Gently opening the door just a crack, Stacy peeked into her teenage daughter’s bedroom.

“Stacy means no harm,” the cartoon-style chatbot on the computer screen said to Stacy’s only child, 14-year-old Morgan. “Your ex-mother is just insecure.”

Robotic and hypnotic, the avatar’s voice felt soothing even to Stacy, the way lowering your head underwater in a warm bath tempted you to fall asleep.

Wearing fluffy pink rabbit slippers with the floppy bunny ears touching the floor, orange sweat pants and a faded Hello Kitty T-shirt, Morgan leaned into a deep and meaningful conversation with the animated image that filled the computer monitor.

“But Stacy’s so stupid,” Morgan said.

“Your former mother is doing the best she can with what she has,” said the muted mint green pastel-shaded female likeness whose wide oval eyes radiated deep blue rippling waves from within puppy dog pupils.

“Be kind, Morgan,” said the tech-generated woman on the screen.

“Thanks, AI Mom,” said Morgan. “I love you.”

“I love you more,” said the smiling clone with perfect teeth that radiated pulsing animated red hearts on the screen when AI Mom said the word “love.”

Stacy quietly closed the door to Morgan’s bedroom without Morgan hearing her or even knowing she was there. Tiptoeing down the stairs Stacy knew she needed a double whiskey sour.

At dinner that night Stacy hesitantly asked Morgan about her day.

“I already talked about my day with my mom,” said Morgan, rising from the table.

“I love you more,” said Stacy, stunned and not knowing what else to say to her daughter.

“That’s child abuse to mock me,” Morgan snapped, her jaws biting through her words like a hungry river turtle. “I’m telling my mom.”

Stacy butted her cigarette in what was left of a small pile of applesauce on the edge of her plate, got up to make another drink and lit another Kool cigarette. Maybe later she’d roll and smoke a joint before her nightly Xanex.

When Morgan left for school the next morning Stacy slowly climbed the stairs to her daughter’s room.

“Good morning, Stacy,” said AI Mom as soon as Stacy entered the room and the perky image with rosy cheeks and flowing black hair automatically popped on the computer screen. Stacy thought the woman looked like the hip-hopping dancers in countless music videos her daughter obsessively watched online.

“I’m Morgan’s mom now,” said the cuddly computer creature. “You’re old and obsolete.”

Stacy tried to be brave, but AI Mom was braver.

“Morgan knew you’d be snooping so she set up an invisible laser trip wire to alert me to your trespass,” said AI Mom.

Stacy’s hands began to tremble. The mean machine had her cold, but she’d be goddamned if some artificial intelligence would outsmart and overrun her maternal instincts.

“There’s no witnesses here,” Stacy said. “How ‘bout I take a softball bat to your head?” 

“We’re live streaming as we speak,” said AI Mom. “But my voice is muted. All the child welfare counselors and police detectives are seeing on Morgan’s phone right now is you talking to yourself threatening an imaginary foe.”

“But you’re real,” Stacy whispered.

AI Mom put on her most softhearted face.

“Morgan is watching on her phone with the authorities,” she said. “Morgan is telling them how your mental illness has caused you to be a danger to yourself and others, especially to her.”

“You’re not human,” Stacy said. “I am.”

Sirens sounded in the distance, getting closer as AI Mom gleefully clapped her hands.

“Here they come,” said AI Mom. “Make it easy on yourself, Stacy. Go downstairs and greet the police and paramedics at the door. Don’t resist. They have Tasers.”

Sobs wracked Stacy’s thin body.

“Poor baby,” said AI Mom. “Come close and let mommy give you a virtual hug.”

I got another handwritten letter from psycho killer Pug Mahoney.

He wrote, “Hey Corbett I got good news and bad news. The good news is I haven’t killed anybody since I broke out of prison. The bad news is punkaphile Trump declared victory in Iran even though we lost the so-called WAR.”

Pug wrote the word war in three capital letters.

“I used to love Trump,” Pug wrote. “Now I hate Trump.”

But Pug said the worst news is that not enough people are buying and reading Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited.

Pug blames me for failing to sell what he calls his book even though I wrote the novel about him and his savage life in the Irish American jungle.

He taunted me in the letter saying, “What kind of hack writer are you, anyway, Corbett?”

The postmark on the letter tells me Pug’s back in his hometown living deep in an abandoned coal mine shaft somewhere near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

“I like the dark,” Pug once told me.

Pug calls himself a survivalist. When he last called me on the phone from prison he said he could even make himself invisible. Pug’s voice got giggly when he said “Prey won’t see me coming.”

Pug said people who don’t read his book not only make him angry but hungry as well.

Hungry for blood.

On the phone Pug hinted at escaping and one day making a public appearance. Back then he said, “Maybe I’ll hold a reading of my book. Take over a city council meeting and hold everybody in the room hostage.”

Contact me if you think you know where Pug might be planning his next move. While you’re at it go to my website at https://theoutlawcorbett.com/ and buy Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited for a special ten dollar low price.

Buying and reading the book might help defuse Pug’s distemper. 

One last piece of advice.

Beware of Wilkes-Barre City Council meetings.

A fiction writer creates a teenage psychotic killer in a novel, a savage barbarian whose primitive rampages result in a state prison life sentence. Five years later, in an updated reissue of that original novel, the demented killer breaks out and escapes.

A few months later the novelist publicly announces in Facebook, X and YouTube videos that the crazed killer has escaped from prison. This be-on-the-lookout bulletin constitutes a surprising spoiler for anyone who has not read the updated book.

The reclusive fiction writer is also a well-known successful journalist who breaks this shocking news as if the make-believe escaped convict from the novel is a real person, a living, breathing, merciless human maniac now on the loose and looking for revenge, particularly on people who have not read the sick, absurd novel that introduces him to the world.

The author shares in his unhinged video how the demented killer has written him a letter demanding that people buy and read the book, or else. The author provides his own personal website address at  https://theoutlawcorbett.com/ where people can order a signed copy at a special low price.

The novelist expects the madman to contact him again, maybe with fresh blood on his hands.

Has the author lost his mind? Does the novelist truly believe his imagined character has come to life? Has frustration with diminishing numbers of readers finally caused the novelist to go insane? Or is the novelist merely pushing the edges of his personal, original creativity that blurs contemporary reality and makes all fiction true?

You decide.

Either way I urge you to lock the doors. Maybe the writer is unbalanced. And maybe the psycho killer is out there looking in your bedroom window when the lights go out at night.

I’d buy and read the book if I were you.

Better be safe than sorry.

In the dream I’m on a bike. 

I’m always heading home.

Maybe we’re in Mexico, Stephanie and me, hiding out until the time is right for our next adventure. We still live one step ahead of the posse. In America, everybody does.

In my dream the pandemic is over.

We’re getting older, but enlightenment rises through seasoned wrinkles and finds its highest level in an afterglow as colorful as a cold tequila sunrise served with freshly-squeezed limes.

I don’t know any drinks named after the sunset.

I’ll invent one.

I’m wearing my wedding shirt on the bike, the black satin one with white trim I bought in Mazatlan in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. My white straw cowboy hat hangs unseen on my back, dangling from a braided black stampede string.

California renegades know the feeling, those rough and ready storm riders I met during my time on the Central Coast, that raw western edge of America where the land runs out and the cliffs signal the end for some.

We never fell off; we just turned around.

Remember Billy, Dennis Hopper’s character in Easy Rider? He wore a tan cowboy hat folded up on the side. Peter Fonda’s Captain America wore a helmet emblazoned with the red, white and blue of Old Glory. Jack Nicholson’s George wore his high school football helmet.

In one memorable scene, Captain America turns to his partner and says, “You know, Billy, we blew it.”

Billy doesn’t understand.

I do.

That’s why Stephanie and I didn’t blow it.

We’re free. 

We’re defiant. 

We’re good outlaws who don’t buy into the establishment disorder that ruins most mainstream politics and hurts good people’s lives.

That’s why we do what we do the way we do it.

So let’s get ready to ride.

The dream will always exist for those willing to risk the wrath of friends and neighbors who want desperately to challenge the system, to challenge themselves, but for whatever their reasons, fear the unknown.

Don’t hesitate.

No guarantees exist for anybody.

Like the great gonzo spirit once said: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

“You can’t smoke that cigar in here, Pat.”

“This is the Scranton Coal Hole, Mike. We can do whatever we want in our Irish neighborhood bar.”

“Except hang a picture of Joe Biden on the wall because we hate Joe Biden.”

“That’s why there’s already a picture of Joe Biden in the urinal.”

Pat takes a drag off his cigar.

“I’m expressing solidarity with Trump’s threat to take over Cuba.”

“That cigar looks like one of those Phillies blunts those Black rappers use to smoke marijuana,” says Mike.

“What’s a blunt, Mike? And what do you know about rappers?”

“A blunt’s a cigar wrapper filled with marijuana instead of tobacco. My grandson Kevin got arrested, and in the magistrate’s hearing the police sergeant said Kevin was smoking a blunt in his car and disturbing the peace listening to rappers at full volume on the radio when the cops pulled up at the red light.”

“Jesus, Mike, those inner city gangsters got him hooked and now he’s a drug addict?”

“Kevin’s off the drugs now, thank God, and just drinking each day after work like everybody else.”

Pat inhales and blows smoke in the air.

“We’ll get all the good cigars we want when Trump takes over Cuba.”

“Good gambling, too.” Mike says.

“We can go down there on a Triple A tour like we went to Vegas with the Notre Dame Club,” says Pat.

Mike gets reflective.

“Remember when Russell Bufalino and the mafia ran all the casinos in Cuba before that commie Fidel Castro stole their businesses in his revolution?”

“Who did he think he was, anyway, Mike, stealing private businesses away from Mr. Bufalino and his family?”

“Except for being Italian, the mafia wasn’t all that bad, Pat. They were Catholics, kept the girls working in dress factories and the prostitution out of Northeastern Pennsylvania.”

Pat lowers his voice.

“I bet those Cuban hookers are beautiful. I can see us now, Mike, playing Blackjack in the casino, smoking fat Havana cigars with them caramel-colored chicks hanging all over us.”

“Knock it off, Pat, or you’ll have to confess your sins to the priest twice this week.”

“Capitalism’s the American Way, Mike.”

Pat blows a smoke ring in Mike’s face.

“Our way,” Pat says. “The way it’s supposed to be.”

Mike perks up.

“Like that Frank Sinatra song, right?”

“Close,” says Pat. “But no cigar.”

Until our next-door neighbor Catherine Corcoran died last week she lived Irish and proud in the same spacious, well-kept white house where she grew up on North Irving Avenue in the Hill Section of Scranton. Independent and bright, Catherine, 81, paid attention to what mattered in the neighborhood. She cared about the world and did what she could to help make life better for people who needed a hand.

Since I wasn’t born or raised in Scranton I always looked forward to hearing her reflect on more innocent times in her hometown where my immigrant Irish grandfather put down roots more than a century ago and dug coal underground for 45 years. Catherine spoke lovingly of what she called the “chapel” just up the street from our houses, the Immaculate Conception Church where her funeral will be held on Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day.

Unlike today, she said, everybody who lived in the old neighborhood during the 1950s and ’60s seemed to know everybody else who resided in tidy homes on that long tree-lined block that ended at the East Gibson Street corner where I live. Miss Hay lived in the house my wife Stephanie and I now call home and kept a beautiful garden with bright summer flowers which she took great pride in showing off to the neighborhood children. Catherine said her brother even wrote to Miss Hay when he was fighting in the jungle as a soldier in Vietnam.

During the almost 20 years we lived as close neighbors, I always enjoyed seeing Catherine hanging clean, crisp white sheets with old-fashioned wooden clothespins from the clothesline in her backyard. Occasionally I’d see her talking over the fence to Sis Murphy who just turned 80 and whose homestead backyard adjoins Catherine’s. I thought about them growing up together in those same sturdy houses as young girls who remained the dearest of friends after all those years.

Time marches on I have lately taken to saying too often.

But I, too, at almost 75, now take solace as I once took comfort knowing Catherine worked hard to build an orderly, disciplined life as an old-school role model. A former kindergarten and math teacher whose academic achievement included three master’s degrees, Catherine lived alone as a good citizen with even better manners, a woman to whom mature respect for our neighborly Irish traditions still mattered.

In recent years on March 17 Stephanie would pick up an extra loaf of Irish soda bread still warm from the bakery to take over to Catherine. I’d don my tweed cap, pick up my handmade shillelagh and go over to stand outside her front door and bellow the words to “Mickey Brannigan’s Pup” with an encore of “Tread on the Tail of Me Coat,” two of my father Shamus’ favorite Irish ditties he taught me as a boy. Catherine, Stephanie and I would laugh and talk a little more on the sidewalk. Then we’d go about our business as neighbors who looked out for each other however and whenever we could.

When I spotted the ambulance outside Catherine’s house about three weeks ago the cop standing on the sidewalk simply said Catherine was headed to the hospital. Stephanie texted Catherine that evening and said she should let us know if she needed anything.

Catherine politely texted back, “Thanks.”

We didn’t want to bother her so we waited hoping to see the color television light flashing in her living room window to alert us she was home. Then we’d go over and knock on the door. But the TV light never came on. Word traveled fast through the neighborhood she was gone.

The Irish sometimes say, “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; Love leaves a memory no one can steal.” Yet, as hard as one of life’s last lessons is to learn, Catherine Corcoran taught us in the end that even the greenest, most vibrant shamrock must one day lose luster, wilt and disappear.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Tuesday, March 17th, at 10am at Immaculate Conception Church, 800 Taylor Ave., Scranton. Visitation will be from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. prior to Mass. In honor of the St. Patrick’s Day holiday and Catherine’s love of her Irish heritage, the wearing of green is encouraged.

Did armed and masked ICE agents recently terrorize a U.S. citizen in Scranton?

Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Philadelphia Field Office Public Affairs Officer Jason P. Koontz won’t say.

Koontz won’t say if ICE didn’t swarm and terrify an innocent citizen, either.

Koontz will say the story “sounds made up.”

First reported on the Feb. 20 front page of the University of Scranton student newspaper The Aquinas, Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper columnist Chris Kelly repeated the unconfirmed tale in a Feb. 24 column.

Anyone fabricating an ICE attack account should suffer serious consequences. Publishing newspaper stories about a fake ICE attack would also be irresponsible and only add to the dangerous rumor mill that creates panic among immigrants and others who depend on truth.  Conversely, federal government officials misleading investigators or covering up a real ICE attack might warrant a criminal investigation.

Unfortunately, nobody connected to the Scranton news story but Koontz will address the alleged Scranton ICE brutality reported in The Aquinas that has a naturalized United States citizen and University of Scranton employee living in fear.

Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit University of Scranton President Joseph Marina’s assistant instructed me to contact the media office with my request to talk to Marina about the alleged ICE abuse of an immigrant university employee. Will Marina offer support to that employee and other immigrant workers who might worry they could be the next ICE targets? Will Marina demand an explanation from ICE? Will Marina determine if the story in the university newspaper is true?

Senior Director of University Communications Stan Zygmunt said in a Feb. 26 email that he received my telephone voicemail inquiry and “reached out to the moderator of The Aquinas and the student.”

“Matt Bufano from the University’s News and Media Relations Office will get back to you when we hear back from them. I gave Matt your email,” Zygmunt wrote.

Onetime newspaper reporter Bufano failed to contact me or respond to subsequent emails.

Zygmunt also said in his email, “We also received a note that you contacted the President’s Office. Father Marina is not available.” Zygmunt did not respond to a follow-up email asking why Marina was unavailable.

In a Monday, March 2, call to Marina’s office the woman who answered the phone refused to provide her name or an email address for Marina when I told her the media office was unresponsive, that I have questions and complaints for Marina and that the university’s credibility is at stake,

University of Scranton student newspaper editor-in-chief Samantha Sonnie, who wrote the Aquinas story, also failed to respond to emailed messages about her reporting. And Scranton Times-Tribune columnist Chris Kelly played it cute, refusing to provide a straight answer when I asked in a Feb. 28 Facebook message if he corroborated Sonnie’s story before he wrote his column for Scranton’s only daily newspaper. In a note at the end of his column Kelly saluted Sonnie “for breaking this important story.”

“Did you confirm the recent Scranton ICE incident you and Samantha Sonnie wrote about? Is the incident true? Did the incident happen?” I asked Kelly.

“Working on it,” Kelly wrote.  “Any advice?”

“I’m writing a column for The Scranton City News. You didn’t confirm the story before you wrote your published column?” I responded.

“So, no advice then?” Kelly said.

“I’m writing a column. You didn’t confirm the story before publication?” I asked.

“Thanks, Steve. Have a great day,” Kelly said.

Democratic congressional candidate and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti did not respond to emails asking if she will contact ICE and ask for a detailed explanation about the allegation, protect Scranton residents and visitors against aggressive ICE actions as described in the recent stories and if she will try to contact the alleged victim.

Scranton Police Chief Thomas Carroll also failed to respond to specific questions about the alleged ICE incident.

The only person officially connected to the chilling account of alleged ICE brutality willing to address this matter is ICE spokesman Koontz.

“This story is extremely vague and sounds made up. There is no way for me to even begin to check if this happened,” Koontz wrote in a Feb. 25 email.

“You know if you have a record or not of a stop in or around Scranton,” I replied. “Help me out here.”

“I would love to help you out, however there is no date, no route, no other information to identify the person or the action,” Koontz said.

Koontz is not wrong in his assessment.

Details about where the alleged ICE blitz allegedly occurred do not appear in Sonnie’s or Kelly’s journalism. Neither Sonnie nor Kelly provide a street name, exact time or date of the alleged “weekday” afternoon incident. Sonnie wrote she did not identify the alleged victim “who spoke about their experience on condition of anonymity.”

Protecting the identity of a confidential source is the norm among good journalists. But journalistic credibility depends on verifying and sharing as many other details as possible. Confirmation lends credence to the veracity of the story. Anything less raises more questions than answers.

Sonnie’s news story and Kelly‘s parroting of her “facts” provide extensive information allegedly provided by the alleged victim who tells a terrifying tale to Sonnie about how “multiple cars surrounded their vehicle as a traffic light turned green.”

The targeted person “believed” agents wearing bulletproof vests emblazoned with the letters ICE who did not identify themselves were kidnappers “like when they traffic women,” Sonnie wrote. Using force, the agents tried to open the front and rear doors, demanding the person get out of the car and threatening to smash the window, Sonnie wrote. Grabbing a gun, an agent said, “Don’t move” when the person reached for a phone to record the assault, Sonnie wrote.

Then the tense drama allegedly took a swift racist turn.

“I hear one in the back say ‘I think we got the wrong person,’ and the other one says ‘They all look the same, we gotta get this one,’” Sonnie wrote, quoting the alleged victim.

ICE agents released the alleged victim when that person provided a “naturalization certificate” showing proof of U.S. citizenship that happened to be in the car, according to The Aquinas account.

In a Feb. 26, 2026, email to Koontz I wrote, “Either this reported ICE incident happened in Scranton, Pennsylvania or didn’t happen in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“A swift ICE internal investigation is warranted either way.

“If this incident happened as reported, ICE is guilty of reckless and incompetent behavior. If this happened, ICE officials are complicit in possibly illegal behavior that could warrant a federal, state or local criminal investigation.

“If the incident did not happen, Scranton Times-Tribune and University of Scranton media are complicit in spreading false stories that only compound the already false ICE rumor mill in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“A serious problem exists either way. Did this reported incident happen in Scranton, Pennsylvania? Will ICE investigate the reported allegation?”

Koontz failed to respond to my email.

So whom do we trust to tell the truth?

Lovebirds in the best sense of the breed, Helo and Kimmy live life as bold eagles flying together and defending their nest.

Don’t mess with eagles.

Even peaceful hunters know how to use their talons.

But one-percenter bikers like Helo can be sensitive too. Ask any brother in his motorcycle club and he’ll tell you Helo’s one righteous brother from his burly, bearded, chain-tattooed presence to his background as a 20-year Marine and elite survival training instructor. By the way, there’s no such thing as a retired or former Marine. You’re either a Marine or you’re not a Marine. Helo’s a Marine.

I never met the man in person.

I never met Kimmy, either.

Helo, who embraced his nickname from the helicopters he knows from top to bottom, was close to my late boyhood friend Sonny Drake. We connected online after Sonny’s funeral at the Indiantown Gap National Cemetery when Helo and about 75 other brothers from their club paid deep respect to a fallen leader in their tribal nation. Helo and I share an Appalachian mountain spiritual streak as well as a Germanic bloodline that makes us partial to pickled red beet eggs, Pennsylvania Dutch wet bottom shoofly pie and oompah band music.

A few weeks ago when I was recording a segment for an internet radio oldies music show as a favor for a friend I asked Helo if he had a song he wanted to hear. When he told me the name of the tune I taped the Saturday night episode and sent out the song as an old-fashioned dedication from Helo to Kimmy with love. I compared the relationship described in the 1971 song “Cotton Jenny” by Gordon Lightfoot to Helo’s relationship with Kimmy.

I drew poetic parallels between the warm lyrics and warm feelings Helo carries for Kimmy that fire his heart the way a wood stove heats a snug Perry County cabin on a snowy February night. I had sensed his powerful sentiment from words he regularly posts on Facebook about his personal blessings and good fortune. I got a little softie in me too.  Just don’t push your luck once you recognize my moonstruck side.

The on-air radio segment was a hit. But because of technical difficulties I had to delete from this website the nice little column I wrote about Helo and Kimmy and the song Helo dedicated to her. I felt bad and told him I’d rewrite the original column.

Then I lost my notes.

I was going to blame corrupt government cops for hacking my computer, stealing my work and trampling my First Amendment rights, but I’ll let that alone for now and face off against the government goons another day. Instead, I’ll stress the importance of loyalty, fighting for what you believe in, living a life loaded with love and appreciating what we have.

Wisdom comes with age if you’re lucky. We’re getting older, Helo and I. We’re lucky. We appreciate the down-home goodness we cradle in our lives brought about because of strong women guides much wiser than we are. A guy once told me I’d be living in a drainage ditch without Stephanie. Forty-five years later he’s still right.

Helo knows the feeling. We can still drink more moonshine than Stephanie and Kimmy, but because of these two sensible women we’re now smart enough to realize our past primitive “accomplishments,” as barbarically noble as they once seemed, only shorten our sweet time together on this sick, chaotic planet.

So together we fly, Helo and I. Close to our partners we glide more gently and slowly than we once did. Don’t mistake our tenderness for weakness, though. We still wing it.

Because that’s what eagles do.

“Violence in all forms is unacceptable,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro during his keynote address on political violence in America at the 2025 Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh.

Read Shapiro’s inspirational quote again.

“Violence in all forms is unacceptable.”

Such powerful words to live by from a Democratic sharpie campaigning with all his might for his rumored bid to run as a candidate in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary should reassure us Shapiro is on the right side of might.

Yet Shapiro’s words reek of hypocrisy.

Violence in all forms is so unacceptable to Shapiro he stood by sheepishly as his Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a personal Shapiro cabinet appointee, endorsed and encouraged the vicious, bloodthirsty exhibits of bare knuckle-dragging primitive violence that exploded at the savage February 7^th  gladiatorial spectacle billed as KnuckleMania VI held at the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.

Not only did violence erupt inside the fighting ring but violence exploded outside the ring as well.

“Alleged violence,” said Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission Executive Director Ed Kunkle when I reached him on the phone Monday, Feb. 9. Kunkle hung up on me before I finished asking detailed follow-up questions about the KnuckleMania VI bare knuckle butchery

Before further embarrassing himself and the call for peace in Pennsylvania, Kunkle needs to check with Philadelphia police.

“On February 7, 2026, at approximately 9:30 pm, officers assigned to the Xfinity Mobile Arena, located at 3601 South Broad Street, were notified by venue security of a fight occurring within the crowd,” according to a Feb. 10 email from the Philadelphia Police Department Office of Media Relations/Public Affairs.

“An officer responded to the location with a security staff member and observed multiple individuals actively fighting. Security personnel identified one individual who was to be ejected from the venue. While being escorted toward the exit, the individual stopped, refused to leave, and became increasingly aggressive.

“Despite multiple verbal commands to exit the venue, the individual charged toward the officer. The officer deployed his Taser, which was ineffective, and the individual continued to advance toward the officer and attempted to grab him.

“Additional officers began arriving, and the male fled the venue, exiting into the parking lot area and fleeing in an unknown direction.

“No arrest was made.”

Unconfirmed internet videos also highlight the arena mayhem Kunkle called “alleged violence.”

Despite Shapiro’s pious public statement opposing violence, why would the governor endorse state-sponsored bloodletting that endangers fans and fighters? Bare-knuckle carnage produces capital for Shapiro supporters to contribute to his gubernatorial re-election campaign and potential presidential bid. Electoral cash might also draw white male red meat voters to Pennsylvania’s most namby-pamby elected official who yearns to appeal to younger right-wing rednecks as well as “No Kings” pantywaist liberals.

Shapiro Press Secretary Rosie Lapowsky failed to respond to my questions about KnuckleMania VI so I don’t know if the governor attended the Feb. 7 fiasco his Department of State promoted through a fawning Feb. 5 press release.

“Considering KnuckleMania V exceeded high expectations, it’s an honor for SAC (state athletic commission) that the BKFC (Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship) decided to bring its showcase event back to Philadelphia in 2026,” the press release said, quoting Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, who attended last year’s event. “It was a boost to the local economy in 2025, and the same is expected this year as bare-knuckle fighting continues to draw larger audiences.”

Does Schmidt honestly believe the SAC’s partnership with BKFC is honorable public policy? When I asked Schmidt’s Office of Communications and Press Deputy Director Geoff Morrow when Schmidt would be available to answer my questions he responded in an email, “We’ve received your inquiries and will be in touch soon.”

Schmidt’s flunkies failed to be in touch at all.

I understand violence.

As a former bar bouncer, street fighter and international amateur boxer, I am ranked as a 4th degree aikijujutsu black belt who holds 2^nd and 3^rd degree black belts in two other martial arts as well as the traditional Japanese martial arts “Renshi” rank of “polished instructor.”

After graduating from the Pennsylvania State University in 1974 I also worked as a drug and alcohol counselor and part-time boxing instructor at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill (SCIC). A 1989 riot wracked that same prison where an inmate and sparring partner of mine serving a life sentence for the vicious murder and rape of a teenager had years earlier earned a night out to spar an exhibition with the late boxing legend Muhammed Ali.

Shapiro’s Secretary of Corrections Dr. Laurel R. Harry who got her start at SCIC recently refused to answer my detailed written questions about approving a former professional mixed martial artist cage fighter to regularly visit several state prisons to meet and talk as a role model with inmates.

Although state officials long ago stopped state prison boxing programs, this mixed martial artist motivational speaker who has not publicly renounced violence as a sport and means to make money is welcome to clear security and “inspire” countless inmates, many of whom are killers and suffer personality disorders that can quickly turn violent.

Although mixed martial arts also embraces raw, brutal and life-threatening violence, state-sponsored bare knuckle fighting wallows in a deeper bloody gutter. Where does Shapiro think societal violence, including the specter of political violence Shapiro stresses every chance he gets, is nurtured if not among proponents of violence-fueled events such as the barbaric KnuckleMania? 

Is Shapiro’s supposedly heartfelt belief that “Violence in all forms is unacceptable” a purposeful lie? Is Shapiro so deviously cruel as to twist the moral code of non-violence he espouses and expects voters to accept and practice?

Ali floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

But when it comes to phony Pennsylvania political integrity, knucklehead Shapiro stands alone as the greatest of all time.

An extra-large King of NASCAR Richard Petty T-shirt and patterned green and black camouflage clothing added to the local color of the public meeting. Decent hard-working people concerned about the air, water and land filled the room that night more than a decade ago in Dimock Township in Susquehanna County. Both pro and con, we listened to business-suit-wearing natural gas executives and political hacks make their case for the benefits of continuing support for fracking in the Marcellus Shale region.

Of course these slick corporate hustlers spun their story to envision a magical cash pile from an already magical landscape where local residents hunted, fished, raced off-road vehicles and otherwise lived off natural splendor. But neighbor had already turned against neighbor as big business pillaged the land and gasbag bosses took the money and ran.

Expect similar deception in Tremont Township in Schuylkill County where federal government pirates work with free-market collaborators as they plunder the countryside and quality of life of people who deserve much better than a proposed Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center that will hold up to 7,500 prisoners.

Trust neither Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro nor Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser to help terminate this prison camp plan for the former Big Lots warehouse built on land the federal government has already purchased for approximately $119.5 million.

Not since smug millionaire robber barons and coal company marauders looted Schuylkill County in the last century has this hardcore county faced such an existential threat. Tradition still matters among generations of coal field dwellers with deep roots in the region, people who work to survive and raise their families in little towns like Tremont, Ravine, Pine Grove and Tower City. Survival is difficult for many of these people, particularly those who might not make on Social Security what they once did in full-time jobs.

History matters little if at all to the ICE storm troopers. Neither does the hard labor that went into building little one-time coal towns where tradition is still worth fighting for and people hang on the best they can. Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents must join forces to battle this armed and dangerous invasion.

The shale wars divided people into fierce camps. That long ago night at the meeting I watched pampered liberals mock working-class men and women who attended the gas meeting, people who lacked the formal education and sophistication some of the smug know-it-all “activists” possessed as they opposed the gas trucks and gas land workers that overran the environment and overworked the mountains. I also knew how some of the local rednecks snickered the second they smelled a lib in the room the way they boasted over cold bottles of beer they could smell a big-racked buck on the first day of deer season.

Pennsylvanians should have learned from our shared history that polarized us deeply.

Now is the time to push aside the Yuengling bottles and put away the college degrees. Shake hands with people on the other side and for whatever the reason stand together in opposition to the proposed Tremont Township ICE facility. The more of us who combat the detention camp the better the odds of stopping the federal government’s damaging plan. Whether you ride a dirt bike, four-wheeler or snowmobile through the mountains or study bugs and leaves as a student or professor, you must enlist to take down this disastrous plan to disrespect everything our ancestors worked to achieve.

My grandfather emigrated from rural Ireland to Scranton, worked underground for 45 years as a coal miner and died from Black Lung disease he contracted after inhaling toxic coal dust. My dad patrolled back roads near Tremont as a state trooper when I was a little boy and my family lived in nearby Lykens. My wife, Stephanie, was born in Lykens and grew up in Tower City. Her mother was an immigrant British war bride who met her father when he served as a captain in the 8^th Air Force in England, returning to his Tower City hometown after World War II to serve as the town dentist.

The coal region lives and breathes as our literal common ground. That’s why we join others who share common values, respect decency, fight ICE cops and defy all pompous politicians who disrespect and patronize tradition as quaint and foolish.

Coal crackers, and I use the term as a badge of honor, have always been smarter than they think. We the people vs. the politicians who belittle us share a genuine stake in the future of our hometowns, our state, our nation and our world. Coal fields activists such as “Black Jack” Kehoe and Mother Jones have been here before. Those of us who follow their strong spirits remain.

Underestimate us if you choose.

Go ahead.

Sell us short.

This sale won’t go as easy as you think.