February 18, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

I REALLY ENJOY THE LACK OF RESPECT FOR PUFFED-UP ESTABLISHMENT FIGURES:

Posted at 9:13 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DID THEY SPRAY ENOUGH OF THAT FLEX-SEAL STUFF ON IT? NASA will fuel up its Artemis 2 moon rocket for the 2nd time on Feb. 19. Will it leak again?

No joke, in our old house we had a leaky skylight. Roofing guys couldn’t fix it. Finally I got on the roof and sprayed two cans of that flex-seal stuff that’s advertised on late-night TV all around it. No more leaks. Granted, there were no cryogenics involved, but still. If there are more problems tomorrow, maybe it’s worth a try. I mean, it can turn a screen door into a boat . . . .

Posted at 9:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

PROBLEM?

Posted at 7:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY:

Flashback: Backyard Filmmakers Are Hollywood’s Greatest Fear.

Backyards now optional. (I thought I’d posted this yesterday, but I was wrong.)

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRIORITIES:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

AYFKM? Palestinian activist accused of expressing desire to ‘kill Jews’ wins deportation case.

Judge Nina Froes determined on Feb. 13 that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not provide sufficient admissible evidence to establish that Mohsen Mahdawi was removable, Reuters reported.

Froes said DHS relied in part on a memorandum purportedly signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio but failed to authenticate the document.

As a result, the government was unable to “meet its burden of proving removability,” according to Reuters.

Froes was appointed during the final year of the Biden cabal.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

COWARDS: Gutfeld Defends ‘Silence of the Lambs’ While Actors Stay Silent.

Earlier this month, actor Ted Levine apologized for playing serial killer Buffalo Bill in the film.

Levine argued the role was insensitively portrayed, suggesting it caricatured the trans movement. Never mind that the character wasn’t trans, or that the actor took more than 30 years to utter his apology.

He wasn’t alone.

“Lambs” producer Edward Saxon also apologized for Buffalo Bill, the film’s human skin-wearing ghoul.

“From my point of view, we weren’t sensitive enough to the legacy of a lot of stereotypes and their ability to harm.”

Naturally, late-night comedians didn’t defend the film classic. They were too busy pushing Democratic party talking points and misleading viewers about candidate interviews.

Not Greg Gutfeld.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

FROM BAUHAUS TO TOM’S HOUSE: James Lileks on architect Louis Kahn.

While browsing through an Architectural Record from 1977, there was a gushing review of the incredibly brilliant Yale Center for British Art by the incredibly brilliant Louis Kahn.

* * * * * * * * *

The British Center’s special site and function surely had something to do with these surprising developments. Directly across the street from it stands the earliest of Kahn’s mature buildings: the first in his great sequence of inventive designs. It is Yale’s Art Gallery of 1953.

 

Ah yes. That one. The building that gave us one of the best examples of life before and after the Second World War.

Hint: Kahn’s building is on the left.

You know how many years separate those two structures?

Nineteen.

The building on the right was completed in 1928. The building on the left was begun in 1947.

In From Bauhaus To Our House, Yale man Tom Wolfe wrote:

Yale’s administrators were shocked. Kahn had been an architect for twenty years but had done little more than work as assistant architect, under Howe, among others, on some housing projects. He was not much to look at, either. He was short. He had wispy reddish-white hair that stuck out this way and that. His face was badly scarred as the result of a childhood accident. He wore wrinkled shirts and black suits. The backs of his sleeves were shiny. He always had a little cigar of unfortunate hue in his mouth. His tie was always loose. He was nearsighted, and in the classrooms where he served as visiting critic, you would see Kahn holding some student’s yard-long blueprint three inches from his face and moving his head over it like a scanner.

But that was merely the exterior. Somewhere deep within this shambles there seemed to be a molten core of confidence … and architectural destiny … Kahn would walk into a classroom, stare blearily at the students, open his mouth … and from the depths would come a remarkable voice:

“Every building must have … its own soul.”

One day he walked into a classroom and began a lecture with the words: “Light … is.” There followed a pause that seemed seven days long, just long enough to re-create the world.

His unlikely physical appearance only made these moments more striking. The visionary passion of the man was irresistible. Everybody was wiped out.

Kahn stared at the administrators in the same fashion, and the voice said: What do you mean, “It has nothing to do with the existing building”? You don’t understand? You don’t see it? You don’t see the string courses? They express the floor lines of the existing building. They reveal the structure. For a quarter of a century, those floors have been hidden behind masonry, completely concealed. Now they will be unconcealed. Now the entire structure will be unconcealed. Honest form—beauty, as you choose to call it—can only result from unconcealed structure!

Unconcealed structure? Did he say unconcealed structure? Baffled but somehow intimidated, as if by Cagliostro or a Jacmel hoongan, the Yale administration yielded to the destiny of architecture and took it like a man.

As Wolfe concluded his chapter, “Administrators, directors, boards of trustees, municipal committees, and executive officers have been taking it like men ever since.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

SAY ANYTHING THING:

She’s always been nasty and bitter, and has only gotten more so with age.

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

JIM GERAGHTY: Stephen Colbert and James Talarico Are Lying to You.

The equal-time rule was part of the Communications Act of 1934. It states, “If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station.”

Note that this applies to broadcast television stations include NBC, CBS, and ABC. The FCC’s equal time rule does not apply to cable channels like Fox News Channel, CNN, or MSNOW, because they don’t go out over public airwaves. (There are professional political pundits out there who don’t know or understand that distinction.)

* * * * * * * *

You can decide that the equal-time rule is stupid, but no broadcast television network is allowed to cite a “well, that’s stupid” provision when appealing a fine or punishment from the commission.

Texas holds its primaries on March 3, less than two weeks away. State Representative James Talarico and Representative Jasmine Crockett are the two best-known Senate candidates on the Democratic side, and different polls will give you different results on which one is ahead. A little-known third candidate, Ahmad Hassan, is also running for the Democratic nomination.

Stephen Colbert, the soon-to-be canceled $20 million per year host of The Late Show on CBS, wanted to have Talarico on his program Monday night.

But Colbert did not air his interview. Viewers watching at home saw Colbert at his desk, delivering a monologue:

[Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast. Then I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.

Colbert continued:

But on January 21st of this year, a letter was released by FCC chairman and smug bowling pin Brendan Carr. In this letter, Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were motivated by partisan purposes. Well, sir, you’re chairman of the FCC. So, FCC-U.

I think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself, sir. Hey, you smelt it, because you dealt it. You are Dutch oven-ing America’s airwaves.

Ah, what wit! Can you believe CBS is losing $40 million per year on that show, and isn’t keeping that guy and his program around longer?

“Let’s just call this what it is. Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV,” Colbert said.

Except Trump and his administration hadn’t “silenced” anyone. Nor, apparently, had Colbert’s bosses. A statement from CBS issued Tuesdaypointed out that the network hadn’t told Colbert that he couldn’t air the interview with Talarico, as the host had claimed to his audience. They had simply reminded Colbert of the equal-time rule:

“THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico. The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”

It gets worse; Talarico has been on a tirade on X since Monday, arguing that President Trump has tried to “silence” him, “censor” him, “block” the airing of the interview, and that he is a victim of “cancel culture.”

“His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert,” Talarico claimed, apparently oblivious to the fact that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is a government agency and not a broadcasting station and thus doesn’t “air” anything.

Time travel — it’s not just for Joy Reid anymore:

Exit question:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll