Christmas Charities of Marie-Antoinette

While surfing the internet, it is all too common to see Marie-Antoinette characterized as someone who ignored the plight of the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her charities were quite extensive and are a matter of public record. She also took great care to instill a love of the needy in her children. At Christmastime, during a particularly brutal winter, the queen had them renounce their Christmas gifts in order to buy food and blankets for the destitute. As Maxime de La Rocheterie relates:

One year, on the approach of the 1st of January, she had the most beautiful playthings brought from Paris to Versailles; she showed them to her children, and when they had looked at them and admired them, said to them that they were without doubt very beautiful, but that it was still more beautiful to distribute alms; and the price of these presents was sent to the poor.
(The Life of Marie Antoinette by Maxime de La Rocheterie, 1893)

Another biographer Charles Duke Yonge discusses how the queen's generosity was well-known by her contemporaries, in spite of her efforts to be discreet, and the efforts of her enemies to portray her as a decadent spendthrift.

By the beginning of December the Seine was frozen over, and the whole adjacent country was buried in deep snow. Wolves from the neighboring forests, desperate with hunger, were said to have made their way into the suburbs, and to have attacked people in the streets. Food of every kind became scarce, and of the poorer classes many were believed to have died of actual starvation....Not only were Louis and Marie Antoinette conspicuous for the unstinting liberality with which they devoted their own funds to to supply of the necessities of the destitute, but the queen, in many cases of unusual or pressing suffering that were reported to her in Versailles and the neighboring villages, sent trustworthy persons to investigate them, and in numerous instances went herself to the cottages, making personal inquiries into the condition of the occupants, and showing not only a feeling heart, but a considerate and active kindness, which doubled the value of her benefactions by the gracious, thoughtful manner in which they were bestowed. She would willingly have done the good she did in secret, partly from her constant feeling that charity was not charity if it were boasted of, partly from a fear that those ready to misconstrue all her acts would find pretexts for evil and calumny even in her bounty. One of her good deeds struck Necker as of so remarkable a character that he pressed her to allow him to make it known. "Be sure, on the contrary," she replied, "that you never mention it. What good could it do? they would not believe you;[9]" but in this she was mistaken. Her charities were too widely spread to escape the knowledge even of those who did not profit by them; and they had their reward, though it was but a short-lived one. Though the majority of her acts of personal kindness were performed in Versailles rather than in Paris, the Parisians were as vehement in their gratitude as the Versaillese; and it found a somewhat fantastic vent in the erection of pyramids and obelisks of snow in different quarters of the city, all bearing inscriptions testifying the citizens' sense of her benevolence. One, which far exceeded all its fellows in size--the chief beauty of works of that sort--since it was fifteen feet high, and each of the four faces was twelve feet wide at the base, was decorated with a medallion of the royal pair, and bore a poetical inscription commemorating the cause of its erection:

"Reine, dont la beaute surpasse les appas
Pres d'un roi bienfaisant occupe ici la place.
Si ce monument frele est de neige et de glace,
Nos coeurs pour toi ne le sont pas.

De ce monument sans exemple,
Couple auguste, l'aspect bien doux pur votre coeur
Sans doute vous plaira plus qu'un palais, qu'un temple
Que vous eleverait un peuple adulateur.[10]"

(Life of Marie-Antoinette by Charles Duke Yonge, 1876)

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The FBI Turned Reporters Into Weapons Against Conservatives

 From Amuse on X:

The most troubling revelation to emerge from the decade of investigations and counter-investigations tied to Russiagate is not the now familiar list of intelligence failures. It is the discovery that the FBI quietly transformed segments of the American press into tools of disruption, a tactic with deep historical roots and a corrosive effect on democratic accountability. To understand the scale of this transformation we must trace the origins of disruption itself, how it was abandoned after the Church Committee, and how it resurfaced during the Obama years with a sophistication that rivaled foreign influence programs once aimed exclusively at adversarial regimes overseas. The logic behind disruption was simple, if an official believes a political movement or individual poses a threat, he may decide it is safer to shape or sabotage that target’s environment before any crime occurs. The Church Committee concluded that this logic leads inevitably to the abuse of surveillance powers, political labeling, and the trampling of civil liberties. The FBI agreed in public and shelved the program. It returned when the war on terror hardened the belief that prevention is superior to prosecution. Under Obama this mindset widened until it blurred the line between intelligence and politics, especially when the rise of Donald Trump was interpreted inside parts of the bureaucracy as a national security emergency.

