Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

February 4, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM ABC NEWS: Behar Equates Don Lemon Storming Church to Press Documenting Nazi Concentration Camps.

When the Americans liberated Dachau, after World War II during the Holocaust – after the Holocaust, Dwight D. Eisenhower said take pictures of these concentration camps because years will go by and people will not believe this happened.

So, this administration does not really like somebody like Don Lemon who has a camera, who a position – like we do in a way – to speak to the people and tell them what really is going on. So, you know, God bless Dwight D. Eisenhower and Don Lemon.

Behar never explained what she thought was happening inside the church that warranted her making that analogy.

Easy mistake to make — doesn’t everyone confuse a church service with liberating a concentration camp?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 4th, 2026

#HIMTOO? Newly released files shed new light on Chomsky and Epstein relationship.

The close friendship that Noam Chomsky maintained with Jeffrey Epstein continued being detailed extensively among millions of investigative records pertaining to the late convicted sex offender recently released by the US justice department, including Chomsky “fantasizing about the Caribbean island”.

In Friday’s tranche of documents, which built upon earlier disclosures of their close social ties, there is no specific indication that the famed academic and linguist was referring to his friend’s private Caribbean island where children were sexually abused. But the personal familiarity between the two men in that exchange is palpable, as it is in numerous other emails between Chomsky and Epstein aimed at planning more mundane social gatherings.

There additionally was an exchange in which Chomsky wrote to Steve Bannon, the rightwing chief White House strategist during Donald Trump’s first presidency, requesting an introductory meeting. “Lots to talk about,” Chomsky wrote, adding that he had been provided Bannon’s contact information by Epstein, a former friend of Trump.

Former Epstein girlfriend Karyna Shuliak at one point emailed a third party whose identity was redacted that she and her boyfriend wanted to send Chomsky and his wife two genetic testing kits.

Perhaps most strikingly, in late February 2019, Epstein represented to an associate that he had gotten advice from Chomsky over how to navigate “the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public”. That was 11 years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution – and months before he would reportedly die by suicide while in federal custody awaiting sex-trafficking charges.

“The best way to proceed is to ignore it,” Chomsky wrote, according to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist. “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”

Related: Ben Sixsmith on “The very strange downfall of Noam Chomsky.” “If you’re younger​​ than ​​35, you might have no idea how much of the internet used to be occupied by people arguing about Noam Chomsky. Left-wingers used to fight with liberals and conservatives at insane length over the merits — or lack thereof — of the ageing linguist and anti-war commentator.” As for Chomsky’s numerous enemies on the right, “These poor souls would have had no idea that all their work undermining Chomsky’s political reputation would become unnecessary when, at a grand old age, the man himself formed a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 4th, 2026

“BIGLAW WOULD RATHER REPRESENT TERRORISTS THAN PATRIOTIC AMERICANS:”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 4th, 2026

February 3, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “What is a Woman?”

The New Hotness?

To be fair, this changes everything!

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Black ICE Agent Hit With Racial Slurs After Asking Trans Agitator, ‘Are You a Man?’

Some people say ICE agents should be outfitted with body cameras, and we agree. As has been proven ever since the Summer of Love in 2020, body cameras usually wind up showing the professionalism of the law enforcement officer and the craziness of the people they arrest. Whenever we see a video of ICE agents being surrounded by idiots blowing their whistles, we find the restraint shown by ICE agents remarkable.

This ICE agent let the restraint slip for a second and managed to make the video of the day. Protesters were already in his face when he asked one, “Are you a man?” That didn’t sit well with the legal observers. (Language warning)

Last week, Tim Walz asked, “Is this a Fort Sumter?” His constituents certainly are acting (and sounding) like the Confederates of 1861.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

CHECKMATE: Native American tribe that owns land under Billie Eilish’s LA mansion has message for virtue-signaling singer.

The Native American tribe that owns the land under Billie Eilish’s multimillion-dollar Los Angeles mansion said celebrities should “explicitly” reference the tribes if they want to use them to virtue-signal.

The Tongva tribe confirmed the “Bad Guy” singer’s $3 million home does sit on its “ancestral land,” after the 24-year-old used her Grammys acceptance speech to rail against ICE and insist that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

The indigenous inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin, known as the “First Angelenos,” said they appreciate Eilish’s sentiment, however, they noted that the performer hasn’t contacted them directly — and insisted that next time she explicitly reference them.

“Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property, we do value the instance when public figures provide visibility to the true history of this country,” a Tongva spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

“It is our hope that in future discussions, the tribe can explicitly be referenced to ensure the public understands that the greater Los Angeles Basin remains Gabrieleno Tongva territory,” the spokesperson added.

Eilish was widely mocked for her comments on Sunday, as she yelled, “F–k ICE” from the stage while denouncing the US as stolen land.

“Oh, gee, this ‘stolen land’ nonsense again? Maybe she should step up and forfeit her Southern California mansion since it is supposedly on ‘stolen land,’” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X.’

I’d say that members of the Tongva should at least drop by and have a soak in her hot tub, but as Robert Conquest liked to say, “Everyone is conservative about what he [or she] knows best:” Billie Eilish Gets 3-Year Restraining Order For Trespasser.

Which seems odd, considering, “nobody is illegal on stolen land:”

Related:

UPDATE: Fortunately for Eilish, nobody was watching: 2026 Grammys Dip 6.4% From Last Year With 14.4 Million Viewers. Sunday’s ceremony ranks as the most-watched awards show since the 2025 Oscars.

The 2026 Grammys scored a solid audience as they aired live on Sunday, but still saw a slight 6.4% drop in viewership when compared to last year’s awards.

The awards ceremony, which aired from Los Angeles’ Crypto.com arena beginning at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET, brought in 14.41 million viewers across CBS and Paramount+, according to Nielsen big data plus panel live-plus-same-day figures. The 2026 event also marks the last one airing on CBS before moving to Disney in a new 10-year streaming and broadcasting deal.

Viewership for Sunday’s show was down 6.43% from last year, which scored 15.4 million viewers. It’s also down from the 16.9 million viewers brought in by 2024, which marked the biggest audience the awards show has seen since 2020.

I’m sensing a trend here: Grammy Awards viewers stats 2000-2020.

(The huge ratings outlier in 2012 was as a result of Whitney Houston’s death the day before the ceremony, causing the show’s producers to schedule several tributes to her.)

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE WILL BE IN THE EPSTEIN FILES FOR 15 CHARACTERS: Michael Malone: I Am in the Epstein File.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

GREAT MOMENTS IN VIRTUE SIGNALING:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

IT’S COME TO THIS: The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films.

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “But students will not do it.”

I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films. Malcolm Turvey, the founding director of Tufts University’s Film and Media Studies Program, officially bans electronics during film screenings. Enforcing the ban is another matter: About half the class ends up looking furtively at their phones.

A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change. Some students have always found old movies to be slow, Lynn Spigel, a professor of screen cultures at Northwestern University, told me. “But the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.”

Most of the instructors I spoke with, however, feel that something is different now. And the problem is not limited to large introductory courses. Akira Mizuta Lippit, a cinema and media-studies professor at the University of Southern California—home to perhaps the top film program in the country—said that his students remind him of nicotine addicts going through withdrawal during screenings: The longer they go without checking their phone, the more they fidget. Eventually, they give in. He recently screened the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation. At the outset, he told students that even if they ignored parts of the film, they needed to watch the famously essential and prophetic final scene. Even that request proved too much for some of the class. When the scene played, Lippit noticed that several students were staring at their phones, he told me. “You do have to just pay attention at the very end, and I just can’t get everybody to do that,” he said.

The idea of a two-hour adaptation of a famous novel was an invention of early Hollywood in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Will the form die once movie theaters vanish?

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

THE LEFT DOESN’T WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE, THEY WANT TO BE THE POLICE: Border Control.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 3rd, 2026

February 2, 2026

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

UPDATE:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: 16 Dead in NYC From Warmth of Collectivism.

At least 16 people have died outdoors in New York City after a winter storm and days of subfreezing temperatures, intensifying scrutiny of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s (D.) handling of the cold snap and his decision to halt the removal of homeless encampments.

The death toll climbed to 16, Mamdani announced Monday, and hypothermia played a role in at least 13 of the deaths. Fourteen New Yorkers died from Hurricane Ida in 2021.

Mamdani announced in December that he would drop former mayor Eric Adams’s policy of clearing homeless encampments and encouraging people to go to shelters, saying that displacement was ineffective. Critics argue the reversal left the homeless vulnerable when temperatures plunged.

Adams said he pleaded with Mamdani not to abandon the city’s established policy. “I begged him not to reverse our policy that kept homeless New Yorkers from freezing outdoors in makeshift encampments,” Adams wrote Thursday on X. “He didn’t listen.”

“Reinstate the policy now. Every day of delay risks more lives,” the former mayor said.

Mamdani on Monday, though, said that “It does not appear there’s any relationship between encampments and what we’ve seen with these 16 New Yorkers.”

The mayor also took heat from Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.). “So much for the ‘warmth of collectivism,’” Stefanik said. “The cold hard truths of Socialism have arrived in NYC. People are literally dying on the streets in the cold because of inexperience, ineptitude, and a dehumanizing radical ideology.”

The optics of this risk backfiring very badly on our theater kid mayor:

UPDATE: While Mamdani is the only open communist of blue city mayors, he’s far alone in his incompetence:

It’s not quite that if you elect a Democrat, you’re signing on for at least one term of poorly run government. But in one big U.S. city after another, highly touted mayors — all progressive Democrats, of course — are proving deeply subpar in delivering services when their cities need them most.

The failures of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are well-documented. Closer to home for me, Muriel Bowser is in the final year of a twelve-year run as mayor of the District of Columbia, isn’t running for reelection, and apparently is gripped by what the high schoolers used to call “senioritis.”

As you likely know, one week ago, the northeast got hit by a major snow and ice storm. Bowser attended a party at the U.S. Conference of Mayors Thursday, while her city still hadn’t completed the basic duty of plowing the streets.

The virtue signal to reward ratio is astonishing:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The purpose of a system is what it does. Not what it says it’s for.

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S: How Bernie Sanders built a device to give himself ‘cosmos-shattering orgasms.’

Bernie Sanders was a follower of the ‘Father of Free Love’ in his youth and built himself a device so he could achieve ‘cosmos-shattering orgasms’, according to a new book on the senator.

He was heavily influenced by the controversial sex therapist Wilhelm Reich who believed that liberation could be achieved via enhanced climaxes.

During his 20s and while at college, Sanders became a devotee of Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst, who believed that a universal energy called ‘orgone’ powered everything.

Reich constructed a shed-like device called an ‘Orgone Accumulator’ which supposedly collected energy to be later released in the form of explosive orgasms.

According to the upcoming book ‘Bernie for Burlington’, Sanders saw Reich’s teaching as the ‘answer’ to his own hardscrabble childhood.

Such was his devotion to Reich that he even built his own orgone orgasm device, a 5ft-long prayer mat made of copper wire with spikes on it that he slept on to channel the ‘energy’ into his body, author Dan Chiasson claims.

Chiasson, a poet and journalist who is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, grew up in Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, where a the now 84-year-old Sanders became mayor before becoming a US Representative and then Senator.

The book charts Sanders’s ideological development as a democratic socialist and says that he was ‘deeply influenced’ by Reich, who ‘connected political liberation with the successful cultivation of cosmos-shattering orgasms’.

The New York Times assures me that everyday sex in the former Soviet Union was nothing but cosmos-shattering orgasms.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

ACE OF SPADES: Major British Labour Politician Pressured to Resign Over Epstein Payoffs; Epstein Had a Secret Baby?

Peter Mandelson is a major fixer for Labour who is responsible for the rise of Tony Blair.

There are at least two occasions on which it is alleged Epstein handed large sums of money to Lord Mandelson or his husband.

His husband.

Mandelson directly referenced one of the claims when announcing his resignation from the Labour party. Bank statements held among the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice appear to show that in 2003 to 2004 the disgraced financier paid a total of $75,000 (£54,750) into bank accounts of which Mandelson — then a Labour MP — was believed to be a beneficiary.

The former cabinet minister had already come under pressure over the second allegation that his husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, had received £10,000 from Epstein about two months after the registered sex offender was released from prison in 2009.

Related: There’s no way back for Peter Mandelson.

Filed related to the paedophile financier suggest that Mandy may have received $75,000 from Epstein and also lobbied against a tax on British bankers’ bonuses. Mandelson says he has no record of the payments. Documents released by the US Department of Justice in recent days suggest that Epstein also sent £10,000 to Peter Mandelson’s partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva in 2009. Mandelson did not comment on this report and there is no suggestion Da Silva was involved in any wrongdoing. But what seems all too clear is that Mandelson’s Achilles heel – his love of associating with powerful, wealthy men – has led to his final downfall.

Mandelson’s statement last night was more graceful than some of his more defiant public pronouncements in the past. (Who can forget his Gloria Gaynor-esque statement in 2001 that “I’m a fighter, not a quitter”?) He declared that “I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and I feel regretful and sorry about this. Allegations which I believe to be false that he made financial payments to me 20 years ago, and of which I have no record or recollection, need investigating by me.” Even allowing for the conditionals attached, he knew that the game was up, and so announced that: “While doing this I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour party and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party.”

Mandelson was right to use a phrase that the other embattled Epstein veteran Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor seems to have been unable to utter: “I want to take this opportunity to repeat my apology to the women and girls whose voices should have been heard long before now”. But given that the one-time master of the dark arts is no longer seen in the House of Lords, his resignation from Labour means that, at the age of 72, Mandelson has now effectively quit public life.

Further thoughts from Mark Steyn: “If you’re wondering why the British political class are so indifferent to the gang-raped working-class girls of every town up and down England, well, it’s clear from a cursory glance at the Epstein files that our rulers are relaxed about the way of the world: under the new class system, there are those who are pleasured and those who do the pleasuring.”

Posted at 5:53 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

THE WRATH OF KIRK: William Shatner’s fiber commercial is on pace to get more views than the woke new Star Trek show.

This is a real ad:

[Warning: It’s a fiber commercial, so there’s PG-13 potty humor]

On X alone, Shatner’s ad has racked up 1 million views.

The premiere of the woke Star Trek show, meanwhile, only had 1300 live viewers on YouTube and was eventually pulled after only 218,000 views in nine days, with 8,000 likes and 27,000 dislikes.

Geeks & Gamers put it this way:

One man boldly going with a bowl of cereal just outperformed an entire streaming rollout. That should worry Paramount far more than any dislike counter ever could.

There are only three cast members of the original show still alive, and by far, Shatner is the biggest star, so if he wants to cash in at age 94 on the enormous goodwill he’s built up over the decades for starring in a beloved TV and movie series, he deserves every dollar he gets for such an ad. Conversely, the showrunners of the various streaming versions of Trek deserve all of the scorn they’re receiving for ruining the franchise they inherited.

As far as the actual cereal that Shatner is promoting though, let’s face it, it’s no Colon Blow:

Posted at 5:24 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can AI Movie Stars Replace the Genuine Article?

Much of Hollywood, to say nothing of moviegoing audiences at large, have resigned themselves to the idea that most of what we do will soon be replaced by AI. Judging by the general tenor of the comments I receive, many of my regular readers are actively rooting for this outcome. And if the various creative guilds (WGA/DGA/SAG) decide to go on strike later this summer, you can bet that this fear of AI will be one of the primary reasons why they do so. But given that Hollywood rushed headlong into streaming without understanding how the economics would work (spoiler alert: they don’t), before we enthusiastically embrace our new AI overlords we should, at least for one brief moment, resist the tech bro impulse to “move fast and break things” and ask a few important questions… questions like “what is a movie star?”

Most of the time, if you press someone in Hollywood for an answer, the one you’ll get will not be particularly useful or practical. Often the answer will sound a bit like the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who, while discussing the definition of pornography, said “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

My own personal definition of what makes a movie star has always been some version of this… “a movie star is someone who takes your breath away the first time you see them on film, even when they’re doing nothing at all.”

A machine can’t replace the million dollar charisma a legendary actor brings to his or her role. I suppose we will see AI-versions of the early Pixar movies coming out of Hollywood, where the visuals are created from a series of AI prompts, but a mixture of superstars and veteran character actors create the personas of the onscreen characters, based on the goodwill they’ve accumulated over the decades. But where AI is going to really shine is for everyday people to type in the prompts and generate the otherwise missing scenes from movies and TV series they’ve enjoyed, such as this fan-made AI Star Wars homage:

But we’ll eventually see how AI recreations of legendary actors compare when they’re intercut together: Deepfaking Orson Welles’s Mangled Masterpiece. Will an A.I. restoration of “The Magnificent Ambersons” right a historic wrong or desecrate a classic?

I hate to be a cynical, but alas, my money is on the latter. At least for the next few years.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “Nobody is illegal on stolen land.”

The New Hotness? Let’s celebrate America stealing some land!

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

“THE AESTHETICS OF REBELLION ARE WORN BY THE ACOLYTES OF THE REGIME:”

This is why the British government coding Amelia with the aesthetics of rebellion was such a strange choice: Amelia Victorious: How to Lose the Culture War With a Video Game.

There’s something genuinely funny going on in the United Kingdom right now.

The British government’s Prevent office, housed under the Home Office (think Department of the Interior, but allergic to dissent), partnered with a media nonprofit called Shout Out UK (like a PBS focused on preventing “radicalism”) to come up with a clever new way to re-educate British youth.

The concern, as always, was “radicalization.” They thought the solution was inspired: a choice-based video game. Kids like games. Games involve decisions. Decisions shape values. What could possibly go wrong?

Thus Pathways was born, a government-funded interactive morality play designed to gently shepherd British children toward being properly antiracist, properly accepting, and properly enthusiastic about the ever-increasing number of migrants reshaping their country. Civics class, but fun. And digital. And corrective.

As part of this effort, the designers introduced a character named Amelia, a cute, purple-haired, vaguely goth girl who carries a Union Jack and talks about Britain being for the British. She was meant to function as a warning, a living illustration of how nationalism can look attractive, even charming, and yet be dangerous to the impressionable youths of Britain who may not have fully internalized the idea that Brexit is bad and they are to obey their elitist overlords.

What they did not anticipate was that the public would take one look at adorable, charming Amelia and decide she was the good guy.

QED:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot:

Chaser: Billie Eilish gets permanent restraining order against man who repeatedly turned up to her home.

—Metro News, June 19th, 2020.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 2nd, 2026

February 1, 2026

TOP ENERGY EXPERT SAYS PROBABILITY THE U.S. WILL ATTACK IRAN SOON IS 75% AS RISK OF MAJOR DISRUPTION TO OIL SUPPLY IS PRICED IN — ‘THIS ONE IS REAL.’

Oil markets could be in for a major shock as President Donald Trump mulls a military strike on Iran, according to a top energy analyst.

The Islamic Republic responded to domestic unrest with unprecedented violence, slaughtering tens of thousands of people since protests broke out in late December.

Trump warned the regime not to kill protesters and vowed help was on the way. While he reportedly held off on an attack last month, the recent arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East has raised expectations that a strike is imminent.

“We would put 75% odds in the coming days to weeks there will be some sort of U.S. attack on Iran,” Bob McNally, Rapidan Energy Group founder and former White House energy advisor, told CNBC on Thursday.

Brent crude oil futures have jumped 5% in the past week and 14% since the start of the year. Prices have now broken their year-long pattern of a steady decline punctuated by brief spikes that quickly reverse to resume the downtrend, he noted.

The U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year only resulted in a temporary price surge as the conflict remained limited in scope and avoided the country’s oil infrastructure.

In addition, the U.S. military raid last month to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro failed to move the needle much in oil markets as production wasn’t interrupted.

“But this one is real,” McNally warned. “The markets are pricing the risk that this time the past will not indicate the future—that we could have a sustained disruption in energy flows.”

Iran pumped 4.7 million barrels per day last year, accounting for 4.4% of global oil supplies. Much of its heavily sanctioned shipments go to China via a so-called shadow fleet.

Related: A ‘tear down the wall’ moment in Iran will damage both the Islamic Republic — and China.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 1st, 2026
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