The Telegraph (UK).

Few countries on earth can claim to have a navy with a longer history than that of Iran, whose heritage dates back to the First Persian Empire of 500BC.

One wonders what that era’s great and terrible warriors would think about the state of the Iranian navy now.

Four days into the United States-Israeli war on Iran, the Islamic Republic’s naval headquarters is in ruins, one of its elite admirals is dead and its finest warships are ablaze in the Gulf of Oman, home to its southern fleet.

Donald Trump has made the annihilation of the Iranian navy a key goal of his campaign, with the US boasting on Monday that all 11 of Iran’s vessels stationed in the Gulf of Oman have been destroyed.

It don’t take long when you’re good.

The Telegraph (UK).

An Iranian warship has been sunk by a submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka.

At least 101 people are missing, with one dead and 78 injured, Sri Lanka’s navy and defence ministry said.

It was not immediately clear who had attacked the ship, which the Sri Lankan authorities identified as the IRIS Dena.

The vessel was armed with heavy guns, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles and torpedoes and could carry a helicopter.

Earlier, the US military said it had already destroyed 17 Iranian vessels and that its goal was sinking “the entire navy”.

Sri Lanka’s foreign minister said its navy had responded to a ?distress call from the ship and launched rescue operations at 6am (12.30am UK).

UPDATE: US submarine sank Iran’s warship off Sri Lanka coast, says Hegseth

The Times (UK).

MPs have been urged to address the £100,000 tax trap before they fall victim to it themselves, with their pay expected to reach £110,000 a year by the end of this parliament.

Gee, I wonder whether this could be why so many rich people are bailing out?

Members of parliament earn a basic annual salary of £93,90, which is set to go up to £98,599 from April. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which sets their salaries, yesterday said it expects MPs’ basic salary to reach £110,000 by 2029.

For every £2 of income you earn (excluding pension contributions) over £100,000 you lose £1 of the £12,570 tax-free personal income allowance. Once you earn £125,140, you get no personal allowance at all.

It means that those earning between £100,000 and £125,140 face a marginal income tax rate — the amount they will pay on the next £1 they earn — of 60 per cent (62 per cent if you include national insurance).

Britain now is where the U.S. will be in future under the Democrats. Let us learn from their mistakes, shall we?

The Times (UK).

British fighter jets shooting down cheap Iranian drones with expensive air-to-air missiles is akin to “firing golden bullets at plastic targets”, weapons experts have said.

RAF Typhoons and F-35s have been scrambled from airbases across the Middle East to intercept waves of slow-flying kamikaze drones launched by Iran.

On Sunday a Typhoon pilot blasted a one-way suicide drone out of the sky with a high-tech missile as it headed towards Qatar.

Well, that’s always the problem with asymmetric warfare, isn’it? You’d have thought that The Lesson of Ukraine would have gotten home by now. Time to get hot on developing lasers and other directed energy weapons.

The Times (UK).

Rachel Reeves has increased taxes to the highest level in postwar history in a move that risks damaging economic growth and disincentivising people from trying to earn more money, the official forecaster has said.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said taxes would hit 38 per cent of national income in 2030-31, a postwar record. It said the level of taxation could “distort or constrain economic activity by more than expected”.

The spring forecast highlighted soaring tax revenues after the chancellor’s decisions to increase the employers’ rate of national insurance and freeze income tax thresholds. It said that revenues from the two taxes would rise from £480 billion in 2025-26 to £600 billion in 2030-31.

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Iran is not Venezuela as much as Trump wants it to be (Politico)

Death toll rises in Trump’s ‘Epic Fury’ military campaign (Ellen Mitchell/Associated Press)  Soon they may match the typical transgender or Muslim mass shooting.

Trump: Dems Would Back Iran Strike If Not Done By Me Of course they would; who doesn’t know that?

Witnesses Describe Horror Scene After “Double-Tap” Bombing Kills Over 20 at Popular Tehran Square (Drop Site News)  You’d think they would jihadist terrorists or something.

Doctors Sound Alarm on White House ‘Secrecy’ Over Trump’s Neck Rash (Laura Esposito/The Daily Beast)  Maybe they ought to worry about him getting athlete’s foot, too. I mean, all that golf….

Can Donald Trump Win a War with Iran If He Can’t Explain Why He Started It? (Susan B. Glasser/New Yorker)  Yes.

MAGA Already Hates Trump’s Iran War (Will Sommer/The Bulwark)  As if anyone writing for the Bullshitwark has a clue as to what MAGA hates. (Hint: The Bullshitwark.)

MS NOW Itches for High Casualties to Hurt Trump, All Operation Plans

U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for “Armageddon,” Return of Jesus (Jonathan Larsen/Jonathan Larsen’s …)  Ah, ah, ah, ah, yankin’ their chains, yankin’ their chains….

Box-Cutter Thug Gets 16.5 Years In Prison After Framing Immigrant With Fake Trump Death Threats

‘Pretty Bad for Vance’: The VP’s Silence on Iran Peeves Allies (Ian Ward/Politico)  Boy, this molehill sure looks like a mountain if you squint properly.

Clinton says Trump told him of ‘some great times’ with Jeffrey Epstein (Andy Sullivan/Reuters)  Epstein! Epstein! Epstein!

Is America sliding into autocracy | FT #shorts

Rubio’s war remarks blow open MAGA’s Israel divide (Axios)

Trump’s Iran War and the Article One crisis (Lisa Needham/Public Notice) What crisis?

Minnesota Sues Trump Admin Over $243M Medicaid Freeze

Donald Trump’s dangerous ‘war of whim’ (Edward Luce/Financial Times)  The Financial Times is what the Wall Street Journal would be if it were run by the staff of Mother Jones.

Pete Hegseth’s Crazed, Angry Tirades on Iran Give Dems a Big Opening (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

We’re witnessing the birth of the Trump Doctrine (Marc A. Thiessen/Washington Post)  At least that’s what we’re going to tell you.

In Plunging Into a Mideast Conflict, Trump Gambles His Presidency (Tyler Pager/New York Times)  A gamble that no Democrat would risk, even one that was compos mentis, as Joe Biden notoriously was not.

On MS NOW, Reza Aslan Compares ‘Authoritarian’ Trump to Iran Regime

In Anti-Trump Rant, Politico Finally Admits Biden Administration Was ‘Dysfunctional’

Comedy Shows Claim Iran War Is a Distraction From Epstein  EpsteinQ Epstein! Epstein!

What Is the Point of This War? ??? A vignette from the end of the U.S.-led global order, per Reuters: (William Kristol/The Bulwark)  Wonder of wonders: Bill Krisol has found a war he doesn’t like. History is being made.

FAKE NEWS: ABC’s Bruce Falsely Claims Rubio Said Israel Dragged U.S. into Iran War

Chris Hayes Compares Trump Bombing Iran to 9/11 Terrorists

Trump has cornered himself with his war in Iran (Sidney Blumenthal/The Guardian)  Didn’t know that Sid Vicious was still alive. He and Robert Reich must have a lot to talk about.

Axios,  a Voice of the Crust.

An expensive Democratic civil war is brewing this election cycle, with a staggering 30 House Democrats facing at least one primary challenger who has raised $100,000 or more, an Axios analysis found.

Why it matters: These primaries are drawing tens of millions of dollars from Democrats’ efforts to retake the House while priming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to inherit a rebellious class of new freshmen.

Well, if crazy people are your base, you have to cope.

Read it.

Our new poll finds question wording can swing opinion by 20-60 points on immigration, the budget, and transgender rights. That’s a problem for people who use polls to tell politicians what voters want.

You can be sure that proglodytes, Democrats, and the Narrative Media know that very well, and take advantage of it to deceive low-information voters and moron politicians.

Read it.

Golden State groomers were dealt a devastating blow on Monday after the Supreme Court sided with parents challenging school policies in California that restrict when educators may disclose changes to a student’s name or pronouns, handing parental rights advocates an early but significant victory in a closely watched culture-war dispute.

In an unsigned ‘shadow docket’ order, the justices restored a lower court’s injunction blocking enforcement of policies that prevent teachers from informing parents when their child socially transitions at school. The Court said the parents are likely to succeed on their claim that the policies violate their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.

“The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs,” the Court wrote. “California’s policies violate those beliefs.”

Read it.

A North Dakota judge officially ordered Greenpeace to pay $345 million to the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline following a nearly yearlong tug-of-war over a Morton County jury’s verdict.

