Some story ideas are best left in the editing room … or in the first draft.

“Marty Supreme” casts Timothee Chalamet as a ‘50s-era ping-pong prodigy hoping to dominate his sport. Yes, we’re talking ping-pong, but it’s still a terrific movie despite the goofy concept. There’s even an impressive performance by “Shark Tank” alum Kevin O’Leary.

Now even a shrinking ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ is reducing the number of live musical interludes between spoon-feedings of propaganda.

His character is the lead’s frenemy, a benefactor who clashes with the brash ping-ponger. Except the film’s ending nearly featured a bloody coda that would have shocked everyone.

And perhaps crushed its Oscar dreams.

Director Josh Safdie reveals the original premise ends with an ‘80s set scene where O’Leary’s character bites Marty in the neck. Yeah, he’s a vampire in that iteration of the film, even though there’s only one vampire reference prior to it. Audiences assumed it’s a metaphor.

A24, the artsy-fartsy studio behind the film, apparently balked at that ending. The rest may be Oscar history. Bullet dodged …

The naked lady sings

Our heroine is a scrappy OnlyFans model, gang!

The political leanings of the Metropolitan Opera’s new “Carmen” update are so on the nose that it would make Pinocchio blush. This take on Bizet’s classic features an ICE agent attacking an innocent victim on a stage decked out to be the U.S. southern border. And that poor soul happens to be an OnlyFans model.

Who knew Orange Man Bad wasn’t a fan of the adult web site? Now we know, and knowing is half the battle. The other half? Saving your money and watching a version that doesn’t devolve into “resistance” agitprop.

Big Bird, free agent

And yet another “we must fund media that hates us” argument hits the bricks.

PBS and NPR finally had their federal funding removed, courtesy of Team Trump. The usual progressive suspects decried this attack on … wait for it … democracy.

Actually our democracy is better when state-sponsored news doesn’t use our cash to suppress stories like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and a cognitively impaired president.

One chronic PBS defense boils down to two words (or one name): Big Bird. Today’s children must have free, unfettered access to the yellow fella living on “Sesame Street” or they’ll grow up listening to Kid Rock.

Now even that argument is going down in flames.

YouTube just partnered with Sesame Workshop to make more than 100 full “Sesame Street” episodes available, for free, to anyone with an internet connection.

Move over, Oscar — looks like another progressive institution is headed for the dustbin of history.

The ‘Show’ must go on (and on)

Jordan Klepper remains gainfully employed by Comedy Central, but his star just won’t rise. He’s the guy who seeks out uninformed Trump supporters and mocks them for his “Daily Show” sycophants.

George Carlin, he ain’t.

This week, Klepper — one of the show’s rotating hosts — attacked President Donald Trump for … supporting the Iranian people desperate to overthrow their tyrannical government.

How does a freedom-fighting fake newsman spin that as something bad? Not to worry — Klepper found a way, calling Trump a hypocrite because he’s against the violent radicals attacking ICE in Minnesota:

Ah, he’s talking about Iran. My mistake. Yes, but you know what? It doesn’t matter, because President Trump is nothing if not consistent in his beliefs and ironclad in his principles. And I know that his police force will treat Americans with that same empathy and restraint when they — ah, [bleep], you know where this is going.

Yes, we do know where it’s going, Jordan. Which is why anyone with a brain tuned out “The Daily Show” a long time ago.

Spin doctors

Scrap the musical guest … we got Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in studio!

Late-night TV is getting out of the music business, laments the Hollywood Reporter. First “The Late Show” cut back on its musical guests. Then “Late Night with Seth Meyers” jettisoned its house band to cut costs.

Now even a shrinking “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” is reducing the number of live musical interludes between spoon-feedings of propaganda.

The article laments a great opportunity for emerging bands to make a name for themselves — even if the spots don’t move the needle like they used to.

The bigger message is clear. It’s belt-tightening time with Team Kimmel, and the show’s fans would rather watch Democrats blather than enjoy a cool, new band cracking the zeitgeist.

Oh well. Maybe Senator Pocahontas can lead a drum circle.

​Showbiz, Entertainment, Culture, Opera, Carmen, Only fans, Daily show, Donald trump, Ice, Toto recall 

The criminal case against Brian Jerome Cole Jr. for the alleged January 2021 placement of two pipe bombs on Capitol Hill raises more questions than it answers about Cole’s movements that night and why the FBI appears not to have addressed notable actions in its case documents, as well as the strange behavior of Capitol Police investigators that immediately followed.

The government alleges that Cole, 30 — who the defense says is an autistic man with obsessive compulsive disorder — was a lone wolf who somehow evaded the FBI’s massive dragnet for nearly five years. Blaze News examined the charges against Cole to see if his arrest fits with the case history and facts already in the public square. The list of conflicts, problems, and questions is extensive. This is Part 1.

‘I’m pretty confident that we’re closing in on some suspects.’

The defense disclosure that Cole suffers from Level 1 autism spectrum disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder recast the prosecution’s case and called into question the FBI’s four-hour interview of Cole on Dec. 4 and his alleged “detailed confession” without an attorney present.

“I know that the government has come out and claimed that Mr. Cole has made confessions,” defense attorney Mario Williams said in an interview with WTTG. “Not true. … That interview, we do not consider a confession at all,” Williams said. While Williams asserted his client’s innocence, he declined to comment on whether his client is the hoodie-wearing person depicted in the footage of the bomber.

On Jan. 9, Cole pleaded not guilty to two felony charges in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.: transportation of explosives and malicious attempt to use explosives. His defense has pointed out that the five-year statute of limitations on the charge for transporting explosives expired a day before a federal grand jury handed up the two-count indictment. The status of that charge is not clear.

Disbelief and muted praise

Cole’s arrest was greeted by skepticism and disbelief by the Cole family, by an FBI whistleblower who worked on the pipe-bombs case, and by officials inside the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice, and White House, who all spoke privately to Blaze News. Cole’s grandmother, Loretta R. Cole Donnette, told a reporter that her grandson operates on the mental level of a 16-year-old.

While FBI Director Kash Patel went out of his way to credit then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino for assembling a new FBI team that solved the pipe-bomb case using only the evidence and tips the bureau had already compiled, the White House remained silent. Even the FBI’s initial self-congratulations have been muted since the initial press conference.

After Bongino left the FBI in early 2026 to return to his podcasting career, Patel’s farewell comments failed to mention his most high-profile success.

“Dan heads back to the private sector after helping orchestrate a record year for the FBI,” Patel wrote on X on Jan. 4. The director cited eight examples, from the U.S. murder rate to Operation Summer Heat, but nary a mention of the pipe bombs.

This stands in contrast with the attention the two brought to the case in the months leading up to the arrest and in its immediate aftermath. In May, Bongino listed the Jan. 6 pipe bombs as one of the top three cases he and Patel planned to focus on. “We made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention to these cases,” Bongino wrote on X May 25.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino (L), accompanied by Attorney GeneralPam Bondi (C) and FBI Director Kash Patel (R), speaks during a news conference on an arrest of a suspect in the January 6 pipe-bomb case at the Department of Justice on December 4, 2025.Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Bongino said in May 2025 that the FBI had been working anew on the pipe-bombs case ever since Patel was sworn in as the ninth director the previous February. He told Fox News: “The second we got in, I put a team on it and I said, ‘I want answers on this.’ And I’m pretty confident that we’re closing in on some suspects.”

It’s not clear what became of any other suspects — plural — Bongino mentioned this past spring, as there was no further word about the case for more than five months, and the FBI now alleges Cole acted alone.

