"Generalissima"--Queen Henrietta Maria and the English Civil War

From author Stephanie Mann:

This is the second volume in a trilogy of historical novels about Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I; mother of Kings Charles II and James II and therefore grandmother of the Old Pretender and great-grandmother of the Young Pretender and the Cardinal Pretender.

In this book the author traces the lives of the Queen and her family from 1640 to 1644, from the Royal palaces of Saint James, Wimbledon, Whitehall, Hampton Court, to The Hague in the Netherlands, the battlefields of the English Civil War, through betrayals--especially by Lucy Fairfax, one of her ladies-in-waiting--and attacks on Henriette (as she is called throughout the book) because she is a Catholic; storms and battles at sea, the death of her mother, pregnancies, separations, her efforts and love for her husband and her disappointments that he has not always fulfilled the promises of their marriage contract, times in York, Oxford, Cornwall, and France!

Throughout all these conflicts, dangers, and adventures, Vidal's narration, use of dialogue, and description are vivid, personal, and often poignant. (Read more.)

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The Insurrection Act, Voter Fraud and Venezuela

 

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The Unknown Crusaders of World War II

 From Catholicism:

For those who have read my recent series for Catholicism.org, The Intelligent American’s Guide to the French Right, the varied nature of the French Right in particular complicated the great question of the day. One thing that is important to remember is just how hated Communism was by the French Right in particular and the European Right in general: they had witnessed since 1918 the murder of the Russian Imperial Family; the horrors of the Russian Civil War; Communist atrocities in Hungary, Slovakia, and Bavaria during short-lived Soviet regimes in those countries; the Communist-inspired war on the Church in Mexico in the 1920s; the atrocities committed by the Communists in Spain during the 1936-39 Civil War there; and the collaboration with the invading Germans by the Communists subsequent to the 1939 Hitler- Stalin pact. It was only with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 that Communists throughout the world suddenly remembered patriotism — and worked to take control of the Resistance Movements — and tried, with some success, to take them over.

As we chronicled in the earlier series, most of the French and European Right regarded the National Socialists as a movement of the left — “Brown-Shirted Bolsheviks.” But defeat at their hands forced the Men of the Right into all sorts of practical considerations. Who were the greater threat to what was left of old Christendom: the Soviets, or the National Socialists? This question divided the European and French Right, and its effect can be seen in the life of Fr. Georges Grasset, whom Gary describes in the following pages as “…the priest I most would have wanted as my spiritual director during my lifetime as a Catholic.” Fr. Grasset’s participation came about due to his devout allegiance to Count Pierre Louis de La Ney du Vair, a deeply anti-Nazi organiser of youth for Vichy France.

In the event, of course, given the vast numbers of Russians and other ex-Soviet citizens who joined the German ranks, had Hitler been sincere about a Paneuropean Crusade against Bolshevism, he would no doubt have won the war. But it was more important to him and the National Socialist leadership to follow out their racial doctrines on the Eastern Front than to defeat the enemy. Thus, to many Russians and Central Europeans, they made Stalin look like a preferable alternative.

In the long run, of course, those of the European Right who chose resistance against the Axis turned out no better than those who chose collaboration. In the new post-1945 Europe created by the Soviet-American Dyarchy, there would be no room for the kind of countries or the kind of Continent envisioned by such people before the War. It was for precisely that kind of Christendom forbidden by the victors of 1945 — which doubtless would equally have been forbidden had the Axis triumphed — that the staff and contributors of Triumph, of whom Gary was a prominent member, struggled. This present time of fog and vagueness could use a little more of Gary’s famous clarity. (Read more.)

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Church Windows Honoring Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette

"Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven!"

Today, the feast of Saint Agnes, is the anniversary of the murder of Louis XVI. Depictions in stained glass of the martyrdoms of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at the Church of La Boissière-de-Montaigu in the Vendée. We know that in reality the Queen wore white, and had no woman with her. Via Le Boudoir de Marie-Antoinette.

Marie-Antoinette ascends the scaffold

And below is portrayed the Royal Family in the Temple prison in Paris. Of course, the crown and scepter were not there, but they are symbols of the royal duties and responsibilities that Louis never forgot.

Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Marie-Antoinette, Madame Royale, and Madame Elisabeth

I think the above picture is supposed to represent the Vow of Louis XVI to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart which he actually made at the Tuileries palace while under house arrest in the spring of 1791. He may have renewed the Vow while imprisoned at the Temple in 1792, as the picture appears to indicate. Below is a representation of Louis XVI making the Vow in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence of Marie-Antoinette and their surviving children, assisted by His Majesty's spiritual director Père Hébert of the Eudist congregation.

Louis XVI consecrating France to the Sacré-Coeur, stained glass of the Church of Saint-Véran in Saint-Vran, in Brittany.

Here is a novena prayer in honor of Louis XVI (I have polished up the translation):

O my Jesus, who said, "Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you!" Behold, I knock, I seek, I ask for the grace of [insert your prayer intention], in communion and by the merits of the Angelic King, our King Martyr, our King of France, our King Louis humble and hidden as King of the New Israel of God on earth, sacrificed and present in the Wound of the Divine Heart. Sacred heart of Jesus, I trust and hope in you.

 

Oh my Jesus, who said, "Truly I say to you, whatever you ask of my Father in my name, he will give you!" Here only to you Father, in your name I ask for this grace of[insert your prayer intention], in communion and by the merits of the Angelic King, our King Martyr, our King of France, our King Louis humble and hidden as King of the New Israel of God on earth, sacrificed and present in the Wound of the Divine Heart. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust and hope in you.

 

O my Jesus, who said, “Truly I tell you, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Behold, confident in the infallibility of your words, I ask you for this grace of [insert your prayer intention], in communion and by the merits of the Angelic King, our King Martyr, our King of France, our King Louis humble and hidden as King of the New Israel of God on earth, sacrificed and present in the Wound of the Divine Heart. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust and hope in you.

 

O Heavenly King Consoling, Spirit of Truth, Thou who is omnipresent, and fills all, Treasure of good and Giver of Life: Come and dwell in us, cleanse us of all filthiness and save our souls, Thou who are Goodness. AMEN.

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America’s Woke Revolution

 From Chronicles:

s Burns’s new and arguably most ambitious documentary, which continues a 44-year career of sweeping, colorfully narrated, and lavishly illustrated treatments of vital swaths of American history and culture, something that can unite Americans? Many felt that way about his magnum opus, The Civil War (1990), which, long before the South and its heroes were condemned to racialized damnatio memoriae, humanized both Yankees and Confederates. It was a painstakingly rendered history that offered a moving and informed account of our country’s most challenging episode in a format that commanded near-universal appeal and won nearly unanimous praise.

Alas, in the intervening years, Burns, much like the formerly government-funded broadcaster that has reliably featured his work ever since, has succumbed to what Elon Musk has called “the woke mind virus.” Evidence of Burns’s politicization appeared as early as his lengthy 1994 series Baseball, which might have convinced some viewers that our erstwhile national sport was merely an open-air canvas for racial conflict and labor activism.

Some of Burns’s subsequent efforts leaned less on ideology—it is hard to ruin Jazz (2001) and National Parks (2009)—but the Age of Trump has clearly had a bad effect on the celebrated filmmaker. His jarring The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022), which recounts Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s failure to confront Nazi mass murder during World War II, invidiously ends with a film montage including President Trump calling for border security and, inexplicably, footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstration at the Capitol. 

In a CNN interview around the time of that film’s release, moreover, Burns deplored Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s chartered flight of a few dozen illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—a self-proclaimed “sanctuary island.” He called it a worrisome exercise taken straight from what he called the “authoritarian playbook” and raised concerns about the end of democracy. In a curiously mixed metaphor for such an accomplished maker of historical nonfiction films, he later described other DeSantis policies as part of “a Soviet system or the way that Nazis would build a Potemkin village.” (Read more.)

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Bathing and Hygiene in the Middle Ages

 From Medieval History:

In wealthy households, bathing was carefully staged rather than casually undertaken. Servants prepared wooden tubs filled with heated water, hung tapestries for warmth and privacy, and supplied scented sponges, oils, and cloths. Bathing here was as much ceremony as hygiene. Monasteries also maintained bath facilities, though monks generally bathed infrequently, often only on feast days or for medical reasons.

For most people, bathing was simpler and more practical. Peasants washed in rivers during the warmer months or used basins at home when water could be spared. Heated baths were rare luxuries. Only nobles and prosperous townspeople enjoyed them regularly. Even so, kings were not exempt from the need to wash. King John travelled with his own bathtub, while Edward III installed hot and cold running water at Westminster Palace.

Across the Alps, bathing culture was even more deeply rooted. In Italy, long-standing spa traditions endured. A fourteenth-century physician, Pietro de Tussignano, laid down strict rules for visitors to an Alpine bath: bathers were to arrive fasting and shaved, swim daily, and abstain from sex in order to purge bodily impurities. Soldiers on campaign sometimes carried portable tubs, while retired clergy in France occasionally installed private baths of their own. The familiar image of a universally filthy Middle Ages becomes difficult to sustain when set beside such scenes of steaming water and scented herbs. (Read more.)

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The “Trial” and Martyrdom of Louis XVI: An American Memorial

 

From The New Digest:

That the trial of Louis was indeed a sham — a proceeding for which “one can find neither pretext nor means in any existing law,” as Louis put it in his testament — is not seriously contestable. David P. Jordan’s book on the trial, probably the best treatment available in English, details the copious violations of law by the revolutionary republican assembly, the National Convention. Those violations occurred at several levels. Even putting aside the ancien regime view that the King could not be tried and judged by any human power and is accountable only to God, the trial violated both the post-revolutionary Constitution of 1791 and the new Criminal Code enacted in 1791. The Constitution had made “the person of the King … sacred and inviolable” and specified that he could only be prosecuted as a citizen for acts posterior to his abdication, whereas Louis was charged with treason for acts taken when he was still the constitutional monarch. To be sure, the Constitution of 1791 had been de facto abrogated by the fall of the constitutional monarchy and proclamation of a republic in August-September of 1792. Yet the Constitution had not yet been replaced, and there was a serious legal argument that it still governed Louis’ acts at issue, which had occurred while it was in effect — an argument made by a number of the Girondin deputies at the trial.

As to the Criminal Code, it was still in effect at the time of the trial and was violated in countless ways. It required, for example, that the jury of accusation or grand jury should be different than the trial jury, and composed of different members, whereas the National Convention took on both functions, appointing itself judge and jury as well as lawmaker. Louis was also denied access to evidence before the trial (evidence whose provenance was not proven in valid form anyway); given no notice of the charges against him before he was interrogated; and given a hopelessly inadequate span of time to prepare such defense as he could. The Jacobins were in a sense more candid, or at least more logically consistent in their lawlessness, than the Girondins. They opposed holding any trial in the first place, arguing, as Louis Antoine de Saint-Just put it, that Louis was an enemy alien outside the revolutionary body politic, with whom the revolutionary state was at war, and who should be executed without any process at all, as one would shoot an enemy on the battlefield.

Saint-Just’s (in)famous speech is translated in a book by Michael Walzer that is quite prominent in the English-speaking world, and that gives a number of the leading speeches of both regicide and non-regicide deputies. Walzer’s agenda, however, is quite explicitly to justify Louis’ trial and execution as a revolutionary necessity, the only way to condemn and kill the King’s body politic along with his natural body. This mars the book, making it an unreliable guide to the events and legal arguments. Walzer, for instance, omits on some trifling pretext the speech for the defense (!), crafted by the great ancien regime lawyer Malesherbes (although delivered at the trial by another of Louis’ attorneys, de Sèze). A contemporaneous translation of the speech was provided in 1793 by a London publisher and is available here. Walzer, it may be added, preserves a discreet, ambiguous and doubtless tactical silence about whether revolutionary justice also required the later deaths of Marie-Antoinette by guillotine, and of the King’s eight year old son Louis-Charles by criminal neglect and starvation while in prison. On Walzer’s logic, it seems that they too had to die so that the Revolution might live, as Robespierre had said of the King; in a monarchy, the Queen and the King’s heir are also part of the King’s body politic, of one flesh with the crown. (Read more.)

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Maryland Needs a Real Watchdog: A Statewide Inspector General With Subpoena Power

 From Direct Line News:

Marylanders are tired of being told, year after year, that “the system is working” while audit after audit shows the system is bleeding money. At the opening of the 2026 legislative session, we’re again confronted with a simple question: who, exactly, is empowered to protect taxpayers when state agencies fail? Right now, Maryland’s answer is fragmented oversight, scattered audits, and a whole lot of finger-pointing after the damage is done.

That’s why Maryland needs an independent statewide Inspector General (IG), not another “task force,” not a glossy performance dashboard, and not a politically appointed office that answers to the same people it’s supposed to police. We need a true watchdog with one essential tool: subpoena power.

Let’s be blunt. The difference between an Inspector General and a press release is authority. An IG can compel the production of documents and testimony, put witnesses under oath, and refer evidence to prosecutors. Audits can spotlight problems; they usually can’t force accountability. That’s the heart of the debate unfolding in Annapolis right now: Maryland has identified enormous financial exposure across agencies, but its far less clear what consequences follow or whether anyone is ever held responsible. (Read more.)

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200 Years of 'Le Figaro'

 From The European Conservative:

In its early days, Le Figaro was classically liberal; royalist without being ultra. It was annoyed by the pettiness of Charles X as much as by the mediocrity of Louis-Philippe, the monarch of the barricades. After various editorial vicissitudes, it was vigorously taken over in 1854 by a certain Hippolyte de Villemessant. People spoke of a second birth for the newspaper. At the time, Le Figaro stood out above all as a literary and artistic newspaper. Its reviews were read and appreciated, setting the standard in the small Parisian world of arts and letters—which, at that time, meant the whole of Europe. Music was not excluded from its field of expertise. Villemessant was a close friend of Offenbach, whose work he fervently supported. In Paris in 1867, Le Figaro helped to promote the phenomenon that was Johann Strauss, thus paving the way for the international triumph of The Blue Danube. In a unique gesture in the history of the press, Strauss composed a Figaro Polka, a piece dedicated to the newspaper, as a token of his gratitude.

In the same year, Le Figaro became a political outlet, thanks to the liberalisation of Napoleon III’s empire. At the time of the Commune, the newspaper watched with horror as revolutionary madness raged in Paris. Under the Third Republic, it triumphed with the restoration of order. Its social conservatism and attachment to freedoms made it a model of balance in this troubled period when a leaderless France still did not know where its destiny lay. When Captain Dreyfus was unjustly convicted in a climate of antisemitism fuelled by rivalry with Germany, Le Figaro chose the side of justice. Émile Zola published several articles in Le Figaro defending the innocent officer before his indictment, “J’accuse,” published in a rival newspaper, L’Aurore, truly launched the ‘Dreyfus Affair.’

The newspaper weathered the First World War and the crisis of the 1930s by continuing to publish the most prestigious writers of the time, including Marcel Proust and Jean Giraudoux among its columnists.

When the international situation became tense, Le Figaro chose the side of the Francoists against the Republicans in Spain. At the time of Munich, like many other French people, its journalists were ‘unenthusiastic Munichites’ while Nazism aroused increasing mistrust and revulsion.

The Second World War marked a turning point in the history of the French press. The vast majority of French newspapers, which had continued to be published under the Occupation and the Vichy regime, disappeared or were bought out and renamed. Le Figaro, which first withdrew to the free zone before suspending publication in 1942, was an exception. A Gaullist publication, it rose from the ashes with the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, benefiting from its literary aura and the support of writers ranging from Louis Aragon to François Mauriac. The flow of publication, which had been interrupted for a time, resumed. (Read more.)

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Cinema and Edward Hopper

 

From The Collector:

Few artists enjoy such enduring popularity and prestige as Edward Hopper. The famous American artist had a unique relationship with cinema. Hopper was a known lover of the movies. At the same time, his works have had a lasting and far-reaching impact on the world of film for decades. Let’s explore the connection between movies and Edward Hopper’s timeless paintings.

The pensive movie theater usherette of New York Movie, or the ominous mundanity of Gas, are as likely to be seen hanging on museum walls as they are on dime store walls. They are also frequently referenced in movies, cartoons, TV shows, and advertisements.

Edward Hopper is considered the ultimate painter of 20th-century solitude. He was actively painting from the beginning of the 19th century until 1965. His name is often followed by words like loneliness, isolation, alienation, and timelessness.

There is an undeniable feeling of melancholy in Hopper’s paintings. In a departure from most of his realist contemporaries, Hopper depicted urban life in a subtly stylized manner, brimming with psychological layers. His artworks stand somewhere among realism, impressionism, expressionism, and surrealism. (Read more.)

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Congress Should Enact Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan Now

 From Amuse on X:

The American healthcare system presents a familiar puzzle. It absorbs nearly $5T each year, yet ordinary patients rarely know what care will cost, why prices differ so wildly, or who is accountable when costs rise without corresponding improvements in outcomes. Conservatives have long diagnosed the problem correctly. It is not that Americans spend too little on healthcare. It is that spending is insulated from market discipline, obscured by intermediaries, and structured to protect incumbents rather than patients. President Donald J Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan is best understood as a systematic attempt to reverse those distortions by restoring agency to patients and accountability to providers, insurers, and drug manufacturers.

 Begin with prescription drugs. Americans pay more for the same medications than patients in other developed countries. This is not an accident of chemistry or logistics. It is the predictable result of a pricing system in which the largest buyer in the world, the US government, refuses to negotiate as aggressively as smaller foreign systems and allows manufacturers to segment markets to maximize revenue. Trump’s Most-Favored-Nation framework cuts directly through this structure. The principle is simple. Americans should not subsidize lower prices abroad. If a drug company is willing to sell a medication for a given price in Germany or Japan, it can sell it for that price here.

 Critics often respond that such an approach risks innovation. But this objection confuses incentives. Innovation depends on expected returns across global markets, not on extracting monopoly rents from one population while offering discounts to another. By anchoring US prices to verified international benchmarks, the Great Healthcare Plan forces manufacturers to compete on efficiency and value rather than political leverage. The experience of Trump’s first term insulin reforms and the Administration’s recent voluntary negotiations confirms the point. Prices fell. Access expanded. Innovation did not collapse. (Read more.)

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Opera in the Modern World

 From the New York Post:

Jonas Kaufmann will no longer sing at London’s Royal Opera House — because, of all things, the pay is too low. “I don’t know how you do it,” the tenor recently told BBC Radio. In the same interview, he revealed that he won’t bother singing at the Metropolitan Opera anymore, either, though that’s about ideological differences. For a singer like Kaufmann — arguably the biggest star in all of opera — to swear off two of the world’s top-five opera houses is not merely eyebrow raising. It is cataclysmic.

“I feel so sorry for the next generation,” he lamented. Nearly every singer who has ever pursued an operatic career has pondered whether anything the business has to offer is worth the hassle: the heartache of losing engagements or rejection, the stress over one’s vocal health, the missed holidays, the travel, all of it. In the past, a comforting thought would have been that, if only one can perhaps achieve the top levels of the business, all will be well. And now, the very top of the business is telling us that all is certainly not well. (Read more.)

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Sir Galahad: The Greatest of the Round Table

  

From The Medieval Scholar:

Galahad’s role in the Arthurian legend, particularly his quest for the Holy Grail, is a later addition to the mythos. His character first emerges in the 13th century within the “Lancelot-Grail” (Vulgate) Cycle, a series of Arthurian romances that expanded the legend and positioned Galahad as central to the Grail quest. The name Galahad is thought to derive from the Welsh Gwalchaved, meaning “Falcon of Summer,” linking him to Celtic origins and mythological traditions.

The original portrayal of Galahad may have been influenced by the mystical ideals of the Cistercian Order and figures like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose vision of ascetic, spiritualized knighthood echoed through Galahad’s character. This is reflected in Galahad’s celibate and otherworldly nature, his white shield bearing a vermilion cross, and his embodiment of Catholic warrior asceticism, mirroring the ideals outlined in St. Bernard’s Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militiae for the Knights Templar. (Read more.)

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Minnesota Is Rejecting Federal Sovereignty, The Insurrection Act Exists for This Moment

 From Alexander Muse at Amuse on X:

The Insurrection Act is an old statute with a modern purpose. It is a legal bridge between two truths that sit uneasily together. One truth is that the US is a union of states with real sovereignty in matters of policing and public order. The other truth is that the US is one nation with one set of federal laws, one Constitution, and one federal government charged with executing its laws everywhere. When those truths collide, a republic needs a rule for who must yield, and under what conditions. The Insurrection Act supplies that rule.

 To see why, start with the early Republic. The Constitution authorizes Congress to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. It also makes the President Commander in Chief once those forces are in federal service. Congress implemented this constitutional design through the Militia Acts of 1792 and 1795. Those statutes gave the President the power to summon state militias to confront insurrections and invasions, but they did so with caution and with checks. One of those checks was the requirement, in some situations, of a judicial certification that ordinary law enforcement was overwhelmed. Even at the founding, Americans understood the tradeoff. A government that cannot enforce its laws will not stay a government for long. A government that casually deploys soldiers against its citizens risks becoming something else.

George Washington’s response to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 put that tradeoff into practice. The federal government acted. It did so through legal channels, and it did so to enforce federal law. The core idea was not punishment. It was the preservation of a basic fact about political order, that laws will be executed even when a region decides it would rather not.

By 1807, Thomas Jefferson faced problems that the militia framework did not fully cover. The Republic confronted frontier instability, cross border threats, and a particularly ominous episode, the Burr conspiracy, a suspected plot that combined private armed ambition with the prospect of rebellion in the west. Jefferson concluded that the government might need to respond quickly, and that relying only on state militias might be too slow, too uneven, or too dependent on local will. He therefore sought statutory authorization to use regular federal forces at home. Congress responded with the law signed March 3, 1807, an act authorizing the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States in cases of insurrections. (Read more.)

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Veni, Vidi, Dixi

 From Spencer Klavan at The Claremont Review of Books:

Gallic War is a collection of field reports on these achievements, written with the general voting public in mind. It would have had the effect of transferring to the folks back home some of the enthusiasm that Caesar inspired in his soldiers. When he delegated command to senior officers, he fleshed out his own narrative with their notes—the last book, the eighth, was written entirely by one of Caesar’s high-ranking subordinates, Aulus Hirtius, to clear up some final details after Caesar’s own assassination. The whole thing is vivid with color commentary from the barracks: jokes the men told, slang terms they came up with. Soldiers in every time and place have a habit of christening their weaponry: British privates called their muskets “Brown Besses.” The pilots over Hiroshima and Nagasaki learned from their superiors to call their bombs “Fat Man” and “Little Boy.” In much the same way, Caesar’s men dug spike-filled booby traps outside their siegeworks and called them “lilies,” because they looked like deadly flowers. It’s often said that Gallic War is written in the third person, since Caesar so often refers to himself as “he,” not “I”: “at first Caesar decided to refrain from battle.” But the true grammar of the book is in the first-person plural: “our army,” “our province,” “our men stood armed and ready to attack.” The main character, the hero of the story, is us: the Roman army, of which Caesar presents himself (impersonally, but not at all impartially) as the consummate representative. It is a master class in building esprit de corps.

The Roman public had never seen anything like it. They voted to hold festival after festival of thanksgiving in Caesar’s honor. These were the achievements that made him a hero in the eyes of his men and a threat, in the eyes of his enemies, to the already wobbly balance of power in the republic. Plutarch writes of Caesar that he “wrapped his army around him like a cloak” to make himself unstoppable: that was the kind of unwavering allegiance he won from his soldiers in Gaul. The popular support inspired by that campaign made it possible for him, just a few years later in 49, to step across the Rubicon a legion at his back. In the wake of that cataclysmic event, Shakespeare imagined the assassin Cassius asking his co-conspirator Brutus, “Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed / That he is grown so great?” The answer is in Gallic War. It is an astonishing book about the making of a world-historic man. (Read more.)

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Two Murdered Kings in January

Louis and Antoinette

 Great article but I wish to clarify a couple things. Marie-Antoinette was not a descendant of Charles I but of his sister, Elizabeth Stuart. Also, Charles I made many promises to the Pope to help Catholics before his marriage to Henrietta Maria and then later during the War, when he implored the Vatican for aid. Because Charles ruled through Parliament there was no way he could ever return the Church lands confiscated by Henry VIII because Parliament would not have allowed it. Even Mary I did not try. For those interested in Charles I's internal struggle, my novels on Henrietta Maria explore the matter. From Charles Coulombe at One Peter 5:

Nevertheless, Requiem Masses for both Louis and his Queen on their anniversaries became a regular part of the French calendar and remain so until to-day. There are two claimants to the French Throne: the Legitimist Louis, Duke of Anjou, and the Orleanist Jean, Count of Paris. Without delving into which has the better claim to the throne of St. Louis, between them, their followers across France sponsor a great many Requiems for their common collateral ancestor, on and about January 21. Of course, despite the disparity between the sponsors of said Masses, there is a good bit of overlap in the attendees. This year the Orleanist Action Francaise will sponsor a torchlight procession tomorrow in Louis’ memory from the Places des Pyramides near the site of his burial to the Place de la Concorde, where he was guillotined. This Sunday will see a Legitimist-sponsored Mass at the Chapelle Expiatoire, starting at 10 AM. The Royal Parish Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois in Paris shall see a Mass under Orleanist auspices. So it shall be throughout most of the country, and in a few places elsewhere (New York used to see one annually at the church of St. Anne; but that ceased when the Archdiocese closed the church and sold the property in accordance with what has become local custom).

Three documents are usually read at these Masses – be they Tridentine or Novus Ordo. The first is the King’s Will. It is a remarkable document, which is redolent of the murdered sovereign’s deep Catholicism:

I pardon with all my heart those who made themselves my enemies, without my have given them any cause, and I pray God to pardon them, as well as those who, through false or misunderstood zeal, did me much harm.

This is a typical expression in the touching document. (Read more.)

 

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What Are We Prepared To Do?

 From AND Magazine:

The Untouchables is a highly fictionalized film about Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables” and their part in bringing down Al Capone. During the film there is a memorable scene in which a tough old Irish beat cop, Sean Connery, schools Ness, played by Kevin Costner, on what it will take to bring down Capone. During that scene, Connery famously asks Ness, “What are you prepared to do?” to bring down Capone and then adds, “If he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”

It’s wonderful if historically inaccurate theater. It’s also great advice in dealing with the ayatollahs.

The men who run Iran do not care about public opinion. They do not care about world opinion. They have no interest in dialogue or negotiation other than as a delaying tactic. They are on the right side of history. The Mahdi is coming. The end is near, and on the other side of Armageddon, they will rule.

Unless we are willing to submit to their control, we have two options. We can do our best to isolate revolutionary Iran, limit the damage it can do, and hope it ultimately collapses of its own weight. Or, we can actively work to crush the regime and give Iran back to the Iranian people.

Which brings us back to Connery and his question. “What are you prepared to do?” If regime change is the goal, then how are we going to achieve it? (Read more.)

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How 'Wicked' Is Deeply Tied Into Feminism’s Occult Origin Story

 And it's not even part of the original Baum stories, which are weird enough. From The Federalist:

Gage worked alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the early days, when they founded the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA), and she coauthored with them the six-volume work The History of Women’s Suffrage (1881–1922). In 1893, Gage wrote her own book, Woman, Church, and State: The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex. She worked ardently to publicly discredit Christianity, engaging in public confrontation for her radical view, such as her 1886 publicity stunt at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. “She showed up,” as the Smithsonian reports, “on a cattle barge with a megaphone, shouting that it was ‘a gigantic lie, a travesty and a mockery’ to portray liberty as a woman when actual American women had so few rights.”

Gage eventually broke ranks with Stanton and Anthony, who joined forces with the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, a move that Gage found disagreeable because of the group’s openly Christian principles. Stanton and Anthony were, however, more pragmatic, believing that aligning themselves with the much larger temperance movement was good for their effort.

Despite the break, Gage’s influence did not end there. Like most of her first-wave comrades, Gage was involved in various occult activities, including theosophy, seances, manifesting, and a firm belief in both good and bad witchcraft. She spent years researching witchcraft, even moving to Salem, Massachusetts, to investigate the Salem Witch Trials. “Those condemned as sorcerers and witches, as ‘heretics,’ were in reality the most advanced thinkers of the christian [sic] ages,” Gage wrote. (Read more.)

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When the Gods War for the Soul

 

Review of the series Rise of the Merlin. From Bree A. Dail:

I appreciate ambitious book-to-screen adaptations—The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, The Witcher, Game of Thrones—even while criticizing their excesses and missteps. When they work, they remind us that epic storytelling can still be done with seriousness, scale, and intention.

Setting aside the issue of gratuitous sex—which always unnecessarily lowers the artistic value of these epics—most original series today (along with many book-to-film or television adaptations) operate at an astonishingly low bar. They suffer from a lack of creative writing talent, a disregard for beauty and mystery, and an indifference to language itself.

From The Rings of Power, to Bridgerton, to the seemingly endless Star Wars spinoffs, and the glut of witch and vampire series, the pattern is the same: dreadful dialogue, thin character development, hollow spectacle, and stories that mistake volume for meaning. Enormous budgets cannot compensate for the absence of imagination, reverence, or craft.

Which is why it is worth noting—explicitly—the astonishing impact Spencer Klavan had in developing, and then teaching, the Atlantean language for this series. That kind of philological seriousness is vanishingly rare in modern television. J. R. R. Tolkien would have been impressed. It is also worth noting Jeremy Boreing not only produced, but directed and wrote these episodes. This has been a major undertaking, which must be lauded. (Read more.)

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The Left Has Chosen Street Violence - A Lot More People Are Going To Die

 From AND Magazine:

Renee Good was not observing ICE officers. She was attempting to prevent them from doing their jobs, and, ultimately, she was attempting to kill one of them.

Good’s death is a tragedy. It is not, however, the end of anything. It is only the beginning. The people and organizations training groups across the country to fight ICE have no intention of backing down. They are only getting started.

“Like with Zionists, communities have a moral obligation to ensure that ICE agents feel no comfort in any space, social, political, or otherwise. They should be run out of every place they attempt to find community in, made pariahs by merit of their fascist views and participation in a fascist paramilitary agency. These officers may be our neighbors, but they are not part of our communities. They forfeit such a claim when they signed up for an agency tasked with destroying communities across the nation and doling out violence against those the state deems ‘undesirable.’”

Commie Corner

During rallies in New York City following the Good shooting, protesters marched and chanted “Abolish ICE!”, “Kill Them All, Burn Them All and “Kristi Noem will hang — Save a life, kill an ICE” as they marched through Manhattan. (Read more.)

 

From Daniel McCarthy at Chronicles:

According to ICE spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, the Goods were “stalking” ICE. Leftist organizations train activists like the Goods to harass and interfere with law enforcement in a variety of ways, including by using vehicles to block their movements.

This “activism” is not only in support of illegal activity, it creates dangerous situations for law-enforcement officers, bystanders, and the activists themselves, as Renee Good sadly discovered. The organizations that train activists to thwart law-enforcement know the risks—in fact, they’re part of the plan.

If ICE agents get killed as a result of interference, that’s a win in the eyes of those who brand law enforcement as “fascists.” And if bystanders or anti-ICE activists get killed as a result of the activists’ meddling, that’s a win, too, since it serves to embarrass law enforcement and hurt the agency politically.

Groups that teach people like the Goods how to endanger themselves and others know they can count on sympathetic coverage from much of the media whenever something violent occurs—it’s a publicity windfall. So why would they stop promoting these tactics, even if they get people killed?

If one Renee Good can close schools and conjure up protests against hotels said to be housing ICE agents in Minneapolis, imagine what three or four more martyrs will accomplish. The only obstacle is the victims have to be sympathetic: On Jan. 8, an ICE agent in Portland, Oregon, shot two people in a car that tried to run him over—yet inconveniently for anti-ICE activists, the injured duo were illegal immigrants with ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.

Portland Police Chief Bob Day nonetheless broke down crying at a press conference describing the incident, bemoaning “historic injustice of victim blaming.” (Read more.)

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Lost Lands of Arda

 From The Saxon Cross:

My first entry in this series detailed how Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, when correctly scaled, perfectly matches the landscape of Ice-Age Europe. Tolkien’s placement of mythic locations such as Mirkwood also matches their attested locations in ancient Europe.

My theory is that J.R.R. Tolkien meant for his Middle-Earth legendarium to be a literal mythology of ancient Europe. While the professor made vague allusions to his mythology being a telling of our ancient past, I believe he took this more seriously than he ever publicly admitted. I do not believe he meant it only as a frame story.

[...]

Keep in mind that when I talk about my map projection of Middle-Earth onto Europe, I am consistently referring to the map projection from the first article, not picking and choosing different scales to make things work.

Today, I want to expand by going into deeper detail on more locations within Tolkien’s mythology and their real-world counterparts.

I also want to examine some of the issues with the map from my first post. I will examine the issue of the Black Sea, and also explain why I believe the south of Middle-Earth looks so unlike the real Mediterranean. (Read more.)

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Jacques-Louis David's Sketchbook

 From ArtNet:

The French media outlet Radio France launched its investigation into the sketchbook after being contacted by a descendant of the original owner. The broadcaster claims that it was able to pull together enough evidence to back the descendant’s claim in “just a few weeks.” The discovery sheds a light on the slow progress of ongoing provenance research into objects that were acquired by French museums after 1933.

France’s ministry of culture issued a response to the evidence gathered by Radio France stating that neither the ministry nor the Palace of Versailles had not been aware that the item was stolen during the war. They promised to “continue their research on this notebook and have discussions with the descendants of the owners.”

The Palace of Versailles declined to comment.

The sketchbook dates from 1790 and is filled with rare drawings and notes, including preparatory materials for one of David’s most famous works, The Tennis Court Oath (1790). The painting, which was never finished, records a foundational event in the French Revolution. It belongs to the Palace of Versailles but is currently on display in the Louvre’s landmark exhibition “Jacques-Louis David,” until January 26. The sketchbook is not featured in the exhibition.

Once stolen by the Nazis, the sketchbook was sent to Germany. It was sold by Munich’s Karl and Faber gallery in 1943. It came into the hands of the German dealer and art historian Otto Wertheimer, who had himself fled Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 1930s. He settled in Paris in 1944 and became known for supplying French museums with important masterpieces at a time when an artwork’s provenance was rarely questioned. He sold the David sketchbook to the Palace of Versailles in 1951. (Read more.)

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Turnabout in Minnesota

 From Tierney's Real News:

What happened next? 6 people in the US Attorney’s office in Minneapolis resigned because they said they don’t want to investigate Becca. Why not? Will it tie that office, or the Minnesota authorities, back to the money laundering and fraud and violence? Of course it will! That tells you everything you need to know.

EVERY DEMOCRAT in Minneapolis is likely corrupt including the politicians, the US Attorneys, the MPD and the FBI!

PM: “Six federal prosecutors in Minneapolis resigned on Tuesday rather than conduct an investigation into Becca Good.”

On January 13, 2026, six career federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis resigned in protest.

Joe Thompson served as the acting U.S. Attorney of Minnesota and he led the office until Bondi replaced him with Daniel Rosen as U.S. attorney in Minneapolis in October.

Joseph H. Thompson, who was involved in Renee & Becca’s investigation for the US attorney’s office, was one of those who resigned in protest. (Read more.)

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The Man, the Myth, the Legend

 From The Claremont Review of Books:

David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler’s The Rise of Andrew Jackson: Myth, Manipulation, and the Making of Modern Politics, is not another biography; instead, it’s an examination of the myths and legends surrounding Jackson’s election. How did a man with “a nasty temper, a violent streak, and a past littered with appalling lapses in judgement,” get elected president? Centering on Jackson’s handlers, spin doctors, and apologists, the Heidlers’ study answers this question through its chief characters—John Coffee, Sam Houston, Henry Lee IV, William Berkeley Lewis, John Overton, and Martin Van Buren.

The Heidlers divide Jackson’s supporters into “Jacksonians” and “Jacksonites.” Jacksonian true believers saw Jackson as the voice of the people and stuck with him despite political setbacks. The Jacksonites, in contrast, were more tactical, utilitarian, and opportunistic.  Skeptical of Jackson’s abilities and character, they embraced him when it suited them, employed his rhetoric when necessary, and rode his coattails to secure their own ambitions. In short, “Jacksonites believed in winning elections.”

The Heidlers open with the War of 1812’s Creek campaign, one of the lowest points in Jackson’s career. He had been shunned by President Monroe’s administration, undersupplied, and threatened by deserting troops. Following his victory at Horseshoe Bend, however, Jackson, the “man the government had abandoned in Natchez had in the span of a single year become the country’s darling.” Jackson’s victory during the Battle of New Orleans sealed his celebrity. According to the Heidlers, the victory was so stunning that some even attributed it to divine intervention. Jackson’s newfound fame prompted a spread of hagiographic and celebratory misinformation. John Overton had been considering Jackson for a political future since 1814, but, after the Battle of New Orleans, talk of the presidency began in earnest.

The bulk of The Rise of Andrew Jackson deals with the elections of 1824 and 1828 and the political machine that propelled Jackson into the White House. The heart of this machine were the men behind the pro-Jackson newspaper, The Tennessee Junto, whose job was part damage control, part mythmaking. In newspapers, biographies, at rallies, and in private correspondence, the Jacksonian and Jacksonites lauded Jackson’s generalship, casting him as a new George Washington, and turned contemporary events—the dying out of the founding generation, the collapse of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties, the Panic of 1819, presidential hopeful William H. Crawford’s stroke, the expansion of voting rights for white men without property, and John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay’s so-called “corrupt bargain” that denied Jackson the presidency in 1824—in Jackson’s favor. Properly leveraged by Jackson’s sophisticated political machine, these events propelled Jackson to the presidency in 1828 despite his personal flaws. (Read more.)

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Most Expensive Elizabethan Portrait Ever

The Duke of Norfolk who plotted to marry Mary Queen of Scots. From ArtNet:

A 16th century painting of Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk, has become the most expensive Elizabethan portrait to date after selling for £3.2 million ($4.2 million) at Sotheby’s Old Masters sale in London on December 4.

It is, in a sense, heading home, with the art advisory Clore Wyndham purchasing the Hans Eworth painting on behalf of the Duke of Norfolk and the trustees of Arundel Castle, where in due course it will hang. “It fills a gap in the collection and is a highly significant Tudor portrait,” Henry Wyndham, the advisory’s co-founder, said over email. “Eworth, after Hans Holbein, was the most important artist working in England at the time.”

This is not hyperbole, Eworth seemingly filled the void left by the death of Holbein in 1543, leaving Antwerp for London in the mid-1540s and setting up a studio in Southwark. There, he would paint England’s aristocracy including the Howard family, which proved a particularly appreciative patron—Eworth painted Norfolk’s first and second wives, as well as his grandmother. Eworth’s identity, however, was long obscured. It wasn’t until 1913, when his name was discovered in the inventory of a great 16th century collector that the artist formerly known as Monogrammist HE was identified. To date, a little more than 50 paintings have been attributed to Eworth. (Read more.)

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Ending the Charade of Wasteful International Organizations

From The State Department:

It is no longer acceptable to invest the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars in institutions that cannot demonstrate results, accountability or respect for our national interests. It is an abdication of America’s global leadership to continue funding and promoting organizations that obstruct solutions to the problems facing the world today such as affordable energy, economic growth, and national sovereignty. Continued U.S. participation in them only legitimizes their existence and a model that has failed billions around the world.

From the UN Population Fund’s long history of ethical violations including funding coerced abortions; to UN Women’s failure to define what a woman even is; to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change squandering millions of dollars on funding for climate-alarmist, anti-energy investment in the West Bank and Gaza; to the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent espousing openly racist policies in support of global reparations—these organizations boast a consistent record of dysfunction if not outright malice. The American people, our partners and the billions around the world who look to the United States for leadership deserve better. Our continued participation in organizations that do not reflect our values or serve our interests would be an abandonment of our national duty.

The organizations that we have chosen to withdraw from have been selected after a lengthy review of their purpose, actions, efficiency, effectiveness, necessity, and most importantly, their ability to help us achieve U.S. national interests. Those we are withdrawing from are by no means the only offenders. Our review of United States participation in international organizations remains ongoing.

This does not mean America is turning its back on the world. We are simply rejecting an outdated model of multilateralism- one that treats the American taxpayer as the world’s underwriter for a sprawling architecture of global governance. (Read more.)

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When People Don't Understand Consequences...

 From Jan Greenhawk at The Easton Gazette:

There is a larger problem here.

The bigger problem is that we, as Americans, as parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, etc. have not shown our children and grandchildren that every decision one makes in life creates a consequence. Whether that consequence is good or bad, big or small, depends on the nature of the decision, the timing, and whether a decision is rational or not. Sometimes, consequences rely on good or bad luck.

Watch parents and small children in supermarkets and you will see how children are taught (or not) about consequences. When I was a child, if I screamed, cried, and threw a tantrum for my mom to buy me a toy on the aisle, I was shown that I not only wouldn't get that toy, but that I would suffer a consequence which could include immediate removal from the store. When I got home, the consequence would be banishment to my room and a stern lecture and punishment from both Mom and Dad. I learned not to embarrass my parents in public or to try to get my way with a tantrum.

Yet, I watch parent after parent in the same situation mollifying and giving into a screaming child and rewarding him/her for bad behavior.

When I taught in the public school system, consequences for students who didn't study, didn't do homework or hand in assignments on time were clear. You don't do your assignments; you get a zero on those assignments. You don't study for a test, and you can't answer questions correctly, you get a failing grade and that grade impacts your class grade negatively. Hand in late work; there's a penalty. Sometimes students overcame the deficit and passed. Sometimes they didn't and failed. It was a hard lesson for some. But it was a lesson in life and consequences.

When I moved into the adult world of working, consequences were very important. Show up late for work? Consequence. Say something that makes your company or employer look bad? Consequence. Don't turn work in on time? Pay a bill late? Ignore and violate laws? Consequence, consequence, consequence. (Read more.)

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Grace Kelly's Wedding Invitation

 

They call it a "royal" wedding but it was a "princely" wedding, as Monaco is not a kingdom but a principality. From Town and Country:

[GraceKelly's] lavish April 1956 wedding to the Prince of Monaco was filled with the allure and public speculation you'd expect—but there were also quieter, intimate moments under all the glitz and glam. From the first sketch of her handcrafted, lace-embroidered gown to sweet shots of the couple on their honeymoon, get a rare glimpse into what the wedding festivities were really like. (Read more.)

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Hogwarts from Hell: D.C.’s Deep State High School

 From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

In Jacob Siegel’s forthcoming book The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control, the author describes the people, places, and agencies of the deep state that conspired to destroy Donald Trump in the aftermath the 2016 election. Siegel notes that the different agencies and actors of America’s left-wing bureaucracy are so numerous it’s easy to get confused. This confusion, he explains, serves as “a weapon that doubled as a disguise.” They don’t want us to know who they are or what they are doing. 

For me, it took a conversation with a friend of mine who studies the deep state to help clarify things. My friend who, like me, grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended one of its elite high schools in the 1980s, noted that it’s amazing how many of these deep state players also went to the same high schools—all located within the same small radius around D.C.—and all at the same time, the 1980s. “It’s like a deep state high school,” he quipped.

Indeed. Just as Santa Monica High produced a remarkable number of our generation’s Hollywood actors (Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen, Nicolas Cage, and Angelina Jolie), so, too, did the high schools in the D.C. metro area produce our generation’s leading deep state actors. These elite high schools—Walt Whitman, Saint Andrews, Holton-Arms, and St. Albans—are all just a quick bike ride away from one another. These elite schools gave us guys like eBay founder and left-wing philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, former Biden White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, and Graphika’s John Kelly. In other words, it seems D.C. high schools produce bureaucrats the way Western Pennsylvania produces quarterbacks.

It can get overwhelming trying to keep track of all the acronyms and agencies that make up the deep state, so it’s helpful to keep in mind their general mission. Just as a high school can have a motto—“Men For Others” was the one at my Jesuit school—Deep State High also appears to have an overarching theme. That theme or motto has been to do whatever it takes to work in opposition to Donald Trump— particularly if the form that opposition takes wastes taxpayer money on dumb projects.

Siegel’s book explores how, in 2016, the governmental security agencies, Silicon Valley technocrats, politicians, and the media had such a violent reaction to the arrival of Trump that they considered him “a threat to American democracy.” This was the justification for the elite class—the cool kids of Deep State High—to organize themselves against Trump, a transfer student loved by the working class. If it had been an ’80s movie, MAGA would have been like a crew from the other side of the tracks. (Read more.)

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A Philosopher for All Seasons

 From The Public Discourse:

“The world is in trouble because of a lack of thinking.” These words, from Pope Paul VI in 1968, ring true as a fundamentally human problem. We do not give enough thought or consideration to so many of the things whirling about us. The late 1960s were no doubt an intensified moment of thoughtlessness, but so too, in different ways, is our own time.  

But what does thinking look like? Or to put it a different way, what does a thinker look like? In the ancient world, philosophers wore certain clothing to indicate they were philosophers or to signal their school of thought. In China, Confucian scholars donned a White Sim-ui. In modern times, we might in the philosophical context think of an Oxford don, or one of those existentialist philosophers with a turtleneck and cigarette quick to hand.  

Jason L. A. West’s recent book The Christian Philosophy of Jacques Maritain is far less sartorial than this. But the book does feature a dapper and very French-looking Maritain on the cover and is most compelling in showing what a philosopher ought to look like, or be like. West argues for the continuing centrality of Maritain in philosophy. His book contends that Maritain was neither a mere commentator on Thomas Aquinas nor a philosopher contained in his own time. Maritain, for West, provided a “dynamic and compelling approach to philosophy in his time” and one worth engaging now in the twenty-first century.  

Part of the great strength of West’s book is the way that he details Maritain’s contributions to multiple fields of thought ranging from the philosophy of science to aesthetics. Maritain’s greatness influenced multiple fields of thought in contrast to many philosophers in our era of specialization. West’s development of each field of thought is thorough and engaging. He manages well the task of detailing complex intellectual developments and showing disputed questions regarding Maritain’s contributions, while also writing in a general, accessible way. The book lends itself to reading in full. But for those whose interests do not range as widely, reading specific chapters will be intellectually rewarding. While I read the whole book, I found certain chapters more interesting, especially those regarding metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. Others might dwell more with the chapters on science or history. But whether you read in full or in part, you will encounter the ideas and the thinker behind them.  

In this, West’s depiction of Maritain as a philosopher is the most important aspect of the book. Maritain becomes a kind of model of what philosophy, or thinking itself, should look like in our time. While we might not all become existential Thomists like Maritain, we can not only learn from him but should consider aiming to be like him in his activity of thinking. It is worth considering then some of the essential features of Maritain that West puts forth in his book. (Read more.)

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Caravaggio’s 10 Most Provocative Paintings

 

From ArtNet:

Caravaggio is probably the ultimate Baroque bad boy. He brawled in the streets, hurled insults in verse, racked up lawsuits like trophies, and may have even committed murder. Yet, despite practically everything about his personal behavior, his paintings are some of the world’s most beautifully rendered, emotionally moving—and unabashedly provocative. Just note his Victorious Cupid (1601–02), which just went on view in the U.K. for the first time, where his polished naturalism brushes up against a frank sexuality; or The Cardsharps (c. 1594), an everyday scene of card players that masks a swindle in action. Here, from the Tenebrist master’s dramatic oeuvre, we spotlight his top 10 paintings, with points awarded for each work’s storytelling, behind-the-scenes intrigue, and sheer audacity.

[...]

 After missing out on seeing Jesus after his resurrection, Thomas was unconvinced that Christ really had risen from the dead, saying he’d need to touch Jesus’s crucifixion wounds himself before he’d believe. And lo and behold, Jesus turned up a week later to call Thomas’s bluff. Caravaggio places the painting’s light source directly behind Jesus, symbolically pulling Thomas into the light as he touches his wound. (Read more.)

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Stolen Elections!

 From Tierney's Real News:

President Trump announced recently that his team was going to show America documented proof of election fraud in the November 2020 election by the end of February 2026. My guess is he’s timing the release to force the Senate GOP to terminate the filibuster and FIX ELECTION FRAUD before the 2026 mid-term elections.

So, I think this is a good time to recap what we knew back then so that when the final numbers DO come out - we can compare! I have reams of data on election fraud but I’m going to synthesize it down to a 10 minute read with just the highlights.

In December 2020, just one month after the stolen election in November 2020, Peter Navarro released a 3 volume report containing a chart of estimated ILLEGAL BALLOTS cast in six swing states.

This is the chart that President Trump, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman hoped to present before Congress and the public at the Capitol on J6 to show how at least 3 MILLION illegal votes were cast IN JUST SIX SWING STATES ALONE to push Biden to the top.

Team Trump didn’t want Congress to certify a fraudulent election on J6 - he wanted them to send it back to the states and let them AUDIT it. The states were willing to do that. (Read more.)

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