September 28, 2026

VICTORIA TAFT: The Pressure on Lindsay Clancy Holdout Juror Is About to Go Nuclear. “Besides being left in shock over Reddington’s stunning move to ask the judge to investigate the juror who has been in hiding since the death threats began following Clancy’s mistrial, he wants juror Michael Desronvil to turn over his phone for technical exploitation.”

“Conform or else,” they explained.

Posted at 4:19 pm by Stephen Green

SAD: Teach for America veered left and lost its way: Can it refocus on achievement?

Teach for America, founded 35 years ago, “lost its way” completely “in the last 8-10 years,” tweets Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion. “For years TFA brought smart motivated people into schools and focused them on student achievement in areas of high need. [T]hey traded that noble work for a set of political objectives that made corps members feel virtuous at the expense of the very students they claimed to serve … It’s been a long time since they cared more about student achievement than say trying to ‘teach young people to interrogate systems of power’.”

Teach for America produced achievement gains for students, and a huge group of alumni who’ve shaped education reform, writes Dale Chu, a former TFA teacher and now an education consultant. But he thinks Lemov, “hardly a TFA hater,” is right.

When Chu joined the corps in 1997, Teach For America focused on teaching, not politics, he writes. “Equity” meant holding “all students to high expectations, especially those living in marginalized communities.”

Applications for TFA slots peaked in 2013, then began a long slide as mission creep set in, he writes. The size of the teaching corps declined. And, Chu writes, TFA’s “public messaging began weighing in more directly on policing, structural racism, gender, and identity.”

Went Woke, going broke.

See also Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

BY THE NUMBERS:

“Over the past weeks, the key development has been the squeeze on Saudi exports. Originally, the Saudis recovered exports back in March by redirecting crude loadings away from the Arabian Gulf (also known as Persian Gulf :-). That meant exports somewhere between 30-40% below the January baseline. But it worked. Aramco exported 4.5mbpd of crude and 700kbpd of products in June through the Red Sea. Not bad.”

Posted at 3:32 pm by Stephen Green

UM…: Your SEO Guy Should Probably Not Be Fabricating Federal Court Orders. “The SEC inspector general says the largely overseas reputation-management company fabricated a U.S. District Court order and submitted it to an internet search engine in an effort to get information about the settlement removed from search results.”

Posted at 3:17 pm by Stephen Green

GOTHAM CITY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

STOP VOTING FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE YOU II:

Posted at 2:29 pm by Stephen Green

ROD STEWART, 81, CONFIRMS FINAL TOUR AFTER HEART PROCEDURE AND HEALTH SCARES:

Rod Stewart is ready for one final encore.

The rock legend announced “The Final Encore Tour” Monday, revealing that next year will mark his last-ever tour after facing a series of health issues.

“Well, here we go… one last time!” Stewart wrote on Instagram. “Come and see me on my The Final Encore Tour for one more round of rock ’n’ roll. I’m really looking forward to it.”

Stewart opened up about his decision to make the tour his last in an emotional video message.

“Ladies and gentlemen, after much deliberation and sadness, I have to announce next year will be my last tour ever, ever, ever,” he told fans.

“I’m not retiring, but this will be the last rock and roll tour,” he clarified.

“I wanna thank you for everything you’ve given me, and hopefully I’ve given you something in return,” Stewart said before singing, “Please come out and see me on the tour. It’s gonna be great!”

In 2021, Damon Linker wrote: What Rock Fans Don’t Want to Admit.

The recent death of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts at the age of 80 is just the latest rude reminder of what all of us know in our bones but nonetheless choose to ignore most days: The classic rock era is nearly dead and buried — and so are its greatest icons.

I wrote about this two years ago, and, inevitably, things are looking even bleaker now. Bob Dylan is 80. Paul McCartney and Paul Simon are 79. And not far behind them are a host of rock stars well into their 70s: Brian Wilson, Carole King, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Ray Davies, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Debbie Harry, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Bryan Ferry, Elton John, and Don Henley. James Taylor and Jackson Browne just completed a tour together; the former is 73, the latter 72. The baby of the bunch, Bruce Springsteen, currently wrapping up another residency on Broadway, turns 72 next month.

Over the next decade, most of these superstars are going to die, and the remaining holdouts soon after. On one level, this will be a terrible loss. These are people we care about deeply, who write and perform music that means the world to us.

But if we’re honest, we also have to admit that the loss is largely a function of nostalgia, of feelings attached to sounds and sights from long ago. Yes, many of these legends still take to the road to play live. Some produce new music from time to time. But none of these artists — not one — is doing work to rival the quality of what they produced at their peak. And in every case, that high point was decades ago.

And after they’re gone, sadly comes what Kyle Smith dubbed in 2019, The Great Forgetting:

As the Who suit up for what I suppose will be their final tour (“Who’s Left”?), Chuck Klosterman points out in his book But What if We’re Wrong? that whole forms die out. He compares rock to 19th-century marching music: nothing left of the latter except John Philip Sousa. That’s it. And Sousa himself is barely remembered. In 100 years rock might be gone too, Klosterman guesses. Maybe we’ll remember one rock act. Who will it be? Maybe none of the obvious answers. It certainly wasn’t obvious at the time of Fitzgerald’s death that The Great Gatsby would be the best-remembered novel he or anyone else wrote in the first half of the 20th century. As for the novels of the second half of the 20th century, the clock is ticking on them. The Catcher in the Rye is moribund. Generation X was the last to revere that book. Teaching it to young people today would get you ridiculed. To Kill a Mockingbird? It had a good run but it’s now being labeled a “white savior” story by the grandchildren of those who revered it. Soon schools and teachers will be shunning it.

To Kill a Mockingbird? Atticus Finch is literature’s most celebrated rape apologist!

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

POSITIVELY SOVIETESQUE: China broadens travel curbs to encompass family of top AI talent.

That marks a broadening of existing curbs on the freedom of movement of China’s most influential tech talent — a category that encompasses entrepreneurs, researchers and executives. While not an outright ban on travel, the new requirement is likely to exert a further chilling effect on a tech sector already facing unprecedented curbs. China has restricted foreign travel for top AI professionals in private firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and DeepSeek since earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported in May, reflecting Beijing’s determination to safeguard its technology as it makes big strides in AI and chipmaking.

It’s unclear whether all those people’s families need to follow the new strictures, the people said. China is also separately implementing rules, which became effective Sept 15, for enforcing exit bans in cases ranging from criminal investigations to potential violations of the country’s industrial and technological security.

Beijing’s plan is to add relevant individuals to the list as time goes by, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing a sensitive issue. Government departments have already notified several people of the need to clear family travel, two of the people said.

But why would anyone ever want to leave the workers’ paradise?

UPDATE (Charlie): The original story seems to have disappeared. Here’s a link to a similar report.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

HOW IT STARTED: MSNBC Goes Full Racist, Attacking Sydney Sweeney Ad Campaign.

Remember how, in recent years, nearly every high-profile “racist incident” that dominated the headlines eventually turned out to be a false flag or outright hoax? Well, nothing’s changed. The outrage-obsessed left has apparently run out of real things to be angry about, so now they’re inventing reasons to keep the mob frothing.

Case in point: the latest American Eagle ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney. According to some perpetually offended leftists, it’s somehow Nazi propaganda*. Yes, really.

 

—Matt Margolis, PJ Media.com, July 29th, 2025.

How it’s going: Sydney Sweeney converting to Judaism? Rosh Hashanah outing fuels rumors.

Sydney Sweeney is at the center of fresh conversion rumors after reportedly attending Rosh Hashanah services with boyfriend Scooter Braun, as their relationship grows increasingly serious.

Celebrity gossip account Deuxmoi reported that the 29-year-old “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus” star is considering converting to Judaism. The speculation intensified after she was reportedly spotted attending synagogue with Braun, 45, during the Jewish High Holidays.

—Ynet, today.

Like Trump, Worst. Nazi. Ever.

* I’m so old, I can remember the last days of Obama’s second term, when they media was seeing the Reich Stuff coded into Taylor Swift’s image.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

OR THE LAST TWO YEARS OF TRUMP 45 FOR THAT MATTER:

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll