Chilling Video in Guthrie Case. Nothing Adds Up. Suspect in Canada Mass Shooting: ‘Female in a Dress.’ Wes Moore: Too Good to Be True? & More
The FBI has released videos and photos of a masked subject in the case of the mystifying disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, mother of “Today” cohost Savannah Guthrie. They are chilling:
A 27-second video shows the person approaching the front door and raising a gloved hand to a home security camera outside the door before walking away. A 14-second video shows the person facing the camera holding a flashlight in their mouth before covering the camera lens with some vegetation. Law enforcement officials told CBS News the material the individual is holding up appears to be prairie brush.
The New York Times embeds the chilling video of the intruder entering the Guthrie house in a string of Guthrie update stories. The “doorbell” footage, which was thought to have been lost, took more than a week to access (scroll down in the NYT updates). The Times also has a description of the scene:
The silent, black-and-white doorbell camera videos total just 44 seconds, but what they depict is frightening: a masked, armed person approaching Nancy Guthrie’s doorstep late at night, shortly before she was abducted.
Fox Digital also has the eerie video. Body language expert Susan Constantine commented:
From a behavioral perspective, Constantine said the circumstances shown in the footage do not appear consistent with a robbery gone bad, noting that robberies often involve two or three people with defined roles. The FBI images released so far show one individual, and she emphasized that investigators have not publicly identified a motive or confirmed the subject’s role.
Despite the subject wearing a mask, Constantine said the footage still reveals identifiable physical traits.
A delivery driver was detained, questioned, and released in connection with the Guthrie case. (Also, here.) Hot Air’s John Sexton has a good post on new developments, including TMZ’s Harvey Levin’s puzzling claim of “activity” in the bitcoin ransom account and the search of the house that daughter Annie Guthrie occupies with her husband. Nothing adds up. If the TMZ ransom letter is not legitimate—and we don’t know that—then the alleged abductor or abductors have made no contact. In which case, why was Nancy Guthrie taken? What was wanted?
Terrible news from Canada. At least nine were killed and dozens injured in a shooting at a school and residence in British Columbia. The New York Post describes the suspect as “a female in a dress“:
The suspect, who was described in a local active shooter alert as a woman in a dress with brown hair, was found dead from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, cops added.
Police have identified the shooter, but didn’t publicly release their identity due to the integrity of the investigation.
Matt Vespa notes the “weird” way police described the suspect. This is one of the deadliest shootings in Canadian history.
This is a real headscratcher: The FAA has halted all flights to the El Paso airport for ten days, citing unspecified “special security reasons.” Townhall suggests possible reasons.
Is Maryland Governor and 2028 aspirant Wes Moore just too good to be true? Governor Moore has often told the story of a grandfather forced to flee the KKK. Now, he’s facing questions about the veracity of the story. The Free Beacon offers other examples of unverified biographical details the Governor has claimed. Governor Moore’s office responds that the “broader reality is not in dispute” and accuses the Free Beacon of racism.
“Democrats Still Searching for an Argument Against Voter ID” is the headline on James Freeman’s Best of the Web column. Rep. Marcus Raskin gets high marks for creativity:
What’s wrong with it is that it might violate the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote, because you’ve got to show that all of your different IDs match. So if you’re a woman who’s gotten married and you’ve changed your name to your husband’s name, but you’re so now your current name is different from your name at birth. …
Neil Munro’s Breitbart piece on sanctuary cities (“Democratic State Leaders: Sanctuary Cities Must Be Exempted from Civil Rights Laws”) is getting a lot of attention. Powerline’s Bill Glahn picked it up and commented. Joe Abraham, a lifelong resident of Illinois, has written Gov. J.B. Pritzker asking how Pritzker can defend the sanctuary policies that killed his daughter:
Recently, I sent Gov. JB Pritzker a letter asking straightforward questions about the sanctuary policies he champions — policies that protected an illegal alien who went on to kill my daughter. I asked for a response by January 19, 2026, the one-year anniversary of Katie’s death. To this day, I have received nothing.
Waitin’ for That Golden Age. Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley says that Americans are running out of patience with the Republicans:
Empathy might go further than telling struggling households that they’ve never had it so good, but Mr. Trump can’t help himself. His predecessor’s tenure was “defined by the misery known as ‘stagflation’—high inflation and low growth,” the president wrote in these pages last month. “Only 12 months into my second term in office, we now have the exact opposite—extremely low inflation, and extraordinarily high economic growth!”
The optimism is admirable, but the political messaging misses the mark. Most voters don’t buy the administration’s claims that things are hunky-dory. They don’t believe Joe Biden still deserves blame for the current situation ….
We’ve been taking note of the collapse of “gender-affirming” medicine. Alas, “The Pronoun Wars in Public Schools” are still going strong:
Can a public-school district refuse to hire a K-12 teacher if she won’t use transgender pronouns? The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said yes in a 2-1 decision late last month, over a rousing dissent by conservative Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. Similar disputes are bubbling up elsewhere, so the Supreme Court at some point might need to clarify. …
Judge Wilkinson disagrees. “There can be no question that transgender rights represent a highly contentious and significant issue in our social and political zeitgeists,” he says. “If this issue is not one of public concern, I cannot think of an issue that would be.” The judge calls pronoun usage “a noncurricular matter” and suggests Ms. Polk could easily be accommodated by letting her “call all students by their last name (e.g., ‘Bueller, please answer question 43.’)”
One More on Education. The “Mississippi Miracle”—whereby the native state of your humble scribe made astonishing progress in educating her kids, moving from near the bottom to near the top in national rankings—is being threatened. You can guess why: “Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who leads the Senate, took orders from the public-school monopoly.” Get some courage, Delbert. Delbert is a Republican.
This Is About Education, too. A GOP lawmaker was shocked after an anti-ICE sheriff was stumped by a fifth-grade civics question:
A North Carolina House Oversight Committee hearing spurred on by the recent killing of a young Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska, in Charlotte, took an unexpected turn when [GOP Rep. Allen] Chesser asked Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, “What branch of government do you operate under?”
McFadden, who is the top law enforcement officer in the county where Zarutska was killed, simply answered, “Mecklenburg County,” prompting Chesser to repeat, “What branch of government do you operate under, sheriff?”
The sheriff answered, “The Constitution of the United States,” to which Chesser responded, “That is what establishes the branches of government; I’m asking what branch you fall under.”
After McFadden answered, “Mecklenburg County” again, Chesser remarked, “This is not where I was anticipating getting stuck. Um, are you aware of how many branches of government there are?” The sheriff quickly shot back, “No.”
After a long pause, Chesser continued, “For the sake of debate, let’s say there are three branches of government: legislative, executive, judicial. Of those three, which do you fall under?”
The sheriff answered, “I believe I fall under the last one … judicial.”
“You are incorrect, sir. You fall under the executive,” said Chesser.
After that, Chesser continued to press McFadden about how he reconciles his responsibility as an officer under the executive branch to enforce the law with his opposition to cooperation with ICE.
