July 8, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Can This Alliance Be Saved?

Featured image The Wall Street Journal reports on a secret meeting of European and NATO leaders on what to do about President Trump: It was almost midnight in Brussels and the leaders of Europe were locked in their fifth hour of an emergency meeting with a single theme for discussion: how to manage a breakup with America. The new year was only three weeks old and President Trump, after removing Venezuela’s autocratic »
July 8, 2026 — John Hinderaker

The Gift that Keeps On Giving [Updated: Platner Drops Out]

Featured imageThat’s Graham Platner. The drama continues, with Platner refusing to give up his Senate nomination. Byron York thinks there is a chance he might stick it out: By the way, did you know that Platner claims to be 100% disabled, and therefore lives on veterans’ disability benefits? Apparently being 100% disabled doesn’t prevent you from being a Senator. This is the Executive Director of Maine’s Democratic Party. She sounds desperate »
July 8, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Give War a Chance

Featured imageAs Scott noted earlier this morning, President Trump has given up on dealing with Iran. I take it that he will now do what we recommended a long time ago: bomb for a while to complete the degradation of Iran’s military, and then go home. As for the Strait of Hormuz, we can leave that problem to the countries in Europe and Asia who depend on oil from that source. »
July 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

NewsGuard revisited

Featured imageNewsGuard is a brick in the wall meant to protect the reading public from “misinformation.” It is a danger to those such as us. It is the centerpiece of Rob Bluey’s Daily Signal column “Florida Just Showed Us How to Fight Back Against Media Blacklists.” Let us salute Rob Bluey and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for their efforst to guard against NewsGuard. Here let me reiterate a story I dug »
July 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Believe all tattoos

Featured imageThe Democratic handwringing over Graham Platner is sickening. It is not sickening because the Democratic supporters of Platner didn’t abandon him when the New York Times first explored his sexcapades. One could infer that he was guilty of traditional wrongdoing from the story, but it wasn’t necessarily so. The “believe all women” line is an obvious fiction. As we have seen, even those who mouth the idiocy don’t buy it. »
July 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson

“They’re cuckoo”

Featured imageThe bellum waged by Iran doesn’t seem to have been interruptum either by the April 7 ceasefire or the June 17 Memorandum of Understanding. The terms of those agreements to the contrary notwithstanding, the Iranian thugs have continued to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz. From our perspective, this constituted the primary desideratum (a Latin word that has made its way into English) of these agreements. Vice President Vance’s »
July 7, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Less Bad Numbers on the Midterms

Featured imageRasmussen’s latest numbers are looking up a bit for Republicans. Keep in mind that this is a likely voter poll: The Democratic Party now leads Republicans by four points in the battle to control the House of Representatives. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that if the elections for Congress were held today, 46% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Democratic candidate, while 42% »
July 7, 2026 — Scott Johnson

This just in

Featured imageFollowing up on “Unstrait is the gate,” I think this deserves a separate note: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired at least two missiles at commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz early on Tuesday, two senior U.S. officials told Axios. Both ships suffered significant damage, but no casualties were reported, one of the cited officials said. U.K. Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) confirmed one of the incidents, saying a tanker »
July 7, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Unstrait is the gate

Featured imageAthough the Iranian regime agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz in the June 17 memorandum of understanding with the Unites States, it has failed to do so. General Jack Keane states it as a matter of fact in his bluntest appearance on Fox News yesterday. His statement of the case brings us up to date. Vice President Vance’s new friends in Iran appear not to be all that he »
July 6, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Do Democrats Even Pretend…

Featured image…to be patriotic anymore? YouGov conducted a poll of more than 1,000 U.S. adults, on the subject of flags. The results are dismaying. Steve Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline highlights this: Democrats view the Black Lives Matter flag more positively than the American flag: Amazing, especially since Black Lives Matter turned out to be a fraudulent organization. The results at the link are generally pretty interesting, especially the crosstabs, but I »
July 6, 2026 — Scott Johnson

A happy ending

Featured imageIn his It’s Noon In Israel newsletter Amit Segal recounts the story behind the wedding of former October 7 hostages Sasha Troufanov and Sapir Cohen in Israel over the weekend: Sapir was released…during the November 2023 ceasefire, not knowing whether Sasha was still alive. For Sasha, the nightmare stretched on for more than 400 days. He was shot in the legs by his captors, and by the time he was »
July 7, 2026 — John Hinderaker

It Serves Them Right

Featured imageGraham Platner is presumed to be on his way to oblivion, but reportedly he is trying to hold the Democratic Party hostage on his way out: Maine Democratic candidate Graham Platner appears to be holding the Democratic Party hostage and is refusing to drop out after being accused of rape unless he gets to approve his successor to run for the Senate, The Post has learned. A source familiar with »
July 7, 2026 — John Hinderaker

The Sick Smithsonian

Featured imageThe White House’s Domestic Policy Council has produced a report on the takeover of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History by the anti-American Left. This X account summarizes some of the high (or low) points: A museum supposedly for families and children displayed: — A sadomasochistic "crotch harness" — A "trans nonbinary" person's "chest binder" — Pages from a 6yo girl's diary in which she prays "every night »
July 7, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Tattoo you

Featured imageI wrote about Maine Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner on May 31 in “A Platner to make you plotz.” At that time I contemplated that the Democrats would send Platner out to pasture with a substitute after he secured the Democratic nomination, as he went on to do. Platner has now been abandoned by his Democrat friends as a political inconvenience. He is guilty of faults of the traditional kind »
July 6, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Thief River caper

Featured imageStranger than fiction. Last month, on the heels of the great Bemidji (MN) roofing raid where ICE nabbed more than a dozen illegal aliens at a residential job site, federal immigration authorities did a similar raid in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. According to federal court filings, the raid in Thief River Falls took place at a commercial roofing job site, believe it or not, of all places, at the Pennington »
July 6, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Farewell to Graham Platner

Featured imageGraham Platner, the self-described Communist with a Nazi tattoo and a long paper trail on social media, was obviously a person of low character from the beginning. But he polled pretty well against Susan Collins, so every prominent Democrat stuck with him. Or pretended to, anyway. Maybe they were just looking for the right opportunity to jump ship. That opportunity came today, when Politico released a report, based on its »
July 6, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Strange planet

Featured imageLast night TCM played the dystopian thriller Soylent Green (1973), starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. It was Robinson’s last film. He was dying of cancer during the filming and Heston credited him with the success of the film. Robinson played his character’s death scene in the face of his own “true and imminent death,” as Heston subsequently wrote. Rereading Gulliver’s Travels, I’ve been thinking about Heston’s role as »