Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

October 11, 2025

BEST ENDORSEMENT YET FOR BARI WEISS: Dan Rather questions Bari Weiss’ credentials for CBS role, says hiring is ‘dark day’ for network.

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather criticized CBS News on Thursday for making journalist Bari Weiss its editor-in-chief, as well as acquiring her independent news outlet, “The Free Press.”

Rather, age 93, argued on his Substack page that the hiring of the anti-woke reporter, as well as CBS coming under the control of billionaire David Ellison – whose father is a friend of President Donald Trump – meant that CBS News will be catering to the Trump agenda.

“The American people will pay the price for this move, as will the journalists of CBS News who can no longer credibly serve as watchdogs because the ones they are meant to hold to account are signing their paychecks and hobnobbing with the president,” the veteran journalist wrote.

At one point, he warned, “It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News.”

Curiously, it takes about a dozen paragraphs until just before the end of the Fox New article to read, “Rather stepped down from his role as ‘CBS Evening News’ anchor in 2005 and left the network the following year after reporting a discredited story about then-President George W. Bush.”

Well, that’s one way to put it, I suppose.

Related: Associated Press Is Big Mad Over ‘Polarizing’ Bari Weiss Joining ‘Fact-Based’ CBS.

Our friends at the Washington Free Beacon did us a great service late Monday by collating an exhaustive list of the most ridiculous meltdowns over CBS News announcing Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief and that parent company Paramount SkyDance purchased her site, The Free Press.

By Wednesday, the Associated Press got off the sidelines to offer a cartoonishly whiny piece that, if published earlier, would have made the roundup in sneering a “polarizing” person taking over a “fact-based” network that has supposedly never had “an agenda.”

Matt Sedensky sneered from the onset that this “polarizing voice” had “made a name for herself as an unflinching critic of mainstream news outlets,” but must now “run one.”

Everything seemingly is spinning out of control!

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 11th, 2025

IRONY ALERT: Dave Weigel Is Very Concerned About Nazi, Fascist Republicans Using the Word Terrorist.

Flashback to Dave’s wild and crazy early days at the WaPo (where he lasted off and on until 2022, when his fellow leftists got the vapors over his retweeting a joke mocking women): Emails reveal Post reporter savaging conservatives, rooting for Democrats.

Weigel was hired this spring by the Post to cover the conservative movement. Almost from the beginning there have been complaints that his coverage betrays a personal animus toward conservatives.  E-mails obtained by the Daily Caller suggest those complaints have merit.

“Honestly, it’s been tough to find fresh angles sometimes–how many times can I report that these [tea party] activists are joyfully signing up with the agenda of discredited right-winger X and discredited right-wing group Y?” Weigel lamented in one February email.

In other posts, Weigel describes conservatives as using the media to “violently, angrily divide America.” According to Weigel, their motives include “racism” and protecting “white privilege,” and for some of the top conservatives in D.C., a nihilistic thirst for power.

“There’s also the fact that neither the pundits, nor possibly the Republicans, will be punished for their crazy outbursts of racism. Newt Gingrich is an amoral blowhard who resigned in disgrace, and Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite who was drummed out of the movement by William F. Buckley. Both are now polluting my inbox and TV with their bellowing and minority-bashing. They’re never going to go away or be deprived of their soapboxes,” Weigel wrote.

Of Matt Drudge, Weigel remarked,  “It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree.”

* * * * * * * *

Weigel seems to harbor special contempt for a type of conservative he calls a ratfucker, a favorite phrase of his.

In a thread with the subject line, “ACORN Ratf*cker arrested,” Journolisters discussed how James O’Keefe, whose undercover reporting showed officials from activist group ACORN willing to help a fake prostitution ring skirt the law, had been arrested in another, failed operation at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) office.

Weigel’s response: “HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.”

“Deep breath.”

“HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHA.”

“He’s either going to get a radio talk show or start a prison ministry. That’s was successful conservative ratfuckers do for their second acts,” Weigel wrote, likely alluding to Nixon aide Charles Colson who converted to Christianity after a stint in prison for obstruction of justice and founded Prison Fellowship.

Republicans? “Ratfucking [Obama] on every bill.” Palin? Tried to “ratfuck” a moderate Republican in a contentious primary in New York. Limbaugh? Used “ratfucking tactics” in urging Republican activists to vote for Hillary Clinton in open primaries after Obama had all but beat her for the Democratic nomination.

Or to put it another way:

UPDATE:

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 11th, 2025

October 10, 2025

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Iran Seeks to Become the Global Hub of…Trans Surgery?

Iran’s embrace of trans surgery makes a twisted kind of sense. A country that denies the existence of any gay people is open to the idea that some men and women were simply born in the wrong body. And as a practical matter, a struggling theocracy is happy to offer those medical services to the rest of the world for a price

The 21st century is not turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Instaphrase:

 

Posted at 1:50 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 10th, 2025

THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN: Graffiti art in Canterbury Cathedral ‘belongs in a car park.’

Canterbury Cathedral has been criticised for hosting a display of graffiti-style art described as “belonging in a car park”.
Religious leaders and activists claimed the installation was symbolic of “decay” and said Canterbury Cathedral no longer had “a sense of the sacred”.

The brightly coloured words, which appear as though they are spray painted, are part of Hear Us, a new art exhibition that displays questions that people have posed to God, including “Why all the suffering?” and “How?”

The Rev Marcus Walker, the rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London and chairman of the Save the Parish campaign group, told The Telegraph he would like to set Canterbury Cathedral a challenge to “not embarrass the rest of the Church of England for one clear calendar year”.

Who in the Church of England thought this was a good idea?

Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick didn’t intend for A Clockwork Orange to be a how-to guide for 21st century British aesthetics:

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 10th, 2025

ONE NIGHT IN TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Ferguson Plays Chess with a Houseplant.

While President Donald Trump is negotiating Peace in The Middle East, and corrupt Democrats are getting indicted and arraigned, Bob Ferguson, Democrat Governor of Wacky Washington is playing chess…

…with GUESS WHO?

There’s plenty of symbolism in this photo. Why does Biden look like a Force ghost from the Star Wars movies? Why do the chess pieces  resemble the pill bottles and ice cream cones that littered Biden’s single term in office? And as the Victory Girls ask, “Is this AI?” “Who moved Biden’s pieces? The autopen?”

(Classical allusion in headline.)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 10th, 2025

HEAD OF NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TRIES TO JUSTIFY NOT HONORING TRUMP WITH AWARD:

Not Nobel enough?

The head of the Nobel Peace Prize tried to justify not giving the award to President Trump early Friday — subtly suggesting the commander-in-chief was not worthy of the illustrious award despite his historic breakthroughs seeking the end of the Israel-Hamas war.

Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes was asked about the clamor to give the prize to Trump, who had said it would be an insult to the US not to award it to him.

However, the deadline for nominations was Jan. 31 — just days into Trump’s second term in office — meaning all nominations Trump has earned this year for settling conflicts across the world are for the 2026 prize.

Still, instead of pointing out the timing, Frydnes suggested that a last-minute switch wasn’t made because the US leader doesn’t live up to it.

Instead, “The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado,” who graciously dedicated the award to Trump:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 10th, 2025

October 9, 2025

THAT’S AN ENDORSEMENT, THEN: Abigail Spanberger Refuses to Withdraw Jay Jones Endorsement amid Text Scandal.

UPDATE:

Posted at 10:20 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

THE LAMBORGHINI COUNTACH: James May finds his dream supercar in Jay Leno’s Garage (Video).

UPDATE: May’s original encounter with a Countach, from 2003, his first season on Top Gear:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

HMMMM: Republican Buys Dominion Voting Systems, Forces Them To Drop Lawsuits Against Conservatives.

Dominion Voting systems has been acquired by founder and chairman of Liberty Vote Scott Leiendecker, in a deal which included dropping lawsuits against conservatives.

Leiendecker, former GOP election reform advocate, has officially become the sole owner of Dominion after making the deal contingent on dropping several remaining lawsuits against prominent conservatives and One America News Network (OANN).

Leiendecker further disclosed to the Caller that remaining litigation with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell will be dropped by Dominion Voting Systems as part of the acquisition agreement.

Dominion also filed a lawsuit against Herring Networks, which owns OANN, in August 2021. The lawsuit remained unresolved, though Leinendecker further confirmed that future litigation will be discontinued following the acquisition.

Will lefties declare Dominion is the new Diebold the next time they lose a presidential election? Flashback: What Happened to the Democrats Who Never Accepted Bush’s Election.

Posted at 8:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

KATIE PORTER TAKES HER ABUSIVE TENDENCIES TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH SOCIOPATHIC RESPONSE TO SCANDALS:

In other words, “I hit you because I want you to do better.” It is incredible that this woman made it as far as she did. While in Congress, there were numerous reports, some of which I mentioned above, of her being abusive to her staff and others, and for the most part, it was all ignored by the mainstream press. It shouldn’t have been, and politicians being psychopaths should not be normalized for partisan gain.

Having “high standards” does not equate to screaming and yelling at people for making the most basic of “mistakes,” and I use that word very lightly because much of what Porter has freaked out about over the years has actually been her fault. For example, when she tried to blame the aforementioned wounded warrior for giving her COVID, the timeline shows that almost certainly wasn’t the case. Like many Democrat politicians, Porter is a classic narcissist who believes everyone else is responsible for her screw-ups and bad fortune.

That she recycled the above excuse about “high standards” and being “intentional in showing gratitude” shows how little she truly cares for those around her. Imagine being one of her kids? On second thought, we don’t have to imagine. Porter claimed after the 2024 election that her daughter broke down in tears because she was so worried that she wouldn’t be able to get an abortion if she were raped. Talk about emotional manipulation, something that seems to be a go-to for the former congresswoman.

Porter seems rather obsessed with abortion, including championing its benefits when inflation is spiraling out of control:

Apparently, Porter would be fine with her daughter competing in sports against a biological male:

Good luck to the next journalist who has to interview her:

UPDATE: Porter wished death or prison on Trump last year:

Posted at 8:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

JIMMY KIMMEL PLEADS WITH HITLER TO SAVE HIS SHOW! Jimmy Kimmel makes transparently desperate plea to Trump to save his tanking show after audiences vanish.

Outspoken Donald Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel said he would ‘love’ to have the President on his show amid his tumbling ratings.

The late night host was discussing his return to the screen after his show was temporarily axed over his comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The remarks prompted an outcry, followed by celebrations from Trump when it was announced that Kimmel was being yanked off air.

The TV host was reinstated a week later, but has recorded sliding ratings ever since with viewership down more than 70 percent in his first week since his return.

In his first interview since the scandal, Kimmel told the Bloomberg Screentime Conference: ‘I’d love to have Trump on the show, for sure.’

However, he admitted that the President might be hesitant given his long history of criticizing Trump.

‘I don’t know…alright I’ll ask him,’ the host joked before admitting that his inflammatory comments on Kirk had been, ‘intentionally and maliciously mischaracterized’.

Was this also ‘intentionally and maliciously mischaracterized?’ Jimmy Kimmel Has Advice for Donald Trump: If You ‘Have to Tell People I’m Not Hitler, Something Is Wrong.’

—The Wrap, October 30th, 2024.

UPDATE: Great moments in tone — Kimmel and his interviewer are chuckling and grinning over Kimmel’s initial reaction to Kirk’s assassination:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

NY AG LETITIA JAMES INDICTED ON FEDERAL BANK FRAUD, FALSE CLAIMS CHARGES:

New York state Attorney General Letitia James was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Virginia on charges of bank fraud and making false claims to a financial institution that netted her nearly $19,000 in savings on a loan for a second home, according to the Department of Justice.

The indictment was handed up in the Eastern District of Virginia, where former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Sept. 25 on charges of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice

“No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” US Attorney Lindsey Halligan said in a statement. “The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”

James responded in a statement: “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.”

“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” she added. “The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties.”

If convicted on both counts, James faces up to 60 years in prison and a fine of up to $2 million.

There’s always a tweet:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

FINALLY: Judge sets high bail in latest wave of Boston protest chaos arraignments.

Two more protesters charged in the outburst of violence during a pro-Palestine march and rally Tuesday have been held on $10,000 bail. A number of others were held on $7,500 and $5,000.

The high bail amounts are the latest as public officials respond to the chaotic protest Tuesday that left a Boston Police officer with a broken nose and likely in need of reconstructive surgery.

Osama El Khatib, 26, of Watertown and Styx Hatch, 19, of Boston were both held on $10,000 bail.

Members of the Boston Police Department made a show of support in the courtroom at Boston Municipal Court during Thursday’s arraignments.

Two other defendants were held on $7,5000 including: Atlanta Carrig-Braun, 24 of Boston; Haley Macintyre, 24, of Dorchester.

Held of $5,000 bail were Madeline Weikel, 27 of Watertown; Jacob Pettigrew, 22 of Malden, and Gabrielle Smith, 28 of Cambridge.

The charges stem from a pro-Palestinian protest on Tuesday that descended into chaos when police tried to clear Tremont Street in order to allow emergency vehicles to get through to a nearby call.

Hopefully they’ve got it all out of their systems: Trump has dealt a devastating blow to Israelophobia. “The disarming of Israel is a feverish obsession of the activist class, for they understand that in order for Israel to be replaced ‘from the river to the sea’, in order for this sinning settler-colonial nation to be scrubbed from humanity’s records, first its Jews must be denuded of all means of self-defence. They’re iffy about Trump’s plan for some one simple reason: it leaves the Jewish State intact and it demands the surrender of Hamas. It thwarts their dystopic dream of dragging the Middle East back to 1948, before the modern state of Israel existed. Everyone can now see that what falsely presented itself as a peace movement was in truth a ruthless campaign of delegitimation, demonisation and even destruction waged against the world’s only Jewish nation by our post-reason elites.”

Related: The ‘Peace Protesters’ Who Won’t Give Peace a Chance.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

HOW I ALMOST WROTE A BIOGRAPHY OF TOM WOLFE: The publishing world seems oddly uninterested in the life of The Bonfire of the Vanities author.

The agent got back to me within a week, emailing the various responses. Nonfiction editors at half a dozen big houses either didn’t like my approach, or didn’t like Tom, or didn’t like the genre of literary biography. One said, “I’m not passionate enough about Wolfe.” Another observed, “While I admire some of Wolfe’s early nonfiction, I’m not a fan of his novels.”

The agent’s email concluded: “Your thoughts?”

Well, my thoughts, my suspicions, are that the publishing industry isn’t interested in the full story of the man who wrote “A Man in Full” because he wrote too frankly, and too irreverently, about race and sex and status. Of course, every disappointed aspiring author will find reasons to blame benighted publishers, but what’s striking is the apparent lack of interest in Wolfe’s life story at all. Meanwhile, I have lately read books of varying quality on Wolfe’s contemporaries Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion and Jimmy Breslin. It’s certainly odd.

And there the story would end. But nowadays writers can skip the middleman altogether and publish online. Which I have been doing weekly on Substack since May, telling my Wolfe tale in serial form. I hope that one day some enlightened publisher does put a biographer to work. Those boxes are full of treasures.

While a good meaty biography of one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century remains elusive, there’s an enjoyable, albeit far from perfect, documentary about him on Netflix: Radical Wolfe: Does the New Tom Wolfe Documentary Cover the Man in Full?

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

DAVID THOMPSON: Not Reading The Room.

From the Stage pages of the Guardian, a reminder of which concerns – and by extension which citizens – simply don’t matter:

A compelling drama about refugees living in Britain could be one way to defuse the rising anger and anti-migrant sentiment in the UK, according to the award-winning actor Jonathan Pryce, who said great TV or film could “open up” the issue.

As if the issue weren’t already foremost in a great many minds, perhaps due to unhappy first-hand experience. Note, too, the conflation of migrants and refugees. As if those arriving in vast numbers, welcome or otherwise, legally or not, were some homogenous mass of human sorrow, and thus, rather conveniently, impossible to refuse.

Read the whole thing. As a young man, Pryce was the star of one of the very best films about living in a hellish dystopian society:

Apparently, he doesn’t realize that’s what he’s promoting these days, despite Old Blighty’s myriad attacks on free speech. As Thompson writes of England in 2025, “at the moment we’re way past the point at which the alarm started flashing. And the longer that friction continues, and the more that the concerns of the natives are dismissed or denounced or made taboo, the uglier the pushback is likely to be.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

 

“DO YOU REALIZE WHAT THEY’VE DONE TO YOU? They just tricked you into massively lowering your expectations:”

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

MICHAEL DUKAKIS, SLIGHT RETURN:

Classical reference in headline:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 9th, 2025

October 8, 2025

STACY MCCAIN: Typical Democratic Voter Inadvertently Explains the Great Mystery of Our Time.

Did you ever wonder how the Democratic Party got so crazy? For example, how is it that the governor of Illinois is inciting violent mobs against federal immigration authorities and meanwhile, in Virginia, every Democrat is rallying to the defense of Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, who openly fantasized about murdering political opponents?

To summarize briefly: Bad causes attract bad people.

To understand the symbiotic relationship between toxic political movements and their toxic supporters, my advice is to first read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic, The True Believer, especially Part 2: “The Potential Converts.” Next, you should read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, focusing on Chapter 10, “Why the Worst Get on Top.” Among the personal experiences that led me to comprehend this phenomenon was being swarmed by a mob of “Occupy” protesters in 2011. If you ever had the misfortune to be in close proximity to a zombie horde like that, you would never doubt that the fundamental problem of the Democratic Party is that its grassroots “base” is composed of dangerous lunatics.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 8th, 2025

JEFFREY BLEHAR: The Ugliness Inside of Katie Porter.

Porter’s petulance, lack of preparation, and sense of self-entitlement were staggering. She was genuinely offended to have to answer a mildly difficult question, one that (as Watts emphasized) every other candidate handled with ease. She acted like it was an insult not only to her intelligence but her personal dignity. I have seen celebrities walk out on interviews, but rarely political candidates, rarely for such unfathomable reasons, and never with the whine of a spoiled brat: “I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you! I don’t want this on camera!” (I was hoping for “I want it now!” to complete the trifecta, but alas it never came.)

Dealing with the press is a requirement for elected politics. Donald Trump famously hates the press — and is happy to talk with them constantly, taking any question flung at him and chewing the cud verbally for hours. If even Kamala Harris is willing to go out there and serve up bowls of word salad like the Swedish Chef, it certainly shouldn’t be beneath the likes of Katie Porter. Porter’s beastly reputation has long preceded her (you don’t become an inner-circle member of Washington’s informal “bad bosses” Hall of Fame any other way), but this interview is an amazing display of who she really is — the ugliness inside her heart — that voters will find impossible to ignore. I suspect Xavier Becerra had the best fundraising day of his campaign today.

Blehar adds, “Porter was politically mentored by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, which is fitting — both carry themselves like Dolores Umbridge — as well as deeply ironic, given that Warren is well-liked by her staff and Porter was famously loathed by hers.”

Gosh, I can’t imagine why:

Here’s the video of Porter’s meltdown with CBS’s Julie Watts if you missed it last night:

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:39 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 8th, 2025
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