June 27, 2026

RECENT EVENTS HAVE MADE ME DOUBT THE ENTIRE WATERGATE STORY:

(Classical reference in headline.)

 

 

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

EUROS NEED A GROUP OF PRANKSTERS WHO GO AROUND SABOTAGING THE AIR CONDITIONING IN HIGH-LEVEL GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS AND IN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS’ HOMES:

Posted at 9:02 am by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S BEEN A NICE PREAMBLE FOR AMERICA’S 250th ANNIVERSARY: World Cup Tourists See What Too Many Americans Have Forgotten.

Americans are routinely told that our nation is hopelessly divided, irredeemably flawed and perhaps even in terminal decline. Public polling reflects this pervasive frustration, pessimism and anomie. If someone halfway around the world only followed the polls, he might be forgiven for believing our republic is all but over.

But something remarkable is happening during the 2026 World Cup, which is jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Fans from all across the world have arrived in America — and they are absolutely loving it. We too often take our way of life for granted, but many soccer tourists now here cannot stop marveling at what they see.

The unlikely symbol of this phenomenon is “Freddy,” a young German soccer fan who has become an internet sensation while documenting his first road trip across the United States. Freddy’s viral social media posts have attracted tens of millions of impressions because they reflect something both rare and refreshing: genuine, boy-like wonder. As he has crisscrossed the American South, Freddy has gushed at everything from Waffle House and Taco Bell to Buc-ee’s, Bass Pro Shops, sprawling football stadiums and the impressive size of regular, middle-class American homes. Americans, accustomed to taking all these things for granted, have watched with glee as a slack-jawed foreign visitor experiences it all for the first time.

But Freddy the German is hardly alone.

It’s been a fun month, hasn’t it?

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll

BLUE POLITICS IN TENNESSEE GETTING CRAZIER: Is Hamilton County Slipping From Red To Blue Or Just From Sane To Unhinged?

As noted yesterday, the Democrat candidate for county mayor in Hamilton County made threats against school board members as part of his unhinged promotion of the LGBTQ in Hamilton County schools.

The Democrat standard bearer acknowledged a “poor choice of words” in calling for a school board members to be lynched and called the controversy over his threats “silly.”

Today, both the Chattanooga Times and Times Free Press published editorials with one calling outMark Herndon’s actions as beyond “silly” and the much more liberal Times simply saying he made a “mistake,” and somehow justified it by promoting the paper’s LGBTQ agenda.

The role of “mainstream” media in justifying Democrats’ psychosis needs to be called out.

Meanwhile, up the road in Knoxville: Knox County mayor candidate Beau Hawk marched in Venezuela for Nicolas Maduro.

Posted at 8:35 am by Glenn Reynolds

SACRIFICING HUMAN LIVES TO THEIR RELIGION:

Posted at 8:14 am by Glenn Reynolds

ROD DREHER: The Fascist Film That Plays As Prophecy.

Before I go further, I want you to understand clearly: I am not endorsing this film’s message, any more than Prof. Betz is endorsing civil war. Rather, I am telling you that “Citizen Vigilante,” written and directed by the German filmmaker Uwe Boll, is a sign of the times. Maybe the most potent sign yet. A move by the German authorities to ban it will only make it more popular — and will also reveal the extent of the judgment they have brought on themselves. (I expect other European governments will follow suit on the ban attempt, and that they will fail as well.)

I have been accused by well-meaning people — people who understand the problem — of somehow encouraging civil unrest by talking about it. They’re wrong. In fact, the outright refusal of those in power to talk about it, and to suppress and punish people who are trying, however crudely, to face the truth, makes propaganda works like this inevitable. And it also makes the fascist fantasy of the film likely to come true.

In fact, let me make this clear: “Citizen Vigilante” is a fascist film, in the sense that it valorizes lawless violence in service of restoring social order and an ideal of justice. It shows exactly why an exasperated people turn to fascism as a solution to a problem liberal democratic governments have proven unwilling or unable to solve.

If you don’t understand that, you will not understand the malign power of this film. Nor will you get why it will become an underground smash, no matter what the authorities do. “Citizen Vigilante” is also a fulfillment of Ross Douthat’s famous prophecy from about twenty years ago, that went something like this: “If you don’t like the Religious Right, just wait till you see the Post-Religious Right.”

Let’s begin.

Read the whole thing.

Roger Ebert used the F-word to describe Charles Bronson and Michael Winner’s first Death Wish movie:

The critic didn’t really care for Michael Winner’s 1974 revenge thriller, Death Wish, from a narrative perspective, at least. Starring Charles Bronson in all of his granite-faced glory as a vengeful family man exacting retribution on the people who tore his family apart, it came under heavy fire for celebrating vigilantism.

Ebert awarded the film a surprising three stars out of four, prefaced with the warning that it was a “quasi-fascist advertisement for urban vigilantes, done up in a slick and exciting action movie.” He appreciated the filmmaking and Bronson’s performance, though, despite labelling it as “propaganda for private gun ownership and a call to vigilante justice.”

Pauline Kael similarly dropped an F-bomb on Clint Eastwood’s first outing as Dirty Harry:

There is one virtuoso plot development: the maniac arranges to get him self beaten to a garish pulp, so that he can scream police brutality and pin the blame on Callahan. The San Francisco police, with their unenviable record of free-style use of the billy, should contribute to a memorial plaque for “Dirty Harry.”

On the way out, a pink-cheeked little girl was saying “That was a good picture” to her father. Of course; the dragon had been slain. “Dirty Harry” is obviously just a genre movie, but this action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced. If crime were caused by super-evil dragons, there would be no Miranda, no Escobedo; we could all be licensed to kill, like Dirty Harry. But since crime is caused by deprivation, misery, psychopathology, and social injustice, “Dirty Harry” is a deeply immoral movie.

San Francisco was just beginning its slow descent into Detroit by the Bay in 1972; New York was an urban hellscape throughout the 1970s and ’80s. That changed when Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton’s broken windows policing proved that it was possible to rescue a city from its descent into Hell. But like Ebert and Kael before them, the EU grandees who are raging over Elon Musk making Citizen Vigilante temporarily viewable in Europe don’t believe that everyday citizens deserve to walk the streets in safety, and are furious at anyone who spotlights the disasters they’ve created.

As Glenn has written, “the police aren’t there to protect society from criminals. They’re there to protect criminals from society.” But only when they’re allowed to do their jobs. When they aren’t, and enough people notice, Hollywood responds with Dirty Harry, Death Wish, and now Citizen Vigilante. 

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Since Ed is quoting me above, there’s also this:, “You don’t get Hitler because of Hitler — there are always potential Hitlers hanging around. You get Hitler because of Weimar, and you get Weimar because the people in charge of maintaining liberal democracy are too weak and corrupt to do the job.”

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

STILL WAITING:  The Supreme Court will soon be deciding a couple of cases involving whether a state can exclude “transgender women” from women’s sports teams. You won’t be shocked to know that I think they can.

I’ll be interested to see whether any of the Justices agree with Pete Kirsanow’s and my interpretation of Title IX (which focused on bathrooms, locker rooms and showers).  Dan Morenoff and Joe Bingham at the American Civil Rights Project later adapted our argument to the athletic context and submitted it to the Court in the pending cases as an amicus brief.  Our argument is different from the Trump Administration’s.  It starts from the assumption that Bostock was correctly decided and is designed to appeal to Justice Gorsuch’s approach to transgender questions.  (FWIW, regardless of whether Bostock was decided correctly, I believe ours is the correct interpretation of Title IX on this point. It’s basically a logic puzzle.)

Quite apart from my little argument, this is one of those cases I’m willing to get up early in the morning for if there’s a decent chance the decision will come down that day.  We’re getting late enough in the Court’s calendar that it will need to come down soon.  I’m going to start getting up at 5:30 am Pacific on “opinion days” so I can have coffee and be ready in case the decision is announced.

Posted at 7:55 am by Gail Heriot

AMERICANS PAYING FOR UNAMERICANS:

Posted at 7:35 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

June 26, 2026

OPEN THREAD: You oughta know how all the pros play the game.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SPELLING CHECK:

Posted at 7:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds