Cagle World

A few years ago, I had to do some research into the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act, colloquially known as FACE.

Every pro-lifer in the country knows about this law, signed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to protect abortion clinics from, essentially, me.

When I say “me,” I’m not exactly referring to people who hold rosaries and pray the Hail Mary while abortion supporters yell mean things about my mother.

FACE was meant to address what was then a growing epidemic of violence against people and places that provided abortion services.

While I am as pro-life as they come, refusing to even acknowledge an exception for rape or incest, I acknowledge that there are violent people in the anti-abortion movement.

There are men like Eric Rudolph, the notorious Atlanta Olympics Bomber, who two years later bombed a clinic in Birmingham, Ala., killing an off-duty police officer.

There was Scott Roeder, who shot Dr. George Tiller outside of a church service in Nebraska, killing one of the only physicians in the country who performed late-term abortions.

There was Paul Hill, who murdered Dr. Bayard Britton and a clinic volunteer in Pensacola, Florida; Michael Griffin, who murdered Dr. David Gunn, also in Florida; and James Kopp, who shot and killed Dr. Barnett Slepian as he was coming home from attending his own father’s funeral.

There were women, too, most notably Shelly Shannon, who shot at Dr. Tiller years before he was gunned down by Roeder. She unapologetically defended her acts by comparing abortion providers to Hitler.

There is no doubt that FACE was enacted to protect people exercising what was then their constitutionalright to an abortion.

Although that right was overturned in 2024 to the great joy and delight of this columnist, it is nonetheless true that abortion was a fundamental right until the Dobbs decision, and people were entitled to exercise that right without fearing for their own lives.

Interestingly, though, there is a part of FACE that is never discussed. Perhaps as a grudging nod to the conservatives who weren’t too thrilled to have federal law protecting abortion clinics, Congress included places of worship in the Act, writing:

“Whoever — by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship … shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection (b) and the civil remedies provided in subsection (c).”

Those penalties include fines and the possibility of imprisonment of up to three years in a federal facility.

I’m sure that the drafters of the Act weren’t contemplating that a band of anti-ICE protesters was going to invade a church in Minnesota and terrorize the congregation, including little children.

Their idea of a threat was likely limited to the folks who protested at abortion clinics.

They envisioned middle-aged white men armed with guns or at least with pictures of bloody aborted fetuses screaming at women in front of Planned Parenthood.

The truth is that the vast majority of pro-lifers simply stand in silent prayer, and speaking for myself, the only weapon I carry is what someone once termed my “assault rosaries.”

But times they are a-changing, and there was an invasion of a church this month, ostensibly because of rumors that its pastor worked for ICE.

A group of people, many of them wearing masks, rushed into the church and deliberately disrupted the services, chanting things that no child should be forced to hear while sitting in a pew.

Now, anyone who has read my recent columns knows that I strongly oppose the actions of this government when it comes to immigration.

I’m especially angered by the inhumanity displayed by ICE when it arrests people whose only crime is being undocumented. There is a brutality that I have not seen in many years.

What happened in Minnesota was a disgusting display of arrogance, bigotry, ignorance and hypocrisy. It was also a federal crime. People who stormed that church should be charged under the FACE Act, just as so many pro-lifers have had to defend themselves in federal court.

We cannot sit by while radical extremists show blatant disregard for the First Amendment rights of worshippers, regardless of the faith they profess or the opinions they hold, simply because they disagree with the government.

Last time I checked, the Free Exercise Clause was still in effect, and didn’t come with an asterisk that said “unless we don’t like your politics.”

So excuse me for smiling when the DOJ files charges against these disrupters, using a law that was meant to keep me from praying in front of an abortion clinic with my lethal beads.

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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 studied the classical philosophers in college, including Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.

But the most profound advice I’ve culled over a lifetime of scholarship has come from contemporary pop stars. The Beatles reminded me in a rather pithy way that “All You Need Is Love,” although I believe they might have stolen that from Jesus, or Burt Bacharach.

The Vogues taught me that it’s a “Five O’Clock World” and not to lose sight of life’s fleeting pleasures. Bobby Sherman advised me that material possessions are irrelevant, as they “Easy Come, Easy Go.”

Scott McKenzie convinced me not to go to San Francisco because it would make a mess of my hair, and the Hollies reinforced my belief that public transportation was not only indispensable, it might even lead to meeting my soulmate at the “Bus Stop.”

That same iconic group reminded me that even if he didn’t take Ozempic, he’s still my brother.

But the most important lesson I ever learned came from Mick Jagger, who told me in the clearest terms that “You Can’t Always Get What You Want, But You Get What You Need.” It has served me well over the years, especially since I am the eldest of five siblings and not accustomed to hearing the word “no.”

Fortunately for the international community, especially Denmark, I am not the president of the United States.

Yes, I’m talking about Greenland.

I have heard more about that island in the past few months than I have since my father passed away in 1982. I mention Ted Flowers because he was my first exposure to the giant hunk of ice which has, not coincidentally, rare earth minerals and oil as its more delightful attributes.

Daddy was stationed up in Thule for two years during the Cold War right after graduating high school in 1956. He was working at a NORAD location that was crucial to the allied ability to watch over the Soviets.

At that time, Greenland was, as it is now, “owned” by Denmark.

In fact, as of this past month, Greenland has been a part of the Kingdom of Denmark for 212 years.

This leads to the obvious conclusion that the Danes were always quite generous in allowing U.S. troops to use their territory to protect our shared security interests. They haven’t kicked us out or terminated our lease, as far as I know. We are not squatters seeking some bizarre sort of international adverse possession.

The other inescapable observation is that after 212 years, you’d think people would notice exactly who is the landlord here, and it’s not Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, that brings us back to Mick Jagger and now, Donald Trump.

President Trump wants Greenland. He says it’s crucial to our national security interests, which is true.

Teddy Flowers could have told you that 70 years ago. But Trump isn’t interested in the sort of arrangement where we are welcome guests in someone else’s home. He wants the home.

He wants to evict the rightful owners, no matter how accommodating they have been. To use an analogy he might understand, the president wants to buy Boardwalk while playing Monopoly, even though it’s not his turn and somebody else already landed on it 212 years before.

Additionally, it’s not a stretch to think Trump cares at least as much about that oil and those mineral rights than he does about our national security.

That’s because Denmark has never denied us anything we have asked in terms of military support, and has been a staunch and humble ally. Treating it with such incredible disrespect indicates, with apologies to a famous Dane, that something is rotten and it ain’t in Denmark.

I have never made a secret of the fact that I am an internationalist or, as some of my more virulent right wing critics have called me, a globalist.

Those who know what I do for a living assume that I simply don’t care about national borders and don’t value our national interest as much as I do the universal community. That is not at all true, but it fits a tidy “America First” narrative. I actually very much believe in borders and sovereign rights.

That’s why I find it troubling that anyone believes Donald Trump can force a sovereign nation to give up its property, particularly through bribery. Offering to pay Greenlanders to become part of the U.S. is laughable, in the kindest interpretation.

Which brings me back to Mick Jagger.

The president needs to learn that he can’t always get what he wants, but he will indeed get what he needs, which is a lesson in what happens when you tell a sovereign European nation that you don’t give a damn about its borders.

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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].

It finally dawned on me the connections we make on social media have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

This is why I never tried online dating.

I know people who found love that way, including a few “silver singles” who managed to excavate that one rare diamond from the relationship tar pits. But the internet is more subterfuge than substance. And social media is quite worthless as a conduit to platonic happiness.

Maybe I’m naïve. I abandoned Twitter/X a while ago, after I received some rather shady email threats because of my writing.

Of course, the same sort of people who issue death threats are the same ones who buy generic dog food for their elderly Labrador, so I’m pretty sure they’re too cheap to actually buy a plane ticket or gas up the car to come after me in person.

I held on to Facebook and some “friends” who I’d never actually met, but who seemed like the kind of people I’d share coffee and chicken soup with, the sort of people who would be kind enough not to point outthat I used a dangling participle in this sentence.

They are Catholic like me, so they’d know, but they’d maintain a polite grammatical silence.

I held onto them, even though we disagreed on some political issues, even though they were pro-choice, even though they supported the legalization of pot and even though in some cases, they supported theNew York Giants.

I was unable to continue conversations with Dallas fans, however, finding that this was a bridge too far over the Rio Grande for this Philly girl.

But last week, an ICE agent shot a woman in the face because she disobeyed a traffic order where he yelled at her to “get out of the f*****g car!” and some of the aforementioned “friends” didn’t see this as a crime, much less a tragedy.

A few of them mumbled platitudes about how it was “sad” or “regrettable” that she was killed but that, after all, she had rammed a law enforcement agent with her car so he was justified in making her 6-year-old an orphan.

There are a lot of things in life that have shocked me, and I’m no Pollyanna, but this one hurt.

I always tried to take a rather balanced view of the extremists on both sides of the political aisle, giving a bit more charity to my fellow travelers on the right.

And I have won awards for writing about the dangerous job that police officers confront on a daily basis, including one from the National Association of Black Journalists for a piece on the murder of Philly Police Sgt. Robert Wilson, killed on his son’s birthday while trying to disrupt a robbery in progress.

I sometimes get yelled at from police cars with the windows rolled down with officers “thanking” me by name for my support.

I have law enforcement in my family.

And every time I pass by the brass plaque dedicated to the memory of Danny Faulkner, gunned down in cold blood by the racist amateur journalist Wesley Cook, a/k/a Mumia Abu Jamal, I say a prayer and I spit into the wind at the thought of his murderer.

But I’m not blind.

I have seen as many Zapruder videos of what happened in Minneapolis as possible, and I talked to law enforcement officers who know about the protocols, and I thought back on the ICE agents that I have known for over 20 years who would never have done anything like this, and I’m convinced that Renee Good was unjustly killed.

I am not a criminal attorney, so I cannot say “murdered.”

I can’t authoritatively discuss the grades of culpability.

What I do know is that shooting a woman in the face, a person who has not aimed her car at you but was in fact turning in the other direction, who was not, in fact, blocking a roadway but had let other cars pass, who was not in fact a “domestic terrorist” is an illegal act.

Sadly for me, there are a lot of people who disagree.

Most of them are not in law enforcement, but they are supporters of this administration’s draconian policies with respect to immigration.

And while I could understand their confusion about whether Kilmar should be deported, and I sympathize with their anger at criminal aliens, I have no stomach for anyone who thinks shooting a mother in the face is an acceptable response to anything in this world.

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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 hate hypocrisy.

That is why, from my first sentient moments, I knew I could never call myself a liberal.

Even before I abandoned the Democratic Party 10 years ago after a 38-year stint, I knew I wasn’t made out for the progressive life.

And as the party became much more draconian in its standards of who fit and who did not, I realized that there was no place for me in an organization that talked big sentences about human and civil rights, but insisted on allowing women to destroy their unborn children.

But Democrat and liberal are not interchangeable terms, just as Republican and conservative are not synonyms.

Political parties are forced to abandon purity and prostitute themselves to poll numbers. They call it “a big tent,” except the tent has no place for dissent. It’s simply a way to look better to the tent makers.

And conservatives are capable of hypocrisy as well, when they wax eloquent about law and order but celebrate when the president systematically destroys due process because they don’t like “illegals.”

If they loved the law as much as they say they do, they’d stop listening to social media scholars and realize the U.S. Constitution applies to us all, citizen and stranger, which is exactly the thing that sets us apart in the world.

But overall, I’ve found that I live more comfortably among those on the right. Not the extreme right and not the Trump right, but those who speak honestly and clearly about their values. I have never seen that on the left, not even when I lived with them.

But a few recent events reminded me hate might not have a home in those blue neighborhoods, but doublespeak and dishonesty sure do.

The most glaring: Brigitte Bardot, the iconic French sex symbol who died at the age of 90 last week.

Most of us on this side of the Atlantic know her for her sensual beauty and the fact that she was married to the same man who also snagged Jane Fonda and Catherine Deneuve.

Digging a little deeper and beyond the froth of celebrity, she was known for her lifelong advocacy on behalf of animals. She was that rare beauty who, though cloaked in the frivolous froth of celebrity, cared deeply about humanity. She challenged us to find compassion for the innocent, animals with no voice.

And unlike many American stars, she retreated from the reflective lights to focus on her mission. Unlike George and Amal, who seem to like the attributes of celebrity as much as advancing partisan “good deeds,” she sought Justice from an apolitical God.

She lived life according to her own terms. She was callous toward humans and intolerant of those who were useless to her. She was a flawed creature and an imperfect icon. But she was as authentic a human being as ever captured in the quicksilver of film.

That reference to her being a flawed creature and imperfect icon derives primarily from her horrific treatment of her son, who she once compared to a “tumor,” and her two admitted abortions.

That makes her repellent at some profound level. But she was also deeply compassionate, and sacrificed her career, her youth and quite possibly her health to defend one of the two most innocent beings on Earth: animals.

She was very likely the reason they stopped beating baby seals for their fur. She defied her industry, and others, when they told her to shut up. And for that, she deserves praise, and respect in the moment of her passing.

But the liberals just couldn’t help themselves.

NPR, which runs glowing memorials to imperfect dead people all the time, attempted character assassination with La Bardot by mentioning her opposition to the Islamification of France.

Bardot was clearly thinking of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo when French-born radical Muslims murdered an entire newsroom of journalists who dared ridicule Mohammed.

For that, Bardot is labeled on the left as a hateful woman, a bigot, unworthy.

Killing babies isn’t a problem. But criticize the toxic radicalization of a once-proud culture, one whose blood runs in my own veins thanks to great-grandpa Pierre LaSalle, and she’s a vile bigot, someone who said mean things about Muslims and foreigners and sounded, God forbid, right wing.

Please spare me your emails about Christians-and-Trump-and-Epstein-and-MeToo-and-shutdowns-and-ICE and the rest. I have no illusions as to the moral consistency of my fellow conservatives.

But at least the real ones, not the pro-Planned Parenthood frauds, understand that you cannot be pro-abortion and pro-human rights.

And they are also willing to give grace to a 90 year old who went home to the God who created her.

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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].

The old maxim is we are not allowed to speak ill of the dead.

In Latin, because all Catholic school veterans understand that Latin makes everything more official, we say “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.”

The direct translation there is a bit different, but has the same meaning “Of the dead, only speak good.”

Legally, it makes sense. Emotionally that’s harder to accept, especially when we hated the person.

Donald Trump clearly has a problem with the maxim at an emotional level. His lawyers can deal with the lawsuits.

Last week, when Rob Reiner and his wife were killed in the most horrific manner by, allegedly, their son Nick, the president posted this comment on his Truth Social site: “Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife,Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.

“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. MayRob and Michele rest in peace!”

As a preliminary point, I’ll circle back to the Catholic school reference.

Clearly, this president did not have the benefit of a top-notch parochial education from the nuns, because his grammar and syntax are laughably mediocre.

Sister Mary Emanuel, my old English teacher at Merion Mercy, would have thrown a book at his head for that post. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.

Beyond that, the contents of the observation are gross and ill befitting the man who is supposed to represent all Americans.

It is obvious that this president represents only those who love him and refuse to criticize him. I understand that, of course.

I voted for him twice, even after I saw the inhumanity in his rhetoric, because the alternatives were untenable for me as a pro-life woman.

But I never had any misconceptions that Donald J. Trump, who has a penchant for referring to himself in the royal “third person,” has an empathetic soul.

He is a transactional creature who values people based on what they can do for him, and it is in these moments of grief and tragedy that he shows the limits of that character.

We do not slander the dead. We might have hated the poor souls who shed the mortal coil. I have a very hard time saying anything nice about those who wronged me in life, and standing at their graveside doesn’t automatically turn them into honorable people.

The idea that we do not ridicule those who can no longer respond is as much for ourselves as for them. We need to stay within the bounds of decency when humans are the most vulnerable.

We do not hurt babies. We do not abuse the elderly. We do not mock the disabled. And we do not speak ill of those who have passed to the other side of the veil.

If we do, we are worthless.

The shocking thing about Trump’s cruel reaction to Reiner’s murder is we expected it. He has made us immune to coarse thoughts, coarse language, empty rhetoric and an unprecedented amount of belligerence towards his perceived enemies. He has been the target of a lot of hatred himself, so it’s likely that this is the source of his anger. It’s quite human to hate those who attack you.

I do. I don’t turn the other cheek. Ever.

But Donald Trump has unleashed in us the tendency to kill our better angels, the ones that allow us to go up to the line of inhumanity but not cross it, and give free reign to our basest impulses.

He has turned us into him.

And that is why people will defend him even in the face of this last display of abject cruelty. Reiner had children who lost both parents. But I am not so blind that I can’t recognize the narcissism in our president and his infinite capacity to get it wrong, every time.

He’s not tone deaf. He’s Helen Keller. I’m just sad to be unsurprised by things that would have once seemed inconceivable. Not anymore.

Yes, Reiner had made very cruel comments about Trump, and Trump suffered two assassination attempts, so that has an impact.

But I remember George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, who was paralyzed in an assassination attempt and turned from a hateful segregationist into a champion of civil rights.

Sometimes, it’s not how life treats us, but how we deal with it.

There is no other way to look at this. Trump needs to learn that human decency requires us to remain silent in the face of fallen enemies.

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Copyright 2025 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 have never been married, which means I have never been widowed.

I have, however, been around widows all my life, since the life expectancy for men in my family is significantly shorter than that of the ladies.

Both of my grandmothers were widows for many years, and I was particularly close to my mother’s mother, my “Mom Mom,” who lost the love of her life in 1968 and basically existed for the next 17 years, until she could be with her beloved Mike again.

She was only 52 when he died and never looked at another man.

My mother was even younger when she lost my father, who died of cancer at the age of 43. Lucy was also 43 and spent the next 32 years raising her five children while keeping her own company.

My mother was exceptionally beautiful in the Sophia Loren tradition of Mediterranean goddesses, and many admirers sniffed around over the years.

My other grandmother was widowed when her soulmate Ed passed away, and for the next 17 years, she also refused the amorous attentions of some Southwest Philly neighbors.

I have friends who have lost their husbands, including a woman who is very dear to me and lost her husband at a tragically young age.

She never remarried, either, although there is always time for that. She’s beautiful, an Ivy League grad, and has an exceptional heart. Life is unpredictable.

Three generations of widows, following a similar script. I also know widows who happily remarried and built new lives, notbetter ones, just different.

My point is that you can never enter the heart and mind of a widow, much less attack her for the way she chooses to mournher loss.

That is exactly what is happening with a very high-profile widow, Erika Kirk.

Erika’s husband was assassinated a few months ago, and his wife and business partner have been very visible in the public eye since his death.

That has angered some people, almost entirely on the left, that sort of progressive woman who specializes in crocheting pink hats and considering abortion to be a sacrament.

One of those women, a podcaster named Jennifer Welch, decided she couldn’t take it anymore and unleashed a firehose of vitriol at Erika, calling her a “grifter” and other choice epithets. This is just a taste of the acid she threw:

“[Erika Kirk is] an opportunistic grifter who weaponizes your gender to demean women. [She is] a walking, talking, breathingexample as to why nobody, number one, wants to be a Christian, and number two, wants to be a female hypocrite such as [her.]”

And then she added that the assassinated husband was a “racist” and a “homophobe.”

In the first place, I am not sure where Welch gets her facts about “nobody wanting to be a Christian,” when the number of Catholic converts has actually skyrocketed over the last decade, and the pews are filled in other Christian churches.

Perhaps women who think that killing babies in the womb have a problem with the church, but that’s kind of a niche audience.

But even beyond that rather ignorant and bigoted suggestion from a woman whose face looks like a human billboard for a variety of Botox products, the idea that you would attack a widow whose young husband was murdered in front of thousands of people because you don’t like the way she is mourning his death is just repellent.

It is not quite as repellent as the horrific jokes from the left about Charlie Kirk’s murder, but it’s close enough to make me realize that hate not only has a home, it’s actually involved in Trump-level real estate development, among leftists.

You don’t attack widows. You just don’t do it. If a woman decides a few months after she buries her husband to go on OurTime.com to look for companionship, you keep your mouth shut.

If she decides to enter the convent, you keep your mouth shut.

If she decides to move to India and live on an ashram, or take voice lessons and annoy the neighborhood with her gurgling, or join Snapchat to communicate with the grandkids, or adopt 10 more cats, or become a vegan, or become obsessed with Pilates, or become a late-in-life Swiftie, or even shoot herself up with enough Botox to kill those 10 cats, you do not say anything.

Unless she is the reason that her husband is dead, in which case she would be an episode on “48 Hours,” you have no right tocriticize the way that she grieves.

Some women, like the women in my family, mourn with quiet grace, saving their tears for the moments when they can be alone.

Other women launch joyfully into life, seeking new relationships and new adventures. And others will do what Erika Kirk is doing, honoring her husband by continuing his work and keeping his name alive.

She is a woman to admire, emulate and respect.

As far as the Jennifer Welches of the world, I would be surprised if they understood what love demands, what its loss signifies, and what it means to be a decent human being.

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Copyright 2025 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].

My mother used to tell me that I was incapable of having an unexpressed thought, which was her adorable way of saying I talked too much. But Lucy was right.

Rarely do I formulate an opinion that I do not end up sharing with at least a few other people, and in most cases, with the world on social media.

That has gotten me both praise and vitriol, friends and enemies, and in a few cases, death threats.

But overall, I think that it’s important to let people know where you stand on any given issue, so they can make their own decision to either bring you into the fold, or employ the 10-foot pole.

That’s what I did the other day, on Facebook. My 64th birthday was last week, and I took the occasion to summarize who I was and what I believed after six and a half decades.

It went a little bit like this:

– I am as anti-abortion as you can be. Life of the mother is my only exception. Rape/incest is a red herring. Sorry, it is.

– I do not believe all women. MeToo was a scam.

– Black Lives Matter. So do White Lives. So do Brown, Yellow, Red, I can sing à rainbow, Captain Noah.

– Gay marriage is legal. I accept the Supreme Court decision making it the law of the land. Note to abortion lovers: Dobbs Is The Law of The Land, too.

– Immigrants are human beings. No human being is illegal. No human being should be unlawfully arrested and denied bond. Deal with it.

– Trans adults are entitled to their identity. Forcing it on minors, and children, is child abuse.

– Trump has crushed due process. Biden was incompetent. Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Trump was wrongly prosecuted. I’m glad Bill Cosby is home.

– I’m glad Jeffrey Epstein, who did commit suicide, is dead.

– The Eagles suck (right now.)

20 years worth of columns, right here. This is a summary of my beliefs. I expected a healthy response, but I did not expect the post would go viral, and thousands of people would be exposed to my unorthodox views.

I was surprised at the comments I received, many of which were in agreement, but many more which were shocked, shocked I tell you, that a woman would be against abortion, that she would not “believe all women,” that she would actually think due process mattered with both Bill Cosby and illegal immigrants, and that she neither adored, nor hated, Trump.

I will admit the vast majority of the vitriol came from left-wing posters who called me ugly, a misogynist, a rape apologist, ugly, a liar, uneducated, ugly and did I mention ugly?

But never fear, there was a sufficient amount of anger from the people who look at ICE raids and say, with absolutely no irony and a sort of sick pride, “I voted for this!”

Happily, there were a few folks who liked what I had to say, because they saw in me a reflection of themselves, with the difference being that I have a loud mouth and a somewhat significant platform.

I was thanked for being an independent thinker, someone who wasn’t afraid to shatter the myth of perfection, of a consistent philosophy on all things.

One of the comments was so wonderful, I immediately asked for the man’s social media friendship.

This is what Anthony wrote:

“This used to be a normal take in life, but then somewhere along the line, everyone decided that they had to make a hard choice, and they had to accept every belief or thought process that aligned with that political choice.

“Each party has become so radicalized that you can no longer have beliefs from both columns. You have to pick one or the other. It’s so (blanking) stupid. Ultimately, it would be nice if we could just go back to all debating our beliefs without hatred. It would be great to live in a world with opposing views, but coexistence.”

That was exactly the point that I was trying to make in my little screed, and that was not digestible by far too many people who want to live in “teams.”

Personally, and I am writing this on my 64th birthday, I no longer care if people agree with me. I do care that they agree to let me speak, and are willing to engage in respectful and robust debate.

And if you are the kind of person who simply cannot stomach someone who travels too far off of your favorite reservation — and if that is not politically correct, Hiawatha, I’m thrilled — perhaps you need to go back and read the First Amendment, followed by a few servings of Miss Manners.

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Copyright 2025 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 never liked John Fetterman. He was too far to the left, or so I thought. Too weird. Too much of a narcissist who did things the way that he did them to attract attention, without respecting tradition, or sartorial expectations.

I also never liked Marjorie Taylor Greene. She was too far to the right, or so I thought. Too weird. Too much of a narcissist, who did things the way that she did them to attract attention, without respecting tradition, or sartorial expectations.

Admiring them both as profiles in courage, limited as that courage is, was not on my Bingo card for 2025. And yet, here we are.

Fetterman has shown himself to be a maverick, beholden to neither Biden or Trump, and willing to poke a finger in the eye of progressives who for some bizarre reason think that they own him. I had a conversation with one fellow who told me the people who voted for him expected him to be as far left as they were, and are both shocked and disgusted that he has sliced a middle course through the political landscape, guided primarily by his own values.

The fact that in some cases, those values do not align with the uber leftist ideals of the “defund the police,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Believe Women” and “Hamas Isn’t Evil” crowds has tempered his former fans’ Trump Derangement Syndrome with a touch of Scorned Voter Syndrome.

It’s fun, actually, to watch them have a meltdown, because these are exactly the sort of people who made my life miserable for the past few years with their threats to get me fired, with their defamatory stickers and with their attacks on city streets. To see that sort of person panic is akin to the feeling I get when I spray a roach with Lysol and watch it meet its maker, in insect heaven.

But then we have Marjorie Taylor Greene, another extremist from the other end of the political spectrum whose comments about Space Lasers and her devotion to Donald Trump, not to mention her Trailer Trash Barbie vibe, made me hold my nose whenever I saw her venting on TV about the Democrats. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that this woman would show the kind of courage that is lacking among more traditional conservatives like the Speaker of the House, a host of Justice Department appointees, the head of the Heritage Foundation and, on occasion, a few Supreme Court Justices.

It started when she told the Wizard (who appointed Dr.) Oz that Americans were suffering, and that consumer prices were not down. Her very pithy comment that he’s gaslighting the nation, because “people know what they’re paying at the grocery store, they know what they’re paying for their kids’ clothes and school supplies, they know what they’re paying for their electricity bills”was pitch perfect. Yes, we do know, and no, prices are not down. They are up. They may not be way up. But food is more expensive, clothing is more expensive and tariffs definitely have something to do with it. So you go girl, tell the Wizard that you can see behind that Oval Office screen.

And then, more tellingly, the congresswoman has been in the forefront of demanding the release of the Epstein files, as Trump promised during this campaign. She has joined other GOP leaders, mostly and not coincidentally women, in seeking access to all the records.

Greene’s not doing this because she hates Trump. They had a long and fruitful romance. This is one of the people who put the knife through the heart of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, so she is no liberal. She loved Trump, she decried his two impeachments, she has stood by his side in so many battles. But apparently, she wasn’t willing to sell her soul for 30 pieces of bitcoin.

And for that, she is getting death threats from MAGA, just like Fetterman is getting them from leftists. Both of them have run afoul of the cultists, in a time when cults are gaining power and being an independent voice, even on just one or two issues, will get you excommunicated.

So I have to give this very Odd Couple credit. They might look strange, and indeed they do. But perhaps they are the new face of political courage. And at a time when people are afraid to break from the pack, that is a beautiful thing.

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Copyright 2025 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].

When the first woman emerged from the mists of time to point the finger at Bill Cosby, claiming that he had drugged and raped her, I saw the writing on the wall.

We were now going to take seriously accusations of bad behavior made, in many cases, decades after the fact.

This coincided with an ongoing investigation into the Catholic church, which was dealing with its own priest-pedophilia problem, which created a perfect storm of clients for people like Gloria Allred who survive on the tears of alleged victims.

We all know what happened to Cosby. He was convicted of sexual assault after a torturous journey to the courthouse, and then that conviction was overturned because he’d been denied due process.

I wrote many columns about that lack of due process in both the Cosby and the Catholic Church contexts, which earned me a lot of hate mail and the moniker “rape apologist.”

It’s no surprise, then, that I was a vocal critic of the MeToo movement, which was like Cosby on steroids, resembling more the witch hunts of Salem, Mass., than any legitimate inquiry into wrongdoing.

Christine Blasey Ford waged a dog-and-pony show against now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh because of repressed “memories” of people laughing at her as the former prep school student sexually assaulted her at a party in Maryland.

I’m sure that there were some actual cases where victims found their voices and decided that silence was no longer an option.

I am sure that there were, in act, situations where women — and some men — were forced into situations against their will, things that could legally qualify as rape.

But from what I could observe over the years, the vast majority of these cases were brought to dismantle the patriarchy at some macro level, as opposed to seeking real justice for criminal acts.

And far too many of us blinked and said, “OK, I guess we just have to go along or risk being called rape apologists.”

But now we have the Epstein files, and the story is completely flipped. We are no longer talking about women who thought they were abused and mistreated by men who might have had some power differential but who were their age, or slightly older.

Here, we are talking about a man, and his diabolically immoral girlfriend who orchestrated the wholesale violation of scores of young girls, barely pubescent and below the age of consent.

This was rape, pure and simple.

And unlike many of the MeToo self-described victims, these girls, now women, had been making accusations for decades, trying to get someone to listen to them.

Amazingly enough, even during the MeToo moment, no one really did. There were some cases that might have made it into court, and Epstein was convicted of sex crimes, but he skated with a sentence that reflected just how much knowledge he had of the twisted vices among the rich and powerful.

That includes Republicans and Democrats, Catholics and Jews, men and women, princes and commoners, Americans and foreigners.

Jeffrey Epstein’s reach was as wide and as potent as the Medellin drug cartel, and the poison that he administered as lethal.

Donald Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, and endeared himself to the MAGA base with this promise.

Then, once elected, he backtracked for what some consider inexplicable reasons, and others consider self-preservation, and called the whole thing a ”Democratic hoax,” which was a repellent slap in the face to the victims of the predatory Epstein.

Finally, after the pressure became too great and he realized that his own party was going to vote to release the files, the president switched sides in a move that would have made Wrong Way Marshall — the Vikings player who scooped up an opponent’s fumble and ran into the opponent’s end zone — extremely proud.

Regardless of the reason, he did the right thing.

These are not women with a desire to wreak vengeance on chauvinist men. These are not the Christine Blasey Fords who have vague memories of rowdy high school parties.

These are not aspiring actresses going to the hotel rooms of powerful Hollywood moguls.

These were girls. These were children. These were 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds, promised jobs and instead trafficked in the most horrific manner.

The crime is apolitical, agnostic, transcends class and philosophy, and should be exposed in all of its gory reality. And frankly, it is time.

Evil people have hidden in the shadows, protected by the idea that their power would keep them in those shadows forever.

It’s time to shine the light, so that these victims, real victims, will finally be seen.

And as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, this is one very important reason to give thanks.

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Copyright 2025 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].

Whenever I post something about a person who has been granted asylum, or who has obtained their green card, or who has become a U.S. citizen, people congratulate that person, and say “welcome to the country.”

Many of the comments are incredibly warm, and they make me very proud of the work that I do.

And then there are the people who always manage to put a damper on the celebration by saying “Thank you for doing it the right way.”

I think in their own minds, they are being kind and complimentary. They are saying this person, my client, has followed the rules and honored our country by not taking advantage of its benefits.

But they have no idea how offensive it sounds, especially in this day and age.

Over the last few months, shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump, I have noticed a sea change in the way we treat people who are, in fact, doing it “the right way.”

People who have applied for asylum either at the border, or after they lawfully entered the U.S., have been picked up at regular check ins with ICE, detained without explanation, denied any sort of bond, and essentially pressured into seeking deportation.

The government doesn’t have to apply too much pressure to a person who is living in a jail cell with four other strangers, allowed one shower a week, eating sub par food, and cut off from communication with their families and in some cases, even their attorneys.

If you think I am exaggerating, that is your right.

I don’t have space to document my numerous visits to detention centers like Moshannon and Pike in Pennsylvania, Elizabeth and Delaney Hall in New Jersey, Oakdale in Louisiana, Batavia in New York and a few in Texas.

They differ only in the accents of the guards. The climate, the attitudes and the outcomes are identical.

And I don’t have space to describe the calls I’ve been receiving from desperate people who, last year, would have qualified for bond and this year are disappeared into some privately owned and operated facility that is making its owners quite wealthy.

The immigration judges are also changing.

When I started practicing in this field over 30 years ago, these men and women carried themselves as if they were independent adjudicators of right and wrong, legal and illegal, just and unfair.

They were always a part of the Executive Branch, which meant that they were not like Article III federal judges who were insulated from the politics of the White House, but they liked to think of themselves as neutral and unbiased, men and women who did not work on a time clock, did not worry about quotas, did not rush through cases to please the man in the Oval Office, and who really did care about the accuracy and just nature of their decisions.

Some of them are still in that mold.

In fact, I have had the great privilege of practicing before people like that, including a few who recently granted asylum to deserving clients. One of them was so sad that he had to deny a case that he basically apologized to the clients, understanding his obligation to the law but not forgetting his humanity.

But the majority are either afraid of being fired because they are not satisfying the demands of their immediate boss, Pam Bondi, or they find themselves in the rhetorical cross hairs of her boss, Donald Trump.

These are people who are now forced to hear four cases a day, complicated applications from victims of political and social violence, and to render a fair and unbiased decision for each of them in a very short period of time.

Gay men from Pakistan. Political dissidents from Venezuela. Abused girlfriends of Salvadoran gang members.

Imagine having to determine the outcome of someone’s life in the span of a Netflix film. It weighs on you, especially in this climate.

I suppose the point of this column is not to convince anyone that the current immigration system is unfair, broken, and in many cases cruel. Some of my readers already believe that, some never will, and some might accept this as the result of years of mistakes made by Biden and Obama.

But the real mistakes made by Trump’s predecessors do not justify the wholesale inhumanity that I see happening today in courts and offices in my city and elsewhere.

It does not justify upending lives because someone in D.C. decided that we needed to bully people into giving up their right to asylum, and that quotas were more important than integrity.

I am nearing retirement, and yet I won’t be retiring. I am going to see us through the next few years of mayhem, of not having a “right way to do it,” for as long as I can stand in front of a judge and say “Your honor, this individual deserves our protection.”

And if you have made it this far, you have my thanks.

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Copyright 2025 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].