Pun Salad

Back in the 1980s I read the legal thriller/mystery Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, his first novel. At the time, it was a blockbuster. It got made into a Harrison Ford movie!

I read maybe a couple more Turow novels after that, but kind of lost interest.

But a few weeks ago, I noticed that Turow's latest novel Presumed Guilty was nominated for a "Best Novel" Edgar Award. And (as it turns out) the protagonist from that first book, lawyer Rusty Sabich, is featured in it.

Ah, but (also as it turns out) this book, Innocent, came out back in 2010, also featuring Rusty. So I decided I'd better read this first.

[By the way, reader, if you're wondering if you have to read Presumed Innocent before Innocent, I'd say no, you don't have to. I don't think there are any spoilers for that book in this one. I recommend it though.]

Page one spoiler: Rusty finds his wife, Barbara, unexpectedly dead next to him in bed. Inexplicably, he waits for nearly a day before even notifying their (now grown) son, Nat about her death. Why? His explanations are poor. And it doesn't take long before suspicion falls upon him. You see, in that previous book, Rusty was put on trial for the murder of a different woman, but the prosecutors failed to make their case. Could he be trying to get away with murder again?

The book's style is tricky, some chapters written with a few different first-person narrators. And some chapters third-person. There's also some jumping back-and-forth in time. What is completely obvious is that Rusty isn't telling us all he knows in his narrative. (Geez, just like that first book.)

And there's a lot of (what I call) navel-gazing, even in the third person. We get to know a lot about everyone's motivations, flaws, opinions, etc. Just not everything.

Plot twists abound; there's always one around the corner. Just when you thought things couldn't get any more byzantine, another trap door opens under your feet. Turow is a master at that.

Reader, I thought I had a good idea about What Really Happened. I didn't.

Whether you watch the video or read the text, feel free to draw your own conclusions. Excerpt:

Other words appearing in Brown's text: "fairy-tale", "deceptive", "untrustworthy", "poor data quality", "elementary accounting error", "misunderstands", "misinformation", "misconceived". That's a lot of misses!

Also of note:

• "All we are sayyying is…" Sing it with John Hinderaker and me: "Give War a Chance."

  As Scott [Johnson] noted [Wednesday] morning, President Trump has given up on dealing with Iran. I take it that he will now do what we recommended a long time ago: bomb for a while to complete the degradation of Iran’s military, and then go home.

  As for the Strait of Hormuz, we can leave that problem to the countries in Europe and Asia who depend on oil from that source. We don’t. If it turns out that they collectively don’t have the military power to deal with the IRGC, they can learn a lesson from that.

  The prices of Brent Crude and West Texas Intermediate spiked a little over 5% on the news. Prices at the pump will now resume an upward trend rather than declining, and I assume that means the midterms are lost for the Republicans. They probably were lost anyway. Trump might be able to help the cause by going on television and addressing the nation from the Oval Office, specifically addressing gas prices–something he should have done, but unaccountably didn’t, before the conflict began.

  Both Brent and WTI Crude futures have declined a bit since John made that glum assessment. And (at least as I type) AAA says the US average regular gasoline price is $3.8840/gallon, compared to … $3.8230/gallon a week ago. Up, but not that much.

• And stupid. Don't forget stupid. Noah Smith is not wrong: JD Vance's crusade against GDP is wrong and bad.

  Free trade usually raises GDP. Immigration, done right, raises GDP [footnote elided]. Rightists in America want less free trade and less immigration. But every time they propose restricting trade and immigration, someone — either libertarian business/econ types on their own side, or moderate liberals on the other side — says “That will make America poorer!”. So they want some way to neutralize this objection, so they can do things that will, in fact, make America poorer.

  So America’s right borrowed an argument from the European left. The European left favors degrowth, and another term for degrowth is “making GDP go down on purpose”. So naturally, they’re always trying to find reasons to denigrate GDP as a metric of human flourishing (see here, here, and here for examples). The American right is simply tweaking these arguments to make them more appealing to their own base.

  Noah goes on to deal with Vance's specific arguments. Which are, to repeat: wrong and bad.

• On a related note… Phil Gramm And Donald J. Boudreaux take to the pages of the WSJ to save the reputation of the guy on the $10 bill: Hamilton Was No Protectionist. (WSJ gifted link)

  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have invoked the policies of the first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, as precedents for President Trump’s trade agenda. Hamilton, the finance wizard of George Washington’s administration, “touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprung upon its feet,” in the words of Daniel Webster. He is the most respected financial officer in U.S. history. Enlisting him in support of the president’s trade policy would certainly lend credibility to a policy that so far, by most economic measures—including economic growth and real disposable personal income—has failed.

  Since Hamilton can’t defend himself, we’d like to defend him against the claim that he would support Mr. Trump’s protectionism. In Hamilton’s 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures, he made the case for government encouragement of American manufacturing in a world dominated by European powers that, he worried, could easily refuse to export their manufactured goods to America in exchange for American agricultural products. As Hamilton explained, “if Europe will not take from us the products of our soil, upon terms consistent with our interest, . . . there is no other expedient, than to promote manufacturing establishments” at home. Promotion of U.S. manufacturers could be provided by protective tariffs or, even better in Hamilton’s view, by subsidies.

  Messrs. Bessent and Greer claim that the Trump administration is simply reviving the Hamiltonian trade policy that created the American economic colossus. But in the 21st century, when the average trade-weighted tariff rate of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries was below 3% and almost identical to that of the U.S., and the OECD found that the nontariff barriers of U.S. trading partners aren’t significantly higher than America’s nontariff barriers, it’s highly doubtful that Hamilton would support Trump policies. Hamilton in essence rejected Mr. Trump’s tariffs when he argued in his report that “if the system of perfect liberty to industry and commerce were the prevailing system of nations, the arguments which dissuade a country in the predicament of the United States, from the zealous pursuits of manufactures would doubtless have great force.”

  Whenever I see Phil and Don's names together, I think "Everly Brothers". I grew up not far from their childhood home in Shenandoah, Iowa.

  And now I can't get "Wake Up, Little Susie" out of my head…

• Go back and read that First Amendment again, SCOTUS. George Will claims The Supreme Court hasn’t fully atoned for its campaign finance sins. (WaPo gifted link)

  Any adequate history of human shortsightedness, which would pretty much encompass all of human history, would mention America’s half-century dalliance with “campaign finance reform.” The Supreme Court recently issued another decision distancing itself, but not nearly enough, from its original 1976 sin of not invalidating limits on coordinated expenditures by parties when it invalidated expenditure limits on candidates.

  Academia has been egregious in diminishing the First Amendment, but this began in Congress. All campaign finance laws are written by incumbent legislators, and, unsurprisingly, serve their interests. Ostensibly responding to Watergate, but primarily codifying its members’ interests, Congress imposed limits on the quantity, content and timing of political (campaign) speech, the First Amendment’s core concern. Limits on campaign contributions and spending magnify the importance of incumbents’ many communications advantages.

  Commenters, according to the WaPo's AI summary, predictably babble about "money". This recent tweet in response to Gavin Newsom was eloquent:

  Let's be precise, Governor, since precision is your enemy here.
  
  Donating to a candidate you believe in isn't "buying an election." It's called speech, and the First Amendment protects it. Money allows someone the ability to spend their time convincing you they are right. Money… https://t.co/uVVaLSME1g

  — The Rational Animal 🤔 (@theobjectivist) July 10, 2026

  In full:

  Donating to a candidate you believe in isn't "buying an election." It's called speech, and the First Amendment protects it. Money allows someone the ability to spend their time convincing you they are right. Money cannot vote. Only individual citizens push the button, and every one of them is free to take a billionaire's ad and vote the other way.

  The proof is a graveyard of rich men who thought otherwise. Bloomberg spent over $1 billion of his own money in 2020 and won a grand total of one contest: American Samoa. Harris outspent Trump $875 million to $355 million in 2024 and lost. If money bought elections, you'd be praising President Bloomberg. Voters decide. Wallets don't.

  Now the part you're counting on people to miss. "Dark money" is election spending funneled through nonprofits and shell companies that legally hide their donors, so no one can see who's paying. You shriek about "buying elections" while your own side ran the largest dark-money operation in history, $1.9 billion of it in 2024, the majority backing Democrats, spent by people whose names you'll never know. Meanwhile Musk disclosed every dollar he gave. You want to jail the man who spent in the open, then rob the taxpayer to fund candidates through public financing. Force to silence the transparent, force to bankroll the hidden.

  You don't fear money in politics. You fear speech you can't control. The Constitution protects the donor's voice. It was never written to protect the politician from hearing one he dislikes.

  … and "Rational Animal" didn't even mention Tom Steyer!

• Why, it's almost as if their real aim is power. James B. Meigs is more diplomatic: Democrats Forget the Supreme Court’s Purpose. (WSJ gifted link)

  Left-wing leaders have been gunning for the Supreme Court for years. The dependably wrongheaded Sen. Ed Markey, for example, rails against “MAGA extremist justices.” During the Biden presidency, he twice introduced legislation to add four justices to the court, which would help Democrats dilute conservative influence. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also backs the court-packing plan, complaining that some court decisions ignore “widely held public opinion.” Mr. Sanders said the court is “out of control” and has flirted with a wacky plan to curtail the justices’ power by “rotating judges to the appeals court” and “bringing in new blood.”

  James makes a pretty simple Civics 101 point:

  The court isn’t intended to be a third body that reflects the will of the people. It’s certainly not meant to be under the direct control of another branch of government. Rather, the court is designed to be a check on Congress and the White House when they overstep the Constitution or misapply the law.

  Enough said?

  [James also notes that he attended a Fourth of July parade starting in "Live-Free-Or-Die New Hampshire". Good for him.]

• Everything old is new again. Dave Barry has a good point concerning the…

  recent concerted effort to reduce the pesky federal budget deficit, which, shockingly, continues to mount despite the fact that both major political parties have issued sternly worded position papers against it. Day after day, week after week, the top brains of Congress and the […] administration sat in a conference room, eating prune Danish supplied by the Prune Danish Division of the Bureau of Pastries of the U.S. Department of Refreshments at a cost of $2,350 per slice.

  "What should we do about this pesky budget deficit?" the leaders asked, crumbs of concern dribbling from their mouths. "How can we reduce it? If only we had an idea! If only we could think of . . . "

  "SPEND LESS MONEY, YOU CRETINS!!" shouted a group of cockroaches, who had been listening from the floor and managed to figure out the solution despite the handicap of not being top political brains. Unfortunately, however, our political leadership is not responsive to cockroaches, unless of course they operate savings-and-loan institutions.

  Does that seem like a fresh take to you? Ah, reader, I originally posted that quote 15 years ago today.

  And it is from Dave's Nov 4, 1990 then-syndicated column.

… at least not above the fold. Instead let's sing A Song of FIRE and ICE (archive.today link), inspired by Kevin D. Williamson.

If you'd like to show your support for Mr. Streever's Constitutionally-protected speech (and also Pun Salad, for that matter), an Amazon link to his book is over there on your right.

Also of note:

• An inexplicably uncommon pun. I shoulda been all over this months ago: Jeffrey Blehar at the NR Corner: Democrats Suddenly Hobbled by a Bad Case of Platner Fasciitis. (archive.today link) Heh!

  But other than that, Google only coughs up the Nation from last October: Maine’s Case of Platner Fasciitis (archive.today link)

  Instead let's look at the always-correct Erick Erickson. Are we looking at the Dog That Didn't Bark, or The Fire Alarm They Refuse to Hear?

  For years, conservatives warned that something was wrong with Joe Biden. We were told we were cruel, ableist, cynical — that we were seeing decline where there was only a stutter, a lifelong tendency to misspeak, the ordinary friction of a long day. The people telling us this were not only Democratic politicians. They were the anchors, the fact-checkers, and the explainer-journalists whose entire professional identity rests on knowing better than the rubes. And when anyone of note confirmed what we had been saying, he had to be destroyed.

  Robert Hur was not a Fox News contributor. He was a special counsel appointed to examine Biden’s handling of classified documents. He declined to bring charges, and in explaining why, he wrote the sentence that detonated Washington: a jury, he judged, would see “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

  For that act of professional candor, Hur was accused of gratuitous cruelty, of auditioning for a MAGA job, and of smearing a good man. The president summoned the cameras to prove his sharpness and promptly confused the leaders of Egypt and Mexico. The message to every Democrat watching was unmistakable: the penalty for telling the truth about Biden is excommunication.

  And the Platner parallel? Well, it's an example of Karl Marx being half-right about something: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second as farce.

  Only half-right? Yeah, both times were pretty farcical.

• And also the fool. The great Jimmy G provides today's final commentary on a non mea culpa: Graham Platner Plays the Victim. But he's pretty brutal on a side issue:

  In a June 5 Fox News appearance, Maine Wire editor in chief Steven Robinson told Laura Ingraham that Platner’s business is “a campaign prop. . . . The oyster business, totally fake.”

  Now, calling Platner’s oyster business “totally fake” is hyperbolic; he does sell oysters to a restaurant his mother owns. But Platner had told the New Republic that he hadn’t paid himself a salary from his oyster business for the past five years. It would be interesting to see if Platner’s business has ever generated any profits after expenses, and whether the Internal Revenue Service would classify it as a hobby or a business for the question of deducting business expenses. (“The IRS safe harbor rule is typically that if you have turned a profit in at least three of five consecutive years, the IRS will presume that you are engaged in it for profit.”)

  PolitiFact rated Robinson’s statement “false,” based on his company’s having filed the proper paperwork with the state. Well, that’s one way to measure the legitimacy of a business, but the “no salary for five years,” “not making a living at it,” and “just one customer that is his mom” facts complicate the picture.

  Almost everybody, including the self-anointed fact-checkers, has a bad habit of seeing what they want to see.

  Gee, could Politifact be biased? Big if true.

Today's Eye Candy is Planned Parenthood's campaign rally for Graham Platner back on June 22. (Where's Graham? He's the one with facial hair.) Just a few weeks later, I wonder how many of those ladies are continuing to stand by Platner?

National Review editorializes: Democrats Run Out of Excuses for Platner. Because of the latest revelations:

Meanwhile, Jeff Maurer invokes Occam's Razor, plausibly: The Simplest Explanation for Platner Is That the Far Left Has Awful Judgement.

I am, as usual, following the Elvis Costello advice: Try to be amused. But if you're leaning toward disgust, you'll find plenty to go around, because, as Erick Erickson points out, Platner is The Man They Wanted.

And, finally, an op-ed from columnist Douglas Rooks that appeared in my lousy local newspaper, Foster's Daily Democrat, just last month, after Platner won the Democratic primary: Generational change is finally coming to Maine politics. Finally! Key paragraph from the Platner tonguebath, emphasis added:

Reread Erick Erickson's excerpt above, and ask yourself how "extensively vetted" Platner was at that point.

I can't help but wonder if Douglas Rooks will revisit his opinion here. And maybe apologize to his readers for his spectacularly poor call.

Also of note:

• Nominations for "Cliché Most Deserving of Retirement" award are open. I'd be OK with never having to read about someone who "says the quiet part out loud" again. But Issues & Insights notes a Democrat doing just that: Ro Khanna Says The Quiet Part Out Loud About His ‘Billionaire’ Tax.

  It took less time than we would have imagined, but proponents of the “billionaire wealth tax” have already given the game away.

  Anyone who knows any history about taxes knows that the left always uses “tax the rich” as a cover to raise taxes on the middle class. Because, as Willy Sutton observed in another context, that’s where the money is.

  But we were surprised to see Rep. Ro Khanna admit as much, even before he and his socialist pals get their coveted wealth tax on the boards.

  “The tax should not stop at billionaires,” he wrote on his Substack. “The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.”

  Once again, from Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty:

  That a majority, merely because it is a majority, should be entitled to apply to a minority a rule which does not apply to itself is an infringement of a principle much more fundamental than democracy itself, a principle on which the justification of democracy rests.

• When you are spending other people's money… The AntiPlanner reports: Despite $25M Grant, Brightline Still Dangerous.

  As of June 23, 2026, Brightline trains had killed 214 people, an average of one every 13 days since the passenger trains began operating in 2017. Make that 215, as Brightline killed a pedestrian on July 2.

  In August 2022, Brightline announced that it had received a $25 million federal grant to fence its lines and make them safer. The state of Florida also contributed $10 million and Brightline itself agreed to match that, providing a total of $45 million for safety.

  Now, nearly four years later, Brightline says it is still “in the midst” of installing those safety measures. There is no explanation for why this is taking so long or why it is spending money on some measures, including “No Trespassing” signs and suicide prevention signs, that seem unlikely to do much.

  The latest death does appear to have been a suicide.

• When "compassion" means screwing over the young. At RealClear Politics, Sam Russ makes a bold proposal: Don’t Lock Young Americans Into Social Security.

  As lawmakers debate how to preserve the program, most proposals focus on raising payroll tax revenue or making other budgetary adjustments. But these discussions miss a larger point: The program itself is increasingly ill-suited for younger generations. Rather than forcing Americans into a system that may not deliver on its promises, policymakers should allow young workers to opt out and prepare for retirement in their own way.

  America’s younger generations are coming of age amid an affordability crisis. Housing costs, groceries, health insurance, transportation, and higher education consume a growing share of household budgets. In such an environment, financial flexibility matters more than ever.

  Yet every paycheck is hit by a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax, withheld with the promise that workers will receive benefits decades later when they reach retirement age. For many millennials and members of Generation Z, that promise appears increasingly uncertain.

  Ackshually, the paycheck hit is 6.2% on the paystub, but your employer is required to kick in another 6.2%. And if you're self-employed, you have to pay 12.4% all by yourself.

  It's a lousy deal, and the real outrage is that today's young aren't more irate about it.

Headline source below, but right here we got Mr. Ramirez:

President Trump got some predictable pushback on his July 4 National Mall speech from an array of [Dd]emocratic [Ss]ocialists. (Choose capitalization as you prefer.) At the WSJ Free Expression newsletter, Matthew Hennessey pushes back on the pushback: When the Red Shoes Fit. (WSJ gifted link)

Over across the Salmon Falls River, US Senate candidate (at least as I type this) Graham Platner is not a DSA member, although Google's AI claims his "political rise was strategically engineered and advised by former DSA organizers." Good job, former DSA organizers! As Robby Soave reports at Reason: Graham Platner accused of sexual assault, campaign likely doomed.

Is it too late for Kamala Harris to establish Maine residency? She has experience in getting into a race where most Democrats pressured the previous candidate to drop out, after the flaws that were completely obvious to everyone else became impossible to ignore.

An excerpt from Jeffrey Blehar's take in his Carnival of Fools newsletter:

Jim Geraghty is the one who came up with the headline quote above. (It was uttered by Will Smith in I, Robot.) And if anyone could say I Told You So, it's Jim: The Nazi Tattoo Guy Is Exactly Who You Thought He Was.

Bonus excerpt, citing a guy whose bio I'm currently reading:

F. A. Hayek figured this out decades ago, and Lord Acton long before him. Power does not just attract “good” people. Lots of bad people want to be elected to high office, because they want all the things that come with power.

Jim also points out that we shouldn't let Maine Democrat voters off the hook, almost 120,000 of whom voted for Platner in the primary.

