Archive for 2025

June 27, 2025

HEGSETH UNVEILS NEW NAME OF USNS HARVEY MILK:

The US Navy has officially changed the name of its ship honoring slain gay-rights icon Harvey Milk to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson in commemoration of the WWII Medal of Honor recipient.

“We are taking the politics out of ship naming. We’re not renaming the ship to anything political,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a video address. “This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration.

“Instead, we’re renaming the ship after a United States Navy Congressional Medal of Honor recipient — as it should be,” he said. “People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in, and so we’re renaming it after a Navy chief.”

The USNS Oscar V. Peterson is a replenishment oiler that provides support to carrier strike groups at sea.

Okay, yes, yes, he was a Canadian, but what a brilliant virtuoso on the piano:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2025

NIFTY: U.S.’s New Viper Drone-Missile from Mach Industries Combines the Range of HIMARS with the Punch of a Hellfire. “Developed by the California-based firm Mach Industries, the Viper is described as a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) cruise missile that blurs the line between drone and loitering munition. With a maximum range of 290 kilometers, a 10-kilogram warhead, and an airframe built for high subsonic flight, the system is tailored for use with HIMARS or similar mobile platforms but without the logistical burden or strategic risks of larger, more expensive missile systems. Its navigation is based on artificial intelligence and multi-frequency RF guidance, allowing the Viper to operate even in GPS-denied zones. At under $100,000 per unit, it stands out as a scalable, attritable precision weapon that can be mass-produced for tactical-level missions.”

Very nice, but it’s in the sub-$1,000 drone space where we’re behind.

Posted at 3:52 pm by Stephen Green on Jun 27th, 2025

YES, I’VE EXPERIENCED THIS PERSONALLY, WITH AN ABSURDLY LARGE DROP IN AD REVENUES FOR THIS SITE.

Posted at 2:54 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 27th, 2025

THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Mercedes-AMG to Drop Four-Cylinder for Inline-Sixes and V-8s. “Mercedes-AMG is transitioning away from the four-cylinder plug-in hybrid powertrain and back towards the inline-six and V-8 powertrains more traditionally associated with the brand. That isn’t to say that AMG had a change of heart concerning the merits of the four-cylinder powertrain, but rather that the automaker is responding to customer criticisms. ‘Technically, the four-cylinder is one of the most advanced drivetrains available in a production car. It’s also right up there on performance. But despite this, it failed to resonate with our traditional customers. We’ve recognized that,’ a source at Mercedes told Autocar.”

The people have spoken.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green on Jun 27th, 2025

WE MUST RECLAIM THE WORD ‘PROGRESSIVE:’

I’ve grown tired of hearing the term progressive used to describe people and policies that embody anything but progress. The word suggests a movement toward liberty, reason and human dignity. But what now passes for “progressive” ideology is a regressive assault on foundational principles: race-based social engineering, denial of biological truth, hostility toward the rule of law and an obsession with censorship disguised as compassion.

Progress gave us the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, constitutional government and equal protection under the law. It was built on Enlightenment ideals – reason, open inquiry and the primacy of the individual over tribe. The ideologues now claiming the label have rejected those very foundations. They call for defunding police, institutionalizing racial favoritism, redefining sex as a matter of feeling and punishing speech that deviates from their ever-shifting orthodoxy.

Let’s be clear: this is not a progressive left, and it’s time to retire that label altogether. What we’re dealing with is a movement of Neo-Jacobin ideologues – absolutists who don’t seek reform, but reeducation. Like their namesakes from the French Revolution, they speak the language of justice while enforcing ideological purity through coercion and public shaming.

As Calvin Coolidge said on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

It was also during the 1920s, as the late Fred Siegel wrote in his 2014 book The Revolt Against the Masses, that “Progressivism” stole a huge base from laissez faire classical liberals and rebranded as “liberalism,” after the brutal, racist Woodrow Wilson had made such a hash of the P-word during WWI:

For the ardent Progressive Frederick Howe, who had been Wilson’s Commissioner of Immigration, the pre-war promise of the benign state built on reasoned reform had turned to ashes. “I hated,” he wrote, “the new state that had arisen” from the war. “I hated its brutalities, its ignorance, its unpatriotic patriotism that made profit from our sacrifices and used it to suppress criticism of its acts. . . . I wanted to protest against the destruction of my government, my democracy, my America.” As part of his protest, the thoroughly alienated Howe distanced himself from Progressivism. Liberals were those Progressives who had renamed themselves so as to repudiate Wilson. “The word liberalism,” wrote Walter Lippmann in 1919, “was introduced into the jargon of American politics by that group who were Progressives in 1912 and Wilson Democrats from 1916 to 1918.” The new liberalism was a decisive cultural break with Wilson and Progressivism. While the Progressives had been inspired by a faith in democratic reforms as a salve for the wounds of both industrial civilization and power politics, liberals saw the American democratic ethos as a danger to freedom at home and abroad.

Having spent the 20th century running roughshod over the traditional definition of liberalism, and with progressivism now becoming increasingly tainted, it’s entirely possible that the left may rebrand once again, just as they did a century ago.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2025

HMM: Gun Rights Orgs Ask Attorney General Bondi to Scrap Her Plan to Merge ATF and DEA. “In the letter, signed by CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, the groups urge Bondi ‘to consider abandoning this proposal and continue to operate ATF as a standalone agency of narrow purpose and limited resource, until such time as all unconstitutional federal gun laws are repealed and the ATF can be abolished.'”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green on Jun 27th, 2025

A TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE TOO FAR: One Year Since Biden’s Disastrous Debate.

“Even I was shocked” by Biden’s onstage performance that day, Representative Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) told National Review on Thursday.

One year later, Biden has not receded from the spotlight as much as congressional Democrats had hoped. A new book released last month, Original Sin, revealed new details about the lengths to which Biden’s inner circle went to conceal his decline from the public (without adequately addressing the role the media played in the cover-up). And the administration’s recent release of special counsel Robert Hur’s hours-long interviews with Biden over his mishandling of classified documents has lent credence to Republicans’ years-long claims that Biden was cognitively unfit for office, let alone a second term. What’s more, House Oversight Chairman James Comer has pledged to continue investigating the 46th president’s use of the autopen while in office.

Meantime, Democrats are struggling to turn the page. Like every other Republican in Washington, Burchett now relishes Democrats’ inability to get their act together, politically, now five months into Donald Trump’s second term.

“They are a rudderless ship,” he says. “They can’t get out of their own way.”

Until now, when a new generation of sane, rational centrists emerge to guide them out of the far left wilderness!

 

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2025

CHANGE:

Related: Supreme Court Rules Texas Can Require Age Verification for Porn Sites.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2025

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Harris County Jails Kill 2.5 Times As Many People As Texas Executes.

Texas has a reputation as the state most willing to implement the death penalty. Yet, thus far in 2025, with the year almost half over, only four people have been executed in Texas.

The death penalty remains controversial, because few prospects are more horrible than having the state take you life. (In communist countries, they’ve done it by the tens of millions.) That’s why our judicial system has an extensive series of checks and balances, derived not only from the Constitution but extending further back into English common law.

But what if I told you that Democrat-run Harris County has let ten people die in their jails this year?

Details at the link.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green on Jun 27th, 2025

CHANGE: SCOTUS Quashes Federal District Courts’ Nationwide Injunctions, 6-3.

Federal courts can still rule against an exercise of executive policy if they find it to be unlawful. They can issue temporary injunctions ahead of such trials if the judge believes that the plaintiffs have a good chance of prevailing and will suffer irreparable harm in the interregnum, just as they did before. However, this ruling limits those stays and injunctions only to the parties before the court in each case. That could complicate matters and force these into class actions at some point, but courts have rules and procedures for that as well.

The usual three justices dissented, but Barrett took a moment out to blister Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in particular[.]

QED:

 

Related: Trump Responds to Supreme Court ‘Birthright Citizen’ Decision. As did Pam Bondi:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 27th, 2025

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Private College Tuition Discount Rate Hits All-Time High: 56.3%.

I said over a decade ago that widespread discounting would be a sign of the bubble’s collapse, long before they started cutting sticker prices.

Also, if you pay full freight you’re a sucker.

Posted at 12:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 27th, 2025
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