May 22, 2025

WELL, THE PROBLEM IS A LACK OF TRUST IN THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY, AND THE FOOD INDUSTRY, AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Banning Lab-Grown Meat is Stupid.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SOMETIMES, ONLY THE DEATH PENALTY WILL DO:

Posted at 5:50 pm by Stephen Green

SORT OF LIKE AN OPEN THREAD BUT WITH WINE: Instapundit readers are again warmly invited to watch and participate in a videocast in which I’ll be a guest. 7-8 PM EST tonight, and also available on replay.

And like all the best joints, no cover, no minimum.

Several IP folks joined in last week, asking questions or adding comments. The show’s theme is to talk about a wide range of subjects in the news and allow (gasp!) a reasonable conversation, respecting those who express unpopular but well-stated views.

What an idea, right?

Here are the links, take your pick of whichever is easiest for you:

Rumble

Facebook

YouTube

TourOfDuty

X

Twitch

Locals

Odysee

 

Posted at 5:05 pm by Charles Glasser

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jon Stewart Ignores His Critical Role in Biden Cover-Up.

Tapper had it coming. So, too, does Stewart, except he’s pretending otherwise.

Late-night TV, along with “Saturday Night Live,” did all they could to hide Biden’s sad decline. Hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver either ignored the countless Biden gaffes or actively spun reality to pretend he was just an old man, not one battling a dementia-like condition.

Stewart is considered the dean of late-night political humor. And, on occasion, he puts his liberal blinders down to speak straight to his audience.

And yet he did very little of the kind when it came to Biden’s cognitive state.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green

THIS IS CNN:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEW REBOOT OF THE GOLDEN GIRLS LOOKS UNWATCHABLE. 1/10. CANNOT RECOMMEND: The Democrats’ Base Turns Out.

Meanwhile, in the wake of last night’s murders, Rubio is looking spot-on in his exchange with Pramila Jayapal:

Posted at 4:32 pm by Ed Driscoll

UNDER THE BUS: Tapper’s Book May End Kamala’s Political Career.

There’s still no word yet as to whether Kamala Harris will run for governor of California or hold out for another doomed attempt at the presidency. But it might be a moot point in light of revelations in Jake Tapper’s new book “Original Sin” about the Biden administration’s systematic cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. Oh sure, we all knew Biden was impaired, but the difference between today and the four years of the Biden presidency is that now even the liberal media is talking about it, and Kamala can’t run from her role in the cover-up.

Past reports indicate that Kamala will make a decision on a gubernatorial bid by this fall. The question is, how will the mainstream coverage of this Biden-Harris administration scandal impact her decision?

She has some serious explaining to do. Throughout Biden’s presidency, she consistently portrayed him as a “strong, effective, and capable leader.” Even after that disastrous June 2024 debate that ultimately led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Harris doubled down, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper it was just “a slow start, but it was a strong finish.”

This scandal isn’t going away. If she chooses to run for governor, she won’t be able to hide from it.

To be fair, Kamala 2020 and Kamala 2024 may have done far worse damage to Kamala’s political career than Tapper and Thompson could ever hope to with their book.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM: Target’s Sales Dented by DEI Boycott.

The retail company said a laundry list of problems dragged down its quarterly sales, including a boycott by shoppers who disagreed with its decision this year to end some diversity programs.

Target’s sales have been tepid for years.

Did anyone stop and wonder if maybe Target’s sales have been tepid because the company went all-in on DEI, woke, and “pride” — even in the children’s clothing department?

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

HMM: Syria’s new leader ‘open’ to joining Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel, US reps who met him say.

Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has privately expressed openness to joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel in a move that would dramatically shake up the Middle East, according to two congressmen who met with him last month.

In exchange, al-Sharaa wanted assurances that Israel would stop bombing Syria, stop fomenting sectarian divisions and reach a renegotiated arrangement regarding the Golan Heights, Reps. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Martin Stutzman (R-Ind.) told The Post.

