September 5, 2026

WHY PEOPLE DON’T TRUST THIS STUFF:

Posted at 9:26 am by Glenn Reynolds

LET’S HOPE THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR REPEATS AS FARCE, NOT TRAGEDY:

Posted at 9:01 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE DEMOCRATS REALLY CAN’T FIND NORMAL GUYS: “It’s been a solid minute since Graham Platner burnt up on entry, so let’s check in on Democrats and their “trying super hard to be normal” guy candidates. Today we’ve got several fake gym rats, pole climbers and hot dog gobblers, and a guy I’ve decided to dub Roboslop.”

Regular guys don’t want to be Democrats. And if any did slip through, they’d be unacceptable to the rabid wackadoos who control the Party.

Posted at 8:58 am by Glenn Reynolds

I THOUGHT THEY WERE JUST GOOD FRIENDS. I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW FAR THE RELATIONSHIP HAD PROGRESSED:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll

PUSHBACK IN BRITAIN:

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:36 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN: England’s Historic Cathedrals Turn to Pop Concerts and Silent Discos.

A Luther Vandross impersonator is performing in various cathedrals including the nave of St. Albans Cathedral, the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain that stands on the burial place of Britain’s first martyr, St. Alban.

Meanwhile, Wells Cathedral, founded in 1175 as the first entirely Gothic-style cathedral in Britain, will be the venue for an imitation David Bowie concert on Nov. 21.

Every medieval cathedral in England appears to be hosting these concerts, except for two: Westminster Abbey and Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. The events, aimed principally at generating much-needed funds, are commercially operated by a Spanish company called “Fever” that introduced them in early 2021 with classical music. The concerts then expanded, becoming pop and rock cover bands a year later. The Register reached out to the company for comment, but it had not responded by press time.

Arguably more controversial than the candlelight concerts are “silent discos,” organized by another company, London-based MEGA Events, and which have been taking place in some of England’s most historic cathedrals for the past couple of years. One of the most recent was in Canterbury, for centuries England’s mother Church and where St. Thomas Becket was martyred, held on the Solemnity of the Assumption. The entertainment involves partygoers wearing headphones and waving strobe lights as they dance to pop music from the 1980s and ’90s over the tombs of deceased noble citizens.

Canterbury Cathedral’s most recent disco featured multiple bars and stalls in the nave’s side aisles selling alcohol and merchandise. The dean’s office stressed this all took place away from the site of St. Thomas Becket’s martyrdom in 1170. The historic cathedrals of St. Albans, Truro, Durham and Salisbury are also among those hosting these discos — coined “raves in the nave” by their critics. MEGA Events has been contacted for comment.

From last year: Graffiti art in Canterbury Cathedral ‘belongs in a car park.’ Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick didn’t intend for A Clockwork Orange to be a how-to guide for 21st century British aesthetics:

In his 2000 book, The Abolition of Britain, Peter Hitchens wrote, at the conclusion of the chapter titled “Hell Freezes Over:”

The Church still goes through the motions, its priests and ministers officiating at abbreviated ceremonies in the production-line crematoria of the nation, at funerals where fewer and fewer of the younger mourners have any idea of how to behave, or dress, or speak, or of what to say. At the funerals of the young, entirely secular pop songs are often played as substitutes for hymns. In the last few years, mourners have taken to telling jokes during funeral eulogies, as if they were at a wedding. Decorum has disappeared not because people are consciously ill-mannered but because they have no idea that it is required. Children at a primary school in the Isle of Wight were spoken to sharply by their teachers in 1996 after they mocked and jeered at a passing funeral. Nobody had told them that death demanded respect. And in a world where blinds are not drawn down, and there are no hats to doff as the hearse goes by, how were they supposed to learn, and what does it matter anyway?

And yet, night after night, in the wards of a hundred hospitals, people die as they have always done, alone at the end and in many cases afraid of what is to come, more and more comforted by morphine, less and less by the Holy Ghost. We prefer not to notice. In the midst of death, we are in life and

John Lennon’s wish in ‘Imagine’—‘no religion, no heaven and no hell, and all the people thinking for today’—has come true. How odd that the Church itself should have helped it to do so, by abandoning its cold and austere central truth, that we must all die and may be judged, the one piece of ground nobody, not even Hitler or Stalin, could ever have captured from it.

As Drew Pavlou wrote above, “It’s actually stunning how much the elite of Britain hate their own culture and civilization. You couldn’t even invent this as satire.”

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

BETHANY MANDEL: Lindsay Clancy supporters may see mistrial as a victory — but it’s really a step backward for womankind.

Millions of American women are celebrating a victory of sorts this weekend — a hung jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial.

The case’s future is uncertain. It will likely be difficult to find enough jurors capable of coming to an unbiased decision after the entire country has been riveted by this trial.

It appears that 11 members of the jury favored some form of leniency, whether a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict or a lesser conviction, while one male holdout forced the jury to hang. He was, it appeared, a modern-day “Juror 8” from the famous play Twelve Angry Men — but in reverse*.

This is a victory for Clancy, whose team will now enter either another trial with the prospect of another sympathetic jury or plea negotiations with the upper hand.

* In more ways than one: Did 12 Angry Men get it wrong? 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

September 4, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: The US Could Have a $100 Billion Stash of Rare Earth Elements – Hiding in Coal Waste.

UPDATE: Reader John Steakley writes: “Be it lumber, coal, granite, marble, natural gas, rare earth elements, or just indefatigable young soldiers, America always returns to Appalachia for its most valuable resources. But as John Denver reminded us, where the mountains are older than trees, such returns are to be expected . . .”

So true. John and I were on the National Space Society board together. I had dinner with him not long before he died. He was much buffer than in his 1970s era, and very interested in aviation. Though perhaps not as safety-conscious as would have been ideal.

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THAT OTHER GUY ON THE CROSS: No matter your view of Christianity, this short take by Alistair Begg should tickle your funny bone.

Posted at 6:13 pm by Mark Tapscott

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 5:40 pm by Stephen Green

LIVING HISTORY: Inside The ‘Top Secret’ Plan That Led To Biggest Pro-Second Amendment Ruling In 90 Years.

With a change in presidential administrations came a change in attitude toward the devices. In 2021, the Biden administration began pushing to classify the items as “short-barreled rifles” under the NFA, and issued a final regulation to that effect in January 2023, giving those who owned firearms with those devices 120 days to register them with ATF in an “amnesty” before they would face a potential ten-year prison sentence.

Pro-Second Amendment groups challenged the regulation in court almost immediately, eventually securing court orders blocking it. However, they also began to eye a legislative fix to the issue once President Donald Trump won a second term.

“One thing we could do is we could work with the [second Trump] administration to undo that regulation,” Johnston said. “The other thing we could do is just nullify that statute, try to repeal that statute.”

Despite the straightforward nature of the plan, GOA didn’t want to broadcast their intentions and risk pushback from anti-Second Amendment organizations. Therefore, it didn’t openly discuss any moves pertaining to federal legislation regarding suppressors or other items covered by the National Firearms Act in its national alerts at the start of the 119th Congress.

Well played — and do read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:54 pm by Stephen Green