March 24, 2026

NO LONGER A JOKE:  Shutdown.

Posted at 6:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

ONLY I’D DISPUTE IT’S NOT “CONSERVATIVE”, IT’S “SANE”:  Hello, Columbus.

Posted at 5:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

LOOK, I DON’T LIKE THE MAN, BUT I’M SKEPTICAL:  Despicable behavior.

The character of the accusers. How long it took come out. The fact that Cesar Chavez was a rabid opponent of illegal immigration… all of it makes me very uncomfortable saying “yes, this is true.”

Posted at 2:27 am by Sarah Hoyt

THE MAN IS SO TWISTY HE COULD GO DOWN A CORKSCREW WITHOUT TOUCHING THE SIDES:  Precision Imprecision.

Posted at 12:26 am by Sarah Hoyt

March 23, 2026

DEVELOPING: Port Arthur, TX: Authorities on scene of possible explosion at Valero refinery, shelter-in-place issued. “Sheriff Zena Stephens tells FOX Beaumont the explosion was likely caused by an industrial heater. Officials also told FOX Beaumont that there are no reported injuries.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 9:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1989: Arsenio Hall lifts the lid on wild late-night era: TV host’s strip club trips with Prince, his showdown with OJ Simpson, and how he got Bill Clinton to play his sax on air.

The new book paints a picture of a chaotic era in television where the line between on-screen success and off-screen excess was often blurred.

The Arsenio Hall Show ran for five years between 1989 and 1994 and featured hundreds of celebrities in what Hall hoped would be a house party on TV every night.

Hall made his show the home of hip-hop and helped break rappers like Snoop Dogg, Tupac and Ice Cube while musical guests included James Brown, Whitney Houston, and Luther Vandross.

The show would win two Emmys and lead Hall to star in hit movies like 1988 comedy, Coming to America, alongside Murphy.

It was an astonishing achievement for the son of a single mother from Cleveland, Ohio, who idolized the talk show host Johnny Carson as a child and began his show business career aged five doing magic shows in the basement of his building.

A switch to comedy and a move to Los Angeles paved the way for Hall to be offered a guest spot hosting The Late Show on Fox after Joan Rivers, the original host, bombed.

Impressed Paramount executives offered Hall his own show, making him the first black, syndicated late night host.

Arsenio was young, hip and cool, and consequently made Johnny Carson look very dated by comparison, and allowed Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Love, who had no love lost between him Carson, deliver the kill shot:

“Was it a coincidence that Johnny Carson stepped down as host of the Tonight Show after 29 years just three days after this segment aired on Saturday Night Live? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But this even making the airwaves on Carson’s own NBC network was a bit shocking. I was only 15 years old when this very funny SNL skit played and I even understood what it meant. Johnny Carson was going to be very pissed off by what he saw.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

VDH: Why today’s immigrants to America are so hostile to their new country.

I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America and productive farms were models for US non-immigrants.

My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America.

Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.

But something has gone terribly wrong with immigration — an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.

While America is at war with Iran, crowds of immigrants, visitors and foreign students scream anti-American slogans as they cheer our enemies.

Read the whole thing.

 

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

KERMIT GOSNELL, ‘HOUSE OF HORRORS’ DOCTOR FOUND GUILTY OF KILLING BABIES, DIES, AGE 85.

In all, Gosnell was found guilty of 237 crimes, including three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of three babies, as well as involuntary manslaughter for the overdose death of a patient.

During Gosnell’s trial, prosecutors said he regularly performed late-term abortions on babies older than 24 weeks — the cutoff age in Pennsylvania.

Prosecutors also said that Gosnell delivered the babies alive during abortion procedures and then killed them by snipping their spinal cords with scissors.

The former doctor was ultimately sentenced to multiple life sentences, avoiding the death penalty.

What was horrific in 2011 became an unexpectedly routine talking point for Ralph Northam in 2019:

Posted at 8:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S A MERCY KILLING: Divisive Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Canceled After Two Seasons.

So much for Paramount+‘s Gen Z Star Trek show.

The streamer has decided to end Star Trek: Starfleet Academy after season two.

Starfleet Academy had recently finished airing its debut season. Paramount+ had (rather optimistically, as it turned out) already ordered a second season, which recently wrapped production.

Starfleet Academy has been a polarizing entry in the Trek canon. Many critics have celebrated the show for focusing on a younger generation and its coming-of-age themes. On social media, the show has been a frequent target of mockery from those who claim the show is too “woke.”

On Rotten Tomatoes, the show had an 87 percent positive critics score, but a dismal 51 percent audience score.

The show also never managed to chart among Nielsen’s weekly top 10 streaming lists for viewership.

Funny, ten days ago, Engadget ran with the hottest of hot takes about the show: Starfleet Academy is the best first season of a Star Trek show ever.

The first season of a TV show is a tricky thing. It has to convince people to watch it and justify the show’s existence to the network (or streaming service) execs. It has to deal with actors and writers who may not have fully dialed into the characters and world yet. There are some shows with absolutely stellar first seasons — Stranger Things, Veronica Mars and Ted Lasso are a few — but many other hit shows stumbled out of the gate, like The Office and Supernatural.

Star Trek is not immune to this phenomenon. The Original Series had a decent first season, with classic episodes like “The City on the Edge of Forever.” But the next four shows all have rather weak beginnings, with even fan-favorite The Next Generation stumbling badly with episodes like “Code of Honor.” That show picked up in season three, beginning a trend called “Growing the Beard,” in reference to how Commander Riker’s new beard coincided with the uptick in quality.

“The Original Series had a decent first season.” What a way to dismiss all of the worldbuilding by Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon that set the stage for everything that followed over the next sixty years: The giant faster-than-light starship performing gunboat diplomacy at the edge of the known galaxy. The heroic young captain modeled after Horatio Hornblower. The stoic half-human, half-alien science officer. The crusty doctor and chief engineer. Once Gene Coon joined midseason, he fleshed out the series’ backstory, creating the “United Federation of Planets” as a futuristic substitute for the USA, and crafted the show’s most-popular bad guys, the Klingons. Heck, even Ricardo Montalban showed up in the first season, a decade and a half before replaying his role as the big baddy in the movie that saved the franchise, and gave Star Trek a new lease on life for the next four decades.

But hey, it’s no Starfleet Academy.

Exit quote:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HAHA, TRUMP SUCKERS THEM AGAIN:

From Democrats’ shutdown theater to a PR coup for ICE.

Posted at 8:11 pm by Glenn Reynolds