ICYMI: ANDY KESSLER HAS A NICE COLUMN ABOUT MY SEDUCTIVE AI BOOK IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Archived version here.
August 3, 2026
THE REPUBLIC DOES NOT RUN ON OUTRAGE. IT RUNS ON CITIZENS WHO LISTEN: Justice Stephen Breyer discusses civic education, compromise, deep reading, and why constitutional government depends on people willing to participate, deliberate, and accept less than 100 percent.
I LOVE THIS:
Important announcement: I am upping my offer, $10 million dollars for a head-to-head basketball game between the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a boy's high school state title team of my choice. If the Aces beat my team, I will give them $10 million.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 3, 2026
There’s no way they will accept, of course, which tells you all you need to know.
HEADLINE OF THE DAY: A ‘Transgender’ Funeral Director, Organ Buckets, and Millions in Theft.
MOST ENVIRONMENTALISM IS MORE FOCUSED ON MAKING YOUR LIFE WORSE THAN ON MAKING THE PLANET BETTER: Don Surber: The plastic straw man argument. Communists: Making life miserable for the middle class one mandate at a time.
On July 27, 2026, the U.S. Navy guided-missile submarine USS Georgia (SSGN-729) returned to Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia, to begin its official inactivation process after 42 years of active service. The arrival marks the beginning of the phased retirement of all four Ohio-class SSGN conversions, which will remove the largest single concentration of conventionally armed undersea missile payload from the active fleet. This operational drawdown precedes the full fielding of Virginia-class Block V submarines equipped with the Virginia Payload Module, creating an interim undersea strike capacity reduction for the U.S. Navy.
The four converted Ohio-class SSGNs provided the U.S. Navy with a collective theoretical capacity of 616 BGM-109 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and dedicated facilities for up to 264 special operations personnel. Following USS Georgia’s retirement, starting on July 31, 2026, the subsequent inactivations of USS Ohio, USS Florida, and USS Michigan through FY2029 will require 22 Virginia Payload Module-equipped attack submarines to fully restore the lost vertical launch cell count.
We need more subs, destroyers, cruisers… well, more everything but admirals.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: COVID-19: Fauci’s Holocaust.
NOW OUT: Dangerous Misinformation: The Virus, the Treatments, and the Lies. #CommissionEarned
#RESIST: NYC to unveil new Columbus statue as group sidesteps Mamdani’s middle finger.
A new nonprofit is planning to unveil a Christopher Columbus statue in Brooklyn this October — dodging Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other haters who’d rather cancel the Italian-born explorer.
The Preserving Italian Heritage Coalition, brought together by Chinese-American state Assemblyman Lester Chang (R-Brooklyn), is planning to house the statue at the John Hughes Club in Dyker Heights, private property that keeps it out of the clutches of city officials.
“I’m Chinese, but this is my community, too,” said Chang, who was born on Eldridge Street in Manhattan and today represents Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights. The coalition is now looking to raise $100,000 to cover construction and maintenance costs.
Chang traces the idea to last November’s election and to President Trump’s Columbus Day proclamation weeks earlier, which vowed to reclaim the explorer from “left-wing arsonists.” He wrote the committee’s first check himself, before there was a bank account to put it in.
Now that’s what I call assimilation.
BEAT CHAPPED LIPS: Jack Black Intense Therapy Lip Balm. #CommissionEarned
HOW LOW CAN THEY GO? University of California weakens due process in student discipline cases.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS NOT INEVITABLE, AND NEITHER IS THE REPUBLIC IT CREATED: Justice Neil Gorsuch discusses the courage behind the Declaration, the character required for self-government, and why every generation must learn the country’s history before it can carry its ideals forward.
WELL, BYE: Carville rips Piker: ‘If he becomes a force in the Democratic Party, I’m out of here.’
“To talk about the larger Democratic Party, post the election in Michigan going forward, I am not going to be in the same party with Hasan Piker,” Carville said on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing,” referring to the Michigan Senate race between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).
“I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with that guy. Now, I think that a majority –– overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me, but this idea that we’re going to seize the means of production and this –– just go look at the DSA platform,” he continued, referring to the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA).
Carville came to prominence more than three decades ago, representing a wing of the party that already got shoved aside by Obama’s red diaper cohort almost two decades ago.
And now the Obama wing isn’t far left enough for the up-and-coming DSA types.
ACADEMIA IS, IN FACT, TOTALLY BROKEN.
That there’s even a controversy about this story is incredible. If a Cambridge prof can plagiarize this carelessly and get away with it for years, and still have defenders, shows academia is totally broken https://t.co/R5TNdxBYgt
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 2, 2026
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Iran War Continues to Be Whatever Anyone Wants It to Be. “Nobody who is sane wants wars to go on forever, but it’s patently absurd to think that we’re into another Vietnam because there hasn’t been a neat and clean resolution after five months. What’s really disturbing is that I heard some people who I know to be supporters of President Trump leaning this way.”
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Democratic discontent with Mamdani mounts in New York City’s outer boroughs.
When Queens Borough President Donovan Richards accused the Democratic Socialists of America of perpetuating “white supremacy” earlier this month, it marked a rare instance of a well-known local Democrat taking direct, withering aim at the group that propelled Mayor Zohran Mamdani into City Hall.
Since Mamdani’s ascension there, local elected Democrats have been hard pressed to publicly blast him and his hard-left base. The mayor’s approval ratings remain strong and the DSA has emerged as a serious political force in the city. So Richards’ X post — which was referencing the DSA’s majority white membership nationally — hinted at a potential turning point.
His attack also points to a more broadly felt symptom: Growing discontent with Mamdani from Democratic politicians in the city’s outer boroughs.
Days after Richards’ online lament, more anti-Mamdani sentiment erupted in the Bronx, where City Councilmember Oswald Feliz accused the mayor of giving his community “crumbs” by not pairing a bus lane project in his district with enough infrastructure upgrades in surrounding areas. Like Richards, Feliz made a reference to race, albeit a more subtle one.
“Is this community not trendy enough to justify the kind of improvements that other communities receive, even without asking?” Feliz said in a statement last week. “If this was a wealthier neighborhood, I have no doubt that a more ambitious proposal would have been on the table. Minority communities are important, and deserve better.”
Too white, doesn’t spend enough other people’s money — you gotta love it.
HUH. GO FIGURE.
This conversation on Reddit has gone viral: A 30 year old woman who doesn’t want kids is complaining that she can’t find the high-effort, successful man that she’s looking for who has everything together because these men all want to have kids, and the ones who don’t want kids… https://t.co/Nl0dgmkO7W
— Lisa Britton (@LisaBritton) August 2, 2026
THE NASHVILLE BOOK SCENE GOES JUDENFREI: ‘White. Blonde. Jew’ author says store canceled event amid backlash. “Just two days after Nashville bookstore Bell Bird Books issued a statement defending its book launch with “White. Blonde. Jew.” author Alyssa Rosenheck, the event now appears to have been cancelled. Rosenheck said in a statement on July 31 that Bell Bird Books cancelled the event days earlier amid ongoing social media backlash and calls to boycott the store. Critics said the event was promoting Zionism, the belief that the Jewish people have the right to the creation and protection of a sovereign state in Israel.”
So what if it is? Zionism is good, and this is supposed to be America. You can bet that the “Republicans banned books” people are okay with this, too.
ROBERT SPENCER: In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again. “What’s next? Maybe organized boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. The BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) movement announced a week after Mamdani took office that it welcomed Mamdani’s ‘revocation of the anti-BDS Executive Order issued last month by the previous mayor.’ The executive order that Mamdani revoked ‘prevented any mayoral agencies or appointees from doing business with vendors and organizations complying with international law by holding genocidal Israel accountable.’ That is, the city was prevented from doing business with entities that boycotted Israel, but no longer.”
JASON GUMP: Cambridge professor made impossible claim he was on Seven Up.
Now footage of a talk Prof [Jason] Arday gave in October 2022 has re-emerged, revealing his claim that he appeared as a child on Seven Up.
He told the University of Bath’s Race Equality Taskforce: “I was part of a programme, actually, which – it doesn’t really exist any more – but it was called Seven Up at the time.
“And Seven Up is basically when they follow you over the duration of your life, so they follow you at [ages] 7, 14, 21. I was pulled out of the project when I was 14.”
During the same talk, he also claimed: “I had just turned 18 when I learnt to read and write.”
Seven Up was the first episode in a decades-long TV series created by Granada Productions for ITV.
The series follows 14 people’s lives at seven-year intervals, beginning when they were seven years of age. The final instalment is expected to be broadcast later this year.
The inaugural episode was broadcast in 1964, meaning its subjects were born in 1957. Subsequent programmes have been titled 21 Up, 28 Up and so on as the participants have grown older.
The BBC also commissioned a spin-off series titled Up: Millennium Generation. This began in 2000, also featuring a group of seven-year-olds. At the time, Prof Arday would have been 15.
A BBC spokesman confirmed that Prof Arday was not involved with the Up: Millennium Generation films.
Like Forrest Gump, or his prototype, Woody Allen’s earlier Leonard Zelig character, Arday has made claims of being seemingly everywhere, apparently not considering that he’d eventually be caught, or that he’d be too entrenched in academia for anything to happen to him if he was. And he may be right — over to you, Cambridge: Cambridge Can — but Evidently Won’t — Catch Jason Arday.
