August 12, 2026

SOMETIMES THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD IS A VERY WEIRD PLACE:  The Cat’s Choice.

Posted at 12:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

August 11, 2026

WARD CHURCHILL, CONTROVERSIAL FORMER UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO PROFESSOR, DIES AT 78.

Churchill was a longtime professor of ethnic studies at CU Boulder. He became a nationally controversial figure in higher education after an essay he wrote that referred to some of the victims of the 9/11 attacks as “little Eichmanns,” a characterization that prompted widespread condemnation and made Churchill a national figure.

The controversy soon expanded beyond his writings about the 9/11 attacks.

In 2005, the University of Colorado launched a formal investigation into allegations that Churchill had plagiarized portions of other people’s work, misused sources and fabricated material. University officials also investigated allegations that he had misrepresented his American Indian ancestry.

Churchill was the subject of many a blogpost at Instapundit back in the day if you wish to scroll through the archives.

Posted at 10:13 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THAT THING THAT NEVER HAPPENS HAPPENED AGAIN:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…:

I’m not exactly certain how the Zionists are to blame for Mamdani’s staff’s screwup, but they must be.

Posted at 6:39 pm by Stephen Green

COLOMBIA QUAKE DEATH TOLL TOPS 250 AS RESCUERS RACE TO FIND SURVIVORS:

Rescue crews on Tuesday dug through ​mountains of rubble in western Colombia, shouting for quiet so they could listen for survivors still trapped under the buildings that collapsed in a powerful earthquake ‌estimated to have killed at least 250 people.

The 7.4-magnitude quake, the most devastating to strike Colombia this century, tore through its coffee-growing heartland early on Monday, leaving apartment blocks, homes, schools and health centers cracked, leaning or flattened.

Separate reports from affected cities put the death toll at 254 on Tuesday morning, with 101 people killed in Pereira, deep in coffee country, and 95 in Cali, the country’s third-biggest city.

Absolutely horrific footage emerging from the quake, which Reuters lists as the strongest earthquake in Columbia in a century:

According to the Spanish Website Demócrata, there are no buildings in Columbia that were rated “to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 7.4…The true test of the regulations will come now, when technicians analyze which constructions were damaged, when they were built, under what regulation, what type of soil they had, and whether their structures were executed according to the approved designs. Only then can it be determined where seismic-resistant construction worked and where it failed.”

Posted at 5:42 pm by Ed Driscoll

“NORTH CAROLINA PASTOR” IS THE NEW “ITALIAN TEENAGER” WAS THE NEW “MARYLAND DAD”:

Posted at 5:37 pm by Stephen Green

SENATE GOP BLOWS IT, AGAIN: When Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) sent home all the members of the upper chamber of Congress, one important but obscure piece of business left undone is the Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act approved by the House in June, with 29 Democrats voting for it.

For reasons as yet unclear, none of the Senate’s most talented and energetic anti-waste and fraud warriors have introduced a companion measure to the House bill. In fact, the House bill hasn’t even been assigned to a committee for hearings and markup, the essential step in the progress to a full Senate floor vote. There’s more to this story, as I report today for The Washington Stand.

Posted at 5:33 pm by Mark Tapscott

HMM: New York’s ELA scores soared in 2025 and crashed in 2026. The numbers tell us it may be a mistake.

The results across NYC schools look very similar – schools consistently increased a lot in 2025, then decreased about the same amount in 2026.

Let me state the obvious: data does not usually look like this. If you’re a reader of this Substack, you see the releases from states as we put them out. Outside of the pandemic, proficiency rates typically move by a couple of percentage points (or less) in a given year. Increases of 4 or 5 percentage points are notable. The huge gains in 2025 here are implausible, and they seem even more so with the decline in 2026.

The fact is, this data looks like someone made- and then fixed- a mistake. So I got curious – could we understand that mistake better? The detailed 2026 data isn’t out yet. But the mistake seems like it was made in 2025. And we do have the technical manuals from 2025 and the detailed data on scores by school, group and district. (Shout out here to the API from our Education Data Center – you, too, can make these graphs in a few minutes).

I dug into the data. Here’s what I learned.

The full report gets pretty technical, but this conclusion stands out: “We should try to train ourselves to be more skeptical of results even if we wish they were true. I, as much as anyone, would love it if introducing phonics would increase proficiency rates by 12 percentage points in a single year. But that number isn’t realistic based on what we know about testing. And this should have been figured out, and fixed, last year.”

But as even the New York Times had to admit, in creating the Mississippi Miracle, teaching phonics certainly did help.

Posted at 5:22 pm by Stephen Green

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: How ‘Israeli’ Came to Mean ‘Jewish’ in the American Press.

New York Magazine’s new issue gives new meaning to the term “food Nazi.” The latest edition is dedicated to the proposition that Jews can never fully belong, that they are always visitors to society but never at home. The magazine uses food as the specific lens through which to view this blood-and-soil worldview.

The line getting the most attention is the magazine’s description of the State of Israel as “the land mass currently called Israel,” a declaration that New York Magazine doesn’t recognize the Jewish state. And that indeed is quite newsy. But the publication’s discussion of Jews in New York itself makes the story package not just geopolitical gobbledygook but a direct attack on Jews anywhere.

The conceit behind the story package is the emergence of a restaurant and cultural scene referred to as SWANA, which stands for Southwest Asia and North Africa. Jewish Israelis, while geographically part of SWANA, are not included, “given the political framework” of the term.

Much of the writing in this story package tries to dance around that particular point, but every so often it comes through: “Israelis,” in the context of this new progressive dogma, means “Jews.” An Arab who lives in “the land mass currently called Israel” is obviously not being excluded from this club. Indeed, the “political framework” of the category would elevate what the magazine terms a “Palestinian from the pre-1948 borders” as first among equals.

There is of course much irony in the fact that, before 1948, “Palestinian from the pre-1948 borders” would have meant Jews, especially during the portion of the Mandate when Arabs in the Holy Land still considered themselves part of a Syrian polity. But I digress.

John Podhoretz tweets, “This is the first issue of NEW YORK under James Murdoch’s ownership.”

According to Wikipedia, “In 2020, Murdoch and his wife each donated US$615,000 to the Biden campaign. In September 2024, he was one of 88 American corporate leaders who signed an open letter endorsing vice-president Kamala Harris for president.”

Exit question:

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT COULD PROBABLY BE HAD PRETTY CHEAP, CONSIDERING:

I’m not sure “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” applies here.

Posted at 5:06 pm by Stephen Green