June 29, 2026 — Scott Johnson

The complicated Jefferson

Featured image In this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal Review section Richard Brookhiser reviews four new books on Thomas Jefferson. This should be a big week for Jefferson as we celebrate the semiquincentennial anniversary of his immortal handiwork. As John Adams said in his last words, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Jefferson had actually died a few hours earlier, but Adams got it right in the larger sense we observe this week. Along »
June 29, 2026 — Scott Johnson

At the Obama Center

Featured imageMiranda Devine assesses the legacy of Barack Obama as seen in The Obama Presidential Center. Her current New York Post column provdes an on-the-scene report from “the Obamination”: [T]he library-that-is-not-a-library is a monument to the self-regarding former president. Obama is the central focus of the entire museum, with enormous portraits and photographs of Barack and Michelle as imperial rulers, and dozens of installations, interactive exhibits and videos depicting his inspirational »
June 28, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Socialism kills

Featured imageFrom the U.K. Daily Mail, Venezuela earthquake rescuers discover collapsed buildings were ‘held up by STYROFOAM’ as catastrophic death toll reaches 1,430. Styrofoam. Not concrete. The Daily Mail reports, In the video, a man can be seen recording himself pulling away pieces of what appears to be collapsed walls with just his hand. The outside of the wall has a thin layer of concrete, while the inside is clearly Styrofoam »
June 28, 2026 — John Hinderaker

How “Feminists” Abandon Women

Featured imageI have read a lot of fiery op-eds over the years, but I haven’t read many as hot as this one by Camilla Long in the London Times. Her subject is the abandonment of women by supposedly feminist liberals in Great Britain, but you could make a similar case anywhere. Over to you, Camilla: I wasn’t going to write about the horrific findings of the Ockenden report, the many devastating »
June 28, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Citizen Vigilante [Updated]

Featured imageCitizen Vigilante, a new film by Uwe Boll, became a sensation after the German government tried to ban it. Elon Musk responded by making it briefly available for free on X, so the German ban had the usual effect of driving viewership. I watched Citizen Vigilante on YouTube. As you probably know, the film is about a vigilante who, outraged by Europe’s immigration policies and lax criminal justice system, begins »
June 28, 2026 — Scott Johnson

California’s billionaire tax

Featured imageWhat starts in Califoria doesn’t stay in California. A proposed “billionaire tax” has made its way onto the ballot in this year’s election. In “Exit the billionaire,” I looked to Hoover Senior Fellow Joshua Rauh to explain why it would make the state poorer in the long run. Well, as a famous economist once said, in the long run we are all dead. Proponents of the tax will live it »
June 28, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Sunday morning coming down

Featured imageI haven’t thought abut Gordon Lightfoot since he died at the age of 84 in 2023. Yesterday Albert O played “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” on WUMB’s Highway 61 Revisited and it brought back the memories. Borrowing from what I wrote in 2023, I want to recall him briefly this morning. Lightfoot was a proud Canadian, but one wouldn’t call him a Canadian folk giant. He was a folk giant simply — »
June 27, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Court Packing: A Step Toward Disunion

Featured imageI have said and written many times that the United States is on a path toward disunion. We are separating ourselves into distinct zones, Red America and Blue America. Red states are getting redder (and more prosperous) and blue states are getting crazier. A nation cannot exist half slave and half free, nor can it exist half socialist and half free. Unless something changes, the road we are on leads »
June 27, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Arrested in Mogadishu

Featured imageIt would seem that Minnesota leads the nation in the production of international fugitives from justice. From the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, Our Burnsville Man was apprehended in Mogadishu, Somalia, after more than four years on the run from federal fraud charges. There is probably a Netflix miniseries embedded in that last sentence. Eidleh is Defendant No. 2 (out of 80) in the sprawling Feeding Our Future scandal, and is »
June 27, 2026 — Scott Johnson

At SPA, Daily Mail edition

Featured imageThe reign of Luis Ottley as St. Paul Academy head of school is at least of local interest. St. Paul Academy is a large and venerable institution. On the other side of the river, Blake and Breck have not suffered anything like the humiliation that Ottley has delivered to SPA in response to parents who have had the temerity to criticize him. He has wielded his authority to dismiss the »
June 27, 2026 — Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Party Like It’s October, 1917 Edition

Featured imageSo my site access has been restored but my WiFi access continues to be spotty as my ocean-going continues, but it did prompt the first graphic in this week’s gallery by the producers of the Ricochet podcast, where I ended up being a mostly silent spectator this week between 10-second bursts of connection, which was about all I needed for my very few five-second bursts of lucidity. Meanwhile, I still »
June 28, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Whole lotta deconflictin’ goin’ on?

Featured imageVice President Vance has bragged about “the deconfliction channel” Washington and Tehran agreed to set up during talks in Switzerland. Representatives from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the US Army’s Central Command are to sit together — where else? — in Qatar: “One of the things we wanted to come out with [was a] channel on the Iranian side [for reducing conflict], which we did,” Vance said in an »
June 27, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Land acknowledgment

Featured imageFrom the New York Post, Minnesota school board member under fire after saying dogs should urinate on ‘White corpses’ in cemeteries. Lovely. Such a good example for our yutes. The Post reports, A Minnesota school board member is facing backlash after suggesting that dogs should be allowed to relieve themselves in Christian cemeteries, writing in a social media post that people should “leave indigenous land sacred and piss on the »
June 27, 2026 — John Hinderaker

The SPLC, Still Hanging On

Featured imageThe Southern Poverty Law Center has long been known as a far-left hate group, and now that it is under indictment for mail fraud and has been exposed as perhaps the largest funder of racist organizations in the U.S., one might expect its influence to wane. But left-wing organizations, like the teachers’ unions that control most public schools, won’t give up their allegiance to the SPLC without a fight. Thus »
June 27, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Fujimori wins?

Featured imageConservative candidate Keiko Fujimori, age 51, appears to have won election for the Presidency of Peru. She leads her left-wing opponent by around 50,000 votes, out of more than 18 million cast. Her lead appears to be larger than the number of uncounted votes remaining. That should make her the winner, shouldn’t it? Elsewhere, Wikipedia lists her as President-Elect, expected to assume office in late July. Reuters reports, Keiko Fujimori’s »
June 27, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Muslim pirates then & now

Featured imageMichael Oren is the Israeli historian and author of Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (2007), among other excellent books. In the first chapter of Power, Faith and Fantasy he tells the story of our submission to, our subsequent struggle against, and our final victory over the Barbary pirates. Turning to that chapter this morning, I see how much of it I have »
June 26, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Heat Wave!

Featured imageSometimes it gets hot. Even in Northern Europe, currently in the midst of a heat wave. Many people don’t realize that London is farther north than anywhere in the contiguous U.S. It is at the same latitude as Calgary, Canada. Paris is at the same latitude as North Dakota and Montreal. So Northern Europe has not generally been home to high temperatures. Thirty-one years ago, my wife and I and »