‘SAIGON HAS FALLEN’ 50 YEAR LATER: It was half a century ago that Americans woke up to the news that the North Vietnamese Army had entered the capital of South Vietnam. Then came the haunting scene of the last U.S. helicopter on the roof of the U.S. Embassy with a long line of desperate people trying to escape.

Rod Martin reminds us today of what followed:

“What followed was not peace, but darkness. The swift collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (turns out the Domino Theory was true) brought the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia.

“At least a million were sent to the ‘re-education camps’ in Vietnam alone. Half a million were murdered. Another two million fled this brutal night by sea, on rafts wholly unsuited for the tumultuous ocean, in wild hope that an American aircraft carrier might happen upon them. Close to half a million died in the water.”

Thus was set a pattern enabled by failed U.S. leadership that is with us to the present era, as witnessed by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and what may be in the offing in Ukraine. Martin offers some bracing insights and recommendations.

 

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Put About 100 Months’ Worth of Work Into His First 100 Days. “The president and his people have been working with an urgency driven by the dire straits that Joe Biden and his idiot handlers left the country in. There was no time to slow-play an agenda if the Republic was going to be saved — things were that bad. I had never gone into existential crisis mode until Biden and his slow kid commie cabal came into power.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

CHARMING: Ukrainian Reporter Was Tortured in Russian Prison Before Her Death, Investigation Finds.

Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in the summer of 2023 while reporting on black site prisons in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. She died under unclear circumstances while being held at a Russian prison in September 2024. Her remains were returned in February 2025 as part of an exchange of bodies between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukrainian forensic experts confirmed the remains were a 99.9% DNA match with her parents, according to a collaborative investigation led by Forbidden Stories, an international network of journalists.

“There were numerous signs of torture and ill-treatment on the body,” the exiled Russian news outlet IStories quoted Yuriy Belousov, head of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office war crimes unit, as saying.

According to The Guardian, medical examiners documented burn marks on her feet from electric shocks, abrasions on her head and hip, a broken rib and a fractured hyoid bone — a possible sign of strangulation.

“Experts have not yet been able to determine the cause of death due to the body’s condition,” Belousov said.

Investigators said the body was returned without a brain, eyes or larynx. A Ukrainian law enforcement source told IStories that Russia sometimes attributes missing organs to standard autopsy procedures.

“However, this may be a way to hide traces of violence,” the source said.

Meanwhile: “Russia is once again preparing to escalate the forced removal and deportation of Ukrainian children during the upcoming summer months. A Russian official stated that about 53,000 children from occupied Ukraine will ‘spend their summer holidays’ in children’s camps throughout occupied Ukraine and the Russian Federation.”

Nobody — at least nobody serious — is talking about going to war with Russia. But anyone wondering why Ukraine fights on needs to know about these things.

CHANGE? House Judiciary sets Wednesday markup of immigration policies in GOP agenda bill. “It would establish a minimum $1,000 asylum application fee, charging asylees for the first time in U.S. history. It would also establish a $1,000 fee for parolees, a $3,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children and a $550 fee for work permits for a number of applicants, among other new fees.”

THEY CAN’T HELP BUT LOVE US: The Main Attraction at Vietnam’s New War Museum: Anyone Who Looks American: Children mob U.S. visitors for selfies and handshakes outside, while displays inside condemn Yankee ‘imperialists.’

David McCaskey visited the new war museum here to see the American planes, helicopters and tanks from the Vietnam War.

But the 33-year-old graduate student from Buffalo, N.Y., quickly realized those exhibits were playing second fiddle to the museum’s star attraction: David McCaskey.

As soon as he entered the gates, about 30 schoolchildren in identical tracksuits swarmed him. They wanted a photo. Then another group did. And another. After 20 minutes of smiling for more than 100 children, he put on a face mask and sunglasses and finally slipped away.

“It’s the closest I’ll ever get to being a celebrity,” McCaskey said.

The Vietnam War ended 50 years ago Wednesday when North Vietnamese tanks rolled through Saigon, capital of the U.S.-backed South Vietnam. Today, tourists visiting the land of their onetime enemy are discovering that Americans are by and large beloved here.

We can’t help being lovable. Also, they’re next door to an expansionist China and need allies.

RIP: A Great Warrior for Freedom Has Passed Away.

One of the great Americans of our age, David Horowitz, died on Tuesday at the age of 86.

David Horowitz was one of the towering intellects and most perceptive thinkers of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first; he was also a man of unusual courage and remarkable vision. Though few people today realize it, David Horowitz was also one of the most influential people of our time, as he was one of the first leftists of any prominence to leave the leftist ranks and become a stalwart warrior for freedom.

Multitudes followed in his wake, often without realizing who it was who had blazed the trail for them. We are all in his debt not only for blazing that trial, but for the fact that after he established himself as a voice for freedom, sound values, and patriotism, David Horowitz spearheaded efforts to seize the intellectual and moral initiative from the left, and to articulate a vision for an America that really is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

After decades of the left’s cultural hegemony, David Horowitz played a massive role in establishing a large-scale movement of American patriots who refused to accept the claims of self-anointed “progressives” that their victory was inevitable, that they were on the right side of history, and that surrender was wiser than resistance. Today, that movement is broad-based, and one of its foremost exponents is in the Oval Office. Trump himself called Horowitz his “great friend.”

Read the whole thing.

IF YOU BUILD IT (SOCIALISM) THEY WILL GO:

WHO SELLS GOOD SHOCKED FACES? MINE IS GETTING WORN OUT*:  Spoiler: The ‘Pro Palestine’ Mob Is Neither ‘Pro-Peace’ nor ‘Anti-War’.

*Also came back drunk when Stephen Green borrowed it.  And, boss? I thought we had our shocked faces in a locked room? Because the Ace of Spades people borrowed it too… and… well… it’s inexplicable. Also scary. Anyway… I need a new shocked face as soon as possible. Can I get money from petty cash?