Also of note:

• One more July 4 leftover. Erick Erickson says it so well: The Shining City on the Hill. That's an image passed along from Jesus → John Winthrop → Ronald Reagan → Erick. (And now from Pun Salad → you, I guess.)

  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Winthrop said it to a boatload of Puritans before they’d even landed, and here is the part people forget: it wasn’t a boast. It was a warning. The eyes of all people are upon us. If we deal badly, we become a story and a byword through the world. He was telling them that being watched is a burden before it is an honor. Reagan understood that. When he called us the shining city, he wasn’t puffing out his chest. He was telling us that the light we throw off lands on other people, whether we mean it to or not, and we had better mind what kind of light it is.

  Now, here is what makes ours the shining city and not just another lamp. Go back and look at the revolutions. Ours in 1776, France in 1789, Russia in 1917, China in 1949. Four revolutions, four attempts to tear down the old order and build something new. And here is the thing I need you to sit with: only one of them ended in liberty. Only one.

  The French stormed the Bastille shouting about the rights of man, and within five years, they had the Terror, the guillotine running like a factory, Robespierre feeding his own friends to the blade until the blade came for him too. They wanted to remake mankind, and when mankind wouldn’t cooperate, they started shortening people by a head. The Russians promised bread, peace, and land, and they delivered famine, the Cheka, the Gulag, and a man named Stalin who murdered more of his own people than Hitler managed to murder of anyone. The Chinese promised the workers a paradise and gave them Mao, the Great Leap Forward that starved forty million human beings, and the Cultural Revolution that turned children into informants against their own parents. Terror. Mass murder. Dictatorship. Every single time.

  I note that a self-described "leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture" is named Jacobin. Nothing to worry about there!

  (As near as I can tell, there are no right-wing mags named Sturmabeilung, but maybe give them time.)

• I'm so old, I remember when Slate was worth reading. In his Wanderland newsletter, (Dispatch gifted link) Kevin D. Williamson deftly demolishes their attempt to deflect accountability from a lefty favorite:

  As some of you will know, on Tuesday NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg wrongly reported that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito had announced his retirement. It was an epic blunder. And, bearing in mind that Steve Hayes has asked me to stop using so much profanity, take a gander at the [impeccably punctuated and baroquely complex chain of expletives deleted] that Slate published in response:

  [W]as it an egregious, personal error, akin to Totenberg stealing into Alito’s hotel room and absconding with an internal organ, as it has been widely treated? We don’t think so. Indeed, what has been grievously missed in the melee is that this is not really a press story at all—it is a story about court transparency and hubris. This mistake reveals an institution that has repeatedly and systemically sidestepped public accountability by making itself impossible to cover by human reporters and, in so doing, has made itself vastly harder to understand by the very public it is meant to serve.

  That is baloney. There are lots of human reporters who cover the Supreme Court without making up stories about things that did not happen. We employ a few here! But if you have ever read Slate’s Supreme Court coverage, then you will understand why Slate’s writers and editors do not believe that the Supreme Court can be competently covered—they have never seen it done.

  But maybe even that is too generous: I believe that somebody can do 20 pull-ups.

  There is also a discussion of J.D. Vance's efforts to promote the "Railway Safety Act of 2026", now folded into the "BUILD America 250 Act". It's a spendathon that will probably make rail less safe, but will make some unions happy.

Christian Britschgi continues Reason's look at America's All-Stars: George Washington Was a Model of Restraint.

We ain't likely to see a guy like him again.

Also of note:

• I repeat: “Oh GOD no.” James Lileks asks and answers: A DSA America? Not Okay. (NR gifted link)

  When I got off the T in Boston last Sunday, I saw a table near the exit with some fliers and signs. A cheerful young lady handed me a piece of paper, and as I took it, she asked, “Considering voting socialist this November?” The flier had a red rose, the symbol of the Democratic Socialists of America, and I handed it back as if it was a piece of blotter paper soaked with Ebola and said “Oh GOD no.”

  “That’s okay!” she chirped as I walked away. Glad to know. Of course, it won’t be okay if the DSA takes over everything, because then every area of life will be a miserable struggle session to ensure uniform purity. People will be trashing grocery stores and destroying all the eggs because the Chicken-American Community has not expressed the right opinion on Gaza. That will be Monday; Tuesday, they will burn cars to protest inflation-adjusted rent hikes. Wednesday, they will want to throw eggs at a rally of fascists — you know, the people protesting a mandate to install a drag queen in every elementary school to lead everyone in a fierce rendition of The Internationale every morning — except of course the eggs were all destroyed in the prior protest. Thursday, they will occupy the offices of all the grocery store chains to protest Egg Insecurity.

  I have a long-standing aversion to collectivists and socialists and other flavors of Marxism, because A) it’s dreary, boring nonsense cranked out by a hairy fool who probably had the B.O. of a donkey in August; B) it views humans as vast murmuring mobs, devoid of individuality; and C) I’m supposed to follow some 19th century white guy instead of a 20th century black intellectual like Thomas Sowell? Fine, racist.

  At the heart is the hammer and sickle, which terrified me as a child. It was a good symbol of the enemy: They either want to cut your throat or hit you on the head. It’s like a political movement whose symbols are a straight-edge razor and a claw hammer.

  James and I were in Beantown at roughly the same time, but I did not see him.

• Hayek called it the "Fatal Conceit". And, as Andy Kessler points out, it's a Conceit on both ends: Different Parties, Same Folly. (WSJ gifted link)

  Comedian Adam Carolla has a routine about how the very wealthy and very poor do the same things. Some printable examples: never eat at an Outback steakhouse, take outdoor showers, have lunch with Bono, drive a make of car that no longer exists.

  Annoyingly, it’s the same for politicians. They all end up doing the same things—the horseshoe theory has become reality. The left and right, progressives and MAGA, bend around and almost touch. To me, it’s more like a teething ring, going round and round in a politician’s mouth with government power constantly biting down and inflicting pain on all of us. Or an M.C. Escher drawing with everything confusingly connected. I don’t like it one bit.

  Who said this? “Today I’m announcing new tariffs in key sectors of the economy that are going to ensure that our workers are not held back by unfair trade practices. They include a . . . 25% tariff on Chinese steel and aluminum products . . . a 100% tariff on electric vehicles made in China . . . a 25% tariff on electric vehicle batteries from China and a 25% tariff on the critical minerals that make those batteries.”

  Donald Trump? Nope, Joe Biden in May 2024. Eleven months later, “Tariff Man” Trump declared, “Effective at midnight, we will impose a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles.” Clang goes the horseshoe.

  Horseshoes? You've seen them, right? Never far away from horses' asses.