During these same years the US government funded thousands of journalists overseas through USAID. The program supported 6,200 journalists, 707 media outlets, and 279 media NGOs across Europe, Asia, and South America. In Ukraine roughly 80% of reporters were paid by the US government. America defended these activities by arguing that funded journalists helped build civil society in fragile states. The problem is that the model rewarded journalists who produced stories that undermined regimes the US opposed and elevated those who favored American objectives. This pattern began to influence how intelligence bureaucracies viewed the American press itself. Rather than a civic institution, they saw an operational asset. The FBI learned from USAID’s experience overseas and began cultivating domestic reporters in ways that would have been unthinkable after the Church Committee. The goal was not bribery or control but something more subtle, shaping news flow, feeding narratives, recruiting independent reporters, and using their stories as both catalysts and justifications for investigative action. (Read more.)

 

From Mark Judge at Splice Today:

As I reported earlier this year in Chronicles and in Splice Today, David Enrich, an “investigative reporter” at The New York Times who helped cover the Brett Kavanaugh nomination in 2018, apologized to me for his inaccurate reporting. Friends have told me that collecting his scalp is a rare win—liberal reporters just don’t admit they are wrong—but I’m not stopping there. I expect an apology from Sally Quinn. I also expect one from Jennifer Rubin.

Rubin’s the deranged former writer at The Washington Post. She’s the author of the terrible book Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump. Like Enrich, Quinn, and most of the media—even some on the right—Rubin isn’t competent. In the fall of 2018 during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, hearings that I was dragged into when I was accused of witnessing Kavanaugh sexually assault a girl in 1982, leftist nuts like Rubin claimed that I wasn’t participating in the hearings because it’d be bad for Kavanaugh. Rubin was wrong. I didn’t say anything, it was a fraud. Rubin had a chance to report on this, but because she’s a dingbat, she didn’t.

On October 3, 2018, in the wake of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, TV blowhard Joe Scarborough revealed that he’d been to some social events in Washington. He heard people expressing doubt about the stories told by Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. Scarborough said: “Quite a few people that we talked to, and I think a lot of them were registered Democrats, raised questions about Dr. Ford’s story. Now that’s something in 24/7 news coverage, at least in mainstream media, you never hear anybody talk about. They won’t talk about it. They feel that if anybody sticks their neck out and says they disbelieve any part of her story or talk about how there are no corroborating witnesses, well, they’ll get absolutely slammed.” (Read more.)

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How Ken Burns Turned The American Revolution Into Woke Propaganda

 From Amuse on X:

Ken Burns’ new six part, twelve hour PBS series The American Revolution arrives with the familiar promises. It will be definitive. It will scrape away myth. It will finally tell “everyone’s” story. At the level of production values, it delivers exactly what viewers expect. The maps are elegant, the voice over is confident, the selection of anecdotes is often moving. Roughly 80% of the factual scaffolding is solid. Yet precisely because the scaffolding is solid, the remaining 20% matters. Burns uses the trust he earns with competent narrative history to smuggle in a present day ideological project, one that quietly teaches viewers to be embarrassed by the American founding and to transfer moral credit for its achievements away from the people who actually built it.

The core problem is not that Burns includes Native Americans, enslaved Africans, women, and dissenters in his story. Any honest account should. The problem is how he includes them, and how he frames everyone else. Again and again, the series moves from careful description into unargued assertion, from history into catechism. The pattern is simple. First, offer a conventional fact. Second, attach to it a tendentious gloss. Third, omit the evidence that would let a viewer test that gloss. A well produced documentary becomes a vehicle for a subtle but thorough rewriting of the American Revolution along contemporary ideological lines.

Consider the very first move the series makes. Before the colonies are even on screen, we are told that the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy had a thriving democracy and that later the Founders would create a similar union. The unmistakable implication is that we owe our constitutional order, in significant part, to the Haudenosaunee. This is presented in the magisterial tone that Burns has perfected over decades, as if it were a settled finding of the historical profession rather than a contested, fringe thesis. No primary source is quoted on screen, no debate acknowledged, no footnote even hinted at. The viewer simply absorbs that American self government is derivative of indigenous models.

This suggestion collides with the documentary record. If the Iroquois design played a real role in the creation of American federalism, one would expect it to surface in the immense paper trail of the founding. Yet the Journals of the Continental Congress, the records of the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, and the public essays of the period are silent on any Iroquois template. The authors of the Federalist Papers explain their influences in great detail. They cite Montesquieu, Polybius, the Dutch Republic, the Swiss cantons, and of course the English constitution. They do not cite the Great Law of Peace. Individual colonists knew the Iroquois well and sometimes admired their discipline, but admiration is not intellectual dependency.

Burns’ one concrete hook is a line from a 1751 letter, in which Benjamin Franklin notes the practical fact that six nations of what he calls “ignorant savages” had managed to form a union, and remarks that it would be strange if the colonies could not do the same. The letter is an admonition, not a citation. Franklin’s point is that if even people he regards as backward can coordinate, then Englishmen with parliaments and printing presses have no excuse for their disunity. To treat this as proof of direct borrowing from Iroquois constitutional theory is to misread a scolding remark as a philosophical footnote. Burns never explains this, because explanation would reveal how thin the evidence really is.

Equally misleading is the description of the Iroquois system as a “thriving democracy.” The confederacy had no written constitution, relied on hereditary clan structures, and vested decision making in a small council of sachems selected by clan mothers. Ordinary Iroquois did not cast votes in anything like our sense. It was an impressive indigenous polity, but calling it democratic in the modern sense stretches the term past usefulness. Here again, the series chooses the vocabulary of contemporary legitimacy rather than the vocabulary that best fits the 18th century reality.

Why does this matter? Because the opening move sets a tone. If the American founders merely borrowed their institutional imagination from the Iroquois, then the uniqueness of the American experiment is diminished, and so is the moral credit we extend to the founding generation. The point is not to honor the Iroquois as such, who deserve study on their own terms, but to recenter the story away from the people who actually wrote the Declaration, fought the war, and built the Constitution. It is a redistribution of prestige, and it is accomplished by selective quotation and silence rather than by argument.

The treatment of slavery reveals the same habits in a more serious register. When Burns turns to the Atlantic slave trade, he speaks in the passive voice. Tens of thousands of Africans, we are told, were captured and put in chains. The obvious question, captured by whom, is left unanswered. The effect is not accidental. A viewer who has not studied the trade will naturally imagine European raiding parties sweeping through African villages. Burns knows this. He also knows that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the first act of enslavement was carried out by Africans themselves. (Read more.)

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How Marie Antoinette Shaped Centuries of Fashion and Design

A young Marie-Antoinette in formal court dress, which she disliked.

 

Marie-Antoinette at 19 in a formal court gown for a state occasion, corseted with panniers (side hoops), jewels, rouge, and very elaborate hair. Some people think this gown was what she wore to her husband's coronation.

The Queen with her two oldest children in the less formal attire she preferred.

 

There are not many of Marie-Antoinette's gowns left because the really fine ones were made into Mass vestments and donated to the Church. The other gowns were given to her ladies, particularly the lady in charge of the Queen's clothes, who could then sell the gowns for extra income. From History:

“Court fashion was highly prescribed. Marie Antoinette wanted to break free of that and express herself,” says Jeffrey Mayer, professor of fashion history at Syracuse University. Her style signaled a departure from the Baroque era (17th–18th century), which was defined by lavish ornamentation. Instead, she embraced "an elegant, fresh, feminine style, made provocatively modern,” says Cox.

Inspired by Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the queen embraced all things pastoral. She regularly used printed cottons such as toile de Jouy, a fabric depicting monochromatic pastoral scenes. Her playful style drew from the Rococo movement, an 18th-century decorative trend that featured curved lines, pastels, wooden marquetry, ribbons and florals. Marie Antoinette's embrace of these motifs helped popularize the style and laid the groundwork for the “French country” aesthetic. At the Petit Trianon, the queen’s personal retreat in Versailles, she harmonized interior design with fashion. Motifs like her beloved cornflowers adorned everything from her custom tea set to her gowns. Although earlier royals used monograms, she emblazoned “M.A.” on everything from banisters to cosmetics, creating a lasting association between monograms and luxury, says Cox. 

 [...]

The palace of Versailles was open to the public (as long as you met the dress code), and visitors could tour the queen’s closet. They could also visit the Parisian shop of Rose Bertin, Antoinette’s stylist and unofficial “Minister of Fashion.” They could even commission a copy of her latest look…as long as they waited the mandated two weeks after the queen debuted it.

Bertin’s Paris shop, Le Grand Mogol (The Grand Mogul) “functioned as an early couture salon, showing new collections each season and maintaining a fully staffed workroom. This was the blueprint for the modern 'fashion house' or maison de couture,” says Mayer. (Read more.)

The young Queen with flowers replacing jewels.

At a costume ball, escorted by her brother-in-law, the Comte d'Artois (Charles X)

In simple attire, no jewels, hair unpowdered.

Marie-Antoinette in simple attire, hair unpowdered, no jewels. But the portrait was seen as being disrespectful to her queenly status.

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"Politically incorrect"

 From Tierney's Real News:

Many so-called ‘influencers’ and the fake news are finally reporting about the Somali community in Minnesota as if it’s ‘breaking news’ and all this just started yesterday.

NOPE, it started around 20 years ago and has gotten increasingly out of control every year! I was one of the FIRST to cover it in Minnesota in 2018 and I couldn’t get ANY of the local news outlets to cover my reporting. They were all afraid to be called racists.

You can thank President Trump for being “politically incorrect” enough to get the fake news to cover it now!

8 years ago, in 2018, I reported a conversation on Facebook that I had with two local Somali men in Minneapolis as well as with their “handlers” in the Minnesota Koch Libertarian party.

Here’s my personal experience talking to Somalis in Minnesota from 2018:

TIERNEY: “Yesterday, I had long social media conversations with two Somali Muslim gentlemen from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I asked them about their goals for improving Minnesota and how they feel about being an American. I also asked them about the million dollar upgrade at Cedar Riverside public housing that Mayor Jacob Frey promised its majority Somali residents this week. After I was called a racist, a fascist, a bigot, stupid and old, here’s what else they shared with me. Nearly verbatim.

SOMALI MEN: “Get with the program, miss. We are here to stay. We never left our Somali heritage or culture. That’s what America is missing. Please stop forcing us to your ways. You’re old and have very old ideas. Get with the program. I’m trying to have my son to be the first Muslim black governor of the state of Minnesota in next 20 years. He’s gonna run as a Democrat.

Oh, and on those upgrades at Cedar Riverside. They better give us those upgrades and changes if the Mayor wants to earn our votes. Or else we can always get another Mayor next time around. You see how being an American works? I told you lady please get with the program because Somalis are the latest addition to black folks.

Why should we assimilate? Do you know how stupid you sound? Guess what? We’re here to stay and will transform America for the better. Get that through your thick, ignorant skull. You need to see a doctor. It’s inevitable that Somalis will be taking over and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

Again, what’s wrong with Somalis taking over? It is inevitable! This land doesn’t belong to either of us. It is our time to populate it and rule it. Go back to Europe or wherever you’re from if you don’t like it.”

Then I was contacted by two Somali leaders working with a Libertarian organization (the Koch Libertarians were helping the Somali leaders behind the scenes - contrary to what they said publicly) who asked me to support security at Cedar Riverside because the Somali elders feared their own Somali youth! (Read more.)

 

From Overton News:

That’s when Secretary Kristi Noem dropped a bombshell that shook the Cabinet Room.

She revealed that President Trump asked her to investigate billions in taxpayer fraud in Tim Walz’s Minnesota, and what she uncovered is shocking.

Then she took aim at Walz directly and TORCHED him in front of everyone.

“You know, you told me to look into Minnesota and their fraud on visas and their programs.”

“50% of them are fraudulent, which means that that wacko Governor Walz either is an idiot or he did it on purpose…and I think he’s both, sir.”

“He brought people in there illegally that never should have been in this country. Said they were somebody that they’re not. They said they were married to somebody who was their brother or somebody else.”

“Fraudulent visa applications signed up for government programs took hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers.”

“And we’re going to remove them and we’re going to get our money back, and we’re going to this next year, make sure that we only put people in leadership positions in this country that love this country and have its back.”

Noem’s remarks landed like a political thunderclap. (Read more.)

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Anne Arundel’s Historic Belvoir Manor

There is some really intriguing archaeological work going on about slavery in Maryland. From WYPR:

An Anne Arundel County home’s ties to enslavement can be found beneath its soil and in the historic record.

But descendants of those enslaved believe their history is threatened.

When you enter the Belvoir Manor house from the basement and climb the stairs to the first floor you encounter history.

Julie Schablitsky, the chief archaeologist for the Maryland Department of Transportation, said the original stone house was built by Francis Scott Key’s grandparents in 1736. Then a brick addition was built in the 1780s by the owner and enslaver, Dr. Upton Scott.

“He was kind of banned from Annapolis a bit because people thought he was a British sympathizer,” Schablitsky said. “And so he was here living away from his Annapolis home and in doing that I think he was building, and then I also think that’s about the same time when a quarter for enslaved people was built too when they were firing all of these bricks up.”

Schablitsy found evidence of the building where enslaved people once lived while looking to no avail for something else at Belvoir. The French commander Comte de Rochambeau and his 4,500 troops camped there on their way to Yorktown in 1781.

“And instead of finding France we ended up finding Africa,” Schablitsky said.

A short walk from the home is a 32 by 32 foot site that was loaded with evidence and artifacts like stone walls and a brick floor, pieces of ceramic, and what Schablitsy calls the smoking pipe, a clay pipe with DNA that proved its user was a woman of African ancestry.

Wanda Watts has her fourth great grandmother’s manumission papers which prove she was enslaved at Belvoir.

“We know her husband, who was a free man, who was a glass maker in Annapolis and Baltimore, he purchased her and her daughter from here,” Watts said.

Pam and Larry Brogden, who are cousins, believe their family was at Belvoir too. There was a woman, Cinderella Brogden, who was enslaved there in the 19th century. Cinderella and her husband Abraham, a freedman, ran away to Baltimore but were captured.

“Abraham went to prison for three years,” Pam Brogden said. “They don’t know what happened to Cinderella.”

“Cinderella and Abraham, there’s a little gap between that and my great grandfather who came from slavery but we don’t know where,” said Larry Brogden.

On a recent tour of Belvoir the Brogdens, Watts and Schablitsky were taken aback by its condition.

“This is sad that we’re losing the main house,” Schablitsy said.

They had not been there for several years.

Watts said, “It’s really dilapidated and overgrown.”

Windows are broken. Fences are overrun by weeds. Watts said they have reached out to the owners.

“We’d like to see the manor preserved as well as the slave quarters and the area that we believe is the burial ground,” Watts said. “Preserved in some manner, not to disappear.”

Schablitsky said, “This is a very very significant site in Maryland and it is threatened. It is actually threatened. It’s not preserved. There’s nothing to keep it from being developed and lost forever.”

The property is owned by Luminis Health, which owns Anne Arundel Medical Center.

In a statement, Justin McLeod, Luminis’s media strategist, said Belvoir was donated to the company.

He said, “We appreciate its historical significance to its ancestors and our community. The Belvoir House remains in the same condition as when it was gifted to us, and we have engaged a professional property management company to maintain it.”

McLeod added there are no specific future plans for the property.

Gabby Reed, the director of communications for Anne Arundel County, said in a statement that the county has no plans to purchase the property.

On Nov. 22, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman gave a formal apology for the government’s role in the institution of slavery and its lasting impact on the Black community.

Pittman said, “As County Executive, and as a direct descendant of Anne Arundel County enslavers, we collectively offer our inadequate and long-delayed, but deeply felt apology, and pledge to never allow this history to be forgotten as we work together toward atonement.”

Schablitsky has written a book, Belvoir: An Archaeology of Maryland Slavery. She offers clues on how the enslaved lived their lives. (Read more.)

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It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

It's a Wonderful Life, originally a box office flop, has now been part of the American Christmas movie repertoire for decades. My former spouse owned a VHS copy when I first met him and after we were married it became our custom to watch it at least once during the Christmas season. We are always struck by the emphasis on the preciousness of a single human life. George Bailey, who thinks himself a failure, is granted the gift of seeing what the world would be like if he had never been born; it is not a pretty sight. One life touches so many others, even in a backwater town like Bedford Falls. Although most of the characters appear to be Protestant, there are many Catholic elements in the secular film. The power of intercessory prayer, the mediation of the angels and saints, are central themes. Yes, I know that departed souls never become "angels." Clarence calls himself one and is trying to "win his wings;" we always saw him as one of the Holy Souls on the brink of Paradise. He is sent to earth through the mediation of "Joseph" who I always assume is St. Joseph, patron of fathers. Frank Capra was an Italian Catholic, after all. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times:

In media interviews at the time, Capra did not portray it as a holiday film. In fact, he said he saw it as a cinematic remedy to combat what he feared was a growing trend toward atheism and to provide hope to the human spirit. In a moment of possible revisionism decades later, Capra said that he also realized that with the holiday season comes an inherent vulnerability in all humans, and that this uplifting tale might just ride on that sentiment.

The town of "Bedford Falls" where the film takes place could be any number of towns in Pennsylvania that we have known, and James Stewart, who played George Bailey, thought so, too, saying:

Two months had been spent creating the town of Bedford Falls, New York. For the winter scenes, the special effects department invented a new kind of realistic snow instead of using the traditional white cornflakes. As one of largest American movie sets ever made until then, Bedford Falls had 75 stores and buildings on four acres with a three block main street lined with 20 full grown oak trees.

As I walked down that shady street the morning we started work, it reminded me of my hometown, Indiana, Pennsylvania.

The very ordinariness of the town, all the mundane, everyday actions, the hidden tears and disappointments and heartbreaks, as well as the joys, and even the petals from a small girl's rose, are shown as being the elements which go into making a "wonderful life," rather than great deeds and worldly successes. George Bailey had to give up all his youthful dreams of setting the world on fire in order to save the family business. Because he is man who loves justice and hates iniquity, he must stand up to the local tyrant on behalf of the poor of the town. An unfortunate turn of events leaves him frustrated and despairing. He is about to take his own life but is stopped by an act of Divine intervention.

Donna Reed is radiant as Mary, George's wife and his saving grace, who asks her children to pray for their father. She is an ordinary girl who becomes an ordinary wife; in spite of hardships she never loses her dignity or her hope. As for the other characters, they are what make it a most enjoyable film; it is bursting with unsophisticated but colorful personalities, just as in certain small towns I have known. As James Stewart himself would later say:

Today I've heard the filmed called 'an American cultural phenomenon.' Well, maybe so, but it seems to me there is nothing phenomenal about the movie itself. It's simply about an ordinary man who discovers that living each ordinary day honorably, with faith in God and selfless concern for others, can make for a truly wonderful life.

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Eight Ways Trump’s New FBI Is Actually Working

 From Amuse on X:

The latest report from the National Alliance of Retired and Active Duty FBI Special Agents and Analysts has been widely described as damning. Headlines highlight words like “toxic,” “paralyzed,” and “in over his head.” Some commentators present the document as proof that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are failing. This is a mistake. A close reading of the Alliance’s own data, set against its earlier 2023 and 2024 reports, reveals something quite different. The new report, covering the first six months of Patel’s tenure, documents a Bureau in painful transition, not a Bureau in collapse. It records resistance, fear, and bruised feelings, which is exactly what one should expect when a stagnant institution is finally being forced to change. Crucially, it also records eight concrete areas of improvement that are large, measurable, and directly responsive to the Alliance’s earlier criticisms.

To see this, it helps to recall who is speaking. The Alliance is not a cheerleading squad for Trump’s second term. Its prior work was sharply critical of the pre 2025 FBI. In 2023 it warned of “alarming trends” in agent recruitment and selection, describing a decline in standards and a drift toward ideological hiring. In 2024 it documented how local law enforcement had lost trust in the Bureau, with working relationships frayed and federal help increasingly unwelcome. The new report carries forward that institutional memory. When such a group concedes that things are headed “in the right direction,” and when its own sources describe improvements in day to day operations, we should take that seriously. It is rational to weigh these developments more heavily than anonymous grumbling about tone, social media habits, or perceived slights.

The first and most striking improvement is operational effectiveness. Under the prior administration, agents describe a culture of “walking on eggshells.” Field squads had to persuade managers, US Attorneys, and Main Justice that politically sensitive investigations were worth the risk. The Alliance’s sources now say that this dynamic has been turned on its head. Counterterrorism and criminal squads report that prosecutors are backing their work rather than burying it. One veteran agent states flatly that “operational effectiveness has dramatically improved” and that there is “no more walking on eggshells” to convince leadership to act. Another reports that complex cases stalled under the old regime are now moving with full support from DOJ and local USAOs. This is not a minor tweak. It is a structural correction, from a system in which law enforcement actions were filtered through political anxiety to a system in which prosecutors and agents share the same mission and are willing to pursue it. (Read more.)

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The Russian Terrorist-Revolutionary Movement, 1866 – 1876

 From It Can Always Get Worse:

The Russian intelligentsia had emerged in the 1840s dedicated to the overthrow of the entire structure of Tsarism. The logic of cumulative radicalisation implanted by literary critic and novelist Nikolay Chernyshevsky had dictated a turn from literary agitation to active revolutionary methods, specifically terrorism, the objections of leading intelligént Alexander Herzen notwithstanding. The result was the first attempt to assassinate a Tsar in April 1866 by Dmitry Karakozov. This was the onset of a new phase of the Russian revolutionary movement.

Karakozov had not acted alone: he had been part of a secret revolutionary group, run by his cousin, Nikolai Ishutin, whose death sentence in 1866 was commuted by the Tsar (a detail those who present the Imperial Government as a proto-fascist regime might take note of). By some accounts, the group was founded in 1863, with an inner core called “Hell” and an outer circle called simply “The Organisation”. In truth, thanks partly to Ishutin’s wilful mystification, nobody really knows the structure of the Ishutin Society, even all this time later. It seems very unlikely, for instance, that the Society was one faction of a “European Revolutionary Committee” with branches in every State in Europe awaiting the order to murder their monarchs, as Ishutin told his cadres,1 but the Russian terrorist-revolutionaries would become highly integrated into a transnational infrastructure that extended as far west as Britain,2 and it is not impossible international links of some kind were forged in this period.

What is clear is what the group stood for. In ideology: socialism, violence as a virtue, and revolution to thwart industrialisation and constitutionalism in Russia, an idea that would gain increasing salience for the intelligentsia. And the conduct of its members accorded to the principles of Chernyshevsky’s “New Man”: self-sacrifice, ascetism to the point of renouncing family ties and not marrying, and the rejection of all conventional morals, expressed most clearly in its unscrupulous fund-raising methods (namely robbery; one member even planned to murder his father for the inheritance) and its use of deception (not least against its own members).3 The group, a component of the Russian Jacobin stream, was devoted to conspiracy in bringing off revolution and the rule of a despotic minority afterwards, with “Hell” at the centre of the new regime and the (largely non-existent) “Organisation” staffing the State. The economy would be nationalised, counter-revolutionaries exterminated to ensure equality, and officials in the new government who fell short would be removed by assassination.4 (Read more.)

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