May 15, 2026

CORN, POPPED: Israel Knows a Defamation Case Won’t Fly. That’s Not the Play.

Which brings us to the real mechanism: 28 U.S.C. § 1782.

Once an Israeli proceeding is in reasonable contemplation, an interested person can apply in the Southern District of New York (where the New York Times is headquartered) to compel evidence production from a U.S. entity for use in foreign litigation. A properly framed § 1782 application does not ask the court to adjudicate the case; it simply asks the court to order the Times to produce the factual basis for one published allegation.

The subpoena categories write themselves: documents identifying the source and evidentiary basis for the dog allegation; fact-checking notes and editorial review records; communications with cited human rights organizations about this specific claim; internal discussions of reliability or corroboration. The Times will obviously raise reporter’s privilege. That is expected. But the answer here is a measured response: Nobody is asking for every source on every story. The request is for the factual foundation for one allegation the Times has publicly called corroborated and extensively fact-checked and “deeply reported.” Either show the corroboration or explain why you cannot. Both answers are informative.

None of this is a technical defamation case, but the critics declaring the claim dead on arrival are focusing on the colloquial use of the word “defamation” expressed in a spokesperson’s tweet and missing the tree for the forest. The real question is whether there exists a narrow, disciplined legal theory that forces the Times to produce the evidentiary basis for one of the most inflammatory factual allegations it has ever published. And there is.

Clever.

Posted at 6:16 pm by Stephen Green

VERY INTERESTING:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Charlie Martin

IT’S HITLERS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Surprise, Trump Isn’t Hitler After All.

If you look at my X timeline, going all the way back to just after Trump’s win in 2024, you’ll see me behaving like Chicken Little. Every time I tweeted with some urgency that the sky was falling, I was always reassured by many who told me that things are different on the Right. They don’t all “fall in line” like the Left. It’s okay to disagree. The sky isn’t falling.

It’s just that the sky kept falling. It can mostly be boiled down to one word, or one country: Israel. All of the emotional tirades against Trump stem from that one country, including the Epstein Files, where many in the MAGA movement still think there is a pedo ring starring all of the powerful Jews who run this country. They’re just one document dump away from uncovering it all.

Trump has taken the biggest hit as influencers on the Right punish him over his alignment with Israel. Isn’t it ironic?

Who thought he’d be the guy turning his back on Israel? Well, the entire Left for the past ten years. They’ve been calling him Hitler. They’ve been selling the “Jews will not replace us” lie from Charlottesville.

And guess what? They never backtracked. Instead, they’re just using this moment, where the MAGA movement is being dismantled from within, to ride the wave to finally rid the country of their manufactured villain.

Well, the Southern Poverty “Law” Center allegedly paid a lot of money to make Charlottesville happen, and they’re entitled to see a profit on their investment. And boy, did they:

Read the whole thing; I wonder if Trump’s coming redemption arc will be something along the lines of this Hitler:

Or this one:

According to ChatGPT, the Dutch text reads:

“RICHARD NIXON, re-elected president of America by a large majority and chosen by TIME as Man of the Year, may one day go down in history as a Monster of the Century, comparable only to Adolf Hitler as the greatest war criminal of all time.”

Or he might go on to gather strange new respect from Timesmen Paul Krugman and Thomas Wicker, and leftist film critic Roger Ebert.

But I’m pretty old school; I prefer my fascists to be much more libertarian and small government oriented — like Calvin Coolidge.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: AI Might Make Campaign Ads Halfway Tolerable.

If there’s a person on the face of the planet who actually appreciates and enjoys political campaign ads, I’d like to meet them. On second thought, maybe I wouldn’t. We’ve all experienced those weeks of torture leading up to primary or general election battles — where you can’t escape the horror that is political advertising. It’s bad. It’s annoying. It’s grating. It’s irritating. And it’s seemingly endless.

But the rise of AI and social media has introduced a new wrinkle into things, and we’re seeing that play out in particular regarding the L.A. mayoral race. Now, many of the “ads” we’re seeing aren’t actually from the campaign(s). They’re from creative sorts, interested in the race, who have put their imaginations and AI to work and come up with some real bangers.

I happened upon this one last night and couldn’t help but marvel at its cleverness — and its swiftness. This one incorporates components from things that just happened on Wednesday! Watch and enjoy.

I don’t know how Pratt will actually do in the election (John Nolte sounds particularly glum), but his campaign and its supporters have jump-started a new form of political advertising that will be endlessly copied going forward:

UPDATE:

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS “TRUMP VINDICATED” THING SEEMS TO HAPPEN AN AWFUL LOT: Trump vindicated as OPEC faces collapse following UAE departure. “The price of gasoline is set to drop as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) appears poised to collapse, experts predict. OPEC has long kept crude oil prices higher than they would otherwise be. If this pans out, it will be a major victory for the Trump administration, which is resetting global energy markets.”

Exit question: What would we do without experts?

Posted at 4:54 pm by Stephen Green

OLD AND BUSTED: “Minnesota Nice.”

The New Hotness? “Didn’t have multiple Democrat colleagues yelling at me to ‘go f’ing shoot myself’ on my bingo card…”

Earlier this week, legislative leaders from both parties reached a final budget deal to conclude the 2026 legislative session. However, that deal did not include the gun control proposals that Democrats had pushed for all year.

On Thursday, Democrats spoke for hours on the House floor as they attempted to bring a major gun control bill up for a vote. Ultimately, the DFL’s effort to suspend House rules and vote on the gun control bill failed in a 67-67 party-line vote.

Following that vote, DFLers pledged to hold a sit-in on the House floor until the next floor session. The next floor session is not scheduled to start until Saturday, May 16 at noon.

After Thursday’s floor session wrapped up, an altercation broke out on the House floor involving GOP Rep. Elliott Engen and DFL Rep. Aisha Gomez. Video of that moment shows Gomez confronting Engen as shouting can be heard.

GOP Rep. Drew Roach posted a video of the altercation and said Gomez told “[Engen] to ‘go fucking kill himself.’” Engen reposted that video and said “Can confirm. Didn’t have multiple Democrat colleagues yelling at me to ‘go f’ing shoot myself’ on my bingo card…”

Shortly after that moment, the House GOP issued a statement which called on House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson to remove Gomez from her role as Tax Committee co-chair. The statement also called on Gov. Tim Walz to condemn Gomez’s behavior.

I’m sure no one in the Minnesota GOP is holding their breath, considering that this is Walz’s lieutenant governor a potential US senator, running to “Avenge Minnesota.”  “She wants to ‘avenge all that has been taken from us.’ So, who is ‘us’? And what supposedly has been taken from us?”

Last year’s assassinations of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her spouse, and the shooting of State Sen. John Hoffman and his spouse add to the tension in post-2020 Minnesota politics.

And don’t get Mrs. Walz started on how much she enjoys a whiff of the old ultraviolence herself: Tim Walz’s Wife Gwen Kept Windows Open During BLM Riots to ‘Smell the Burning Tires.’

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

NORMAL IS PRACTICALLY A FREAKSHOW IN TODAY’S LA:

Posted at 4:38 pm by Stephen Green

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE IRON EYES CODY, WARD CHURCHILL, AND FAUXCAHONTAS HAVE GONE BEFORE: Buffy Sainte-Marie Stripped of Honorary Degree Over Native American Ancestry Dispute.

Buffy Sainte-Marie — the Oscar-winning folk singer who claims to be an Indigenous woman of Cree descent — was recently stripped of an honorary degree over an ancestry dispute.

On Wednesday, May 13, the University of Toronto announced that it had rescinded Sainte-Marie’s honorary Doctor of Laws degree. She received the honor in 2019 for her “excellence in the arts, as a singer-songwriter, actress and visual artist.”

The decision, approved on May 13, came more than two years after the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired a documentary from The Fifth Estate alleging that Sainte-Marie lied about her Native American ancestry. In it, a birth certificate indicated that she was born in Massachusetts to Italian-American parents. Family members also confirmed this.

Flashback to a much more enlightened and tolerant 2023: Rachel Dolezal ahead of her time? The “Pretendian” wave in Academia. “Even eight years ago, I point out, Dolezal justified her posturing as a black woman — who wound up running a local NAACP chapter in Washington — because, as she told Matt Lauer, she ‘identifies as black.’ Was she just ahead of her time? If biology has nothing to do with sexual identity, can anyone argue that it has a role in ethnic identity? And if so, what does that do to the entire edifice of affirmative action in both admissions and faculty hiring, especially in Academia?”

Or as a wise Assistant to the Traveling Secretary of the New York Yankees once said:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: That Guy Is SO Going Back to Venezuela. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn why they call it blow, what not to do to your boss’s Subaru, and when to stop drinking on that flight to Cuba.”

Posted at 4:23 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN:

Posted at 4:07 pm by Stephen Green

SECRET SERVICE: One Loser Got Far Too Close…So What Happens When Four Pros Show Up? “Let’s revisit that same glittering ballroom. We’re back again with the same black-tie crowd of self-important media elites and administration heavyweights at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner 2.0 in D.C. with the same velvet-rope security theater outside.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

REDISTRICTING DIDN’T LEAVE HIM MUCH CHOICE:

You’re in MAGA country now, Congressman.

Posted at 3:36 pm by Stephen Green

LARRY KUDLOW: Mr. Xi Can Saber-Rattle, But Mr. Trump Has the Goods

In recent weeks he has watched America end his influence in Venezuela, the Panama Canal, soon it will be Cuba, and of course Iran. I mean Communist China’s buying 90 percent of Iran’s oil and gas exports.

But with Mr. Trump’s air-tight blockade of Iranian ports, China is starving for energy. They might make a deal with us, but that too remains to be seen if it comes under Treasury Man Scott Bessent’s investment board idea.

Meanwhile Mr. Trump has elbowed China out of the Middle East and out of the Western Hemisphere.

And on top of all that, China’s economy has never recovered from the real estate property crash of a couple years ago.

They used to post GDP growth rates of 15 percent or more. Now that’s down to 5 percent or even less, which is essentially for them a recession.

And if they have bad economic statistics cropping up, they have decided not to publish them at all.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

THE GOP SHOULD PROBABLY GO AHEAD AND DO IT BEFORE THE DEMS DO, BUT IT WON’T.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Glenn Reynolds