[I’m planning to pin this post to the top of the page for at least a few days, so scroll down for newer posts.]
I’ve turned on the new comments system and I hope it goes smoothly. I’ve already tested it out in various ways and it appears to be operating pretty well, as far as I can tell. But if you have any problems with it, please let me know in an email. You can find my email address underneath the photo at the top of the blog (the apple, books, and pointe shoes on the table). Click where it says “Email.”
If you’ve been commenting here already you shouldn’t experience any changes when you try to comment. As long as you use the username you’ve been using right along, and the email address you’ve been using right along (even if it’s not a real one), your comments should post without any problems and you wouldn’t even notice anything new if I hadn’t posted this announcement.
However, new commenters – that is, people with new usernames and/or new email addresses – will find that their first comment goes into moderation. It will not appear until I approve it. When I see it – which would be the next time I check the moderated comments, so there might be a time lag of a few hours – I will either approve it or disapprove it. If I approve it, you become a regular commenter and your future comments should post smoothly without going into moderation again.
So, in summary: old commenters no problem. New commenters, the first comment is moderated and after that no problem.
See this for a stroll down memory lane, and not an especially pleasant one:
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the former terrorist leaders of the Weathermen and the Chicago power couple who spotted Obama and moved him up the political ladder getting third row seats to the opening of the Obama Presidential Center spoke more eloquently about what Obama represented than any of the hollow political speeches and media press releases. …
But what [Obama] actually stood for was sitting in the third row and wearing the Communist star. The media didn’t even believe that Obama’s mentor getting a front row seat to the opening of his presidential center while wearing the symbol of a movement responsible for the mass murder of millions mattered.
Bill Ayers was pretty clear about what Obama represented. “The people who tried to say that Obama palled around with terrorists, that he had Palestinian friends, that he had a black nationalist minister, none of that s___ worked,” Ayers told the one reporter who stopped him to chat.
Some of us – actually, many of us – were quite aware of what Obama stood for even back in 2008. The media and the left (but I repeat myself) were devoted to covering it up. But apparently there’s no need to cover it up any more.
Those of us of a certain age can remember the 60s quite well:
The Weathermen were a murderous Marxist terrorist organization dedicated to bringing down the United States. After they realized that planting bombs wouldn’t work, they turned to politics.
And the radicals accomplished with politics what they never managed to do with explosives.
“We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men,” Prairie Fire, a book co-authored by Ayers, Dohrn and other radicals declared. “Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle.”
Barack Obama may have seated his two terrorist mentors in the front rows, but he made no direct reference to them, except for having “found my community here, friendships that would last a lifetime.”
Ah, but remember that Obama claimed back during his first campaign that Ayers was someone he hardly knew, just “a guy” who lived “in the neighborhood.” I wrote this post about the Obama-Ayers connection in 2008 prior to Obama’s first election, and I was hardly alone. But the media was engaged in covering it up, and they succeeded.
So here we are. Ayers is 81 years old now, and retired. But he has managed to have an outsized influence on politics by going into academia and focusing on the field of teaching teachers to teach. That’s how he has shaped the beliefs of several generations of students. He must be very very proud:
Ayers is a retired professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues. …
Ayers was elected vice president for curriculum studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008.[48] William H. Schubert, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that his election was “a testimony of [Ayers’s] stature and [the] high esteem he holds in the field of education locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally”. Writer Sol Stern, a conservative opponent of progressive education policies, has criticized Ayers as having a virulent “hatred of America”, and said, “Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer.” …
In an interview published in 1995, Ayers characterized his political beliefs at that time and in the 1960s and 1970s: “I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist … [Laughs] Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs]
(1) It’s official; the 60-day clock has resumed on the Iran War:
President Donald Trump formally notified lawmakers this weekend that the nation is once again at war with Iran, giving his administration another 60-day clock to use the military in the region without congressional approval.
In a letter to Congress dated July 10, obtained by POLITICO, Trump stated that the strikes that began on July 7 represent “military action consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States’ interests both at home and abroad.”
The ceasefire is over – but we already knew that.
(2) Iranian oil shipments are being blockaded again by the US. And this time, Trump wants reimbursement from ships that pass through – or at least, that’s what he’s saying at the moment:
“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” he claimed. “But as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”
Trump announced the concept on Monday — after months of rejecting Iran’s plan for post-war tolls — in what could amount to a negotiating tactic. …
The US government has announced no concrete steps toward imposing the levy.
Trump’s abrupt announcement is a break from his longstanding position that the strait should be toll-free after the conflict ends with Tehran — so much so that administration insiders believe he’s establishing space to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, which wants to impose its own fees.
(3) A prominent British politician named Ann Widdecomb has been murdered, and there is a suspect who has been arrested:
The killing of former British politician Ann Widdecombe is now being considered an act of terror, police said Monday.
A 28-year-old man in custody on suspicion of murder was rearrested on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, Counter Terrorism Policing South East said.
Devon and Cornwall Police originally said the killing was not believed to be a terror-related crime and there was nothing to suggest it was politically motivated.
“We now have new information and evidence that means Counter Terrorism Policing is now leading the investigation,” said the head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, Laurence Taylor.
Widdecomb was a conservative and had recently supported Reform. The man arrested has not been named, nor do we know what flavor of terrorism they’re talking about.
(4) Some rich people are fleeing New York, leading to a tax decline:
The analysis shows New York’s share of millionaires fell from 12.7% in 2010 to just 8.7% in 2022 — the steepest decline of any state in the country.
As a direct result, personal income tax collections in 2022 alone were roughly $10.7 billion lower than they otherwise would have been if they had maintained their share of the wealthy folks. The study makes clear that the people leaving pay a disproportionately large share of state taxes,
(5) 82-year-old woman falls into tub, is injured, and survives nine days there before rescue. An impressive will to live.
We do know it’s happening, but the real question is “in what numbers?”:
A small town Kansas mayor born in Mexico. A Filipino senior citizen living in Hawaii. Two Pakistani men residing in New Jersey. An Aussie in Louisiana. And a Chinese student studying at the University of Michigan. They all have one thing in common.
Each has been charged in the last year with illegally voting in U.S. federal elections as foreigners, part of a sudden wave of prosecutions led by the Trump Justice Department for a crime that used to be among the rarest in the federal court system.
The Trump Justice Department has secured about two dozen non-citizens voting arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months alone, with about another 90 more cases under investigation, officials told Just the News. And all 50 states were sent notices this month that election officials can and will be prosecuted too if they allow non-citizens to vote.
Until now, prosecutors haven’t been especially interested in pursuing the possibility. And so it’s been easy to say it just doesn’t happen. But the DOJ has started to focus on the phenomenon, and these cases are the result. How many more are there?:
Trump administration officials like Dhillon believe the total number of foreigners who made it onto voter rolls will grow into the hundreds of thousands when all the reviews of state voter rolls are completed.
Many blue and even some red states are fighting in court to block the DOJ from examining their voter rolls. The dozen or so states that have cooperated in some form have identified 20,000 to 30,000 non-citizens on their rolls, officials said. A much larger bloc of non-citizens is expected to be found in non-cooperating states such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California, the officials said.
Being on the rolls isn’t the same thing as actually voting, of course. But the two can certainly be connected, especially in states that send out ballots by mail without voters having requested them.
This is part of the reason Americans feel increased distrust of the validity of US elections. Here’s a poll:
In a national survey from the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections (CTTE) at the University of California San Diego, produced in collaboration with the university’s Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research, 60% of respondents said they are confident votes will be counted accurately nationwide in the 2026 midterms. Just after the 2024 presidential election, that figure stood at 77%, a 17-point drop.
The survey of 11,406 eligible voters, conducted Dec. 19, 2025 through Jan. 12, 2026, shows trust declining by 17 percentage points among Republicans, 13 points among Democrats and 16 points among independents. The decline spans party lines, though the sources of skepticism vary.
Of course they vary, and they vary in the way you might expect:
Only 27% of Democrats, 21% of independents and 35% of Republicans say they trust that district lines are drawn in a way that fairly reflects what voters want. …
Republicans expressed higher levels of distrust about mail ballots and whether noncitizens will be prevented from casting ballots, while Democrats’ distrust focused on redistricting efforts.
It often happens that, when a member of Congress dies and an interim appointment is needed, a relative fills the position for a while. That’s what’s happening here:
Former U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, will serve as interim U.S. senator to finish his term following his death.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster made the appointment Monday, one day after Graham died. …
Graham became Nordone’s legal guardian after their parents died and later adopted her when she was 13 years old.
Before her appointment, Nordone worked with the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department and has served as Commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind since 2019.
Nordone, a resident of Lexington, serves on the SC State Workforce Development Board and is the president-elect of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the College of Charleston, a Master of Arts in Rehabilitation Counseling, and is a Certified Public Manager.
She sounds like a very capable person, and they were extremely close. She sometimes helped him on the campaign trail.
This appointment also has the advantage of filling the position for the next few months with someone who is likely (although not certain) to lack permanent political ambitions. Since the election is in November, it should give room to others to campaign in a special election primary that will be held in mid-August.
Sen. Mitch McConnell on Sunday broke his silence on his hospital stay with a statement issued by his office claiming he fell but didn’t suffer a stroke or heart attack — and it included a photo of the politician smiling for extra measure. …
The Kentucky pol suffered “minor injuries” in his fall but then contracted pneumonia, which complicated his health situation, the statement said.
“My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages,” McConnell said in the statement.
“But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital. While receiving excellent care over the past several weeks, I’ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia.”
McConnell’s doctors attributed his fall to his post-polio condition. At the age of 2, he contracted polio, and since then, his upper left leg has suffered from paralysis.
The Office of the Attending Physician for the senator added, “Early in his hospitalization, he developed pneumonia, which responded rapidly to antibiotic treatment.
“The remainder of his hospital stay focused on physical therapy and strategies to reduce his risk of future falls. He has been medically cleared to continue fully participating in his intensive physical therapy program.”
This all makes a certain amount of sense except for a couple of things. The first is that, if he never had a concussion, why was he “briefly unconscious”? That hasn’t been explained at all. Second, his physical condition is probably worse than the statement indicates if he’s still in inpatient rehab and deemed unable to go to the Senate even to vote.
Another conundrum trying to understand the mind of leftists. I know…an impossible task. But someone explain to me why the ones I know enthusiastically cheer every drone strike the Ukrainians make on Russia? Why is that such a just war? I’m not saying it isn’t, but their hypocrisy in not supporting the US getting rid of the 50 year threat of Iran having a nuke. Ukraine good, US bad.
The answer has several elements to it. The first is that the Ukraine War, and our position of helping Ukraine, began during the Biden administration. Had Trump been president and done the exact same thing as the Biden crew in taking Ukraine’s side, the reaction from the left probably would have been much less supportive of Ukraine. In fact, the left might have been against it. On the other hand, Trump’s war against Iran obviously must be condemned by the left, much like everything Trump does.
That’s not all, though. Another factor is that Putin is still connected in their minds to Trump, either by a continuing belief in Russiagate, or just by the idea that they’re both dictators and birds of a feather. Therefore of course the left will support Ukraine rather than Putin in the war (and by the way, I also support Ukraine, but for reasons which I’ve aired before).
Then there’s Israel. The left has come to uniformly hate and demonize Israel, and Israel is a major beneficiary of and military partner in the current war against Iran. Therefore the majority of the left must be on Iran’s side, just as it is mostly on Hamas’ side and on the Palestinians’ side.
So the whole thing is not hypocrisy or even inconsistency if you understand that the left’s guiding principles go like this: Trump bad, Israel bad.
