A few final notes after a crappy day, culminating in a defamation suit threat:

1. Today DOJ released more than 3 million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images from the Epstein files, after staff sorted through more than 6 million records. What a ridiculous waste of time and resources. Now the Axis will either claim that the Trump DOJ protected the boss by destroying those damning videos of Trump being covered in Bosco and licked clean by a bevy of 13-year-olds, or it will scream about rumors, hearsay, and unsubstantiated accusations that have no evidentiary value. The latter has already started; “Woman Told FBI Trump Abused Her at 13, Epstein Files Reveal,” is the “bombshell” headline at the gutter-dwelling Daily Beast. This was one of many uncorroborated tips, with no names attached and no way to investigate further. But, of course, they must be true, because Trump. Remember, the Biden Justice Department had four years to release all this, but was too busy concocting other ways to put Donald Trump in jail. lest he win the election.

2. This is the kind of legal accountability our Leftist states think is appropriate, at least when the miscreants are “of color.” District Court Judge Angel Kelley said, in sentencing Monica Cannon-Grant, a non-profit fraudster, “Ms. Cannon-Grant’s actions were crimes of greed and opportunity but will not go unpunished thanks to the law enforcement community, who have dedicated their mission to uncovering and putting an end to such devious schemes. This case illustrates that anyone who defrauds state programs and exploits their position in the community, will be held accountable for their actions.” Then she pronounced a slap on the wrist: four years’ probation, with six months of home detention and 100 hours of community service. Cannon-Grant was also ordered to pay restitution of $106,003 as well as forfeiture of an amount to be decided at a later date.

[ I rate that meme as “mostly true.” There were no sanctuary cities and states arrayed against Obama. His I.C.E. operations were not as sweeping, but that’s because his predecessor hadn’t deliberately stopped enforcing immigration laws. Obama and Trump both employed Tom Homan to oversee I.C.E. operations, something the Axis media notes as seldom as possible.]

I have rarely made one of my replies to commenters a “Comment of the Day,” and I’m not about to today but one of my long retorts this morning made me realize how absolutely tangential and non-substantive the arguments being made by the Mad Left to support defunding or metaphorically castrating I.C.E are. I challenged an intrepid and respected commenter to justify the dishonest and misleading lyrics sung by a Bruce Spingsteen wannabe, genuinely hoping that he could enlighten me.

But the esteemed Democrat contrarian had nothing; just repurposed “Off the pigs!” and “Fry ’em like bacon!” -inspired stuff, as I suspected. When you begin an inquiry having already decided that one side is evil because, you know, they just are, it does not tend to generate an objective analysis. (The exchange is here.)

Notably absent from the courageous response was a feasible suggestion of a better policy to effectively and quickly remove millions and millions of illegal aliens from our land. Without that, the clear message is, “Ha Ha! We opened the borders, and now there’s nothing you can do about it with being compared to the Nazis hunting down the Frank family!”

I’ll be happy to see lively inquiries today on other topics, of course.

This is a strange day for me, so I’m forced to post piecemeal what would normally be an ethics warm-up with 4-6 items. Sorry.

1. I listed to “Border Czar” Tom Homan’s press conference in Minnesota. Those conservatives who were frantic that I.C.E. was going to stand down in the state, representing a Trump surrender to a mob and the unethical, inciting elected officials egging the mob on, were, of course, wrong.

It would have been nice if he had acknowledged that some of the statements coming from Administration officials following the tragic deaths of two protesters interfering with I.C.E. operations were premature, inappropriate, and gratuitously inflammatory, but such a concession was strategically and diplomatically impossible, since he would have been criticizing his superiors.

Homan’s best moment was when a female reporter, her tone throbbing with anger and hostility, asked if, as she thought was what Trump had promised during the campaign, I.C.E. would focus only on illegal immigrants who had committed serious or violent crimes. That this would be a responsible policy is a persistent progressive delusion stemming from the “Good Illegal Immigrant” narrative, and Homan knocked the question out of the metaphorical park.

He said that if the government’s position became what the reporter was advocating, then it would be an invitation to those living anywhere in the world where conditions and opportunities are worse than in the U.S.—a.k.a. “everywhere”—to try to get into this country by any means necessary. That, he noted, was basically the message the Biden administration was sending for four disastrous years. Yes, the first priority of I.C.E. must be to apprehend the most violent and worst criminals among the illegal immigration population, but no illegal immigrants belong here regardless of when or why they arrived and what they have done since arriving. Sending a clear message that breaching our borders is forever sufficient to warrant deportation is a crucial element of border security.

1. (a) It’s more than annoying that Homan is such a mushmouth. I suppose he can’t help it, but the man is only marginally more understandable than Gabby Johnson (“Rarit!”) in “Blazing Saddles.” Being able to communicate clearly is an element of professional competence. The substance of Homan’s presentation was excellent, but there were whole sentences I couldn’t translate at all.