British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing calls from lawmakers and critics to resign over his appointment of Peter Mandelson, a known associate and possible informant of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

While Starmer’s right-hand man, Morgan McSweeney, resigned on Sunday over his involvement with Mandelson’s appointment, the prime minister doesn’t appear keen to meaningfully accept any responsibility himself — a reluctance now supported by many of his liberal allies in the British government.

A short-lived appointment

Starmer appointed Mandelson — known in British political circles as the “Prince of Darkness” — as ambassador to the U.S. in December 2024, claiming he would “bring unrivaled experience to the role.”

Starmer’s choice was controversial at the time.

‘The game’s up, mate, and it’s time you recognized it.’

After all, Mandelson had not only publicly described the recently re-elected Donald Trump as a “danger to the world” and “little short of a white nationalist and racist,” but was an associate of Epstein long after Epstein pleaded to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14.

A source told the BBC that when Starmer made the decision, “The Epstein stuff in broad terms was definitely known and discussed in detail before his appointment.”

RELATED: Why are so many people all of a sudden saying Epstein is alive?

Peter Mandelson. Photo by Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

Emails released last year revealed that the Starmer pick was not only chummy with Epstein, but had grown close enough with the sex offender to apparently regard him as his “best pal.”

The Foreign Office announced on Sept. 11 that Mandelson had been withdrawn as ambassador, noting that the “emails show that the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment.”

“In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information,” added the Foreign Office.

It gets worse

Any hopes that Starmer’s office may have had of putting the Mandelson appointment in the rearview mirror were dashed by the Department of Justice’s latest release of the Epstein files, which contains emails showing that Mandelson was not only tight with Epstein but possibly furnished him with confidential government information.

The New York Times noted, for instance, that newly released emails appear to reveal that Mandelson provided Epstein with a confidential economic memorandum that had been sent to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The documents also reportedly indicate that Epstein paid Mandelson $75,000 across three separate transactions in the early 2000s.

Mandelson announced earlier this month that he was leaving Starmer’s Labour Party to spare it from “further embarrassment.”

In a Feb. 1 letter to the party’s general secretary, Mandelson claimed that he had no record or recollection of financial payments from Epstein; he regretted “ever having known Epstein”; and had dedicated his “life to the values and success of the Labour Party.”

Mandelson is presently under investigation for possible misconduct in public office.

Starmer digs in heels

Days after his appointee left the Labour Party, Starmer gave a speech, stating, “Sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him.”

After insinuating that he was deceived by Mandelson, Starmer suggested that he will remain in the role of prime minister to “ensure accountability is delivered.”

Apparently, accountability for Starmer meant letting Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney fall on his sword.

In a statement obtained by the Spectator concerning his resignation on Sunday, McSweeney wrote, “The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country, and trust in politics itself.”

McSweeney, an apparent protégé of Mandelson, claimed that he advised Starmer to make the appointment and that the “only honorable course is to step aside.”

On Monday, Starmer’s director of communications, Tim Allan, also quit “to allow a new No. 10 team to be built.”

Neither resignation appears to have placated those in the British Parliament keen to see Starmer shoulder some blame.

Calls to resign

Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, said on Monday, “The leadership from Downing Street has to change,” reported ITVX.

“We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland,” continued Sarwar. “They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened. It cannot continue.”

Clive Lewis, a member of Starmer’s party, suggested that upon reflection, it’s clear the Labour Party is “ruined” and needs to be rebuilt without its current leadership.

Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK Party, told GB News, “It’s over; it’s done. The game’s up, mate, and it’s time you recognized it.”

“He’s lost legitimacy, he’s lost authority, events have moved way beyond his control, and I’m afraid it’s all down to his own grievous misjudgment,” continued Farage. “But remember, even before the Peter Mandelson case, he was already the most unpopular prime minister in living memory.”

On Monday, Starmer stated, “After having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country, or to plunge us into chaos, as others have done,” reported the Guardian.

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The Department of Justice’s publication last month of over 3 million additional pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images from the Jeffrey Epstein files provided the public with new insights into the child sex offender, his degeneracy, his business dealings, and his international network of affluent friends.

The files, which are replete with odd and in many cases damning communications — already triggering at least one criminal investigation in the United Kingdom — have prompted renewed interest in a number of theories about Epstein.

