March 5, 2026

YES: ‘MAGA civil war’ over Iran is another figment of media’s imagination.

ABC chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl had what he felt was a big scoop at the onset of American and Israeli strikes against Iran.

“I just heard back from Tucker Carlson,” Karl reported. “He’s just one person, [but] a prominent one in Trump’s movement. But this is a momentous and potentially defining or maybe redefining move for President Trump.

“He got into politics, in part, promising to end what he called forever wars. He was harshly critical of the war with Iraq. He claimed that he had always been against it. And now he finds himself starting what could be a major conflict with Iran.”

Was there a MAGA divide over President Donald Trump‘s decision to strike Iran? Were GOP legislators revolting against the commander in chief? If Congress were to vote on a War Powers Resolution, would it not pass, given this alleged divide?

Of course, Karl, who recently served as a White House Correspondents Association president, didn’t reach out to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) or House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), instead opting for Tucker Carlson.

Did you expect better from Jon Karl?

Or from Carlson, for that matter.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

NAME THAT PARTY: Jury awards $2M in trial over wrongful death lawsuit against political donor Ed Buck.

A jury awarded $2 million Wednesday in the civil trial of a wrongful death lawsuit against high-profile Southern California political donor Ed Buck.

The brief trial started Monday and resulted in a verdict Wednesday, when a jury of five men and three women unanimously found Buck liable for the drug overdose death of Gemmel Moore in 2017 and awarded his mother damages.

* * * * * * * * *

Moore and Timothy Dean died of methamphetamine overdoses 18 months apart — Moore in July 2017 and Dean in January 2019.

Buck denied the allegations, maintaining that 26-year-old Moore was a long-time drug user and friend, and that they used methamphetamine and other drugs together. Buck claims Moore willingly participated in the actions alleged by his mother.

Evidence in the criminal case showed Buck lured young Black men who were often experiencing homelessness, addiction, and/or poverty to his West Hollywood apartment for sexually charged so-called “party and play” sessions in which he would inject them with methamphetamine and drug them with sedatives, with and without their consent.

After less than a day of deliberations on July 27, 2021 — the four-year anniversary of Moore’s death — the federal jury in downtown Los Angeles found Buck guilty of all nine charged felony counts.

“Unexpectedly,” CTRL+F “Democrat” brings back zero results in yesterday’s NBC-LA story. But even NPR managed to include his party affiliation in their 2021 headline: Democratic Donor Ed Buck Is Convicted In Deaths Of 2 Men He Offered Drugs For Sex.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

Here is the advice from a doctor I interviewed for my book that readers said moved them:

My advice is ‘don’t settle, take your time to find the right person.’” “How do you know the right person?” I asked. “Do they give as much as they take?” he said. “This sounds so simple,” I thought, “but it isn’t.” In our society, men are expected give protection, affection, financial support,and a host of other things in a relationship, and women are told that they are enough as they are—they give too much already. This is a myth for the most part but one that many men have swallowed. If you want happiness in a relationship, ask yourself if she gives as much as she takes. If the answer is “yes,” you are a lucky guy. If the answer is “no,” think long and hard about whether this should be a permanent relationship.

Do you think this advice is accurate?

Posted at 12:23 pm by Helen Smith

CHECKING THE POLLS:

Evergreen:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM:

More:

I started running the numbers on this and it’s lining up too cleanly.

China imports about 11 million barrels of crude per day, with roughly 40-45% of that flowing through the Strait of Hormuz (mainly from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran).

Their strategic petroleum reserves are estimated by analysts at around 90-100 days of total consumption at current burn rates of ~14-15 million barrels/day including refined products.

Cut off from Hormuz and they’re staring down the barrel of empty tanks in roughly three months.

That’s not a sustainable position. Their only realistic play would be immediate, heavy domestic rationing, factories slowed, trucking curtailed, civilian fuel limits, the works. That would slam their economy and ripple hard through global supply chains.

Remind me again…

How long does a president have under the War Powers Resolution before he has to go to Congress for an extension on military actions?

Oh, right—90 days.

Nobody seems to think Epic Fury will last as long as 90 days, but nobody really knows, either.

Posted at 11:27 am by Stephen Green

ACTUALLY, PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE KNOWS EXACTLY WHO NEEDS TO HEAR THIS…:

…but the people who do need to hear it seem to be paid to not listen.

Posted at 10:56 am by Stephen Green

BLUE CITY BLUES: Starbucks leaving Seattle? Coffee giant to move corporate jobs to Nashville. “Starbucks will relocate a portion of its Seattle-based corporate workforce as it expands operations to Tennessee. According to the coffee giant, the move will affect roles tied to direct and indirect sourcing operations teams within Starbucks’ supply chain organization. Starbucks claimed that Seattle will remain its North America and Global Support headquarters, but said it will continue evaluating whether additional teams and roles should transition to Nashville over time.”

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

A REMINDER THAT EZRA KLEIN’S “JOURNOLIST” NEVER DIED; IT JUST MOVED TO SLACK:

Narratives don’t establish themselves, bub.

Posted at 10:25 am by Stephen Green

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: UCSF staffer allegedly threatens to ‘hunt’ down and ‘kill’ conservative activist.

A woman who appears to be a University of California at San Francisco employee was caught on video allegedly threatening to “hunt” down and “kill” a conservative activist who was protesting against cutting off the healthy body parts of gender-confused children.

Parents’ rights activist Beth Bourne told The College Fix she filed a police report after the Feb. 21 incident outside the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco.

Bourne also posted a video of the confrontation Monday on X. Several commenters identified the woman as Madeline Mann, an associate director at the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

The Post Millennial also identified the individual as Mann; it described her as a “transgender activist” who has a daughter who identifies as male.

Exit quote: “The email directed inquiries to institute Director of Program Administration Molly Belinski. She did not respond to an email from The Fix asking if Mann was the individual in the video and why her bio page is no longer on the website.”

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

THESE CCP SHILLS ARE NOT DIFFICULT TO SPOT AND DISMISS…:

…so it’s a safe bet the people parroting them are CCP shills, too.

Posted at 9:23 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Ultimate Theatre Kid Gets the Hook in Congress. “Nearly every image of Walz in our library looks like he’s performing in a Broadway musical. This man is the ultimate theatre kid — playacting as a serious, credible politician.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green

SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG, SWINGING… STICK:

Posted at 8:52 am by Stephen Green

BEN THOMPSON ON THE RIFT BETWEEN THE PENTAGON AND ANTHROPIC ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Anthropic and Alignment.

Why would the U.S. government want to kneecap one of its AI champions?

In fact, [Anthropic CEO Dario] Amodei already answered the question: if nuclear weapons were developed by a private company, and that private company sought to dictate terms to the U.S. military, the U.S. would absolutely be incentivized to destroy that company. The reason goes back to the question of international law, North Korea, and the rest:

International law is ultimately a function of power; might makes right.
There are some categories of capabilities — like nuclear weapons — that are sufficiently powerful to fundamentally affect the U.S.’s freedom of action; we can bomb Iran, but we can’t North Korea.

To the extent that AI is on the level of nuclear weapons — or beyond — is the extent that Amodei and Anthropic are building a power base that potentially rivals the U.S. military.

Anthropic talks a lot about alignment; this insistence on controlling the U.S. military, however, is fundamentally misaligned with reality.

Current AI models are obviously not yet so powerful that they rival the U.S. military; if that is the trajectory, however — and no one has been more vocal in arguing for that trajectory than Amodei — then it seems to me the choice facing the U.S. is actually quite binary:

Option 1 is that Anthropic accepts a subservient position relative to the U.S. government, and does not seek to retain ultimate decision-making power about how its models are used, instead leaving that to Congress and the President.

Option 2 is that the U.S. government either destroys Anthropic or removes Amodei.

Much more to chew on at the link. Fascinating piece.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

REASON TV: Wikipedia is in Trouble (Video).

Further thoughts here:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

WELL, YES:

But Democrats have no scruples.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

DATA REPUBLICAN: The Fall of the NGO-Administrative Complex.

The global order is no fan of Iran. Atlantic writer and former National Endowment for Democracy board member Anne Applebaum has consistently named Iran, alongside Russia and China, as one of the three greatest autocracies threatening the world. Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a speaker at the Council on Foreign Relations, drew an explicit parallel during the 2022 Mahsa Amini massacres, declaring, “Just as we stood together with the people of Ukraine during their revolution of dignity, the United States must continue standing with the people of Iran.”

One might think that these defenders of democracy would celebrate the removal of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a brutal fundamentalist religious totalitarian.

Instead, those same voices are now loudly condemning the airstrikes. Murphy’s reaction offered no sympathy for the thousands of Iranians killed by the regime—only outrage at Trump: “In America, we don’t allow one doddering, self-obsessed old man to waste our money on a dangerous, disastrous overseas war.” Similarly, Applebaum has criticized Operation Epic Fury’s supposed lack of strategic coherence, not the target.

What is louder than the condemnations of the establishment now is what they failed to do over the previous four decades. They never deployed the same aggressive democratization strategies toward Iran that they’ve applied across the Middle East and Africa. Instead, successive administrations released billions in frozen Iranian assets, negotiated the infamous Iran nuclear deal, and—as Politico’s 2017 Project Cassandra investigation documented—deliberately limited prosecution of Hezbollah drug trafficking networks operating inside the United States to protect those negotiations.

In short, those backing the so-called “rules-based liberal international order” actually wanted Ali Khamenei’s regime to remain in place. Actions speak louder than words. For an order that defines itself by the spread of democracy, this is a striking paradox.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll