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After more than 80 witnesses, more than 300 exhibits and four days of deliberations, twelve people in Massachusetts reached one conclusion Tuesday:

They couldn’t reach a conclusion.

The jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial told the judge it was deadlocked.

And as I write this, they’re back at it again.

Clancy has admitted killing her three young children. The question before this jury is whether she was criminally responsible when she did it. Her defense says postpartum psychosis rendered her incapable of criminal responsibility. Prosecutors argue that whatever mental-health problems she was experiencing, she nevertheless understood what she was doing.

Those jurors have now spent days wrestling with that distinction.

I don’t envy them.

There are cases where everybody immediately thinks he knows the answer.

This isn’t one of them.

I said on Rush Hour that Princess Diana may have been ahead of the curve when she predicted that this thing could be heading toward a mistrial. That’s still possible. Massachusetts has a procedure allowing the judge to give jurors a stronger instruction urging them to reconsider their positions before finally deciding that the panel cannot reach agreement.

But here’s what has fascinated me almost as much as the courtroom itself:

Everybody outside the courtroom seems to have reached a verdict.

Social media is ablaze with people declaring what this case proves about women, motherhood, postpartum illness, criminal responsibility, feminism, fathers, doctors and practically civilization itself.

We played one viral commentary arguing that if hormones can excuse a mother from criminal responsibility for killing her children, then society would logically have to question whether women could hold high-stress positions ranging from police officer to surgeon to president.

I don’t buy that leap.

We have had insanity defenses and mental-incapacity defenses forever without concluding that everybody who shares some characteristic with the defendant is therefore unfit for normal life.

One case doesn’t establish that women are governed by their hormones any more than one mentally ill male murderer proves men shouldn’t possess car keys.

But the commentary does expose the reason this case has become so emotionally combustible.

People are trying to figure out where compassion ends and accountability begins.

You can believe postpartum psychosis is real and devastating while still asking whether it legally excuses these particular killings.

You can sympathize with Clancy’s mental condition while remembering that three children are dead.

Those aren’t contradictory thoughts.

They’re exactly the questions those jurors are being asked to resolve.

And sometimes the honest answer is difficult.

Contrast that with another scene we played Tuesday, where getting an answer apparently wasn’t difficult at all.

It was impossible.

The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on birth tourism, and one of the witnesses was Dr. Wladimir Lorentz, associated with an operation called “Have My Baby in Miami.”

Yes.

That was apparently the name.

Congressional investigators have been examining businesses that marketed maternity packages to foreign women who could travel to the United States, deliver a child here and thereby give that child American citizenship.

When Rep. Brandon Gill began asking Lorentz questions Tuesday, the answers became remarkably repetitive.

Why was the company’s website substantially changed after Congress began investigating?

Fifth Amendment.

Did the business assist children of Chinese Communist Party members in obtaining American citizenship?

Fifth Amendment.

Had it ever facilitated U.S. births connected to members of criminal or terrorist organizations?

Fifth Amendment.

Would he answer essentially any substantive questions about the business?

You can guess.

Now, invoking the Fifth Amendment is a constitutional right. Doing so is not proof of guilt, and people shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

But from the standpoint of a congressional hearing examining a business model that explicitly marketed American births to foreign customers, watching question after question disappear into the Fifth Amendment was remarkable television.

Especially because the website had apparently advertised precisely what Congress was asking about.

Come to Miami.

Have your baby.

Obtain the benefits associated with an American birth.

At some point, Americans are entitled to ask whether citizenship has become a product somebody can purchase as part of a travel package.

This isn’t an argument against immigrants.

It isn’t even fundamentally about immigration.

It’s about citizenship.

Those are different things.

American citizenship is one of the most valuable legal statuses on Earth. If businesses have constructed an industry whose principal selling point is helping foreign nationals strategically obtain that citizenship for children through birth in the United States, Congress has every reason to investigate how widespread it is and whether existing laws are being manipulated.

The Oversight Committee says birth tourism has grown into an industry involving visa manipulation and maternity services marketed specifically around U.S. citizenship.

And then came another congressional hearing.

This one was harder to listen to.

A father named Marcus Coleman testified about his daughter Dalilah, who was catastrophically injured in a crash involving an illegal immigrant driving a tractor-trailer.

Dalilah was five years old when the crash happened.

Her father said she spent weeks in a coma, underwent major brain surgery and months of hospitalization, and today lives with profound disabilities. Reporting on Tuesday’s hearing confirms that she remains unable to walk independently, speak normally or eat normally.

And Coleman was furious.

Not performatively angry.

Not cable-news angry.

Father angry.

He told lawmakers he rejected expressions of sympathy from people who had never contacted his family, never stopped him in the hallway, never offered to help change the law and then suddenly expressed concern when the cameras were running.

“This is when you guys care,” he told them.

Inside the hearing room.

With the microphones on.

That’s a line that stays with you.

Because Washington is very good at sympathy.

It is magnificent at statements.

Thoughts.

Prayers.

Condolences.

Deep concern.

What Coleman wanted was accountability.

He wanted to know how somebody who shouldn’t have been driving that truck ended up behind the wheel.

He wanted to know what government policies permitted it.

And he wanted lawmakers to stop using his daughter as scenery in a political argument and actually fix the problem.

That is a father’s right.

Tuesday also brought news of a large ICE operation in Virginia and Maryland. Federal authorities say more than 1,300 people were arrested over roughly two weeks, with about 400 having criminal convictions or pending charges including murder, attempted murder, rape and kidnapping.

The interesting part?

They did it quietly.

No advance circus.

No activists with bullhorns surrounding vehicles.

No television production.

Agents went out and arrested people.

Maybe that’s a lesson too.

Government occasionally functions better when everybody stops performing for each other.

Which, admittedly, is not always our specialty.

And because Rush Hour cannot spend an entire hour on murder trials, congressional investigations and immigration enforcement without somebody providing comic relief, Houston and Southern California volunteered.

First came the DoorDash driver who allegedly delivered a family’s Burger King order completely naked.

No pants.

No shirt.

No strategically placed delivery bag.

Nothing.

The family took one look at the Ring-camera footage and decided perhaps the Whopper had lost some of its appeal.

DoorDash reportedly refunded the order and removed the driver.

Probably wise.

Then Southern California produced a sentence I never expected to read on the radio:

“Serial butt sniffer arrested again.”

Not my headline.

KTLA’s territory.

A registered sex offender was arrested yet again after police say he was seen crouching behind women in stores and engaging in precisely the behavior described above.

Karolos was looking at me as though I had personally selected this story simply to destroy the dignity of the fastest hour in American media.

I maintain that the news chose me.

Somebody has to report these things.

But perhaps even those two ridiculous stories fit Tuesday’s larger theme.

Actions have consequences.

The DoorDash guy lost his delivery gig.

The alleged serial sniffer went back into custody.

Congress is investigating businesses built around birth tourism.

A devastated father is demanding accountability for the policies that preceded his daughter’s injuries.

And twelve Massachusetts jurors are still trying to decide whether Lindsay Clancy should be held criminally responsible for the most terrible actions imaginable.

The circumstances could hardly be more different.

But the question underneath them is the same:

Who is responsible?

That’s one of the oldest questions in law, politics and life.

And increasingly, it feels like one of the questions America has the hardest time answering.

There was much more in Tuesday’s fastest hour in American media — Texas Senate Republicans sweating over Ken Paxton’s money problems, immigration enforcement, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and Jesse Watters going another few rounds, reparations, and enough unusual news to make Karolos question several of my editorial decisions.

If you only want the substance, you’ve got the heart of the show here.

But you’ve really got to hear the audio for the rest.

Especially the moment when a perfectly serious discussion of congressional hearings somehow collided with a naked Burger King delivery and a Southern California butt sniffer.

I can’t explain Rush Hour.

I can only invite you along for the ride.

Rush Hour airs Monday through Friday and moves quickly through the day’s hottest political stories, breaking developments and media absurdities. It is the fastest hour in American media because there is always more happening than the legacy media has time—or desire—to explain.

And if you want my daily stack of news and commentary delivered directly to you, sign up for The Daily BS here. It is free, arrives daily and, unlike a New York Democratic event, questions are not removed for exceeding ideological capacity.