April 21, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE SUPPLY OF WHITE SUPREMACISTS IS SO LOW THAT THE SPLC HAD TO CREATE A MOVEMENT TO BE AGAINST:

Posted at 9:02 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE: The End of EPA’s Endangerment Finding Is a Bigger Deal Than the Iran War.

“We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.” — Bernard of Chartres

Two things happened in February that will change the world. The first is the Iran War.

The second is an event so obscure most Americans don’t even know it happened — the Feb. 12 repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding by the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This decision puts a knife into the kidney of all the major U.S. climate rules made under the Obama and Biden administrations. It was the legal underpinning for the Green New Deal.

Of the two events, the end of the Endangerment Finding is of a greater consequence, yet 21st Century conventional wisdom — curated and gatekept by social media, the most unwise medium ever invented — makes it hard to fit one’s head around this argument. But here goes.

The Iran War is costing about $1-2 billion a day in direct costs, and several times that in indirect costs from higher energy prices across most of Europe and Asia, though less so in the United States, which is increasingly energy independent.

Meanwhile, the 2009 Endangerment is one of those “regulatory state” workarounds when Congress doesn’t pass a law or the Supreme Court passes on a tough decision. This administrative decision is the foundation of ALL modern climate regulation and global climate diplomacy. Its reversal has the Trump administration crowing about the $1.3 trillion in savings over the next decade to American citizens through cheaper automobiles, among other things.

This has made a lot of the right people unhappy.

Worst. Hitler. Ever. Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SLOWLY GRINDING WHEELS OF JUSTICE: April has seen the resignation of three Members of the House of Representatives, even without full disclosure of all the sexual misconduct hush payments made with tax dollars on behalf of congressmen accused of sexual abuse and assault against congressional staff. But more is coming, as I report tonight for The Washington Stand.

Posted at 7:34 pm by Mark Tapscott

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…:

Posted at 5:22 pm by Stephen Green

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Misunderstanding Mr. Spock.

In the wake of the cancellation of yet another ridiculous “Star Trek” property, this time the hilariously cringe-inducing “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” sane audiences are once again asking the question “why can’t anyone get ‘Star Trek’ right?” The answer may be as simple as this… it’s because the studio’s leadership, as well as the creatives so far tasked with bringing new “Star Trek” stories to life, do not understand what “Star Trek” is, they only know what they wish it was.

These days, Hollywood creatives seem to want to write overtly about their own personal politics more than they want to tell great stories. In the Trump era many of Hollywood’s biggest writers, directors and actors believe deeply that the most important thing they can do with the positions in Hollywood to which they have ascended is to use their art to advocate for Progressive policies. It is the Great Cause which has finally brought meaning to their lives.

The problem is that this approach creates terrible drama every time it’s tried… a truth to which Hollywood has remained uniquely allergic over the last twenty years, in part because they believe “Star Trek” is an exception to this iron rule of story. To the modern Hollywood Progressive, the original “Star Trek” series was one which successfully combined exciting sci-fi adventure stories with constant Progressive political agitation. This is a tragic misunderstanding, but one in which Progressives believe so deeply, they have convinced themselves not only that “Star Trek” can continue to agitate for their preferred political outcomes while succeeding as a piece of popular entertainment, but that it must, because Progressive politics is built into the DNA of the “Star Trek” universe and you cannot have one without the other.

The original Star Trek was JFK’s muscular liberalism projected into space.  The young JFK became the young Captain James T. Kirk. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” became “The Final Frontier.” Trek was gunboat diplomacy, in space. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, his best writer-producer both served in WWII; Roddenberry would go on to become a Los Angeles policeman. Coon created Star Trek’s “United Federation of Planets” as the intergalactic equivalent of the United States of America.

As James Lileks wrote in 2007 in a piece titled, “A Conservative Trek,” “You could say [Capt. Kirk] did his part for God and Country, but of course Trek believed in neither:”

Nevertheless, the best Trek was conservative: it was rooted in the unchanging nature of man, be they hooting hominids on the plains of Earth throwing rocks at prey, or civilized spacefarers Money, power, lust, war: These were the constants, and Star Trek knew they’d follow us to infinity and beyond. At best we could find enlightened, savvy ways to avoid the pointless fights. But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive.

Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in “A Taste of Armageddon.” He used it as a threat, and didn’t carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare. But he would have done it if he had to, and not just for the reputation you get back home at the Officer’s Club. Not for Kirk the niceties of diplomacy: If he had to violate a treaty, he’d do it. If he had to save a civilization from the lifeless machinations of an ancient operating system, he’d harangue its computer until it smoked and crashed. In “The Arena,” Kirk didn’t win the battle against a rubber-suit Gorn because they hammered out a six-point Roadmap to Peace. Granted, he got the thumbs-up from the League of Judgmental Effeminate Aliens because he didn’t cave in the Gorn’s head with a stone. But prior to that, he nailed him in the chest with an improvised cannon that shot diamonds. In a cannon-free zone, no less.

All of which is a reminder of how closer to the center did the Kennedy era hug before his assassination, Vietnam, Nixon, and eventually an obsession with identity politics drove Hollywood Democrats completely insane.

UPDATE:

Tweet continues, “Actor Robert Picardo reacted: ‘Not enough people had found us. He said, you know, that the reason you’ll hear is that we never cracked the top 10 shows in streaming. Maybe they wouldn’t have heard about it because there was really no advertising push behind our show.’ Are these Star Trek creators living in an echo chamber bubble?”

Having worked on the Rick Berman-era Voyager, Picardo has to know he’s gaslighting fans of that era Trek.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DRAIN THE SWAMP:

Full details here.

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

BREAKING:

Trump: “Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

So the regime not showing up in Pakistan for the talks might have been less about intransigence and more about political chaos.

Regardless, the blockade remains in place, and that’s the most important pressure point.

UPDATE:

If — again, if — the IRGC has seized what’s left of the civilian government leadership, it’s hard to see how the ceasefire extension lasts very long. Those guys are hardcore revolutionary Islamists.

Posted at 4:25 pm by Stephen Green

MORE ON ACTBLUE:

Maybe the entire Democratic Party needs to come under RICO scrutiny.

Posted at 4:04 pm by Stephen Green

CORN, POPPED:

Posted at 3:03 pm by Stephen Green