• I'm a sucker for AI/George Orwell mashups. Richard Dooling points out the modern parallel to Orwell's most famous essay: AI and the English Language. (WSJ gifted link)

  George Orwell closed his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” with six rules for writers, the first of which commands: “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” It is the rule against clichés—don’t beat dead horses, cry over spilled milk or freeze like a deer in the headlights.

  “The fight against bad English,” Orwell wrote, “is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.” Authors and academics are often the worst abusers of ready-made phrases and buzzwords. They put their readers to sleep by deploying trite phrases in the passive voice. Good, honest writing isn’t only hard work; it can get you canceled for being direct about a controversial topic.

  Enter artificial intelligence, which can flag clichés by analyzing the frequency at which figures of speech occur in data sets. But replacing clichés with something vivid and original is a harder task. In Orwell’s parlance, large-language models show us what they are used to seeing in print. These models are like giant looms. They select complementary textual threads from vast data warehouses and weave them together to create tapestries of prose.

  Orwell called this approach “modern writing” and complained that it “does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”

  Data point: when I asked the Google for replacements for "Every cloud has a silver lining," one of the (many) suggestions was "At least the worst-case scenario makes for a great story."

  Pun Salad's new motto?

I hope you had an enjoyable Fourth of July. I did! And I have some leftovers.

First up is a replay of the Bragg/Heaton Partisan Press Conference.

Lest we forget:

• Neal Stephenson is not too cool to love America. He has thoughts on The Sting in the National Anthem’s Tail.

  Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
  O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

  Our national anthem is unusual in that it ends with a question, which can be read in at least three ways.

  The way in which Francis Scott Key obviously meant it was: “America is the land of the free and the home of the brave; is the flag still waving over it, or did it get destroyed (or did the defenders of Fort McHenry surrender, and haul it down) ?”

  Nowadays, of course, that thing is flying all over the place. So the question is no longer “is it still waving?” The question is “is the place it’s waving over yet the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?”

  Click over to find the other reading of Key's query. You know, I wouldn't have expected Neal Stephenson to have thoughts and concerns about America and its anthem, but I'm glad he does.

• Whoa, Nellie! Ms. Bowles' TGIF column for the week is the usual wonderful hodgepodge o' stuff. Excerpt concerning the Zohran's "rent freeze":

  He will freeze the rent, as promised. But will he freeze costs for landlords? Will he freeze the cost of a plumber who comes to service the unit? The cost of a roofer coming to patch? Materials for necessary construction? Noooo, silly. And thus will begin a cycle of disrepair and hostility. It’s irrational. Which, you need to understand, is entirely the point. Mamdani’s people are smart—they know the math doesn’t math, nor does it need to. The goal is to get to a position where government housing is better than private housing. So you must first destroy private housing. Only when your apartment roof has collapsed, the pipes have burst, and your broke landlord’s best financial decision is burning the building down, then. . . a-ha! A-ha! The government will arrive. Look at these Soviet-style blocs we have for you, they will say. How nice is that, they will say, ours comes with a concrete stairwell! Capitalism was terrible, wasn’t it? And you’ll be like, I guess it was. You’ll eat your little climate cube of grasshopper asses (the abdominal segment goes to party leaders) and sit in a sweltering 90-degree dorm room. And you’ll be happy. No matter what suckage the commies incur, the blame will never be on them.

  Much, much more at the link.

• Only because they had no way to record negative customers. Nicholas Anthony has an obituary at Cato: Postal Banking Has Died With Zero Customers in Years.

  The United States Postal Service has finally laid the postal banking pilot program to rest. However, it’s unlikely anyone noticed. The program didn’t have a single customer from April 2022 to September 2025.

  [Table elided]

  The close of the program is welcome news, but it should never have gotten off the ground to begin with. Postal banking ended in 1966 for a simple reason: it wasn’t popular. There was no reason to think that had changed in 2021 when this program kicked off, and the data confirm this.

  This will come as sad news to nobody except Elizabeth Warren. From back when she ran for president:

  I’ve spent years advocating for postal banking—allowing the United States Postal Service to partner with local community banks and credit unions to provide access to low-cost, basic banking services. As President, I’ll make it happen by appointing people committed to the cause.

  — Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) July 18, 2019

  Sure, Liz. The problem was that USPS had no "people committed to the cause."

  And also, of course, Senator Bernie:

  Did you know that from 1911-1967, Americans could bank at their local post office?
  
  At one point our postal banks serviced 4 million customers.
  
  We must ensure all Americans can access basic financial services by allowing every post office to offer basic banking services again.

  — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 11, 2019

  To put it mildly, Sanders, Warren, et al. totally misjudged the 21st-century demand for postal banking. If only other socialist nostrums were so easy to ignore!

• At least for now, it's pretty good on ideology-free topics. At the Dispatch Jonathan Gibson wonders: What’s Going on With Wikipedia?

  In 2024, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) published a report claiming Wikipedia entries show a consistent anti-Israel bias, pointing to examples such as the “Zionism” page, which reflects a one-sided narrative in its opening two lines alone:

  Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th-century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine which roughly corresponds to the Land of Israel in Judaism—itself central to Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.

  The same year, an investigation by the Times of London suggested that entries have been systematically edited to downplay Iranian atrocities, with editors reportedly facing bans for minor challenges to the anti-Israel narrative. More recently, both [ex-Wikipedian Larry] Sanger and [Jimmy] Wales have spoken out against the site’s “Gaza genocide” page, arguing that the page presents the information as factual and conclusive, rather than debatable.

  I'd trust Wikipedia to tell me the surface temperature on Venus. Surface temperature in Gaza? Nah, probably not.

• And just for the LFOD record. When he's right, he's right. From President Trump's July 4 speech on the National Mall:

  From the beginning, we were a nation that lived by the motto, “Victory or death,” and “Live free or die.” One out of every 100 Americans gave their lives in the fight for independence. To remind us of who these heroes were and what they gave us, we are honored to have here tonight, in the heart of our nation’s capital, one of the very first American flags ever to exist.

  Is it a bid to improve his image in New Hampshire, a state he lost by 0.37% in 2016, 7.35% in 2020, and 2.78% in 2024? Unlikely, since he can't run again. Right? I mean, right?

Mr. Ramirez gets it right:

And, for that matter, so does Nikki Haley: We Are Blessed to Live in America. RTWT, but here's her bottom line:

I always get a little dismayed when I read about polls asking people if they're "proud to be Americans". As someone who's been Catholic-adjacent for many years, I'm pretty sure that:

1. Pride is a sin;
2. In fact, it's one of the deadly ones;
3. But even if it wasn't, it would be tough for me to be proud of being an American;
4. Because being an American isn't something I did;
5. Without going into details about what Mom and Dad did back in 1950, I had zero control over the result: Me, American.

So "blessed" is the right word. Nikki likes it too; her 2024 presidential campaign made it donor t-shirt swag, and it's my attire du jour, modeled for you on your right.

Also of note:

• Being blessed doesn't mean we can't gripe. Kyle Smith is old enough to remember: The Bicentennial Was a Better Birthday Than This. (WSJ gifted link)

  The grocery store brands were bursting with red, white and blue. CBS, during commercial breaks, ran brief public-education spots called the Bicentennial Minute. The Sears catalog—the analog Amazon of the day, the Aladdin’s Cave of consumer wonders—put out a bicentennial edition. Kids pedaled around on bicentennial bikes. Special-edition bicentennial coins were the pride of every pocket, when dealing with change was something we all did every day. The joy of being an American was everywhere.

  In my little hometown of East Longmeadow, Mass., a wall opposite a gas station in the center of town sported a large fresco modeled on Archibald Willard’s iconic 1875 painting “Spirit of ’76,” with three musicians on the march and the flag in the background. My family had a huge picnic in the backyard, featuring appearances by many seldom-seem cousins from out of town, that turned out to be the only one of its kind we ever hosted. Late in the day we turned on a little black and white TV to watch the magnificent parades of tall ships in New York and Boston.

  Ah, well. 250 is just another number, I suppose.

• Among the many things about which the Founders would be appalled… Jonathan Turley thinks The Founders Wouldn’t Back a ‘Billionaire Tax’. (WSJ gifted link)

  Was James Madison the Zohran Mamdani of his time? Gavin Newsom seems to think so. In joining the growing number of Democratic leaders supporting a wealth tax, the California governor claimed that the U.S. Constitution and our Founders were all about wealth distribution: “The system America’s founders built,” he said, “was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades.”

  But Madisonian democracy is designed to avoid the concentration of political power, not the concentration of wealth. The Founders were great believers in capitalism and the free market. This isn’t the 250th anniversary only of the Declaration of Independence but also of the publication of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” which the Founders embraced. Many of the Founders were themselves quite wealthy, including banker Robert Morris Jr., who was known as the “Financier of the Revolution” and would be a billionaire today.

  I fantasize that a time-traveling James Madison would take a few minutes to size up Gavin Newsom, and be struck with wonder at how such a transparent glib phony made it into a position of power.

• 

  I judge the mixture to be about 70/30. Stephanie Slade has a Fourth-relevant article in the July Reason: America's Founders Blended Liberalism and Religion.

  In "Why I Am Not a Conservative," the economist F.A. Hayek averred that "what in Europe was called 'liberalism' was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built." He was neither the first nor the last to see America primarily as a nation rooted in individual liberty.

  Yet to think the United States is purely a liberal country is to take a truth too far. The Founders drew on a panoply of sources, from classical philosophy to biblical theology, from the natural and common law traditions to the ideas of the Enlightenment. They took from each the insights that seemed best-suited to their project, and in doing so they created something at once revolutionary—a novus ordo seclorum—and rooted in the wisdom of the past.

  In championing "Fusionism", Ms. Slade is following the argument of Frank S. Meyer, one of National Review's best writers in its early days. I remember checking out Meyer's book, In Defense of Freedom, from the Omaha Public Library at some point in the 1960s, and it made a lasting favorable impression to this impressionable youngster. I'm glad to see him, and his political philosophy get some respect and attention at Reason.

  Ms. Slade has a book coming out on September 1, and I've pre-ordered at Amazon. Should you be so inclined, the convenient link is at your right.

• Vivre libre ou mourir! Kevin D. Williamson appreciates the help: Vive la France! (archive.today link)

  When I was 19 years old, I was drinking Shiner Bock in Austin, writing newspaper editorials, and going to see punk shows at Liberty Lunch—a full schedule, but somewhat short of the ambitions of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, the young French aristocrat who, being inspired by the ideals of the American Revolution, bought a ship and sailed to the New World in order to present himself to the Continental Congress and offer his services. Congress was in Philadelphia, and Lafayette landed in South Carolina—he was an idealist, not a geographer.

  But with a letter of recommendation from Ben Franklin in his hand, he made his way up to Philadelphia, where Congress, grateful for the services of an enthusiastic young aristocrat who had the good taste to bring along his own money, commissioned the 19-year-old as a major general. Contrary to what probably was Congress’ intent, Lafayette took his commission seriously—not merely as an honorary title. The revolution was to be a grand adventure, to be sure, but also a hard one: Lafayette was wounded at Brandywine, endured the hardships of Valley Forge, and was one of the key players when the tide was turned at Yorktown. Lafayette also provided a critical channel between the upstart Americans and the French monarchy, whose financial and naval power were simply indispensable to the project of American independence.

  No Lafayette, no United States of America.

  Fun fact: US Route 1 is named "Lafayette Road" in most NH towns, because Lafayette took this route when visiting America in 1824-5.

And it's from Jim "Indispensible" Geraghty: No Politician Is Coming to Save You. More on that in a bit, but here's a reminder from Robby Soave that one politician is especially not coming to save you: J.D. Vance hates Milton Friedman. Illustrated with:

JD Vance is so frustrating. Here he takes gratuitous shots at Milton Friedman as a bad model for Republican economic thinking.

With Friedman as the guiding light, Ronald Reagan won 49 states and ushered in a decade of unrivaled prosperity. pic.twitter.com/MX2MmY9Qta

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) July 2, 2026

From the accompanying article:

Going back to Jim Geraghty's point:

Well, it should. Jim's "Morning Jolt" contains a lot to dislike about both sides.

[For the record, I was unimpressed by the Mark Manson book I read last month.]

Also of note:

• From the "Ackshually…" files. Stu Smith only needed a bit of researching to determine: Actually, a Lot of DSA Members Are Communists.

  At the Faith & Freedom Coalition gathering in Washington last week, President Trump warned that many Democratic Socialist candidates “are not social democrats. These are hardcore, godless Communists. . . . This is the most serious threat to our Country since its existence.” Trump’s remarks sparked a wave of condemnations, including from CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who said that “socialism, much less democratic socialism, is not communism.”

  Statements like Collins’s highlight how little attention the press has given to the Democratic Socialists of America and its national leadership. The majority of the DSA’s governing board, the National Political Committee (NPC), openly identifies with Communist ideology.

  It's refreshing to point out the rare occasions when Trump was right about something.

