Bianca Jagger has been a celebrity for a long time. In the 1970s, she was married to Mick Jagger. A Nicaraguan, she was supportive of the Sandinista revolution. Over the last two decades, I have seen her in Salzburg, where I believe she has a home. She attends the annual music festival. She seems a woman of considerable dignity.

Rolando Álvarez Lagos is a bishop of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua. He has been persecuted by the Sandinista dictatorship. Last month, he was sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Ms. Jagger has now made a video, saying that the bishop’s family has no idea where he is and has been wanting to bring him food, water, and medicine.

“I am asking Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to provide a proof of life,” says Ms. Jagger. “We want to know that Monsignor Álvarez Lagos is alive and in good health.”

Rosario Murillo is the wife of Ortega, and his partner in crime.

“I’m also asking Comandante Daniel Ortega,” Ms. Jagger says, “to allow me to come to Nicaragua to visit Monsignor Álvarez Lagos.”

Addressing Ortega directly, she says,

“Comandante, once upon a time, in 1979, after I did a campaign for the British Red Cross and I went to Nicaragua, I asked the then dictator, Anastasio Somoza, to allow me to visit La Modelo, the same prison where Monsignor Álvarez Lagos is supposed to be — and he did.

“So now I’m asking you: Will you please let me come to Nicaragua to visit Monsignor Rolando Álvarez? It would be a wonderful action on your part, especially during this Easter season.

“I remember when I interviewed you and you told me that the person you most admire was Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ, let me see Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, and let him [be] free. He is an innocent man whose only crime is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Well done, Bianca Jagger.

• A few weeks ago, four Americans crossed from Brownsville, Texas, into the Mexican city of Matamoros. Apparently, one of them was going to get cosmetic surgery. In their van, the Americans were immediately set upon by members of a drug cartel, who shot at them and kidnapped them.

The criminals murdered two of the Americans — Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown — while the other two — LaTavia Washington McGee and Eric Williams — survived the ordeal. A local woman, Areli Pablo Servando, was killed by a stray bullet. One report described her as “an innocent bystander.”

Really, they all were. The prevalent theory is that cartel members mistook the Americans for Haitian drug smugglers. According to reports, the cartel issued an apology for the murders and the mayhem. According to reports, the cartel turned over five guilty members to the authorities.

Are they true, these reports? Hard to say.

In the United States, some politicians called for military action against the Mexican cartels. The impulse to do something is understandable, but military action would be imprudent, even reckless. For one thing, it would inflame Mexican nationalism.

The U.S. attorney general, Merrick Garland, said, “The DEA and the FBI are doing everything possible to dismantle and disrupt and ultimately prosecute the leaders of the cartels and the entire networks that they depend on.” Well and good — but as long as demand for drugs exists, there will be supply.

This is a problem that must be worked on day in, day out. It is one of the knottiest and most grievous problems we have.

Some years ago, I was podcasting with George F. Will about North Korea. What to do? He said that some problems can’t be solved. Rather, they have to be managed.

I have a feeling this problem with drugs is one of them. Is an all-out drug war — with full commitment, with all the bells and whistles — the answer? Is all-out legalization the answer?

I’m afraid that management is the best we can do. If we can do better, hallelujah.

Murder, we always have. Rape, we always have. Robbery, kidnapping — all manner of crime. But, by golly, we can mitigate, can’t we?

• This is a grim headline — telling of a grim reality: “‘It’s Like a Graveyard’: Record Numbers of Migrants Are Dying at the U.S. Border.” For the article — a report in the Wall Street Journal — go here.

• From the Associated Press, a report that is a tale of our time:

Soon after a train derailed and spilled toxic chemicals in Ohio last month, anonymous pro-Russian accounts started spreading misleading claims and anti-American propaganda about it on Twitter, using Elon Musk’s new verification system to expand their reach while creating the illusion of credibility.

Maybe one more paragraph:

The accounts, which parroted Kremlin talking points on myriad topics, claimed without evidence that authorities in Ohio were lying about the true impact of the chemical spill. The accounts spread fearmongering posts that preyed on legitimate concerns about pollution and health effects and compared the response to the derailment with America’s support for Ukraine following its invasion by Russia.

Very sinister stuff. Very today.

• Former president Donald Trump — the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — issued a statement:

We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden.

Have a bigger chunk:

. . . we have to finish the process we began under my Administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission. Our foreign policy establishment keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. But the greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, U.S.A. hating people that represent us.

On Twitter, Quin Hillyer observed, “He sounds like an agent for the KGB. Or whatever the KGB’s successor org is now known as.” I had just done a podcast with Matthew Continetti, during which we discussed the “horseshoe theory” of politics: Ultimately, Left and Right draw near.

In America, said Matt, there is a certain anti-Americanism at either end of the horseshoe. This strikes me as manifestly true.

(For our podcast — which is on the Ukraine war and the American Right — go here.)

• “Vote often and early for James Michael Curley.” Remember that jingle, from our political past? He was elected from prison, that old rascal, Curley. And if Donald J. Trump should find himself sitting in jail? He might well romp through the primaries, wrapping up the nomination early.

• The Republican National Committee tweeted around a photo of Ronald Reagan, with the caption “Hard at work.” (The RNC tweets under the handle “@GOP.”) Two quick thoughts.

(1) I’m not sure the current GOP would have thought much of Reagan. (2) Reagan had a wonderful quip (of course). “They say that hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the risk?”

• About Aaron Rai, I read something that I found fairly moving. Rai is an English professional golfer (of Indian heritage). He uses iron covers — i.e., covers over his irons. “So what?” you ask. Iron covers are considered very, very dorky. Everyone uses wood covers (not that woods are made out of wood) (or irons out of iron) — but very few use iron covers.

So, why does Mr. Rai use them?

“I grew up in very much a working-class family, and golf has always been a very expensive game. I started from the age of four, and my dad used to pay for the equipment, pay for my memberships, my entry fees. And it wasn’t money that we really had, to be honest, but he’d always buy me the best clubs.

“When I was seven or eight years old, he bought me a set of Titleist 690 MBs, and they were like 800 to a thousand pounds back then, just for a set of clubs for a kid. I cherished them. When we used to go out and practice, he used to clean every single groove afterward with a pin and with baby oil.

“To protect the golf clubs, he thought it would be good to put iron covers on them. I’ve pretty much had iron covers on all of my sets ever since, just to appreciate the value of what I have, and it all started with that first set.”

Marvelous. (Go here, to read this story about Rai.)

• Several nights ago, I was talking with the host at one of my favorite diners. He is a wonderful host, a sheer, genial professional. He was telling me that customers have changed in recent years. “People are so nasty. They talk to you like they’re tweeting.”

I was fascinated by this observation. For years, I have heard, “People behave on social media the way they never would in real life. The things they say on Twitter, or in comments sections or what have you, they would never say face-to-face.”

Maybe that is no longer true. Everything grows coarser and coarser.

• An interesting obit: “Mary Bauermeister, Avant-Garde Artist and Host, Dies at 88.” I was arrested by the final paragraphs:

Bauermeister cited something “an old writer” had told her in her youth when she was “desperate” — an injunction that exemplifies the fearlessness, as well as the willfulness, that characterized both her art and her life:

“Always do what requires the greater courage from you.”

• I had read a couple of articles about Brooks Koepka, the great golf champion. The articles said he was rollin’ in dough, as a member of the Saudi golf tour. But he was not enjoying himself. He was unhappy with life. Then, at a golf range, I noticed an ad, featuring Brooks — an ad that has been there for a long, long time:

• I spotted something chiseled at the top of a stately old building. Note the “v” in the chiseled word “public.” It was such a struggle for the poor to keep clean. It still is, in much of the world. These public baths must have meant a lot to many. The thing about “do-gooders”: Sometimes they really do do good, you know?

Have a happy week, y’all. See you soon.

If you would like to receive Impromptus by e-mail — links to new columns — write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.