While many sleuths poring over the files have zeroed in on references to cannibalism and accusations of Epstein and his inner circle allegedly engaging in “ritualistic sacrifice,” others appear more focused on what the files have to say about the sex offender’s reported death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.

Citing discrepancies in the official narrative, admissions about falsified records, and viral claims on social media, skeptics have long theorized that Epstein did not kill himself but was murdered or possibly even secreted away in August 2019.

Despite the newly available autopsy photos and details, these theories are enjoying a second life due in part to certain details in the new files, a viral image of a bearded look-alike, and signs of activity on a video game account name associated with the sex offender.

Epstein in Tel Aviv

An image went viral earlier this month purportedly showing a bearded Jeffrey Epstein alive and well in Israel. On closer examination, however, the image — which was popularized in part by a self-described “unapologetic Muslim Palestinian” and by a Middle Eastern-based news account — showed signs of AI manipulation and/or generation.

For starters, the wording on the street signs is reportedly “gibberish,” providing not only incorrect Hebrew and Arabic lettering but in one case referencing a road that doesn’t appear to exist.

RELATED: Bill Clinton accuses GOP of setting up ‘kangaroo court’ over Epstein testimony — and demands public hearing

The Metropolitan Correctional Center. Photo by Don Emmert / AFP via Getty Images.

The supposed photograph of Epstein in Tel Aviv also appears to be a cropped version of an image that appeared days earlier bearing a Gemini AI watermark on the subreddit r/hardaiimages — a destination for AI-generated images designed to give viewers pause.

The pre-emptive death notice

In line with the official narrative, the newly released FBI New York Field Office report regarding Epstein’s death — which includes images of paramedics apparently attempting to revive the sex offender, an image of his corpse without his arm tattoo visible, images of his broken hyoid bone and breaks in his thyroid cartilage, and images of his apparent scene of death — asserts that Epstein was found unresponsive and died as the result of an apparent suicide on the morning of Aug. 10, 2019.

However, one of the other newly released files suggested that Epstein died a day earlier.

In the document, which is dated Aug. 9, 2019, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman stated, “Earlier this morning, the Manhattan Correctional Center confirmed that Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges brought by this Office of engaging in the sex trafficking of minors, had been found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.”

‘Someone’s been having fun renaming their Fortnite account.’

“Today’s events are disturbing, and we are deeply aware of their potential to present yet another hurdle to giving Epstein’s many victims their day in Court,” Berman added.

The date on the release as it appears now with an “updated” note on the Justice Department website is Aug. 10, 2019.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

While the incorrect date might simply be a typo in a draft release, many online have speculated it is an indication of foreknowledge of Epstein’s real or faked death.

Gaming from beyond the grave

Some sleuths who dug into the new trove of Epstein files found mention of the child sex offender’s YouTube username, “littlestjeff1.” They also found possible evidence that Epstein was active in the video gaming ecosystem after his permanent ban from Xbox live in the form of a May 7, 2019, email highlighting a $25.95 charge for the virtual currency in the game Fortnite.

Justice Department.

In a massively viral and widely shared tweet, the X user @Truthpole noted that some individuals “matched this exact username to a Fortnite profile on Fortnite Tracker … which showed stats like Silver 1 rank in Chapter 5 Season 1 (post-2019), wins into 2025, and past activity flagged in Israel.”

The suggestion that Epstein may have been active on Fortnite after his supposed death was not only advanced in viral posts by other accounts on X but on other social media platforms, including Instagram.

The claim was all the more provocative after littlestjeff1’s stats were set to private earlier this month, according to archived page captures highlighted by Snopes.

Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Fornite’s developer and publisher Epic Games, weighed in on Feb. 6 to pour cold water on this particular theory, writing, “Someone’s been having fun renaming their Fortnite account, but it’s recent and not connected to the email addresses in the archive.”

The official Fortnite Status account similarly piped up, stating, “This was a ruse by a Fortnite player.”

“A few days ago, an existing Fortnite account owner changed their username from something totally unrelated to littlestjeff1, following the revelation of littlestjeff1 as a name on YouTube,” the official Fortnite account said. “These Fortnite trackers only display your current name, not any prior changes to it.”

The Fortnite Status account noted further, “We have no record of the subject’s email addresses referenced in the public document existing in the Epic account system. Since the public document releases, people have created Fortnite accounts with similar-looking email addresses and user names.”

When challenged on this explanation and prompted to account for why the apparent Epstein handle appeared to be associated with the game user in a third-party, year-end recap detailing player results in 2025, Fornite Status noted, “Fortnite gg Wrapped shows the account’s current name with stats from 2025.”

Skepticism still abounds about the explanation from Epic Games, given the mention of the digital Fortnite currency purchase in the Epstein emails; however, in that email, both the sender and the recipient’s addresses were redacted. Snopes suggested that other correspondences in the files indicate the game currency purchase pertained to a mother and her child.

Besides eyebrow-raising video game activity, fake sightings, and a questionable DOJ memo, skeptics have also raised questions about other findings in the files, including the mention in an FBI memorandum of a “flash of orange” spotted on surveillance footage heading toward the isolated prison tier where Epstein was housed the night before his body was reportedly found.

A 2023 report on Epstein’s death released by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General identified the “orange shape” as a corrections officer carrying linen or inmate clothing.

Video forensic experts expressed to CBS News in August that they were “skeptical about that interpretation and suggested that the shape could be a person dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit climbing the stairs.”

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While many are debating the meaning of the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, at least one left-wing influencer was caught trying to peddle misinformation to rile up both sides.

Ed Krassenstein posted that a little boy included in the show was Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old who was abandoned by his father during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation and became a left-wing cause célèbre.

‘Holy racism you dumb f**k. … Nice self-own.’

“Many of you may have missed this, but the little boy who Bad Bunny handed his Grammy to at the Super Bowl was Liam Ramos! Amazing!” Krassenstein wrote.

The claim was immediately contradicted online, and Krassenstein was mocked and ridiculed for what many saw as a racist suggestion.

“It’s not Liam Ramos. This is a child actor named Lincoln Fox,” read a community note attached to the post on the X platform. The note linked to an Instagram account for the child actor confirming his presence at the game.

“Leftist thinks all Hispanic kids look the same,” podcaster Brittany Hughes joked.

“Pretty racist … to assume that all brown people are the same and that one kid is the same as another without even checking,” one critic said.

“Not only is this wrong, but it’s racist. And instead of deleting and posting an update, you’re keeping it up because you’re desperate for a few bucks,” another user said.

“Pretty racist of you to see a little Hispanic boy and assume it’s the one little Hispanic boy whose name you know,” another popular response reads.

“Holy racism you dumb f**k. All Hispanic kids look the same to you? They’re not even the same age or complexion you dips**t. Nice self-own. … Don’t ever preach from your pulpit again, d**khead,” another detractor responded.

“It’s not the same kid you absolute buffoon. Kid is about 4 inches taller than you though,” one user joked.

Krassenstein added a second message saying there were conflicting reports about the child. He eventually admitted the child was an actor but did not delete the first post, which got over 11 million impressions.

RELATED: ‘State-of-the-art’: GOP congressman pre-empts Crockett’s ‘grandstanding’ with glimpse inside ICE facility in Texas

A publicist for Bad Bunny rejected the claim to NPR Music and confirmed the boy was an actor.

The halftime show was also criticized by many who were angered that the music artist rapped almost entirely in Spanish, and one brief shot showed two men dancing suggestively with each other.

Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show starring Kid Rock had more than 6.1 million viewers tune in on its YouTube livestream, according to the New York Times.

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Hollywood celebrities love nothing more than lecturing everyday Americans on morality, politics, and how we should live — but of course, their hypocrisy is hard to ignore.

“We’ve got all the hypocrisy in the world coming from Hollywood. These are not our moral exemplars, and they really don’t have as much influence over our elections as they think they do,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says.

“Thank the Lord. Otherwise, Donald Trump wouldn’t have won in 2016. He wouldn’t have won in 2024. So, we can continue to highlight their hypocrisy just as a good reminder that we shouldn’t be looking to them in any way,” she continues, noting that there are some exceptions — like Jelly Roll’s recent Grammys speech about Jesus Christ.

“There was a time in my life, y’all, that I was broken. That’s why I wrote this album. I didn’t think I had a chance, y’all. There was days that I thought the darkest things. I was a horrible human. There was a moment in my life that all I had was a Bible this big and a radio the same size in a 6-by-8-foot cell,” he said at the Grammys.

“And I believed that those two things could change my life. I believed that music had the power to change my life, and God had the power to change my life. And I want to tell y’all right now, Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is not owned by one political party. Jesus is not owned by no music label. Jesus is Jesus, and anybody can have a relationship with him. I love you, Lord,” he continued.

“Yes and amen,” Stuckey responds. “That is absolutely true. Love people giving glory to God in moments like that instead of saying stupid things about politics.”

“There’s no better news than the news that Jelly Roll just told us of the gospel,” she adds.

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Despite overwhelming support from the American electorate, over the past month Democrats have ratcheted up attacks on Republican-led nationwide voter ID legislation. On Sunday, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) slammed the attacks from his party in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

During the wide-ranging interview, the conversation turned toward the SAVE Act, a bill that would require voters to show government-issued identification to register to vote in federal elections. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 states currently have voter identification laws.

‘As a Democrat, I do not believe it’s radical or extreme to just produce ID to vote.’

Host Maria Bartiromo asked Fetterman, “Why it is so difficult to get the SAVE Act into the portfolio and onto the floor? What’s wrong with having an ID to vote?”

The senator responded, “As a Democrat, I do not believe that it’s unreasonable to show ID just to vote. And I remind everybody that less than a year ago in Wisconsin, they added that to the constitution by a 63%, you know, passing to put that in the constitution, that you have to show ID to vote.”

Fetterman’s statement stands in stark contrast to his fellow Democratic senators, such as Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who went on ABC News’ “This Week” to fearmonger about voter ID laws by saying people “don’t have the proper Real ID, driver’s license, don’t have the ID necessary to vote, even though they are citizens. This is another way to simply try to suppress the vote.”

RELATED: ‘Vast majority’ of Americans of all races agree with Nicki Minaj about voter ID, says CNN analyst

Fetterman responded to those sorts of attacks from members of his party by highlighting the results of a recent Wisconsin election. He said, “They also elected a very, very liberal justice into their supreme court. So it’s not a radical idea for regular Americans to show your ID to vote.”

On February 2, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) labeled the SAVE Act “Jim Crow 2.0” in a Senate floor speech. The minority leader said, “Now as for the SAVE Act itself: It has nothing to do with protecting our elections and everything to do with federalizing voter suppression. The SAVE Act is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0.”

Fetterman is not buying that characterization: “Those things are not Jim Crow or anything.”

The senator from Pennsylvania’s position is in line with a large majority of American voters. CNN polling analyst Harry Enten recently told his audience, “A photo ID to vote is not controversial in this country. It is not controversial by party — and it is not controversial by race. The vast majority of Americans agree with Nicki Minaj.”

Minaj has also expressed support for voter ID laws.

Enten’s data showed that over 75% of Americans favor a photo ID to vote, including the highest support on record in 2025 at 83%.

In closing, Fetterman said, “As a Democrat, I do not believe it’s radical or extreme to just produce ID to vote.”

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According to a February 6 CBS News article, “Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s death observed an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated, locked tier where his cell was located at approximately 10:39 p.m” — an observation, CBS says, that has gone “previously unreported by authorities.”

In addition, the CBS reports that an “FBI memorandum” suggests that video footage reviews conducted by the FBI and other examiners “led to disparate conclusions” — the FBI logged the mysterious orange shape as “possibly an inmate,” while the inspector general’s report recorded it as “an unidentified [corrections officer]” carrying orange “linen or bedding.”

Glenn Beck is sincerely puzzled by these FBI reports. “Inmates at 10:39 are not going around in that area, outside of their cell, so FBI, that doesn’t make sense,” he says.

Further, “we now know … [the FBI] knew that bedding is delivered the shift before this. … No one is allowed on that floor at 10:39,” he adds.

Even more shocking to Glenn is that then-Attorney General Bill Barr publicly stated that “no one entered” Epstein’s housing tier the night of his death, which was then reiterated by former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino last summer during a “Fox & Friends” interview. These statements are seemingly called into question by the revelations made by CBS.

However, the most jaw-dropping revelation in the article, says Glenn, centers on shocking new details from corrections officers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas about the noose — or rather the lack of one — on the night Epstein reportedly took his own life.

According to the article, records of Thomas’ interview, which were released in the latest Epstein document dump, indicate that he told investigators he discovered Epstein in his cell early on August 10 and that he “ripped” him down from the hanging position. However, when asked about the noose, Thomas could not recall taking off a noose. Noel, who was reportedly standing at the entrance of Epstein’s cell at the time, told investigators that she did not see a noose either.

