Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
THE SHEER velocity of the wreckage is almost impossible to process. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Benjamin Franklin wrote. In just the past few weeks, the American president has threatened military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, if it doesn’t surrender Greenland to the United States. He moved to punish a US … Read more
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Following recent developments stemming from political protests and clashes with the federal government across the state, Minnesota announced that it had changed the official state bird to a screaming lesbian. After the recent spate of screaming lesbians, state officials agreed that a change was needed to modernize the official state bird and … Read more
Do you know what might have saved Renee Good’s life? A necktie. Bear with me. Good’s death was the result of a lack of professionalism on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Whatever silly shenanigans Good may have been up to before the shooting, the video of the incident makes it clear that … Read more
Many news organizations carried the story of the release of Bar Kuperstein two years after he had been kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. Kuperstein was a young security guard at the Nova Festival, the music festival targeted by Hamas for its fat genocidal possibilities, with sides of rape, torture, and kidnapping. After taking some … Read more
Every so often, a cultural moment exposes something far deeper than a policy disagreement. That happened again recently when comments from Stranger Things actress Maya Hawke resurfaced online — remarks she made several years ago but which gained renewed attention amid the show’s continued popularity. Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2022, … Read more
The widespread fraud in Minnesota that’s made national headlines in recent weeks is likely occurring in states across the country, Cato Institute scholar Chris Edwards told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. He called it a “remarkable cascade of fraud scandals.” Edwards, an expert on federal and state tax and budget issues, wrote a … Read more
Among his duties as chief justice of the United States, John Roberts is responsible for putting together an annual “Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary.” This report sometimes amounts to a rather boring document, focused mostly on outlining the overall workings of the judicial branch. Other times, the chief justice adds a little spice … Read more
Big Fertility markets itself as a compassionate branch of the medical world that exists to help infertile couples — but instead it facilitates a return to harem logic. History is littered with powerful men who collected women the way empires collect territory, for the express purpose of producing as many children as possible. The dehumanizing … Read more
Taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions more on completely ineffective daycare than even Somalis have been able to pilfer. The Trump administration announced it is pausing all child-care payments to Minnesota in light of explosive revelations about Somali-saturated fraud rings siphoning billions from federal welfare programs. State officials in Ohio, where the second-largest Somali population … Read more
It was bad enough that ostensibly conservative political commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens both have been the main drivers of a growing divide in the MAGA movement, through their obsession with demonizing Israel and the Jews. Now they have also become leading Western apologists for Islam. Are they even conservative? Were they ever? (Owens … Read more
New research strongly suggests teachers’ unions are driving the skyrocketing administrative bloat that’s sucking resources away from classrooms. By diverting additional funding toward hiring more people, they starve effective educators of the raises and support they need, all to pad their own power structures. Unions benefit enormously from inflating the number of employees in the … Read more
School names, Civil War history, and the politics of historical memory. After whom should one name a school? The United States faces enormous economic, political, and international challenges. However, that isn’t what captured public attention in Harrisonburg, Virginia, during a trial that ended shortly before Christmas. Residents fought over the Shenandoah County School Board decision … Read more
We are not here to be bystanders; political power ultimately rests with us. Last week, I was a guest on Michael Medved’s show, and the host asked a question that surprised me: If the Democrats take the House and the Senate after the midterm elections, will they impeach Donald Trump a third time? I was … Read more
Anybody who spends much time on social media, especially that website formerly known as Twitter, has likely seen an uptick in antisemitism these last couple years. As a Catholic, it has been disappointing to see so much of it among Catholic youth. For many years, we lived in a world in which the social memory … Read more
Doing so will not somehow damage the ‘movement.’ Here’s a friendly tip for the confused and apprehensive among us: Whatever the loudest and most intrusive voices within the firmament might like to insist, you don’t actually have to defend Donald Trump when he’s being a complete idiot. Suppose, to pluck a trio of wild examples … Read more
It’s not about Israel. It’s about convincing Jews everywhere to let themselves be killed by Muslim terrorists. If Not Now, is an anti-Israel BDS group, whose gimmick is pretending it’s an organization of “Jewish youth.” (In reality, many of its members are not Jewish and it’s a typical far leftist organization.) There was a period … Read more
Whisper it, but there’s a revolution happening in Iran. The Islamic Republic and the Ayatollah may both still be in place, but right now, away from the world’s attention, Iranian women are quietly rebelling. On the streets of the nation’s major cities, where the regime murdered hundreds of protesters and imprisoned more than 20,000 Iranians … Read more
PRESIDENT TRUMP was back in Pennsylvania last week to tout his economic record, but one of the lines that drew attention had nothing to do with jobs or inflation. He revived a crude slur he used in 2018, when he called several poor nations “s**thole countries” during a White House meeting with lawmakers. At the … Read more
Ahead of this year’s celebration of Hanukkah, here are eight important facts about the holiday: 1. Hanukkah is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles, and Shavuot/Pentecost, which commemorate the liberation from slavery in Egypt to independence in the land of Israel, and … Read more
The strange new alliance between democratic socialists and nationalist populists isn’t a sign of political healing. It’s a sign that people have lost their grip on basic economics. In a scene that perfectly captures the strangeness of American politics today, President Donald Trump, a billionaire and self-styled champion of American business (at least the ones … Read more
Criminals are, no surprise, harder to catch than law-abiding people. If you will indulge my revisiting an old theme for a new purpose: There is a reason—a bad, dumb, bureaucratically self-serving reason—that U.S. gun control efforts are mainly focused on sporting goods shops and the people who do business with them. The reason is that … Read more
The ancient rot at the heart of anti-Israel activism. . . . The surge of anti-Jewish hostility is particularly concerning in light of what sparked it: meticulously planned pogroms in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023, followed by the abduction of hundreds of innocents. The hostages were condemned to terrorist captivity, where they endured physical … Read more
The portion that Americans spend on food has fallen steeply over the last century. Let’s set aside the controversy over what Walmart’s shrinkflation of its annual Thanksgiving feast bundle might suggest for the recent trajectory of grocery prices. The good news for which we can be thankful is that the share of their incomes that … Read more
… you rarely (if ever) hear the following phrases. “Party like it’s A.D. 1570!” “We should sing more plainchant at this parish.” “I’d like to thank the choir for their sublime rendition of the Mass For Five Voices by William Byrd.” “I just love the way the four torchbearers process in with such dignity.” “People … Read more
If only they had been illegal aliens in Mexico. Pope Leo has no problem speaking forthrightly when it’s an issue that he really cares about, like global warming or illegal aliens. “We must pray for the conversion of many people, inside and outside of the church, who still do not recognize the urgency of caring … Read more