“Has there ever existed a man whose arrogance is so out of proportion to his talents? I am of course talking about Wes Streeting – Britain’s secretary of state for health, cracker of the most terrible committee-written jokes, and the man hilariously gushed over by witless centrists as the saviour of Labour. No shade, but if the answer is ‘Wes Streeting,’ you are asking the wrong question. Unless the question is ‘Who’s the biggest tit on the frontbench?’ Streeting is back in the news, like that C-list celeb who just won’t leave us alone, after self-leaking the WhatsApp chats he had with ultimate wrong’un, Peter Mandelson.” (02/10/26)
“The biggest colorblind conclusion from the 2024 election is that most voters, regardless of race, care primarily about making ends meet. Such voters can conclude: If Democrats couldn’t keep inflation down, then maybe give a Republican a chance, even if that Republican says racist things. Voters could further rationalize that Trump couldn’t be that racist, and that his promised deportations wouldn’t affect neighbors, friends, and family. Now that Trump has failed to deliver the economy he promised, while letting immigration agents run wild, he is hemorrhaging support across racial lines. In turn, Democrats reasonably want to prioritize an ‘affordability’ agenda to win voters back. But that can be pursued while calling out Trump’s racism, which goes well beyond offensive comments to infect his policy choices.” (02/10/26)
“Trump hasn’t made a rational argument for lower interest rates. Instead, he seems to believe that rate cuts should be his reward for overseeing a ‘hot’ economy – like a third-grader given a gold star for acing a quiz. Understanding that this makes no sense, Trump’s economy-policy minions have converged on a different, ostensibly more economically rational reason to cut interest rates: AI.” (02/10/26)
“Public discussion of the Epstein files has largely centered on individual misconduct and reputational fallout. That emphasis risks overlooking the more consequential question raised by the Justice Department’s response to the disclosure mandate. The episode is less instructive as a scandal than as an example of how executive institutions behave when transparency carries political cost. What is at stake is not the identity of those named in the records, but how legal obligations are treated once compliance becomes inconvenient.” (02/10/26)
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Rev. John F Naugle
“t some point in our lives, we have our first experience with the ‘comfort cart.’ The comfort cart, for those who are lucky enough to not yet know, is the cart of snacks and drinks that gets delivered to the room of someone who is actively dying in a hospital or nursing home so that friends and family have less of a reason to step away while awaiting the death of their loved one. … True civilization respects the reality that we will all die and obliges us to accompany the dying with certain rituals, both religious and non-religious. The progressive loss of these rituals with the apparent motive of avoiding thinking about death both set the stage for the Covid hysteria and was accelerated by it.” (02/10/26)
“The DNI’s basic responsibility is to provide the president, department and agency heads, senior military commanders, and Congress with intelligence that is ‘objective’ and ‘independent of political considerations.’ Gabbard’s only authority related to voting is her supervision of the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), which houses the Election Threat Executive (ETE). The ETE, founded in 2019, is tasked with providing recommendations for potential responses to attempts to influence or interfere with U.S. elections by countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. It is unclear how the DNI helping the FBI seize a county’s voting records from 2020 fits into the mission of the FMIC or the Office of the DNI (ODNI) more broadly, especially as those records were already under seal, per a state court order.” (02/10/26)
“Last week, the Supreme Court declined to review the California Republican Party’s request to prevent new congressional maps for the midterms, which passed after a public referendum last November: 64 percent of voters approved the measure. California’s congressional redistricting, which could net Democrats five pickups in the House, was a response to Texas, which at President Trump’s demand added up to five new Republican districts last summer. Unlike Texas, California actually made this decision through the expressed will of the public in a ballot measure,’ says Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center’s Washington, D.C., office. ‘You could argue this isn’t just the electeds running amok.’ The Supreme Court didn’t explain the early-December order.” (02/10/25)
“If you grew up Evangelical around the time I did, you probably first heard the story of David and Bathsheba with the visual aid of a flannelgraph. That was certainly not the last time you heard it, as it is a frequently preached passage. It comes up in messages about repentance, or God using flawed people, or the compounding nature of sin, or even how idleness leads to sin. … Why are we talking about David as if he made a mistake and disobeyed God, and not that he kidnapped and raped Bathsheba, impregnated her, killed her husband, and then forced her to marry him? And then God punished David by killing her child. Do we ever once hear how she feels about any of this? Of course not. It’s not about her. It’s about David.” (02/10/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by W James Antle III
“‘Abolish ICE’ is the rallying cry heard from the streets of Minneapolis to the main stage at the Grammy awards. It’s the stick deployed against the Trump administration and the carrot consumed by Bad Bunny as he hops around at the Super Bowl. Closer to the nation’s capital, however, people have been muttering ‘abolish ice.’ The denizens of the Acela Corridor aren’t without their own misgivings about assertive immigration enforcement. But even the most hardened member of the Resistance — frozen solid — has to wonder why it takes two weeks after a moderate snowstorm for a Democratic-controlled city to plow a street or clear a sidewalk.” (02/10/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Aaron Mackey
“For thirty years, internet users have benefited from a key federal law that allows everyone to express themselves, find community, organize politically, and participate in society. Section 230, which protects internet users’ speech by protecting the online intermediaries we rely on, is the legal support that sustains the internet as we know it. Yet as Section 230 turns 30 this week, there are bipartisan proposals in Congress to either repeal or sunset the law. These proposals seize upon legitimate concerns with the harmful and anti-competitive practices of the largest tech companies, but then misdirect that anger toward Section 230.” (02/09/26)
