I've really grown to like Nellie Bowles' weekly "TGIF" column at the Free Press, her acerbic look at news stories that catch her fancy. This week, she discusses FBI Director Kash Patel's habit of distributing personalized bottles of Woodford Reserve bourbon (pictured at your right). (A 750mL non-customized bottle of the stuff will set you back $31.95 at our state's booze stores this month.)
But Nellie's headline for this edition is "Too Crazy and Not Crazy Enough", and we will excerpt the relevant item:
→ That seems like a bad loophole: Okay, so there is a legal loophole in Tennessee (and I’m sure wherever you live too) where a suspect can be deemed incompetent to stand trial—but then also not crazy enough to be committed. And so they are just released! The Goldilocks of mental illness—anxiety and depression and a secret third thing? OCD but not the kind where you just bleach the counters every night?—means total freedom, no matter what you do. In Tennessee, at least, the loophole has finally been closed. Why? An 18-year-old Belmont University freshman from New Jersey, Jillian Ludwig, was killed by a stray bullet in 2023. The shooter, Shaquille Taylor, 32, had been released from custody for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon just 12 days before the killing. After that assault, he had been found, you guessed it, incompetent to stand trial—but too competent to be forcibly institutionalized. So he was just released back into the population and less than two weeks later, what do you know, he shot dead a random college girl. A lesson in this. The key to life is to be just a little too out of it for people to hold you to normal standards, but not so bad that they write you off completely. That’s what Mr. Taylor and I have in common.
More at the link, reader. Some funnier than this.
Also of note:
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Look out below! You may have seen dire news stories in the MSM about SNAP ("food stamps") changes causing mass starvation. Here's an antidote from Jack Salmon: SNAP Enrollment Is Finally Falling.
For the first time since the pandemic-era expansion of the welfare state, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is beginning to shrink back toward normalcy.
Between January 2025 and January 2026, the number of individuals receiving SNAP benefits declined by nearly 4.3 million. Roughly 3.5 million of that decline occurred after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025.
However:
Even after the recent drop in enrollment, SNAP participation remains approximately 1.7 million individuals above pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the average cost per household (adjusting for inflation) is still about 18 percent higher than before the pandemic.
Jack provides context you may not have seen elsewhere, and recommends further changes, including:
[C]urrent reporting rules only require disclosure of payment errors exceeding $57 per individual. That threshold should be eliminated entirely so that all payment errors are disclosed and tracked. Since states will now bear part of the financial burden of erroneous payments, greater transparency would strengthen incentives to identify and prevent errors.
SNAP is a prime example of Milton Friedman's observation:
People who spend Other Peoples' Money on Other People simply lack incentive to do it efficiently or even wisely.
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Magic 8-Ball Says: Oh, Probably. Jeff Maurer wonders: Are We Blaming Phones for Our Bullshit?
A new study about the effects of phone bans in schools is out, and if you’re thinking “I’d like to have the study summarized by a comedian who browsed some articles about the study after a few beers,” you’re in luck. The study said that bans have a minimal impact on student behavior and test scores. That doesn’t mean that the bans are a bad idea — the solution isn’t to un-ban phones and have teachers try to teach sine and cosine to a classroom full of students browsing Pornhub. But phone bans aren’t a magic bullet; there remains no easy solution to our nation’s Dull Child Epidemic.
Becoming a parent has made me familiar with the discourse around phones (and screens, generally). In some circles, saying “I let my child have a phone” is like saying “I let my child have a machete,” or “My child runs an adorable li’l meth lab in his room.” My boy is three, the big decisions around phones are well in the future, but it’s practically received wisdom among my peers that the culprit for everything from anxiety to depression to restless leg syndrome has been found, and it’s smartphones.
But I wonder if the story is not so simple. As much as I take the points of those who worry a lot about phones — and I’ll address some of those points in a minute — I’m becoming something of a skeptic. Already, by the standards of the ultra-blue place where I live, I’m practically the “let the kid have a BB gun” dad. I agree that kids are subject to some bad, new pressures, and that phones are part of the story, but I think we often often misunderstand and misrepresent phones’ role in that story.
I'm also well out of the demographic that has to worry about this. But if you're not…
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Just do it, Trump. Listen toe Erick Erickson: Finish Him.
It is time for the President of the United States to finish the job in Iran. Yesterday, the President engaged in what he called a “love tap.” He needs to love the Iranian leadership to death.
If we’re going to pay high gas prices, at least make it worth it. Allowing Iran’s Islamic revolutionary leadership to fester will cost more lives long term. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, Emiraties, and others are furious that the President has pulled punches, even after Iran bombed an oil export facility in the United Arab Emirates.
The President and his team seem desperate for a deal. In the process, Iran is learning that if it holds the United States’s economy hostage, they can have their way with us. The only way to show them otherwise is for us to finish them.
I think Congress should quickly authorize that, too. Constitution, y'all.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
