AT AMAZON, Shop the Labor Day Sale. #CommissionEarned
September 5, 2026
CDR SALAMANDER: GOFO Accountability–Russian Style.
BETHANY MANDEL: Lindsay Clancy supporters may see mistrial as a victory — but it’s really a step backward for womankind.
Millions of American women are celebrating a victory of sorts this weekend — a hung jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial.
The case’s future is uncertain. It will likely be difficult to find enough jurors capable of coming to an unbiased decision after the entire country has been riveted by this trial.
It appears that 11 members of the jury favored some form of leniency, whether a not guilty by reason of insanity verdict or a lesser conviction, while one male holdout forced the jury to hang. He was, it appeared, a modern-day “Juror 8” from the famous play Twelve Angry Men — but in reverse*.
This is a victory for Clancy, whose team will now enter either another trial with the prospect of another sympathetic jury or plea negotiations with the upper hand.
* In more ways than one: Did 12 Angry Men get it wrong?
CHANGE: Measurable and Stunning 18-Month Decline in Number of Foreign Born Living in the US. “In the 18 months from January 2025 to July of this year, the number of foreign-born people in the country has declined by 2.9 million. Like, I’m sorry – HOLY SMOKES. Now, that’s a number.”
September 4, 2026
OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.
THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: The US Could Have a $100 Billion Stash of Rare Earth Elements – Hiding in Coal Waste.
UPDATE: Reader John Steakley writes: “Be it lumber, coal, granite, marble, natural gas, rare earth elements, or just indefatigable young soldiers, America always returns to Appalachia for its most valuable resources. But as John Denver reminded us, where the mountains are older than trees, such returns are to be expected . . .”
So true. John and I were on the National Space Society board together. I had dinner with him not long before he died. He was much buffer than in his 1970s era, and very interested in aviation. Though perhaps not as safety-conscious as would have been ideal.
THE LONELY LIVES OF SCIENTISTS: Soil Scientists Buried 2,000 Pairs of Underwear to Prove a Point.
SETTING WOMEN’S RIGHTS BACK 200 YEARS: How Some Female Lindsay Clancy Jurors Reacted to the Mistrial Declaration. It’s Not Shocking.
PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Scientists Expose Unexpected Driver of the May 2024 Superstorm.
THAT OTHER GUY ON THE CROSS: No matter your view of Christianity, this short take by Alistair Begg should tickle your funny bone.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What college students really need in their first aid kits.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Mayor Mamdani Up All Night Practicing Sad Face For Upcoming 9/11 Observance https://t.co/gp7FHTYtUs
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) September 4, 2026
LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS: CNN botches Gloria Steinem tribute days after embarrassing Dolly Parton impersonator mix-up.
Related:
The mother who just killed her 2 year-old was an obsessive Lindsay Clancy supporter.
I told you. Women are especially susceptible to social contagion.
It can cause eating disorders, self-harm, "gender transition," and yes, even child murder.
Be warned. https://t.co/H7t5jSrDLl
— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) September 4, 2026
LIVING HISTORY: Inside The ‘Top Secret’ Plan That Led To Biggest Pro-Second Amendment Ruling In 90 Years.
With a change in presidential administrations came a change in attitude toward the devices. In 2021, the Biden administration began pushing to classify the items as “short-barreled rifles” under the NFA, and issued a final regulation to that effect in January 2023, giving those who owned firearms with those devices 120 days to register them with ATF in an “amnesty” before they would face a potential ten-year prison sentence.
Pro-Second Amendment groups challenged the regulation in court almost immediately, eventually securing court orders blocking it. However, they also began to eye a legislative fix to the issue once President Donald Trump won a second term.
“One thing we could do is we could work with the [second Trump] administration to undo that regulation,” Johnston said. “The other thing we could do is just nullify that statute, try to repeal that statute.”
Despite the straightforward nature of the plan, GOA didn’t want to broadcast their intentions and risk pushback from anti-Second Amendment organizations. Therefore, it didn’t openly discuss any moves pertaining to federal legislation regarding suppressors or other items covered by the National Firearms Act in its national alerts at the start of the 119th Congress.
Well played — and do read the whole thing.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Maybe Paramount-Warner Should Leave L.A.
The party crashed when COVID literally shut the town down for years, followed by Peak TV overbuild, cord-cutting, streaming losses, rate hikes, two strikes. Then, to the shock of the Gen Z-led merchandising industry, the customer rejected their Bluetooth Sandinista Mickey Mouse dildo and decided it was inappropriate for kids.
Where others see a smashed dildo, David Ellison sees the pieces of a $165 billion 2001 Time Warner/AOL merger for the bargain-basement price of $110 billion. He’s ready to leave where he’s not wanted. He’ll be fine.
However, for L.A., it’d be a death blow. The infrastructure is already suffering with vendors going out of business and crewmembers quitting. If Paramount-Warners leaves, the built-in advantage of being a mecca for filmmakers with access to top talent, props and equipment disintegrates overnight. Studio stockpiles of props, wardrobe, cranes and cameras can truck over to Nashville or Austin. Crews can suddenly live in lower-cost states and afford homes and schools for their kids. They may have to pray to Baby Jesus a little more, but a little Holy Ghost Power never hurt nobody.
This is not 1986, when you have to shoot below the roof of a backlot set. We can extend and digitally enhance anything. Setting up shop in business-friendly, film-friendly cities has no downside if the infrastructure truly moves. Every vendor benefits from the lower cost of living for its employees, especially the struggling working class that no one seems to give a shit about in these culture wars.
A major studio leaving L.A. is a nuclear explosion that creates a chain reaction. Eventually other studios start calculating a zero percent state income tax. The math was already there, and yet the only incentive the politicians are handing them is the incentive to act on it.
California already lost Tesla and SpaceX to Texas. McKesson, Oracle, Chevron, Charles Schwab, CBRE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, AECOM, Public Storage. Palantir went to Denver. Yamaha left for Georgia. The fucking owner of In-N-Out now lives in Tennessee. When politicians treat business as the enemy, the question isn’t why Paramount would leave. It’s why would they stay.
Will the last business out of California please turn off the Greta-approved eco-lights?
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: He Fought the Law and the Law Won Real Good. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how to take a totally deserved beating, why to keep it in your pants at the park, and that for some people, holstering your pistol might not be as easy as it looks.”
READER FAVORITE: Prepared Hero Emergency Fire Blanket, Kitchen & Home. #CommissionEarned
BUY PLENTY OF AMMO: August Was the Seventh Straight Month With a Year-Over-Year Gun Sales Increase.
SPACE IS HARD: Is Russia’s rival to Starlink failing? Here’s what we know.
THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DISMISSED THE ACCORDS AS “TACTICS OF THE PRIOR ADMINISTRATION”:
The Lebanese MP and Sunni leader @fmakhzoumi has told @MiddleEast_24 that Lebanon could join the Abraham Accords after Hezbollah is disarmed.
He makes it clear that peace with Israel would be nothing but good for the country. pic.twitter.com/S2gntxGZAk
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 4, 2026
IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Portland Cops FAFO After Appeasing Antifa Terrorists.
SPACE: ‘A new mission starting today’: 8 years after launch, BepiColombo begins Mercury arrival.
Today’s maneuver doesn’t place BepiColombo in orbit around Mercury quite yet. MPO and Mio will spend the next several weeks navigating toward the planet ahead of orbital insertion on Nov. 21. “Arriving to Mercury is not as simple as other missions that do a big maneuver and they are there,” said Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo’s operations manager. “In our case, it’s going to be six months of continuous activities.”
The Nov. 21 arrival will begin a sequence of 16 maneuvers to progressively lower and reshape BepiColombo’s orbit. Mio is scheduled to separate from MPO around Dec. 9 and settle into a highly elliptical polar orbit. MPO will jettison Mio’s MOSIF sunshield (Magnetospheric Orbiter Sunshield and Interface Structure) on Dec. 16, then continue lowering its own altitude before reaching its own polar orbit on March 10, 2027.
BepiColombo is scheduled to begin science operations on April 6, 2027, with MPO and Mio studying Mercury simultaneously from complementary orbits. MPO will focus on Mercury’s surface composition, geology and planetary interior, while Mio will investigate the planet’s magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind.
Here’s to hoping everything goes as planned — and the images ought to be outstanding.
