Cagle World

It’s not like he replaced her with a more qualified woman.

It’s not like the man he scavenged from the dwindling heap of loyalists is marginally better than she proved herself to be.

It’s not like there’s going to be a noticeable change in competence or temperature at the head of the Department of Justice.

But I’m smiling nonetheless. Because even though the successor won’t be very different, at least a truly awful female will be ousted from the office she obtained through ovarian merit.

Which is to say, she’s another lady who said the things President Trump wanted to hear, and he rewarded her richly, if temporarily.

Pamela Bondi, former attorney general of Florida, former personal attorney of the formerly impeached former and current president, former a lot of things, is now former attorney general of the United States.

And that’s because she was simply terrible. There is no way to make this political.

Conservatives must admit, even those MAGA loyalists currently battling one another on the “Israel Is The Problem” vs “We Need To Vanquish Iran” battleground, that it’s a blessing she’s gone.

Nothing that Bondi did, absolutely nothing, was noteworthy.

She looked like an idiot toting the Epstein binders. She was combative and unprofessional before an admittedly hostile Congress.

She eviscerated protections for immigrants with a heavy hand in regulatory decisions and was a frequent defendant in habeas petitions won by immigration lawyers, including yours truly.

Bondi, whose lineage, like my own, includes the pride of Italy, just couldn’t hack it.

And it’s a shame, because in her former incarnation as a state prosecutor, she was excellent.

But when she became President Trump’s personal avenger, initiating prosecutions against his former political enemies with little to no basis, and when she made it quite clear that the White House was her client, not the aggrieved citizens of the United States and not noncitizens who were still entitled to protection under our Constitution, she became another footnote like former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

But that’s not really fair. I remember when Bondi was picked after Trump was justifiably attacked for nominating former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

I still believe she was the better choice, in the way that lethal injection is preferable to electrocution. There was at least a scintilla of quality there, and she had no history of sexual misconduct.

I also believe that her current partner eschews women’s clothing.

Which brings me to why I’m angry.

Trump prizes loyalty. He believes that this is the most important quality of all, and I suppose it derives from his early tutelage by Roy Cohn and then the revolving door of employees during his first term.

I prize loyalty as well. But when I am a public official paid by public monies and charged with protecting public rights or executing public duties, loyalty is to the, um, public.

It is to due process, the Constitution and our institutions and if that puts you in your supervisor’s crosshairs, you choose your ethical duties, not your boss’s high opinion.

Sadly, Pam couldn’t figure it out.

Neither could Kristi, who engaged in cowboy cosplay for Trump and nearly destroyed DHS with her incompetence.

Neither could the slew of U.S. attorney wannabes like Alina and Lindsey, who are better suited to Mar-A-Lago than Marbury vs. Madison.

I am a woman and a professional. I am an American citizen. I am a conservative who believes that laws are meant to be obeyed, not considered suggestions.

The thought that these women were chosen for their looks and their gender as opposed to their resumes is as repellent to me now, when it’s done to advance so-called conservative goals, as it is when liberals started the whole DEI crap.

Trump has appointed some great women, including Amy Coney Barrett. Ironically, she has provoked the ire of Trump and his loyalists by not using her judicial vote as a “get out of jail free” card for him often enough.

And that’s why she is head and shoulders above the motley crew in his current cabinet.

So I’m not weeping for Pam. I’m sure the president will find another X-Men-sounding job for her as he did for Kristi, something like “Guardian of the Everglades” or “Duchess of the Dow.”

And to my Italian sister, I say, with affection, ciao.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Say “Kermit Gosnell” to someone outside of Philadelphia, and they will look at you with the puzzled expression of someone whose only familiarity with that name comes from a cute little frog singing about rainbows.

Gosnell was an abortionist who operated for more than two decades out of a filthy West Philadelphia clinic that was cited numerous times for health violations.

And yet, for reasons I will get to, he was able to continue killing babies, and women, until he was finally arrested, prosecuted and convicted of first degree murder in the deaths of three infants and involuntary manslaughter in the death of a pregnant woman.

He was also convicted of 21 felony counts of illegal late term abortion.

These were not back-alley horrors, the kind that Planned Parenthood uses to defend abortion like a Hamas terrorist uses Gazans for human shields to cover their evil deeds. They were performed while Roe was still the law of the land.

You would think that a villain of that magnitude would be much more widely known. In fact, just a few weeks ago in Idaho, I was in a coffee shop and happened to mention Gosnell to a young barista who had a big Planned Parenthood button on her T-shirt.

