June 20, 2026

June 19, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SPACEWAR: ‘It’s quite a bit more than we expected’: Satellite reveals immense scale of GPS signal tampering. “An experimental satellite has mapped the scale of GPS jamming across Europe and the Middle East from space for the first time. The data surprised the team behind the project and indicated that satellites orbiting far from Earth aren’t the only ones that experience degradation of their positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals, which could affect their performance and the safety of their operations.”

Posted at 9:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Cigars, a canceled lacrosse season and the scandal rocking a Massachusetts town.

The boys gathered on an Ipswich, Mass., beach to celebrate their high-school graduation, some with medals draped over their black gowns. Jutting from each mouth: cigars that may or may not have been real.

The photos taken under cloudy skies June 7 mirrored those snapped all around the country lately. But in this coastal enclave dubbed America’s Best-Preserved Puritan Town, those snapshots have lit a burning debate.

What’s beyond dispute: Six of the grads were on Ipswich High School’s lacrosse team, and administrators suspended all six from a playoff game two days later for violating state athletic association rules against tobacco use. The team ultimately voted to forfeit the contest—and just like that, their championship run went up in smoke.

Now, this hamlet of 14,000 north of Boston is in a fierce debate over whether the penalty matched the foul. It has grown into a saga featuring a “a CSI-level investigation” at a local grocery store, and a heated showdown involving two dads in the principal’s office—captured on a police body camera.

“Come on, how many times you’ve been pulled over and a cop has said, ‘Ahh, go ahead?’ ” said Marc Randazza, a lawyer representing one of the suspended students and his father. “There is always discretion, right?”

To Ipswich resident Heidi Garofalo, though, the line was clear. “Kids have to learn the consequences when they do something wrong,” she said. “You have to abide by the rules. It just takes one slip [to] ruin everything.”

It really is “America’s Best-Preserved Puritan Town” – as H.L. Mencken famously wrote, “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy:”

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

YES:

Posted at 8:16 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DON’T DISS THE MIDWEST:

Posted at 8:04 pm by Stephen Green

FEMINISM IS JUST ANOTHER LEFTY FRONT. THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE, THE ISSUE IS ALWAYS THE REVOLUTION.

Posted at 7:57 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TRADE NEWS:

Posted at 7:54 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DISPATCHES FROM THE BOOM BELT:

 

Posted at 6:25 pm by Ed Driscoll

GABBARD LEAVES, WHERE’S CONGRESS’S COJONES? Tulsi Gabbard made public what appears to be documents that make a devastating case on behalf of the proposition that Anthony Fauci funded the dangerous research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology from which a leak resulted in more than 1 million American deaths.

That’s the issue that will grab the most headlines and social media clicks, but the crucial constitutional issue here concerns Congress and whether its Inherent Power is a dead letter.

As I point out today in my latest PJ Media column, there was a time when lying under oath could land you in the Capitol jail. Nobody in today’s Congress appears to have the stomach for a return to those days, even though the Founders didn’t just happen to make Congress “the First Branch.”

Posted at 5:34 pm by Mark Tapscott

RIP: Empire Strikes Back and Alien Special Effects Pioneer Brian Johnson Dead at 86. “Brian Johnson, one of the most legendary special effects artists in the history of the industry, and whose work shaped some of the most iconic science-fiction movies and television shows ever made, has passed away. Johnson is perhaps best known for his time on Space: 1999, while his wider career included major contributions to Alien, The Empire Strikes Back, and Aliens. Johnson’s effects work helped bring some of cinema’s most incredible worlds to life, from the Nostromo of Ridley Scott’s Alien to the frozen battlefields and starship spectacle of Hoth.”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE BOLSHEVIKS ALWAYS OUST THE MENSHEVIKS: Mamdani seeks to remake NYC congressional delegation in his socialist image, clashes with old guard.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is quietly seeking to remake the city’s congressional delegation in his image, and cement his power bloc within the Democratic Party while he still enjoys popularity in the city. The democratic socialist Mamdani has endorsed three ideologically aligned candidates — all considered “far left” by traditional Democrats — seeking to expand his influence in the city where he was elected as mayor last November.

In particular, Mamdani has endorsed three ideologically aligned candidates seeking to unseat current members of the Democratic caucus, two-term Rep. Dan Goldman and Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader Adriano Espaillat.

Mamdani’s endorsements and campaigning against incumbent Democratic lawmakers in particular are putting him on a quiet collision course with establishment Democratic leaders, especially House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who, tasked with winning a majority in the upcoming midterm elections, has been forced to divert resources to defend the incumbents.

I do hope you went long on popcorn.

Posted at 4:54 pm by Stephen Green

LATERAL MOVE: “Engels very much made his family fortune as a derivative beneficiary of American slavery. And he used that slave-derived fortune to directly subsidize Karl Marx.” 

To be fair, Marx was an equal-opportunity racist. Flashback to 2015: Karl Marx Calls Mexicans Lazy. Will Social Justice Warriors Demand Noted Racist Karl Marx Be Banned From Study on Campus?

In addition to slurs against Mexicans, Marx, whose father had converted from Judaism to Lutheranism, was none too keen on Jews and blacks, as well.

But the SJWs are already on the case! They want to see Marx removed from the college criteria not because he was a stone cold racist totalitarian, but — wait for it! — because he’s yet another dead white European male. As James Lileks wryly observed back in January, “Some Berkeley students are mad about a class that is just plain othering the living heck out of them. From a piece they wrote for the Daily Californian:”

We are calling for an occupation of syllabi in the social sciences and humanities. This call to action was instigated by our experience last semester as students in an upper-division course on classical social theory. Grades were based primarily on multiple-choice quizzes on assigned readings. The course syllabus employed a standardized canon of theory that began with Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to modern philosophers: Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault, all of whom are white men. The syllabus did not include a single woman or person of color.

In response, Lileks wrote:

If there’s one thing you take away from the Daily Californian essay, it’s the pursed-lip’d narrow-eyed glare of someone who is being forced to sit in a room and NOT BE VALIDATED. (Some of the complainants may be angry because they are witnessing the non-validation of others and are compelled to be enraged on their behalf.) College, apparently, is now a place where the notions of people freshly matriculated from high school must be handled with oven mitts and lightly buffed with soft cloth lest their orthodoxies suffer the slightest abrasion. Like the school that canceled the annual performance of The Vagina Monologues because it othered non-traditional women who lacked the titular orifice, it’s a delightful example of leftist autophagy. Marx is in foul order in Berkeley not for his ideas, or the heaps of corpses accumulated in his name, but because he had a prostate.

By the way, Foucault died of AIDS, so you can dismiss everything the students wrote. Homophobes and haters. No, kids, don’t bother defending yourselves. As your heroes would no doubt say: If it wasn’t true, we wouldn’t have accused you.

Heh. Yet another reminder that as Ray Bradbury predicted in Fahrenheit 451, the books will be burned as much to protect everyone’s feelings as much as to block the ideas within them.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

RIP: James Burrows, Will and Grace director and Cheers co-creator, dead at 85.

James Burrows, known for co-creating “Cheers and directing “Will & Grace,” has died. He was 85.

“We celebrate the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of James ‘Jimmy’ Burrows, who passed away peacefully today surrounded by his loving family,” his family told People in a statement Friday.

“For more than five decades, Burrows was one of the most influential and beloved directors in television history,” the statement continued. “As a legendary director, mentor, and creative force, he helped shape generations of comedy and brought immeasurable joy to audiences around the world.”

“Burrows directed more than 1,000 episodes of TV, including every episode of the original ‘Will & Grace,’ and is credited as having helped create shows including ‘Friends,’ ‘Taxi’ and Frasier,’” CBS News reports.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

GO EAST, YOUNG MAN: California’s billionaire tax officially heads to Nov. 3 ballot. “If you want a budget deficit in perpetuity, pass this,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square. “What happens is, these folks are now going to Florida and everywhere else, and not only are they leaving, but they are the ones investing in a lot of these jobs. Those jobs now are fleeing California, and we’re going to lose them, dramatically, going forward.”

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green