April 21, 2026

AID AND COMFORT? YOU MAKE THE CALL:

UPDATE (Charlie): Regular readers know I’m suspicious of most cries of “treason” for all the reasons stated in Federalist 43 and various SCOTUS rulings. But then there’s ex Parte Bellmon (1807): “To constitute that specific crime [of treason] war must be actually levied against the United States.”

I think the current unpleasantness makes treason a colorable claim.

UPDATE (From Ed): In 2023, the local Fox affiliated reported “Murphy pushes back against Senate Republican resolution that targeted LGTBQ+ kids.” Today, he’s rooting for the side that hangs gay people from construction cranes. That’s one serious case of TDS running amok.

Also apparently Murphy approved:

MORE (From Ed): Predictably, Murphy falls back on the “botched joke” get out of jail free card:

Posted at 11:50 am by Stephen Green

OBAMA MADE EVERYTHING WORSE. EVERYTHING:

Posted at 11:25 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE (IT BACK): ‘Killing the idea of a Palestinian state’: West Bank settlement of Sa-Nur reestablished.

Cabinet ministers, members of Knesset, local politicians, and hundreds of settler activists celebrated the reestablishment and repopulation of the settlement of Sa-Nur in the northern West Bank on Sunday, nearly 21 years after it was evacuated under the Disengagement Plan.

Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan, who was one of the residents evacuated from Sa-Nur in 2005, was one of the 16 families who took up residence anew in the settlement on Sunday.

Speaking at the ceremony, Defense Minister Israel Katz repeated previous promises that the government is working on legalizing 140 illegally established farming outposts around the West Bank.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described the reestablishment of Sa-Nur as a “national holiday” and a “historic correction” to the “sinful expulsion from northern Samaria,” in reference to the four settlements in the northern West Bank, including Sa-Nur, that were evacuated under the Disengagement, which also saw Israel dismantle all its settlements in Gaza and pull out of the Strip.

“On this moving day, we are honored to make a historic correction to the sinful expulsion from northern Samaria,” said Smotrich. “We are abolishing the disgrace of expulsion, killing the idea of ​​the Palestinian state, and returning to the settlement of Sa-Nur. This is a day of celebration for the settlement movement and a national holiday for the State of Israel.”

The Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank rejected statehood in favor of terrorism, so this is what they get.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Misunderstanding Mr. Spock.

In the wake of the cancellation of yet another ridiculous “Star Trek” property, this time the hilariously cringe-inducing “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” sane audiences are once again asking the question “why can’t anyone get ‘Star Trek’ right?” The answer may be as simple as this… it’s because the studio’s leadership, as well as the creatives so far tasked with bringing new “Star Trek” stories to life, do not understand what “Star Trek” is, they only know what they wish it was.

These days, Hollywood creatives seem to want to write overtly about their own personal politics more than they want to tell great stories. In the Trump era many of Hollywood’s biggest writers, directors and actors believe deeply that the most important thing they can do with the positions in Hollywood to which they have ascended is to use their art to advocate for Progressive policies. It is the Great Cause which has finally brought meaning to their lives.

The problem is that this approach creates terrible drama every time it’s tried… a truth to which Hollywood has remained uniquely allergic over the last twenty years, in part because they believe “Star Trek” is an exception to this iron rule of story. To the modern Hollywood Progressive, the original “Star Trek” series was one which successfully combined exciting sci-fi adventure stories with constant Progressive political agitation. This is a tragic misunderstanding, but one in which Progressives believe so deeply, they have convinced themselves not only that “Star Trek” can continue to agitate for their preferred political outcomes while succeeding as a piece of popular entertainment, but that it must, because Progressive politics is built into the DNA of the “Star Trek” universe and you cannot have one without the other.

The original Star Trek was JFK’s muscular liberalism projected into space.  The young JFK became the young Captain James T. Kirk. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” became “The Final Frontier.” Trek was gunboat diplomacy, in space. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, his best writer-producer both served in WWII; Roddenberry would go on to become a Los Angeles policeman. Coon created Star Trek’s “United Federation of Planets” as the intergalactic equivalent of the United States of America.

As James Lileks wrote in 2007 in a piece titled, “A Conservative Trek,” “You could say [Capt. Kirk] did his part for God and Country, but of course Trek believed in neither:”

Nevertheless, the best Trek was conservative: it was rooted in the unchanging nature of man, be they hooting hominids on the plains of Earth throwing rocks at prey, or civilized spacefarers Money, power, lust, war: These were the constants, and Star Trek knew they’d follow us to infinity and beyond. At best we could find enlightened, savvy ways to avoid the pointless fights. But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive.

Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in “A Taste of Armageddon.” He used it as a threat, and didn’t carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare. But he would have done it if he had to, and not just for the reputation you get back home at the Officer’s Club. Not for Kirk the niceties of diplomacy: If he had to violate a treaty, he’d do it. If he had to save a civilization from the lifeless machinations of an ancient operating system, he’d harangue its computer until it smoked and crashed. In “The Arena,” Kirk didn’t win the battle against a rubber-suit Gorn because they hammered out a six-point Roadmap to Peace. Granted, he got the thumbs-up from the League of Judgmental Effeminate Aliens because he didn’t cave in the Gorn’s head with a stone. But prior to that, he nailed him in the chest with an improvised cannon that shot diamonds. In a cannon-free zone, no less.

All of which is a reminder of how closer to the center did the Kennedy era hug before his assassination, Vietnam, Nixon, and eventually an obsession with identity politics drove Hollywood Democrats completely insane.

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

WELL, GOOD:

Posted at 10:23 am by Stephen Green

SCRATCH A DEM, FIND AN AUTHORITARIAN DEMAGOGUE:

Posted at 9:21 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Tough Luck, Haters — The Glorious Warthog Gets Another Reprieve. “The A-10 has been a fixture in the Tucson sky since the mid-1970s. Even I was young then. When they take off from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base they fly right over my neighborhood. I get a great view of them when they are landing too, and could sit outside and watch them all day.”

Posted at 9:06 am by Stephen Green

MORE ON KASH PATEL’S DEFAMATION LAWSUIT:

Well, if anyone would know…

Posted at 8:50 am by Stephen Green

BY DESIGN: How Much Will That College Cost You? Good Luck Figuring it Out.

Financial aid offer letters are supposed to tell families how much they will have to pay for college, which can be the deciding factor in where—or even whether—students go to college. But too often, the letters leave out important information and use terms that make it confusing to figure out the final cost.

Some student advocates say the letters are downright deceptive. Others believe the lack of consistent language causes confusion; each college has its own format with its own vocabulary. This can make it difficult to answer the critical question: How much will this cost me?

For over a decade, college access groups have been lobbying for a bill in Congress that would require all colleges to use the same, clearly labeled, standard form—kind of like nutrition labels on food—so families could accurately compare offers. But college associations and others have worked to block it.

If kids had a better idea of what a degree costs, they’d have a better idea if it was worthwhile.

Posted at 8:35 am by Stephen Green

MALICE:

More:

They sent off the letter to The Atlantic, warning of impending litigation if they went forward, and this appeared to at least generate some changes. At The Daily Beast, they felt they had another “gotcha” moment, revealing a lack of cerebral processing heft when they breathlessly reported:

“Kash Patel’s legal team has revealed more allegations were leveled against him than were published in a bombshell report by The Atlantic—and said what they were. That means that the letter, which came from a personal attorney for Patel rather than from the FBI’s own counsel, effectively put what it describes as false and defamatory statements into public circulation.”

Allow me to help you folks out here. You see, after the lawyer contacted them with this letter, it is clear that Fitzpatrick, and/or her editors, pulled some items from the piece out of fear of further litigation. This was not a case of mistakenly exposing something; they were being transparent in showing the flawed reporting taking place.

Or as someone replied on X: “Gonna be bigger than Gawker.”

Stay tuned…

Posted at 8:19 am by Stephen Green