July 21, 2026

WELL:

All things considered, I think I’d rather keep that genie in the bottle where it’s been since 1945.

Posted at 4:05 pm by Stephen Green

EVERYONE NEEDS A HOBBY: Conservative think tank wants Supreme Court to legalize home whiskey distilleries.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled recently that the federal ban against home whiskey distilleries is unconstitutional. However, the 6th Circuit upheld the federal ban.

The federal government said the law is constitutional because it was enacted to prevent tax evasion and that it would be easier for a distiller working out of their home to conceal the business and therefore avoid paying taxes.

On Monday, the Buckeye Institute filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to decide between the two conflicting appeals-court rulings.

“Two courts of appeals considered the same provisions, against the same constitutional challenge, on mater-ally identical facts, within 11 days of each other, and issued opposite judgments,” Buckeye’s Monday petition to the Supreme Court states.

Legalized home-brewing revolutionized the beer industry, and could do the same for distilled spirits.

Besides, who the hell is Washington to tell us what legal products we can make in our own homes?

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

THE SYSTEM THEY DO SUPPORT WAS RIGGED TO RIP THEM OFF:

Posted at 3:34 pm by Stephen Green

THE LEFT LOOKS AFTER ITS OWN:

Posted at 3:03 pm by Stephen Green

SETH MANDEL: The Normalizing of Mamdani’s Creepy Bibi Obsession.

Mamdani should say that, were he an official of an ICC member country’s national government, he would support arresting a foreign politician he disagrees with. But as he’s the mayor of a city in a non-ICC country, he is about several dimensions removed from being able to make this threat without coming off like someone more deserving of a restraining order.

As so often happens, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman had the right response, which was to mock the mayor as a fake “tough guy” who is all talk. The key to this discussion, as far as I’m concerned, is to resist the temptation to pamper Mamdani’s fragile ego by pretending there is a real-world debate over arresting Netanyahu.

The serious question at hand isn’t whether Mamdani will arrest Netanyahu but whether we should be concerned by the insanity of the mayor’s behavior. Do foreign officials need police protection from the mayor of New York City? Does Mamdani have a list of global politicians he openly fantasizes about assaulting? Or is it just the guy governing the world’s only Jewish state?

We should be concerned about the baleful effects of normalizing this kind of nuttiness.

“The goal is always to denormalize normal things, and normalize abnormal things,” as Glenn just noted yesterday in a different context.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

IT ISN’T LIKE THAT, IT’S EXACTLY THAT:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Will – and Can – Trump Target Pickaxe Mountain Next?

Undoubtedly, the IRGC wants to find an untouchable facility for their (not so) secret work on nuclear weapons. However, if they waited until after Operation Midnight Hammer to move centrifuges and critical tasks, they may be prepping Pickaxe more as a place from which to start from square one. The Iranians did not get the chance to move material from Isfahan and Natanz before they provoked the Israelis into the Twelve Day War, and they wouldn’t have moved anything out of Fordow at all. The Iranian regime fully believed Fordow to be as impregnable as Pickaxe seems to be now, right up until Trump ordered a series of bunker-buster bombs dropped into its vents and demolished operations there. Afterward, the US has kept a very close eye on activity at all three sites, and Trump has himself shared the operating analysis that the Midnight Hammer bombing runs buried all of the material at those sites, including Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

The timeline suggests that the IRGC decided to create a second Fordow, as it were, rather than a replacement for it. That’s worrisome in itself, but they have had only six years to move what remained from the damaged centrifuges in the 2020 incident while operating their main development sites in parallel. The rapid increase in activity during the Twelve Day War and after Operation Midnight Hammer would likely be a reaction to losing the advanced operations entirely at the other locations, and an attempt to set up a new site where those could be rebuilt rather than just a relocation of those activities with full capacity. That’s still a bad development, although hardly unexpected from this regime.

So can we take Pickaxe off the board too? Last week, Trump told Hugh Hewitt that it’s already made the target list[.]

Faster, please.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE’S DOING GREAT!

Steve’s Second Law of Holes states that when your opponent is busy digging himself into one, hand him a bigger and nicer shovel.

Posted at 2:01 pm by Stephen Green

DIFFERENT TAKES:

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DAVID STROM: How’s It Going in Hungary? “They are coming down like a ton of bricks on Orbán and his political party, following the now-familiar EU plan to subvert elections by canceling them if their candidates aren’t likely to win, banning political parties, disqualifying candidates, and rigging the rules.”

Posted at 1:56 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BECAUSE ABC NEWS HAS NO STANDARDS. NEXT QUESTION?

For whatever reason — a misguided attempt at prestige, perhaps? — “The View” is produced by ABC’s news division. Which is all you need to know about the standards of ABC News.

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green

QUESTIONS ASKED:

Tweet continues:

GILL: Your organization says politeness is a defining characteristic of white supremacy culture.

Ma’am, are you a white supremacist?

HARTIG: No, sir.

GILL: Why does your organization say being polite is part of being a white supremacist?

ANOTHER ONE:

GILL: Is objectivity important for history?

HARTIG: We strive to be objective

GILL: Your document says being objective is white supremacy.

HARTIG: Mm…

GILL: Are you promoting a white supremacy culture at the Smithsonian? Ma’am, is this a difficult question?

Later in Gill’s grilling, he’s christened the newest ride at Disney World: The Mickey Mouse Minstrel Mobius Loop!

Flashback to 2020’s Summer of Love: And the Answer is None. None More Woke: The Smithsonian’s Anti-White Propaganda. “Did David Duke write this stuff? It’s crazy! If a white man said that black people are lazy, can’t keep to a schedule, have no respect for authority, can’t think straight, are rude, etc. — he would be rightly criticized as racist. But there it is, at the taxpayer-funded National Museum of African American History and Culture. Why? Why do we pay for this racist propaganda? The museum itself looks fantastic, but this is disgusting.”

Click to enlarge.

 More at the Washington Examiner: African American History Museum’s website says being on time is a marker of ‘whiteness.’

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll