Archive for 2025

July 16, 2025

A ROCK ‘N’ ROLL PILGRIMAGE:  My big sister traveled from Houston to Birmingham, England for what the NYT tells us was the event of the season–Ozzy Osborne’s last gig, featuring Black Sabbath as well as Metallica, Guns n’ Roses, and more.  It raised about $200 million for charity.

This was Old Home Week for my sister.  For years, she managed the Ozzfest Tour on behalf of Live Nation and has a genuine affection for the 76-year-old Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne (as they apparently do for her).

When I was a kid, she would sometimes take me along to the concerts she was working on.  But the thrill of rock ‘n’ roll never quite took with me.  I’m the law nerd little sister.  My rock stars are Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Richard Epstein, … oh … and Glenn Reynolds.  To each sister her own.

Posted at 1:34 am by Gail Heriot on Jul 16th, 2025

July 15, 2025

OPEN THREAD: You know what to do.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 15th, 2025

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Why was a schoolgirl punished over a Union Jack dress?

Courtney, like all Bilton School students, had been encouraged to wear ‘traditional’ outfits for Culture Day, and to ‘proudly represent their heritage’, including their ‘nationality or family heritage’.

You might say Courtney’s outfit was not exactly ‘traditional’, inspired by Geri Halliwel’s famous Union Jack dress from the 1997 Brit Awards. But that was clearly not the issue. What the school’s instructions really meant was that she should dress as any nationality or heritage, so long as it’s not British. According to Courtney’s father, Stuart Field, the school also turned several other pupils away at the gates on Culture Day, including a boy with a St George’s flag, a boy with a Welsh flag and a boy dressed as a farmer with a checked shirt and a traditional flat cap.

Courtney’s school also stopped her from giving a speech about what being British meant to her. ‘In Britain’, she would have said, ‘we have lots of traditions including drinking tea, our love for talking about the weather and we have the Royal Family’. ‘We have amazing history, like kings and queens, castles, and writers like Shakespeare.’ It also praised British humour, ‘our values of fairness and politeness’, and fish and chips. Not exactly Enoch’s ‘Rivers of Blood’, is it?

Exit quote: “The school has since issued an apology, but this is hardly an isolated incident. Far too many British institutions see any expression of patriotism, no matter how mild or innocent, as a problem to be contained.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 15th, 2025

MINNESOTA ASSASSIN’S CONFESSION LETTER RELEASED FOLLOWING FEDERAL INDICTMENT:

Accused Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter’s confession letter was released on Tuesday, claiming that the state’s Democratic Governor, Tim Walz, wanted him to kill Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. It came after he was indicted on federal murder charges for the deaths of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as stalking and firearms offenses.

In the lengthy letter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel, Boelter identifies himself and writes that he was the “shooter at large” in the June 12 shootings in Minnesota, which happened in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 13. (Note: Boelter’s dates are off by one day – Saturday was June 14, and portions of the letter are difficult to decipher.)

“I will probably be dead by the time you read this letter. I want to share some information with you that you might find interesting,” the letter read. “I was [trained?] by U.S. military people off the books starting in college, I’ve been in projects since that time in Eastern Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa — all in the line of duty, doing what I thought was right and in the best interest of the United States.”

“Recently, I was approached about a project that Tim Walz wanted done…,” the letter added. “and Keith ____ was also aware of the project. Tim wanted me to kill Amy Klobuchar and Tina [Smith]. Tim wants to be a senator and doesn’t trust ______ to retire as planned.”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 15th, 2025

“HOT COMMIE SUMMER:” Wall Street can’t make sense of the rise of Zohran Mamdani.

Wall Street leaders tend to think global. They travel between international offices and worry about global markets and trade policy shifts in Washington DC.

So it has come as a surprise to Manhattan’s executives that one of the biggest talking points during summer power lunches and boardroom meetings has been decidedly local: how to solve a problem like Zohran Mamdani?

Hundreds of business leaders are gathering in New York this week to hear from Mamdani, 33, the democratic socialist who stunned Wall Street when he emerged as the surprise winner of the Democratic primary for New York mayor this month.

It’s the start of a “hot commie summer”, Daniel Loeb, the billionaire founder of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund, has observed.

In a session hosted on Tuesday by the Partnership for NYC, a consortium of 350 corporate giants, topics up for discussion in the global centre of capitalism included Mamdani’s campaign pledges to introduce state-owned grocery stores and immediately freeze rents for two million people living in rent-stabilised apartments.

Not surprisingly: Rise of Zohran Mamdani has Wall Street giving up on Gotham.

The polls, for now, show a likely Mamdani mayoralty, combined with a leftist city council and a state government that veers nearly as far left as Zohran.

All which spells disaster for those businesses who stay: Police defunding, higher taxes and government takeover of businesses like supermarkets.

And that gets us to why there were so many no shows Tuesday: the city’s business community doesn’t have to stay.

If you follow these big firms, as I do, you know they employ hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers — but fewer and fewer in recent years.

The harsh COVID lockdowns here gave them the excuse to move operations to places with lower taxes and regulations, mainly Florida and Texas, but also Utah and even Tennessee.

Mamdani will be another reason for the big banks to finally say goodbye to Gotham.

Regarding those state-owned grocery stores, Mamdani has a radical new plan to make them work:

True buying in bulk has never been tried before.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 15th, 2025

WE NEED NEW ANTIBIOTICS: Ancient Killer Is Rapidly Becoming Resistant to Antibiotics, Warns Study. “In spite of having plagued humans for millennia, typhoid fever is rarely considered in developed countries today. But this ancient threat is still very much a danger in our modern world. According to research published in 2022, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever is evolving extensive drug resistance, and is rapidly replacing strains that aren’t resistant.”

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 15th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE AXIS OF DAVIDS: David Brooks Tribute: Gergen Was Centrist, ‘A Good PBS Conservative Like Me.’

Friday night’s PBS News Hour tribute to former presidential adviser and former News Hour “conservative voice” David Gergen, who died July 10 at the age of 83, demonstrates how mild, center-left political personas have long been the only flavor of “conservatism” that taxpayer-funded PBS can tolerate. (And if the descriptions of Gergen reminds you of another journalist playing the “conservative” role on PBS these days, read on.)

Brooks described Gergen as “almost out of another era of Washington, of people who serve both parties, who do it for national service. And then he was a centrist, a good PBS conservative like me,” which says it all about both PBS and what Michael Walsh likes to call the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party. (And possibly the sharpness of the creases in Gergen’s trousers.)

Or as Glenn wrote in 2016: How David Brooks Created Donald Trump.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 15th, 2025

MINNESOTA VICE: Trial will be “very difficult” for Sen. Nicole Mitchell to win, Minneapolis attorney says.

It’s a high-stakes trial that could ultimately determine the balance of power in the Minnesota Senate.*

“It has such political ramifications,” said Twin Cities attorney Mike Bryant, who is not affiliated with the case. “I think a lot of people will be watching what happens.”

It was April 2024, when the criminal complaint said Minnesota Sen. Nicole Mitchell‘s stepmother’s called 911 to report a burglary at her Detroit Lakes home. Mitchell allegedly told police she entered the home to retrieve personal items connected to her recently deceased father, because her stepmother had cut off contact.

In a social media post, Mitchell denied all allegations. Mitchell said she had gone to check on a family member with Alzheimer’s disease.

Bryant said he feels Mitchell will have to testify.

“Unless the state has a really super weak case that they can’t prove anything, I think it’s going to be one of those situations where the jury’s going to want to hear from her,” said Bryant.

“I think it’s going to be very difficult to win,” said Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Joe Tamburino, who is also not affiliated with the case. “Let’s face it, according to what’s in the complaint and what we imagine the prosecutor will prove at trial, is that she was found in the house at the very early morning hours, she was dressed in black and she was discovered by her stepmother and then supposedly she ran down to the basement, and then when the police got there, she made a number of incriminating statements.”

Somebody’s taking Michael Walsh’s description of the Democrats as “a criminal organization masquerading as a political party” waaaay too literally:

 

* Curiously though, CBS Minnesota plays doesn’t name Mitchell’s party in the article.

By the way, Mitchell isn’t the only prominent Minnesota Democrat currently racking up high legal bills: “‘The invoices for a $430,000 legal bill run up by Gov. Tim Walz’s administration to prepare him for a congressional hearing last month ranged from $70 to review a letter inviting him to the hearing to $2,880 for “searches for news or statistics for crimes committed by transgender or nonbinary persons.’ Do we at least get a PDF of what they found?”

Ordinarily you would, but PDFs have been temporarily banned, since they might have e-signatures that could be construed by NBC News with the presidential autopen.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jul 15th, 2025
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