The noose, reported CBS, has “never been definitively identified,” and the one collected at the scene was later determined “not to be the ligature used in Epstein’s death.”

“All right: First, you had us believe that it was a paper noose. Now you’re saying the paper noose that was found was not the noose that killed him. In fact, you can’t find the noose — the paper noose — and this one was later added to the scene. By whom?” asks Glenn.

He is astounded that Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by the chief medical examiner just six days later despite failure to identify the actual instrument that caused his death.

“You don’t have the … suicide weapon. The weapon that you do have, the noose, is not the noose that killed him. No explanation on how that arrived later at the scene. … You have a blurry figure going up in the middle of the night, and you can’t identify that individual … and yet you rule this a suicide?” he asks in disbelief. “That is fascinating to me.”

“I mean, there’s just no way to square this circle. There’s no way to do it. You cannot, with any credibility, say, ‘Yeah, this guy committed suicide,”’ he scoffs.

“There’s a reason why we don’t believe the government. There is a reason, and it’s this kind of crap.”

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary and analysis, watch the video above.

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While James Fishback, a Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate, has seen a good deal of campaign success since the launch of his campaign in late November, he has also seen a great deal of resistance — and potentially intimidation.

On Sunday night, Fishback’s campaign alleged that a fire was “intentionally set” near his house, where he and his team were working.

‘I’ll be hosting a rally in my own backyard tomorrow night.’

Emma Wright, Fishback’s campaign manager, posted an official statement less than an hour after the alleged incident.

“Shortly after 5:50 p.m. on Sunday, a fire was intentionally set in his side yard and began spreading toward his home, where Mr. Fishback and members of his staff were working. We are grateful to the Madison County Fire Rescue for their swift response and for containing the fire before it damaged his home,” the statement read.

RELATED: Young GOP outsider takes aim at Trump-endorsed candidate in campaign launch to replace Gov. DeSantis in Florida

Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images

Fishback’s campaign also condemned political violence of any kind, stressing that it has “no place in America.”

Fishback quote-tweeted the statement from his campaign manager, adding, “My team and I are okay.”

In a post that has since received 560,000 views, Fishback provided some photos of the scene, including what appears to be a burned area of a yard with the fire department on the scene.

Fishback followed up with a few more posts in the hours following the alleged attack, including an invitation to an unconventional rally.

“I’ll be hosting a rally in my own backyard tomorrow night,” he wrote just hours after the alleged incident on Sunday. “We will not be intimidated.”

Shortly thereafter, he added an invitation to his house for a “backyard rally.” The invitation included what appears to be his home address in Madison, Florida. The rally will be held on Monday night.

Blaze News reached out to Madison County Fire Rescue for comment. The Fishback campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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Turn on any TV show with a funeral scene. Watch any movie from 1915 to 2026 with a funeral scene.

What do you see? Dignified grieving families all in tasteful, restrained black clothing. The men wear black suits. The women wear black dresses and obscure their faces with a veil, or at least the suggestion of one on a fascinator.

‘Personalization’ is precisely what most of us do not need at a moment of crisis.

You’ll never see a more unrealistic scene on film.

Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral

Very few reading this article have ever witnessed this kind of sober, black-clad mourning in real life. America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has jettisoned nearly all etiquette as “lol boomer stupid,” and not even the most solemn occasion was spared the vulgarization.

Go to a funeral today and tell me what you see. I’ll tell you what I see: men who should know better walking into the parlor in jeans and name-brand sneakers in day-glo colors. Women wearing tarty outfits that barely cover enough leg to qualify for even the skimpiest Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

Since the hippie-commie takeover of the 1960s, we have decided to let it all hang out, including our backsides and cleavage. No matter what. Nothing is serious. Nothing is sacred. Not even death has enough gravitas to prod the average American into showing respect through sober dress.

It’s time to bring back the black. Contrary to modern glibness about everything, etiquette is not some silly, optional “Boomer” fixation on using the correct utensil at dinner. It’s not an oppressive regime. Etiquette is the word we use for the universally agreed-upon rules of behavior.

All human societies have etiquette. Without it, there is no society, only tribes and warfare. When etiquette is important enough to be codified, it becomes what we call “law.” That, too, is becoming seen as some quaint notion from a bygone era, and we can all look to our cities to see where this road is taking us.

Digging in

For 20 years I was the executive director of a nonprofit called Funeral Consumers Alliance. It was an educational organization and a watchdog group. Think of it like Consumer Reports magazine, but only for the funeral and burial purchase. Our aim was to give people accurate information so they could choose a send-off that was emotionally meaningful and affordable.

Strange as that may sound, contemplate the fact that Americans spend more than $20 billion annually to bury the dead. It’s easy to see how the grieving can be hoodwinked into paying premium prices for scams like “protective caskets” (the claim is that they keep the body dry and preserved; not true) and a host of other purchases that push the tab up to $10,000 or more.

My mentor was the outgoing organization director who became my dear friend. Lisa was a tough old no-nonsense broad. We spent many a night at her kitchen table working while drinking wine and chain-smoking, cracking each other up over the absurdity of the funeral business while figuring out how to arm grieving people against graveside upselling.

Lisa taught me almost everything I know about the subject. When we first met in 2002, she told me how “modern” consumers wanted something different in a funeral. “The Baby Boomers aren’t going to put up with cookie-cutter funerals. They want personalization,” she said.

Graveside groove

Lisa was correct, as I would discover after taking over her job. During my two decades, I spoke with more than 10,000 American families over the phone who needed counseling on funeral arrangements. This gave me a good baseline of understanding of the American mind on the topic of deathways.

The majority who called for advice wanted to avoid overspending, certainly. But the next biggest category of question was, “How do we do this the right way, but also our way?”

This never sat right with me. The more I thought about it, I began to realize why. “Our way” invariably meant conforming to a new set of assumptions about death, assumptions we had adapted en masse at some point in the last 50 years.

To say someone “died” is offensively blunt; “passed away” or simply “passed” is preferred.“Funerals” are gloomy remnants of the Victorian era designed to make everyone suffer. What your friends and family really want is a “celebration of life.”And anyway, who cares what other people want? This is about you — not your loved ones and their messy, depressing grief. “Throw me a big party!”

In other words, we have agreed to pretend that death is just another stop on a soft-focus Life Journey™. If we maintain this fiction, then somehow the deaths of our husbands, wives, and friends won’t be real. Or we won’t hurt as much. We convinced ourselves that there was something pathological about being bereft.

Crisis without crutches

This is all fake. We can’t party away grief, and our efforts to do so have left people in mourning with no guideposts. Like G.K. Chesterton’s fence, we tore down the structures around death without asking why we built them.

Should I send invitations to the funeral or is that not “done” any more? Is it OK if I skip the wake? What kind of photos am I supposed to put in our PowerPoint Tribute™? Is it OK to play the pop standards of the 1950s that my dad loved? Am I wrong to think my granddaughter should not have worn a halter top to my husband’s wake?

Honestly, there’s no need for any of this flailing, but we did it to ourselves by insisting that what mattered most was “personalization.” Well, no. “Personalization” is precisely what most of us do not need at a moment of crisis. We need dependable crutches, and that’s what our former customs did for us.

Sadness welcome

Judith Martin is one of the wisest philosophers of the American mind of the past century. You know her as the arch etiquette columnist “Miss Manners.” Years ago, I read an essay in which she said in more eloquent words the same thing I’m trying to communicate now: Death is no time for improvisation. Funeral customs were support structures that buttressed the grieving, taking pressure off of them so they didn’t have to stand on their own when it was impossible to think through the emotions.

I’m pleased to see that she hasn’t changed her tune. And I’d like to persuade you to take her viewpoint seriously. In her column from March 2025 in the Washington Post, Martin responds to a reader who went all in on the “celebration of life” approach. Martin’s gentle reader asked her if she made a distinction between “funerals” and “celebrations of life.” She also asked Miss Manners if it was acceptable to wear white instead of black.

Martin responded this way:

Funerals used to be set rituals, usually religious ones. Eulogies were given by clergy members, who were unlikely to have known the deceased as well as their relatives and friends and could inadvertently make mistakes — misattributing specific virtues, for example.

She acknowledged that many modern people prefer “celebrations of life,” but find themselves making mistakes in tone at a time of solemnity because they’re preoccupied with putting on a “personalized” performance at the wrong time.

