Jonathan Turley.

This month, the anniversary of the California Gold Rush came and passed with little mention … for good reason. When James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, millions traveled great distances to seek their fortune in the “Golden State.”

Now, 178 years later, California has engineered an inverse Gold Rush, virtually chasing wealth from the state. Rather than covered wagons going West, there is a line of U-Hauls going anywhere other than California.

From boondoggle projects to reparations, California politicians continue to rack up new spending projects despite a soaring deficit and shrinking tax base.

Rather than exercise a modicum of fiscal restraint, Democrats are pushing through a tax that takes five percent of the wealth of any billionaires left in the state.

Blue states forget that they’re not countries. Their people can vote with their feet—and will.

Motto of the Special Warfare Operator: Be polite to everyone you meet, but have a plan to kill them.

Read it.

Dating and relationships in the US have changed dramatically in the past decade.   Once heralded as a vast clearing house for unlimited hook ups and endless partner options, online dating apps have all but imploded compared the their peak from 2016-2021.  High traffic apps like Bumble have lost 90% of their market value.  Tinder has lost 40% of its users since 2022.  Match Group apps have lost around 50% of their engagement since 2019.

The word on the street is, the apps are cancer and no one serious about dating actually uses them.  Why?  Female hypergamy is the clear culprit; the fantasy that the grass is always greener on another man’s lawn.  Data from match apps indicates that the average woman will only “swipe right” on 6% of all men in any given dating pool.  Meanwhile, the average man will swipe right on around 60% of women.

This means that the majority of American women suffer from delusions of grandeur and refuse to settle for men that are equal to them in terms of looks and career.  The end result is an increasingly desperate mob of mid-level women all fighting each other for access to the top 5% of men – Men who might sleep with such women, but also men who have no reason to settle down with them.

Too many options for women result in no options at all.

Gee, sounds like something I would say.

Newsbusters.

Before the Department of Homeland Security shutdown at midnight on Saturday as a result of Democrats demanding certain ICE reforms, ABC’s World News Tonight host David Muir and chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce declined to inform their viewers that ICE will be largely immune from the shutdown.

 

Read it.

Has Europe really embarked on a nuclear reset, rethinking its US-led deterrent architecture? For the first time since the Cold War, major European capitals are openly debating the need for an independent nuclear deterrent – an emerging theme on clear display this week at the Munich Security Conference.

We’ve reported before that the turning point came in March, when Washington temporarily halted battlefield intelligence sharing with Ukraine – a move that forced allies to confront the prospect that Washington may no longer serve as a dependable security guarantor, also as ratcheting Trump rhetoric increasingly highlights Europe needing to shoulder its own defense burden.

France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz held “confidential talks” on European nuclear deterrence, the German chancellor has confirmed. Still, he tried to downplay the full implications in his Friday remarks: “We Germans are adhering to our legal obligations. We consider this strictly within the context of our nuclear sharing within NATO and we will not allow zones of differing security to emerge in Europe,” Merz said.

Trump is turning out to be the most significant President since Franklin Roosevelt. What’s he going to accomplish in the next three years?

Actually, what I heard growing up in Indiana was ‘born in a barn’, but the priciple remains.

Read it.

Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion.

Althought an affection for the Aggregation Fallacy persists in certain quarters, even unto old age (yeah, I’m looking at you, ‘economists’…).

There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.

…

Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure.

A more elegant description of the Democrat party I’ve never enc0untered.

Read it.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s name no longer appears on the official list of speakers for the UN Human Rights Council’s opening session on February 23. His removal resulted from a petition by a Canadian civil society organisation, which asked Swiss authorities to investigate him for suspected crimes against humanity.

The UN Human Rights Council will meet on February 23, at which, according to preliminary plans, the Iranian Foreign Minister was scheduled to speak. The international organisation has not yet confirmed that he has been officially banned from speaking—the final list is under constant review. If his name does not appear on the final list, he will not speak at the Council’s meetings.

The removal came after the Canadian civil society organisation Dignity Initiative collected more than 100,000 signatures demanding that the minister be disinvited and called on the Swiss authorities to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity.

In its letter, Dignity emphasised that the minister does not represent the Iranian people, but rather the oppressive regime to which he belongs. According to the organisation, allowing him to participate in the Human Rights Council is tantamount to giving representatives of regimes that have committed some of history’s greatest atrocities a legitimate platform in an international forum.

Of course, historically the U.N. hasn’t hesitated to put nations notorious for their violation of human rights on the Human Rights Council, as demonstrated by their official web site. Like most Woke organizations, the U.N. prioritizes Diversity and Inclusion over Actually Doing What They’re Supposed to Be Doing.

Read it. And watch the video.

Marco Rubio appears for an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News. The interview was pre-scheduled as a follow up to the rather historic speech in Munich at the security conference. Within the interview {video and transcript below} Rubio expands on the baseline of the speech, the ‘why‘ is the U.S-EU alliance important.

Well worth your time.

Read it.

Political operatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna have never mentioned the name Katheryn Ruemmler despite her name appearing thousands of times in emails within the Epstein files. Yet both Massie and Khanna went out of their way to publicly claim they forced the DOJ to release the names of four men they accused of being sex traffickers and pedophiles.

Massie was very proud of his efforts to discover the names and force the DOJ to unredact them. As Massie proclaimed, continuously: if President Trump and the DOJ did not publicly unredact the names, it would be proof that President Trump and the DOJ were protecting pedophiles and sex traffickers.

After holding their joint press conference, Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna then went to the House of Representatives to proclaim (1) Salvatore Nuara, (2) Zurab Mikeladze, (3) Leonid Leonov and (4) Nicola Caputo were sexual deviants, pedophiles and much worse. They were horrible men who had abused underage girls.

…. Except, there was a problem. A BIG PROBLEM.

Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonid Leonov and Nicola Caputo had absolutely nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein or anything even remotely associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

The names Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonid Leonov and Nicola Caputo were in the Epstein files because they were random pictures of men, random passport pictures, used in a photo lineup during questioning of one of Epstein’s victims.

This is the sort of shit one might expect of Ro Kanna, a Democrat, but one might hope that Massies, nominally a Republican, would avoid it.

I must confess that prior to this I had no firm opinions about Massie; the only think I knew about him was that Trump apparently dislikes him (a status that Massie shares with a large portion of the populatin). However, in light of this news, I suspect that (once again) Trump Is Right.

Apparently I’m not alone: AG Pam Bondi Releases List of Names Appearing in Epstein Files to Complete Demands of Thomas Massie

The Foundry.

There is a growing sense of frustration coursing through American politics, and it is no longer confined to one party or ideology.

That frustration has real roots.

Major institutions badly damaged their credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, the excesses of the Black Lives Matter movement, and years of breathless coverage of Russiagate. At the same time, artificial intelligence looms over the labor market with few clear answers about what comes next. Add to that a political class that often appears shamelessly corrupt, and the result is a public that feels misled, ignored, and exposed.

But frustration does not remain static. In the United States today, it is mutating into something darker: nihilism.

“ISMS! Get your isms here! You can’t be a pundit without an ism!”

The Foundry.

Transgender orthodoxy is in retreat in medicine, the courts, and even business—as the LGBTQ mafia bleeds allies in corporate America.

The Human Rights Campaign has long employed mafia-like tactics to pressure companies to toe the line on gender ideology, but a growing chorus of critics, assisted by President Donald Trump’s second administration, has led companies to reconsider their alliances with the organization.

About three-quarters of all Fortune 500 companies (377) disclosed their business practices to HRC in 2025, so the LGBTQ activist group could rate them on its Corporate Equality Index. This year, however, only 131 companies are working with HRC—a 65% drop.

This represents a massive hit to the transgender industrial complex, but conservatives shouldn’t rest on their laurels. In the very press release where HRC admits its massive losses, it touts its abiding impact: the companies still working with HRC employ over 22 million Americans.

This is a free segment from Glenn Greenwald’s System Update, made available on Substack.

Read it.

A new Trump-aligned nonprofit is launching to fill a gap in enforcement of the president’s election integrity executive order.

Nicole Kelly, senior counsel at Lex Politica, the law firm that represents Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other Republicans, is the president of a new 501(c)4 called Save Election Day to lead the fight in battleground states to implement the initiatives identified by President Donald Trump’s executive order last March.

“President Trump’s executive order that came out last March that really sparked the initial idea here because this organization was founded for one single purpose,” Kelly told The Daily Signal, “which we believe is existential to the future of the United States democracy, which is to lead the fight in the states to implement the key initiatives that were identified and outlined by President Trump.”

Save Election Day is particularly aimed at implementing several policies nationwide: one single Election Day; requirements of photo ID to vote; elimination or reduction of mail-in balloting and early voting periods; elimination of post-Election Day ballot receipt periods; and bans on noncitizen voting.

Republicans are now rifling through the Democrat toolbox and stealing all the good stuff.

Read it.

The British countryside is “too white.” At least that is, according to Defra—the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, as reported earlier this month in these pages. Following a report in 2019, National Landscapes—a charity mostly funded by Defra—has been launching outreach programs aimed at encouraging ethnic minorities to break the stranglehold of “white communities,” “white spaces,” and “white environments.”

The initiatives focus on ‘people,’ ‘pubs,’ and ‘pets’—the three P’s of rural racism, surely? In terms of people, regrettably, the British countryside appears to cater to “white English culture”—which obviously has to change. Pubs traditionally involve drinking, which is unwelcoming to some communities. And pets—specifically dogs, are encouraged to be kept on a tighter leash, because Muslims do not like them. It’s worth pinching yourself and realising that this is not April 1st; this is real, and taxpayer money has been spent to reach these conclusions.

Neither is this Mother Nature’s first rodeo in terms of racism allegations. Only last year, it was reported that the British countryside was “overwhelmingly white” and was in need of more halal food. A year prior, rural England found itself a “racist colonial” white space, according to wildlife charities.

Britain is full of white people, and there’s a reason for that.

Britain is undergoing the most extensive invasion of foreigners since Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and there’s a reason for that, too.

Ponder the result of that last invasion, and see the future.

Read it. And watch the video.

This is a critically worded speech that is very important to listen to with great deliberation. Within his remarks Rubio is telling Europe that we want to remain allied in our interests, but we are no longer going to allow the system of “globalism” to destroy our uniquely American life.

The United States is separating from the madness; this is not up for debate. The only question is whether Europe is too far gone, or whether they will join us.

Rubio continues to impress. I still favor Vance for 2028, but if he’s not available Rubio will certainly do.

Ponder the quality of possible Republican candidates with the bare bench (except for random piles of poop) of the Democrats.

Read it.

The Super Bowl has long mirrored consumer culture. This year, that mirror reflected a shift away from electric vehicle hype and toward something more grounded. After years of promotion, EVs failed to justify their place on the biggest stage in advertising.

The Foundry.

In November, a “WarRoom” clip exposed two Sharia courts in Texas, operating for years and handling hundreds of cases.

While legal if both parties agree, Muslim women often face strong pressure to use Sharia courts over county courts. Under strict Sharia, women inherit less, divorce is difficult, and testimony counts for less. Refusal can lead to honor-based abuse—shaming, threats, beatings, or rarely, “honor killings.”

Texas sees hundreds of unreported cases annually. For many women, signing is survival, not consent. On Nov. 19, Gov. Greg Abbott called for investigations. Three months later, and there have been no charges. Arbitrations continue quietly, and no woman has spoken out.

Fear keeps these stories hidden.

On Nov. 18, Abbott became the first governor to label the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist groups.

The move blocks them from buying land, state funds, or public contracts. Cy-Fair ISD cut ties, nonprofits halted grants, and CAIR sued for defamation. On Jan. 28, Abbott asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to revoke their nonprofit status. The groups are still active, and while the crackdown is real, it has mostly been symbolic so far.

Read it.

In the days since the 2026 Super Bowl football game, I have seen several articles about players on the winning team having to pay California more in state income taxes than the bonuses the players received for winning the game. All because the players were in the state for ten or more days. Thus, according to California law, players owe California a proportion of their entire annual pay.

So?

This California visitor’s income tax is not new.

This California visitor’s income tax is not limited to highly paid athletes.

This California visitor’s income tax is a feature of California government stupidity.

And has been for a long time.

Although I grew up mostly in Southern California, in 2000 I moved to New York State for a job. Beginning in about 2010, a part of my job became supervising a couple of company offices in California. This required me to physically visit those offices a few times per year.

I kept careful track of how many days I spent in California for those visits. If those days accumulated to ten or more in a calendar year (which my employer would know, since travel was booked through the company’s travel program), I would owe California income taxes based on a proportion of my total annual income. And, because of its connections to California, my employer was obligated to track that information and to report it to the state. So, I made sure to keep my cumulative visits to the company’s California offices to fewer than ten days in a calendar year. Although I found the first half of December a beneficial time to travel for business, I sometimes skipped visits to the California offices lest I incur taxation by the state of California.

Democrats never saw a pocket that they didn’t want to pick.

The Foundry.

It’s hard to wrap your head around the massive news President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Thursday.

Trump and Zeldin estimated that the EPA will save taxpayers over $1.3 trillion by eliminating the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which served as the bedrock for a host of greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles in model years 2012 to 2027.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 directed the EPA to regulate “any air pollutant” that could “endanger public health or welfare.”

In 2006, Massachusetts and 11 other states sued the agency, demanding that it regulate greenhouse gas emissions on the theory that the emissions contribute to climate change and therefore endanger public health. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA must consider “whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change,” and the Obama administration issued the Endangerment Finding in 2009.

BBC, a Voice of the Crust.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed using a poison developed from a dart frog toxin, the UK and European allies have said.

Two years on from the death of Navalny at a Siberian penal colony, Britain and its allies have blamed the Kremlin following analysis of material samples found on his body.

There is no innocent explanation for the toxin, called epibatidine, being found in samples taken from Navalny’s body, the UK Foreign Office said.

There are more poisons in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. So watch your back.

Read it.

Not just to put it on the market—to require that it be used.

A congressional task force soon plans to release a compromise between corn farmer and oil refinery interests that could reshape the American energy industry.

In D.C., it doesn’t matter what benefits the consumer—what matters is who wins the fight between two organized blocks of producers (and their sock-puppets in Congress).

The New Neo.

A textbook example is from CBS. In particular, the headline is misleading. There’s no question in my mind that this is purposely so, and perhaps the most important part of the game. The headline is often either the only thing people read, or the headline and the first paragraph or two, and articles are shaped by people who are well aware of that. Even if a person does read the whole thing, the headline tends to shape that person’s perceptions.

The headline of this particular article is, “Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump’s 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows.” Wow, the reader is meant to think, I guess the right is lying when it says the focus right now is on criminals. How many people read articles with such a jaundiced eye that they’re aware of the trap there, the words “violent criminal records” and especially the definition of the word “violent”? Most of those who do read the headline with skepticism are probably not going to be Democrat voters and/or Trump haters, because of the phenomenon of confirmation bias.

I read all articles with skepticism, but that’s only because I have to write about them and need to try my best to get it right, and have learned over and over and over again how much of what we read is propaganda. It happens on both left and right, but more often on the left, and of course most of the MSM is on the left.

That’s why I immediately realized the key word there was “violent.”

I would rather focus on the key words ‘criminal record’. The constant drumming on ‘criminal record’ puts a false notion in people’s mind (especially the minds of those on the left side of the IQ bell curve) that somehow illegal aliens can’t be deported unless they have some kind of ‘criminal record’ (i.e. have been charged with, and convicted of, an actual crime). This ignores, of course, (and that is deliberate) that being in the country illegally is ipso facto a crime; these people are in actual fact criminals, whether they have a ‘criminal record’ or not.

But she certainly has a point.

The Foundry.

It is a journalist’s duty to report the truth, yet so many news outlets covered themselves in shame by bowing and scraping to honor the “transgender identity” of the man who carried out one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history.

Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, was born a man and he died a man. He spent his last day on Earth killing his 39-year-old mother, his 11-year-old stepbrother, a 39-year-old teacher, three 12-year-old girls, and two boys, 12 and 13, before taking the coward’s way out and turning the gun on himself. He reportedly wounded about 25 others at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and critically injured two more.

Initial reports on the shooting described Van Rootselaar as appearing female, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police erased all doubt Wednesday at a press conference.

“I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female and identified as female, both socially and publicly,” Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said.

Read it.

Sen. Josh Hawley accused Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison of having knowledge of massive welfare fraud in his state, yet enabling the fraud to continue.

“I should call you ‘prisoner’ because you ought to be in jail,” Hawley, R-Mo., told Ellison in a heated exchange during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday.

Hawley specifically pressed Ellison on an alleged conversation the attorney general had with leaders of the Minneapolis nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which orchestrated a massive fraud scheme.

Read it.

Sympathy for bums, homeless unhoused drug addicts, wanted criminals, violent illegal aliens, vandals, thieves, drug dealers and gang members can be a cost-free self-congratulatory, ego-boosting practice if one is wealthy enough live safely insulated from such theoretical objects of compassion.  However, when they are next door and attacking one’s home, person and property, it should be a distinctly different cost-benefit calculus.

A horror story out of Prince George’s County, MD raises the question as to why people who suffer from proximity to social dysfunction continue to vote for and echo the verbiage of self-congratulatory wealthy insulated white people. When majority black residents of a PG County condo community reached out to majority black police leadership under the direction of a majority-black county government to ask for protection and relief from theft, trespass and assault emanating from an adjacent illegal homeless unhoused, drug-riddled, gang infested encampment, a senior black police officer responded that “we’re not criminalizing the unhoused”, a response more fitting for a female college sophomore or an ICE-hating, climate-saving older AWFL than from a cop being asked by citizens to deal with actual criminal activities.

Read it.

Hell may not have frozen entirely. But a chill wind has blown through the Post’s editorial boardroom. When an institution long associated with climate alarmism writes “It’s about time” in response to a major deregulatory move, observers are entitled to raise an eyebrow.

The Foundry.

Republicans can “win big” in midterm elections if they “unwrap the gift of MAHA” that President Donald Trump has handed them, according to a new memo from Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action.

Four to six percent of former non-Trump voters cited the “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement in explaining their decision to switch their support to him and the Republican Party in 2024, according to Trump’s go-to pollster, Tony Fabrizio.

But the Republican Party is just “renting” those voters, Lyons said, adding that every Republican needs to buy into the MAHA movement in order to keep those votes.

“The MAHA movement is here to strategically support President Trump,” Lyons wrote. “We’re eager to help cement this new coalition. We’re looking for Republicans who share the same vision.”

Read it.

The most successful economics blog in the world is called Marginal Revolution. That is not an accident.

It could have been called Markets and Power, or Inequality Today, or Political Economy. It could even have been called Capitalism Explained. Instead, it is named after a nineteenth-century intellectual earthquake: the marginal revolution. A quiet reminder that modern economics begins not with slogans or moral postures, but with a way of thinking.

That reminder matters today more than we like to admit.

…

In the 1870s, almost simultaneously and largely independently, three economists overturned classical political economy. William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, and Léon Walras broke with the Ricardian tradition that explained value through labor, costs, or embedded substance. Value, they argued, does not come from the total amount of work put into something. It comes from the last unit—from what economists would soon call marginal valuation.

[insert my usual rant about how ‘there is no such thing as capitalism’ here]

[insert my usual rant about how ‘economics’ is a Pretend Science, like psychiatry or Grievance Studies, here]

The Marginal Revolution site is run by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tubarrok, whom regular readers of this blog will recall my having cited many times.

Read it.

These digital tools aren’t simply interfaces that facilitate connection. The ease and expansiveness of online dating have commodified social bonds, eroded meaningful interactions, and created a type of dating throw-away culture, encouraging a sense of disposability and distorting decision-making.

…

Dating apps don’t sell love. They sell the feeling that it is one premium upgrade away. The platforms aren’t primarily designed for users to find love and promptly delete the apps from their phones. They’re designed to keep users swiping.

Dating apps don’t ‘help you to find that special someone’. They try to keep you looking for that special someone. This is particularly true for women, and is the root cause of the ‘loneliness epidemic’ among men.

People once dated locally, and your ‘catchment area’ was limited to the people you would (or could) meet in person. Social media generally, and dating apps specifically, have globalized the amount of exposure, to the detriment of all.

hoe_math points out that all women now see the best men as attainable, and so have developed unrealistic expectations.

Michael Sartain likes to cite a study where one hundred men were asked “If you met a woman that met 80% of your desired qualities, would you find that acceptable?” to which almost all of them said something like “Eighty percent? Hell, yes—that’s a win!” One hundred women, asked the corresponding question, answered “No, that would be ‘settling’.”

Sartain likes to say that there are actually three sexes: The top 20% of men, in whom women will admit an interest; all women; and the bottom 80% of men, who to women are effectively invisible, and might as well not exist.

(You can see the two of them lay it all out here.)

The Telegraph (UK).

Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein’s plan would have been ‘one of the worst atrocities’ ever seen, says Sir Stephen Watson

CNN, THE Voice of the Crust.

The Trump administration delivered a deadly blow to longstanding US climate policy on Thursday, finalizing rules that revoke the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate climate pollution.

No, it didn’t. It revoked the EPA’s excuse for over-regulation in the name of preventing climate pollution.

First issued in 2009, the endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health under the Clean Air Act. It has underpinned the EPA’s authority to limit planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants and vehicles since the Obama administration and is considered the federal government’s most powerful tool to tackle climate pollution and the country’s contribution to the global crisis.

When you’ ve said Obama Administration, you’ve said it all.

“We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump said on Thursday, calling the policy “disastrous.”

Trump said repealing the regulations “has nothing to do with public health.”

“This was all a scam, a giant scam,” Trump said on Thursday. “This was a rip off of the country by Obama and Biden.”

Indeed it was. The EPA is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Read it.

Sure, the biometric security feature works as well as it ever does, using a face scan to unlock your iPhone, confirm mobile payments and generally an extra layer of protection between your digital data and the prying eyes of the outside world.

But we live in a time of increasing unrest, and with it comes a concern about biometric security features in general. Run afoul of what purports to be law-and-order these days, and your own face can be used against you by police who can compel you to use Face ID unlocking against your will. A security writer at PC Mag goes so far as to suggest you should stop using Face ID entirely.

All they need to do is hold you still and show the phone your face and they’re in.

Convenience and security are mutually exclusive.

The Telegraph (UK).

The Green Party is set to vote on legalising heroin in an attempt to make society more “inclusive”.

A motion drafted ahead of the party’s spring conference next month aims to update its existing policy to call for an end to the “prohibition of drugs”.

At the last general election, the Greens promised to set up a commission that would produce an “evidence-based approach” to changing the law around substance use.

However, Zack Polanski, who became the party’s leader last autumn, has since gone further and said he wanted to legalise all drugs.

Heroin and cocaine are included in the motion that calls for a blanket legalisation.

Some people have minds so open that their brains fall out.

The Telegraph (UK).

A thief used a forklift to break into a jewellery store before fleeing the scene on a getaway donkey, footage showed.

The man, known only as MC, made the escape after robbing a store in Kayseri, central Turkey, on Tuesday.

He was filmed riding through town on the animal after taking goods from the store before being caught and arrested.

At modern prices, worth about $24,000.

Sometimes the old ways are best … when they work. Otherwise, not so much.

The Telegraph (UK).

Kim Jong-un has chosen his teenaged daughter to be his heir, South Korea has claimed.

Seoul’s spy agency told parliament on Thursday that Kim Ju-ae had been selected to lead North Korea when her father dies.

Ju-ae, the only publicly known child of Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju, has become an increasingly present figure during tightly choreographed official appearances, provoking suspicion that she was being groomed to be her father’s successor.

I wonder whether she’ll need to get a Stalin haircut like her dad.

The Telegraph (UK).

Palestine Action has won a legal challenge against the Home Office’s decision to ban it as a terror group.

The proscription, which began on July 5 last year, made being a member of the group, or supporting it, a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Palestine Action remains banned as a terror group to allow for further legal arguments and to give the Government time to consider an appeal.

The War Zone.

An AeroVironment LOCUST laser directed energy weapon owned by the U.S. Army was central to the chain of events that led to the recent shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, according to Reuters. Though many questions still remain to be answered about how the flight restrictions came to be imposed, LOCUST was designed to respond to exactly the kinds of drones that regularly fly across the southern border from Mexico.

Multiple outlets had already reported yesterday that the use of a laser counter-drone system was a key factor in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) sudden decision to impose the temporary flight restrictions over El Paso. Reuters‘ report says “two people briefed on the situation” identified the laser system in question as LOCUST. TWZ has reached out to AeroVironment and the U.S. Army for more information. U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which oversees U.S. military operations in and around the homeland, declined to comment.

Last July, the U.S. military released a picture, seen below, showing Army personnel assigned to Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) conducting sling-load training with a LOCUST mounted on a 4×4 M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) at Fort Bliss. This had prompted some speculation that LOCUST systems might be in use along the U.S. border with Mexico. JTF-SB was established in March 2025 to oversee a surge in U.S. military support to the border security mission. Fort Bliss, situated in El Paso, is a major hub for those operations. It is also home to the 1st Armored Division and a significant number of Army air defense units.

The War Zone.

The Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Truxtun collided with the support ship USNS Supply while the two were conducting an at-sea replenishment yesterday, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has confirmed. Both ships have continued to sail safely, but two sailors were injured.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the collision, which is said to have occurred somewhere in the Caribbean Sea.

The full statement from SOUTHCOM, as provided to TWZ, is as follows:

“Yesterday afternoon, the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG103) and the Supply-class fast combat support ship USNS Supply (T-AOE-6) collided during a replenishment-at-sea. Two personnel reported minor injuries and are in stable condition. Both ships have reported sailing safely. The incident is currently under investigation.”

Some captain is going to get relieved and some watch officer is going to be encouraged to go into another line of work.

Trump administration working to expand effort to strip citizenship from foreign-born Americans (NBC News)

Trump Plans Denaturalization Crackdown

Canadian separatists optimistic after meetings with Trump officials (NBC News)

The less voters knew, the more they liked Trump in 2024. Not Anymore (G. Elliott Morris/Strength In Numbers)

Bondi refuses to apologize for DOJ handling of Epstein files during heated hearing (CBS News)

Trump Can’t Cancel Elections. He Could Undermine Them. (Sean Morales-Doyle/New York Times)

Elon Musk’s X Appears to Be Violating US Sanctions by Selling Premium Accounts to Iranian Leaders (David Gilbert/Wired)

‘Zionism’ Is Splitting MAGA in Two (The Bulwark)  They hope, they hope, they hope….

About 6 in 10 think Trump has gone too far when it comes to deploying federal immigration agents in major U.S. cities. (AP-NORC)  According to the Narrative.

U.S. judge rejects BBC’s stay application in Trump defamation case (Reuters)

ICE Is on a Dark Path. Congress Must Act Now. (New York Times)

Americans think everyone is corrupt (Matthew Yglesias/Slow Boring)  Gee, I wonder why?

Making America Stagnate Again (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks. Since Krugman’s predictions have failed every single time so far, this makes me optimistic.

Illinois AG sues to prevent Trump admin. from cutting $600M in public health funds from 4 states (ABC7)  Because, as we all know, public health is TOTALLY the resposibility of the Federal government—and the Federal taxpayer.

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January (Nick Robins-Early/The Guardian)

Lawmakers demand DOJ stop tracking lawmakers’ Epstein files searches (NBC News)  Gee, I wonder why?

Senate Democrat aims to put members on record opposing Maxwell pardon (Jordain Carney/Politico)  Because they, not knowing Trump but knowing their fantasy version of Trump, assume that he will pardon her, and want to get their preemptive virtue-signal on record.

How Young Men View Trump 2.0 After One Year (Lucas Holtz/Third Way)  At least according to the Narrative.

Minnesota AG: Feds still not cooperating on Pretti and Good investigations (Eric Bazail-Eimil/Politico)  Seeing as how the Minnesota AG is a pro-terrorism pro-crime Black Muslim, I can’t say that I blame them.

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Domestic robots have been a fixture in science fiction novels for more than a century, but in the real world we’re still all doing our own domestic chores barring vacuuming.

While a number of companies are working on humanoid robots, with Apple reportedly among them, all we’ve really had so far are promises and extremely limited demos. But you can (maybe) buy a laundry-folding robot today for $8,000 or rent it for $450 a month …

Isaac 0 is available to purchase, with delivery promised for this month – but only if you live in the Bay Area of California.

Doing things badly at great expense is pretty much the California way these days.

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into the position of Virginia’s governor. In spite of her record as a progressive, people believed that she had gone through a major transformation and had become a moderate. Or, they were your typical low-information voters, and simply paid no attention.

Don’t say ‘low information voters’; say ‘low brain voters’, which is more accurate.

The chief defect is that the vote of a moron and the vote of a genius are worth exactly the same.

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Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of the football team Manchester United, has apologised for his previous comments claiming Britain is “colonised” by immigrants after facing backlash from the political left for his views.

Radcliffe issued a statement expressing regret over his remarks, saying, “I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe … It is important to raise the issue of controlled and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth.”

Note that he didn’t retract his remarks; he merely expressed regret that ‘some people’ were offended. This is the non-apology ‘apology’ people put out when they aren’t really apologizing but want to appear polite.

The Football Association (FA) launched an investigation into his comments to see if they breach the organisation’s ‘hate speech’ policies, despite the apology. Another statement by Ratcliffe—”You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in”—is also under evaluation for potentially breaching the FA’s policies.

He still may get cancelled, since the Football Association appears to have some pretty Woke rules in place. If I where him, I’d look to sell his interest in the team and focus on other hobbies.

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“The inmates are running the asylum.”

There’s an expression we’ve all heard, particularly in more recent times.  According to TheFreeDictionary.com, it means the following: The people least capable of running a group or organization are now in charge.  Said especially when the result is total chaos or calamity.  Example: the Biden administration.

Okay, that last sentence wasn’t in the dictionary, but it could have been.  In any case, inmates running the asylum is something that could fairly be said about many of our cities, states and institutions these days.  (See, Minneapolis, California, public education, science, medicine, sports, Hollywood, et al.)

And then there’s New York City, one of the biggest “asylums” of all.  It just elected as mayor a guy who is in love with the most miserable, failed and murderous ideology in history: collectivism.  But neither he nor the people who elected him are much impressed by historical statistics that tallied up something in the neighborhood of one hundred million corpses that were the cost of his beloved collectivization.  Those were just the proverbial “cracked eggs” necessary to make the proverbial “omelet.”

And we can be sure that a misguided collectivist like Zohran Mamdani is not going to make wise personnel choices regarding the governance of the city he has so foolishly been put in charge of.  Case in point: Mamdani has appointed Stanley Richards, an ex-con, to run the city’s — guess what? — Department of Correction.  So . . . inmate running the asylum.

“Stanley will make history in this role as the first-ever formerly incarcerated person to serve as commissioner,” said the mayor.  “I will turn to Stanley as we work to build a city where justice is at the heart of our corrections system.”

So, another historical first!  Yay!  But when he uses the word “justice,” what exactly does he mean?  Well, of course, he means “social justice,” and there’s your cracked-egg recipe for disaster.

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The Swiss government and parliament both oppose a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million until 2050 by limiting migration. But voters will have their own say this June after a petition linked to the ‘No to a 10 million Switzerland’ initiative crossed the 100,000-signature threshold needed to initiate a nationwide referendum in record time.

Establishment media outlets, including those outside of Switzerland, have focused in particular on the opposition from big business to this significant measure. But referendum backers from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party stressed on Wednesday that while “a small economic elite profits from uncontrolled immigration, the majority of the Swiss population suffers.”

Gee, where have we heard that before?

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The teenager is accused of the attempted murder of two boys, aged 12 and 13. He is also charged with possession of a knife on school premises without good reason or lawful authority, and also accused of unlawfully and maliciously administering a noxious thing to a third child with a harmful, unidentified liquid. Reports say that the defendant shouted “Allahu Akbar”—or something similar—during the attack.

Probably just a coincidence. In the old days British schoolboys were drilled in Latin and Greek; nowadays they are drilled (if they are drilled at all) in Arabic and Urdu.

Local leaders, including the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt, expressed their shock over the incident. The mayor also urged anyone with information to contact the police, adding: “There is no honour in staying silent.”

Such English names….

Gates of Vienna.

Yet another bystander has been shoved in front of an oncoming train, this time in Switzerland. It’s not clear whether a railway poster with a “no shoving infidels” pictogram might have prevented this tragic incident.

Grenchen is a town in northern Switzerland in the canton of Solothurn. Without warning, an unknown assailant pushed a pensioner in front of a train at the Grenchen Nord station. The victim was severely wounded, but survived.

The perpetrator has yet to be caught, so there is so far no indication of what ethnicity he is, or whether the attack was an instance of shoving jihad. It’s possible that there is no cultural enrichment involved in the case.

I’m betting that there is.