August 14, 2026

LEFTISTS ARE ALWAYS COOKING THE BOOKS:

Posted at 10:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO 9/11:

Tweet concludes, “One student, Zacarias Moussaoui, keeps asking how to fly a plane, but insists that he doesn’t need to know how to take off and land. Moussaoui is arrested.”

As Mark Steyn wrote in 2005, “With hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta’s jet and the World Trade Center on 9/11, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier:”

Ms Bryant is an official with the US department of agriculture in Florida, and the late Mr Atta had gone to see her about getting a $650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world’s largest crop-duster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Mr Atta refused to deal with Ms Bryant because she was “but a woman”. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly.

When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn’t get the 650 grand in cash that day, Mr Atta threatened to cut Ms Bryant’s throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington – the White House, the Pentagon, etc – and asked, “How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?”

Fortunately, Ms Bryant had been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. “I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from,” she recalled. “I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could.”

“Better dead than rude,” to coin a phrase.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DEMOCRATS’ ‘WOKE 1’ HANGOVER:

As the “vibe shift” takes hold, Democrats who enthusiastically partook in the most extreme “Woke 1” rhetoric find themselves in a bind. Their old statements now seem unhinged. They can admit they were wrong, perhaps with a nod and a wink to how crazy we all went during lockdown. Or they can dig in their heels and stand by their old positions. Neither option is particularly attractive.

If you try to distance yourself from 2020-era statements, you come off as intellectually spineless and willing to go along with whatever’s popular, either because you have no ideas of your own, or because you’re too cowardly to break ranks. Your convenient conversion might also not be believed. As Ms. Hong found, no one buys that a 37-year-old ought not be judged by the beliefs she held as a 31-year-old. Refusing to capitulate feels good, but doesn’t solve the core problem that voters perceive you as an extremist crank.

So what is a plucky, progressive Democrat suffering from a nasty 2020 hangover to do? If it were me, I’d start by deleting my tweets.

Good luck with that — presumably, the craziest stuff from those running in the midterms and (especially) the Dems’ 2028 presidential candidates have all been screencapped by now by opposition researchers.

And for those on the left who reject the word “woke” to describe 2020 and/or their current worldview:

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

WORTH ANOTHER LOOK:

NASA ECLIPSE AT TOTALITY

Posted at 4:27 pm by Charlie Martin

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Wet the Cop, Not the Bed. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn a brand-new way to fail the field sobriety test, what’s on the other side of that pond, and how Wyoming Man pretty much arrested himself.”

Posted at 4:23 pm by Stephen Green

IT HELPS TO THINK OF THE MEDIA AS A NARRATIVE-ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM AND LITTLE ELSE:

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green

BECAUSE OF COURSE:

Posted at 3:36 pm by Stephen Green

REPORT: Jason Arday found dead.

UPDATE:

Posted at 3:32 pm by Ed Driscoll