April 15, 2026

HE’D BE A FOOL TO GO ALONG AT THIS LATE DATE:

Posted at 4:34 pm by Glenn Reynolds

REQUIRED READING:

Posted at 4:34 pm by Stephen Green

GEORGE WILL: Seattle has a severe case of the Ayatollah Itch.

In 2004, Seattle’s government, as woke as a rooster at dawn, adopted the Race and Social Justice Initiative, which was more than a program to promote workforce diversity. Rather, it was a program of compelled racial identity.

Its explicit purpose was to change “the fundamental nature of local government” by embedding “racial equity and social justice principles” throughout city “programs, budgets, and culture.” This involved evaluating city employees through a “racial equity lens.” Facially illegal and presumptively unconstitutional, this monomania featured the full spectrum of now-familiar nostrums and policies. They are divisive, bullying and, by now, boring.

Favoring a colorblind society is stigmatized as “racial evasion.” What normal people consider elementary adult virtues — e.g., punctuality, individualism, perfectionism — are residues of “white supremacy culture.” Diversity, equity and inclusion trainers told trainees that racism is “in white people’s DNA.” Although it is against the law to “limit, segregate, or classify” employees by race “in any program, established to provide … training,” Seattle inflicted mandatory, race-segregated sessions. The preferred euphemism for such evasions of the law is “affinity groups.”

They separate White people and BIPOCs (Black, indigenous and people of color). Seattle seems unaware of how close it has come to formulating a 21st-century version of the Jim Crow “separate but equal” doctrine.

The city’s first manager of the Race and Social Justice Initiative was almost endearingly candid: “We asked all the white people to go in one room and all the people of color [to] go in another room. … Well, the White people got in the room and just talked about their fear, and the Black people got in the room and talked about how glad they weren’t the White people.“ Living, no doubt, in a bubble of the like-minded, this person probably had no clue how repulsive he sounded to normal Americans.

Exit quote: “The Ayatollah Itch is a communicable disease spread by aspiring thought police. The vaccine against it is the visceral American recoil against government establishment of religion. Including ersatz religions concocted from evanescent political fads.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

TYPICAL:

Posted at 4:05 pm by Stephen Green

NIFTY… I ASSUME: U.S. Navy Destroyer Equipped With New Launcher For Unknown Weapons.

A new and not immediately recognizable launcher has emerged on the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Carl M. Levin. Last year, launchers for Coyote counter-drone interceptors appeared in the same general location on two other Burkes, the USS Bainbridge and the USS Winston S. Churchill. The Navy is currently known to be exploring several other options for integrating lower-cost anti-drone interceptors on various warships to bolster their defenses against this ever-growing threat. The new launcher could also be for deploying other kinds of munitions, drones, and/or decoys.

The Carl M. Levin and its new launcher can be seen in the background of a picture that the U.S. Marine Corps released on April 8, which is seen in parts throughout this story. The image was taken on March 29 at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The Levin, also known by the hull number DDG-120, is homeported there. A Japanese-language blog called OSINFO was the first to notice the launcher in the image and posted it to social media.

“What the launcher fires and what purpose it serves are unknown,” and the Navy remains tight-lipped.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

CALIFORNIA DEMS LOVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP: And just days after indy Internet journo David Delaiden won his 11-year battle against multiple spurious charges filed by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, Democrats in the California Assembly filed legislation that is clearly aimed at giving state officials media censorship tools. But Democrats using government to censor pro-life/Conservative/Evangelical media and researchers is nothing new. Check out my report today for The Washington Stand.

Posted at 3:41 pm by Mark Tapscott

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Now Comes the Gun-Grab: Rhode Island Dems Go for Full-On Confiscation. “At a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing, lawmakers pushed 18 gun control bills in a single slate. The package goes well beyond sales restrictions. It includes legislation aimed at unconstitutionally dismantling the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act through so-called ‘public nuisance’ liability schemes, along with gun rationing, ammunition background checks, mandatory training requirements and liability insurance mandates.”

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLANKET PARTY: Eric Swalwell Finds Out About Sudden ‘Investigative Reporting.’

California Democrats have been growing increasingly panicked at the polls in their “jungle primary” for governor — where the top two vote-getters (regardless of party) advance to a general-election runoff. It had become disastrously possible that the top two could both be Republicans — Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. Democrats needed to shrink their field of candidates. So, voila, “investigative reporting” dropped a bomb on Swalwell — from the liberal San Francisco Chronicle and liberal CNN.

That’s not to say that Swalwell’s accusers don’t have deeply disturbing facts on their side. It’s all about the remarkable timing. Swalwell ran for president in 2020, which would have been an obvious occasion for investigative reporting, even if Swalwell wasn’t exactly a front-runner in that cycle. Swalwell was one of many Democrats that CNN rewarded with a primetime “town hall” program for national publicity.

It reminded me of the early months of the 2011-12 presidential primaries on the Republican side. They started with Sarah Palin, who never even proclaimed her candidacy. NBC ran with wild allegations from leftist author Joe McGinniss that Palin and her then-husband had used cocaine, and he claimed Palin slept with NBA star Glen Rice when she was a sports reporter in Anchorage.

“Just last year, Swalwell showed himself wearing a ‘No Kings’ protest shirt, bragging to a bunch of supporters that he’d come up with a new Democrat Party campaign slogan: ‘It’ll All Come Out.’ Then it did. He didn’t see the train coming until it hit him.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

INDEED:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Why justice keeps failing Asian hate victims in San Francisco.

The preferred storyline demanded framing every incident through the lens of systemic racism, mental health, or “root causes” rather than straightforward criminal accountability. So the hour-long interview with my terrified 14-year-old son sat on the shelf and never aired.

Even harder is exposing what happens inside the San Francisco Superior Courts themselves. For years, the courts have shielded ideological judges by refusing to submit required criminal disposition data to the California Judicial Council, as mandated by state law. They spent five years claiming their case management system was “too new” to produce disposition numbers, yet somehow found ample time and resources to build their own public judicial dashboard filled with conveniently skewed metrics. What we do know is that the vast majority of crimes in San Francisco are diverted, reduced, or delayed for years, with few, if any, receiving timely trials. On an annual basis, Alameda County averages 11 trials per judge, while San Francisco manages just one.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

BBC LAYOFFS TO IMPACT 2,000 JOBS AS PART OF MAJOR COST-CUTTING PLAN:

The BBC is to cut as many as 2,000 jobs, affecting 10% of its 21,500 employees, in what is being described as the biggest scaling back in 15 years.

According to The Guardian, staff at the broadcaster were to be informed of the cuts on Wednesday afternoon in an all-staff meeting, with interim director general Rhodri Talfan Davies expected to announce the redundancies.

News of the cuts — representing the biggest job cuts at the BBC since 2011 — come before top Google exec Matt Brittin takes the reins as director general in May.

Live look at the reaction of one former BBC employee:

Related: Learning to code ‘will seriously change your life.’

—The BBC, March 25th, 2021.

As Kier Starmer looks to violate Brexit and reintegrate Britain with the EU, I’m sure its jet-setting president will applaud the reduced energy output of the shrinking Beeb:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Sex Exists.

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

(HOPEFULLY NOT A ) NOVEMBER PREVIEW:

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green