Random News and Notes 30 May
On this date in 1431 Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake for Heresy. In her teens, the “savior of France” began hearing voices – of three Christian saints, St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret – in her head. When she was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing Reims and therefore the French throne. The Dauphin – the French Crown Prince – having nothing to lose believed her and gave her a small Army. Jeanne had several small victories but she was captured in May 1430 by the Burgundians. They then sold her to the English. A year later, she went on trial for heresy and other charges before an ecclesiastical court and found guilty.
Joan, 19 years old, was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.
On this day in 1942, 23 year old Fred Korematsu an American Citizen of Japanese decent is arrested in San Leandro, California for resisting internment under FDR’s controversial Executive Order 9066, which called for the internment of nearly all Japanese Americans in concentration camps in the United States in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the EO.
The decision ranks up there with Wickard v Filburn and Plessy v Ferguson as one of the worst decisions ever to come out of SCOTUS. Like Plessy, it was overturned. In Trump v Hawaii Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, explicitly stated that the original 1944 ruling—which upheld the constitutionality of Japanese American internment camps during World War II—was “gravely wrong the day it was decided”.
On this date in 1967, the short-lived Republic of Biafra was founded. In 1960, Nigeria gained independence from Britain. Six years later, the Muslim Hausas in northern Nigeria began massacring the Christian Igbos in the region, prompting tens of thousands of Igbos to flee to the east, where their people were the dominant ethnic group. Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu and other non-Igbo representatives of the area established the Republic of Biafra, comprising several states of Nigeria.
After diplomatic efforts by Nigeria failed to reunite the country, war between Nigeria and Biafra broke out in July 1967. On January 11, 1970, Nigerian forces captured the provincial capital of Owerri, one of the last Biafran strongholds, and Ojukwu was forced to flee to the Ivory Coast. Four days later, Biafra surrendered to Nigeria.
We start the news in the skies over Wisconsin where there was an attempted cockpit breach on United flight 2005 from O’Hare to Minneapolis. The flight squawked 7500 – the code for a hijacking – and diverted to Madison.
Law enforcement on board the aircraft subdued the subject until landing where the aircraft was met by additional law enforcement.
A school administrator in Washington state has been arrested and charged for covering up a series of sexual assaults in her school. Longview School Superintendent Karen Cloninger faces felony witness tampering and misdemeanor charges for failing to report child abuse and obstructing police in a probe over sexual assaults by Mark Morris High School boys’ basketball players on younger teammates from November 2025 to January 2026. Detectives say she knew key details like forcible dragging but directed staff not to alert police right away.
Five district employees, including her, are on paid leave amid a third-party review, parental demands for board resignations, and an ongoing police investigation that could bring more charges.
Not for nothing but the largest increase in spending for public K-12 education is on the exponential growth of administrators. Non-teaching personnel and administrators now make up roughly 52.5% of all public school system employees. By 2023, the total number of school administrators in the United States reached approximately 993,000, marking a 23.5% net increase over just 10 years.
Anyway, it does my cold dead heart good to see Karen perp-walked this way.
There was a charter bus crash in Virginia yesterday. The crash occurred around 2:35 a.m. southbound near mile marker 146 in Stafford County, when the New York-to-Charlotte bus failed to brake and hit six vehicles. All five deaths were occupants of the struck cars, while the bus’s 34 passengers and driver Jing S. Dong were hospitalized; three remained in critical condition.
Note the name of the driver. Dong is a naturalized citizen who cannot speak or read English yet the State of New York felt it was OK to issue him a commercial Drivers Licence.
Local police confirm the driver of this motorcoach — a man from China who became a U.S. citizen — doesn’t speak English. He received his commercial drivers license from New York State in 2024.
Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states’ accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English.
If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus.
Our investigators are reviewing New York licensing records, training documentation, and the driver’s history. Any company, trainer, or school that contributed to putting an unqualified driver on the road will face intense scrutiny.
We’ll share more updates soon.
My prayers are with the loved ones of the innocent lives lost and those who were hurt in this horrific crime.
Demonstrations outside the Newark, New Jersey, Delaney Hall ICE facility escalated Friday night into violence, with crowds vandalizing federal vehicles and throwing things at agents and local police. New Jersey State Police used tear gas to clear roads, the FBI arrested a man for death threats against officers. It appears they assaulted and robbed journalist Cam Higby who was there covering the riots.