September 17, 2026

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

VDH: Iran, the Midterms, and October Surprises.

The theocracy is now vastly diminished after months of Israeli and American bombing and crushing new sanctions. Moreover, the desperate regime has continued to murder dissidents in the months since the failed uprising of January 2026.

In sum, the Iranian conflict is one of the strangest wars of the modern age.

The Iranian regime has suffered terrible material and financial damage.

Its nuclear program is likely in ruins, and its original command-and-control leadership has been destroyed.

The people detest it. The Kurdish minority loathes it. Conditions on the ground are dire, with terrible shortages of food, medicine, and fuel.

The resistance may sense that the Trump administration would double down on kinetic force to finish off the wounded regime if a mass popular uprising emerged and needed support from the air.

Taken together, these possible October surprises before the November midterms could make the next 50 days the most volatile in modern memory.

Trump could well be facing domestic warfare as well next year: Jeffries has not ‘ruled anything out’ on impeaching Trump if Democrats win.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE: The battlefield now extends all the way to the moon, U.S. military’s highest-ranking officer says.

“Today’s modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday (Sept. 16) during a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

Cislunar space extends from Earth all the way out to the orbit of the moon and includes the lunar surface. For several years now, military officials have been stressing the strategic importance of this huge region, which could get quite a bit busier in the next decade or so.

For example, both the United States and China plan to build bases near the moon’s south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice. Winning this new moon race is critical, U.S. officials have stressed, because whoever does so will be able to establish norms of behavior on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor.

And as Robert Heinlein taught us, the Moon is the ultimate high ground.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

DON’T YOU LOVE A HAPPY ENDING? Orland Park, IL Gas Station Stickup Man Learns the Victim Gets a Vote, Too. “Police say the suspect approached the person at the pump to rob him. The CCL holder drew and shot the armed attacker. The would-be stickup artist left in an ambulance. The customer stayed and spend the rest of the morning as a witness rather than a victim.”

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

FASTER, PLEASE:

Posted at 2:40 pm by Stephen Green

OLD AND BUSTED: The Snail Darter and the Delta Smelt.

The New Hotness? Great crested newts could thwart Piddington migrant camp.

Great crested newts could scupper plans to build a camp near an Oxfordshire village to house as many as 1,256 asylum seekers.

Campaigners in Piddington, which voted to leave the UK in protest at the proposed camp, have unearthed records showing a plethora of protected wildlife next to and on its site.

In an apparent blunder, the Home Office’s ecological assessment of the area, submitted as part of its planning application, claimed that there was no evidence of protected newts, bats or reptiles.

Campaigners are claiming that unless the Home Office redoes its ecological assessment, and introduces protective measures possibly including moving the newts, it will be open to a legal challenge that could thwart the asylum camp.

The errors form the basis of a High Court challenge to the plans launched on Wednesday night.

Dr Claire Brenner, a resident with a zoology degree who uncovered the evidence, said: “If the Secretary of State determines this application with this materially incomplete information, that’s open to legal challenge.

“If they proceed to work on the site without a licence, then potentially it’s a wildlife crime.”

As one wag asked on X, “So let me get this straight… The Government care more about the safety of NEWTS than Women and Girls?”

Yes. Next question?

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

OUR CALIFORNICATION CONTINUES APACE: Amendment 87: How the Broncos play into Colorado’s tax fight.

Like any CEO, a head coach doesn’t have infinite money. He’s stuck with a salary cap, competing against 31 other teams for the same shrinking pool of ridiculously overpaid talent.

Enter Amendment 87, which offers most of us a token tax cut while nearly doubling the rate on those evil, hated rich people we call Denver Broncos. If it passes this fall, every Bronco currently taxed at Colorado’s flat 4.4% starts paying 8.4%.

Football players take a lot of hits to the head, but their accountants don’t — and unlike our legislators, accountants (and even concussed football players) can do arithmetic. All else equal, a player has to earn 8.4% more to play in Denver than to play somewhere with no state income tax at all.

Any player who plays for the Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans or the Seattle Seahawks gets an instant 8.4% raise compared to playing for Denver under Amendment 87.

Run Peyton Manning’s numbers again: at $20 million a year, that 8.4% is $1.68 million a year — $8.4 million over a five-year deal. Double those figures to adjust for inflation, and you’re talking real money even by NFL standards.

Sure, plenty of things factor into where a star chemist, programmer, performer or quarterback decides to live and work. But an 8.4% pay cut isn’t a rounding error. It’s the kind of number that ends up circled on a napkin in some agent’s office come free agency.

Not that it matters, but it’s not just football teams competing for star talent. Every Colorado business is as well.

Few things are as mobile as talent.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

INDOCTRINATION MASQUERADING AS EDUCATION:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

I JUST WANT TO TELL YOU GOOD LUCK, WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU: Can James May land an Airbus A350?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THAT WOULD BE NICE: Soros-Backed DA Larry Krasner Going Down? “While I would be delighted to see pro-crime Krasner see hard time in Club Fed, I would be even more interested in possible revelations from a robust discovery process exposing just what communications pass between the numerous tentacles of various Soros-backed organizations and Soros-backed DAs.”

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

THE IRONIES OF DEM-SOC: In Blue State America, It’s Always 1984.

One thing Orwell understood about the all-powerful state is that it can’t tolerate the family or organized religion. In 1984, the state survives by turning children against their parents.

Massachusetts just proved that he was right.

In December 2024, Massachusetts child welfare authorities removed 15-year-old Sophie Kutzko from her devout Catholic parents’ home after they refused, on religious grounds, to affirm a transgender identity that a counselor at her school initiated with their knowledge or consent. Sophie is 17 now, still a ward of the state under the Department of Children and Families. Joseph and Arlene Kutzko are suing to get her back.

“You start with school policies that refuse to inform parents when a child rejects their sex and claims another identity,” said Vernadette Broyles, the attorney representing the Kutzkos. “That’s part of a system that starts everything down the rabbit hole.” She added there was “a direct school to DCF pipeline in this case as we have seen elsewhere.”

This isn’t confined to Massachusetts. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed two bills in 2021 letting minors hide abortions and transgender treatments from their own parents. And school districts across the country have quietly followed suit, concealing gender transitions from moms and dads who still, legally, have every right to know and reject.

When leftists started picking up Orwell’s 1984 after Trump took office, it wasn’t because they saw it as a warning; it was because they saw it as an instruction manual. Make no mistake about it: in blue states, there is a coordinated campaign to convince children that the state loves them more than their own families do. Orwell called it decades ago. The Democrat Party is out here proving him right.

Insert obligatory reference to Nat-Soc operatives asking themselves, “Are we the baddies?” here:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

AND MERZ KNOWS JUST THE MAN TO DECIDE WHAT INFORMATION IS CORRECT AND PERMISSIBLE:

Conveniently enough, that man just happens to be Friedrich Merz.

Posted at 12:29 pm by Stephen Green