I was shocked when I saw that Lindsey Graham had died. He wasn’t all that old, and he hadn’t been ill. But there was the headline, and it couldn’t be denied:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the most prominent and powerful foreign policy hawk in Congress, died suddenly Saturday following reported chest pains and cardiac arrest. He was 71.
For more than two decades, Graham championed the peace through American strength abroad, advocating for military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq — and Iran.
Graham had a lot of enemies, including some on the right, and he had a lot of friends. He even had some enemies turned friends, such as President Trump, who grew close to him. Many tributes poured in, and of course much online hatred as well, in the manner of our present age.
I didn’t always agree with Graham, although I often did. I think his finest hour – certainly his most intense hour – was at the Kavanaugh hearings:
Recently, Graham had been busy flying to Ukraine, working on bringing Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords, and promoting the SAVE Act. I also just learned, from this article, that he hadn’t taken advantage of his position to amass enormous wealth, comparatively speaking:
The late Sen. Lindsey Graham ranked among the bottom half of Congress’ big earners despite more than three decades in office and a top role leading the GOP.
Graham, 71, died Saturday night with a net worth of nearly $1.5 million, leaving the senator, who had a modest upbringing in South Carolina, ranked at 294th in wealth among the 535 voting members of Congress, according to data from the Quiver Quantitative tracker. …
Despite a 31-year career in Congress that catapulted Graham to the center of power in the Senate, the South Carolina native has never strayed too far from his humble roots.
Graham grew up in a blue-collar family in the small town of Central, where his parents ran a restaurant and pool hall known as the Sanitary Cafe. A young Graham lived in the room right behind the family business.
The late senator previously credited his working-class upbringing — in which he helped his parents run their restaurant — with pushing him to be the first person in his family to go to college.
But while he was attending the University of South Carolina, both his parents died of illness just 15 months apart from each other, leaving Graham to legally adopt his then-13-year-old sister and get her through her education.
After earning his law degree, Graham joined the Air Force …
I saw Graham in person once, and I was extremely impressed, but not by what you’d imagine. It was at a large outdoor gathering during the 2015-2016 primary season, and he was running for president. He dropped out early in the game, but this was before that. There was a big crowd but not an enormous one, it was a beautiful day, and there were about ten speakers – all of them GOP candidates for the presidency. When it came Graham’s turn he spoke for about fifteen minutes.
I of course knew who he was, but he surprised me by being incredibly humorous. I mean really zany quips, one after the other, all of them sounding like ad libs, all of them incredibly witty. I hadn’t ever seen that side of him, and he was in rare form. Afterwards I somehow found myself speaking to a volunteer for his campaign, and I asked if this was unusual. She said he was constantly cracking them up with his humor.
A hospital in Colorado had ended medical transitions of children – that is, it stopped giving puberty blockers and hormones to children (it never gave surgical treatment to children). But then parents of trans-identified children sued the hospital, and demanded it continue treatment. A Colorado court decided, in early July, that the hospital must provide it:
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled 5-2 on May 18 that Children’s should resume providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, deciding in favor of transgender patients who had sued the hospital.
The state’s highest court returned the case to a lower court, saying a judge should issue an injunction requiring the hospital to resume care. That lower court judge, Denver District Judge Ericka F.E. Englert, issued the injunction Thursday, and Children’s confirmed Monday that care would resume, at least as an offering in the hospital’s array of services.
In an emailed statement, Children’s said the hospital had “reinstated medical gender-affirming care into our scope of services” — and then added that every medical doctor in the gender-affirming care clinic “has independently decided they will not prescribe or renew gender-affirming medications for patients under age 18.”
That was written nearly a month ago.
The hospital initially had suspended these services because the feds had threatened to cut off Medicaid funding, which is a huge source of the hospital’s income. After the lawsuit from the parents, the doctors are still refusing to provide the drugs because they say they are afraid of being held criminally liable.
The hospital continues to provide “mental health care” for such children. That is very appropriate; the medications are not. I’ve written extensively on that subject and am not going into it again here.