“But there is another danger in the very premise of a celebration of life: the attempt to banish sadness,” Martin wrote.

So please do not mandate cheerfulness. This loss is a tragedy, and grief should not be made to seem out of place. You may succumb to it yourself. The American color of mourning is black, although the code is only sporadically observed (except in cases of funerals for national figures). But Miss Manners is not going to say you should not wear white — a mourning color in other cultures — if it makes you feel better.

I’m going to out Miss-Manners Miss Manners and be a little less gentle to the readers. No, you may not wear white. Or green. Or what “feels comfortable.” The funeral is not about you. It is about standing together with people in sorrow and showing them that you recognize the depth of their loss. It is your moral duty to voluntarily forswear your own comfort and vanity as a signal of respect and love.

Get back into black.

​Manners, Judith martin, Miss manners, Etiquette, Funerals, Celebrations of life, Lifestyle, Funeral consumers alliance, Mourning, Death, Intervention 

For Americans tuning in to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, there was more than one choice for halftime show entertainment. Viewers could watch Bad Bunny’s halftime show at the Super Bowl, most of which was in Spanish, or they could switch over to Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming on YouTube and other social media platforms.

President Trump apparently watched the former — and quickly made his opinions about the show known.

‘Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting.’

On Sunday night, Trump attacked the performance via Truth Social.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” Trump said.

RELATED: Bad Bunny delivers just 1 line in English during Super Bowl LX halftime show

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

He continued, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World. This ‘Show’ is just a ‘slap in the face’ to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every single day — including the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History!”

Trump added that there was “nothing inspirational” about the show, but that the “Fake News Media” would shower the performance with praise “because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.”

Trump concluded the post with a familiar call to replace the NFL’s “ridiculous new Kickoff Rule,” a request he has made on more than one occasion when talking about the league.

Turning Point’s alternative show drew as many as 6.1 million concurrent viewers, according to one estimate from the Athletic.

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​Politics, Super bowl, Super bowl lx, Bad bunny, Trump, President trump, Turning point usa, Super bowl halftime show, Truth social 

A male who last year ran over a Kansas City police officer with an ATV during a traffic stop, then sped away from the scene, has received his sentence.

Kansas City police said they tried to stop a group of ATV riders and motorcyclists committing traffic violations on April 12, 2025, KCTV-TV reported.

‘The noise and the aggressiveness, they’re not following any road rules, you know, they’re blazing through intersections.’

One officer tried to remove Kendall Coleman from his ATV and place him in custody, police told the station, adding that Coleman reversed, causing the officer to fall.

Police said Coleman then lifted his ATV into a wheelie, hit the officer with its front two tires, and ran over the officer with all four tires before speeding away, KCTV reported.

Court documents from last year indicate Coleman called his father — Marc Coleman — the night of the assault, telling him he was in trouble and needed to leave town, KMBC-TV reported.

Investigators used license plate readers to track Marc Coleman’s vehicle traveling west on Interstate 70 into Colorado Springs, KMBC noted.

Authorities told KMBC that prepaid phones were purchased after Kendall Coleman’s phone was disconnected, and surveillance video and other records helped link him to the ATV involved.

An anonymous Crime Stoppers tip ultimately led investigators to Kendall Coleman on April 23, and he was arrested, KCTV reported.

You can view video of the assault on the police officer in the below news video, which aired prior to Coleman’s capture:

RELATED: Blaze News original: A dozen times gangs on motorcycles, ATVs, and bikes harassed, attacked, and killed others

The officer suffered head injuries but has since made a full recovery, KMBC reported.

Kendall Coleman pleaded guilty Thursday, KMBC reported.

Prosecutors dropped an armed criminal action charge against Coleman — who is 28 years old — as part of a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and aggravated fleeing, KCTV said, citing Jackson County Circuit Court records.

KMBC also said Coleman originally had been charged with first-degree assault.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Adam Caine sentenced Coleman to 12 years in prison, KCTV said, citing court documents.

Coleman remained in the Jackson County jail Thursday evening and was awaiting transfer to the Missouri Department of Corrections, KCTV added.

A restaurant owner down the street from where the assault took place told KMBC that ATV riders have been a problem: “The noise and the aggressiveness, they’re not following any road rules, you know, they’re blazing through intersections.”

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​Atv, Police officer injured, Arrest, Prison sentence, Kansas city, Ran over, Crime