July 12, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Lindsey Graham dies at 71

Featured image This morning comes the shocking news that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham died yesterday evening. He had just turned 71 this past Thursday. According to his office, he died after a “brief and sudden illness.” He was completing his fourth term in the Senate and gliding to reelection in November. Statement from the Office of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). pic.twitter.com/CQ5yVvqTH1 — Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 12, 2026 What »
July 12, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Sunday morning coming down

Featured imageRoger McGuinn turns 84 tomorrow. I am drawing on what I wrote to pay tribute to McGuinn when he turned 83 last year. It is time to celebrate again. He is a gifted and influential artist. Before founding the predecessor to the Byrds with Gene Clark and David Crosby, McGuinn was a folk nut. He returned to his first musical love with Roger McGuinn’s Folk Den, where he posts new »
July 11, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Kratom

Featured imageMinnesota produces more news than can be consumed locally. From the U.K. Daily Mail, Former Obama staffer accused of stealing from colleagues to fund drug habit. The Daily Mail reports, Adam Fetcher, 42, was let go from his role as Chief Communications Officer for the City of Minneapolis last week amid a police probe, The Minnesota Star Tribune reported. According to the outlet, Fetcher, who earned $186,495 a year in »
July 11, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Law Enforcement for Sale

Featured imageMy first experience with law enforcement being sold out to partisan interests arose out of a program, in which, as I recall, New York University Law School was involved, to place anti-fossil fuel lawyers in state attorney generals’ offices to sue oil companies. The effort was funded by left-wing money. So the far left was able to use public authorities to pursue its extremist agenda, courtesy of secret left-wing donors. »
July 11, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Iranian Assassination Attempt?

Featured imagePresident Trump says the Iranian government may try to assassinate him: “1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!” Trump wrote on Truth »
July 11, 2026 — Scott Johnson

When the Times profiled Omar

Featured imageNews that the New York Times will launch a Twin Cities newsletter brings to mind a few of the Twin Cities stories that the Times has covered over the years. Some of them overlapped my own work on Power Line and gave me a fresh perspective on how the Times works. When Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Ilhan Omar was elected to Congress in 2018, then-Times congressional reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg »
July 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Platner Says Goodbye

Featured imageGraham Platner officially withdrew from the Maine Senate race today. This is his letter to Maine’s Secretary of State: I only want to call attention to the manner in which Platner concluded his letter, presumably expressing his priorities: F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts. “Up the Hearts” is a soccer reference, which I guess fits–so much for Platner’s blue collar bona fides. But “F*ck ICE” and “Free Palestine” are »
July 10, 2026 — Bill Glahn

Deported

Featured imageEvery now and again, justice prevails. As John noted earlier, Tou Lue Vang, pardoned child rapist and Laotian national, has been deported: Some backstory here. There are a handful of southeast Asian men who arrived in Minnesota as refugees decades ago who went on to be convicted of serious felony crimes. As a result, they lost their legal immigration status and were ordered deported back to their home countries. But »
July 10, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Strait developments

Featured imageIt seems unlikely that President Trump will choose to leave the Strait of Hormuz under the control of the Iranian thugocracy. Can he really leave the Strait in a condition worse for us than it was before the commencement of the current hostilities? It makes it hard to claim victory. It would in fact represent a significant defeat. The Institute for the Study of War has posted this Iran Update »
July 10, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Ayatollah on ice

Featured imageThe Reuters caption on a photograph taken from the scene captured in the video below reads: “A person enters a refrigerated truck carrying the coffin of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in Israeli and U.S. airstrikes, as people attend Khamenei’s funeral procession, in Karbala, Iraq, July 9, 2026.” Video of the incident can also be seen in this Times of India story. »
July 9, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Birth Tourism In Texas

Featured imageBirth tourism–foreigners coming to the U.S. for the specific purpose of having a baby that will be an American citizen–has been going on for some time, but the Supreme Court’s reaffirmation of birthright citizenship likely will give it a boost. That, at least, seems to be happening in Texas: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to investigate a hospital in Mission, Texas, according »
July 11, 2026 — John Hinderaker

The Week In Pictures: Goodbye, Nazi Edition

Featured imageThe week began with Independence Day, and it featured a lot of World Cup action. If you can call anything that happens in soccer action. Europe sweltered under a non-air conditioned heat wave, and the Iran conflict resumed. But what motivated meme-makers more than anything else was the spectacular implosion of the Graham Platner Senate campaign. I suppose because it was so unexpected: who would have imagined that the campaign »
July 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker

The Times Expands Its Range

Featured imageThis is something I haven’t seen noted anywhere–the New York Times is expanding geographically, by adding “local newsletters” for metro areas outside of New York. The first one will be in the Twin Cities: The New York Times is piloting a local newsletter for the Twin Cities. It said: "Our hope is that The Local: Twin Cities can serve as a model for similar future efforts elsewhere around the country" »
July 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker

A Happy Ending

Featured imageWell, this is great: Bill Glahn wrote about the Tou Vang case here. Briefly, Vang was convicted in 2005 of repeatedly raping a ten year old girl, something he said was “normal in his culture.” Vang had a legal status in the U.S., but he lost it because of the rape conviction. He was ordered deported, but as so often happens, the order achieved nothing. Twenty years later, he came »
July 10, 2026 — Scott Johnson

Don’t cry for him, Argentina

Featured imageAn observant reader writes in response to “For whom the Totenkopf tolls” with a question regarding Graham Platner: Do you perhaps strongly suspect as I do that a not insignificant percentage of P-Hustle’s [P-Hustle was Platner’s digital username on platforms like Reddit and Kik] apparent bitterness over his current situation stems from a realization that he went through the trouble of reluctantly covering “[his] Totenkopf” with that ridiculous replacement, all »
July 9, 2026 — John Hinderaker

NY Times Recants Dog Rape

Featured imageSort of, anyway: I don’t share Posner’s regard for the New York Times news operation. On the contrary: I think Times reporters and editors have been responsible for more misinformation than any other news outlet over the last 40 years. But it means something that the paper’s head news guy says he wouldn’t have run the Kristof smear. I didn’t track down the podcast, and I don’t know whether there »
July 9, 2026 — John Hinderaker

Socialism Surges

Featured imageMany think that the left wing of the Democratic Party is an exotic species that represents few actual voters. I am afraid that is not the case. Socialism is the most rapidly growing political ideology in America. Thus, Rasmussen finds: More than a quarter of American voters now believe socialism is better than capitalism, and this preference is strongest among Democrats. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey »