I gave Marisa a few comments on the fraud represented on the face of the appication. Ten years later, everything old is new again.

Marisa has one of the three bylines on the New York Post story “Ilhan Omar was so confused by marriage to ‘brother’ she crossed out her own name twice on official application.” The Post story attributes the original excavation of the application to Alpha News (i.e., Preya Samsundar — I appreciate Marisa’s correct attribution of the original spadework): “An image of the marriage application has circulated online for years and appears to have been first published in August 2016 by the Minnesota outlet Alpha News. It has until now largely gone untouched by major news outlets.”

Why is the @nypost doing the work of @StarTribune @PioneerPress @KSTP @MPRnews @FOX9

— Mary (@RepMaryFranson) October 31, 2026

Well, yeah. We have touched it frequently on Power Line. I also touched it in my retrospective on the case for the Washington Free Beacon late last year. I think Marisa was surprised that the application has generally been ignored despite the red flag(s) of fraud on its face. Fun fact — I drew on it for the column I wrote for the Post last year: “Vast fraud of Somali migrants, starting with Ilhan Omar, finally being exposed.”

My story seems like another chapter in what Kyle Smith calls “A Summer of Airline Hell.” When I mentioned it on Power Line and said if I never see United again it will be too soon, a long-time reader wrote to tell me that I probably owed United an apology.

Whoa! That started me thinking back to Billy Jack On Trial (1974).

I filed a dispute of two charges with US Bank, the issuer of the card on which I charged my round-trip ticket. I thought United owed me at least half of $1459.83 (the original ticket) plus $1771.27 (the round-trip ticket with a departure date moved back one day– it seems a little steep, no?).

I posted the text of my dispute in “Fried in Frankfurt.” After VISA resolved the first disputed charge in my favor, US Bank told me that United had responded, but had said nothing in substance to contradict me. I still don’t know what happened to my return ticket and asked US Bank to process the second disputed charge as well.

I can now report that my two disputed charges have both been resolved in my favor. I owe nothing on the two tickets, not even for the ride over from Washington to London (where the tour began).

I incurred the additonal expense of a night at one of the Frankfurt airport hotels and a one-way ticket to Washington for the first flight out the next morning on Lufthansa, which was not cheap. However, this is a story with a happy ending.

So here goes: The Week In Pictures, Trick Or Treat Edition.

Yes, she really did this

And finally…

So Bush threw a strike from the mound. No doubt many have forgotten, but it meant a lot at the time. I attended the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden in 2004, and they played a video to introduce President Bush. The video concluded with this pitch coming toward home plate.

This amazing moment was 25 years ago tonight.

We Americans were indivisible that night.

It feels like a lifetime ago. https://t.co/GyX2LYfYCe

— LB (@beyondreasdoubt) October 30, 2026

If you think it’s easy, watch Barack Obama try to do it. I don’t know, call me a softie. But I will never forget that night.

That slate includes my friend Michele Tafoya. Michele has worked exceptionally hard and garnered support not just from Minnesotans but from around the country. There is a good chance that she will beat the Democrats’ bizarre nominee for Minnesota’s open Senate seat, Peggy Flanagan, and thus bar the door against a Democratic takeover of the Senate. So the race has garnered national attention.

In the last few days, the Democrats have bombarded Republican households like ours with mailings that are intended to split off conservative votes in favor of some other candidate, like the purported libertarian Rebecca Whiting. I don’t know whether such a person exists or is in fact a libertarian, as opposed to a Democrat, but it is obvious that every vote cast for an alleged libertarian makes it easier for the insanely far-left Flanagan to win.

In the last two days, we have gotten four anti-Tafoya mailings that obviously were paid for by the Democratic Party or its donors. All are addressed to us as conservatives, in a transparent attempt to divert a few votes from Michele in hopes of electing Flanagan. This is what they look like:

It’s really a classic: the Democratic Party accusing Michele Tafoya of being a Democrat, in hopes of electing an actual Democrat to the Senate!

This effort is much like what is going on in Alaska, where the Democrats are trying to defeat Senator Dan Sullivan by recruiting a random guy named Dan Sullivan to get on the ballot, siphoning votes from the real Dan Sullivan so that the Democrat, Mary Peltola, can squeak through based on a fraud.

Would it be possible to be more corrupt than today’s Democratic Party? I doubt it. But the fact that Democrats need to engage in such obviously dishonest tactics shows that they are worried about how the midterms will turn out.