“He said, ‘We’re open to not only recognizing Israel, but also to try and join the Abraham Accords, but they must stop bombing within our nation,’” Mills recounted.

Previously: Syria faces renewed sectarian violence as government fails to deliver inclusivity.

al-Sharaa has to clean up his act before the bombings can stop.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

NOW WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO DO THAT?

Posted at 2:43 pm by Stephen Green

BEN RHODES SMILES:

In 2016, the failed novelist turned Obama’s Middle Eastern policy “expert” (in)famously told the New York Times, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

And as Steve wrote earlier, regarding Thompson and Tapper themselves, “they seem to think that anonymously and belatedly telling some of the truth gets them off the hook:”

Posted at 2:36 pm by Ed Driscoll

RESEARCH THAT CHAT GPT CAN’T DO: Archaeologist sailing like a Viking makes unexpected discoveries. “The sailing boat—an open, square-rigged clinker boat similar to the boats used during the Viking Age (800–1050 AD)—traveled from Trondheim up to the Arctic Circle and back in 2022. Since then, Jarrett and his team have sailed over 5,000 kilometers along Viking trade routes (see map). His research shows that the likely routes of the Vikings took them farther from land than previously thought.”

Posted at 2:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SO? JUST HAVE AI WRITE THE BOOKS: Chicago Sun-Times Published A.I.-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don’t Exist.

An AI-generated list of recommended reading for the summer, published by the Chicago Sun-Times, included several books that don’t exist.

Per NPR, at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer used the same flawed list, titled “Summer reading list for 2025.” Suggested titles included “Tidewater Dreams,” purportedly authored by Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende, which was described as her “first climate fiction novel.” Allende is a real person, but the suggested novel is not a book she or anyone else published.

Another suggestion was “The Rainmakers,” which is described as a story set in a “near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity.” This faux novel was said to be written by 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett.

The outlet noted that only five of the 15 books suggested were real titles.

Related: Politico’s Newsroom Is Starting a Legal Battle With Management Over AI.

Politico’s contract stipulates that the publication needs to use AI in a manner that follows the company’s standards of journalistic ethics. “We’re not against AI, but it should be held to the same ethical and style standards as our political journalists,” says Arianna Skibell, the union’s vice chair for contract enforcement, who writes Politico’s energy industry newsletter. Some union members question whether there’s always appropriate human oversight over the AI content Politico publishes.

In one case, an AI-generated live summary used language around immigration that human writers are not permitted to use, publishing phrases like “criminal migrants” as it covered the vice presidential debates.

“There were also factual errors that the AI inserted that night,” alleges Skibell. For example, she says, the AI credited actions taken by the Biden Administration as things Kamala Harris did. That post was later swapped for replacements without the errors, according to screenshots reviewed by WIRED. “At Politico, you can’t just wholly take down articles written by human reporters without going through a series of approvals, all the way up to newsroom leadership. That did not happen for the AI live summaries,” Wittenberg claims. (Politico did not comment on the specifics of the union’s allegations.)

Union members say they believe the AI-generated posts were handled in a way that violates Politico’s correction and takedown policies. They also allege that one of Politico’s paid premium AI tools for generating policy reports has spewed out incorrect information in the past. Politico’s human reporters broke the news in 2022 that the Supreme Court had voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, but a report on abortion rights generated by the Policy Intelligence Assistance tool in March 2025 was written as though the constitutional right was still in effect.

So AI is now covering events as well as human Politico journalists – that’s real progress!

Finally, an oldie but a goodie: DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Politico illustrates story about race and the modern GOP with a picture of Democrat George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. Even more amusingly, it’s labeled “History Dept.”

Exit question:

(Fixed an HTML bug — Charlie)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE’S NOT WRONG:

Palmer Raids redux? I’m starting to rethink those . . .

Posted at 1:58 pm by Glenn Reynolds