January 28, 2026

January 27, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NFL WORLD COMPLETELY TAKEN ABACK BY BILL BELICHICK FAILING TO MAKE HALL OF FAME: ‘WTF?’

The NFL world was baffled by the news reported by ESPN on Tuesday evening that Belichick, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, was not elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, on his first appearance on the ballot.

Belichick fell short of the requisite 40 votes of 50 votes from the voting committee — made up of at least one media representative from each football city and other at-large members — needed to gain entry.

ESPN reported that the two major scandals Belichick was beleaguered by in New England — Spygate in 2007 and Deflategate in 2015 — were part of the discussions. Ex-Colts general manager Bill Polian, an at-large member of the voting committee, reportedly told some voters that Belichick should “wait a year” before getting inducted. Polian denied he voted against Belichick to Sports Illustrated.

Whatever the reason, Belichick — who also won two Super Bowls as a defensive coordinator with the Giants — will not be enshrined in 2026, and the football world was largely stunned.

It’s only Tuesday, but it’s been quite a week for the NFL and its awards for merit: Giants’ Jermaine Eluemunor calls Pro Bowl a ‘joke’ after Shedeur Sanders inclusion.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMELIA VICTORIOUS: How to Lose the Culture War With a Video Game.

There’s something genuinely funny going on in the United Kingdom right now.

The British government’s Prevent office, housed under the Home Office (think Department of the Interior, but allergic to dissent), partnered with a media nonprofit called Shout Out UK (like a PBS focused on preventing “radicalism”) to come up with a clever new way to re-educate British youth.

The concern, as always, was “radicalization.” They thought the solution was inspired: a choice-based video game. Kids like games. Games involve decisions. Decisions shape values. What could possibly go wrong?

Thus Pathways was born, a government-funded interactive morality play designed to gently shepherd British children toward being properly antiracist, properly accepting, and properly enthusiastic about the ever-increasing number of migrants reshaping their country. Civics class, but fun. And digital. And corrective.

As part of this effort, the designers introduced a character named Amelia, a cute, purple-haired, vaguely goth girl who carries a Union Jack and talks about Britain being for the British. She was meant to function as a warning, a living illustration of how nationalism can look attractive, even charming, and yet be dangerous to the impressionable youths of Britain who may not have fully internalized the idea that Brexit is bad and they are to obey their elitist overlords.

What they did not anticipate was that the public would take one look at adorable, charming Amelia and decide she was the good guy.

British lefties are incandescent with rage over Amelia going viral:

 

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WORST. HITLER. EVER: 

Posted at 5:43 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why did Philip Glass cancel Kennedy Center performance?

Because he’s 88 years old, and he needs to have the proper footnotes in the twilight of his career, so that leftist music critics will remember his last days fondly and write favorable eulogies.

Related:

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

FIRED NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST DISHES ON HER COWARDLY, CENSORIOUS NYT EDITORS:

While [Pamela Paul’s]  opinion pieces trended liberal, she voiced skepticism on issues like cancel culture, cultural appropriation, and especially transgenderism. Such iconoclasm made her a reviled figure on the left and in the Times newsroom (but I repeat myself).

The fate of former Times opinion editor James Bennet may have affected how badly Paul was treated by Kingsbury. Bennet was forced out by the paper’s internal left-wing “child mob” for platforming a piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas who argued federal forces should be sent to (deja vu) Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

Pamela Paul: The crime that James had committed was not writing the column or the op-ed. It was platforming it. And so, if I was writing things that were upsetting the, you know, the, the Little Red Guards or whatever, then that person in charge of the section would be guilty of platforming me….

Paul also got into the under-covered issue of online reader comments and what makes conservative posts mysteriously disappear: The paper’s leftist comment editors would do the bidding of leftist readers, who would accuse other commenters of being offensive or using the wrong pronouns, and the editors would dutifully delete those “offensive” comments – a practice that will sound familiar to conservatives.

She explained that her columns on gender issues received “overwhelmingly positive response” from readers but not from “magazines and newspapers that I felt like once would never have bothered to write stories that were essentially regurgitations and summations of a few angry tweets from activists and sort of invested parties.” The New Republic even called her a fascist.

Her February 2023 column defending author J.K. Rowling from vicious attacks by trans activists was the beginning of the end for Paul at the paper.

The Gray Lady needs to keep its hard left subscribers happy to keep the lights on, and that means avoiding any stories that might upset them. Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported way back in 2019:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MINNESOTA’S SIGNALGATE: The Anatomy of a Domestic Insurgency.

A puzzled reader might object that activists have long monitored police activity, that legal observers carry cameras, that communities organize to protect their neighbors. All true, in isolation. The question is not whether any single act is novel. The question is whether the aggregate pattern exhibits features that distinguish protest from organized obstruction. Research from counterinsurgency studies provides a useful vocabulary. Early stage insurgencies rarely announce themselves with bombs. They begin with infrastructure. They build command structures. They specialize roles. They develop intelligence capabilities. They seek to deny the state freedom of movement while remaining sub kinetic.

By that standard, Minnesota displays a striking resemblance to the organizational phase of an insurgency. Recruitment and cadre formation occur through ICE Watch training sessions organized at local schools, NGO facilities, and even HUD provided meeting spaces, converting civic infrastructure into intake and indoctrination nodes. Encrypted Signal networks, colloquially dubbed SignalGate, are divided by geography and capped at roughly 1,000 participants per zone. Membership is vetted through the use of voter rolls, with applicants screened to exclude anyone listed on Republican voter rolls. Chats are deleted on a daily rotation. Roles are assigned. Some participants act as spotters, scanning neighborhoods for federal vehicles. Others are plate checkers, logging make, model, color, location, and timestamp into a shared database known as MN ICE Plates. Dispatchers monitor the feed and direct mobile chasers to intercept targets. The reporting format mirrors SALUTE, size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment, a method taught in military intelligence.

This matters because intelligence collection is not expressive conduct. It is operational. When information is persistently gathered, verified, stored, and acted upon, it becomes a parallel intelligence system. In multiple instances, vehicles later confirmed not to belong to ICE were nonetheless tailed for hours after being flagged. That persistence reveals intent. The goal is not merely to warn neighbors. It is to degrade federal operations by denying surprise and freedom of movement.

The involvement of political officials further sharpens the picture. Leaked chats show participation or coordination by elected figures and senior staff. Minnesota Lt Gov Peggy Flanagan appears under aliases such as Flan Southside. City Council Member Aurin Chowdhury is linked to administrative roles. Former Walz adviser Amanda Koehler is identified as an organizer. Journalists affiliated with MPR and NPR appear in groups where federal locations and movements are discussed in real time. The line between observation and participation blurs when presence inside an operational channel confers access to intelligence and legitimacy to the network.

Read the whole thing. What happens next? Kurt Schlichter has some thoughts:

Related: Alex Pretti Committed Previous Felony on Officers Before Deadly Attack.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll