Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

March 29, 2026

OR BEING HANGED BY AN IRANIAN CONSTRUCTION CRANE:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 29th, 2026

March 28, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: John Kerry’s infamous 2004 “global test” presidential debate rhetoric.

The New Hotness? Europe flunks Trump’s test:

Tweet continues, Trump “was testing whether European countries that the U.S. has protected for over 80 years would do the bare minimum to help secure global sea lanes, which American taxpayers have also been underwriting for decades at no cost to them. In this case, those sea lanes benefit Europe far more than the U.S. and Europe failed the test.”

Exit question: The Hormuz Hypothesis – What If the U.S. Navy Isn’t in a Hurry to Reopen the Strait?

Posted at 5:17 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

CANDY CRUSH! Thieves make off with 12 tons of KitKat chocolate bars.

Twelve tons of KitKat chocolate bars went missing in ​Europe last week after thieves ‌made off with the truck transporting them, Swiss food giant Nestle  said on ​Saturday.

KitKat, which is made by ​Nestle, said the truck carrying 413,793 ⁠bars of its new range ​set off from central Italy to ​distribute the chocolate throughout Europe, but never reached its scheduled final destination in Poland.

The ​vehicle and the merchandise remain ​unaccounted for.

Though the suspects should be pretty easy to spot:

Another movie version proposed here:

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

HOW IT’S DONE:

To be fair, there are far too many people in L.A. who view Bass paling with Fidel in the Venceremos Brigade as a feature, not a bug.

Posted at 2:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

THE RADICALIZATION OF CALLA WALSH:

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint assault on Iran, perhaps no American has more aggressively and publicly rallied behind the Islamic Republic than Calla Walsh. From her new base in Lebanon, the 21-year-old Cambridge-raised activist has taken to social media and left-wing podcasts to incite her fellow countrymen and women to sabotage U.S. and Israeli defense contractors wherever they can find them. On March 3, she mocked four American soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike, posting: “They all died fighting for fascism, genocide, pedophilia, and cannibalism.” She attached pictures of the dead Americans. In recent days she reposted a list of missile-production sites inside the U.S.

“We have a duty to escalate,” Walsh told her host on the Psychic Militancy podcast last Saturday from Beirut, noting that “lockdowns” of weapons factories and vandalism alone are “not sufficient at this point.”

She added: “And as the genocide and these wars of aggression continue to escalate, much more is demanded of people in the West.”

Walsh looks every part the art-school hipster, with her thick-rimmed glasses and a mop of curly hair. But she’s a chameleon of terror. Five years earlier, as a 16-year-old, Walsh was fawned over by The New York Times for being a young, social media-savvy activist who was helping to shake up the Democratic Party in Massachusetts. But as a monthslong investigation by The Free Press shows, she’s thrown her allegiance squarely behind the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Axis of Resistance, which includes the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The U.S. government has placed her on a suspicious persons watch list for her expansive dealings with the governments of Cuba and Iran, U.S. officials told me, as well as a spiderweb of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

* * * * * * * * *

It was Senator Ed Markey’s 2020 reelection bid that elevated Walsh’s profile nationally. Polls showed the septuagenarian trailing the 39-year-old Joe Kennedy III by as many as 16 points. The age gap and the Kennedy mystique appeared to many pollsters as too much for Markey to overcome.

Walsh and a network of hundreds of young, progressive online activists, who became known as the Markeyverse, changed the course of the race. They used social media to mobilize young voters, casting Markey as the leading Democrat fighting climate change and corporate corruption. Kennedy, in contrast, was portrayed as the scion of an entrenched political dynasty who was beholden to business interests and the Washington establishment.

A platinum blonde Walsh canvassed Boston neighborhoods in a Green New Deal T-shirt and face mask. Markey won the 2020 Democratic primary by 11 points and praised Walsh and her allies. Glowing profiles appeared in The New York Times and Boston magazine. “It’s a movement fueled by young people who are not afraid to raise their voices or make enemies,” Markey said after the vote. “This is a tribute to those young people and to their vision. They will save us if we trust them.”

Not since Al Gore declared “Mission Accomplished” to his brand of radical environmentalism by selling out to the petrostate of Qatar in 2013 has an environmentalist pivoted on a dime to defend an oppressive oil-driven Middle Eastern regime. I’m sorry that Walsh’s “Green New Deal” t-shirt is cut-off in the left photo of the before and after juxtaposition below:

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

DEEP SCHIFF:

Last year, PJM’s Matt Margolis wrote: Exposed: How Hillary Planned to Reward Schiff for Undermining Trump.

Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge has not only released FBI reports that reveal that Rep. Eric Swalwell, another Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was also a habitual leaker of classified information, even receiving warnings from the FBI to be more cautious. The reports also indicate that had Clinton won the 2016 election, she would likely have rewarded Schiff for his efforts by appointing him CIA director, a testament to their deep ties and shared political objectives.

As Mark Steyn wrote in 2005 upon the announcement that FBI man Mark Felt was Woodward and Bernstein’s “Deep Throat,” memorably played by Hal Holbrook in 1976’s All the President’s Men: 

Now we learn that Deep Throat was not, in fact, Alexander Haig, David Gergen, Pat Buchanan or Len Garment, but a disaffected sidekick of J Edgar Hoover, an old-school G-man embittered at being passed over for the Director’s job when the big guy keeled over after half-a-century in harness. And, whatever Mark Felt’s motives, it wasn’t because of a distaste over illegal break-ins: at the FBI, he himself had authorized illegal burglaries at the homes of friends and family of various leftists.

Oh, dear. Like the Star Wars wrap-up, “How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat” feels small and mean after three decades of the awesome dramatic burden placed upon it. The nobility of the Watergate myth – in which media boomers and generations of journalism-school ethics bores have invested so much – seems cheapened and tarnished by this last plot twist.

And if the above is true as well, it explains so many of Schiff’s antics over the past decade.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

NO BOSSES:

Bruce Springsteen is the headliner at the flagship No Kings rally at the state Capitol in Saint Paul this afternoon. Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, and Bernie Sanders are also primed to appear. Truth in advertising would require the rally to be redesignated Gimme That Old Time Religion or In Search of Lost Time. As the Rolling Stones once trilled, “What a drag it is getting old.”

Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, and Ilhan Omar will also be there. They wouldn’t want to miss the chance to rag on the King. Opposing the King has become the lodestone of their careers. Contrary to the theme of the proceedings, it comes at no cost and places them at no risk. Abe Greenwald aptly observed in the Commentary newsletter: “Trump is such an oppressive emperor that Americans have felt completely secure in coming out to publicly protest him and his administrations more than they have any previous president. His suppression machine is clearly on the fritz.”

But not the left’s:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

As “Miami” Steve Van Zandt told the London Times in 2024, “‘When Bruce got vocal behind the Democrats, we probably lost half the audience. There’s nowhere we can’t do business.’ But some places feel like enemy territory now? ‘A little bit, yeah. We’re ten times bigger in Europe. We might play six stadiums in America and sixty in Europe.’”

Not that Van Zandt is eager to mend fences with the Boss’s former base: Steven Van Zandt Is Bruce Springsteen’s Guitarist. He Hates You. He Wants You Dead.

Earlier from Sasha Stone: Springsteen Lashes Out After Biopic Flops.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

Details about Scorsese’s 2007 production can be found at Wikipedia, and the full ten-minute clip with Scorsese’s dryly satiric setup and conclusion is at YouTube.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Moment defense secretary ’embarrassingly’ struggles to name navy fleet size.

The figure, which is down from previous published total of 23, was claimed to be inaccurate by defence analyst Francis Tusa.

LBC has contacted the Ministry of Defence for the official figure.
Speaking with Nick following Healey’s comments, Ms Tusa told LBC he was ‘flabbergasted’ by his response.

The government has faced criticism over its sluggish deployment of HMS Dragon to defend British troops stationed on Cyprus, after British bases were hit by Iranian drone strikes at the start of March.

This must be part of that “managed decline” that the Brits talk about so much:

Related: How the Royal Navy shrank to its smallest ‘since English Civil War.’

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

IT’S NOT EXACTLY THE VOIGHT-KAMPFF TEST, BUT IT’LL DO FOR NOW:

Tweet continues, “Holding three fingers right in front of the face adds occlusion (hand blocking face), lighting shifts, and depth blending, exposing artifacts like warped fingers, extra/missing digits, or pixel morphing. It’s a quick, reliable test for spotting fakes in real-time calls.”

At least for now. As Kyle Reese told Sarah Connor, “The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot.“

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

OUT ON A LIMB:

Flashback: Brian Flores’ Lawsuit Exposes the Absurdity of NFL Racial Quotas Like the ‘Rooney Rule:’

Part of the reason this wisdom hasn’t been applied to the coaching world is due to absurd racial quota systems like the “Rooney Rule” in the NFL, which forces teams to interview at least one black candidate for any major coaching or executive vacancy.

The absurdity of this practice can be illustrated by simply applying it to NFL roster vacancies. Imagine if every NFL team were forced to invite a white cornerback into training camp every season. No NFL team has started a white cornerback since Jason Sehorn in 2002. A white cornerback who fulfilled a team’s obligation under a “Sehorn Rule” would feel insecure and teammates would feel resentful, even if the player was qualified for the position and seriously considered for the job.

This is not a defense of the NFL. The league brought this upon themselves when they jumped in bed with the social justice radicals after the Kaepernick saga and doubled down after the George Floyd/BLM riots. They deserve this lawsuit and everything that’s coming to them.

The rest of America would do well to abandon the obsession with racial optics and skin-deep assessments of our fellow countrymen, or we’re heading toward the all-out racial conflict that the radical left seems obsessed with fomenting.

By former New England Patriot Jake Bequette, Read the whole thing.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

SPITTING IMAGES: Back in 2007, Glenn wrote about the left’s efforts to memory hole their predecessors’ spitting on American soldiers after they returned home to America from Vietnam in the late ’60s and early 1970s: Jason Van Steenwyk looks at efforts to erase history.

UPDATE: In the comments, a reference to Bob Greene’s The Homecoming, which is described this way by Library Journal:

“Were you ever spat upon when you returned home to the United States?” asked syndicated columnist Greene of the Vietnam veterans among his readership. He received over 1000 letters in reply, many recounting specific details of just such a painfully remembered incident. Evidently this recollection of “hippies” (as they are often called in the letters) spitting on combat veterans has become one of the war’s most unpleasant, enduring images.

This would seem to pose problems for the new crowd of spitting-denialists, though they will no doubt manage to maintain their unbelief.

Today’s leftists melting down upon seeing ICE agents in airports also poses problems for the spitting denialists, if there are any still left: ICE Agents at This Airport Had the Perfect Reaction to Lefty Screeching About ‘Fascist Foot Soldiers.’

One leftist was so angry at seeing ICE at the baggage carousel that he (checks notes) smashed his own sunglasses and iPhone in response:

As for the rest of us:

UPDATE:

MORE: Regarding that last video, Bonchie of RedState tweets, “I remember in Nazi Germany when people could just walk up to ‘foot soldiers of the fascist regime’ and harass them, and they just laughed and kept walking.”

Posted at 8:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

THE CORBYNIZATION OF LEFTIST BRITISH POLITICS CONTINUES APACE: Green activists called Jews ‘abominations’ in leaked WhatsApp chat.

Green Party activists described Jewish people as “an abomination to this planet” in anti-Semitic WhatsApp messages, The Telegraph can reveal.

One member of the Greens for Palestine group, a Left-wing faction in the Green Party, said Jews “murder, bomb and starve” children.

Another claimed the arson attack on four ambulances owned by a Jewish charity in Golders Green, north London, on Monday had been a “false flag” operation, suggesting it could have been carried out by Jewish people.

A Green council candidate shared posts on social media, making the same claim.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) said its lawyers were investigating the activists’ remarks. It said views expressed in the Greens for Palestine group chat were “straight out of Nazi Germany”.

Labour urged Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, to take action against those involved, saying the growing evidence of anti-Semitism within the party was “deeply troubling”. The Conservatives said the language was “utterly appalling”.

Meanwhile in the Colonies: Rise of the leftist groypers.

Last month, Ana Kasparian, executive producer of the progressive YouTube channel The Young Turks (6.5 million subs), tweeted out “Hey, bitch, the goyim are waking the fuck up. Deal with it.” Ana, like many other chronically online leftists, has been making increasingly obsessive anti-Israel content since October 7. So obsessive, in fact, that it led Jillian Michaels, a co-host of Ana’s panel show Her Take, to storm off set in the middle of production saying “I don’t know how every show ends up being about ‘how do we bash Israel?’ This is not for me, I am not interested in this.”

“MAGA communist” influencer Jackson Hinkle likes to use the same phrase as Kasparian with his millions of followers. Examples include, “Goyim, do not complain. You must die for Israel,” “Now goyim, it’s time to die for Israel,” and “Goyim, don’t ask questions.” This is copied in even harsher languages by the “American Communist party,” a political formation that seems to be less a real party than a social media grift.

There are multiple factors driving the groyperfication of the online left. But it can’t be denied that there is increasing acceptance of anti-Semitic tropes by a subset of leftists and influencers. Nick Fuentes and his digital army of fans, “the Groypers,” have revamped anti-Semitic tropes for the digital era. Now, online leftists are using that same rhetoric.

Of course, left-wing anti-Semitism goes back decades: Stalin carried out Jewish purges and Brezhnev had vast quantities of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion printed in Arabic and distributed throughout the region to counter Israel.

And then there was that ideology that attempted to spread socialism nationally, and in a surprisingly environmentally-friendly way: Rupert Darwall on the Alarming Roots of Environmentalism.

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

TIME TO BUILD SOME NEW FIREBOATS:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

WATCHING THE VEGAN SAUSAGE GET MADE: Public Health Officials Lied, Hypocrisy Ruled, Trust Died: Brutal X Thread Conor Friedersdorf Walked Into.

Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer for The Atlantic. He’s very perplexed and came to X in hope of some answers. He got them although it is probably not what he expected.

* * * * * * * *

Flashback: At the Apex of the Pivot.

Evergreen:

 

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 28th, 2026

March 27, 2026

RONALD RADOSH: The Hollywood Blacklist Gets Whitewashed. A Review of ‘Blacklisted: An American Story’ at the Capital Jewish Museum.

That claim, moreover, ignores that when the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed in Moscow, overnight the Brigade veterans became anti antifascist, arguing publicly that Hitler’s Germany was a benign power, and that the real threat to peace came from the United States and Britain, which wanted to drive the United States into war. The last commander of the Brigades, Milton Wolff, speaking to the veterans at their annual convention that took place in May 1941, denounced as equally evil “Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, and Mussolini.” He attacked FDR for wanting America to participate in the “imperialist slaughter in which the youth of our country, will, if he has his way,” seek U.S. “involvement … in an imperialist war from which the great majority of the American people can derive only misery, suffering and death.” He stated that the Brigade veterans’ organization “opposes every move of Roosevelt and the warmongers in this direction.”

Members who opposed the Nazi-Soviet Pact were immediately expelled from the organization by Wolff. So much for their prescient antifascism! Why is this not in the exhibition?

Then one must pay attention to the most famous of all the blacklisted Hollywood writers, the talented and brilliant screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. During the years of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Trumbo had published his novel Johnny Got His Gun, a searing antiwar novel (made into a Hollywood film during the Vietnam war) about a World War I vet who lost his sight and all his limbs. It was meant to increase antiwar sentiment when the FDR administration was beginning to provide aid to Great Britain. It won the National Book Award for Best Original Novel in 1939.

When Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Trumbo and his publisher suspended printing of Johnny Got His Gun, and Trumbo appealed to readers who had bought it to return or destroy the book. He also did one other little-known action: In 1944, he asked the FBI to come to his house to look at letters he had received from people who wanted to know how they could get a copy of Johnny Got His Gun. Charging that the writers were clearly still antiwar, still isolationist, and some were as well pro-Hitler and opposed fiercely to the president, he gave their names to the bureau. His view, he wrote the FBI, was that his book “shouldn’t be reprinted until the war was at an end.” He was afraid, however, that the letter-writers “could adversely affect the war effort” if the book was made available. In 1970, he acknowledged that “I foolishly reported their activities to the FBI.” Yet he still thought he was right to oppose getting into the war in 1939 because it would be a “disastrous course” to move away from isolationism, which is also why he spoke up against Lend-Lease aid to Britain, arguing that would be like handing a gun to a “hot-headed man.”

Years later, Trumbo bragged that due to his influence in the film colony, he was able to stop a Hollywood movie that was to be made about Leon Trotsky. Yet, Trumbo himself came to see the truth about the totalitarian Soviet Union. He had read, he admitted, all the major anticommunist books, and hence, “I was not surprised.” As for the CP, he knew the blacklisted writers were used for the party’s own agenda. He was furious that they were “exploited for every left-wing cause that came down the pike.”

As Mark Steyn wrote of screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo in 2003, when the off-Broadway play that was a likely inspiration for the 2015 biopic starring Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, “Though the play won’t tell you the answer to that famous question – ‘Are you now or have you ever…?’ – the answer is: yes, he was. The more interesting question is: How do you feel about getting one of the great moral questions of the century wrong?”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

SUPREME COURT BLOCKS MUSIC INDUSTRY’S PUSH TO CUT MILLIONS OFF THE INTERNET OVER PIRACY CLAIMS:

The Supreme Court has unanimously refused to let the recording industry turn internet providers into copyright enforcers with the power to cut millions of people off from modern life.

The ruling, handed down Wednesday in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, kills a legal theory that would have given ISPs one rational choice when they received a copyright complaint: sever the connection first, figure out the truth later.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

All nine justices thankfully agreed that Cox Communications bears no liability for the piracy of its subscribers.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, stated: “Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.”

The real significance of the ruling isn’t what it means for Cox’s balance sheet. It’s what prevents it from happening to everyone who depends on an internet connection to live, work, and communicate, which in 2026 is functionally all of us.

Consider what the recording industry was actually proposing. Sony Music Entertainment and more than 50 other labels, representing artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Givēon, and Doechii*, wanted courts to hold ISPs financially liable for not disconnecting users accused of piracy.

Not convicted. Accused.

The accusations themselves came from an automated system paid for by the Recording Industry Association of America, which hires an anti-piracy company to blast notices at internet providers whenever its software detects possible infringement. Nobody reviews these notices with any care. Nobody checks whether the flagged activity was actually illegal, whether it fell under fair use, or whether the person named on the account was even the one responsible.

Under the legal standard the labels wanted, an ISP that received enough of these automated complaints and didn’t disconnect the account could face catastrophic financial liability. A Virginia jury bought that theory in 2019 and hit Cox with a verdict of over $1 billion.

The incentive structure that kind of liability creates is terrifying if you think it through for more than a few seconds. When an ISP faces billion-dollar exposure for not cutting people off, the only financially rational response is to start cutting people off aggressively.

Exit quote: “A family of five loses their connection because one teenager allegedly downloaded a song. A hospital serving hundreds of patients and their families goes dark because someone on the guest Wi-Fi triggered an automated flag. A university campus gets throttled or disconnected because students were doing what students have always done. ‘That notion turns Internet providers into Internet police and jeopardizes Internet access for millions of users,’ Cox told the Court.”

* Evergreen:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: The Ensh*ttification Of Lord Of The Rings. 

Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record:

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

HOW IT STARTED: Gov. Newsom courts touts California as the ‘freedom state.’

—The L.A. Times, August 3rd, 2022.

How It’s Going: Gavin Newsom floats idea of mandatory national service.

During a taped interview at John’s Grill in San Francisco, Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked Newsom whether the US should adopt compulsory military service or some form of volunteer obligations.

“I think we have to look at ways we can frame a responsibility to serve for a year, 6 months minimum — year, 18 months,” said Newsom, who did not serve in the US military.

He added: “This notion of shared experiences — I don’t know how else you get this country back together.”

—The California Post, yesterday.

While Martin raised the topic of compulsory military service, perhaps Newsom has another kind of shared service in mind. Flashback t0 2019: Marianne Williamson wants a national mandatory service for people ages 18-26 to combat climate change.

In any case, perhaps Newsom needs to recheck his polling data on this issue:

Related: VDH on GCN:

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

NOT ANTI-WAR, MERELY ON THE OTHER SIDE:

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026
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