Three people linked to a group known as the Zizians are facing new felony charges related to firearms and illegal drug trafficking, on top of the misdemeanors that have kept them jailed in Maryland since February.
Members of the Zizians have been tied to violence in several states, including the fatal January shooting of a border patrol agent in northern Vermont.
The charges were filed last week against the three suspects who are named in court documents as Jack Amadeus LaSota, Michelle Jacqueline Zajko and Daniel Arthur Blank and who had previously been charged in Maryland with several misdemeanors each.
Those charges, including the unlawful possession of handguns, trespassing and obstructing arrest, stemmed from their arrest in Frostburg, Maryland, in February while allegedly camping on private property.
Now, prosecutors in Maryland’s Allegany County have brought a new indictment against each of them.
The new charges include felony counts of narcotic possession with intent to distribute and drug trafficking with the use of a firearm, according to court records and an article Wednesday in the Cumberland Times-News in Maryland.
The penalties for the latest felony charges, if they lead to convictions, carry up to 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors and attorneys for the three defendants could not be reached Wednesday afternoon for comment.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank have been in custody in Maryland since their initial arrest in February while the cases against them have been pending. Zajko and LaSota have also been previously charged with federal offenses as has one other person linked to the Zizians in Vermont.
In the Vermont case, two people named in court records as Felix Bauckholt and Teresa Youngblut were pulled over by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent David Maland on Jan. 20 on Interstate 91 in Coventry.
Youngblut, according to court records, opened fire, leading to a shootout that left Maland and Bauckholt dead and Youngblut injured.
Youngblut, 21, of Washington state, faces federal firearms and assault charges but has not been charged directly with killing Maland. At a court hearing Tuesday in Youngblut’s case in Burlington, a defense attorney stated he expected federal prosecutors to file new charges against his client in “short order” that carry the possibility of the death penalty.
Authorities have alleged that the guns that Youngblut and Bauckholt had at the time of the traffic stop in Vermont had been purchased by Zajko, who had lived for a time in Coventry.
Zajko has since been charged with a federal offense related to the purchases of firearms in Vermont. Zajko has not appeared in court in Vermont to face that charge.
LaSota, the alleged leader of the Zizians who blogged under the name “Ziz,” was federally indicted last week in Maryland on a charge of being an armed fugitive.
Guess they’re all going to be enjoying their vegan cuisine in the Allegany County a while longer. Shame they have to miss out on the Pride festivities, not to mention the Fourth of July. Speaking of which, I’m rattling the tip jar like a meth-head over here.
It was John Adams who, in a 1776 letter to his wife Abigail, declared that the occasion of our independence should “be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” including “Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” And by “Illuminations,” of course, he meant fireworks, which is why the Big Yellow Button has returned.
Although the PayPal donation button is permanently on the page, on special occasions I enlarge for the benefit of those readers who might be nearsighted and thus unable to see the button at its regular size. Click upon the Big Yellow Button and it will take you to PayPal where you can contribute $17.76 toward our family’s celebration of independence.
There is a “buy one get one free” (BOGO) coupon burning a hole in my pocket today. You see, as a frequent customer of the nearest major fireworks vendor, I’m on their text message list, and they send coupons to my phone. Today’s one-day special is BOGO on any item $50 or less, so if any readers were feeling particularly generous, $50 would be awesome, but any amount — $5 or $10 or $20 — would be most welcome.
Son Jim rigging our 2022 finale board.
WOW, it’s been three years since we did a show? The Biden years were tough, man, but now that America Is Great Again, it’s time to remind readers of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
Even though we ended up 2-4 on the week, it actually went better than expected, since with our records against the A’s and Dodgers, I fully expected to go 0-6 on the week, Still, Blue Moon Odom vultured his fifth win in relief of David Clyde against Jim Palmer & the A’s and Carl Morton outdueled Don Sutton, winning a 1-0 shutout thanks to Eddie Brinkman’s eighth homer of the year. That leaves us at 70-83 with nine games left in the season, so even if we ran the table against the Red Sox, O’s, and Tribe we’d still be just 79-83, and we all know that’s not happening. Fortunately, we have a nice crop of rookies coming up next year (including the Human Rain Delay) so maybe we’ll be able to break through for another winning season. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Ace of Spades does this thing where he reports some bad news for the gay community and then says, “During Pride Month?” And the whole idea of “Pride Month” has become a joke — basically it’s a corporate branding opportunity, with various companies doing promotional campaigns to demonstrate their “allyship” or commitment to “inclusion” or whatever.
Then again, did “Gay Pride” ever really make sense? It started with a riot — excuse me, I meant to say, mostly peaceful protest — at an unlicensed Greenwich Village gay bar run by the Genovese crime syndicate. Police obtained a warrant to shut it down and raided it in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969. The raid went down shortly after 1 a.m., and the crowd became so violent that it took three hours to clear them out. Somehow, this relatively minor event — fighting cops over the “right” to get drunk in an illegal Mafia-owned bar — has been inflated to world-historical signficance, the Bastille of sexual deviance as it were. And that, boys and girls, is why “Pride Month” is celebrated in June.
The actual facts of the 1969 Stonewall riots are less inspiring than the glorious narrative and, while I’m at it, why “Pride”? It’s all a bullying campaign to silence critics who don’t buy into the “rights” rhetoric which radical perverts stole from the black civil rights movement. As I’ve pointed out before, you’re not even allowed to use words like pervert, deviant or abnormal, no matter how outrageous or disgusting the behavior involved, because that’s “hate speech”:
“Deviant” is a word we don’t hear much anymore, for the simple reason that its meaning has become invalid or irrelevant or, as any Democrat would say, an expression of hate. America has in recent years gradually lost its vocabulary of moral judgment. “Deviant,” “abnormal,” “perverse,” “immoral” — each of these terms for sexual behavior that is wrong and bad implies the existence of an antonym for what is right and good. Anyone who cares to research the etymology of “deviant” and “perverse,” for example, will find that both of these words suggest a turning away from something. But from what have perverts like Anthony Weiner and deviants like Sydney Leathers turned away? We simply aren’t allowed to say it. Politically correctness forbids us to assert that any form of sexual behavior is more wholesome or more normal than any other. And no one in American public life dares use the word “sin” nowadays.
Well, I could continue in that vein for 1,500 words and not exhaust the topic, but there is news to be reported. Notice that I’ve used the most inclusive version of the ever-expanding acronym, LGBTQIA2S+ — including so-called “two-spirit” identity, with the plus sign designating whatever other kinky fetishes any freak might want to celebrate in June.
Andy Ngo identifies as a G in that acronym, but not the obnoxious radical kind, and it was Andy who popularized the label “Trantifa” to describe the (disproportionately large) contingent of Antifa thugs who identify as transgender. Note my use of the phrase “identify as,” because the whole idea of passing as the opposite sex has apparently been abandoned in recent years. The Implausible Tranny type is now the prevailing norm — ugly hulking brutes wearing dresses and pretending to be what they very obviously are not. We’re not allowed to point this out, of course, nor can we be permitted to mention the stark irrationality of such behavior.
Look, if you’re an ugly dude who can’t get laid, do you really think you’re gonna do better as an ugly woman? Is it not rather obvious that, far from being a solution to your unhappiness, your new transgender identity is likely to be the source of a whole new set of problems? But crazy is as crazy does, I guess, and that brings us to the case of Christopher Hudson, a/k/a “Julie Mikela Winters.” Last December, Hudson/“Winters” posted a GoFundMe trying to raise $10,000, claiming to be a victim of brutality by police in Portland, Oregon. It included this photo:
What Christopher/“Julie” wants you to notice about that picture is the bruises on his/“her” face, but notice something else? Yeah, the photo is cropped so that you can’t see his/“her” hairline, because the obvious case of male pattern baldness sort of undermines his credibility as a “her.”
Speaking of credibility, while Hudson/“Winters” claims to be the victim of brutality, Portland Police say that he/“she” is in fact the perpetrator of violence, and in December he/“she” was charged with felony assault on a public safety officer, as well as two misdemeanors. But it’s Portland, where criminals get turned loose in the revolving-door system, so Hudson/“Winters” was back on the streets pending trial on those December charges when he/“she” was arrested during a riot outside the Portland offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
On Tuesday, June 24, federal authorities apprehended an armed subject who advanced on officers with a large knife outside the ICE facility in Portland, Oregon. Julie Mikela Winters, 47, born Christopher Hudson, has been charged with felony attempted assault of a federal officer, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.
The incident occurred during the ongoing Antifa occupation at the ICE facility located at 4310 SW Macadam Avenue, which has been under siege by black-clad militants for more than two consecutive weeks.
According to an FBI affidavit, Federal Protective Service (FPS) officers observed Winters attempting to ignite an incendiary device next to the guard shack of the ICE building at 11:15 pm. When officers approached Winters, the defendant allegedly reached into his backpack and pulled out a large 1-foot knife with a curved blade.
Winters proceeded to advance on federal officers with the blade in hand. “As officers attempted to get tactically positioned, Winters threw the knife at one of the officers’ heads,” according to court documents. The targeted officer was able to dodge the attack.
The defendant proceeded to run away but was subdued by an officer who deployed a Taser. When federal agents attempted to place Winters in custody, Winters resisted arrest and allegedly reached toward his waist in an attempt to pull out a second deadly weapon. “One officer saw Winters grab another knife,” which resulted in the officer kicking the weapon away from Winters, according to the FBI affidavit. The second knife was described as a kitchen butcher knife.
Yesterday’s drive to Las Vegas was long and hot and exhausting. Today’s return was somewhat better. And speaking of today
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
SCOTUS finally slaps down rogue district judges, and burns KBJ in the process.
For the past couple of days, I’ve been watching CNN (so you don’t have to) and — dear merciful God! — there are no words to describe how awful it is. On the other hand, the attempt to describe it gave me an excuse to beat that dead dog again with a 1,300-word opus:
Among the errors to which journalists are prone, none is so common as the delusion of instant expertise. Assign a reporter to do an article about theoretical physics, and by the time he files his story, he’ll be convinced he’s Stephen Hawking. You see this sort of phony expertise everywhere in the media nowadays, including sports, where every ESPN panelist offers his predictions with rock-solid confidence, and never acknowledges his mistake when the team he’d picked to win ends up on the wrong side of a lopsided blowout.
Trafficking in fake expertise is routine practice at CNN, where their dwindling audience is now expected to believe that such personalities as Kasie Hunt and Erin Burnett know more about the effectiveness of U.S. military weapons than does Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. It’s worth noting in this context that CNN invested heavily in the idea that Hegseth was not qualified to be in charge of the Pentagon, despite his experience as an officer in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq.
Scarcely had the B-2 bombers returned from their bombing mission against Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility than CNN went to work to prove that the Air Force mission was a failure. . . .
