Flotsam and Jetsam - Brown Shooter Found Dead - Judge Dugan Found Guilty

It was a quite a day for law enforcement in the search for the Brown killer. First, it was announced he had been identified and linked to the murder of an MIT physics professor "Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old theoretical physicist and fusion scientist from Portugal" that occurred after the Brown shootings, and an arrest warrant issued, then his car was located at a self storage facility in New Hampshire, and finally, he was found dead in the self storage facility of an apparently self-inflicted gun shot. The shooter was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese green card hold and a former PhD student at Brown, most recently living in Florida, who shared a past with the MIT professor. A homeless former Brown student, living on campus who had an encounter with the shooter after the shootings gave authorities enough information to lead to his arrest warrant. Stacy McCain, Finally: ‘Person of Interest’ Reportedly Identified in Brown University Shooting then Claudio Neves-Valente Identified as Brown University Gunman, Found Dead. From Ace, Person of Interest Sought in Brown Shooting, Claim: Brown Disabled Security Cameras Because Left-Wing Groups Complained Their Criminals Were Being Photographed UPDATE: Link to MIT Physicist Slaying? PM, Brown University shooter found dead, identified as Portuguese national Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. Matt Vespa at TownHall, We Got Him: Brown University Shooter Found Dead in New Hampshire. What you mean "we" white man? PJM's Matt Margolis, Brown University Shooting Suspect Found Dead, Identity Revealed. Sundance at CTH has Brown University Shooter Identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, Dead from Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound in New Hampshire and the chain of events that led to the arrest warrants at Rhode Island Arrest Affidavit Gives Details on How Brown Shooting Suspect Was Identified – Full Affidavit pdf. Given the fusion researcher, I was suspicious that their could be an Iranian connection. Rather than domestic terrorism, it rather looks like a case of rage brought on by a failed doctoral program. It's surprising to me it doesn't happen more often. 

Still carping about the process, at Twitchy, NEWLY Released Radio Transmissions Show LEO Gave Brown University Shooter Lots of Time to Escape. Campus Reform, BDS-supporting Brown prof was previously head of school that supported 'right of Palestinians to self-defense' after Oct. 7. In a Hat Hair video Chloe thinks Brown University Engages in Suspicious Behavior Following Shooting. School administrators instinctively act to protect their sinecures.

As long as we're still talking shootings, Hat Hair's Dave Strom can barely believe Australian Public Broadcaster Declares Bondi Beach Attack Had Nothing to Do With Religion and Mitch Berg quips Prime Minister Albanese Searches For The Real Killers. Denial is apparently a river in Australia, too. From the Middle East Forum, Hanukkah Terror Has Roots in Australia’s Alienation of Jews, "Canberra Once Aligned with the United States on Middle East Issues, Including Israel, but Prime Minister Albanese Has Hewn a Different Path." PJM's Cathy Salgado reports Australians Arrest More Bondi ‘Violent Plotters,’ Looks Like Another Islamist Cell. Ace elaborates, Australian Counter-Terrorism Police Ram a Vehicle Containing Five Islamic Men Heading Towards Site of Sunday's Hannukah Slaughter, "Authorities believe two cars loaded with Islamic men were headed to the scene of the Hannukah slaughter to commit further terroristic violence. They rammed the car because, it is reported, they believed they had to stop the car immediately." At Twitchy, Debbie Wasserman Schultz Thinks This Is a Bigger Threat to American Values Than Islamic Terrorism. RNC Research @RNCResearch, "Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz gets called out for saying President Trump is a bigger threat to American values than Radical Islamic Terrorism. "I think we have to focus... if we're worried about the threat to American values on the person who's in the White House.""

At Hat Hair John Sexton reports After Damaging Testimony, the Government Rests Its Case Against Judge Dugan then Day Four of Judge Dugan's Trial: The Defense Rests After 45 Minutes of Witnesses (Update: Convicted!) WUSN.com, Jury reaches verdict in trial of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan "Federal jury finds her guilty on one of two counts." Althouse, "A jury convicted a Wisconsin judge Thursday of obstructing federal agents’ arrest of an undocumented immigrant from Mexico..." "... giving President Donald Trump’s administration a rare win in its prosecutions of public officials who have challenged his agenda. The jury found Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of a felony, obstructing an official proceeding, but acquitted her of a misdemeanor, concealing a person from arrest. The verdict came after six hours of deliberations and Dugan could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.... Dugan... will no longer be able to continue as a judge because Wisconsin’s constitution bars people convicted of felonies from holding public office... WaPo reports." It might seem odd that the judge was convicted of the felony but acquitted on the misdemeanor, but the misdemeanor required showing the act of hiding the person. From the prosecutor's closing argument: "'She was a frustrated and angry judge who was fed up, who decided to corruptly take matters into her own hands.""

As long as we're on the topic of immigration, Scott McKay at Am Spec examines The Absurdities of Birthright Citizenship, "There is now a modern twist to be considered in the birthright citizenship debate." The Manhattan Contrarian, Birthright Citizenship? I Think It's An Open Question. Beege Wellborn at Hat Hair, Here's News - 'Immigrants' Cost a Boatload to House, Fairfax County DA Is Thoughtful Enough to Make Sure the Illegal Always Gets His Man and An End of the Year ICE Tote Up of Naughty Blue States Shawn Fleetwood at da Fed thinks The West’s Embrace Of Mass Third-World Migration Is Civilizational Suicide. Theo Wold @RealTheoWold, "Good! It’s clearly laid out in federal statute: If you lie during the process of becoming a citizen or subsequently commit a crime, the U.S. is authorized to revoke your citizenship. And you’ll be shocked at the amount of people in this country that fall in that category..." Quote The New York Times @nytimes, "Breaking News: The Trump administration plans to ramp up efforts to strip some naturalized Americans of their citizenship, internal documents obtained by The New York Times show, marking an aggressive new phase in President Trump’s immigration crackdown." Speaking of lying on the citizenship application, Fox 9, DHS says Rep. Omar’s son was not pulled over by ICE, despite claims. From RVM, Vance Breaks Down What Real Success on Immigration Means to Him. “Success, to me, is not so much a number, though, obviously I’d love to see the gross majority of the illegal immigrants who came in under Biden deported, that actually is a secondary metric of success.” Vance said lasting progress depends on setting policies that the courts accept and creating the operational capabilities required to enforce immigration law at scale. Vance added, “Success, to me is that we have established a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with and that we have the infrastructure to do that allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country, that, to me, is real success.”

Rick Moran at PJM celebrates Inflation Drops 'Unexpectedly' to 2.7% for November. Media Hardest Hit. At Hat Hair Capt. Ed VIP says Surprise! November Inflation Rate 'Unexpectedly' Shocks Experts, Trump: This Was the Year That Was MAGA and Larry has a video, CNN Was Forced to Report Trump's Inflation Win, and It Was Glorious. Ace, The Inflation Rate Falls As Trump Promises a New "Golden Age" "I turned off Trump's speech because it made me anxious. He was rushing through the script so fast he tripped over words and didn't emPHAsize key points to drive the message home. But he did hit the points. The speech was about 20 minutes. I think he should have taken maybe 28 minutes to give the speech, adding in emphasis and pauses." Sundance, No, Inflation Did Not “Cool Unexpectedly”, It Slowed Because Trump Policies are Working. At PJM Matt Margolis asserts The Economic Comeback Under Trump Is Very Real and Stephen Kruiser say Trump Hails 2025 Successes, but I'm Just Here for the Trolling. Roger Kimball at The Spec looks at Donald Trump’s end-of-year victory lap "He has accomplished more in 11 months than most presidents have achieved in eight years."

Carlo Carrasco announces Trump Announces $1,776 Christmas Bonus For American Troops. From Space.com, Trump signs sweeping executive order aimed at 'ensuring American space superiority' "The president wants the U.S. to start setting up a permanent moon base by 2030, among other goals." Behind the Black, New Trump executive order today guarantees major changes coming to NASA’s Moon program. Chronicles chronicles President Trump’s Trustbusting Moment. "The time grows short for President Trump and his administration to protect American liberty and prosperity by blocking the impending merger between Netflix and WBD."

At NYPo Ben Domenech opines Trump’s chief of staff can’t sway media that revel in Republican ridicule. Driscoll at Insty, "WHY? VANITY FAIR’S HIT PIECE WAS ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Felt ‘Blindsided’ by Vanity Fair Article." At Hat Hair, Mark Judge (remember him?) discourses on Vanity Fair, And the Need for Conservative Photographers. From Twitchy, JD Vance Owes Vanity Fair Photographer $1,000 After Marco Rubio Posts New Profile Pic. Josh Kraushaar @JoshKraushaar, ""The underlying tension came through when Mr. Vance posed for the magazine’s photographer. “I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really shitty compared to me,” Mr. Vance joked. “And $1,000 if it’s Marco.”" At Althouse "Obviously, celebrity portraits on the cover of Vanity Fair are not really about journalism in the way that you and I think about journalism." "But then there’s the other side of Vanity Fair, which is real journalism. I’m surprised that a journalist would even need to ask me the question of 'Why didn’t I retouch out the blemishes?' Because if I had, that would be a lie. I would be hiding the truth of what I saw there.... If presenting what I saw, unfiltered, is an attack, then what would you call it had I chosen to edit it and hide things about it, and make them look better than they look?... This has been a fixture of my work for many years. I’ve photographed all political stripes just like this. You will find... beloved figures on the left photographed in the same way.... I go in not with the mission of making someone look good or bad. Whether anyone believes me or not, that is not what my objective is...." Said the photographer Christopher Anderson, quoted in "The Vanity Fair photographer who disrupted Trumpworld’s polished image/Every line, spot, blemish and blood vessel was captured by Christopher Anderson’s lens. What was he thinking?" (WaPo)(gift link for photographs and the entirety of the interview with the photographer)." Bullshit.

Althouse finds "[Trump] found it interesting as an intellectual issue. Do I think he’s going to run for a third term? No, I don’t think he will run for a third term." "Said Alan Dershowitz, quoted in "Can Trump run for a third term? It’s unclear, says Harvard professorAlan Dershowitz spoke to the president about the constitution at the Oval Office this week and says Trump 'found it interesting as an intellectual issue'" (London Times). "it" = Professor Dershowitz's new book, "Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?" Dershowitz's position on the subject: "It’s not clear."" Then, obviously he needs to try. And, "Over nearly two decades, as Mr. Trump cut a swath through the party circuits of New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein was perhaps his most reliable wingman." ""During the 1990s and early 2000s, they prowled Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel, at least one of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos and both their Palm Beach homes. They visited each other’s offices and spoke often by phone, according to other former Epstein employees and women who spent time in his homes. With other men, Mr. Epstein might discuss tax shelters, international affairs or neuroscience. With Mr. Trump, he talked about sex...." I'm reading "'Don’s Best Friend': How Epstein and Trump Bonded Over the Pursuit of Women/The president has tried to minimize their friendship, but documents and interviews reveal an intense and complicated relationship. Chasing women was a game of ego and dominance. Female bodies were currency" (NYT). That's in the middle of the NYT home page right now. I thought you should know. Trump chased women. And there's a concept — pushed by the NYT for political purposes — that chasing women can be a game of ego and dominance and that female bodies can be used as "currency.""

PJM's Dave Manney looks at Trump’s Pressure Campaign and Maduro’s Fury. La Voce di New York sees Maduro Responds to Trump: the Venezuelan Navy Will Escort Oil Tankers. Fine, we can sink a few of them too. Sarah Anderson at PJM notes The U.S. Sends Troops Into Latin America — But Not to Venezuela, Equador. 

At Euro Con, Europeans May Not Love Trump—but Many Agree With Him. "That’s why people across Europe have been voting in increasing numbers for insurgent national conservative parties—not because of what Trump or anybody else says, but because of what their rulers have done to European society, culture, and civilisation." Sundance sees the EU is Desperate to Find a Way to Use Frozen Russian Assets to Fund Ukraine.

From Da Caller, Over $9 Billion Looted From Minnesota Medicaid Programs, Feds Say. Dave Strom, Minnesota's US Attorney Reveals New Fraud of $9 Billion or More. Cathy Salgado, Two Fraudsters Trafficked $7 Million in SNAP Funds. I&I ed board asserts For Today’s Democrats, Fraud Is A Feature, Not A Bug, "For today’s Democrats, these aren’t problems to be solved. They are cherished benefits that support their (and their friends’) lifestyles and keep them in office." 

Althouse, "Ken Martin, the chairman of the D.N.C., said on Thursday that he had decided not to publish a report that he ordered months ago into what went wrong for the Democratic Party last year...." ""Mr. Martin will instead keep the findings under seal. He believes that looking back so publicly and painfully at the past would prove counterproductive for the party as it tries next year to take back power in Congress.... 'Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win?' Mr. Martin said in a statement. . . From "The D.N.C. Is Scrapping Its Report on What Went Wrong in 2024/Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chairman, ordered the autopsy months ago but is now said to believe that its release would be counterproductive for the party" (NYT)." Matt Margolis, The Democratic Party Is in Complete Collapse, Poll Finds. "Democrats are sinking like a stone, and the new Quinnipiac poll makes it official: their congressional approval rating has hit a historic low of just 18%, with a brutal 73% disapproving. That's the worst number Quinnipiac has recorded since they started asking the question back in 2009. Even CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enten, couldn't hide his shock, declaring that "Democrats, in the minds of the American public, are lower than the Dead Sea."" Dave Strom calls this Luxury Socialism in a Nutshell. Wokal Distance @wokal_distance, "Rage Against the Machine's guitarist, Tom Morello, has a signature guitar out. Which means that for just $2400 a millionaire socialist will sell you a guitar with a communist symbol on it." That's not a really expensive guitar. 

Dave Strom, The 'Most Secure Election in History™' Had Some Big 'Oopsies," But Fear Not.... and 'Trust The Science™' Usually Means 'Trust Our Authority'. Shooting News Week reports Tim Walz Tries to Create a Backdoor Firearm Registry After Gun Ban Fails in State Legislature.

From Ace, DOJ Eyes Civil Rights Action Against Biden Officials Who Weaponized Government Power to Punish Political Enemies "Head of the Office of Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, said that the raid on Mar-a-Lago, made without probable cause, might have been a criminal act." Tom Knighton at TAW, Yet another reason I have trust issues, "But the truth is that the fire of our federal government hasn’t been kept in check. Instead, we saw that power abused. It wasn’t just that the fire wasn’t properly controlled, but it was also used in an act of arson. What am I talking about? The raid at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. We all knew the way that raid was handled was absolute BS, but it seems that it lacked one important thing. The FBI didn’t think they had sufficient cause." Capt. Ed has a belly laugh when Kamala claims We Didn't Release the Epstein Files Because Our DoJ Was Soooo Independent. VodkaPundit at Insty cites MARK JUDGE: The Most Explosive Book of 2026. "Yes, they waged war on us. That’s the simplest way to summarize what the government, technocratic elite, security state, and media did to the American people in 2016. It’s also the premise behind what is sure to be the most important and explosive book of 2026. That book, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control by Jacob Siegel, explores the ways the crazed reactions of these parts of society to the arrival of Donald Trump drove them to label him “a threat to American democracy” and take actions that, ironically, turned them into the very threat they tried to warn us against."

Althouse passes on NYT's take on the Bongino resignation "Mr. Bongino’s obsession with his own image, as projected through a constant stream of gung-ho social media posts, landed flat in a proud law enforcement agency..." ""... where working hard and keeping a low profile has been a calling card of leadership. In a lawsuit filed in September, the former head of the bureau’s powerful Washington field office, Steven J. Jensen, said he was taken aback by the 'intense focus' that Mr. Bongino devoted to 'increasing online engagement through his social media profiles in an effort to change his followers’ perception of the F.B.I.'... Mr. Bongino... fell out of favor after lambasting Attorney General Pam Bondi over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case — and alienating Ms. Bondi’s friend and ally, Susie Wiles...." Some people may be better on the outside looking in, than on the inside looking out.

Capt. Ed sees Federal Appeals Court OK's Nat'l Guard in DC – But ... "The bad news? The ruling applies to Washington DC, and the panel has limited its findings to the federal nature of the nation's capital." John Sexton, California Judge Threatens to Shut Down Tesla Sales and Production in the State. "The ruling by Administrative Law Judge Juliet Cox determined that Tesla had for years engaged in deceptive marketing practices by using the terms “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” to promote the autonomous technology available in many of its cars." At Am Mind, Ilya Shapiro on The End of the Beginning "I’m not tired of winning in the courts." 

VodkaPundit at Insty, THE MEDIA LIES "The media lies stupidly, clumsily, and obviously. Maybe I’d despise them less if the lies came without all the moral preening about objectivity, editorial standards, and those layers of editors and fact-checkers. Maybe, but I doubt it."

Media coverage: Actual suspect: pic.twitter.com/h2lO2P97aT

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 17, 2025

Dudley Newright @NewRightPoast, "I was there, in the 2010s, when they stopped hiring white guys. I worked for a big media company in the big city. Terrible pay, but fun to hang out with creative types all day. Everyone was white. One day one of us wrote a snarkier headline than our usual fare. The piece triggered huge engagement from angry boomer conservatives. Where were they coming from? Facebook, it turned out. . . ." Jamie Wilson at PJM, DEI and the Death of Excellence: How Ideological Selection Degrades Culture Over Time. From Campus Reform, Popular professor fired at HBCU files lawsuit alleging anti-white discrimination. 

Capt. Ed reports Trump Admin To Cut All Funding to Hospitals Performing Pediatric Sex Changes. Tyler O'Neil at Da Signal, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announces 6 Moves to Crack Down on ‘Sex-Rejecting Procedures’: ‘MALPRACTICE.’ Ace, HHS Moves to Block Hospitals From Performing Sex Change Mutilations on Children; House Moves to Ban, "HHS wants to stop the Jack-to-Jill Ripper surgeries." Althouse, "The federal government on Thursday acted to put an end to gender-related care for minors across the nation, threatening to pull federal funding from any hospital that offered such treatment...." ""The administration’s action is not just a regulatory shift but the latest signal that the federal government does not recognize even the existence of people whose gender identity does not align with their sex at birth. If finalized, the proposed new rules, announced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a news conference Thursday morning, would effectively shut down hospitals that failed to comply...." From Fox, NC county dissolves library board after vote to keep kids transgender-themed picture book, "Randolph County officials voted 3-2 to remove trustees who kept 'Call Me Max' children's book."