June 18, 2026

THEY’RE JUST HERE TO DO THE CRIMES AMERICANS WON’T: Illegal Alien Theft Ring Skimming Credit Cards, Stealing Fuel. “Credit card skimmers have been around to steal credit card info for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve read of them also being used to quickly encode new cards for the purpose of stealing gas.”

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

THIS SEEMS LIKE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE JUST A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO:

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

OLD AND BUSTED: ChatGPT.

The New Hotness? ChatVSOP! Meet my snooty AI sommelier. Like many wine drinkers, my family and I are taking notes from Claude.

These days, I am not the only one turning to Daddy AI for wine advice. The New York Times recently ran a piece on the customers consulting chatbots in restaurants, so they know where to start with terrifying wine lists. Sommeliers, for their part, are largely delighted about this development. “People making the conscious effort with AI, it means they’re curious, and that makes me happy,” said Claudia Rossellini, wine director of the restaurant Bavel in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the internet abounds with techy types bragging about online cellars coded by AI. “How I Built an 80,000-Line Open Source Wine Cellar App in 6 Weeks with Claude,” is a typical headline, in this case by one Johan Eklund of “wine cellar management” app Cellarion. Reddit is also full of happy AI users for wine help. “I know almost nothing about wine,” writes one. “Rather than get the same bottle of Pinot Noir over and over, I tell Claude what I am having and it gives me a few good suggestions!”

To wit: my parents and I decided to find out what our Claude “sommelier” could teach us. To do so, we peered at a collection of bottles kindly made for the taking by the daughter of my late great-aunt, a glamorous, chain-smoking, Vienna-born mother of two. Where to start?

Hope pulsed as it does. Should we go with the 1982 Bouchard Père & Fils Meursault? Pictures were uploaded to Claude; the response was extensive and damning.

Claude took one look at the color and declared it was oxidized, which happens when wine is stored at “too warm a temperature.” The wine would then “taste flat, nutty, and vinegary – not pleasant.”

I’ve used ChatGPT a few times on my iPhone when shopping the wine departments at H-E-B and its Trader Joe’s inspired spinoff, Central Market. I uploaded photos of the bottles on the shelf, it OCRed the text on the labels and gave me descriptions of each type of Chablis, until it described the last one as “Ahh, Jean-Marc Brocard Sainte-Claire Chablis 2024 — now we’re talking. This one is a serious reference-point Chablis…If you’re choosing one bottle and want the most true Chablis experience from this shelf: Jean-Marc Brocard Sainte-Claire is the pick.”

I don’t know if it’s one “serious reference-point Chablis” — but it wasn’t bad at all.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: SAF Backing Former Virginia AG’s Challenge to State’s New ‘Assault Firearms’ Ban. “Unlike other lawsuits filed challenging this ‘assault weapons’ ban, this case is unique in that plaintiffs are arguing they have the right to buy the banned arms to preserve their ability to function as the militia that is preserved under the Virginia constitution’s Militia Clause,” Cuccinelli said. “Most other cases are making Heller-like arguments, and we feel this case is a good vehicle to ensure this unconstitutional ban is looked at by the court from every angle.”

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Nick Searcy Reveals Ugly Truth Behind Sean Penn’s Jan. 6 Project.

The Jan. 6 riots matter. And the topic is ripe for a theatrical retelling. That’s not the key takeaway, and veteran actor/director Nick Searcy spelled out the bigger picture on his X account.

You see, the left funds their propaganda, and is willing to lose millions of dollars to get their lies out in an attractive form. While conservative investors will not put their money up to make anything to counteract it. This is why we lose.

Searcy isn’t wrong. Conservative filmmakers routinely fail to get their projects funded. Searcy knows this all too well. He’s helped some small, feisty documentaries get made, like “The War on Truth,” but he’s struggled to get other fictional films off the ground.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (From Ed):

Posted at 1:35 pm by Stephen Green

MY MOTHER HAS ALWAYS CLAIMED THAT IT DOES: Does Coffee Count Toward Your Daily Water Intake? Here’s What Experts Say. Coffee contains enough water to help. But: “However, Larson adds that high amounts of caffeine might increase fluid loss for some people. This usually happens around 400 milligrams or more, or four or more cups of coffee per day.”

Four cups? Those are rookie numbers.

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DON SURBER: “Hello. I’m the Boss:”

Kris Sidial is a prominent derivatives trader, volatility specialist, and Co-Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of The Ambrus Group. He is on vacation in France. He tweeted:

I’m in Versailles right now, staying at the Waldorf, which is connected to the Palace of Versailles.

When we arrived, the receptionist told us the gardens would be closed because, “President Trump is coming.”

I turned to my fiancée and said, “That’s an odd thing for a French citizen to say, wouldn’t you say Macron?”

It’s a very interesting psychological dynamic that exists globally right now with Trump. On a micro level, this small interaction probably reflects the broader perception of why he believes he can walk into meetings of that caliber and project himself as “The Boss.”

President Trump is The Boss.

Indeed, he did visit the Versailles with Macron in tow. Gone are the days when Macron could try to one-up Trump in a handshake. In his second presidency, Trump realizes he holds the cards.

Likely the Secret Service requested the closure of the garden for security reasons. None of the other G7 leaders fear assassination, which reflects their importance. Trump leads the United States, which has an economy larger than the rest of the G7 combined—despite having 100 million fewer people.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOT EVEN MOSCOW IS SAFE: Ukraine strikes Moscow oil refinery in large-scale drone attack, with Zelenskyy saying it’s ‘time the war ended.’

Ukraine launched hundreds of drones on Thursday targeting more than a dozen Russian regions, including Moscow, where they struck an oil refinery, sending plumes of black smoke into the air over the Russian capital.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said the country’s defenses destroyed some 555 drones in the early morning hours. About 180 of those were shot down as they approached Moscow, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said in an update in Russian on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine laid claim to the aerial attack, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying it marked the second time within a week that Kyiv had targeted the Moscow Oil Refinery, a sprawling facility in the city’s southeast that’s run by a subsidiary of state-owned Gazprom. Video verified by ABC News showed blasts at the Kapotnya district refinery.

As for the video… it’s impressive:

That top popped off like the turret of a hit T-72.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

THERE’S NO BETTER GUARANTEE OF HIGHER PRICES THAN WASHINGTON PROMISING TO MAKE THINGS MORE AFFORDABLE:

Posted at 12:37 pm by Stephen Green

HOLLYWOOD TO PARENTS*: FOR PRIDE MONTH, BRING THE KIDS TO SEE THE NEW GAY SUPERGIRL!

“I’m honored that that’s happening, but I think because she doesn’t live inside the binary of what we think a woman should be, that is what makes it so special and so exciting and so new.”

But it really isn’t. Warner Brothers aimed the marketing of 2006’s Superman Returns, which should have been a family-friendly movie towards a gay audience. As a result:

While the film was one of the biggest films of the year, earning $391.1 million on a budget of $204–223 million and becoming the ninth highest-grossing film of 2006, Warner Bros. was disappointed with the worldwide box office return and cancelled a sequel for release in 2009.

*Except for “Christian dads.” Alcock attacked that demographic last month.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE OPINION WAS UNANIMOUS: SCOTUS: One Toke’s Not Over the Line, Sweet #2A. “If you wondered whether you’d ever see a day in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that marijuana use was the equivalent to alcohol use at our founding, well, find your calendar and circle today. In a 9-0 ruling authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court threw out an indictment against a man who possessed marijuana on charges of illegal firearms possession [by a user of illegal substances]. And Justice Alito reached back to Bruen and the Founding Fathers to cement Second Amendment rights for pot users.”

Basically, to regulate firearms the regulation has to be consistent with a historic tradition of regulation. Analogizing pot to alcohol, there’s no history of banning gun ownership on the part of alcohol users. Rules against carrying a gun while drunk sure, but that’s not what the case was about. Correctly decided in my opinion.

UPDATE: More here, at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Posted at 12:21 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WE COULD HAVE HAD CELLPHONES 40 YEARS AGO: But the reason we didn’t is found in the federal regulatory monster that even then could be a devastating obstacle to innovation, as Thomas W. Hazlett explains in a guest appearance for the Rod Martin Report.

Posted at 12:12 pm by Mark Tapscott

1976/2026 COMPARED: It was only 50 years ago that we celebrated our nation’s Bicentennial and comparisons of the America then and now as we begin marking our 250th Birthday are disquietingly vivid and disturbing. Being present for both celebrations and having actively participated in the national political process and then covered it as a journalist perhaps affords me an unusual perspective on how different are the Americas of 1976 and 2026, especially in terms of our individual liberties.

Posted at 12:02 pm by Mark Tapscott

DEATH OF LATE NIGHT: Jay Leno On What Went Wrong At 11:30, Why Joe Rogan Is The New Johnny Carson & How John Oliver Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About.

LENO: Yeah, so when I turn on late-night now, regardless of how I’m watching, if I see Jake from State Farm again, I’m gonna shoot myself in the f*cking head.

It’s like, geez … the host comes out, does the monologue, then it’s right away over to six minutes of commercials. You come back, the host talks about who’s coming up and everything out, “We’ll be right back,” and so on. All cut up.

Enough already.

Why watch that when I can switch over to streaming or YouTube and I can watch an hour with Harrison Ford talking off the top of his head, as opposed to just having few minutes with the guest or with the host, you know? Johnny used to have real conversations. I tried to have real conversations. That’s seems to be gone, and the audience knows it.

DEADLINE: Can it come back?

LENO: It’s not that people are better or worse, it’s the fact that the whole medium has changed. The idea that you have to turn the TV on 11:30 p.m. to hear what was being said, like appointment television, that sounds ridiculous now.

DEADLINE: Devil’s advocate — why?

LENO: Because you can watch TV whenever you want now, you can watch whatever show whatever you want, you know, so that’s what’s really ruined it. There’s no immediacy. People used to say, “Oh, let’s see what David Letterman or whoever had to say about the president’s thing today,” and you and the whole world simultaneously at 11:30 knew what they thought. Now you can look it up anytime, and whenever you watch it, if you miss it, that’s OK, you know? So yeah, that’s what’s really changed.

DEADLINE: Sounds like Jay Leno is channeling Marshall McLuhan. That you’re saying, it’s the medium, not the message?

LENO: Yeah, I think that’s fair to say.

I mean, podcasts really are the new talk shows. Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson.

Yeah, Joe talks to everybody about everything. There’s no FCC to step in and say what you say and can’t say, so you really do get an unfiltered idea of what everybody thinks. So yeah, I mean, to me, that’s what’s also changed late-night.

I talk to young people — they don’t know CBS, NBC or ABC, Channel Four; they know Channel 682 or whatever. They just go to YouTube. Which is amazing. If you had predicted YouTube would be the most popular channel in the world 10 years ago, I think people would have said, “What are you talking about?” But it is now.

Read the whole thing. There are a pair of photos atop this section of the interview juxtaposing a young, Brylcreemed Carson in a suit and tie, and a bald stubble-faced Rogan. In the 1960s and pre-cable 1970s era of mass media, every American man wanted to be the suave yet accessible Johnny Carson or the fun and boisterous Ed McMahon. While Rogan can certainly get his guests to talk and talk, does any guy fancy himself a Rogan clone?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

UM, WHAT? Georgia Republicans scrap redistricting talks before special session begins.

Georgia lawmakers will no longer discuss redrawing the state’s Congressional maps when a special session begins Wednesday.

Speaker of the House Jon Burns sent a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp signed by the House Majority leadership regarding the decision.

“Changes to Georgia’s maps should take place only when members of the General Assembly and citizens have been given ample opportunity to gather the facts, provide input and engage in meaningful discussion,” Burns wrote.

At a news conference, Senate President Pro Tem Larry Walker III says he and Georgia Republican Senators agree with Burns on not moving forward with redrawing the maps at this time.

Because that’s exactly what Democrats would do in this situation?

What a wasted opportunity.

Elsewhere in Georgia: The Classic City Dodged a Socialist Bullet in Its Mayoral Runoff.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green

REQUIRED READING:

Key section:

These were organised, clan-linked operations that treated white girls as “easy meat”…as fair game precisely because they lacked the honour protections afforded girls inside the perpetrators’ own communities.

But the deeper crime…the one that stains the soul of the state…was not committed by the men who used taxis and takeaways as cover for their predation.

It was committed by the police officers who lost evidence bags and classified raped children as prostitutes…by the councillors and social workers who tippexed the word “Pakistani” out of case files…by the prosecutors who raised evidential thresholds when the suspects belonged to protected demographics…and by the national political class that treated the screams of working-class girls as less important than the maintenance of “community cohesion” and the avoidance of racism accusations.

Britain is in a bad place, but it will have to go through a worse one to get out of it.

And that’s only if Britons have the stomach for it.

Posted at 11:27 am by Stephen Green