools. To date, the GOP has been AWOL in the fight against this massive injustice. What makes the government’s perverse overreaction easy to substantiate is that the Biden Department of Justice is still bragging about the body count: more than 1,424 defendants have been charged, 1,334 with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building, 355 with obstructing an official proceeding, 510 with assault, 133 with using a deadly or dangerous weapon, 57 with conspiracy. More than 500 protestors have been incarcerated. Some are still in the DC gulag awaiting trial. (READ MORE from Jack Cashill: Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cops)  Given that Donald Trump netted only 5 percent of the DC vote in 2020, and that all change of venue requests were denied, the DOJ has a near perfect record in securing convictions in court or punitive plea deals. They brag about that too. They shouldn’t. The Scottsboro Boys had a better chance of finding an unbiased jury in Jim Crow Alabama than the J6ers do in today’s Washington DC. The Scottsboro Boys at least had the ACLU on their side. No such luck for the J6ers. On the first anniversary, all fifty-one ACLU chapters signed on to the kind of letter the ACLU chapter of ancient Rome might have written about the Vandals or the Visigoths.  The ACLU propagandists wrote: “On January 6 of last year, the residents of D.C. were traumatized as an insurrectionist mob roamed our streets, harassed our neighbors, and violently broke into the Capitol Building, killing at least five people — all in an attempt to overthrow the counting of American citizens’ votes.”  The only thing the ACLU got right in this letter was the date. Of course, the J6ers killed no one. All the killing was done by the police, all the lying done by the Left. With the ACLU cheering the oppressors and the GOP cowed into silence, Biden’s DOJ was free to inflict an unprecedented reign of terror on American citizens. The case of Lisa Eisenhart and her son Eric Munchel is a testament to that terror. The DOJ knew precisely what the pair did not do. The reason is simple. Munchel wore an iPhone on his tactical vest and recorded non-stop the pair’s patient 40-minute queue into the Capitol and their 11 minutes within.  Eisenhart wore a tactical vest as well. Wearing such vests was not illegal nor irrational. After a self-organized, self-declared “Million MAGA March” in Washington on November 14, 2020, leftist agitators openly attacked stragglers as they were walking to their hotels, knocking one man unconscious. Eisenhart and her son feared more of the same. Munchel started recording shortly before 2 p.m. The mood outside was largely festive, the air punctuated with frequent chants of “USA, USA.” As the pair entered the Capitol through an open door at 2:37 p.m., several police stood passively along the corridor. The court later acknowledged that Eisenhart “was not a member of any suspect group, did not do any advance planning, nor did she use force to enter the Capitol on January 6.” (READ MORE: After Three Days of Deliberation, Jan. 6 Jury Convicts Great-Grandmother Rebecca Lavrenz) With Eisenhart in the lead, the two mounted the stairway to the Rotunda. The protestors milling about inside seemed excited to be there and, like Eisenhart and Munchel, confused about what to do next. As they wandered, Eisenhart grabbed a pile of zip ties sitting exposed on the side of a corridor. She claims she did not want them falling into the wrong hands. The behavior of her and her son makes the claim credible. For a few minutes, the pair followed a group of rowdy young men whom Munchel repeatedly cautioned, “Don’t vandalize anything, we aren’t Antifa,” and then, more forcefully, “You break shit. I break you.” The viewer sees what Eisenhart saw, and that was a total absence of violence and vandalism. What the pair did not see or hear was the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt, which took place while they were in the vast building.  Looking for an exit, Eisenhart and her son found their way to the gallery of the Senate chamber. There was little police presence in the chamber and none in the gallery. A photographer made Munchel infamous when he took a picture of him holding the zip ties. This photo earned him the media designation “zip-tie guy” and went viral quickly. On the following morning, he was contacted by the London Times.  Unaware of any possible consequences, Eisenhart did the interview. “If they’re going to take every legitimate means from us, and we can’t even express ourselves on the internet, we won’t even be able to speak freely, what is America for?” said Lisa defiantly. “I’d rather die as a 57-year-old woman than live under oppression.” The DOJ took issue with this quote and included it in its charging document. Implied was that her stirring defense of free speech was seditious. Just two years earlier in that same Senate gallery, screaming women repeatedly interrupted an “official proceeding,” the Senate vote to confirm Bret Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. More than once, Vice President Pence had to stop the vote and call for order. Hundreds would be arrested during the DC protests, but no big deal. As NPR reported, “Most of those charged this week with disorderly conduct, crowding or obstructing paid fines of $35 or $50.” Eisenhart and Munchel did not get off so easy. On the morning of January 8, a swarm of FBI agents descended on Munchel’s home. His brother answered the door, only to be clapped in handcuffs while still in his underwear. At the time, the FBI did not know that Eisenhart was at the Capitol. It was she who would volunteer that information. Munchel was booked on January 9, Eisenhart on January 12, both at the federal courthouse in Nashville. “I was floored when I read my charges,” said Eisenhart. Having accused her of trying to overthrow the government, the feds deemed the 57-year-old nurse worthy of pre-trial detention. For the next eleven weeks, Lisa was shuttled among jails in Tennessee, Kentucky, and DC. Like other J6ers, Eisenhart was kept in maximum security. She spent those final six weeks in the notorious DC gulag — “hungry, tired, and lonely.” For clothing, the jailers gave her the equivalent of hospital scrubs. For warmth, they gave her a single thin blanket in a unit so cold in the morning she could see her breath. Before showers, they chained her hand and foot. Unable to sleep at night or eat food always served cold, Eisenhart lost 35 pounds and a goodly chunk of hair.  If Eisenhart had followed the case of attorney Urooj Rahman, she would have had some reason to be hopeful about her sentencing. During the George Floyd riots in May 2020, Rahman threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of an empty NYPD patrol car, setting it on fire. She was arrested and spent a few days in jail before being released to home confinement. In November 2022, Federal judge Brian Cogan sentenced Rahman to 15 months in prison. “You are a remarkable person who did a terrible thing on one night,” Cogan told her. Praising her lifetime of work as a social justice warrior, he explained that hers was one of the most difficult sentences he ever had to impose. Unfortunately for Eisenhart and Munchel, Rahman’s sentencing had no predictive value. At a stipulated bench trial in April 2023, both were convicted on the felony charges of conspiracy to commit obstruction and obstruction of an official proceeding. Munchel was sentenced to 57 months in prison, Eisenhart to 30 months. (READ MORE: George Floyd Revisited: Derek Chauvin Was Wrongfully Convicted) The New York Times summarized their offense as follows, “A Tennessee man and his mother were sentenced to prison on Friday for seeking to intimidate lawmakers by marching with matching tactical vests and carrying zip tie-style handcuffs.” That’s about it. Eisenhart got twice what Urooj Rahman got for firebombing a police car. Munchel got nearly twice that. Like hundreds of other January 6 defendants, Eisenhart and her son were charged with a felony for obstructing an official proceeding, a law spun out of the Enron debacle and creatively adapted to imprison J6ers. The Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of that adaptation before the end of June. In the interim, Eisenhart waits in Limbo. Munchel waits in prison. To date, the GOP has been AWOL in the fight against this massive injustice. The Supreme Court ruling will force them to the front lines. The only way they can win this battle is to take the offensive. They’ve got the ammunition. They just need the will to use it. Some of this material has been adapted from Jack Cashill’s new book, ASHLI: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, now available for purchase. The post Why Republicans Should Make January 6 Their Issue appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.