PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS RELEASE VIDEOS OF HOSTAGES BEING STARVED, TORMENTED, DIGGING OWN GRAVE:

Rom Braslavski, a 21-year-old resident of Jerusalem, was kidnapped by terrorists on October 7, 2023, from the grounds of the Nova festival, where he was serving as a security guard. “The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group on Thursday published a video of hostage Rom Braslavski, whom they are holding captive in the Gaza Strip,” The Times of Israel reported. “The terror group claimed that the six-minute video was recorded days before it lost contact with the captors holding Braslavski, and alleged that the hostage’s fate was unknown.”

On Saturday, Hamas released another video of [Evystar] David, showing him with a shovel digging his own grave in a terror tunnel.

A development apparently not newsworthy enough for a cover story in the New York Times:

YEAH, IF THESE CONSULTANTS’ EMPLOYMENT WERE DEPENDENT ON SHAREHOLDER VALUE PROVIDED THEY’D HAVE GONE OUT OF BUSINESS DECADES AGO: AI will not kill McKinsey: A lot of people don’t understand what elite management consultancies actually do.

I’M STILL RECOMMENDING THIS: “My suggestion for the GOP is that they now start hitting the Democrats with single-subject bills that will have to be voted up or down, and that will be very politically expensive for Democrats to oppose, when they’re clearly presented without a lot of extraneous legislative cover.”

Well?

DOOM LOOP: VDH recounts the downfall of Kamala Harris’ presidential run.

YOU KNOW YOU WANT ONE: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 16GB (newest model). #CommissionEarned

CHANGE: Yale ends gender medication program for minors after federal order.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: OLANLY Dog Door Mat for Muddy Paws 24×16, Absorbs Moisture and Dirt. #CommissionEarned

OH, PLEASE: Baylor football coach apologizes for saying ‘midgets:’ His comments ‘contributed to the normalization of ableism,’ advocacy group says.

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: When the Gods of the Copybook Smile.

And as always, please support these essays — and InstaPundit! — by signing up for a paid subscription.

NO JEWS, NO NEWS:

On this day, 11 years ago, the Yezidi Genocide began.

Men were massacred, women and young girls sold into sex slavery. Their people nearly wiped out at the hands of ISIS.

There were no weekly mass protests in any Western country. pic.twitter.com/hC8VIiUI2t

— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) August 3, 2025

THE COMING PREFERENCE CASCADE:

Anti immigration protests in Britain threaten the state because they are an explicit rejection of the universalist ideology of the elite. Once we recognise an Eritrean cannot be an Englishman (nor a man a woman) the creed of the regime collapses. It will be like glasnost and… https://t.co/HbjP9XxjgG

— Douglas Carswell🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@DouglasCarswell) August 2, 2025

MARRIAGE JUST A PIECE OF PAPER: In a culture fleeing at warp speed away from individual responsibility, marriage between a man and a woman for life becomes a memory. But, as the latest of Colson Center’s “What Would You Say?” videos on HillFaith points out, there’s far more to traditional marriage than its critics conceive.

And when you finish that brief video, check out the massive majorities among Republican aides working on Capitol Hill when asked by CNCT Capitol Pulse whether they think those ubiquitous District of Columbia speed cameras ought to be abolished. Can’t happen too soon, says this unreformed Formula Ford racer.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Awkward: Obama, Hillary Hire Same Hitman To Kill Each Other https://t.co/XXAsQEavHC pic.twitter.com/7GDEAVIblh

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 1, 2025

MASSIVE RESISTANCE: More than a dozen states still not complying with new Title IX interpretation. “Currently, 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, are refusing to comply with a Title IX executive order issued by the White House.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: From Dante To Cardi B? The Collapse Of Ivy League Curricula: New book exposes a “thin and patchy” education at the Ivies.

JONATHAN TURLEY: The Reveal: The Public is Finally Learning How Democrats Pulled Off the Greatest Political Trick in History.

Leonard Bernardo, who was the regional director for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, explained that “during the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”

Bernardo added, “Julie (Clinton Campaign Advisor) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

The media (including the Washington Post and New York Times, which won Pulitzer prizes for reporting on the debunked claims) are apoplectic in dismissing these disclosures. The last thing they will do is report on how they helped sell a political hoax. The problem is that they never said it was a trick. They said it was the truth. That is why they cannot honestly cover the story. To do so would not be coverage, it would be a confession.

It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done.

Faster, please.

WHAT’S MORE, THEY’VE ALWAYS KNOWN IT:

It's worth spelling out why they act like this.

Britain's establishment is aware that the migration policies it imposed have been an economic and social disaster. It also knows that it would be completely delegitimising to admit this. https://t.co/g35HDy4s65

— Sam Ashworth-Hayes (@SAshworthHayes) August 3, 2025

THEY’RE PROBABLY RIGHT: Black, Hispanic Americans More Likely Than Whites To Think DEI Increases Discrimination Against Them, Poll Finds.

LIGHTNING DEAL: SPIKECAM 4K Body Camera with Audio. #CommissionEarned

THUGOCRACY? Adam Schiff Thinks Distrust of Government Started with Trump – Boy, Have We Got News for Him!

Schiff can thank his own party for stirring distrust, many decades before Trump descended the golden escalator:

Some blame Watergate for this abrupt collapse of trust in institutions, but not very convincingly. For one thing, the decline in trust begins to appear in the polls as early as 1966, almost a decade before the Watergate was known as anything more than a big hole in the ground alongside the Potomac River. For another, the nation had managed unconcernedly to shrug off Watergate-style events before. Somebody bugged Barry Goldwater’s apartment during the 1964 election without it triggering a national trauma. The Johnson administration tapped the phones of Nixon supporters in 1968, and again nothing happened. John F. Kennedy regaled reporters with intimate details from the tax returns of wealthy Republican donors, and none of the reporters saw anything amiss. FDR used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on opponents of intervention into World War II—and his targets howled without result. If Watergate could so transform the nation’s sense of itself, why did those previous abuses, which were equally well known to the press, not do so? Americans did not lose their faith in institutions because of the Watergate scandal; Watergate became a scandal because Americans were losing faith in their institutions.

—David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s The Decade That Brought You Modern Life — For Better Or Worse.

ENDORSED:

Harris should run again. Never give up; never surrender https://t.co/oSDdsHV9xo pic.twitter.com/NpKj0lQukY

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) August 2, 2025

WELL, IT’S A MAJOR DISGRACE: Trump Turns Judicial Corruption Into the Next MAGA Landslide.

In a sense, Trump is a wrecking ball, but in another, very real, sense, the institutions he’s crashing through have wrecked themselves, as when a District Court issues an opinion that reads like a sophomore paper on the transAtlantic slave trade from Brown University.

Related: Trump’s Next Winning Issue: Judicial Malfeasance.

All the institutions had to do was act normally and Trump wouldn’t have had so much power over them. But they couldn’t help themselves, because they’re run by crazy partisans with an exaggerated sense of their own importance and abilities.

CINCINNATI POLICE CHIEF UNDER INTENSE SCRUTINY FOR MASS BRAWL WAS ACCUSED BY FELLOW COPS OF ANTI-WHITE DISCRIMINATION, USING ‘RACE-BASED QUOTA SYSTEM:’ SUIT.

#JOURNALISM:

This has been one of the most disturbing weeks I can remember in the media.

The New York Times and media establishment more generally got repeatedly busted for broadcasting fake starvation photos of Gazans.

Real photos of Jews being starved to death in Gaza while digging their…

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) August 2, 2025

Related:

The Denver Post Outs People Behind an X Account Critical of the City.

Afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable.

FROM J. KENTON PIERCE:  A Kiss for Damocles (Tales From the Long Night Book 1).

A Kiss for Damocles follows the journey of Shaifennen Roehe, a young homesteader who is the right girl in the right place to serve as a catalyst in her world’s, and eventually, her civilization’s, restoration. She must adapt from merely struggling to survive in a harsh world as her simple homestead becomes a boomtown, and then the keystone of a restored colonial government.

Meanwhile, competing Townie politicians and merchant princes have other plans for Hesperides Colony’s future and take a very personal interest in her as she inadvertently kicks over a few of their apple carts. And all the while, sinister, hidden forces watch and calculate and a centuries-old shadow war comes to a head.

Shai’s universe is one filled with fallen empires, implacable war machines, lost civilizations, hostile xenos, the occasional ancient unspeakable horror, and she’s going to bring the ruckus to every corner of it.