Archive for 2025

September 5, 2025

HE WON’T UNLESS HE HAS TO:

Posted at 7:26 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 5th, 2025

THE NYT SAYS DON’T DO THE RFK/HEGSETH FITNESS CHALLENGE: “Most people can’t even perform five strict push-ups with proper form, or a single pull-up, without compensating.”

Well, yes, and those people aren’t going to be able to do 50 pullups and 100 pushups. But they’re not the target audience. And most of those people could improve their — really sad — performance, perhaps even enough to reach this goal if they tried.

UPDATE: Pete and Bobby are pointing and laughing:

Posted at 6:21 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 5th, 2025

ACTUAL RATES ARE STILL LOW: Prolonged use of injectable contraceptive tied to brain tumor diagnoses. “Analyses showed that depot medroxyprogesterone acetate users had a 143% higher risk of meningioma diagnosis than matched controls, with incidence 7.39 per 100,000 patient-years in the injection cohort and 3.05 in controls.”

Interestingly, I noticed this at the end: “Written for you by our author Justin Jackson, edited by Sadie Harley, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work.”

We’ve reached the point at which journalism is bragging about not being done by AI.

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 5th, 2025

THE CIRCLE OF TIME:

Posted at 5:48 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 5th, 2025

HUGH HEWITT AND JIM GERAGHTY: Should the U.S. have blown up the drug-running boat? (Video.)

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 5th, 2025

80/20: Senator: The Founders Were Same as Ayatollahs?

Senator Tim Kaine may seem like a nobody–he is so relatively anonymous that Saturday Night Live spoofed him right before the election as forgettable. But if you can remember all the way back to 2016, you might remember that he came close to becoming the Vice President of the United States.

Yes, that was a long time ago–back when Hillary Clinton was somebody, sort of. But it’s true. The Democrats put this man on the ticket because he was seen as a moderate who could appeal to middle America.

Moderates no longer exist in the ranks of the Democratic Party elites. Being at or near the top of the pile means rejecting basic American values.

Kaine made his remarkable performance in which he rejected the founding principle of the United States, as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was chastising Riley Barnes, a Trump administration appointee to the State Department.

* * * * * * * * *

Scott Rasmussen just sent me the results of a poll he recently did on this issue:

We need a complete and total shutdown of Virginia until we can find just what the hell is going on there:

UPDATE:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 5th, 2025

ANY RED-PILLED YOUNG LAWYERS IN THE NYC AREA?: I get these job alerts from the NYCBar, and I thought this one was hilarious. I’m not tight with O’Keefe or Varitas, but I swear to god that a red-pilled white would have two chances at this: slim and none. If they got to the interview stage, that would be a scream.

Also, (and no, I don’t have the time to do this) if legal, someone should make two applications: one all CRT-based from a Black kid and the other a Crimlaw-based white guy.

Bets on what would happen? 

 

Posted at 4:14 pm by Charles Glasser on Sep 5th, 2025

REMEMBER, ONLY TRAINED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS CAN BE TRUSTED WITH GUNS: Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day: Miami Officer Sthephany Canizares. “It seems Officer Sthephany (sic) Canizares got into an argument with her significant other after she found some ‘inappropriate messages’ on his phone.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 5th, 2025

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Transgenderism Ends in Nihilism.

For the past decade, the Left’s intellectual apparatus has concocted a narrative about “gender-affirming care,” “trans joy,” and “authentic gender identity,” which has captured institutions and promised to punish dissenters. The trans movement lures troubled young people, such as Westman, with promises of love, affirmation, self-esteem, and authenticity. But it is predicated on a lie: that a man can become a woman and achieve fulfilment through name changes, cross-sex hormones, and genital surgeries.

After the killing in Minneapolis, reporters found fragments of Westman’s diaries and his online videos, in which he said that he was “tired of being trans” and wished that he had not been brainwashed by the movement. Even as he was plunging into madness, he saw reality better than the editors of the Times. “I know I am not a woman, but I definitely don’t feel like a man,” Westman said.

We should grieve those beautiful children who lost their lives at Annunciation Catholic Church. We should also grieve the innocent young people scattered across America who have lost their health, dignity, and sanity to transgenderism, an ideology predicated on dishonesty and nihilism.

Those of us on the right can also put to rest the delusion that transgenderism is rooted in “personal choice.” Transgenderism is not a pluralistic belief system, but a coercive ideology that forces others to deny reality. It has succeeded only through an enormous propaganda campaign, which promises rewards for those who affirm transgender identities and punishments for those who don’t.

The ideology has resulted in the mutilation of countless Americans and in some cases inspired acts of deadly violence. That outcome was predictable: pumping kids full of hormones, while telling them they can change from boy to girl, is likely to end in tragedy, for self or others.

As Rufo writes, the New York Times, “affirmed the shooter’s gender identity, referring to him as ‘she’ and ‘her,’ feigned ignorance of the connection between transgenderism and his violence, and insisted that his motive was ‘a mystery.’” And yet:

 

Posted at 3:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 5th, 2025

JIM GERAGHTY: Malcolm Gladwell Reaches His Tipping Point on Trans Athletes.

‘Near Unanimity in the Room that Trans Athletes Have No Place in in the Female Category’

It’s rather amazing what can be said out loud, into a microphone, once the political winds change.

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker and one of those rare authors who shaped his own oft-imitated genre. Starting with The Tipping Point, Gladwell used recent academic research to coin phrases and introduce concepts in psychology and sociology into popular culture. (How many people knew he started at the American Spectator?)

Earlier this week, Gladwell appeared on The Real Science of Sport podcast, a program hosted by sports scientist professor Ross Tucker and sports journalist Mike Finch. Gladwell made the remarkable confession that when it comes to advocates of athletes born male participating in women’s sports, he found their arguments unconvincing for a long time — but only felt comfortable publicly saying so recently:

Ross Tucker: Well, Malcolm chaired a session at the Sloan conference. That’s a big event held every year at MIT in Boston. I think it was in 2022. I lose track of time, but he was the chairperson, and I was on a panel of three or four. I forget exactly how many, but—

Malcolm Gladwell: They stacked the panel. They stacked against you, Ross. They put a trans athlete and a trans advocate and you on the panel and I was the moderator. And it was one of those strange situations where I my suspicion is that 90 percent of the people in the audience were on your side, but 5 percent of the audience was willing to admit it.

Tucker: My recollection of it is that everything I said was met with deathly silence, and everything the other two said got cheered.

Gladwell: Well, but the cheers were very — I mean I think there was a hardcore of people who were ideologically committed to the position, but the idea that that — I mean there’s many interesting things to say about that conversation. One was that it was a particular moment which has passed. If we did a replay of that exact panel at the Sloan conference this coming March, it runs in exactly the opposite direction.

And it would be, I suspect, near unanimity in the room that trans athletes have no place in in the female category. I don’t think there’s any question. I just think it was a strange — I mean I felt I mean I was — the reason I’m ashamed of my performance of that panel [is] because I share your position 100 percent, and I was cowed. The idea of saying anything on this issue — I was in I believe in retrospect — in a dishonest way. I was . . . I was objective in a dishonest way.

I let a lot of real howlers pass without comment because I didn’t — and I said to you in an email, there was that moment when — and I forgotten her name she’s wonderful, sorry, I’ve forgotten their name, a very thoughtful person.

They were the trans athlete on the panel and at one point they turned to you, Ross, and they said, “Ross, you have to let us win.” And it was at that moment that I realized this position has gone, this argument has gone to the furthest extreme. What the trans movement is not asking for — they’re not asking for, you know, a place at the table. They’re not asking to be treated with respect and dignity. What they’re asking is for no one to question the considerable physical, physiological advantage they bring to the sport, and no one to question — if they’re gonna win these races by five seconds, suck it up! That’s what they were asking, right?

As J.K. Rowling tweets, “Changing sides years late, and only after you’ve realised the non-elite opposition is winning, isn’t a mark of integrity but of arse-covering:”

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 5th, 2025

JUDITH MILLER: The Day That Terrorism Became a Global Spectator Sport.

Dec. 7, as most members of the so-called “greatest generation” know, is the day that Franklin Roosevelt declared would “live in infamy” when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, belatedly drawing America into World War II. Similarly, most Americans, even those too young to have seen the Twin Towers collapse or smelled the stench of burning metal and flesh, know that Islamic terrorists changed history on Sept. 11 by killing over 3,000 people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Within Israel and for Jews everywhere, Oct. 7 will long be remembered as the day that Hamas and other Palestinian enthusiasts slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took 251 people hostage in coordinated incursions from Gaza.

What about Sept. 5? That date rings few memory bells, even for Americans who were able to watch television or follow the news in the fall of 1972. Some may dimly recall that on that day eight Palestinian terrorists from the militant Black September group infiltrated the Summer Olympics in Munich, killing two members of Israel’s national athletic team and taking nine others hostage. On Sept. 5, terrorism itself became a spectator sport.

That terrible event has now been rescued from obscurity by Tim Fehlbaum, the Swiss director and cowriter (with Moritz Binder and Alex David) whose film about ABC’s coverage of the attack more than deserves its sole Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a claustrophobic newsroom thriller. The film compresses the 22-hour-long ordeal into a taut, gripping 94 minutes. It not only chronicles an early terrorist milestone, but also explores with skill and subtlety the strengths and failures of broadcast journalism, the still evolving ethics of TV news, and the beginning of a new, harsher era of mass media.

As the film tells us, Sept. 5 was the first time that an act of terrorism was broadcast live around the world. Some 900 million people watched it unfold on TV, a quarter billion more people than those who saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon three years earlier.

And from me, in March: September 5: Chilling Recreation of the First Live TV Broadcast of Terrorism.

Related:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 5th, 2025
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