She looked at me as if I’d just asked for my latte in Aramaic. The evil man, who finally did us all a favor by dying this weekand fumigating the air, is notorious only in Philly and perhaps among the national pro-life community.

And the reason why we are the fortunate ones is still, to be honest, a societal problem.

Eight years ago, after the movie “Gosnell” had a very limited release in theaters, I wrote that Gosnell was able to continue his murderous spree for so many years was because pro-choice politicians looking to protect the right to an abortion refused to allow the state to close the clinic.

They looked away, including men and women who should have known better.

Four years later, Supreme Court finally struck down Roe in the Dobbs decision, one that galvanized an already hysterical abortion rights lobby.

In the years leading up to Dobbs, Planned Parenthood and its associated acolytes started mobilizing for the coming “war on women” and became Cassandras of doom.

Every other column from every other female columnist was about how the Trump administration was going to destroy our rights, even though Trump was already out of office by the time the landmark decision was decided.

They pressured Congress, and were completely and totally apoplectic at the prospect that this “right” they’d gaslighted society intobelieving actually had constitutional grounding might evaporate into those penumbras beloved of Justice Harry Blackmum.

You can understand, then, why politicians in so-called “red” Pennsylvania were always intimidated by the abortion lobby, and decided that even though they knew about Gosnell, and even though they had received numerous reports about his commercial butchery, they did nothing.

In fact, when Republican state legislators tried to pass reasonable abortion restrictions like requiring that abortion clinics adhere to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, they went crazy, calling this an assault on a woman’s right to choose.

Fortunately, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed it into law.

To be honest, any time Pennsylvania tried to regulate abortion, the pro-choice lobbyists pushed back, and it became obvious that none of this was about women’s health.

It was about unlimited access to abortion, including the red herrings of “rape and incest” which are loopholes so large that the Trojan Horse — pun absolutely intended — could fit through.

I write this now, a few days after the death of the Butcher of West Philadelphia, to remind all the people who are upset that Roe is no longer around to guarantee “safe” abortions, that Gosnell operated with impunity for over two decades while Roe was still the law of the land.

I write this to remind everyone that even though Roe is gone, they are still trying to whitewash the horrors of the abortion industry.

I write this to remind you, my dear reader, that the reason Gosnell was prosecuted in the first place was despite, and not because of, media attention. There was, in fact, very little attention given to this tragedy.

I write this, most of all, to remind every person with a conscience that silence means consent, and that unless we continue to speak out about the barbarities done in the name of “women’s health,” Kermit Gosnell will just be replaced with other monsters.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Another myth has crumbled, decades after death extinguished the person, but not the legend.

Cesar Chavez, he of United Farmworker fame, he of the marches and the documentaries and the hagiographic histories, has been unmasked as a man with the same sort of sexual proclivities as Jeffrey Epstein.

The New York Times investigation, among other sources, documents years of sexual grooming, abuse and rape of young women.

He was the Mexican Epstein, and if we are to believe the narrative, a monster.

It’s no secret that I have always been a skeptic about the MeToo movement that destroyed many lives, some with justification and some with misplaced vengeance and a sense of entitled victimhood.

I have been excoriated by colleagues, and at least one former editor, for defending Bill Cosby, because I didn’t hate him. It is not enough to condemn the bad acts of these men, you must also destroy them socially and reputationally. That, I will not do.

And I was crucified for not believing Christine Blasey Ford, who dredged up memories of some long ago incident at a high school party to become a hair-flipping attack dog for the MeToo brigade at Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination hearings. I didn’t believe her then. I don’t believe her now.

But I have come to the conclusion we should just accept that human beings are flawed creatures, and expecting perfection is a recipe for delusion and disappointment.

While I don’t think Cosby was a rapist, it’s fairly clear that he was a lascivious hedonist who took advantage of his fame and his wealth to attract women who should have known better but were dazzled by his status.

Chavez is far, far worse than Cosby. The icon of the farmworker movement is being accused of a form of predation that dwarfs anything JFK, MLK, FDR or our more recent targets, Hillary’s and Melania’s respective husbands, allegedly committed.

If what they are saying is true, I hope Chavez will be buried under the weight of his own sort of friendly fire, that being the testimony of his comrade in arms, his partner in the long march towards justice, Dolores Huerta.

Huerta is a legend in her own right, whose mural I passed by in Boise, Idaho, last weekend.

It was a reminder, before this scandal exploded, that she was at least as consequential as the man who gave his name to the movement of Chicano dignity.

And now, her own legacy is complicated by her actions. On the one hand, she states quite clearly she was a victim of abuse herself, and then found out her comrade in arms was doing the same thing to countless other women over generations.

She remained silent until last week, which is far from admirable. She allowed these girls to suffer the same abuse that she did, which is not Ghislaine Maxwell territory but does show an amazing lack of awareness that what was going on was evil.

She herself admits that it was done partly out of a fear that speaking out would damage the legacy of the Farmworker Movement.

That is unacceptable, no matter how you look at it.

On the other hand, I find some grace in her struggle. What I find truly honorable, is that when she became pregnant by Chavez,giving birth twice, she did not take the easy path of aborting her children.

She gave them life. She honored them, by allowing them to exist, when so many other women would have hidden the perceivedshame.

We have been told that rape is an important exception to abortion bans, and a legend in the history of civil rights activism chose life.

That, to me, must be considered as a small ray of light in this dark, dark tragedy.

If what has been stated about Chavez is true, he should be remembered in the same way that we remember any predatory creature.

Let’s see if the admirers will do to him what they have done to the people who do not share their politics, and erase him.

I’m skeptical, but let’s see what happens.

In order to cleanse our minds of the dirt that once covered the fruit and vegetables of the many farmworkers who worshippedChavez, let us focus, during this Women’s History Month, on Dolores Huerta, who showed enough courage to, if not speak out,at least let her babies live.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I’ve received a few letters from readers over the past few weeks asking me why I keep writing about antisemitism. One was a simple question, with no negative intent. The others run the gamut between “stop carrying water for the Jews” to “anti-Zionism isn’t Jew hatred so stop it” to “you’re a two-note moron: abortion and the Jews.”

That’s not surprising, and I don’t take it as an insult since it means that people are doing what I always hope they’ll do: read my opinions. But I have to admit, I’d love to write about something else, like the Philadelphia Flower Show, or my hatred of daylight saving time, or the Oscars.

But like Michael Corleone in that horrific third installment of “The Godfather,” just when I think I’m out of it, they pull me back in.

This time it was primarily the wife of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani who did the heavy lifting, or pulling, as it were. Rama Duwaji, who identifies as an artist and is Syrian-American, has been exposed as a Jew hater of the highest order, having liked dozens of posts that celebrated the mass murder perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

Duwaji, who has been featured on a number of magazine covers since her move to Gracie Mansion, has had a relatively undistinguished professional career, which is probably why her husband called her a “private citizen.” She is so private, hardly anyone outside of New York knows who she is.

But the Gaza Groupies, the sick cheerleaders of a death cult, know her well. She has thrown emotional support to their cause, celebrating the rape and murder of women and children with a flick of her New York finger.

I criticized her on X in a post that got almost 20,000 likes, so it wasn’t an entirely bad week. She is, as Maya Angelou said, telling us who she is, and millions of us believe her. And her hubby is quite wrong to give her a pass on her Jew hatred. She may be an insignificant artiste-wannabe, but no “private” citizen gets to live rent free at the public’s expense. With Mrs. Mamdani in residence, it should be called Disgracie Mansion.

And of course, she refuses to apologize.

Another woman who refuses to say she’s sorry is Megyn Kelly. Many readers would be shocked at my comparing Catholic “conservative” podcaster Megyn with Rama Dujawi. It’s true there are significant differences. The former Fox News superstar is arguably intelligent whereas Zohran’s little strudel doesn’t give off smart vibes. Megyn is accomplished, has several degrees and doesn’t mistake crayon posters for art. But they have this in common: They both refuse to apologize for their despicable treatment of the country’s Jewish population.

Rama is the more obvious one, as noted above, joyously celebrating the 21st century Holocaust of October 7th. There is no mistaking her political and moral views on the topic.

Megyn, because she’s smarter, is more subtle. She does not openly spout antisemitic rhetoric and has a paper trail of saying the right things about her Jewish friends (most of them now former) in the pod sphere. But she refuses to condemn raging Jew haters like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, cozies up to people who platform antisemites like Piers Morgan and mocks the very legitimate concerns of more authentic commentators like Ben Shapiro and her once ride-or-die Dave Rubin. Even Sean Hannity, who is no one’s idea of a liberal, and some of her erstwhile podcast guests like Bethany Mandel have jumped off of the Kelly express, wondering what happened to her.

And when people point it out, begging her to come to her senses she doubles down by saying she’d rather die than condemn Candace, the woman who has compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Satan.

Rama and Megyn are opposite sides of the same coin. Mrs. Mamdani represents the absolute worst of the pro-Hamas left, trying to cloak their embrace of terrorism and hatred of Jews behind a facade of human rights. Rama cares deeply about Gazan babies who are victims of their parents’ tragic political choices but has no concern for murdered Israeli toddlers whose only crime was being born Jewish.

Megyn is the much prettier but equally lethal face of right-wing antisemitism, a philosophy that hides its bigotry behind what it pretends is legitimate criticism of Israel or America First isolationism.

This country should shun both of them, and the movements they represent.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Years ago, when I first started to handle asylum cases, I had a consultation with a man from Iran who managed to get tourist visas for himself, his wife and his two young daughters.

This was 20 years after the Shah had been deposed and the Ayatollah Khomeini and his thugs had kidnapped Americans at our consulate in Tehran, and 16 years after Iran financed the bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, killing almost 300 of our young men.

The man was a member of the Bah’ai faith, which was one of the many groups being persecuted under the Islamic Republic. It was considered an “apostate” faith, traitorous to Islam since it was an offshoot of the religion.

My client and his family suffered horror after horror, including having to watch his father’s own body rot in their front yard because the regime denied burials to members of the religion.

Today, the man, his wife, and his daughters are living happily in the U.S. as citizens.

This was my limited contact with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime so brutal even its Arab neighbors saw it as an enemy.

Iran has waged actual wars against its despised enemy, Iraq, and proxy wars through the terror groups that it funded: Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda.

There is no question that Iran is at the center of what we once called the “Axis of Evil.”

And it has been a threat to the United States for decades. To hear some people on what is now called the “woke right” criticizing our intervention this past week as “Israel’s War” is both an example of ignorance and bigotry.

The ignorance comes from the fact that at least as many Americans have been victims of this regime as Israelis. The bigotry is an example of what I have been decrying these last weeks in my columns: Jew hatred.

I am using that term instead of “antisemitism” because many of those on the “woke right” have been telling us that Arabs are also Semites and, therefore, the word is incorrect.

That is a smokescreen for the actual bigotry of the intention, but I’ll play along. Calling this “Israel’s War” is Jew hatred, and I don’tcare how many conservatives become apoplectic.

Some things are so obvious that they cannot be reasoned away by sober arguments about “forever wars” and isolationism.

It is true that one of the principles of MAGA is America First, which is why I refuse to claim that label. I voted for Donald Trump two times, enthusiastically at first because I believed that he would help us overturn Roe with his judicial picks — mission accomplished! — and holding my nose the second time because I could not stomach a Biden presidency.

The devastation in Afghanistan vindicated my choice.

This time, I did not vote for him, but instead wrote in the name of Marco Rubio, a man who represents my vision of the GOP.

Ironically, Trump did me a huge favor by making him secretary of state, a role that he has played with great effectiveness, andengagement in the international community.

My larger point is this: Even if MAGA is in favor of the interests of America foremost and exclusively, annihilating a regime that has kept Iran in its stranglehold for many years was an act of patriotism toward the hostages in Tehran, the murdered Marines in Beirut, and all of the other U.S. victims of terror around the world.

This is, indeed, America First.

That’s why I have no time or stomach for people like Megyn Kelly, who found fame and fortune following the blowing winds and figuring out which hurricane to follow.

She is a chameleon whom I never trusted and who has changed colors more times than a disco glitter ball on the set of “Saturday Night Fever.”

She is in good company with a man colloquially known as Tucker Qatar-lson, whose loyalties are not only suspect, they are obvious, faux Catholic kook Candace Owens, conspiracy quack Glenn Greenwald and others who are either guided by animus towards Israel, or a desire to placate the Arab world.

Little do they know that the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, has different ideas about what is in its own welfare.

I strongly support our actions in Iran. The process might be flawed, and there are issues about how it is managed, but the motivation was justified.

My old client, the hostages in Tehran, and the souls of those Marines would surely agree.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Looking for a good movie the other evening, I came across one that I’d missed when it was out in theaters about a decade ago: “The Mighty Macs.”

This was a slightly fictionalized version of a true-life triumph: small Catholic women’s college fields a basketball team, and miracles happen.

Immaculata College, with girls in skirted uniforms, stunned the nation and won a national title. And another. And another. Hence, the Mighty Macs.

Although a bit stylized in the way that Disney tends to do these things, sanding down the rougher edges of reality, it was incredibly moving to see a part of my own history portrayed so beautifully onscreen.

I say “my own history” even though I never bounced a basketball, because this was Immaculata. If you went to a Catholic single-sex high school in the 1970s, you felt incredibly proud of these older women who brought glory to the tribe.

There was very little support for women’s athletics in the early ’70s. Yes, the third wave feminists were definitely doing their thing across the land, but at small Catholic institutions, they didn’t have much of a foothold. We had nuns. We did not need, or want, bra burners.

Fast forward a half century. Now, women’s sports are well funded, well respected, and widely watched.

There are “girl dads” who proudly tout the accomplishments of their daughters, which is a good thing.

There are high profile champions, some with pink hair, who lobby for equal pay, equal airtime, equal everything.

Of course, it is notable that many of these women also welcome the inclusion of people who were not born as women but want to use our bathrooms.

With the rare exceptions like Martina Navratilova, Riley Gaines and Jennifer Sey, most of these “girl power” women are a bit squishy on the “girl” part.

As I was watching “The Mighty Macs,” with their joy and their humility in the face of such an awesome destiny, I thought of the women’s gold medal hockey team, their supporters, and the reaction to the recent kerfuffle in the Olympic locker room concerning that other hockey team.

That other hockey team, the one with young men who were boisterous and loud and perhaps not as polite as society commands, had just won a gold medal.

They had just beaten the heavy odds and snatched victory from the reigning Canadians, their forever nemesis. They had done it 46 years to the day the last U.S. men’s hockey team had won gold, that “Miracle on Ice” that was also beautifully fictionalized in Disney fashion.

Most importantly for those of us from the Philadelphia area, this was the group of young men who honored their dead teammate, Johnny “Hockey” Gaudreau, who was tragically killed by a drunk driver along with his brother, Matty, two years ago this summer.

When they hoisted his jersey and skated around the ice, tears came to my eyes. When they scooped up his tiny, beautiful children and made sure they were a forever part of the team photo, I lost it. I sobbed.

This was the team that was then the target of attacks, of accusations of misogyny, of being the worst expression of the white patriarchy.

I don’t have space, here, to include all of the catty, mean girl comments made about the men’s team. Most of them were aimed at shaming the men into not going to the White House and not attending the State of the Union, because the women hadn’t been invited quickly enough.

Many of the ladies were outraged the guys, celebrating their unexpected victory in the locker room and exulting in the plaudits of the FBI director — no, he should not have been there — and the president actually laughed at a funny joke from the hated “Orange Man.”

Frankly, I think Donald showed a great sense of humor, and his words were almost prophetic. He said that he’d better invite the women or he’d be impeached.

He hasn’t been impeached, yet, but that’s about the only thing the ladies and their male allies haven’t threatened.

My point is we need to stop finding misogyny in our cereal bowls, ladies. We need to stop screaming about the respect we are owed because we’re proving we don’t deserve it when we act like toddlers.

Be like the Mighty Macs, not a fan of Miss Rachel.

Yes, the women’s hockey team, which was supposed to win and did win, deserves the glory and the praise.

But let’s be honest. The stars this week were the men, the ones who created another Miracle on Ice, the ones who were giddy with joy, and the ones who remembered their fallen brother.

The women won gold. The men were golden.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

There’s a lot of hatred in the world today.

For a while, starting from when I was a young girl, it was classless to openly display your bigotry.

People would whisper among themselves about “the others,” and epithets were spoken at cocktail parties and behind closedoffice doors, but people were savvy enough not to come to work wearing white sheets.

Lately, however, that has changed.

I’ve already talked about the damage being done to our Jewish communities by the blatant antisemitism displayed by anti-Zionists of all stripes, including other Jews who somehow believe that “from the river to the sea” is a cool slogan and not a suicidal chant.

But there are others who have been the target of hatred, and sometimes the attacks come from the highest echelons.

Who can forget our president stating at a debate two years ago that “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats,” when referring to Haitians?

His vice president doubled down on that claim.

We had a congressman named Randy Fine recently compare Muslims to dogs, and prefer the dogs.

Dogs are great, but this immigration attorney has dealt with some incredibly heroic Muslims, so Randy Fine is clearly … not fine.

The White House depicts our first and only Black president and his wife as apes, and then doesn’t even apologize for it.

On a thread about the restoration of the Columbus statue in Delaware, there were a lot of anti-Italian slurs being thrown around. My very favorites were the one from a chick who said she was “third generation Italian,” and she hated the genocidal maniac.

It’s always a tell in poker when someone says, “I’m an Italian,” because what usually follows is anti-Italian merda. The same goes for the Jews who oppose Israel, Catholics who support abortion, and Republicans who hate the GOP.

Even the dumb blonde jokes are making me feel bad for Megyn Kelly, who is neither really blonde nor actually dumb.

It’s not that these attacks are new. I’ve been called the Catholic Whore of Babylon on at least two social occasions, both with that wry “you know I’m only joking” attitude when I knew they were absolutely serious.

And the joke’s on them, since, as I always make sure to mention, I didn’t even have a date until I was 25.

The problem is the attacks are in the open, public, and they come from people with influence.

These are not just some anonymous Twitter trolls sliding into your DMs to tell you that you are an old hag who will burn in hellbecause of your faith.

These are people with prestige, who now feel free to spout their bigotry from the mountaintops. At least before they hid their hatred.

And while in some cases it is good to know how people feel about you, there is something incredibly toxic about a society that has no inner voice saying “shut up, just shut the heck up.”

A local journalist with whom I was not friends, and who was quite vocal about his hostility towards me, passed away. I could have published the comments he’d made.

A few years ago, I would have. I’m a feisty broad and not inclined to kumbaya. But the hatred and the anger in the air have enough fuel, and I’m not interested at this point in providing backup.

Plus, he died. That kind of ends the discussion.

My father, of whom I’ve spoken on many occasions, was a man who had no problem expressing his views on any topic. Teddy expressed those views in some dangerous places, like the segregated South in the late 1960s.

He expressed those views that all men deserved the protection of the laws in front of bigoted white good ole’ boy judges, in courtrooms that reminded you of “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

And this Irish Catholic was joined by black lawyers, and Jewish lawyers, and Italian lawyers and there were priestsand rabbis and ministers doing the same thing. They locked arms and walked together.

Today, there is profit in division. We don’t march together anymore. We run at each other, with knives.

As my good friend Felix said to me, “What anti-Semites (or racists) do is judge individuals because they are part of groups thathave bad actors.”

He’s right. I’m sick of Carrie Prejean, Randy Fine, President Trump, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Nancy Pelosi, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Adam Kinzinger, and all the rest.

And I’m glad Teddy, may his memory be for a blessing, isn’t here to see it.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I thought I could abandon the topic of antisemitism for a few weeks.

There was Pam Bondi to ridicule, ICE raids to criticize, and an idiotic Super Bowl halftime show performed in Spanish by a guy who didn’t want us to know how misogynistic he really is.

But then a woman whom I shall call “insta-Catholic” opened her mouth and, like Michael Corleone, they pulled me back in.

Carrie Prejean is a former beauty queen who won the Miss California crown in 2009 and competed at the national pageant defended “opposite sex” marriage in the question-and-answer segment.

Needless to say, she did not become Miss USA. She also lost her state title, very likely because of her controversial views.

I admired her for speaking out. Back in 2009, I also opposed “opposite sex” marriage, even though I called it same-sex marriage, like the rest of the world.

I didn’t believe there was a constitutional basis for the right, just as I don’t believe there was ever a constitutional basis for abortion. But society and the courts disagreed, and I’ve moved on.

So did Carrie. She parlayed her semi-notoriety into a gig as a COVID conservative who opposed masking children and then went all in on the trans issues. She’d recently been appointed to Trump’s White House Religious Liberty Commission. More on her in a minute.

When I last wrote about antisemitism, I mentioned my own faith had a lot of explaining to do for our centuries of Jew hatred: The Inquisition, the blind eye to the Holocaust from the highest echelons, the blood libels that we helped perpetuate.

Yes, there were the silent heroes, like Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish Catholic priest and the leader of an anti-Nazi resistance group in Rome. Through his connections and his savvy mind, he was able to save 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers.

That he worked miracles is amazing. That he had to do it in darkness is disturbing.

I write, now, about this great example of Catholic moral heroism to remind my brothers and sisters in faith that we cannot allow ourselves to backslide into the tarpits of antisemitism.

I know that we will not be marching with torches, saying things like “The Jews will not replace us.” That is so 2017.

But some of us have absolutely no problem pretending that anti-Zionism is not a veiled form of antisemitism, and saying things like “The Jews killed Jesus.”

I know this because insta-Catholic Carrie Prejean made exactly those comments the other day during a seminar on antisemitism held in D.C.

Prejean made those remarks in her official capacity, while sporting an enamel pin of Palestine on her lapel. I call her insta-Catholic because she’s only been one of us for about a year.

I have no idea what she was before she joined the family.

I do know that this recent convert hasn’t gotten the memo that no, the Jews did not kill Jesus. If we are going to be picky about it, my ancestors, the Romans, did that.

