"It was frankly, it was a nice looking purse."

Said Ed Martin, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, deflecting the question whether Kristi Noem's purse was stolen because she's Secretary of Homeland Security.

I'm reading "Man arrested in theft of DHS chief Kristi Noem's purse is in the U.S. illegally, official says/Noem’s bag was stolen by a masked man Sunday night while she was having dinner with her family in Washington, D.C." (NBC News).

So... he was in the country illegally. That fits the message conveniently. 

You know, I wouldn't carry $3,000 in my handbag, and I wouldn't put any handbag on the floor in a restaurant, and I especially wouldn't if it was a really nice looking handbag, but then I'm very security conscious. I don't expect others to be as security conscious as I am. But some people I would want to be very security conscious, even more than I am, a lot more than I am.

Secretary of Homeland Security.

"If film and if film and TV productions continue to move out of California due to tax incentives in other states what might the future look for Los Angeles? Is there a risk of it becoming the next Detroit."

That's a question from the audience, and Bill Maher snaps, "Well, there's no need to shit on Detroit in the question! Detroit's a fine city. Detroit!"

That was Friday night, but here's a headline that appeared in the London Times earlier the same day: "Why Hollywood could be the new Detroit/It’s a town built on one industry. So what happens when everyone realises it’s cheaper and easier to film in Hertfordshire?"

So you can see the need to "shit" on Detroit. It's a city with one iconic industry, and it lost it and went into severe decline. It pithily expresses the threat to L.A.

In that Bill Maher/"Overtime" clip, Adam Schiff says that because the movie industry is a "prize economic and cultural driver of the United States" — and he loves movies — the U.S. needs to offer tax incentives.

The other guest, Bret Stephens asks: "But why should it just be for Hollywood? It should be for normal people. It should be for any kind of entrepreneur, not just celebrities... whose pictures and whose faces you know.... It shouldn't just simply be a favorite industry — Oh, we can't lose our our movie stars!"

"He starts wiggling and loosening the collar as people disagree with him."

He starts wiggling and loosening the collar as people disagree with him. pic.twitter.com/8aqf7iZSVM

— Whatsup - The Purple Whale (@80strolls) April 26, 2025

"To get answers, one neuroscientist, Harvey J. Grill of the University of Pennsylvania, turned to rats and asked what would happen if he removed all of their brains except their brainstems."

I'm reading "What Nearly Brainless Rodents Know About Weight Loss and Hunger/Studies in neuroscience with applications to humans offer clues about what makes us start eating, and when we stop" (NYT).

Do we really have free will when it comes to eating? It’s a vexing question that is at the heart of why so many people find it so difficult to stick to a diet.... The brainstem controls basic functions like heart rate and breathing. But the animals could not smell, could not see, could not remember. Would they know when they had consumed enough calories? To find out, Dr. Grill dripped liquid food into their mouths. "When they reached a stopping point, they allowed the food to drain out of their mouths," he said...."

"Some progressives within the church worry that the dozens of new cardinals Francis chose around the world will be less versed in Vaticanese..."

"... and may be taken in by the sweetness of the unity siren. 'It sounds really good,' said Cardinal Michael Czerny of Canada, who was one of Francis’ closest advisers, but 'it means reversal.' For those who opposed Francis, many of them appointed by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, unity means a 'new introversion' with the promise of 'unity solving all our problems,' he said. 'If you ask me, "How would you name the wrong track for the conclave?" I would say the idea that unity is the priority,' said Cardinal Czerny.... 'Unity cannot be a priority issue.'... Those like Cardinal Czerny put priority on another word: Diversity...."

From "As Cardinals Prepare to Elect a Pope, One Motto Is ‘Unity.’ That’s Divisive. Some see the byword as a rallying call in a conservative campaign to reverse Francis’ push for a more inclusive church" (NYT).

ADDED: For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: The "unity" the cardinals are considering is unity within the Catholic Church (at the cost of alienating some who are outside of the Catholic Church), right? But if the Church leans instead toward "diversity" of opinion (on social issues, etc), is that a better or a worse strategy for attracting newcomers? What's the point of the Church if it's an amalgam of what various people believe instead of a strong and required set of beliefs?

Sunrise — 6:18.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

The conversation at St. Peter's.

Wow, @piersmorgan , this is absolutely incredible! 🌟📸 What an iconic moment captured in such a breathtaking location—St. Peter’s Basilica is pure majesty!

The image of Trump and Zelenskyy deep in conversation is so powerful, and I can only imagine the weight of that tough… pic.twitter.com/XOHMqyvqst

— Dan Western (@westerns1978) April 26, 2025

ADDED: For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Isn't there some expression along the lines of "He would upstage the corpse at a funeral"?

(Oh! I see. The stock expression is "He could upstage the bride at her own wedding.")

IN THE COMMENTS: Hassayamper said: “I've heard ‘He's always got to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral’ to describe someone who can't resist being at the center of attention.” Yes! That’s what I was looking for. You beat Grok. 

The OED word of the day is "sonnettomaniac."

That is, a person who's crazy for sonnets.

Are words constructed out of "-maniac" really deserving of dictionary entries? Perhaps, in the case of "sonnettomaniac," it was valuable to nudge people to spell it the way it was spelled in the time when people really were sonnettomaniacs.

The OED proffers a quote from 2011: "After the decline of the previous century's 'sonnettomania,' the popularity of the sonnet would never scale such lofty heights again in the course of the twentieth century."

An update on Valerie.

You remember Valerie, the miniature dachshund who escaped into the wilds of Kangaroo Island, blogged here.

Today, I see "Valerie the dachshund rescued after 17 months in Australian wilderness/The eight-pound miniature dachshund had transformed from an 'absolute princess' into a rugged survivor" (WaPo).

I had to blog that... in case you were on tenterhooks.

What are tenterhooks anyway?

"Both Napoli and Hinman fell in love with the band after seeing them perform on the TV variety show 'Shindig!' in 1965."

"'It was the sound that drew me to them,' Napoli said. 'No one sounded like them, and I wanted to know as much as I could about them.'"

From "They spent years following the Kinks. Was this their final stop? What happens when you build your life — and your friendships — around a band that can’t keep it together forever" (WaPo)(full-access link). 

Here. I found it:

Of course, I watched that at the time. I loved the Kinks. Just turning around from my computer and not rearranging anything, I see this on my windowsill:

And I love the line "It was the sound...." I get the 60s vibration. I remember struggling to convey the meaning of "the sound" to my father when he Socratically questioned me about why the music I was listening to all the time could genuinely be considered good.

"Attorney General Pam Bondi actually seemed to lean into the idea that this was part of the larger pattern of judicial wrongs that the administration now seeks to right...."

"Appearing on Fox News, Bondi discussed the Wisconsin case and another in which a local New Mexico judge resigned after a man the government has alleged is a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was arrested at his home. But rather than just focus on those two cases, Bondi repeatedly talked as if they were part of a broader problem with the judiciary. 'What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,' Bondi said.... When Fox host John Roberts asked about the perception created by arresting judges — 'They’ll say this is a government that is expanding the powers of the Article One of the Constitution, now they’re arresting judges,' he said — Bondi didn’t dispute that. 'No one is above the law, John,' she said...."

I'm reading "Pam Bondi’s striking comments on arresting judges/Amid criticisms that the administration is intimidating judges, the attorney general didn’t exactly downplay the idea that this was part of a larger crusade against the judiciary" by Aaron Blake (in WaPo).

No one is above the law is what Trump antagonists said when the authorities arrested him. Four times.

I don't like the use of government authority as a political weapon or as a means of personal revenge, but that WaPo article doesn't get into the meat of what is alleged in the Wisconsin-judge case. Here's Pam Bondi explaining it (on ABC News):

The failure to rip a child from its mother's arms.

I'm reading "2-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Deported 'With No Meaningful Process,' Judge Suspects/A federal judge in Louisiana said the deportation of the child to Honduras with her mother, even though her father had filed an emergency petition, appeared to be 'illegal and unconstitutional'" (NYT).

“The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” wrote Judge Doughty, a conservative Trump appointee. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Asserting that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, Judge Doughty set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

"She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking."

Said a statement from the family of Virginia Giuffre, quoted in "Virginia Giuffre, Epstein and Prince Andrew accuser, takes her own life/The mother of three died aged 41 in Australia, her family said" (London Times).

She was one of the first women to publicly accuse Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 in a New York detention facility awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges....

They keep using that word. Without scare quotes.

"Giuffre told the Miami Herald in 2019.... that she had confided in Epstein and Maxwell about being sexually abused as a child and running away from home. 'They seemed like nice people so I trusted them, and I told them I’d had a really hard time in my life up until then,' Giuffre said."

Meanwhile, last month, Giuffre wrote on Instagram that a school bus had hit her car and that she only had 4 days to live. Giuffre and her husband had separated and were fighting over custody of their children Christian, Noah, and Emily. 

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

So she’s like “they went that-a-way” and they actually went the other way and the feds arrest her?

I'm trying to read "The F.B.I. arrested a Wisconsin judge, Patel says, accusing her of helping an immigrant avoid detention" (NYT), which describes the incident like this:

The case appears to stem from an incident last week in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came to the courthouse seeking to apprehend an immigrant who had a misdemeanor case before Judge Dugan. The F.B.I. has been investigating whether the judge directed the defendant and his lawyer to exit her courtroom out a side door and hallway while the immigration agents were elsewhere in the building, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has reported....

UPDATE: Pam Bondi describes what happened. 

"I don’t think there’s anything wrong with tattoos. But they should have meaning. Not just that I was high watching Game of Thrones...."

"It’s a six-week healing process each time you get one removed. So each tattoo is 10 to 12 sessions. That’s 60 weeks of your life right there on just one tattoo."

Said Pete Davidson, quoted in "Pete Davidson is losing his tattoos. I removed mine — it hurt/Having spent $200,000, the comedian has described the experience as ‘horrible’. It’s not just the cost that’s painful, says Esther Walker" (London Times).