• What they're teaching the kids. As James B. Meigs points out, it is too often Howard Zinn’s Horrible History. (WSJ gifted link)

  In the film “Good Will Hunting,” Matt Damon’s character looks with disdain at a U.S. history book he spots in the office of his therapist, played by Robin Williams. “You want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ ” Mr. Damon’s character says. It will “knock you on your a—.”

  When that movie came out in 1997, Zinn’s ruthlessly negative alternative history was poorly regarded by professional historians but beloved by legions of left-leaning readers. First published in 1980, “A People’s History” became popular mostly by word of mouth. It was the sort of book that a cool Marxist social studies teacher, the kind who sat cross-legged on his desk and asked kids to call him by his first name, might’ve slipped to his brighter students.

  With periodic updates over the decades, Zinn’s opus ballooned to more than 700 pages. But its message could be summarized in two words: America stinks. The author believed most history textbooks offered only a whitewashed “nationalist glorification of country,” he told the New York Times. In response, he oversimplified the story in the opposite direction. America’s Founding Fathers? Just wealthy white men guarding their fortunes. Abraham Lincoln? A half-hearted abolitionist who was concerned about protecting “the interests of the very rich.” World War II? Sure, the Nazis were bad, Zinn concedes, but the U.S. and her allies didn’t really “represent something significantly different.”

  If you're interested, I reported on Mary Grabar's book Debunking Howard Zinn here.

  And to go along with the previous item, see Ronald Radosh on Zinn: Aside from That, He Was Also a Red.

• A tough diagnosis. It's from unmerciful Bryan Caplan: Socialism: Better Never to Have Been.

  If I were a socialist, I’d be desperate to deny that the Nazis were socialists. Why? Well, it’s bad enough that:

  • The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics turned out to be a nightmarish totalitarian despotism, a dystopia of mass slavery and mass murder.

  • The USSR, by conquest and imitation, spawned dozens of additional nightmarish totalitarian despotisms.

  • These despotisms included the jaw-dropping hellscape of Maoist China, the world’s most populous country at the time.

  Yet as long as Nazi Germany was not socialist or even anti-socialist, the socialist can find solace in the fact that the Soviet Union was the primary agent in the defeat of an even more nightmarish totalitarian despotism. While there’s some dispute over whether the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany had the higher body count, Nazi Germany definitely had a higher annual murder rate for territory under its control. As long as you charitably interpret the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as “Stalin was just buying time to prepare for the inevitable war,” you can tell yourself that socialism saved civilization despite its Dorian Gray-level transmogrification.

  I'm currently reading a biography of Hayek, and it's describing the enthusiasm 1930's-40's enthusiasm in Britain and America for a scientific, rational, planned economy. Often accompanied by praise for Uncle Joe Stalin's socialist paradise. It's difficult not to see parallels with current events.

• James Lileks is going through a rough patch. But today's Bleat contains his hilarious "AI end-of-billing-cycle credit use" videos, featuring "Betty Furness, for Westinghouse!"

  And there's other good stuff too. Check it out.

• From the Archives. It's been twenty years since Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens described the Internet as a "series of tubes." And my post from back then linked to some of the commentary I found (variously) insightful, amusing, or mean-spirited. Some of the links have rotted away over the years, but some still work.

  But what really amused me about the archived post was the bit about the "62-year-old Rolling Stone" Keith Richards adding his guitar licks to My Soul is a Witness, a collection of African-American spirituals.

  Who would have thought, back then, that Keith would have made it to 82?

  And you can still get My Soul is a Witness at Amazon.

Via Power Line:

Powerful winds reaching 131 mph tore through parts of South Dakota, leaving a trail of destruction that included heavy damage to a wind farm. 🌬️ pic.twitter.com/o2x8wWU6ke

— AccuWeather (@accuweather) June 30, 2026

Today's headline from Airplane II, as delivered by … well, you know:

Also of note:

• Not fooling anyone, perhaps except himself. Tosin Akintola, for example, sees it clearly: Trump scapegoats gas companies for price hikes caused by his Iran War.

  On Monday, President Donald Trump renewed his threats to the oil and gas industry, telling gasoline retailers they "must get their Prices down, IMMEDIATELY!" to around $2.50 per gallon. The president first threatened the "big Oil Companies" last Wednesday, when he ordered the Justice Department to investigate whether they were engaged in price gouging.

  "Price gouging" is a standard tactic of the populist demagogue, and it's (of course) bipartisan. Why, 'twas only a few weeks ago I linked to Nancy Pelosi's press release describing her 2006 call for a "New Direction for America". Which, among many other promises, pledged to "Crack down on price gouging" to "Lower Gas Prices and Achieve Energy Independence".

• But other goats needed presidential scaping! John R. Puri noticed more of the same from the "It's not my fault!" President: The Government Gives Away Its Beef-Price Fiction (archive.today link)

  The president wants beef prices to fall to relieve consumers, except when he wants them to rise to aid cattle ranchers. He is learning through interventionism that every price paid is someone else’s income. Therefore, the administration is seeking a scapegoat.

  It has found one in meat processors — the companies that slaughter, butcher, and package beef. Last November, the president directed his subordinates to investigate potential collusion or price-fixing among the four firms that account for 85 percent of the beef-processing market. It was a conclusion in search of evidence. The Department of Justice is currently investigating the four major companies, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche believes he has unearthed “anti-competitive activity.”

  Shocker! He 'unearthed' exactly what Trump wanted him to unearth!

  John goes on to note that the administration is also giving a half-billion dollars to keep meat processors in business.

  So if they are price gouging, they're doing a lousy job of it.

  Or maybe Trump's first instinct when faced with bad news is to revert to a fact-free accusation about shady others.

• Good advice, part I. It's from (a)Bill Maher, directed to (b) politicians, relayed from (c) Kevin D. Williamson: Stop Being Funny. (Dispatch gifted link)

  When politicians are being ridiculous, Maher said, “I put them in jokes—jokes that work.” Jokes that work is the key thing. It is axiomatic in comedy that the way to kill a joke is to explain it, but it is worth thinking about why and how Maher’s jokes, and other jokes about politicians, work. If politicians are to stop being funny, then they will need to answer the question: When are politicians funny?

  For one, politicians are funny when they are needy—especially when they show themselves to be in desperate need of attention and adulation. Pete Hegseth’s risible workout videos are an example of this. Bill Clinton’s general neediness was both pitiable and funny as he tried to fill whatever awful vacancy is at the center of him with junk food and junk sex. Donald Trump’s pharaonic megalomania is both disturbing and hilarious, even if the scolds insist that there is nothing to laugh about in such times as these. Jill Biden’s insistence upon calling herself “Dr. Biden” is funny. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s need to swan around at the Met Gala while pretending to be an in-the-trenches class warrior is funny. European Central Bank boss Christine Lagarde’s constant sophomoric LinkedIn posting, which makes her look like she is desperately seeking employment, is eminently mockable.

  Beyond neediness, politicians—and media figures and activists—also are funny when they are unreasonable. Ross Perot’s mania was a gift to Saturday Night Live’s Dana Carvey and other satirists. There is a reason everybody makes fun of vegans, Bible-thumpers, libertarians, and the fading memory of Greta Thunberg. Humor is one of the ways we try to keep politics inside the 40-yard lines—extremists are inviting targets for satire. About half of The Blues Brothers is an extended riff on the ridiculousness of George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party.

  KDW's article doesn't mention Ronald Reagan, who knew how to deliver a line, punchlines included.

• Good advice, part II. It's direct from Erick Erickson, aimed at you and me: Calm Down.

  Well, more aimed at you, maybe. I'm always pretty calm.

  Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the immigration policies on citizenship of the last 140 years will continue.

  Today, you’d think the nation was coming to an end. We’ve literally been implementing the 14th Amendment this way for, again, 140 years.

  Having now read the full decision, did you know there were up to eight votes for the idea that illegal aliens could become citizens by being born in the United States? There might have been a ninth. As it were, there were six, not five, votes for the decision.

  I bet you heard 5-4, but the people spinning you up did not tell you that even Clarence Thomas raised the possibility that an illegal alien born in the United States could be a citizen.

  Six Justices, not five, definitely held that a child born in the United States to illegal aliens was a citizen. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch both, in their dissents, noted that a large number of children of illegal aliens would also most likely be citizens. Even Justice Alito suggested an unquantifiable number of children of illegal aliens would be citizens.

  Erick's got an interesting take, as usual.

• Mea Culpa, I guess. At least according to Leonora Barclay at Persuasion: Reading Is Dead. And We Killed It.

  Earlier this year, publishing house Hachette pulped the upcoming horror novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, following allegations that Ballard relied on artificial intelligence to write the book. Meanwhile, half of novelists in the UK fear they will be completely replaced by AI. As artificial intelligence continues to replace creative activities previously considered uniquely human, there’s a fear that fiction will grow ever more distant from the human experience, with predictable plots and simplistic dialogue and characters. Literature will start to function as synthetic junk food for the brain.

  Unfortunately, we didn’t need AI to do this. Literature has been functionally artificial for a number of years now, since long before ChatGPT came on the scene. It wasn’t computers that did this, it was us—publishers, agents, writers, and readers. Over the last 20 years, modern novels have become shorter, with simpler language and shorter sentences. At the same time, people are reading less. In 2023, the number of Americans aged 15 and older who read for more than 20 minutes a day was 15 percent, compared to 22 percent in 2003. In some ways, shorter novels can be a blessing (I know it’s supposed to be Charlotte Brontë’s best novel, but I spent most of Villette wishing the main character would just get on with it), but it’s worrying that authors are now writing for diminished attention spans.

  Well, maybe. But (since I am old) I hold Sturgeon's Law in high regard. ("Ninety percent of everything is crap") Are things worse now than they were in the 1950's, when Sturgeon proposed it?

I'm with Mr. Ramirez; it's time to make the "Death to America" mullahs an endangered species.

Also of note:

• The bogosity is strong with this one. Especially when he's trying to defend the indefensible. Rich Lowry examines Zohran Mamdani’s Bogus Explanation for Opposing Israel. He claims that he refuses to support "any state that privileges one religion over another." For an example of his "fairness", he cites Saudi Arabia.

  Well.

  Israel doesn’t have an official religion — repeat, it has no state religion.

  Instead, it is the homeland for Jews. Its Basic Law says that Israel is “the nation-state of the Jewish people, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious, and historical right to self-determination.”

  In other words, Israel is for the Jews in much the same way, say, that Poland is for the Poles or Japan for the Japanese.

  That these countries have distinct national identities defined by the peoples that live in them doesn’t mean they aren’t free societies.

  The Israeli Declaration of Independence says the Jewish state “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”

  And, indeed, there is freedom of religion in Israel. Christian, Muslim, Druze, and Baha’i communities maintain their own religious institutions and are free to worship as they please. The wrinkle is that — in an inheritance from the Ottoman Empire — Israel recognizes various religions and gives their courts authority over matters such as marriage and divorce.

  For the record, Wikipedia tries very hard to lump Israel into the (many) other countries with a state religion, it has to admit that "Judaism is not the state religion". Buried in a lot of handwaving meant to persuade the reader otherwise.

• The horseshoe's ends are getting closer every day. Meagan O'Rourke reports on Democrats' first 'Project 2029' proposal: More government control over social media.

  Democrats are gearing up for the 2028 election and preparing a list of policy priorities—dubbed "Project 2029"—should they retake the White House. The first Project 2029 proposal is not about affordability, healthcare, or foreign policy. No, the Democrats' first proposal concerns children's online safety: the issue fueling lawmakers' bipartisan push to impose greater government control over the internet.

  Semafor's Nicholas Wu first reported on the "Kids Over Clicks" proposal on Monday. The proposal, Wu wrote, advocates for "narrowing protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that shield platforms from some liability," banning social media accounts for kids under 16, "designing safer internet platforms," and more.

  "It's for the kids" is, unfortunately, a too-effective thought-terminating cliché.

• Also on the censorship front. There was something for everyone at SCOTUS yesterday. Let me link to something the WSJ editorialists (and I) liked: Political Speech Wins Again at the Supreme Court. (WSJ gifted link)

  One laudable project of the current Supreme Court has been incrementally restoring the First Amendment right of Americans to spend on political campaigns. A 6-3 majority on Tuesday took another step toward that end by overturning federal limits on coordinated spending by candidates and parties (NRSC v. FEC).

  Political parties are weaker than ever, and one reason is a 1974 campaign finance law that limits how much parties can spend in coordination with candidates. “For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend freely to support their candidates during campaigns and could do so in coordination with the candidates,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh writes for the majority.

  It's dispiriting how many Democrat candidates want to "overturn Citizens United". Now they will have something else they want to overturn! Even my "moderate" CongressCritter Chris Pappas, now running for Senate, wants Citizens United overturned.

  Fun fact: his campaign website features his "Anti-Corruption Agenda". Which proudly announces that "Pappas doesn’t take a dime of corporate PAC money."

  But as it turns out, Pappas takes a lot of dimes of union PAC money. Which is not corrupting at all, apparently.