March 9, 2026

“AMERICA AND PUBLIC DISORDER”:

https://x.com/Chris_arnade/status/2030948600944144599

You can read Chris Arnade’s full Substack article here.

Posted at 8:49 am by Stephen Green

GENTLEMEN, YOU CAN’T COMMIT JOURNALISM HERE, THIS IS CBS NEWS!

Oh no, not a political adversary to a politician! And yet, “It is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics,” H.L. Mencken wrote in 1920s, in sharp contrast to the vast majority of today’s “journalists,” who view themselves as Democratic Party operatives with bylines.

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

YES: Energy secretary predicts rising oil prices due to Iran conflict will be temporary.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that a recent rise in gasoline and energy prices tied to the escalating conflict with Iran is temporary, stressing that markets are reacting more to fear of a prolonged war than to an actual shortage of supply.

Wright made the comments during an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation.

“What you’re seeing is emotional reactions and fear that this is a long-term war,” Wright said.

“We have a temporary period of elevated energy prices, but it will not be long,” he also said.

The world is awash in the stuff. It’s just that some of it is stuck in the Gulf.

Posted at 8:34 am by Stephen Green

THE WORLD THE FATWA MADE:

A mysterious feature of the fatwa was the way it brought out apologists, appeasers, and peacemakers who misunderstood its motivations. Former President Jimmy Carter blamed Rushdie in The New York Times for “vilifying the Prophet Mohammed and defaming the Holy Koran.” The former president, who had been in office when the ayatollah held American citizens captive, blindfolded and abused for 444 days, did not seem to recognize the nature of the trap he was falling into. “While Rushdie’s First Amendment freedoms are important,” Carter wrote, he nevertheless agreed the work of fiction was a “direct insult” to Muslims whose sacred beliefs had been “violated.”

Those like Carter, who approached the fatwa with rational expectations, wound up saying irrational things, ratifying its terms even if they quarreled with them. Blaming Rushdie’s novel for inflicting “the kind of intercultural wound that is difficult to heal,” as though the author had assassinated an archduke, Carter chose to see the fatwa as a mirror of offended religious sentiment, even though it was a license to commit transnational murder issued by a cleric who had named a street after Anwar Sadat’s assassin.

Carter’s hope that “tactful public statements and private discussions could still defuse this explosive situation” was like waiting for a hostage to be released. He failed to understand that the fatwa’s rejection of borders, laws, national sovereignty, and individual autonomy was the whole point. Or that a decree that made the victim the aggressor, murder a virtue, and suicide a sacrament did not permit common ground.

The message Carter failed to understand was received loud and clear by a 24-year-old American named Hadi Matar.

Thirty-three years after Rushdie was sentenced to death, Matar traveled from Fairview, New Jersey, to Chautauqua, New York, where he attacked Rushdie with a knife from behind as he sat onstage at the Chautauqua Institution waiting to give a speech about free expression and the importance of keeping writers safe. Matar, who told a reporter that he had only read “a page or two” of The Satanic Verses but knew it was an “attack on Islam,” stabbed the 75-year-old writer in the face, the eye, the neck, and the midsection, 15 times before being tackled by bystanders.

That was the logic of the fatwa. Khomeini hadn’t read The Satanic Verses either but had revoked its creator’s right to exist anyway. This helps explain how Matar, who was found guilty of attempted murder last year, could tell the court before his sentencing: “Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people. He wants to be a bully; he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”

You don’t need magic to turn a writer into a monster; the sleep of reason will do, and the overriding presence of conspiracy theories that do the thinking for you, and turn whole categories of humanity into stock villains in a long-running play.

On Thursday, Erik Florack described Carter as “The Father of the Islamic Revolution.” A decade later, he was quite happy to keep stoking it along.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

RACISM, SEXISM, STRAIGHT UP:

Background here.

Posted at 8:18 am by Stephen Green

JOHN FUND IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW:  Passing ACA7–the latest attempt to overturn California’s Proposition 209–would probably not be a smart move on the part of the Calif0rnia Senate. (More background on ACA7, which has now passed the Assembly on a party-line vote here.)

Posted at 8:16 am by Gail Heriot

HE COULD WRITE THAT THEN, NOW HE’D BE LYNCHED:

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

THEY HATE IT WHEN AMERICA WINS:

Posted at 7:53 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE: French President Emmanuel Macron announced the extension of France’s nuclear deterrent to eight European nations, alongside the expansion of France’s nuclear warhead stockpile. “Macron laid out that nuclear-capable Rafale B fighters would be spread out across Europe on temporary deployments as an “archipelago of forces” that would complicate the decision making of any nation wanting to use extreme force against France or its allies. Alongside these deployments, allies will also be invited to take part in French nuclear exercises, in a similar manner to NATO’s Conventional Support to Nuclear Operations programme.”

Not many people had “French nuclear umbrella” on their 2026 bingo card.

Posted at 7:32 am by Stephen Green

ICYMI: ROGER KIMBALL: Unconditional Surrender: When Wars Are Fought to Win.

Within just four or five days, virtually all of Iran’s senior leadership has been eliminated. Then its replacements were eliminated. “Their army is gone,” President Trump said a few days ago. “Their navy is gone. Their communications are gone. Their leaders are gone. . . . Their Air Force is wiped out. . . . They have 32 ships. All 32 are at the bottom of the ocean. Other than that,” he quipped, “they’re doing very well!”

The assault is not just continuing; it is ramping up. Just a few days ago, Israel destroyed a massive underground complex in the center of Tehran from which the (late) Supreme Leader Khamenei had planned to conduct the war. As retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg told Fox News, President Trump is “going after everything. . . . There’s a huge target list out there, and there’s no restrictions.” Kellogg, noting that he had never seen an operation like this, said that it’s not “whack a mole” but “whack a mullah. . . . This is a massive win for the United States.”

It’s also a massive win for the Iranian people. Just a week ago, the populace was cowed by the mullahs, their immoral “morality” police, and the murderous Basij thugs who terrorized the population. Remember, in January, they maimed and murdered tens of thousands of protesters. Tens of thousands. Now, a popular game in Iran is sneaking up behind Islamic regime clerics and knocking off their turbans. I like to see it. Around the world, exiled Iranians—often alongside Israelis and other Jews—are demonstrating in favor of President Trump. In London, a group of Iranians held a vigil, replete with candles and singing of the American national anthem, to honor the six American troops killed in Kuwait by an Iranian drone strike.

It helps to be the strong horse.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

THAT’S HOW IT WORKS:

Evergreen:

Posted at 7:21 am by Glenn Reynolds

DAY SEVEN OF THE U.S.–ISRAEL WAR: The Strategy Appears to Be Working, and Iran Is Losing.

“War is the continuation of politics by other means.” – Carl von Clausewitz

Seven days into the U.S.–Israel war with Iran, the central question is not simply what has happened on the battlefield, but whether the strategy behind the war is working.

In classical strategic terms, war must always be evaluated through the relationship between political objectives and military action. The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz argued that the political objective determines the military means used to achieve it. The success of a war cannot be measured simply by explosions, missile launches, or headlines. It must be measured by whether the use of force achieves the political objectives of the war, whether through territorial control, destruction of military capability, or compelling the enemy to change its behavior in accordance with those objectives.

The first task, therefore, is to identify what those objectives actually are.

Thus far, the United States has been consistent in publicly stating its goals. President Donald Trump’s March 1 statement announcing the start of operations made clear that the war is aimed at ending the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons pursuit, destroying the missile capabilities that Tehran has long used as a shield for that nuclear ambition, and eliminating Iran’s ability to threaten global commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.

Long, but well worth a read.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

IT SHOULDN’T, SO STOP IT.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds