Howdy, everybody. Welcome. Today's Friday, Sept. 4, 2026.
My calendar says it's Wildlife Day, Lazy Mom's Day, Food Bank Day, Spice Blend Day, Chianti Day, Macadamia Nut Day, College Colors Day, Bring Your Manners to Work Day, Eat an Extra Dessert Day, and Janmashtami. So do the sane thing today: Donate to the food bank, mind your manners while you're at it, then reward yourself with a glass of Chianti, something macadamia-crusted, and a second dessert — moms, you're excused from all of it.
Today in History:
476: Odoacer deposes the last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and proclaims himself king of Italy, ending the Western Roman Empire.
1781: Spanish settlers found the city of Los Angeles under Gov. Felipe de Neve.
1886: Geronimo surrenders to Gen. Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, ending the Apache Wars.
1888: George Eastman patents his roll-film camera and registers the trademark Kodak.
1893: Beatrix Potter mails a picture letter containing the first drawing of Peter Rabbit — a fitting one for Wildlife Day.
1917: The American Expeditionary Force suffers its first fatalities of World War I in France.
1921: Federal troops end the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest labor uprising in the nation's history.
1944: British troops liberate Antwerp, Belgium, during World War II.
1950: Darlington Raceway hosts the inaugural Southern 500, the first 500-mile stock car race.
1951: President Truman addresses the nation from San Francisco in the first live, coast-to-coast television broadcast.
1957: Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus calls out the National Guard to block the Little Rock Nine from entering Central High School.
1972: Swimmer Mark Spitz wins his seventh gold medal at the Munich Olympics.
1998: Larry Page and Sergey Brin found Google as Stanford doctoral students.
2002: Kelly Clarkson wins the first season of American Idol.
2018: Amazon becomes the second company to reach a $1 trillion valuation.
Birthdays Today include: Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, singer and actress (Cowboy Carter, Dreamgirls); Damon Wayans, actor and comedian (In Living Color); Whitney Cummings, comedian and writer (Whitney); Mark Ronson, music producer and DJ ("Uptown Funk"); Tom Watson, golfer (five-time British Open champion); Wes Bentley, actor (American Beauty); and Dr. Drew Pinsky, physician and media personality (Loveline). If today's your birthday, too, happy birthday from all of us here.
I mentioned yesterday's wild bout of weather here in Western New York, and that we were waiting on official confirmation. Well, it's official now: Five tornadoes touched down on Wednesday. Count 'em — five. One hit Olcott Beach, up along the shores of Lake America, one hit East Shelby, one hit Alexander, and two more touched down out east of here, in Waterloo and Fayette, with Fayette taking the hardest hit, an F2, about as strong as they come around these parts. Days later, we're still finding trees down across roadways as the wet ground gives up holding the roots in place. It's keeping our fire and highway crews busy. No damage at Casa De Florack, thankfully.
* * *
So, I see a piece on the Daily Wire this morning:
Christian Castro, 52, is charged with lying to federal agents about the January encounter in which he shot Julio Sosa-Celis in the leg. Making false statements to federal agents carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison, according to The Washington Post.
The federal charges come after Castro's release from custody in Texas, where he had been arrested on Minnesota charges stemming from the shooting. His federal charges remain sealed, and he has not yet been taken into federal custody, according to the Post.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said during a May news conference that Castro fired toward a north Minneapolis home "with the intent to cause fear of immediate bodily harm or death to the four adults who were just inside the door." The bullet struck Sosa-Celis in the leg before traveling through a closet and into the wall of a child's bedroom, according to prosecutors.
Castro allegedly told federal investigators that Sosa-Celis and another man assaulted him with a broom handle and a snow shovel, prompting him to fire his gun in "self-defense," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said during a previous news conference.
Groan… Ellison. Again.
Yeah, that's your first clue right there. Let's not forget, Ellison's fiefdom of Minneapolis was ground zero for those "peaceful riots" we heard so much about back in 2020. You could hardly blame me for doubting Ellison's account, even absent that sordid history. This is exactly the kind of virtue signaling we've come to expect from him, and with an election bearing down, the timing seems more than a little convenient.
Does Ellison have a case here? You could argue that way, but then again, maybe someone should be consulting with Derek Chauvin. As I recall, they thought the case there was pretty solid, too. Given that history, one can hardly blame the DOJ for not responding to Ellison’s usual political theatrics.
And here's the thing: The DOJ's skepticism isn't hypothetical anymore; it's got a paper trail. Chauvin's own defense team filed a third petition for post-conviction relief on Aug. 18, and this one doesn't bother with the medical-evidence angle his last two swings used. This time the argument is structural: Chauvin's lawyers claim Gov. Tim Walz unlawfully assigned Ellison to prosecute the case in the first place, and that the assignment itself deprived the court of jurisdiction. Two prior petitions already went nowhere.
Judge Paul Scoggin dismissed the first over a disputed autopsy rumor, then rejected the second in May after Chauvin's team leaned on a documentary and a stack of officer affidavits. Neither is what matters here. What matters is that Chauvin's lawyers are now arguing, in a Hennepin County courtroom, that Ellison had no business running that prosecution to begin with. And for the record, I think they’re correct.
Maybe that argument goes nowhere in the courts, too. Remember, judges in that part of the country, for all the trappings, have proven themselves not to be apolitical, either.
But consider, please: The same attorney general currently holding press conferences about an ICE officer's self-defense story is the same attorney general whose original conviction of a Minneapolis cop is, at this very moment, under formal legal challenge for how he got the job of prosecuting it. Notice also that we don’t get to question Ellison’s motives. Given the history here, that lack seems kinda crucial.
When Ellison stands in front of cameras and declares what Castro's motives were, he's asking the public to trust his read of a police shooting, again, from the same office that's spent the better part of two years fending off claims that it stacked the deck the last time around. And of course, we the people are not supposed to notice such things.
The DOJ downgrading the federal charge against Castro from a civil rights violation to a single false-statements count doesn't read like an administration eager to hand Ellison a win, either. That's not proof Ellison's wrong about Castro, but it is a damn good reason not to take his word for it uncritically.
Look, I understand why people like Ellison have such problems with actually enforcing immigration law. His Islamic cultural background and his far-left politics both benefit mightily from ignoring or at least being soft on such laws. What I can’t get my mind around is the number of others bent on making enforcing our laws — laws passed by a fair number of Democrats, by the way — into an example of objective evil. Do they not understand that kind of fire tends to burn everything, including laws they support? You shouldn't wonder why I repeatedly suggest that they're about tearing down America.
People like Ellison seem bent on using all their power to make America a copy of the Grooming Gang havens that the UK and Germany have become. Oh, and let’s not forget Spain and Ireland, for that matter. Forget the idea that people in all of those countries are vehemently protesting the body counts and the intentional dissolution of their cultures by their governments, whose job it is to protect those lives and those cultures. They’re all just Nazis, anyway. Right, Keith?
Let’s be honest, here: This is not about Justice. The Castro case is being pursued for one reason: The midterm elections. We know that any courtroom action coming from this case will be well out into the future, well past November. I suggest the actual verdict of such court action doesn’t mean nearly as much to Ellison and his people as the ability to project negatively on enforcing our immigration laws. Certainly it is the rather singular explanation for the urgency Ellison's attaching to this matter. Think I'm kidding? Watch the volume knob on these matters get twisted to the left, down to just barely audible levels, after November.
Thought for the Day: The recent storms have me thinking: Even after the wind tears through, the roots that held longest are the ones that grow back first.
VIP members, let's hear your thoughts, because they matter.
Take care, gang. We have a weekend to celebrate. We should be here for it. I'll be here tomorrow as always. Hope you will be, too.
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