The jury in March 2025 originally ordered Greenpeace to pay Energy Transfer about $667 million, finding the environmental group at fault for harming the company during anti-pipeline protests in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017 and for publishing false statements that harmed the company’s reputation. Greenpeace denies these allegations and says Energy Transfer’s lawsuit is a veiled attempt to punish the environmental group for supporting the demonstrations.

Southwest Judicial District Judge James Gion in October slashed the jury’s award to $345 million, though he didn’t finalize the amount until Friday.

The final judgment also orders Greenpeace to pay 11% interest on the sum, starting from March 19, the date the jury announced its verdict, until the full amount is paid.

Read it.

Germany’s Green Party has presented a 24-point plan in the Bundestag aimed at promoting a “diverse Muslim life” across the country, including in schools, prisons, hospitals, and the Bundeswehr.

The motion calls for expanded Islamic religious education, nationwide Islamic pastoral care, and the removal of headscarf bans in public institutions. The Greens argue that Muslim life is an integral part of German society and that structural discrimination and lack of recognition have historically marginalized Muslim communities.

Lamya Kaddor, the Greens’ domestic policy spokeswoman, called for stronger state support and civil society initiatives to ensure “real participation” and counter stigmatization.

I wonder whether they would support such a program for Jews. I suspect not.

Read it.

Amid the chaos of a deadly mass shooting that rocked Austin in the early morning hours of Sunday, March 1, a self-driving vehicle company is facing scrutiny after one of its cars got caught up in the aftermath. Waymo, the self-driving cars that recently launched in San Antonio, have made their presence known in Austin over the past few years, notoriously causing traffic jams whenever the robots get confused. Such was the case on Sunday in the wake of the traumatic mass shooting.

The shooting occurred around 2 a.m. Sunday at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden on West Sixth Street in Austin. The incident left three dead, including the gunman, and dozens more injured. But as first responders rushed to the scene and patrons fled to safety, a Waymo went viral after blocking an Austin-Travis County EMS ambulance as the self-driving car attempted a U-turn and proceeded to get stuck in Austin traffic.

The moment was caught on video by Austin realtor Matthew Turnage, whose video has since been viewed over 250,000 times. In the video the Waymo is shown in the middle of an Austin street, apparently unable to complete the U-turn as the ATC EMS ambulance inches closer. The Waymo slightly moves up but freezes at the most inopportune time.

Still not ready for prime time. Police ought to be given an override code so that they can take control of such vehicles and get them out of the way.

Read it.

The German federal government spent nearly €900,000 on organizations involved in Mediterranean migrant rescues in early 2025, according to official disclosures.

Organizations receiving state funds included SOS Humanity (€215,000), SOS Mediterranee (€201,694.50), Sea-Eye (€169,156), RESQSHIP (€34,994.40), and Italy-based Sant’Egidio (€279,000). The payments were made from January 1st to March 31st under the previous traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens, and FDP—and were subsequently halted by the new Union-SPD government.

During this period, 5,555 migrants were “rescued” in the Mediterranean.

They game the system very effectively. The migrants, coached by the NGO personnel, row in makeshift boats out beyond African or Middle Eastern territorial waters, whereupon the “rescue boats” swoop in, pick them up, and take them the rest of the way to E.U. territory, where they receive “asylum”.

Read it.

On Monday, March 2nd a French appeals court reduced the prison sentences of three men convicted in connection with the 2020 jihadist beheading of a teacher who had shown his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

As they do.

Two friends of the attacker, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their 16-year sentences reduced to six and seven years, respectively. Both were accused of driving the killer and helping him procure weapons before beheading Samuel Paty. Meanwhile, Brahim Chnina, a Moroccan father involved in the case, saw his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.

Can’t have all that Islamophobia, after all.

In Texas, accessory to first-degree murder gets you life without parole. In France … not so much.

The Antiplanner.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority doesn’t expect to complete the rail project before 2040, and it predicts that, when completed, it will have cost $126 billion, according to the agency’s latest business plan. While that’s not really news, what is news is that a close look at the plan reveals that it is as unrealistically optimistic as when the agency projected it would cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020.

My, what a surprise….

Read it.

n a patriarchal tribal society, the control by men of access to females is of paramount importance. No societies are more patriarchal and tribal than the Muslim countries of the Middle East and South Asia, so it’s no surprise that men in those societies zealously guard their women and girls, preventing them from interacting with any males outside their immediate families. The rules are especially strict when it comes to interactions with infidels, who must stay away from Muslim women upon pain of death.

The behavior of men from such countries when they migrate to societies where women and girls are almost totally unguarded is exemplified by the actions of the notorious “grooming gangs” in major cities across England. For them, young white girls are objects to be degraded and exploited, and are passed around among Muslim men as if they were chattel.

An Afghan in Vienna had to go to court for threatening a non-Muslim man who dared to speak to a Muslima.

Muslims, of course, are free to rape kafir women with impunity.

Read it.

Vienna, once hailed as one of Europe’s safest capitals, is grappling with a wave of violent crimes linked to unchecked migration, alongside a deepening crisis in schools where German is becoming a minority language.

My, what a surprise.

Import Turd World people, get Turd World problems.

Read it.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) is rolling out yet another exercise in class-warfare fantasy legislation on Monday, this time a proposal to extract a staggering $4.4 trillion from the nation’s roughly 1,000 billionaires through an annual 5 percent annual wealth tax, according to The Washington Post.

Well, he always said he was a socialist, and the cornerstone of socialism is robbery.

Read it.

That’s “Iron Beam”, not Eyebeam.

Read it.

It’s not how much you make, it’s now much the government lets you keep.

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

The Supreme Court blocked a state judge from redrawing Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ (R-N.Y.) congressional district, agreeing to her emergency request Monday to restore the lines that connect Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

The high court’s intervention marks a new twist in the legal battle that has rippled through New York’s state judiciary and thrown the future of New York’s 11th Congressional District into question. It marks a victory for Republicans, who had been bracing for the possibility that the district would swing to Democrats if it was redesigned ahead of the midterm elections.

A state judge had ordered the boundaries be redrawn after ruling the district dilutes Black and Latino voting strength in violation of the state constitution.

White people, of course, get their voting strength diluted all the time and nobody gives a shit—certainly no Democrat.

TechDirt.

You might recall that when political news website Semafor entered the media industry on the back of $25 million in private money, they made all kinds of promises about how they were somehow going to revolutionize U.S. media. In reality most of their promises were relatively inane, and it didn’t take long before the outlet demonstrated it was primarily interested in propping up the status quo.

Case in point: one of the very first things the outlet did is start hosting “Restoring Trust In Media” annual conferences. Except each year they make it a priority to unironically validate, normalize and platform a lot of the people actively working to undermine trust in news. Like former Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson the first year, and overt bigot Megyn Kelly last year.

Semafor keeps being criticized for not only not helping to “restore trust in media,” but for actively making the problem worse. But they keep doubling down. This year’s event, for example, is a who’s who of people that have made U.S. media immeasurably less trustworthy over the last year

Gothamist.

When Ian Davey of Davenport, Florida, filed an insurance claim for a 2023 car crash with a day care bus in Queens, he filled in a section asking whether the incident was staged with a definitive answer: “Hells F–ing NO.”

But there were some red flags.

The doctor who declared Davey “totally disabled” by his injuries was a urologist practicing at a hospital in Bangladesh, according to court documents. Records show the only witness to the collision owned a personal injury consulting firm and later retracted his statement to investigators. And the surgeon who operated on Davey was named in a civil racketeering case as part of an alleged criminal network that staged crashes and exaggerated injuries to inflate insurance claims.

“This case is a fraud from top to bottom, an entirely manufactured claim,” said attorney Dan Johnston, who’s representing the bus driver. “The most horrifying part is that this is a set of circumstances that repeat over and over again every single day in the courts of New York.”

Newsbusters.

Did you know that a historic and symbolic landmark of the nation’s capital was recently vandalized by an individual currently sought after by the FBI? If the story escaped your attention, thank the Big Four News Apps — Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News — which largely ignored the attack, only featuring one article on the story over four days.

On Feb. 20, Fox News exclusively reported that the Trump-Kennedy Center had been subjected to an alleged act of vandalism after a suspect poured a “toxic,” dark substance onto an outdoor ice rink earlier that morning. The attack marked a major escalation of violence on a federal property, particularly one that holds national significance.

The Media Research Center examined the Big Four News Apps to determine whether they featured the vandalism story among their top 20 headlines during the mornings of Feb. 21 through Feb. 24. The results were telling.

Read it.

A fight over Virginia’s congressional maps is heating up, with Republicans and Democrats locked in a legal battle that could reshape the state’s representation in Washington.

Virginia voters were originally scheduled to head to the polls on April 21 to decide on a referendum on new congressional maps as the state’s Supreme Court reviewed a legal challenge. The proposed constitutional amendment would allow the General Assembly to redraw districts before the 2026 midterm elections.

Republicans, including House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, sued to block the vote, arguing Democrats did not follow proper procedures. A lower court initially sided with Republicans, but the state’s high court ruled the referendum could proceed while legal arguments continued.

A Tazewell County judge has since issued a temporary restraining order blocking the April 21 referendum, pausing the vote as litigation continues.

Read it.

During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump’s simple offer to them, and their Republican counterparts, was like a college professor telling his students: “Anyone who wants 10 points of extra credit, please stand up if you believe the Earth is round.”

Trump’s challenge to senators and House members was equally simple. As he put it:

“I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

At once, Republicans bolted upright and heartily applauded an anodyne declaration with which at least 90% of Americans surely concur. Some, perhaps most, illegal aliens grudgingly would approve.

And yet Democrats sat there, flat in their chairs, neither standing nor cheering a tenet as basic as asserting that parents’ primary responsibility is to feed their children rather than nourish people who break into their homes.

Democrats silently scowled as Americans watched in astonishment.

Read it.

A gay rights/LGBT parade was abruptly cancelled based on the credible risk of an extremist attack, it has been revealed. Security authorities identified a “concrete threat” just one hour before the Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade in Gelsenkirchen, scheduled for May 17th last year, was set to begin—forcing approximately 600 registered participants to abandon the march.

The alarm was raised after the North Rhine-Westphalia State Criminal Police discovered a TikTok video in which a male user announced an impending assault. Investigators linked the threat to Islamist extremism, noting that the suspect’s profile featured a black flag and the “Tawhid finger”—symbols frequently associated with radical groups. The investigation has since shifted to Switzerland, where the Lucerne juvenile prosecutor’s office is conducting proceedings against a young male suspect believed to be the author of the video.

The organizing association, “Together,” made the difficult decision to call off the festivities to protect attendees.

Be careful what you wish for.

Read it.

Fairfax County Public Schools is no longer a district in quiet decline—it is a system in visible retreat.

Fairfax Schools experienced the largest decline in student enrollment of any district in the state from 2015 to 2025, according to University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Policy. While neighboring districts such as Loudoun County Public Schools and Arlington Public Schools grew by 8,315 students and 3,429 students, respectively, Fairfax Schools saw a decrease of 6,894 students during the same period.

Declining enrollment in Virginia’s largest public school district doesn’t show signs of slowing. From 2025 to 2030, Weldon Cooper further estimates that the district’s student enrollment will decline an additional 6.6%.

While district leaders, especially the superintendent, Michelle Reid, continue to invoke Fairfax Schools’ past reputation as a beacon of public education and academic excellence, current priorities and indicators tell a different story. In 2025, Virginia Department of Education’s data show that roughly a quarter of students in Fairfax Schools failed their reading, math, and science Standards of Learning exams, compared with about 20% of students in the neighboring district of Loudoun.

Additionally, in December 2025, the state’s department of education reported that 40 federally identified public schools in Fairfax County need support—meaning that 20% of the district’s 199 public schools are underperforming.

You can’t depend on Democrats for much, but you can depend on them to destroy the public schools.

Time to leave.

Read it.

The European Commission presented its new strategy, “ProtectEU: Agenda to prevent and counter terrorism,” an ambitious document that seeks to update the Union’s response to an evolving threat environment.

On paper, the initiative aims to anticipate risks, prevent radicalisation, and strengthen police and judicial cooperation. In practice, however, it seeks to broaden the concept of “terrorism” and “violent extremism” to such an extent that it ultimately encompasses increasingly diffuse political and cultural categories (and is convenient for those in power).

The result is a framework in which the boundary between criminal violence and ideological dissent becomes dangerously blurred.

The document itself acknowledges that, although jihadist terrorism remains “the most prominent and lethal threat,” terrorist actors are driven by a “growing range of motivations,” including the “rejection of European democratic values,” antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and, among others, “anti-LGBTQ+ hatred,” misogyny, racism, “anti-system ideologies,” or even “nihilism.”

What the E. U. really needs is a First Amendment. No chance of that, though.

Read it.

Hundreds of Iranian nationals gathered in the centre of The Hague and on the Dam in Amsterdam over the weekend to celebrate the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in attacks carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces. In Amsterdam, bottles of champagne were opened and sweets were distributed among the crowd.

Many participants carried the Persian flag bearing the ancient Lion and Sun symbol, removed by the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution.

“We’re not happy about war, of course, but this is the only option,” activist Nastaran Beik Pourian said, adding “We need other countries.”

Read it.

The Golden Dome for America (GDA) initiative has drawn criticism for not publicly releasing a detailed architecture, cost breakdown, or long-range budget projections. Think tanks, major media outlets, and some lawmakers argue that without public transparency the program risks becoming an expensive, open-ended undertaking.

Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But they often treat public disclosure as an unquestioned virtue. Revealing how the system works would give our adversaries the information they need to blunt it.

We don’t disclose budget information or performance characteristics for nuclear submarines, the F-35 and other sensitive air vehicles, or spy satellites developed by [the National Reconnaissance Office]. Demanding public disclosure of GDA is akin to asking the United States to publish a playbook for defeating it.

This reality is not theoretical. China and Russia have already criticized Golden Dome as destabilizing and driving an arms race. In this environment, withholding key details is not only prudent—it is imperative.

Read it.

Fairfax County police have charged a Sierra Leonean man, who authorities say illegally entered the U.S. in 2012, with second-degree murder after the fatal stabbing of 41-year-old Stephanie Minter at a bus stop shelter in Virginia’s Hybla Valley area last month.

Police responded at 7:16 p.m. Feb. 23 to reports of an injured woman at the bus stop near Richmond Highway and Arlington Drive, where they found Minter of Fredericksburg suffering from stab wounds to her upper body.

Officers and emergency personnel attempted lifesaving measures, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

The case has drawn public attention and sharpened debates over criminal justice practices and cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Investigators identified Abdul Jalloh, 32, through surveillance footage and interviews, noting he was seen with Minter exiting a bus near the attack site shortly before the killing, police said.

On Tuesday, officers located Jalloh after an employee at a local business recognized him and contacted police.

UPDATE: Media Ignore Arrest of 14-Year Illegal Alien with 30 Arrests in Case of Va. Bus Stop Stabbing Murder

The Antiplanner.

BART is proposing to close 15 stations if voters don’t agree in November to a tax increase to support the bloated agency. BART’s 2025 ridership was only 49 percent of 2019, yet its operating costs were at least a third greater and “general administration” (bureaucratic overhead) was more than two-thirds greater.

Read it.

Import Turd World people, wind up with Turd World problems.

Read it.

Import Turd World people, wind up with Turd World practices.

ODF.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

Barely a year ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) came close to becoming the Senate’s most powerful Republican. A former top lieutenant to Sen. Mitch McConnell while the Kentuckian was majority leader, Cornyn has built a reputation over more than two decades in the Senate as a staunch conservative who could still compromise with Democrats, an enormously prolific fundraiser and an architect of the Republican takeover of what is now the country’s biggest red state. He demolished every primary challenger he faced in three reelection races.

On Tuesday, he could lose it all.

Cornyn, 74, is facing formidable Republican primary challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt despite Cornyn’s enormous spending advantage. Cornyn and his allies in Washington have poured $69 million into ads in his defense, helping to make the primary one of the most expensive on record, according to AdImpact.

Still, polling shows Cornyn lagging behind or running even with Paxton, despite the attorney general’s numerous legal and personal controversies, such as his 2023 impeachment by the state House of Representatives on charges including bribery and abusing his office to cover up an affair.

The question that never gets asked, by Cornyn or anyone in the political establishment, is why? Why does a senior Republican in a presumably safe seat come to be in trouble? Why is he coming so close to losing to a rival who would seem to have several strikes against him?

But the one endorsement that could save Cornyn — President Donald Trump’s — has eluded him.

And there’s a reason for that. But nobody is asking what it might be.

Gregg Keller, who runs a super PAC backing Paxton, said much of the Republican base in Texas detests Cornyn and could stay home in November if Cornyn ekes out a primary victory.

“These Texas MAGA voters — they will not turn out in the general election for John Cornyn,” Keller said.

And there we have it. Cornyn isn’t an outright RINO like Murkowski or Romney or McCain, but he’s been coasting for far too long. He’s become the anchor on the ass of the Republican party in Texas, at a time when we need wind in our sails.

Many of Cornyn’s vulnerabilities in a Republican primary stem from what made him a formidable character in the Senate. His work on a bipartisan gun safety bill has been panned by the right in a state where the Second Amendment is politically sacrosanct. Paxton also blasted Cornyn’s work helping refugees settle in the United States and for calling Trump’s border wall “naive” in 2016.

“He’s been doing this for 24 years. People are just ready for a change, ready for someone that has more energy and that has the ability to go fight for them in Washington,” Paxton said shortly after a Saturday rally in Fort Worth. “John Cornyn doesn’t do that.”

Exactly.

As they do….

Read it.

In borderless Britain, it seems as if barely a day goes by without some monstrosity being committed by a migrant who should never have been in the country in the first place. The world is now familiar with the ongoing scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani rape gangs. Yet what is also unfolding right now is a wave of brutal sexual violence committed by illegal arrivals, often asylum seekers from Afghanistan.

Read it.

It took some time for the supposed difference between Annalena Baerbock’s feminist foreign policy and the approach that the diplomatic corps under Chancellor Friedrich Merz would take to become clear. What has changed is less the substance than the performative act. Under the Sauerland-born Merz, tone and gestures shifted—the staging is meant to appear more masculine, sober in style, perhaps more professional, less embarrassingly activist—but the content remains largely unchanged.

Jonathan Turley.

“Respectfully, f–k off.” Those words by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesperson, Izzy Gardon, summed up the current race to the bottom of American politics.

And that race has been spearheded, at least during my lifetime, by Left wing degenerates—in addition to everything else they’ve done to corrupt our public social space.

Democrats appear in a competition of the profane where voters are now subject to a virtual carpet-bombing of f-bombs and other indecent language.

Gardon’s response was to a standard media inquiry after Newsom’s controversial statement to a black interviewer.

And there it is.

There was a time when political leaders maintained basic standards of civility and avoided profanity in public.

That ship has sailed.

Read it.

Iran is most often discussed as a nonproliferation problem, a sponsor of terrorism, a regional spoiler. Each of these framings captures a real problem, but none captures what matters most. The nuclear file, the militia archipelago stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, the question of Gulf security architecture: these only acquire their full meaning when read against the backdrop of Chinese grand strategy.

Beijing has spent years and billions of dollars building Iran into a structural asset. Everything that follows in the Middle East flows from this fact. Which is why Operation Epic Fury is the first American military campaign that threatens to sever that asset. By striking Iran directly, the Trump administration is dismantling, whether by design or by consequence, a pillar of China’s regional architecture.

The urgency of saying so plainly has never been greater. In June 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a 12-day campaign of precision strikes that destroyed Iranian enrichment facilities, killed over 30 senior commanders and a dozen nuclear scientists, and drew the United States into direct strikes on 3 nuclear sites. The Islamic Republic’s deterrent mythology, cultivated over four decades, collapsed within a fortnight. In late December, the largest protests since 1979 erupted across all 31 provinces, fueled by economic freefall and a population that no longer believed in the regime’s strength. The government responded in January 2026 with massacres that killed thousands, prompting the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization and further increasing the isolation of the regime.

By any conventional measure, the Islamic Republic is weaker than at any point in its history. Yet China was moving to put it back together. This week, it was reported that Tehran was close to finalizing a deal for Chinese-made supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles, weapons capable of threatening American carriers now massing in the Persian Gulf. Earlier, Chinese suppliers shipped over 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a key missile propellant ingredient, to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, enough to rebuild a substantial portion of the ballistic missile stockpile that Israel had just spent 12 days destroying.

Understanding why Beijing would do this and what it means for the United States requires looking beyond Iran and toward the broader contest in which Iran plays a role.

Dean  Ball.

Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology under Trump

At some point during my lifetime—I am not sure when—the American republic as we know it began to die. Like most natural deaths, the causes are numerous and interwoven. No one incident, emergency, attack, president, political party, law, idea, person, corporation, technology, mistake, betrayal, failure, misconception, or foreign adversary “caused” death to begin, though all those things and more contributed. I don’t know where we are in the death process, but I know we are in the hospice room. I’ve known it for a while, though I have sometimes been in denial, as all mourners are wont to do. I don’t like to talk about it; I am at the stage where talking about it usually only inflicts pain.

Unfortunately, however, I cannot carry out my job as a writer today with the level of analytic rigor you expect from me without acknowledging that we are sitting in hospice. It is increasingly difficult to honestly discuss the developments of frontier AI, and what kind of futures we should aim to build, without acknowledging our place at the deathbed of the republic as we know it. Except there is no convenient machine to decide for us that the patient has died. We just have to sit and watch.

Our republic has died and been reborn again more than once in America’s history. America has had multiple “foundings.” Perhaps we are on the verge of another rebirth of the American republic, another chapter in America’s continual reinvention of itself. I hope so. But it may be that we have no more virtue or wisdom to fuel such a founding, and that it is better to think of ourselves as transitioning gradually into an era of post-republic American statecraft and policymaking. I do not pretend to know.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

Potential Democratic presidential candidates are blasting Donald Trump’s war against Iran, but their criticisms differ — and a few even echo some Trump talking points.

The problem for Democrats is that Americans have been waiting for decades for some President to do what Trump has been doing, from getting stuck into the immigration problem to robust action against state sponsors of Islamic terrorism like Iran, and everything the Democrats have to say against Trump’s actions merely pulls them deeper and deeper into the tarpit of obvious anti-Americanism.

Favoring every other nation except your own may work in Britain and Canada and Australia, and certainly works in Europe, but with Americans … not so much.

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

Left-wing Democrats are quietly escalating efforts to persuade New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president. One big reason: They see no clear alternative. Bernie Sanders (84) is too old — and no other Sanders-like pol with national punch is emerging.

I guess Gavin Newsom counts as “moderate” in the present Democrat party. Telling.

But I can understand their problem. All of the Democrats with what might be called “national name recognition” are either obvious incompetents (like Kamala Harris) or obvious psychopaths (like every Democrat in Congress). The party is basically stuck between a rock and California.

Read it.

In a rare moment, Israel is confirming at least nine people killed and over 40 injured after an Iranian ballistic missile slammed into a residential area west of Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon.

The missile impact was in Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, and according to Israeli media destroyed a synagogue and even caused damage to a bomb shelter beneath surrounding homes. There’s a likelihood that the death toll throughout the country will climb given Tehran’s ongoing massive retaliation.

“The Magen David Adom ambulance service said it declared the deaths of eight victims at the scene and took 28 others to hospitals, two in serious condition,” Times of Israel reports. “The death of the ninth victim was declared a short time later.”

“Significant”? By what standard?

More people died in the mob that attempted to storm the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan. Almost as many died in the Islam-inspired mass shooting in Austin, Texas. Eight times as many casualties occurred in the famous Oct. 7 Hanas terror raid that the Narrative Media are so studiously ignoring, while trumpeting the perfectly understandable Israeli retaliation in Gaza as a “genocide”.

I guess “significant” is in the eye of the propagandist….

Read it.

For the past half century, successive Presidential administrations and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have thwarted the development of advanced reactor designs that might fulfill President Eisenhower’s vision for the “peaceful uses of atomic energy.”

That all changed last May, when President Trump issued four executive orders aimed at reinvigorating the U.S. nuclear energy industry. The Trump orders addressed advance reactor technologies – from microreactors to small modular reactors all the way up to advanced tech versions of the water-cooled reactors that power every active U.S. nuclear power plant.

Trump also pledged to revamp the NRC to cut costs and timeframes for bringing new nuclear energy facilities – of all sizes – into production. This revolutionary move ended decades of bureaucratic overkill that choked off what could have long been a preeminent energy driver.

They just ought to buy the reactors that power U.S. nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Proven technology, compact, never had any problems, ever.

Read it.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges Friday against 30 more people who are accused of civil rights violations in a January protest inside a Minnesota church where a pastor works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The new indictment comes a month after independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong were charged for their alleged roles in the protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.