Two months later, in July, Bongino garnered more than 20 million views with a single post on X, writing that he was “shocked” by the things he had learned about the FBI during his brief tenure. He made the remarks in the context of a pledge that he and Patel were “committed to stamping out public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations” and later told radio host Vince Coglianese they were specifically in reference to anti-Trump corruption he uncovered investigating the Obama FBI’s 2016 Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence operation that alleged Russian interference in the election.

“It is a priority for us. But what I have learned in the course of our properly predicated and necessary investigations into these aforementioned matters, has shocked me down to my core,” he wrote on X. “We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned.”

A rough start for the DOJ

The prosecution got a sloppy start during Cole’s initial court appearance on Dec. 5.

Despite having placed so much importance on the years-long investigation, the Department of Justice did not have an indictment of Cole when he was arrested — only a criminal complaint.

A magistrate judge set Dec. 15 for a detention hearing but did not establish a date for arraignment, where Cole would have an opportunity to enter pleas to the charges. The detention hearing was later moved to Dec. 30 by joint agreement.

Cole’s right to a speedy trial meant federal prosecutors had until Dec. 19 to obtain a federal indictment or face an adversarial preliminary probable-cause hearing, where the government would have had to present its evidence to the judge showing that Cole is likely guilty of the charges and defense attorneys could question the case against their client.

While Cole agreed to delay the detention hearing until Dec. 30, he refused to waive his right to a preliminary hearing within the 14-day window his speedy-trial rights demand, his attorneys said in court filings.

FBI, Prince William County Police Department

The DOJ did a bit of an end run on Dec. 29 by obtaining an indictment of Cole in the local D.C. Superior Court. It is not a standard practice for federal courts to accept indictments from the local or municipal-level D.C. court. A test case on that question is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, though a decision on that case is unlikely in time to affect the Cole case.

While the DOJ finally went back to the district court to get a federal grand jury indictment of Cole on Jan. 6, the statute of limitations on one of the charges had expired — by a single day. Now, Cole’s attorneys are arguing that the DOJ missed both the window for that charge and the deadline for a speedy trial.

After a magistrate judge ruled that Cole must remain locked up until trial, defense lawyers filed an emergency motion for review of the decision with U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who was assigned to the pipe-bombs case.

Cole’s “emergency motion seeks release because the government failed to follow the law, and it does not get to detain Mr. Cole now because the magistrate judge failed to properly release him on Dec. 30,” attorney J. Alex Little wrote in a motion supporting his client’s release.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has worked tirelessly to solve the pipe-bombs case, decried the DOJ’s ongoing efforts to keep Cole in jail until trial.

“No credible motive, presents danger to no one, flimsy evidence, no priors, willing to wear a tracker under house arrest, family will vouch, and DOJ botched the legal work,” Massie wrote on X the day before Cole’s Jan. 7 detention hearing. “Irreparable harm to him otherwise.”

Independent case discoveries

Blaze News outlined shocking case discoveries on Oct. 9 in a feature story on the work of an independent investigator who goes by the social media handle “Armitas” and has asked not to be otherwise named publicly for security reasons.

Armitas tracked the hoodie-wearing bomb suspect by scrubbing the feeds of dozens of U.S. Capitol Police CCTV security cameras. He discovered that the suspect visited two locations apart from where the bombs were found on Jan. 6, 2021.

At the first, the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, the suspect sat down cross-legged in front of a bush on the north side of the building. The suspect leaned into the bush and appeared to attempt to place something under the shrub around 7:47 p.m. After 77 seconds, the suspect got up, grabbed the suspect’s backpack, and walked off toward the DNC a few hundred feet away.

The bomber also visited a C Street rooming house near the Capitol Hill Club at about 8:15 p.m. Security video shows the suspect visited the front garden of a congressional rooming house known as the C Street Center, 133 C St. Southeast.

Photos by U.S. Capitol Police

The suspect was standing behind some bushes when a Capitol Police squad car pulled over directly across the street about 8:15 p.m. The suspect then walked south on Rumsey Court and, according to the FBI, placed a bomb along the rear wall of the Capitol Hill Club.

The FBI has never publicly addressed the two Capitol Police squad cars parked across the street from the pipe bomber just as the suspect was moving into place to drop the second pipe bomb. It is not known whether the two patrol officers were ever identified or interviewed.

Armitas said he presented the information about the possible other bomb-drop locations to the FBI and the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Remaining Questions Surrounding Jan. 6. The FBI has not publicly acknowledged the information or explained whether it has investigated the possibility that the bombs were originally intended to be placed and explode at other sites.

Williams said the defense has an expert prepared to testify that the pipe bombs were not explosives and could not have detonated.

“We have an expert that’s well recognized, and we have an expert report,” he said. “Now, these devices that are alleged to be explosive and this or that by the government, what’s the key point that you need to focus on? [They] were not viable, by their [the government’s] own data.”

Either a ‘device’ or a hoax

The first responders to the discovery of the Capitol Hill Club/RNC device had serious doubts that the contraption was a real bomb. This included the head of RNC security and then-Capitol Police Officer Michael Riley, who exchanged looks of disbelief but had no choice but to treat the device as real, Riley told Blaze News.

The devices had 60-minute kitchen timers attached, but were ostensibly placed 17 hours before they were found. Under questioning by Massie in June 2023, former FBI Assistant Director Stephen M. D’Antuono said it was not technically possible for a device with a 60-minute timer to detonate 17 hours later.

The House Subcommittee on Oversight also took issue with the FBI’s description of the pipe bombs as “viable.”

‘By the way, they didn’t go look for a third pipe bomb.’

“According to an FBI bomb technician who agreed to speak to committee staff on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, the FBI’s use of the term ‘viable’ is a deviation from the standard description used by bomb technicians,” read a January 2025 Subcommittee on Oversight report.

“Traditionally, bomb technicians deliberately avoid using vague language,” the report continued, “choosing instead to refer to a bomb as a ‘device’ if it would ‘function as designed,’ or as a ‘hoax.’”

Did Cole set the bomb timer for 60 minutes?

According to the FBI, Cole told agents he set the kitchen timer on the DNC bomb for 60 minutes before he placed the device near a park bench behind the building. However, the video released by the FBI doesn’t show the suspect even attempting to set the timer before placing it under the DNC bush.

Armitas said the surveillance video released by the FBI from a DNC security camera shows that the bomber took the device out of a backpack and immediately placed it under the bush near the base of the park bench. Setting the timer would have required two hands. “Video from 2 different angles shows that the timer was never set,” Armitas wrote on X.

“This device requires 2 full turns of the dial to set it,” Armitas wrote, “not to mention you have to unclip and re-clip all the alligator clips, otherwise turning the dial will close the switch across those clips, shorting the detonator — kaboom. As we can see in the video, the device is pulled out of the backpack and immediately placed.”

Counter-surveillance behavior

One of the two-man Capitol Police counter-surveillance teams dispatched after discovery of the Capitol Hill Club bomb on Jan. 6 exhibited odd behavior in their search for other devices.

The counter-surveillance agents chose to walk all the way from the Capitol South Metro Station near the RNC, despite the urgency of the search. Capitol Police CCTV footage did not show them conducting any searches along the way.

They walked along South Capitol Street Southeast, not stopping at the park bench where the FBI has since insisted the device sat for 17 hours, and proceeded to the north side of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute building a few hundred feet from the DNC.

Two U.S. Capitol Police counter-surveillance officers walk toward the Democratic National Committee on Jan. 6, 2021. One of the officers would discover a pipe bomb under a park bench behind the DNC. U.S. Capitol Police

The agents walked up a sidewalk to the front of the CBCI building before returning. One of the agents stopped, leaned down, and looked under a bush beside the sidewalk. It was the same bush where security video shows the alleged bomber stood and sat for 77 seconds the night before, appearing to attempt placement of something under the shrub. What did the agent see? Was it the same thing noticed by a construction worker who peered under the bush at 1:00 p.m., just minutes before?

The CBCI shrub and the bomber’s visit were unknown to police at midday on Jan. 6, and the counter-surveillance agents had not yet discovered the DNC device. Why did the bush draw their attention? How could they have known the shrub could be an important part of the forthcoming investigation?

51 of them ‘were identified as “not needing further action” because the phones “belonged to law enforcement officers or persons on the exclusion list.”‘

The appearance of the bomb suspect at the CBCI bush was not even mentioned in an Oct. 22 video update from the FBI. The animated map shown in the FBI video does not show the bomber walking down a sidewalk north of the CBCI building and spending 77 seconds standing and sitting in front of the shrub.

Once the counter-surveillance agents found a device in the bushes at the DNC, it appears that they stopped searching for other bombs, even though the risk should have been heightened by discovery of a second bomb within just 25 minutes of the first. They later could not account for this when questioned by Rep. Massie.

“How did they know exactly where to look, including the place [Congressional Black Caucus Institute bush] where the pipe bomber tried to place a bomb?” Massie asked. “It was police, it was Capitol Hill Police that found these bombs, and they got there. But … I hope they went and bought lottery tickets after finding these, after going to these two locations.

Bomb orientation different on J6 than night before?

According to Armitas, the hoodie-wearing bomb suspect placed the DNC pipe bomb under the bench with the kitchen timer facing out toward the sidewalk. But when the bomb was discovered by a Capitol Police counter-surveillance agent at 1:05 p.m. Jan. 6, the device’s orientation was 180 degrees different, with the timer facing under the bush and the long end of the pipe facing toward the sidewalk. That could indicate that the bomb was removed after being placed on Jan. 5 and re-placed shortly before its discovery on Jan. 6.

Corrupted cellular data?

In testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary in 2023, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office said some of the data turned over by cell carriers was “corrupted” and that “the corrupted data may have contained the identity of the suspect,” according to a January 2025 U.S. House report.

“We have complete data,” former FBI Assistant Director D’Antuono told a Judiciary committee in June 2023, before correcting himself. “Not complete, because there’s some data that was corrupted by one of the providers. Not purposely by them, right. It just — unusual circumstances that we have corrupt data from one of the providers.”

In later correspondence with the Judiciary Committee, representatives for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile said they did not supply corrupted data and that the FBI never notified them with concerns about the integrity of the information they supplied.

The Subcommittee on Oversight said in its January 2025 report that the FBI “has refused to comply with multiple requests from the subcommittee regarding this claim.”

Of the 186 phone numbers of interest identified by the FBI, 51 of them “were identified as ‘not needing further action’ because the phones ‘belonged to law enforcement officers or persons on the exclusion list,’” according to the January 2025 U.S. House report. The names associated with those 51 protected numbers have not been made public.

FBI identified possible suspect using AdID

Case agents developed eight potential targets from subpoenas issued to 10 AdTech companies, which use anonymized trackers to help target advertising to customer prospects. The information collected by AdTech includes “the websites a user visited, their internet activity and a user’s location,” a 2025 House report stated.

Unlike the vague location information from cell phone tower pings, AdTech uses GPS technology to pinpoint a user’s exact location in order to tailor advertising based on the user’s location. Anyone with online-purchasing apps, maps, or applications like DoorDash and Uber Eats can be tracked using AdID technology.

‘The user associated with this AdTech ID was a significant lead.’

According to AdTech, the company’s software tools allow advertisers to reach qualified customer prospects, control how and where advertisements are shown, and optimize advertising spending “in real time.”

The FBI Counterterrorism Advanced Projects Unit initially identified three potential AdID targets, but “none of these targets were ‘particularly high-confidence candidates,’” the 2025 House report stated. By March 2021, the FBI identified one AdID “whose movements matched the suspect’s movements as outlined by the video the FBI released tracking the suspect’s whereabouts.”

