June 7, 2026

BANNING GUNS DOESN’T MAKE ANYONE SAFER:  Cry Me a River.

Posted at 2:29 am by Sarah Hoyt

June 6, 2026

THE MOST UNFORGIVABLE TRUMP TRAIT IS SUCCESS:

Posted at 10:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Book me on the next flight to Tracy Island — on Aurora Air!

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

FINALLY: Going supersonic! NASA’s X-59 jet breaks sound barrier for the 1st time. “The X-59, a long-nosed demonstrator designed to help develop the tech required for ‘quiet’ supersonic flight, notched the milestone on Friday (June 5), more than six months after getting off the ground for the first time.”

This image from the Retrofuture Vault on Facebook captures the 21st Century I was expecting:

Posted at 9:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

JENNIFER LOPEZ: “You have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker!”

“So what’s your take?”

That’s Kareem Rahma’s signature question on his buzzy video series SubwayTakes, and he lobbed the question in Jennifer Lopez’s direction on a brand new episode. The veteran superstar, who is in the middle of promoting her new Netflix romantic comedy Office Romance opposite Brett Goldstein, shot back a take that went viral in short order.

“You have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker,” said the “Jenny From the Block” singer who hit the block after being born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents. “Everybody wants to claim our city, but you have to be born in New York. You have to be born in one of the five boroughs to be a New Yorker.”

Exit question:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

JONATHAN TURLEY: Eight years after Kavanaugh, Democrats have stopped believing all women.

Long after the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh, the left continued to claim that his presence on the Supreme Court “rests on a mountain of misogyny.” In Ms. Magazine, actress Kathleen Turner reminded people that not believing women was furthering misogyny: “Survivors who come forward break the rules of silence a sexist society demands, and society expects them to pay a price.”

If you recall, the lack of evidence led to the Senate Judiciary Committee combing through Kavanaugh’s personal calendars. Denials that such a thing had ever happened, coming from childhood friends, were treated as still more evidence of sexism.

There was Sen. Shelton Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who grilled Kavanaugh about using the term “boofing” (apparently referring to passing gas) with a high school friend as if it were a confession to a rape. His inquisitorial barrage was something straight out of the McCarthy period.

Whitehouse expressed disgust that some would not take Ford’s word for it, declaring, “Today I stand with women who are brave enough to come forward with their stories of abuse and mistreatment. They deserve to be heard and credible allegations must be investigated. We must believe survivors, not bully them.”

Whitehouse is now a major donor and supporter of Graham Platner, the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Maine. He dismisses the New York Times accounts from women of Platner’s physically and mentally abusive behavior. Instead of believing these women, he reportedly attacked Lyndsey Fifield, who “bravely” came forward publicly with her story at the request of Times reporters.

Whitehouse is quoted as saying that he was “unimpressed” by the allegations and the multiple women coming forward “seems like a lot of nothing.” He suggested that he is not prepared to believe a woman if she is a conservative. “I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed ‘unsettling’ was a woman who works for right-wing political operations,” he said.

To be fair, I’m not surprised that someone who was accused of belonging to an all-white beach club likes the cut of the jib the Oystergruppenführer.

Related: As Norman Podhoretz wrote in 2007, “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE IRONY OF GRAHAM PLATNER’S CAMPAIGN:

Most people don’t know this, but the rise of Graham Platner wasn’t remotely organic, and there is almost nothing real about his origin story or his campaign.

Jim Geraghty did a superb job explaining the process by which a wealthy, mentally unstable guy who was kicked out of an exclusive private school and who bragged about how he went off to war because he wanted to kill people was transformed into a working-class everyman oyster farmer.

Platner was handpicked, groomed, artificially constructed, promoted through a sophisticated public relations campaign, and elevated to superstar status.

Read the whole thing; incidentally, AI image creation is getting increasingly sophisticated. For a split-second, I thought this was a real photo, although “Bernie’s” face looks more like it should be in Madame Tussauds:

Bernie going all-in on Platner recalls Kevin Williamson’s 2015 NRO piece: Bernie’s Strange Brew of Nationalism and Socialism.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Posted at 4:32 pm by Ed Driscoll