Tea at Trianon: Lying about the Goods

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, January 23, 2026

Lying about the Goods

There are those of us who believe same-sex marriage is impossible. But it seems in the case of the Goods it was not even attempted. From Declassified with Julie Kelly:

Following the anti-Trump resistance fashion of resigning from the Department of Justice as a sign of protest against their higher-ups and the president, six prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota quit earlier this week rather than pursue an inquiry into the woman described as the “widow” of Renee Good, the anti-ICE activist shot and killed on January 7.
One of the departing lawyers, Joseph Thompson, had led the office’s multi-billion dollar fraud investigation into several Medicaid-funded organizations in Minnesota. But he left his post on Tuesday—not before allowing a New York Times photographer into his government office for a photo shoot, it appears—rather than follow orders to do his job. “Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good,” the Times reported on Jan. 13. “Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful.”
But if Thompson and his colleagues indeed resigned over plans to investigate Good’s “widow,” they may soon regret their decision. (Or not. Either way, good riddance.) An attorney representing Renee Good’s estate acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Post that Becca Good was not her wife. Antonio Romanucci, the Chicago-based attorney who also represented the family of George Floyd and succeeded in winning a $27 million settlement for the Floyd family, said Renee’s “partner, parents and four siblings want ‘to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America.” Romanucci further confirmed the pair “were not married.”
On Friday, just a few days after publishing the story about Thompson, the Times had to admit in a separate story that Becca and Renee “were not legally married.” But a review of Times articles published since the shooting does not show that the paper has corrected any previous articles describing Becca Good as the “wife” or “widow” of Renee Good. (Read more.)