July 15, 2025

MINNESOTA VICE: Trial will be “very difficult” for Sen. Nicole Mitchell to win, Minneapolis attorney says.

It’s a high-stakes trial that could ultimately determine the balance of power in the Minnesota Senate.*

“It has such political ramifications,” said Twin Cities attorney Mike Bryant, who is not affiliated with the case. “I think a lot of people will be watching what happens.”

It was April 2024, when the criminal complaint said Minnesota Sen. Nicole Mitchell‘s stepmother’s called 911 to report a burglary at her Detroit Lakes home. Mitchell allegedly told police she entered the home to retrieve personal items connected to her recently deceased father, because her stepmother had cut off contact.

In a social media post, Mitchell denied all allegations. Mitchell said she had gone to check on a family member with Alzheimer’s disease.

Bryant said he feels Mitchell will have to testify.

“Unless the state has a really super weak case that they can’t prove anything, I think it’s going to be one of those situations where the jury’s going to want to hear from her,” said Bryant.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult to win,” said Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Joe Tamburino, who is also not affiliated with the case. “Let’s face it, according to what’s in the complaint and what we imagine the prosecutor will prove at trial, is that she was found in the house at the very early morning hours, she was dressed in black and she was discovered by her stepmother and then supposedly she ran down to the basement, and then when the police got there, she made a number of incriminating statements.”

Somebody’s taking Michael Walsh’s description of the Democrats as “a criminal organization masquerading as a political party” waaaay too literally:

 

* Curiously though, CBS Minnesota plays doesn’t name Mitchell’s party in the article.

By the way, Mitchell isn’t the only prominent Minnesota Democrat currently racking up high legal bills: “‘The invoices for a $430,000 legal bill run up by Gov. Tim Walz’s administration to prepare him for a congressional hearing last month ranged from $70 to review a letter inviting him to the hearing to $2,880 for “searches for news or statistics for crimes committed by transgender or nonbinary persons.’ Do we at least get a PDF of what they found?”

Ordinarily you would, but PDFs have been temporarily banned, since they might have e-signatures that could be construed by NBC News with the presidential autopen.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

WELL SAID:

I’m so old, I remember when Warmonger Literally Hitler™ Bad Orange Man was going to start World War III.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

HOW IT STARTED: Chinese property giant close to collapse. China Evergrande, once the country’s second-largest real estate developer, is drowning in debt. Some 1.5 million people have put deposits on new homes that have yet to be built. A collapse could be catastrophic.

—Deutsche Welle, September 16th, 2021. 

How it’s going: “China has built 65 to 80 million vacant homes, enough to shelter the entire population of Germany, as millions struggle to find affordable housing. But the numbers only tell part of the story. Behind these ghost cities are real people who are trapped in a broken system.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHY IS CNN SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Watch: Abby Phillip and Ana Navarro Team Up to Excuse Racism, Make CNN Even More of a Dumpster Fire.

Can CNN get worse? That’s an evergreen question with an evergreen answer.

On Monday, libertarian commentator Brad Polumbo was part of the panel on Abby Phillip’s primetime show, and things quickly devolved into racism after Ana Navarro couldn’t form an actual rebuttal. The co-host of “The View” claimed that Donald Trump’s presidency has been a “reign of terror.” At that point, Polumbo rightly, and fairly politely, pointed out that such a statement is hyperbolic.

Did Navarro then provide evidence to back up her rhetoric? Of course, not. She dismissed Polumbo as a “white man” whose opinions don’t matter because of his race. A fair warning that you may lose some brain cells watching this exchange.

Exit quote: “With Scott Jennings likely having political ambitions and appearing on CNN less, this is what Phillip’s program has devolved into. That Greg Gutfeld continues to swamp her in the key demo should surprise no one.”

 

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA — SO GOOD AND SO HARD:

Did Los Angelenos honestly expect Newsom or Bass to let this crisis they enhanced go to waste?

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: This is the real doom loop. It will change everything about life in the Bay Area.

The Bay Area is facing a doom loop. It’s just not the one we usually think about.

For years we’ve heard of the potential economic doom spiral circling San Francisco, where a massive city budget deficit fueled by remote work leads to poorer services and even more residents fleeing. But another threat has been building in relative silence.

The Bay Area is getting old fast, and it’s accelerating. Though aging is a global trend, the San Francisco metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties — is already the third-oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., trailing only two places in Florida. And no other region is growing older at a quicker pace.

That means fewer children, more elderly people and a declining number of 20-somethings. The confluence of demographic shifts will profoundly impact every aspect of life in the San Francisco area. Combined with rising housing costs and growing hostility toward immigration, the graying of cities and towns means the region’s continued prosperity is in doubt.

—The San Francisco Chronicle, yesterday.

Perhaps that’s because Chronicle readers took the newspaper’s advice on the topic. In 2008, the paper was complaining that “There is nothing more bacchanalian than a kid’s birthday party,” and how those bacchanalian birthday parties lead to increased global warming, from their perspective, those declining numbers were good news, right?

In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children of any major American city:

Just 13.4 percent of San Francisco’s 805,235 residents are younger than 18, the smallest percentage of any major city in the country. By contrast, San Jose’s percentage of children is 24.8 percent, Oakland’s is 21.3 percent, Boston’s is 16.8 percent and Seattle’s is 15.4 percent, according to Brian Cheu, director of community development for the Mayor’s Office of Housing. Even Manhattan is composed of roughly 15 percent children, according to Dan Kelly, director of planning for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency.

In 1970, children made up 22 percent of San Francisco. In 1960, they constituted 25 percent.

I’d say there is a glimmer of hope for the city based on this Wall Street Journal headline, “Mayor Daniel Lurie: ‘San Francisco Needs to Save Itself.’” But “unexpectedly” the word “homeless” doesn’t appear until the comments section.

(San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.)

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

ROBERT SPENCER: A Spectre Is Haunting the Democrats: The Spectre of Communism. “This time it’s real, and undeniable. The Democrats have for years denied, with varying degrees of scorn or anger, that they are Communists, despite hating both free enterprise and borders, which are just the sorts of things you’d expect socialist internationalists to hate. Now, however, the deniability is no longer even close to plausible.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Stephen Green

REMEMBER WHEN THEY SCREAMED “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW”? My pals on the left screamed “No one is above the law!” for quite a while and suddenly…no more. I wonder why that is? Just the News is reporting that:

“Fannie Mae’s Financial Crimes Division concluded that [Schiff] engaged in a sustained pattern of possible mortgage fraud.”

Perhaps some folks pretending to hold the high moral ground are in fact outcome-determinative when it comes to those ethics and understanding of law. What say you?

Posted at 1:04 pm by Charles Glasser

BEARING ARMS: Third Circuit Suggests Gun Ban for Drug Users Not Always Constitutional. “Taken to its logical conclusion, the Third Circuit’s decision would appear to allow a gun prohibition on anyone who uses any kind of intoxicating substance; a conclusion reached by Judge Thomas Ambro, who partially dissented from today’s decision.”

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

BETHANY MANDEL: The left is a cult — and parents can fight it, with Supreme Court’s blessing.

In a landmark ruling last month, the Supreme Court slapped down a public-school district’s mandatory lessons on sexual topics for young children — and gave parents the power to push back against leftist indoctrination in school.

In Mahmoud v. Taylor, parents in Montgomery County, Md., argued that mandatory teaching of LGBT-themed books violated their families’ religious beliefs.

They didn’t seek to remove the books — only the right to opt their children out of lessons that used them. The court backed them.

The district’s instruction promoted the idea that gender is fluid and interchangeable, a notion that runs against the teachings of every major monotheistic religion: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Its LGBT teachings are part of a secular belief system that deliberately aims to supplant those traditional faiths with a new one.

Leftism today increasingly functions not merely as a political ideology but as a full-fledged secular religion, complete with its own moral code, dogmas, rituals and rules of excommunication.

For example, “Consider any discussion of climate change. Suddenly, leftists become apocalyptic preachers warning of imminent destruction: rising seas, burning forests, uninhabitable cities  — all brought on by sinful human consumption.”

When the late Julian Simon debated an earlier iteration of hard left religious eco-zealots, he had this classic reply:

Simon, the economist who was legendarily skeptical about environmental doom, once posed a question at an environmental forum: “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Almost every hand shot up. He then said, “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” There was no response, so he asked again, “Is there any evidence I could give you—anything at all—that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Again, no response. Simon concluded, “Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for church.”

Heh, indeed.™

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

JUST NBC THE PERPETUAL LUDDITES! NBC News Tries to Sweep Biden’s Pardon Problem Under the Rug With the LAMEST ‘Gotcha’ EVER.

It’s NBC; they’ve had 30 years to figure out “What is Internet, anyway?”

Hopefully, they’ll get there eventually.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll