August 10, 2026

ICYMI: WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP IT’S BEEN: Thoughts on the 25th Anniversary of InstaPundit.

And if you enjoy these essays, or classic InstaPundit, please either take out a paid Substack subscription, or make a one-time donation here. I appreciate your support.

UPDATE: A reader sends: “I would like to send you a check. Do you have an address I can use?”

Yes, please send to 118 N. Peters Rd. #12-230, Knoxville, TN 37923. Please make any checks out to me, not to “InstaPundit,” which the bank doesn’t like.

Posted at 6:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is This the Most Woke Movie Review … Ever?

Roger Ebert’s legendary status as America’s film critic is well earned.

He still let his progressive views seep into his signature thumb in his later years. That didn’t diminish his place in movie reviewing lore, nor his legacy.

A contributing critic for his self-named site has taken that progressive baton and run with it. Think “Chariots of Fire”-style running.

The review wastes no time getting to the ideological point.

“One Night Only” … is everything that’s troubling about the current conservative capitalist hellscape that is the United States of America writ large.

Ma’am, this is a rom-com review…

There’s so much more.

It makes nods to the very real horrors of today, like tech bro-backed surveillance capitalism, rampant Big Pharma advertisements, and fascist police and politicians controlling our bodies, without ever taking the time to interrogate any of the sources that have led to our current political climate.

If only “When Harry Met Sally…” had brought up the Iran-Contra scandal, it might have been a classic. Oh, well.

Of course, for the same critic, some “politicians controlling our bodies” are perfectly fine:

Ebert certainly became a huge leftwing crank in his later years on Twitter, but the vast majority of his movies reviews never went full Salon or Grauniad. Definitely read the whole thing.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

RESCUE MISSION FOR THE RESCUE MISSION: Katalyst Space makes progress in restoring control of Swift servicing spacecraft. “Katalyst said it was planning to upload a ‘significant flight software update’ in the coming days to allow for attitude control in the spacecraft’s current configuration. That will allow the company’s engineers to restore full attitude control of the spacecraft and resume plans to head toward NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.”

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Update:

Posted at 4:43 pm by Stephen Green

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH:

Posted at 4:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPSEC:

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S NOT FUNNY (ACTUALLY, YES IT IS): The Joke that Sparked Death Threats for Arynne Wexler.

Wexler shared the fallout from an immigration bit with “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” last week.

Wexler said she was shocked that another joke from her repertoire drew little outrage. She has compared Muslims to pit bulls, suggesting the majority of both groups aren’t violent, but …

She didn’t get blowback from pit bull owners from that routine. Instead, she heard positive feedback from dog owners.

The one that sparked the death threats?

She was at the White House in the spring of 2025 as part of an influencer gathering. She got some face time with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, and she opened with the riff that caused a kerfuffle. Leavitt brought up President Donald Trump’s work with deportations and securing the southern border.

That gave Wexler an opening.

“I can attest to the fact that deportations are working because my Uber drivers finally speak English again,” she told Leavitt.

“Everyone laughed,” she recalled. “I leave the room and my phone is blowing up … I’m getting so many death threats in my Instagram, to my web site. I was put in touch with the FBI because I was getting so many threats over it … over that joke.’”

“And I put [the gag] on Instagram because I can’t help myself,” she added.

Read the whole thing. And don’t miss the clip of her doing the Pit Bull/Muslims bit.

Posted at 4:20 pm by Stephen Green

STILL NOT TIRED OF WINNING:

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS VS. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: A Tale of Two Chiefs. “There is Chief Justice Roberts, the institutionalist, who strategically guides the Supreme Court by not deciding more than is necessary to decide. Then there is Chief Justice Roberts, the institutionalist, who strategically guides the Supreme Court by deciding more than is necessary to decide. Which Roberts do we get in each case?”

Posted at 2:15 pm by Glenn Reynolds

PAST GERALDO IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RIVERA:

Not to mention, our celebrity betters have informed us that “Haiti is Great Already:”

As have our top journalists:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Jason Arday taught me. Here’s what I learned.

At first, my classmates were charmed by Arday’s cheerful attitude and inspirational stories. To start with, too, they were interested in his claims that white people were guilty of every kind of prejudice. Yet as the module progressed, and he failed to turn up for yet another class, things began to change. It gradually dawned on us that we were learning nothing of substance, and that much of his talk was nonsense.

When it came to our assessment, Arday recommended we answer one of the two essay questions — there were four options — that mentioned ethnicity. This, after all, was the only thing he’d talked to us about. I remember one young, black, female student coming to me in the library as we began to draft our essays and saying: “I don’t know what to do, I’ve read my notes and there is nothing there I can use!” She wasn’t the only one, and I offered advice as best I could, writing my own essay using the online resources Arday’s predecessor had left.

In the end, Arday gave me 70% for my essay. That sounds good — except that my average for the year was 75%, meaning my overall result was dragged down. Particularly as Arday had given my work no feedback, I asked for a meeting. At Roehampton, marking is blind, so he wouldn’t have known who’d written which essay. In our meeting, I explained that 70% was a low mark for me and asked him to provide feedback. Suddenly, his friendly, confident demeanor changed. I now saw a side of him I’d never seen before: angry, but also scared. Arday implied that I was racist, and said that the only reason I wasn’t happy with 70% was due to my “white privilege”. He was clearly upset at being questioned, and I ended the meeting as quickly as possible.

Arday left Roehampton shortly afterwards, and I never saw him again. Given that he could neither teach nor support his students, it’s little wonder that he appeared psychologically incapable of coping with criticism. The University of Roehampton was seemingly aware of his failings yet did nothing, avoiding controversy by allowing him to move on to another set of students.

Still though, students of Arday will have learned a lot about where not to place apostrophes in their thesis titles:

And how to copy and paste your way to superstardom:

Arday himself claimed to have worried, “What if I have completely overestimated my capabilities? What if my story ends up being a cautionary tale like Icarus about flying too close to the sun?”

But it must have been quite a rush at the apogee of his ascent: “Whether or not he even knows it, Jason Arday played the rotten, elitist, box-ticking, minority and sick note obsessed education regime brilliantly. He outwitted the cleverest people in Britain – well, people who like to think they’re clever. He outsmarted those who would have us believe they’re the enlightened and have the right to rule. People who opine that vaccination should be mandatory. That was an actual Cambridge Union debate a few years ago, never let us forget. Bright young things lined up to argue for an end to bodily autonomy. These people are numbskulls. So never mind Arday’s grammar, consider the grand sweep of his achievement. He has shown us that the emperor has no clothes. One way or another, he has had Cambridge over, and I care not a jot for Cambridge as a victim, nor do I care for the buyer’s regret of the liberal elite who suddenly claim to be shocked that a person who can’t always spell or get grammar right could rise to the top of academia by playing on certain narratives.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll