January 11, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THREAD:

Posted at 6:53 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BREAKING: Just the News is reporting that “Iran security forces have killed at least 490 people as opposition protests continue.”

“A crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed at least 538 people and even more are feared dead, activists said Sunday, while Tehran warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.”

Sadly, I fear this will get worse before it gets better.

Posted at 6:52 pm by Charles Glasser

TRIGGERNOMETRY INTERVIEWS GREG GUTFELD (Video):

Exit quote: “For a long time, we were—using the Dean Wormer analogy from Animal House—we were Dean Wormer, the evil head of the college, and the left was Animal House. I always felt my role was to somehow flip that. And that’s what you’re seeing now: the scolds, the humorless people—the Karens of the world—are on the left. The people on the right are the ones having fun, being a bit reckless here and there, but that’s part of free speech. We’re sharing the risk. We’re not scared anymore. And I think that’s really the answer to your question.”

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DATA REPUBLICAN: Minnesota as a Systems Failure: How NGOs process dissent until reality no longer matters.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE PROBLEM ISN’T ICE. IT’S ICE WATCH:

Now, consider why  [Renee Nicole Good] was there. As Steven Vago, Chris Nesi and Natalie O’Neill of the New York Post reported, Good “was part of a group of activists who worked to ‘document and resist’ the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota . . . Good became involved in ‘ICE Watch’ — a loose coalition of activists dedicated to disrupting ICE raids in the sanctuary city . . . Coalitions similar to ICE Watch have cropped up all over the country — with activists using phone apps, whistles and car horns to warn neighborhoods when ICE shows up. ICE Watch and adjacent groups can also turn confrontational — with numerous instances of activists ramming agents with their cars in the past.”

As the Post report notes, “ICE agents have faced an unprecedented spike in car attacks, surging by some 3,200 percent over the last year, shocking data released by the Department of Homeland Security revealed to The Post.”

Our own Haley Strack has more in depth-reporting on ICE Watch:

ICE Watch chapters, which have cropped up in communities across the country in recent years, train activists to monitor ICE activity using purpose-built apps and alert allies who have been trained to flood an operation area and interfere with arrests being made. An Instagram account identified as “MN Ice Watch” instructs to report the locations and appearances of ICE agents. The account has posted photos across Minneapolis of law-enforcement agents, vehicle license plate numbers, and ICE officers’ faces; the account generates information via anonymous reports and submissions from local activists.

On a tab titled “Education,” the account promotes information about how to “de-arrest” individuals who have been arrested by law-enforcement by “physically removing an arrestee from a law enforcement officer’s grips, opening the door of a car or pressuring law enforcement officers to release an arrestee.” The “de-arrest primer” goes on to describe the benefits of blocking police vehicles. “If you don’t have a crowd asserting pressure there may be some interference charges that come with blocking a police vehicle that may be more easily handed down for only one or two people blocking a police vehicle, but in many cases these are misdemeanor offenses and catch and release,” the primer notes.

Read the whole thing; this is far beyond simply engaging in protest speech to bring attention to a political controversy or an injustice. It’s a campaign that aims at two ends, neither of which is mutually exclusive: thwarting the enforcement of laws passed by Congress, and/or provoking conflict and confrontation with armed federal agents in the hope of discrediting the enforcement of those laws. And ICE Watch chapters and similar organizations are doing this sort of thing all across the country. Good’s death is the inevitable, and to some extent intended, outcome of this style of direct action, which is designed to create headline-grabbing conflict and drama.

NRO’s Jeffrey Blehar compares “Ice Watch” and their ilk to the libertarian-leaning “sovereign citizen” movement:

Tweet continues:

They remind me of nobody so much as “sovereign citizen” types. (Their arguments are of that caliber.) The problem is there are exponentially more of them.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, the YouTube algorithm offered me up police bodycam videos dealing with traffic stops where the drivers plays the “sovereign citizen” card assembled by Sgt. Christopher Curtis, a Marine and former member of the Las Vegas PD. These are people who believe if they just utter the correct magic phrases, including “I’m not driving, I’m travelling,” and “I am a sovereign citizen,” they can get out of a traffic stop, which they think works much the same way that Obi-Wan Kenobi can magically get past the stormtroopers patrolling Mos Eisley spaceport, by waving his hand while telling them “these are not the droids you’re looking for.”

Unlike Obi-Wan, these efforts inevitably end in disaster:

But while the sovereign citizen crowd think that magic words – and magic thinking — can allow them to avoid a speeding ticket, that’s very, very different from actively interfering with law enforcement:

The left have decided they get to have the heckler’s veto in America, which one way or another can’t end well:

Tweet continues, “where luxury beliefs like theirs are tolerated unlike in actual communist countries.”

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

PERSPECTIVE:

Stalin’s Red Army required just 820 days from the end of the Battle of Stalingrad to capture Berlin — a distance of about 1,380 miles, fighting the entire way.

In the 1,418 days since Russia’s the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, their forces hold nothing further than 25-50 miles from the territories captured in 2014.

Winning? Losing? I don’t know. But I’m damn sure that 1,418 days of this is a pointless, stupid waste.

Posted at 5:19 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S NOT LONG NOW, STAY TUNED:

Posted at 3:44 pm by Glenn Reynolds

I HOPE IT BREAKS THEM IN MULTIPLE WAYS:

But it’s important to remember that, in Ben Rhodes’ words, they literally know nothing.

Posted at 2:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds

“TRUSTING KHOMEINI:” 1979 NYT article praising former Supreme Leader surfaces amid Iran protests.

Published days after Khomeini’s return from exile, the article suggested that fears of a theocratic dictatorship were overstated. It argued that Khomeini would act primarily as a moral guide rather than a ruler, that political pluralism would persist, and that his close associates included moderates with records of concern for human rights.

At the time, Iran’s post-revolutionary structure was unsettled. The Shah had fled, institutions were in flux, and many observers believed the broad coalition that overthrew the monarchy would prevent any single faction from monopolising power.

Who wrote it and how did he later reassess it?

The article was written by Richard Falk, then a professor at Princeton University who had met Khomeini shortly before the revolution’s victory. Falk wrote amid widespread Western reassessment of support for the Shah, whose rule was criticised for repression and dependence on US backing.

In later reflections, Falk acknowledged that his optimism did not align with how events unfolded. He has said the New York Times headline was not his choice and that the speed with which clerical authority consolidated power was underestimated. In hindsight, he described Khomeini as a revolutionary figure with a rigid, uncompromising vision rather than a symbolic religious guide, conceding that expectations of pluralism proved misplaced.

Forget “turtles all the way down.” Given their early praise of Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and Khomeini, the Gray Lady is Walter Durantys all the way down.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll