Men's Lifestyle April 17, 2026 0 Comments

Pete Hegseth Just Took a Massive Public Fall—Here’s Why Everyone’s Talking About It Right Now!

So, here we are — gearing up to dive into a whirlwind of stories that make you question just how wild reality can get sometimes. Ever wondered what happens when a local prosecutor takes on a federal immigration agent who allegedly points a gun at civilians on a Minneapolis highway? Spoiler alert: it’s not your everyday courtroom drama. Meanwhile, ceasefires flicker in the Middle East, a high-profile political figure bungles a biblical quote in spectacular fashion, and a rookie paleontologist uncovers a creature so bizarre it’s been dubbed the “murder muppet.” Oh, and if you thought college sports flights were just about getting from point A to point B—think again. This 7-minute read jogs through a series of jaw-dropping updates that’ll have you questioning the headlines and maybe your weekend plans too. Intrigued? Let’s roll.

LEARN MORE

7 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has a prosecutor named Mary Moriarty, and on Friday, Moriarty stepped up into a new weight class. From Politico:

A federal immigration agent accused of pointing his gun at occupants of a car after pulling alongside them on a Minneapolis-area highway is wanted on felony assault charges, Minnesota prosecutors said Thursday. An arrest warrant filed in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, says Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. is charged with two counts of second-degree assault. Minnesota authorities say Morgan, 35, was on duty as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent when the incident occurred February 5.

The driver and front-seat passenger of a car called 911 saying the driver of an unmarked SUV pulled alongside them, rolled down his window and pointed a handgun at them both. The car’s driver told investigators they feared it was a “crazy person driving down the road aiming guns at people,” according to the warrant.

And who’s to say they were wrong? Dude’s on the lam, too.

A spokesman for Moriarty’s office said no arrangements have been made for Morgan to surrender and that there is an active nationwide warrant for his arrest. If convicted, Morgan faces up to seven years in prison for each assault charge. Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Let’s not minimize the trouble that Moriarty is getting herself in. This case instantly goes national. The administration doesn’t want local prosecutors busting its immigration shock troops no matter what crimes they may commit in their pursuit of grade-schoolers and their moms. This is not even to mention the wing-nut media and online auxiliaries who will be trolling her relentlessly. Through all that, she’s going to have to a) find this guy and b) defend her right even to bring this case at the same time she’s working to build it. (The massively rejiggered federal judiciary is waiting in the weeds.) I wish her luck. She’s going to need it.

The Strait of Hormuz is open, and ceasefires exist in Iran and Lebanon. Both of which are welcome developments. Meanwhile, the president says that the U.S. blockades of Iranian ports will remain in place until a “deal” is reached. It looks like the crack diplomatic squad of vice president J Divan Vance, Steve Witkoff, and the Dauphin Prince Kushner may be back at the table along with a Very Special Guest. From The New York Times:

President Trump said on Thursday that he might travel to Pakistan if a deal to end the war in Iran was signed there, hours after the country said it expected to host a second round of negotiations between American and Iranian officials. Senior Pakistani mediators were in Tehran this week in an effort to shore up a fragile U.S.-Iran cease-fire that is set to expire next week. A reporter asked Mr. Trump outside the White House on Thursday afternoon if he would visit Pakistan to “seal the deal yourself.” He said yes.

Personally, I think pigs will fly to Islamabad before the president does, and I don’t trust his partner in Jerusalem as far as I can throw the Dome of the Rock. But, for a moment, nobody’s killing each other and the sea lanes are marginally open. Might be a decently non-crazy weekend after all, but I’m not putting any money down either way.

This comes as no shock to anyone, but Secretary of Talking About War Pete Hegseth is a double-ply idiot. This latest embarrassment, in which he manages to misquote both the prophet Ezekiel and Quentin Tarantino, is damn hilarious.From The New Republic:

“They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17,” Hegseth erroneously said, saying the lead planner of the Combat Search And Rescue operation in Iran shared it with him.

“So the prayer is CSAR 25:17 and it reads … ‘the path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee.’ ”

Here’s what the original verse in the Bible actually reads: “I will execute great vengeance on them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I lay My vengeance upon them.”

I’d suggest Hegseth find a different movie.

I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh … women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh … I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I … I do deny them my essence.

No. That won’t work with him at all.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “I Want To Be Happy” (Lafayette Harris Jr.): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Here, from 1930, President Franklin Roosevelt presents his first Cabinet. The film is notable for the presence of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet. These folks, and especially Perkins—maybe saved the country. History is so cool.

For all the problems, real and alleged, with college sports, I didn’t see this one coming. There is a rising controversy because college basketball teams use a company called GlobalX for their chartered flights around the country. GlobalX also is responsible for 75 percent of the flights used by ICE for deportation purposes. From Democracy Now!

The campaign is targeting the Miami-based charter company Global Crossing Airlines, or GlobalX, which holds a $5 million annual contract to transport teams during the NCAA tournaments. GlobalX is also used to transport immigrants deported by ICE.

Here’s a chance for NCAA president Charlie Baker, my very own ex-governor, to show some real courage. Get out of business with these traffickers.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Earth.com:

Ancient Mongolian burial mounds that have always been tied to mass feasting show no trace of large on-site horse butchery, new research has found. The missing bones now point away from the graves themselves and toward a ritual system that kept slaughter, eating, and burial separated. Across the stone rings around these mounds, archaeologists kept finding horse skulls while ribs and long leg bones were nowhere in the vicinity.

Working from that pattern, Dr. Jean-Luc Houle at Western Kentucky University tested whether those bones had been cut beside the graves. Houle’s regional survey work, including field seasons from 2017 through 2024, repeatedly recorded the same selective pattern in horse deposits. That repeated pattern made a simple feast-site explanation harder to keep and pushed the search beyond the monuments.

I confess that ancient Mongolian burial rituals is one of the many things on which I never had “long-held beliefs.” However, it’s nice to learn that they may not have eaten his horse above the deceased’s grave. None of the best people do.

Hey, Virginia Tech. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Nevertheless, the senior geosciences major spent two years unscrambling the ancient creature and determining its place in the story of evolution. His findings, which were published April 15 in Papers in Paleontology, shed light on how dinosaurs dominated the Jurassic period. This is the type of work a long-tenured curator or a late-stage professor would do, but geobiologists Sterling Nesbitt and Michelle Stocker tapped [Simba] Srivastava when he was a first-year student. “We want undergraduate researchers to experience the whole paleontological research process at Virginia Tech,” said Nesbitt. “Simba grabbed the project by the reins.”

We haven’t had one of these for a while, where an amateur—or, in this case, a gifted rookie scientist—makes a big find. And this one pushes the evolution of carnivorous dinosaurs back to 252 million years ago, three times as early as the T. rex.

Clues about how dinosaurs evolved and spread in the succeeding Jurassic period lie buried in the rocks, but well-preserved fossils from the end of the Triassic are rare. In fact, Srivastava’s squished specimen is the only one of its kind anyone has found so far.

The name Srivastava picked for the new species reflects its bizarre proportions and unfortunate condition. “We landed on Ptychotherates bucculentus, which means ‘folded hunter with full cheeks’ in Latin,” said Srivastava. “One paleo-artist said that it looked like a murder muppet.”

If this kid is smart, he’ll copyright “Murder Muppet” and wait for the bids from aspiring metal bands to roll in. In any event, he’s certainly happy now that the murder muppet lived then.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and Eric Swalwell’s victims, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and for the brilliant journalists of The Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and for all the people suffering from the severe cold brought by the polar vortex, and the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered,flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and for people suffering from the outbreaks of measles, a particularly brutal flu, and Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Harlem, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.