True, the Jews were involved at some level, but I’m pretty sure that Pontius Pilate didn’t keep kosher.

The point is that when a non-Jew says that the Jews killed “our savior,” they are pointing fingers and blaming innocent men and women for what we consider to be one of the greatest crimes of humanity.

Children who grew up hearing “the Jews killed Jesus” have no problem internalizing their bigotry.

That was on full display when Prejean was removed from the commission by an embarrassed White House. She became a martyr for religious freedom, with fans saying things like “Israel just killed another one” and “Why does America have to always bend the knee to Jews?”

This is not like the hanging of Jews in effigy, which just happened in Philadelphia. This is the more subtle sort of racism that seeps into the bones and becomes part of our marrow.

Catch them young, you have them for life. Except, you don’t.

Good Catholics see the bigotry of a new convert like Carrie, and we reject her. We celebrate her firing, and we scream, “Not in our name!”

Even Bill Donohoe of the Catholic League, a formidable conservative, condemned Prejean.

Not in our name.

So score one for the good guys this week.

And if you’re interested in a true Catholic hero, one who wasn’t as pretty as Prejean but who surely wears a better crown than Miss California, read up on Hugh O’Flaherty, a very righteous gentile.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

One of my favorite stars is Gregory Peck, because he embodied what I always believed to be the American ideal: a handsome man who spoke quietly, but whose moral center was rock solid.

Of course, he was Atticus Finch, fighting racists in the Deep South. But the role that really solidified his personification of our better angels was “Gentleman’sAgreement.” If you haven’t seen this black-and-white classic, you are missing out on one of the greatest “message” movies of the golden age.

It is about antisemitism, not the kind that comes in white sheets and with burning crosses, not the kind thatmetastasizes as swastikas on synagogues, but the more subtle version that manifests in sideways glances, exclusion from country clubs, the inability to buy homes in certain neighborhoods and the perpetuation of a centuries old lie that “the Jews Killed Jesus.”

Growing up, I was exposed to that sort of antisemitism.

A Catholic child who was born before Vatican II and made her sacraments when it was still a very new thing, I understood the role that my beloved church had played in the perpetuation of hatred against an entire race of people.

We have tried to make our amends, and the greatest pope in my lifetime apologized for our silence and ourcruelty, but even John Paul II could not erase the stain of antisemitism among Catholics.

We still have a lot of work to do, and believe me, we are doing it.

Other Christians are doing heavy lifting as well, although sadly, I have seen outcroppings of hatred manifested in people like Tucker Carlson, who accuses Israel of killing Christians but never raised his voice about the massacre of our people in Nigeria, in Syria, in China and in every other country not filled with Jews.

Then there is Candace Owens, who converted to Catholicism just so she could lie about Israel. There are a lot of similar folks on the right, and I condemn them, unlike certain popular podcasters who care more about their celebrity status than they do about their integrity.

I’m looking at you, “MK.”

But lately, it is not the right that is trafficking in antisemitism. It is the left, filled with intellectuals and social liberals who are marching in the streets to defend the rights of immigrants and who emptied the crafts stores of pink yarn for those insipid “MeToo” hats, but who are silent when it comes to the hanging of Jews in effigy.

Late last month, during one of the coldest weeks in recent history, a group of far-left agitators took overbeautiful Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia and shouted out their support for Hamas.

They said it was about the children in Gaza, but they hoisted up a scarecrow-like figure of a Jew and swung it by the neck.

There was no attempt to collect money to feed hungry Gazan babies. There was no GoFund Me site forDoctors Without Borders, so that they could patch up the wounds.

This was blatant Jew hatred, as obvious and as vile as the KKK with their percale sheets and their threatening torches.

The thing is, you wouldn’t really know about it if you didn’t pay attention. There were no stories in thelocal newspapers. I didn’t see any of the TV stations do an in depth report on this hate crime.

I didn’t hear our local NPR radio station dive deep into the roots of this obscenity. The only station that seemed at all interested was Fox, and while I commend them, I am also sure that they were happy to allowliberals to show themselves as bigots.

It was good PR for the team.

I don’t belong to any teams, except the one called humanity.

Whether you are conservative or liberal, you should be screaming in anger and defiance when you see a group of racists committing a hate crime in the most beautiful park in the city.

There were a few who did come through and showed their great character. Most notable wasPennsylvania state Sen. Sharif Street, who wrote these moving words on social media: “I forcefullycondemn the antisemitic rally that took place today in Rittenhouse Square. As an American Muslim, I feel compelled to say that Hamas is a terrorist organization and should be condemned — not glorified.”

Street is a Democrat. He is one of the good ones, who is able to call out bigotry when he sees it.

I am still a bit shocked that this faux Jew lynching was allowed on public property. Perhaps it was animpromptu expression of antisemitic hatred.

Perhaps not.

Either way, the one good thing about the overt kind of bigotry is that you can’t mistake it for anything else.

It’s not a wink, or a nod, or a refusal to let you into the club. It is here, as it has always been.

And those who are poisoned with it, like Carlson, Candace Owens and the pro-Hamas zealots need to be told that we see them.

And their time is up.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

ICE has been out of control over the past few months, and particularly since the beginning of this year.

Over the three decades I’ve been practicing immigration law, I’ve never seen the level of chaos and division, fomented by the rhetoric of Donald Trump’s DHS and front woman Kristi Noem and the Dark Prince of D.C., Stephen Miller.

The lies about “domestic terrorists” like Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse. It should repel everyone who saw the videos of his murder.

They shot him while he was facedown, immobile, likely taking his last breaths.

If you are capable of justifying that, you should skip over the rest of my column because I write in a language you don’t understand.

Yes, he had a gun, with a license to carry.

Foolish of him to bring it to a volatile situation, one where other people also had guns and the legal authority to use them.

And there is another video of him engaging with ICE agents in a violent manner, attacking their vehicles and screaming expletives.

That bit of phone camera verite shows us that he was not a martyr. He was not an angel.

He was far from perfect, and clearly a man with anger issues. The people who leaked that video have the same sort of agenda as the activists who film ICE, hoping to catch them in these moments of unrest.

Everyone has their motives, and don’t be fooled by the folks who turn these Anti-ICE stalkers into patriots.

They are people exercising a constitutional right to place their philosophical enemies in a bad light. This talk of transparency and “keeping them honest” is cover for people who, in their homes use expletives that rhyme with “Duck? Nice!”

I am someone who has been very busy these past months, heading to court to represent clients who, by every metric, deserve to be granted asylum but who, because of Trump’s manipulation of due process, are being ordered deported.

Under Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton and even in some cases Trump 1, they had a chance to avoid the hell they’d fled.

I have represented women who have had their private parts butchered out of tribal custom, who have been shot at by their husbands, children who have been sexually abused by their grandfathers, young evangelical preachers who were threatened with death by gangs, young Catholic women beaten into a miscarriage by their boyfriends, angered that they would not get an abortion.

I have represented young gay men, brutalized by the police, political dissidents from Albania, Muslim men who built schools for girls and were shot at by the Taliban.

I have represented Lebanese police officers tortured by Syrians, Iranian dissidents, victims of torture in Guinea, and so many others they blend together in a fog of anguish before my eyes. These are the ones who won asylum, before Noem and Miller and Bondi and the judges started shutting the gates.

I write this so you know that I am not the sort of person who thinks Alex Pretti caused his own death, or that Renee Goode aimed for Agent Ross. I write this as someone who watches in horror as people paid to pick up the criminals instead target little children with backpacks while their fathers run in justifiable fear.

I write this as someone who taught herself how to file habeas petitions at the ripe old age of 64 after years of never having to, because immigration judges used to follow the law.

Now, they make it up and higher authorities need to correct their tragic errors.

But I also write this as someone who is tired of the canonization of people who deliberately insert themselves into law enforcement operations.

Alex Pretti and the women he was defending frustrated Border Patrol agents who were trying to apprehend a man credibly accused of domestic violence and allowed that criminal to escape. And this is not an isolated incident.

I have had to thread my way through protesters to accompany clients into ICE check-ins. These protests do nothing to calm the fears of people who are trying to comply with the law.

The singers, and the women and men with arms linked and whistling may think they are like the brave men and women who crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge, but they are not.

They can protest. That is their constitutional right.

But obstruction, trespass, threats, kicking the tail lights of cars and other narcissistic expressions of protagonism add to the climate of fear already ginned up by the bigots in the White House.

It is simply the same form of hostility displayed by incompetent Noem and arrogant Miller, just directed at different targets.

ICE needs to stop terrorizing immigrant communities with their raids and their lack of professionalism.

These are not the agents I have known and respected for decades. These are untrained amateurs playing with their shiny toys and the power they’ve been given to the tune of billions of dollars.

But the people who hate ICE need a reality check: They’re not as righteous as they’ve been told they are by CNN.

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Copyright 2026 Christine Flowers, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].