February 27, 2026

MINNESOTA NOT-SO-NICE: Hoplophobic Harridans Plan to Protest Minnesota High School Clays Fundraiser This Weekend… Here’s What You Can Do.

You read that right. A bunch of teenagers who like to shoot clays for sport and are conducting a fundraiser for their club will likely face a passel of hoplophobic harridans and a sprinkling of hen-pecked beta males this weekend. These scolds think that’s the perfect venue to scream about “gun violence,” as if these kids are somehow the equivalent gang-bangers that turn cities like Minneapolis into war zones.

It’s odd that these gun-haters never pull these stunts in crime-ridden urban neighborhoods, isn’t it?

Nothing says “imminent threat to society” quite like a 16-year-old in safety glasses yelling “Pull!” before busting a clay bird. We’ve all seen the shocking videos of these clean-cut trap and skeet shooters looting convenience stores, robbing pedestrians or carjacking big city residents with their 12-gauge pump shotguns, right?

Let’s get real for a second. High school trap shooting is statistically one of the safest sports out there. Safer than football, wrestling, cheerleading and pretty much everything else including P.E. class. Zero school killing sprees have been carried out by a school trap team member. These kids are drilling discipline, focus, responsibility, and—gasp!—proper firearm safety under strict adult supervision. It’s a lifeline for some bookish types who’d otherwise warm the bench in other sports, giving nerds, quieter kids, and future engineers a place to shine, build confidence, and learn that tools aren’t toys. To say nothing for young people with disabilities.

But we can’t have that, can we? Because guns are icky. And scary. So instead of cheering on kids who are literally doing everything right, these lame lefties choose to harass teens and their families at a fundraiser to support their sport. Because nothing screams “protect the children” like intimidating actual children who are just trying to pay for ammo and targets.

So here’s the play for Minnesota gun owners and normal humans within driving distance: show up this Sunday.

Details at the link.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

RICH LOWRY: Candace Owens hits new low with ‘depraved’ Erika Kirk conspiracy madness.

Usually, conspiracy theories spring up around assassinations that are hard to fathom, or have some ambiguity about them.

It is clear that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK, but it’s understandable that there have been questions about the event.

It is the depraved achievement of Candace Owens to make a bonkers true-crime drama, with all sorts of mysteries and twists, out of an open-and-shut murder case.

Kirk’s accused killer, Tyler Robinson, had a motive, left a trail of damning evidence, and confessed to multiple people.

To dismiss all this and call for Erika Kirk to be frog-marched into a police station is so mad, it makes Owens’ conviction that both the moon landing and dinosaurs are fake look well-grounded by comparison.

It is a symptom of our time that such malevolent buffoonery is rewarded with a huge audience.

It’s impossible to discredit Owens because she’s not in the credibility business to begin with.

The Washington Post used to at least nominally be in the credibility business a long time ago, but in recent years, they’ve decided to completely abandon it for clicks, grins, and ginning up the leftist base:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

JEFFREY BLEHAR: Netflix Is Out on Warner Bros.

I’ll admit, I missed big by predicting something “delightfully sordid.” Instead, we got something unpleasantly sordid: The final nail in the coffin for the Netflix bid was almost certainly board member Susan Rice’s ill-timed appearance on a podcast hosted by Preet Bharara on February 20, where she promised “accountability” for Trump administration wrongdoers once the Democrats took office. This was interpreted by MAGA’s most agitated online voices as a promise of lawfare against the administration — the irony of complaining about this is apparently completely lost upon them — and led to Laura Loomer loudly demanding the former national security adviser resign her position on the board of Netflix.

Since Loomer has Trump’s ear, that meant that Trump himself began to instantly parrot Loomer’s line, demanding Rice resign from Netflix or “pay the consequences.” That put Netflix in an impossible position — they were not going to earn the eternal wrath of progressives by caving to Trump and firing Rice, not for a bid they were going to have extreme difficulty getting Trump’s approval on anyway. So they have bowed to the inevitable and cut their losses.

The upshot is that Netflix’s competitor Paramount — owned by Trump ally David Ellison — now seems all but assured to win the battle to purchase Warner Bros. You will read plenty of shrieking about the dangers of “media consolidation” in the coming days from journalists who all secretly pray to one day work a salaried position at the New York Times; little of it will be worth listening to. On an aesthetic level, some will celebrate the fact that the soulless Netflix will now no longer yank Warner Bros. movies out of theaters — but the death of the theatrical experience can only be delayed, not denied.

I agree with the last statement; as John Podhoretz wrote in December:

But yesterday morning, hours before the WBD-Paramount merger was officially announced, “George MF Washington” published his latest substack: One Step Closer to the Edge.

There is no good option here… Hollywood losing its most storied movie studio is bad for the movie business however you try to slice it. But when I consider the matter of Warner Bros and its two suitors Paramount and Netflix, there are only two things I care about…1) which potential buyer is more likely to treat the Warner Bros library with the respect it deserves… and 2) which suitor is committed to preserving the institution of theatrically released movies, which I still believe is good for the soul of America. What no one in Hollywood’s artist or executive community ought to be doing is rooting for one side or the other because Orange Man Bad.

Instead we ought to remember that oppositional defiance of the Orange Man was one of the main drivers of broad Hollywood support for closing movie theaters in order to protect audiences from a bad cold in 2020. Our industry was certain that we could casually press pause on a wildly successful 100-year-old business model in order to bring about a desirable political outcome, and then simply switch it back on whenever we wished without having to face any economic consequences.

How’d that one turn out?

One of the themes that emerges from left-leaning author Ronald Brownstein’s 2021 book, Rock Me on the Water: 1974 – The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics is how utterly obsessed Hollywood was with Richard Nixon in the 1970s, and how that obsession and paranoia was reflected in their work. Talking about Warren Beatty’s 1975 film Shampoo, Brownstein writes:

The movie presents Nixon’s election as the collective result of Americans’ personal corruption and hypocrisy*. All the televised snippets from Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, about rebuilding respect, upholding law and order, promoting unity, and restoring the nation’s “moral code” are deeply ironic by the time audiences hear them in the movie. And yet this message is delivered in a tone more of sorrow than anger, one that underscores the complicity of the electorate in choosing leaders capable of such immorality. Lester, the businessman who symbolizes America’s establishment, is presented as a figure worthy of understanding, not disdain, when he tells George, “I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore.”

Sound familiar? And yet, Nixon eventually began to garner strange new respect from leftists years after they forced him out of office, and Hollywood produced some pretty good movies in the early to mid 1970s, before Steven Spielberg and George Lucas showed industry executives that the real money lie in depoliticizing their product and remembering how a happy ending does wonders at the box office. In contrast, Hollywood’s hatred of the Bad Orange Man during his first term may have hastened the big screen’s demise by a good decade or so.

* Time magazine’s 1969 Man of the Year collectively smiles.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

HARDBALL: Pentagon officials sent Anthropic best and final offer for military use of its AI amid dispute.

Pentagon officials on Wednesday night sent Anthropic their best and final offer in negotiations for use of the company’s artificial intelligence technology, just ahead of a government-imposed deadline, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

It was unclear whether the offer substantially changed what the government has been seeking from the AI startup, or whether the company had agreed.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth set a deadline of Friday evening for the company to grant all lawful use for its AI technology or face the loss of its business with the U.S. military, sources familiar with the situation told CBS News.

I guess Tuesday’s Pentagon meeting didn’t go very well.

Posted at 11:44 am by Stephen Green

JOANNE JACOBS: No need to listen, read, write or think: AI will do college for you.

Going to lectures, reading and writing aren’t necessary, reports Matthew Gault on 404. Companion claims to have developed an agentic AI tool called Einstein that will log into Canvas, a popular edtech platform, to complete assignments, participate in discussions and take tests with no input needed from the “student.”

I suspect it’s not real. The link to Einstein’s website doesn’t work for me, and I wonder if it’s a way to scare professors away from using edtech platforms that are susceptible to cheating. But, these days, who knows?

“Universities…by and large adopted a transactive model of education,” said Matthew Kirschenbaum, a University of Virginia professor, who’s written about the impact of artificial intelligence. “Students see their diploma as a credential” that will be “the springboard to economic stability and prosperity.”

If students are paying for the credential — not for learning — then why not have AI do the work?

That’s the real question, isn’t it?

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

THE COLONEL JESSUP EFFECT STRIKES AGAIN:

Related thoughts from the Critical Drinker:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll

2027 PREVIEW? How China is masking drone flights in potential Taiwan rehearsal.

A large Chinese military drone has conducted regular flights over the South China Sea in recent months while transmitting false transponder signals that made it appear to be other aircraft, including a sanctioned Belarusian cargo plane and a British Typhoon fighter jet.

Military attaches and security analysts scrutinising the operations say the flights represent a step-change in China’s grey-zone tactics in the contested South China Sea and appear to be testing possible decoy capabilities in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Since August, at least 23 flights have been logged under the call sign YILO4200, a known long-endurance Chinese military drone, but the aircraft transmitted registration numbers of other aircraft, according to Reuters analysis of data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

The flight paths often head east from the Chinese province of Hainan towards the Philippines, near the disputed Paracel Islands, and down Vietnam’s coast, the flight analysis showed.

Here’s the reference (although there are countless versions of it, going back several years) from the headline: Why does 2027 Keep Coming up About the Chinese Military? “From the Davidson Window to other prognostications, the window of greatest possibility for war with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is generally seen as opening in 2027.”

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 9:16 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: A Pox on Everyone Who Keeps Hillary Clinton in the News. “It’s the Republicans who are foisting her upon us now, however and it’s all in another futile attempt to ‘get’ the Clintons. As I’ve written often, nailing the Clintons for anything is the Great White Whale for many conservatives. And as I have written even more often: it ain’t gonna happen. When Mr. and Mrs. C were first subpoenaed over the Epstein stuff last summer, I reminded everyone that they’ve been through this before and are very good at never getting any comeuppance.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 8:47 am by Glenn Reynolds

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Legendary Lower Broadway honky tonk owner says property taxes could ruin Nashville. “There seems to be no bottom to the despair caused by Nashville’s historic property tax increase. The one-two punch of soaring property values and a 26% tax hike is putting businesses — and some homeowners — on the ropes. Now, the Tennessee General Assembly is considering whether to step in.”

Nashville needs adult supervision.

Posted at 8:33 am by Glenn Reynolds