June 18, 2026

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.

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

UPDATE: Obama Presidential Center subcontractors claim they’re owed millions and facing financial ruin ahead of grand opening.

Several [contractors] also described what they viewed as a wall of silence surrounding the project, with some declining to speak publicly or requesting anonymity because of confidentiality agreements or fears of professional retaliation.

The allegations emerge days after a Fox News Digital investigation reported that the Obama Foundation’s reserve fund — originally promoted as a $470 million financial safeguard intended to help protect taxpayers if the project encountered financial trouble — remains funded at roughly $1 million.

Standing outside the center on a gloomy Friday afternoon, Owen flipped through spreadsheets and financial records that he said documented millions of dollars in losses tied to the project.

Owen said the project stretched on for years longer than anticipated, forcing his company to absorb millions of dollars in labor and overhead costs as work demands changed and expanded.

He said the losses have drained the company’s reserves, created uncertainty for employees and could ultimately force layoffs. Owen also said the years-long effort to recover what he believes is money owed has taken a significant toll on his mental health.

“I haven’t had eight hours or six hours sleep in over a year,” Owen said. “I’m cooked emotionally. I feel like an aluminum can that’s been thrown in front of a steamroller. We’re crushed. And I have to fight for my company and for my people.”

You f****d up; you trusted Obama.

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

FREE SPEECH FRIGHTENS THEM, AND IT SHOULD:

Posted at 10:25 am by Stephen Green

WELL PUT: Thune Keeps Counting Votes Instead of Finding Them.

Reagan’s first political director, Ed Rollins, once explained how the White House got a needed vote out of a stubborn senator. “We just beat his brains out. We stood him up in front of an open grave and said he could jump in if he wanted to.”

Mister, we could use a man like Ed Rollins again.

Posted at 10:10 am by Stephen Green

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? California seeks to allow kids to ‘divorce’ their parents without cause.

Assembly Bill 1967 is moving through the California Legislature with barely a ripple of public attention. The bill, authored by LGBTQ rights activist-turned-Assemblymember Rick Zbur, would allow children of any age to initiate state dependency proceedings against their own parents. The parents will not even know this has happened until the die is already cast.

The bill allows any minor residing in any residential facility to file a legal application against their parents, without cause or evidence of harm.

Residential facilities include drug rehabilitation programs, boarding schools, wilderness therapy programs, faith-based residential programs, and runaway shelters It does not matter whether the facility is safe and an appropriate placement chosen by the parents. The child can petition the court to strip the parents of custodial authority and substitute county child welfare control or foster placement. The application need not be corroborated by any adult and need not be served on the parents. The child’s statement alone is sufficient to trigger a mandatory assessment of the parents’ home. This assessment can occur without the parents’ knowledge.

The investigation includes a social worker assessment of the parents’ home. The use of the word “assessment” instead of “investigation” is legally significant: an assessment carries no requirement of a physical home visit and can be completed entirely on the basis of the child’s statements alone, without the parents ever being contacted.

“The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police.” —George Orwell, 1984.

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM AIRSTRIP ONE:

Posted at 9:23 am by Stephen Green

THERE’S A LOT OF CHATTER ABOUT THE IRAN AGREEMENT, BUT I DON’T HAVE A LOT TO SAY. IT WILL FAIL. At least, Iran will break it, and Trump will start bombing again. I think Trump knows this. The Iranians probably do too. At best it’s Peace Of Amiens II and I doubt it will last that long.

Posted at 9:13 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Chips Away at the Dept. of Education, but Will It Be Enough? “The president and Secretary McMahon have do deal with bureaucratic realities while I’m dreaming of them taking a blowtorch to the whole department. Rather than deliver a knockout punch, they’ve been trying to weaken the Dept. of Education (ED) via a series of body blows in the form of offloading its duties elsewhere.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green

SUPER HEAVY LIFT: SpaceX valuation balloons to $2.6T, briefly passes Amazon.

The newly public company’s stock had already climbed 20% on Monday — its first full day of trading. Tuesday’s news that SpaceX was acquiring AI coding company Cursor, along with the start of options trading on SpaceX’s shares, sent the share price even higher, spiking its valuation to $2.9 trillion before it ultimately settled back down.

This is all despite the fact that SpaceX posted a $4.9 billion loss on $18.7 billion in revenue last year, compared to Amazon, which turned a $78 billion profit in 2025 on $717 billion in sales in 2025. SpaceX has recently added new revenue streams in the form of compute leasing deals with Anthropic and Google, though, and will absorb the revenue from Cursor when that deal closes in the third quarter.

The Anthropic and Google deals are non-binding, but investors don’t seem to mind either way. Elon Musk’s space-and-AI company had added roughly $1 trillion to its valuation since going public on Friday.

I managed to buy a single vanity share last week, and snagged a few more when SPCX closed down for the first time on Wednesday. Don’t know if I’ll win, lose, or draw, but it’s exciting finally owning even a minuscule piece of the world’s most exciting company.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

DREW HOLDEN: A COVID Autopsy, Part 5: ‘Kids Will Be Resilient with Lost Education.’

But perhaps no legacy media coverage failure about COVID was worse than the threat the virus posed to kids, and what steps the government should take in response. Remember the fight over school closures?

Amid the push to reopen after 15 Days to Slow the Spread, and for months (and even years) thereafter, legacy media fought tooth-and-nail against efforts to allow students to return to in-person learning. As parents were trying to figure out how to ensure their children’s education could continue amid the pandemic, legacy media outlets were preaching panic at every turn.

Take the New York Times. As late as August 2020, the outlet was publishing headlines asking “As the Coronavirus Comes to School, a Tough Choice: When to Close” – a when, mind you, not an if, even five months after lockdowns started. It was a perspective, published as straight news, seemingly encased in amber of what the paper said back in March. Under a section titled “A growing consensus,” NYT alleged, the increase in school closures was “reflecting a growing consensus that the benefits of closings outweigh the harms, especially since many of the harms can be mitigated,” highlighted by the fact that “a transition to e-learning is possible.”

The paper went further. Despite a paragraph of disclaimers about expert concerns that “the effect of school closings is extremely difficult to predict because of unknowns like how infectious children are and because of the difficulty in separating out the effect of school closures from other measures that states took to control the virus” and that, at the time, “testing was especially limited and spotty, raising questions about how well the number of confirmed cases reflected actual infections,” the Times’ title of the piece (just in time for the debate on whether to cancel a second year of in-person school) was definitive: “School Closures in the Spring Saved Lives, Study Asserts.” And it wasn’t enough for the Times that public schools locked their doors – “If Public Schools Are Closed, Should Private Schools Have to Follow?”

But it wasn’t just the Times – the message that it was too dangerous to allow students to go to school was everywhere.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll