DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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When an ICE agent shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good after she allegedly obstructed immigration authorities with her vehicle, disobeyed their commands, and attempted to flee – drawing fatal fire from an officer nearly struck by the vehicle – politicians and pundits decried her death as murder. They called it particularly unjust because she was not acting as a protester but a legal observer.

The legal term is ‘accessory’. It is also a crime.

After federal agents arrested Don Lemon for allegedly disrupting a St. Paul church service in protest of the same Twin Cities immigration enforcement surge Good had opposed. His lawyer defended the former CNN anchor as a journalist, persecuted by the Trump administration for having carried out “constitutionally protected work” in violation of his First Amendment rights. So too did myriad media organizations ranging from the National Association of Black Journalists to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

While Good’s shooting presents a distinct issue, her case and Lemon’s highlight the complex legal issues surrounding those who claim to be chronicling protests. Legal observers and journalists have long worked on the frontlines of civil unrest, the former documenting instances of alleged police misconduct in violation of constitutional rights to peaceably assemble, and the latter chronicling the assemblies. Their efforts have brought transparency and accountability. But what happens when legal observers and journalists act, or are seen by authorities as unlawful protestors rather than the neutral parties they are supposed to be? To what degree do their titles afford them special protections from prosecution in a court of law?

 

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investigating whether signature collectors in San Francisco illegally offered to pay people to sign ballot petitions using false names.

A video posted Monday on X shows a sign that says “Sign petition for $5” and a line of people waiting along the sidewalk. A woman sitting at a folding table appears to be instructing the name and address to use to fill out the petition. When the person recording asked what the petitions were for, the woman said, “Just sign it.”

The California secretary of state’s office said in a statement that it was “aware of, and investigating, the matter.”

Democrats are cheaters every age.

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A recent attack by an illegal alien that took place on the New York City subway perfectly represents where concentric circles of awful leftist policies meet to damage free societies.

On Sunday afternoon, 34-year-old Bairon Hernandez allegedly shoved an 83-year-old Air Force veteran, Richard Williams, and another young man onto the subway track in the Upper East Side. Fortunately, the younger victim, Jhon Pena, was able to pull Williams off the track before a train arrived, though the vet remains in serious condition.

The suspect, according to Pix 11, is a four-time deportee with 15 prior arrests for, among other things, “simple assault, domestic violence, obstruction of police, possession of a weapon, drug possession, and aggravated assault.”

Hernandez first entered the country in January 2008 and was last deported in July 2020, according to the New York Post. He re-entered the country sometime after then.

Welcome to Mamdaniville, where octogenarian veterans are pushed onto train tracks by demented illegal alien career criminals while the mayor whines that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “a rogue agency, one that has no interest in laws, no interest in order.”

Uh huh.

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Calls for “bleed kits” to be rolled out across London’s bus network have gained traction, with the London Assembly unanimously backing a motion to install them in major bus stations and trial them on high-risk routes.

These kits, designed to stem severe bleeding from deep wounds, are pitched as a lifesaver in emergencies—yet their sudden necessity speaks volumes about the city’s descent into chaos under unchecked policies.

The push comes from the London Youth Assembly, highlighting how young people feel increasingly unsafe on public transport.

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Someone asked a good question. I’d written a post arguing that what the industry calls “AI agents” are flowcharts with good marketing, and that the mathematics to do better has existed since the 1960s. A commenter on LinkedIn replied: “So why did it stop being widely used?”

It deserved more than a comment-length answer.

The short version is: path dependence, disciplinary silos, and the seductive convenience of not having to specify your objectives. The long version requires a brief tour through the recent history of artificial intelligence, which turns out to be less a story of progress than of fashion.

NPR, the chief propaganda organ of the Crust.

Call me when the number of U.S. war dead exceeds that of the average trans-perpetrated mass shooting.

CBS News, a Voice of the Crust.

A man shot and killed by Dallas police earlier this week was a familiar figure in North Texas law enforcement – and part of the security detail for U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, sources told CBS News Texas.

Multiple law enforcement sources tell CBS News Texas the man, known publicly as Mike King, had been using aliases while running a business that placed officers in off?duty jobs.

King was killed Wednesday night after a standoff with Dallas police SWAT officers. Police say he fled into a hospital parking garage, barricaded himself inside a vehicle, and was forced out by tear gas before pulling a gun on officers.

Sources say he was wanted for impersonating a law enforcement officer and had claimed to be one while operating Off Duty Police Services, an online platform connecting North Texas officers with off?duty work. Authorities have not released his real name.

Johnathan Turley.

There has been an ongoing struggle between district court judges and the Trump Administration over a variety of policies. In the first year, some district court judges issued nationwide injunctions that were largely rejected by the Supreme Court and appellate courts. These conflicts have continued and the intracourt tensions have increased. That was evident with the recent decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which delivered a virtual haymaker in reversing Judge Sara Ellis, an Obama nominee.

The panel criticized Ellis for limiting the operation of federal officers in Chicago, saying that she “effectively established the district court as the supervisor of all Executive Branch activity in the city of Chicago.”

Protesters and journalists went to Ellis to restrain “Operation Midway Blitz.” They challenged the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the First and Fourth Amendments, specifically raising the use of tear gas and other chemical agents. Judge Ellis issued a preliminary injunction described by the panel as “sweeping”: “It enjoined all law enforcement o?cers in the Northern District of Illinois, as well as federal agencies and the Secretary of the DHS, from using certain crowd control tactics and tools. It also required the defendants to regularly inform the court of its e?orts at implementing the injunction.”

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The Minnesota Senate rammed through sweeping gun control measures on Friday, after deliberately sidelining the state’s largest pro-Second Amendment organization with just 6 minutes of testimony, while gun control supporters got 32 minutes of speaking time on the flagship gun ban bill.

The Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, chaired by Sen. Ron Latz (DFL), advanced S.F. 3655 – a near-total ban on semiautomatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 rounds – on a strict 6-3 party-line vote. Latz admitted they “prioritized individual testifiers over organizations” – yet anti-gun groups still got slots while the state’s biggest 2A voice was frozen out.

Before allowing input from the public, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus – representing tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens – warned the public yesterday that committee staff had already told them the hearing schedule was “full” – effectively blocking them from offering in-person testimony on the core bills: the semi-auto ban, the magazine ban, repeal of state preemption (opening the door to a patchwork of local gun laws), and new carry restrictions at the State Capitol and schools.

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Seattle, which is home to Amazon and Microsoft, currently employs some 193,000 well-compensated Washingtonians working in the tech sector. One major reason that Seattle emerged as the first big tech hub outside of California is obvious: It is the only West Coast state with no state income tax. Its state constitution forbids an income tax. High wage workers and entrepreneurs seeking a piece of the relatively laid back, outdoors-focused Pacific Northwest lifestyle can move to Washington without taking a state-mandated pay cut.

For the progressive Democrats who dominate state politics in the Pacific Northwest, money in the pockets of anyone other than the government and its political allies is wasted. To grab more of it, legislative Democrats in Washington are pushing through an income tax in the guise of a “millionaire’s tax” that would levy a 9.9% tax on incomes over $1 million. Just yesterday, as the “millionaire’s tax” neared the finish line in the Washington legislature, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced he and his wife have relocated from Seattle, where they lived for 47 years, to Miami. Florida has neither a state income tax nor a state income tax masquerading as a “millionaire’s tax.”

The constitutionality of the bill rests on progressives’ expectation that the Washington Supreme Court will completely abandon decades of precedent deeming income taxes unconstitutional. The expectation may not be unfounded: Five of nine justices were appointed by Democratic governors. Democrats also voted down an amendment to forbid applying an income tax to lower income levels, signaling the “millionaire’s tax” is likely to become a “thousandaire’s tax” if Democrats get their way.

A Constitution protects rights only when the judiciary agrees. Look at what the U.S. Supreme Court did when draftees challenged conscription for World War I on the grounds that it violated the 13th Amendment, which it obviously does.

What makes this proposed tax truly egregious, however, is its attempt to stop voters from having any say in it. The Democrats’ tax bill includes a necessity clause that precludes a voter referendum that could overturn the new income tax. So long as the majority-progressive-appointed state Supreme Court goes along, progressives will have upended 90 years of constitutionally prohibited income taxes while shielding it from a vote of the people.

Democrats are the most un-democratic group of people in the country.

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In the rugged interior of Newfoundland, an hour’s drive west from the Canadian Forces Base in Gander, sits a dormant mine with profound implications for the nation’s security and prosperity. Beaver Brook could be the largest North American producer of antimony — a critical mineral threaded through the entire spectrum of modern military hardware, from small arms and artillery shells to advanced missile seekers and night-vision goggles.

But China owns the mine and shut it down in early 2023 — one year before Beijing imposed export controls blocking antimony sales to U.S. military end users, driving prices from about US$5,900 per tonne to more than US$50,000.

Antimony forms in crystalline masses, often clustered in dark silver needles — nature’s own suggestion of the gunmetal world it enters. It was little known before Washington recognized that Beijing had quietly secured a near-monopoly over the world’s critical mineral supply, antimony among them. The metal fires every conventional round, hardens military components, and provides the infrared edge that defines lethality in modern conflict. Armies could not sustain combat for even a single day without it — a reality that has driven urgent U.S. efforts to stockpile it, revive domestic processing, and cut reliance on China and Russia.

I guess the Canadian government is just stupid.

The Telegraph (UK).

The central principle of democracy is that power is vested in the people and expressed by their elected representatives. We expect that governments will seek to align themselves with the views and opinions of the people, while protecting the views and opinions of minorities. Yet Britain is currently demonstrating a different phenomenon: at times, and under the right circumstances, governments are seeking to align themselves with the views and opinions of minorities while failing to protect the views and opinions of the people.

Take this Labour Government, which at present appears to be in a blind panic. With local elections approaching, Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues are desperate to win back the approval of Muslim voters they had long taken for granted. The results of this risk going beyond pure politics – shaping Britain and British society for years to come.

This week, the ramifications were plain for all to see: a highly-contentious definition of anti-Muslim hostility being proposed despite vocal opposition from other minority faiths and the majority, and policy on the war in Iran driven by torturous attempts to balance maintaining the special relationship with America and winning over Muslim voters. There was also much agonising about whether to ban a march whose organiser has previously met Iran’s late ayatollah Ali Khamenei to hand him a dossier complaining of anti-Muslim hatred in Britain. The march will go ahead on Sunday as a “static protest”.

The Telegraph (UK).

Volunteers have been left “beyond angry” after flower bulbs they planted were mowed over by a Green Party-led council.

More than 70 volunteers planted almost 30,000 bulbs in St George Park in Bristol on Saturday after raising thousands of pounds to fund the initiative.

But thousands of the bulbs were “shredded” days later when council workers mowed the grass of the park.

• “Verified by NBC News” = Trust me, bro.
• “Adding evidence, experts say, that an American missile likely hit…” = We have no actual proof.
• “…hit a compound once home to a military base” = This is a buried lede, please don’t pay attention to it.
• “Weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis” = Here’s a left-leaning DC thinktank nerd to make our scant evidence seem more concrete than it is.
• “4 other weapons experts, who agree” = Trust me bro, Part Dos.
• “NBC News spoke on the phone with a father who said his 8-year-old daughter, Zahra, was killed…” = Let’s end with a sad story of a random Iranian man so the audience really hates Trump.

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Japanese motor company Yamaha is saying sayonara to California after their US headquarters was located in the Golden State for half a century.

The business-hostile state is driving the Japanese company out.

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And apparently running as a Republican would just be a waste of time & money.

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Now that Rohan has been thoroughly pillaged and the hordes of Mordor are approaching Minas Tirith, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is leaving the shores of Middle Earth.

Ardern rose to fame for her totalitarian lockdown measures during Covid. Her government essentially locked the island nation down for two years. The tourism industry – huge in New Zealand – was devastated. The economy stagnated.

Almost two years into the lockdowns, Ardern finally gave citizens permission to visit their friends and joked about letting them use their friends’ bathrooms.

A 2022 study looked at the mental health effects on New Zealand due to New Zealand’s isolation from the rest of the world combined with these strict policies, “considered amongst the most stringent response to the pandemic globally.”

Like many other places, the closure of schools and businesses led to depression and suicide that killed many more young people than the virus ever would. It delayed learning and social skills for an entire generation and destroyed social cohesion and trust in government.

None of these measures stopped the spread of Covid.

The Other McCain.

Two decades ago, the phrase “Dearbornistan” became common among conservative bloggers during the Global War on Terror, because of the notorious cluster of Islamic radicals in the Detroit surburb of Dearborn

As soon as I heard about Thursday’s attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield — before anything had been reported about the suspect’s identity — I checked to see how far the synagogue was from Dearborn. It’s about 20 miles, but the distance is a bit shorter to Dearborn Heights, which is six miles west of Dearborn itself. Both communities are part of Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, which sends Democratic “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib to Congress.

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The scientific community has seriously betrayed the American public, and their reliability and reputation are in jeopardy as a result of the deceptions and fraudulent acts they have perpetrated. After the poor guidance and literal lies that the members of medicine and science have told us over the last few years, we have to ponder: where do we go for the truth?

There are many reasons for science taking a deceptive approach to their research, and by exploring them, we may learn how to overcome their compulsion to misrepresent their results.

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Senator John Cornyn is in the fight of his life. In a throwback to the Tea Party primaries of the early 2010s, the senior senator from Texas (first elected in 2002) has been forced into a runoff for the first time in his career by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023, managed to effectively tie Cornyn in the initial primary, with both receiving around 42% of the vote. While Cornyn is favored to win a runoff, particularly if President Donald Trump endorses him, it is by no means a sure thing.

Cornyn and his team may be wondering how they got to this point. They are not alone. Across the Western world, center-right individuals and parties are in deep trouble and seem unable to figure out why.

In Europe, the “respectable” center-right is a political dinosaur on its way to extinction. The German CDU is neck-and-neck (though more often than not, in second place) with the populist-right Alternative for Germany. Austria’s Freedom Party has been leading for the past three years, while Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy has led the country for over four. Poland’s right wing is dominated by two parties: a populist-right party and one that’s even further to the right. France and the United Kingdom have both seen their center-right parties decimated, replaced by the populist-right National Rally and Reform parties, respectively.

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When a 7-year-old’s heartfelt sketch promoting equality gets twisted into “racism” by leftist school officials, it’s a chilling sign of how far indoctrination has gone—now finally overturned in a resounding First Amendment victory.

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Don’t lose your shit over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think that we had no plan for dealing with this problem. That’s not so.

There are very few mines actually laid so far. Tankers are not going through the Strait of Hormuz because their captains are nervous. Their ships and their cargos are worth millions and the insurance costs millions. So, they’re waiting in place, hanging back. The US still has work to do destroying Iran’s shoreline defenses of missile and drone launch sites. Iran is firing all they’ve got left. Whenever they launch something, we see the geo-location on our satellites and radars. The mobile launchers are a little trickier because, obviously, they shoot and move. But they don’t always move fast enough, and there isn’t an endless supply of them.

The US Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweeper ships in the Persian Gulf in September, 2025, but replaced them with more agile Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) capable of countering submarines and clearing mines. Two LCS ships — USS Santa Barbara and USS Canberra — quietly deployed in March 2025.

Don’t hold your breath for the LCS to do anything productive.

Newsbusters.

The hits just kept coming for CNN this week. Amid criticism of the network’s biased reporting from Iran, bias about the conflict, and how they got access to the country, two high-ranking CNN officials were caught at the Iranian Embassy in London attending a celebration for the founding of the Islamic regime. Additionally, the daytime edition of CNN News Central on Thursday aired four-uninterrupted minutes of Iranian state television delivering a purported written statement from the latest ayatollah, who’s in a coma.

On March 12, the U.K.-based newspaper The Telegraph published an article about the unfolding scandal engulfing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government where his Foreign Ministry attended a February 12 celebration at the Iranian Embassy to mark the founding of the Islamic Republic. The party was happening at the same time they were slaughtering thousands of their own citizens in the streets. The newspaper reported:

UPDATE: In the hours since NewsBusters put a spotlight on the imagine of CNN officials at the Iranian Embassy shared by The Telegraph, the newspaper has removed the image from the story. You can still see the image below.

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Court documents show less than two years after Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was released from prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State group, he opened fire in a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday before ROTC students subdued and killed him.

The shooting that left one person dead and two others injured has raised questions about why Jalloh, who the FBI identified as the gunman, was imprisoned and the conditions of his release — with some elected officials questioning how someone with known ties to the Islamic State group was able to carry out such an attack.

“The horrific tragedy that occurred today on ODU’s campus never should have happened,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, who represents the congressional district neighboring the university, wrote on Facebook.

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One of the many tiresome habits of the MSM and academic Islamist apologists is the regurgitation of the lie that the Islamic texts that expressly call for violence against non-believers are (a) context-specific and only applicable to events in the early formational years of Islam and/or (b) merely relevant in the context of self-defense when attacked by infidels. They don’t really call for violence.

Oddly enough, in the 14 centuries since the death of the Prophet, Muslims have rather regularly misinterpreted this modest, context-specific, purely defensive guidance while they continued to invade, conquer, kill and enslave many millions of non-Muslims. In recent years, the incidence of jihadist violence is increasing again despite the internet making available creative translations inserting the revisionist references to self-defense and despite assurances by our betters that these instances are a small aberration that we must endure in service to our commitments to diversity and to the polite ongoing euthanization of Western civilization.

…
We need to end the pretense that jihadist violence is some rare event unrelated to express religious texts. The weird but defining white liberal delusion that they have transcended their own culture, heritage, country prevents them from descending from that higher fictional plane to engage in a defense of the culture and heritage they have putatively escaped even when they themselves may be personally at risk of lethal attack. We all have to pretend there is no such thing as jihad because it would disrupt the fantasy world of Keir Starmer or Barrack Obama (kinda like The Matrix for narcissists.)

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A disturbing act of arson targeted a synagogue in Rotterdam during the early hours of Friday, March 13th, marking another troubling escalation of anti-Semitic violence in Europe.

Unidentified perpetrators ignited a fire at around 3:40 a.m. by the entrance of the A.B.N. Davidsplein synagogue , which was followed by a reported explosion. Fortunately, local authorities confirmed that the fire extinguished itself and no injuries were sustained, though the symbolic and psychological damage to the local Jewish community remains significant.

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Here in the United Kingdom, there is a phrase that is increasingly being used among an educated public in periodic attempts to define the very odd form of regime that’s emerged principally since the prime ministerial office of Sir Keir Starmer began: ‘anarcho-tyranny.’ This term denotes a state of affairs in which the government habitually fails to enforce the basic laws against criminals that makes the ordinary members of society feel safe and secure, whilst enforcing increasingly stringent regulations against those ordinary members of society.

In turn, those living in such a society begin to feel that they live under a tyranny, but not a typical tyranny of the citizenry by the state, at least not directly. Rather, it is a tyranny of the ordinary member of society by bad members of that same society, from which the state absolves itself of the duty to protect them. If tyranny is the worst form of government, anarcho-tyranny is arguably the worst form of tyranny.

What, though, has been emerging in the UK—and for some time now—is perhaps something even worse than anarcho-tyranny as defined above. For it is not simply that basic laws against criminals are not enforced while the state imposes strict regulations against society’s ordinary members, but rather that the state goes a step further in actively rewarding those people who either are or should be deemed miscreants.

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A newly released study by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), nearly 50 percent of Muslims under the age of 40 in Germany hold “Islamist” views, with these Muslims expressing an attraction to Islamism, a preference for Sharia law over the German Basic Law, and harboring anti-Semitic prejudices.

The findings, described as “explosive in nature,” were featured in the latest edition of the “Motra Monitor.” The study reports that as of 2025, Muslims in Germany under the age of 40 (45.1 percent) hold “latent or manifestly Islamist attitudes.“

Some German politicians have already voiced their views on the study’s release. Wolfgang Kubicki, a prominent politician in the Free Democrats (FDP) and former MP, stated on X: “This study should set off all the alarm bells. It is a societal time bomb. We must not only talk about migration, but also about integration and religion. The policy of naively looking away has favored this development. The naivety must stop.”

“O Muslim, O Servant of Allah,  there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.”

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The UK government is ramping up its assault on free expression, now urging schools, councils, and workplaces to monitor and report “anti-Muslim hostility” as part of a broader strategy that critics slam as a tool to silence legitimate debate.

Under Labour’s plans, institutions will be encouraged to track incidents of ‘prejudice’ against Muslims, with a new definition adopted to clarify unacceptable behavior. This comes amid a surge in hate crimes, but opponents warn it could muzzle criticism of Islamism or immigration policies.

Newsbusters.

ABC News, already the worst among the Elitist Media broadcast network evening newscasts, may have plumbed a new low. A story subject’s murderous, transgender father was hit with Disney pixie dust and spun into the more anodyne “former family member.”

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A federal jury in Philadelphia has delivered a resounding guilty verdict against two Pennsylvania brothers and a longtime associate, convicting them of masterminding one of the most elaborate and prolonged racketeering operations uncovered in recent years. The scheme, which prosecutors say drained more than $32 million from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program while exploiting vulnerable foreign workers through the H-1B visa system, spanned over a decade and involved layers of deception across multiple states.

At the center of the criminal enterprise – self-dubbed the “Savani Group” – were brothers Bhaskar Savani, 60, a trained dentist from Ambler, Pennsylvania, and Arun Savani, 58, from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Bhaskar controlled the group’s extensive network of dental practices, while Arun oversaw finances and real estate holdings. Together, they built what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described as a “complex web” of sham entities and fraudulent operations, amassing tens of millions through outright fraud “at every turn.”

India has almost as much people as China, and every year their technical schools graduate more IT people than their local business can absorb. All of them want to come to America, where they can make better money, live better lives, and displace American workers under the H1-B program. Ask Satya Nedella, CEO of Microsoft. Ask Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.

Newsbusters.

The public media martyrdom of would-be deportee Mahmoud Khalil continues on National Public Radio. Khalil, who performed openly pro-Hamas activities during post-October 7 campus protests as a green card grad student at Columbia University, before the Trump Administration moved to arrest and deport him, was celebrated on Tuesday morning’s All Things Considered.

The fawning profile by DHS/immigration reporter Ximena Bustillo and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson: “One year later: Mahmoud Khalil remains in limbo but ready to fight.”

Khalil attended protests that distributed Hamas and Hezbollah literature, which the United States considers terrorist organizations. There’s no First Amendment right to support violence and terror, and no right for green card holders to stay in the country if they violate American policy, especially not a graduate student who abused his host country’s hospitality by harassing its Jewish citizens – there were many disgusting anti-Semitic incidents at Columbia University. Khalil could never bring himself to condemn Hamas.

Yet NPR stuck up for Khalil’s Columbia protesting, without providing any examples of his controversial stands like supporting Hamas’s murderous rampage of October 7, 2023. Does NPR really want listened to sympathize more for Khalil than the innocents killed, raped, and kidnapped? (New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who refused to condemn Hamas, and his publicly pro-Hamas wife hosted Khalil and his wife for dinner Monday night.)

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Iran’s asymmetric warfare in the Strait of Hormuz has shifted from kamikaze drone strikes on tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships to littering the world’s most important maritime chokepoint with naval mines.

Even though much of Iran’s conventional naval capability has been severely degraded in the 12 or so days of the Operation Epic Fury campaign, IRGC forces retain asymmetric leverage in Hormuz and the Gulf region through sea mines, drones, small vessels, and missile threats.

“It’s a good tool of asymmetric warfare,” Jahangir E. Arasli, a senior research fellow at Baku-based Institute for Development and Diplomacy who specializes in maritime threats, told the Wall Street Journal.

“The conventional capability is wiped out, but they have this asymmetrical capability,” Arasli said, noting that he was speaking in a personal capacity.

Mine control and countermeasures is one of the areas that the modern U.S. Navy totally sucks at—it was one of the supposed ‘tasks’ that the notorious LCS ships failed at—and has received effectively no attention since the death of the Soviet Union.

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Half a century after the book “Why Johnny Can’t Read” sounded an alarm about the rise of illiteracy in the U.S., it has only gotten worse: A quarter of all young adults, many of them high school graduates, are now functionally illiterate. Unable to read more than basic, short sentences, their prospects in today’s information economy are bleak.

This crisis gave rise to a movement that embraced the science of reading and produced a surprising success story in the Deep South, a region dogged by the highest rates of childhood illiteracy in the nation. State leaders and education reformers in Mississippi and Louisiana led a remarkable improvement in elementary reading scores that now rank among the highest in the nation.

The turnaround was a long slog, requiring a heavy hand from the state to win buy-in for a wholesale transformation of curricula, teaching methods, accountability, and more. Former state education chief Carey Wright called it the “Mississippi Marathon.” One of the biggest questions in public education now is whether the southern surge can spread nationwide, turning millions of struggling students into proficient readers with a brighter future.

But such a top-down approach is running into resistance, particularly in blue states like New York and Illinois, where strong teachers’ unions have fought to preserve local control over schools. And nowhere is the political battle over who runs the classroom more pronounced than in Massachusetts, which has long boasted the nation’s best public schools.

The Left i.e. Democrat i.e. unionized teachers don’t see their jobs as teaching things like literacy and mat so much as indoctrinating the kids that go to government schools with Woke ideology. I say we ought to let them stew in their own bile.

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Rep. Eric Swalwell has primarily been living in Washington, D.C. for years, and now that he’s running for governor of California, he’s hit a snag over residency.

According to reports, Swalwell is renting a single room in a home in the eastern Bay Area that’s occupied by a family of three to claim residency in the state. Public records show it’s a three-bedroom, 1,350-square-foot home owned by Nicolas and Kristina Mrzywka. It is unlikely that Swalwell has ever truly lived there. And now, one of his Democratic primary rivals is calling him out on it.

“The alleged discovery of Swalwell’s Livermore rental came from the congressman’s top Democratic opponent, billionaire Tom Steyer,” reports the New York Post. “Steyer says Swalwell appears to ‘live in California on paper only’ as the governor race heats up, ‘making him unlikely to meet the basic residency requirements to run for Governor.’”

And Democrats are cheaters every age….

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The Washington State Senate has voted to approve a new tax on residents who make more than $1 million per year.

Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, has vowed to sign the bill.

The bill, approved Wednesday by the Democrat-led Senate, will impose a 9.9% tax on state residents who earn over $1 million annually.

Supporters say the tax would affect only a small share of taxpayers — roughly 0.5% of high-income residents — while generating billions annually for programs including education, healthcare, housing, and tax credits for working families, as well as eliminating sales taxes on personal care items such as shampoo.

I predict that when this tax goes into effect, there will be no more ‘millionaires’ in Washington state to be affected.

I predic that they will spend vast sums of money on Woke vote-buying projects in anticipation of revenues that will not arrive.

I predent that eliminating sales taxes in anticipation of the revenues (that will not arrive) will leave the state budget full of holes that, since they can’t conceive of reducing spending, will have to be filled with more taxes on non-‘millionares’.

These people are Just Plain Stupid.

Time to leave. (I’m looking at you, Bill Gates.)

The Telegraph (UK).

Police responded to reports of an active shooter at 12.19pm on Thursday, in what the FBI described as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community”.

No-one was seriously injured in the attack, authorities confirmed. One security guard was hit by the car hospitalised after being knocked unconscious by the gunman’s vehicle, police said.

The suspect was found dead in the vehicle at the scene. Mr Bouchard said he could not comment on how the gunman had died.

Two sources told CNN that he had been shot dead by security staff at the synagogue.

The Telegraph (UK).

Second refuelling aircraft lands safely after suspected mid-air collision near Jordanian border.

The downing of the aircraft at around 7pm GMT on Thursday near Turaibil along the Iraqi-Jordanian border is “under investigation”, the US Central Command (Centcom) said. It insisted the loss was “not due to hostile fire or friendly fire”.

I like the fact that The Telegraph adheres to traditional journalistic practice of putting the facts first in order of importance rather than the feminist version that starts with a tear-jerking ‘human interest’ anecdote before going on to not-so-subtly pushing a Narrative.

The War Zone.

The U.S. Navy is not yet ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, but it will happen. This is the synopsis provided by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright in an interview with CNBC. The development comes as Iran continues to pummel international shipping in and around the critical channel, which the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, vows to keep closed.

“It’ll happen relatively soon, but it can’t happen now,” Wright said, of the planned naval escort mission. “We’re simply not ready. All of our military assets right now are focused on destroying Iran’s offensive capabilities and the manufacturing industry that supplies their offensive capabilities.” Wright added that the Navy should be able to escort tankers through the strait by the end of this month.

The War Zone.

KC-135 Stratotanker that was taking part in Operation Epic Fury has crashed in Iraq, U.S. Central Command announced.

“U.S. Central Command is aware of the loss of a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft,” the command stated Thursday afternoon in a media release. “The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely.”

“This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire,” the CENTCOM statement added. “More information will be made available as the situation develops. We ask for continued patience to gather additional details and provide clarity for the families of service members.”

I’m wondering how much this may be due to the different methods used by the Navy and Air Force in airborne refueling operations.

The War Zone.

The U.S. Navy has conducted at least one new round of live-fire tests of its prototype electromagnetic railgun at the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. The service had shelved its railgun effort in the early 2020s, at least publicly, after work that had shown promise ran into technical hurdles. A railgun is now set to be a key feature on the future Trump class “battleships.”

A brief mention of the new railgun testing is included in a document highlighting achievements by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD) in 2025. NSWC PHD, which is part of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), primarily operates from Port Hueneme in California, but it also maintains a detachment at White Sands. The U.S. Army manages the WSMR, which other branches of the U.S. military also use for a wide variety of research and development and test and evaluation activities.

The “WSD [White Sands Detachment] tested a railgun to collect critical information about high-velocity firing during a three-day campaign at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico,” the year-in-review document says. “The testing in February [2025] was a joint effort between WSD and NSWC Dahlgren Division in Virginia and conducted for Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA)’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office.”

The present situation of using million-dollar missiles to try to take out thousand-dollar drones puts this, and directed-energy weapons, back on the front burner.

Perhaps we actually need a state of constant war to ensure that our military services can periodically rid themselves of the creeping rot of bureaucracy and political fashion that seem to grow like black mold during periods of peace.

Watch it.

ESysman of the Yacht Report lays it out for you.

Read it.

A Republican won a deep-blue Northern Virginia county-level seat in a major upset Tuesday after revelations that her Democratic opponent made racist social media posts more than 10 years ago.

Republican Jeannie LaCroix, 64, won a special election for a Prince William County Board of Supervisors seat, defeating Democrat nominee Muhammed Sufiyan Casim, 36, a Muslim Pakistani immigrant, who in the 2010s made a series of online posts containing racist, misogynist, and antisemitic content, Potomac Local News reported.

Casim, who was in his 20s when he posted the content, apologized for the posts in an interview with the Prince William Times—saying he had used the N-word “foolishly” and suggested he had copied the behavior of “kids” of “brown ethnicity” at the time.

Read it.

explosion at the U.S. embassy in Oslo was the result of “an order from a [foreign] government entity.”

Police prosecutor Christian Hatlo said Wednesday “this is quite natural given the target … and the security situation the world is in today.”

It also makes sense given that three brothers of Iraqi origin have been arrested on suspicion of what is being described as the “terrorist bombing.” The men, whose identities have not been publicised, were reportedly not previously known to police. But Hatlo said investigators were not ruling out links to “criminal networks.”

New York Post.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Newsbusters.

Only a handful of right-leaning stories slipped through Google News’s iron grip on information domination. While the tech giant pushed 314 left-leaning stories, its gatekeepers only permitted 11 right-leaning articles to make the occasional appearance in the platform’s morning editions last month.

MRC uncovered that just 2% of Google News’s top morning stories in February came from sources rated right-leaning by media ratings firm AllSides. Google’s leftist bias is only further underscored by the fact that it completely shut out right-leaning outlets for over half the month.

Read it.

“Enough is enough.” With those words, Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt) launched a push to impose a 5% annual wealth tax on America’s billionaires. With Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Cal.), the legislation, “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act,” echoes the growing “eat-the-rich” mantra on the left — seeking to replicate a disastrous push in California that has led to an exodus from that state and an estimated loss of $2 trillion in taxable assets.

It is also flagrantly unconstitutional.

Under the plan, Congress would target 938 billionaires to tap them for $4.4 trillion. That money would then be redistributed as a $3,000 direct payment to every man, woman, and child in a household making $150,000 or less – $12,000 for a family of four.

The timing of the move is telling. Not only is it calculated before the midterm elections, in which the Democrats hope to retake power, but it follows the push by California Democrats and unions to impose a similar wealth tax in that state.

Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has supported the state law, which includes a ruinous provision for startup entrepreneurs. The law would not only be retroactive to try to trap wealthy taxpayers who have fled the state, but also base wealth calculations on the voting shares of corporate executives. Often, with start-ups, entrepreneurs hold greater voting shares than actual ownership. However, just in case they need more incentive to leave the state, they will be taxed as if their voting shares represented actual wealth.

The practical problem is that the wealthy, like their wealth, are mobile. As a result, many are fleeing California. So now Khanna is joining with the nation’s leading Democratic Socialists to ensure there is nowhere to hide in the United States. For billionaires in California, they could be double-tapped for ten percent of their wealth.

It has long been the dream of the far left. Years ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren delighted Democratic voters in her run for the presidency by telling the rich she was coming after “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” In one debate, she dramatically rubbed her hands together after saying she would take some of the wealth of fellow candidate John Delaney, a self-made millionaire.

Democrats never see a pocket without the urge to pick it.