The pipe-bombs case team requested that the FBI’s Special Operations Group conduct surveillance on the person of interest tied to the AdID. The House reports called this a “significant lead.”

“It ultimately remains unclear what happened to this lead; however the allocation of resources for surveillance purposes suggests the user associated with this AdTech ID was a significant lead,” the report said.

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​Politics 

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) blasted California officials this week for refusing to extradite a doctor facing abortion charges.

Murrill said that it was “appalling” to see Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) “openly admitting that they will protect an individual from being held accountable for illegal, medically unethical, and dangerous conduct that led to a woman being coerced into terminating the life of her unborn child.”

Remy Coeytaux was charged on Jan. 8 in St. Tammany Parish with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 50 years of hard labor.

‘The trauma of my chemical abortion still haunts me.’

Murrill announced on Tuesday — several months after indicating that she would “pursue anyone and use any legal means available” to hold accountable those who distribute abortion pills in the Bayou State — that a criminal arrest warrant had been signed for Coeytaux and his name had been entered into the National Crime Information Center.

Roughly an hour later, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry indicated that he was “signing the extradition paperwork to bring this California doctor to justice.”

“Louisiana has a zero tolerance policy for those who subvert our laws, seek to hurt women, and promote abortion,” said Landry. “I know Gavin Newsom supports abortion in all its forms, but that doesn’t work in Louisiana. We are unapologetically pro-life.”

RELATED: Pro-abortion doctor gets dismantled by Hawley on men and pregnancy: ‘I don’t know how we can take you seriously’

Shuran Huang for the Washington Post via Getty Images

Newsom said in response that “Louisiana’s request is denied.”

“We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services. Not today. Not ever,” said Newsom. “We will never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.”

Newsom suggested that this frustration of Louisiana justice was consistent with his 2022 executive order directing California to decline extradition requests for doctors accused of providing or facilitating abortions.

Nancy Northup, the president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Coeytaux in a separate civil case, told the New York Times that the allegations “are unproven and should not be reported as fact.”

“Women should also be able to get safe and legal abortion care in their own state,” added Northup. “Thousands of women seek abortion pills via mail every year because abortion is banned in their state, and that will not change until abortion is legal everywhere.”

While characterized as safe, abortion pills not only kill unborn children but endanger women’s lives. The Ethics and Public Policy Center noted in a report last year that over 10% of women “experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.”

Coeytaux is accused in a federal lawsuit of sending abortion pills to a Louisiana woman in 2023 — a woman who has indicated she was pressured to take the drugs and is now “haunt[ed]” by her chemical abortion.

Rosalie Markezich, the recipient of the drug and now suffering from the fallout of the abortion, claimed in a September court filing that despite initially celebrating her pregnancy, her boyfriend “soon changed his mind,” then used her personal email address and mailing address to obtain mifepristone and misoprostol “from an online provider that his sister has used multiple times before.”

A few days after allegedly forwarding to Coeytaux the $150 her boyfriend sent her, Markezich received the drugs by mail.

According to her declaration, Markezich changed her mind about killing her child, but her boyfriend, who “had anger issues and a criminal record,” allegedly coerced her into taking them — and she proved unable to throw them back up.

“The trauma of my chemical abortion still haunts me,” said Markezich.

Coeytaux is also named in a civil complaint filed in July with the federal court for the Southern District of Texas. The Texas complaint alleges that a woman, Kendal Garza, was pressured by her estranged husband to use abortion drugs allegedly obtained from Coeytaux “to murder” Garza’s unborn child by another man.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) ordered Coeytaux on Aug. 14 to cease and desist from mailing abortion drugs into the state of Texas and indicated such conduct not only violates Texas state law but the federal Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibits the mailing of abortion-related drugs.

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​Abortion, Gavin newsom, Mifepristone, Abortionists, Gavin, Newsom, California, Louisiana, Murrill, Rob bonta, Abortion pill, Interstate, Politics