May 16, 2026

May 15, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CORN, POPPED: Israel Knows a Defamation Case Won’t Fly. That’s Not the Play.

Which brings us to the real mechanism: 28 U.S.C. § 1782.

Once an Israeli proceeding is in reasonable contemplation, an interested person can apply in the Southern District of New York (where the New York Times is headquartered) to compel evidence production from a U.S. entity for use in foreign litigation. A properly framed § 1782 application does not ask the court to adjudicate the case; it simply asks the court to order the Times to produce the factual basis for one published allegation.

The subpoena categories write themselves: documents identifying the source and evidentiary basis for the dog allegation; fact-checking notes and editorial review records; communications with cited human rights organizations about this specific claim; internal discussions of reliability or corroboration. The Times will obviously raise reporter’s privilege. That is expected. But the answer here is a measured response: Nobody is asking for every source on every story. The request is for the factual foundation for one allegation the Times has publicly called corroborated and extensively fact-checked and “deeply reported.” Either show the corroboration or explain why you cannot. Both answers are informative.

None of this is a technical defamation case, but the critics declaring the claim dead on arrival are focusing on the colloquial use of the word “defamation” expressed in a spokesperson’s tweet and missing the tree for the forest. The real question is whether there exists a narrow, disciplined legal theory that forces the Times to produce the evidentiary basis for one of the most inflammatory factual allegations it has ever published. And there is.

Clever.

Posted at 6:16 pm by Stephen Green

VERY INTERESTING:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Charlie Martin

IT’S HITLERS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Surprise, Trump Isn’t Hitler After All.

If you look at my X timeline, going all the way back to just after Trump’s win in 2024, you’ll see me behaving like Chicken Little. Every time I tweeted with some urgency that the sky was falling, I was always reassured by many who told me that things are different on the Right. They don’t all “fall in line” like the Left. It’s okay to disagree. The sky isn’t falling.

It’s just that the sky kept falling. It can mostly be boiled down to one word, or one country: Israel. All of the emotional tirades against Trump stem from that one country, including the Epstein Files, where many in the MAGA movement still think there is a pedo ring starring all of the powerful Jews who run this country. They’re just one document dump away from uncovering it all.

Trump has taken the biggest hit as influencers on the Right punish him over his alignment with Israel. Isn’t it ironic?

Who thought he’d be the guy turning his back on Israel? Well, the entire Left for the past ten years. They’ve been calling him Hitler. They’ve been selling the “Jews will not replace us” lie from Charlottesville.

And guess what? They never backtracked. Instead, they’re just using this moment, where the MAGA movement is being dismantled from within, to ride the wave to finally rid the country of their manufactured villain.

Well, the Southern Poverty “Law” Center allegedly paid a lot of money to make Charlottesville happen, and they’re entitled to see a profit on their investment. And boy, did they:

Read the whole thing; I wonder if Trump’s coming redemption arc will be something along the lines of this Hitler:

Or this one:

According to ChatGPT, the Dutch text reads:

“RICHARD NIXON, re-elected president of America by a large majority and chosen by TIME as Man of the Year, may one day go down in history as a Monster of the Century, comparable only to Adolf Hitler as the greatest war criminal of all time.”

Or he might go on to gather strange new respect from Timesmen Paul Krugman and Thomas Wicker, and leftist film critic Roger Ebert.

But I’m pretty old school; I prefer my fascists to be much more libertarian and small government oriented — like Calvin Coolidge.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: AI Might Make Campaign Ads Halfway Tolerable.

If there’s a person on the face of the planet who actually appreciates and enjoys political campaign ads, I’d like to meet them. On second thought, maybe I wouldn’t. We’ve all experienced those weeks of torture leading up to primary or general election battles — where you can’t escape the horror that is political advertising. It’s bad. It’s annoying. It’s grating. It’s irritating. And it’s seemingly endless.

But the rise of AI and social media has introduced a new wrinkle into things, and we’re seeing that play out in particular regarding the L.A. mayoral race. Now, many of the “ads” we’re seeing aren’t actually from the campaign(s). They’re from creative sorts, interested in the race, who have put their imaginations and AI to work and come up with some real bangers.

I happened upon this one last night and couldn’t help but marvel at its cleverness — and its swiftness. This one incorporates components from things that just happened on Wednesday! Watch and enjoy.

I don’t know how Pratt will actually do in the election (John Nolte sounds particularly glum), but his campaign and its supporters have jump-started a new form of political advertising that will be endlessly copied going forward:

UPDATE:

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll