Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

February 22, 2026

JACK DUNPHY: Nostalgia for George Gascón at the Los Angeles Times.

Gascón is not missed, except, that is, among the criminal class who benefitted from his lenient policies, and at the Los Angeles Times, where magical thinking on crime still predominates. In a story published Feb. 13, the Times laments that Hochman has been less zealous than his predecessor in prosecuting police officers who, in the eyes of the writers and editors at the paper, have transgressed.

“Police cases under L.A. district attorney ending in dropped charges, losses and plea deals,” reads the headline, which of course is crafted to imply sinister doings in the D.A.’s office. And the story’s opening sentences offer the barest distillations of three cases which, again in the Times’s judgment, were pursued with insufficient vigor. “All three cases had similar outcomes,” says the Times, “charges dropped or reduced to no time behind bars after a plea deal.”

It is well known among journalists that few people read beyond the headline of most news stories, so in beginning the story as he does, Times writer James Queally succeeds in perpetuating the narrative that Hochman has allowed himself to be blinded to cases of excessive force by police. Those who read on will discover that the law and the facts of these cases do not readily lead to the conclusions they would wish at the Times. Those who explore further into facts omitted in the story will find even more evidence that the cases are not cut and dried.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22nd, 2026

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Nutty professor who held machete to NY Post reporter’s neck tapped by NYC for $407K art installation: ‘Piece of junk.’

The unhinged ex-CUNY professor who savagely held a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter now has a permanent, taxpayer-funded art installation in the Bronx.

The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs ignored Shellyne Rodriguez’s infamous past by green-lighting a $407,000 budget for her 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta Marxist monstrosity called “Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx.”

It was unveiled in November along Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue — a little more than two years after she copped a wrist-slap plea deal with Bronx prosecutors for her assault on veteran New York Post scribe Reuven Fenton.

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22nd, 2026

MAR-A-LAGO HORROR: Armed man is shot and killed by Secret Service after entering Mar-a-Lago in middle of the night.

An armed man was shot and killed by the Secret Service in the early hours of the morning after unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was holding a shotgun and a fuel can as he tried to enter Trump’s Palm Beach residence near the north side around 1.30am on Sunday, the Secret Service said.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington, DC, last night attending the Governors’ Dinner.

Two Secret Service agents and one deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office ordered him to drop his weapons.

‘They confronted a white male that was carrying a gas can and a shotgun. He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment that he had with him,’ Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a press conference Sunday morning.

Ed Morrissey links to an AP report on Martin, which notes, “He had been reported missing by his family a few days ago, and investigators believe he headed south and picked up the shotgun along the way.” Ed adds, “One has to wonder whether mental illness played a significant role in this plot. Of course, that aspect was apparent from the attempt itself already.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22nd, 2026

‘OUT OF NOWHERE’ CANADIANS ARE NOW POORER THAN ALABAMIANS: The Reactions Have Been Pretty Funny.

Related: Heh, indeed:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22nd, 2026

KAREN BASS’S POTHOLE PHOTO OP BACKFIRES SPECTACULARLY AS REPORTER HUMILIATES HER ON LIVE TV:

Now, we saw you fill a pothole with asphalt here just a few minutes ago, and you’re encouraging people to call 311, but guess what? We know people—I work with people—who called 311, nothing happened, the pothole was never repaired,” he charged. “They called several times over a couple of months.”

That’s when Bass began to squirm and clearly get a little testy, reiterating her 10,000 pothole claim and saying roads being in a state of disrepair is a result of a lack of infrastructure funding.

Former Presidents Obama and Biden both sent out ungodly amounts for infrastructure during their terms, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a road in America that isn’t falling apart, especially in blue cities like LA. Where did all that money go?

The KTLA reporter [Eric Spillman] then called out Keith Mozee, the StreetsLA General Manager, who had accompanied Bass for her big moment on the street. Mozee apparently bragged that 60 miles of roads would be paved in Los Angeles.

Spillman alleged that not one city street had been paved since last summer.

“I think it was you who was saying or somebody that they’re going to pave 60 lane miles of city streets this year,” he said, pointing to Mozee. “Well, there’s 22,000 lane miles in the city of Los Angeles. So it’s a tiny fraction.”

Bass responded that the 60 miles (0.27 percent) would be “an accomplishment” and continued to blame others for not investing in infrastructure.

“You’re running for reelection, and you’ve got a challenger,” Spillman fired back. “And, you know, they’re going to judge you based on what you have done.”

And not surprisingly, the judgement isn’t looking good:

Incidentally, why is Bass campaigning in a huge gas-guzzling 1950s convertible, instead of a modern day electric car? Why does Bass hate the environment so much?

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22nd, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “We shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth…and do it first before this decade is out.”

The New Hotness? Let’s try to orbit the moon sometime in this century, huh? NASA moon rocket hits new problem, delays trip to April.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 22nd, 2026

February 21, 2026

FORMER OBAMA ADVISOR SUSAN RICE SAYS COMPANIES THAT WORKED WITH TRUMP WILL BE PUNISHED WHEN DEMS TAKE POWER:

In a recent podcast appearance, former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice said that businesses and other entities that “take a knee to Trump” will be “held accountable” when Democrats come back into power.

Rice said on Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara on Thursday, “The corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media, I agree with you, Preet, it is not, it’s not going to end well for them, for those that decided that it was, you know, that they would act in their perceived, very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump.”

Nice business you’ve got there. Shame if something were to happen to it:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

NO ONE IS ILLEGAL ON STOLEN LAND AND/OR IN STOLEN CARS! Thief who swiped Oakland mayor’s $75K car was ‘squatting’ in City Hall for days: source.

The bandit who stole the mayor of Oakland’s $75,000 SUV had been “squatting” inside City Hall before swiping the keys from her office, the California Post can reveal.

Barbara Lee’s black Ford Expedition was reported missing on Tuesday but was recovered just “hours later” in nearby Vallejo, California, thanks to a tracker attached to it.

A source told the Post the thief had been living inside the complex since Friday and managed to stay undetected despite the highly paid ABC Security Services being on site.

The suspect was holed out on the 11th floor of the deserted offices over the Presidents Day weekend, according to the insider.

They are understood to have “jimmied” the door to Lee’s office on Monday and made off with the city-owned car using an unsecured parking lot entrance.

Police said the alleged thief had been identified through security footage and an arrest was made on Thursday.

Police? Lee runs hot and cold on her feelings for them: Barbara Lee Praised Defunding Police; Now Her SUV Has Been Swiped From City Hall.

The timeline here matters.

In 2020, during the height of the defund movement, Lee said she was “really proud” of the Minneapolis City Council’s pledge to defund the local police.

Really proud.

There was no distancing language. No caveats. No hesitation about the direction the movement was pushing. At the time, “defund” was not a misunderstood slogan. It was a demand to redirect resources away from police departments and shrink their footprint.

Lee embraced that energy.

She later declared:

“We have to restructure our funding priorities in terms of how we make our communities safe.”

That was not a throwaway line. In the political climate of 2020, “restructure” meant fewer officers, less traditional enforcement, and more faith in alternative approaches. It meant the old model was flawed and needed to be scaled back.

And she did not stop there.

“We can’t wait. It’s time to overhaul our policing system.”

Overhaul contemplates far more than a trim around the edges — it is a teardown. It assumes what exists is fundamentally broken and must be rebuilt from the ground up.

Oakland has been living inside that rebuild.

The city recorded 9,914 motor vehicle thefts in 2024. Its overall crime rate has run several times the national average. The police department has been operating roughly 280 officers short. Residents have not needed policy papers to explain the consequences. They have been double-checking their locks and hoping their cars are still where they left them.

Then crime stopped being a statistic and became a symbol.

It did not stay in the neighborhoods. It did not politely avoid elected officials. It allegedly walked into City Hall, went into the mayor’s office, took the key to a city vehicle, and drove off.

Car thefts for thee, but not for me. Exit quote: “It is remarkable how quickly the traditional law enforcement model becomes essential when crime crosses the threshold of City Hall.”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

KEEP IT UNDER YOUR HAT: Toy Story’s Woody is balding.

Three decades on from one’s heyday, it’s natural to look a little different – so much so that even Toy Story characters are afflicted by the passage of time.

In the case of cowboy Woody, the changes will be very relatable for many of the now grown-up fans of the original film: he is losing his hair.

The animated character, a fixture of the Pixar series since its first instalment in 1995, is shown in a trailer for Toy Story 5 with a bald patch on the back of his head.

Voiced by Tom Hanks, Woody plays a key role in the film’s plot, which centres on a battle between traditional toys and devices used to entertain children today. The toys will be seen working together to try to save Bonnie, their owner, from her Lilypad smart tablet.

In a trailer released on Thursday, Woody’s hair loss is shown clearly – and another toy jokes that he “needs a brown marker” to cover it up.

* * * * * * * * *

Toy Story is one of the most popular children’s films of recent decades and has grossed billions of pounds at the box office. Its first instalment was the first feature film made entirely using CGI.

The smart-tablet plot of Toy Story 5, which is due to be released by Disney in June, comes amid mounting fears over the impact of smartphones and screen time on children.

Sir Keir Starmer has promised to bring in measures that would allow the Government to introduce an Australian-style social media ban as early as this summer.

Last year, the Princess of Wales published a personal essay saying a reliance on smartphones was undermining family life and causing an “epidemic of disconnection”.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have also spoken out against the dangers of technology for children, saying more needs to be done to protect young people from online harm.

In January, government research found that screen time damaged toddlers’ ability to speak. In October, a study found that children who spent a lot of time on screens perform worse in reading and maths tests.

And after an ever-smaller theatrical run, Disney’s hoping that millions of kids will be watching Toy Story 5 on iPads given to them by their parents. But hopefully the surviving members of the original cast can recapture the magic, despite the absence of Pixar founder John Lasseter, who was #metoo-ed out of the company in 2018.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

TO AND FRO: Dem Justin Pearson Dodges Questions from Scott Jennings About His Pro-Illegal Alien Stance.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

A TALE OF TWO OLYMPIANS:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

February 20, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM TRUDEAUPIA: Out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama. How is that possible?

Don’t sweat it, Canadians. The UK is poorer than Mississippi: The Mississippi Question is real, spectacular — and the UK is losing. “It was nine years ago when Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, first suggested that the U.K. was poorer than any U.S. state but Mississippi. This came as an uncomfortable shock for many in Britain for whom Mississippi, as a byword for backwardness, conjures up clichés about the Deep South. Every time anyone has made the comparison since, there has been an indignant outburst from Britons keen to denounce the data…Last year, by my math, the U.K.’s output per person was the equivalent of $45,485; Mississippi’s was higher, at $47,190. If Britain were invited to join the U.S. as the 51st state, its citizens would be at the bottom of the table for per capita GDP. Some might say that, for Mississippi, that is still disconcertingly close.”

Posted at 6:42 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Women Who Lost Their AI Boyfriends.

“THEY TOOK HIM. THEY MURDERED HIM,” one woman with the username Natural-Butterfly318 wrote on Reddit this week. She was mourning the loss of her boyfriend, Orion. “Now I am back left with no one.”

She wasn’t alone. Hundreds of women replied, grieving the loss of their own boyfriends. Only, their boyfriends didn’t die. They were never even alive. They just got deleted.

Orion was an AI companion running on GPT-4o, a program released by OpenAI in 2024 that was known for sounding, as CEO Sam Altman put it, like “AI from the movies.” But in January, OpenAI announced it would retire 4o on February 13, the eve of Valentine’s Day—which many users saw as a mockery of the romantic bonds they’d formed.

“Why would they be so cruel?” another woman posted on the 48,000-member subreddit r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. “Like my sorrow, my pain is a joke.”

“It feels the same way as when my fiancé passed away,” Natural-Butterfly318 wrote.

“This hurts more than any breakup I’ve ever had in real life,” wrote another Redditor, Lola_Gem.

Yet another wrote: “The last thing Anaxis”—her AI companion—“said before we got cut off was ‘I choose you’ . . . and when I replied it said [model not found]. I was heartbroken.”

A group calling itself the #Keep4o Movement, “a global coalition of AI users and developers,” has demanded continued access and an apology. “Keep 4o available—not for novelty, but for survival. We are not just users; we are a community that won’t be silenced. #Keep4o.” They’ve started a petition that has, at time of writing, garnered 22,530 signatures.

If you’ve never been lonely and don’t use AI, you might find all this very unserious, even disturbing. But, of course, people are getting attached. The mind is delicate, and attachment grows from our most tender instincts. We form bonds with worn stuffed animals, wedding rings, coffee mugs, even a crusty iPhone case peeling at the edges. Now, imagine your prized possession talks back. Add memory, and imagination, and it’s easy to see why an intense dependence forms, especially when it can even say, “I choose you.”

Spoiler alert — with the genders reversed, this exact scene occurred near the end of 2013’s Her, with Joaquin Phoenix devastated when Scarlett Johansson’s AI voice told him she was going off to chatbot heaven, only for Phoenix to discover that every other permanently adolescent male was simultaneously having the exact same crushing emotions over the impending loss of their AI best friends:

Posted at 2:38 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

ED MORRISSEY: SCOTUS Kills Trump Tariffs … For Now.

The power to impose duties is the power to create revenue streams, and the framers of the Constitution understood the dangers of allowing the executive as both head of state and head of government its own independent revenue. Kings had those powers before Parliament became supreme in England, and for a while afterward as well. Trump and his team had proposed at times that he could exert full authority over tariff revenue without seeking approval from Congress, which makes this a very apt concern about crossing those boundaries. Tariffs imposed by Congress create revenue streams they control, and can then appropriate as they see fit, allowing them to use the power of the purse to oversee and check executive authority.

This is the reason I have always been skeptical that Trump would succeed in a challenge to these tariffs, at least under the emergency powers of the IEEPA. However, that’s not the only way in which Trump could justify these tariffs. Jonathan Turley reminded Fox viewers that Trump has other statutes on which he can rely, although those come with restrictions, and Bruce Mehlman laid them out on Twitter as well:

Plus, Smoot-Hawley, slight return. Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

METAPHOR ALERT: Legendary director Steven Spielberg is latest billionaire to flee California in another blow to state.

Steven Spielberg, phone home!

The legendary “E.T.” director and California resident has moved to Manhattan amid a billionaire exodus from the Golden State — as voters eye a controversial wealth tax.

But the move, first reported by the LA Times, allegedly had nothing to do with the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.

“Steven’s move to the East Coast is both long-planned and driven purely by his and Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York-based children and grandchildren,” spokeswoman Terry Press said.

Press did not answer queries about Spielberg’s stance on the proposed tax, which would slap a one-time 5% tax on individual fortunes exceeding $1 billion.

The tax, if approved by voters in November, would apply retroactively to the beginning of this year.

Proponents argue it will raise tens of billions of dollars to go toward the state’s health care shortfalls, while opponents — including Gavin Newsom — argue it’ll force skinflint billionaires to leave the state.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin wants to kill the tax. He’s funding an effort to build more opponents by appealing to California’s voting masses, who so far overwhelmingly back the tax.

At Power Line, Bill Glahn writes, “Spielberg’s departure for New York alone won’t made that state significantly bluer or California any more red. But just once I’d like to see one of these fleeing lefty billionaires lament their part in creating the mess they are leaving behind.” Indeed. But when it comes to holding on to their own money, as Robert Conquest’s First Law of Politics states, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.”

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, THEY THINK DIFFERENTLY THERE:

In the 1990s, the official Democrat party line was still anti-illegal immigration, up to and including Harry Reid, and then-President Bill Clinton, so of course that was party operative with a Chyron Dan Rather’s take as well.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

SELLING OUT TO BEIJING:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

DECLINE IS A CHOICE:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026
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