Latest posts

  • The GOP’s Sudden Case of Rhetorical Modesty: Please Clap for Our Hypocrisy

    The GOP’s Sudden Case of Rhetorical Modesty: Please Clap for Our Hypocrisy

    America, we are living through a miracle. Not the miracle of bipartisan cooperation, or the miracle of clean water infrastructure, or even the miracle of a functioning Congress. No, the miracle is this: Republicans have suddenly discovered the concept of rhetorical responsibility. Like a toddler who’s just realized the stove is hot—after years of sticking

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  • The EU Declares Independence (From Us, Mostly)

    The EU Declares Independence (From Us, Mostly)

    Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission and owner of Europe’s most determinedly practical haircut, took the stage in Strasbourg on September 10 to deliver her State of the Union. And let me tell you, it was not the milquetoast Euro-babble of years past. Instead, von der Leyen announced what she called Europe’s

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  • The Week America Became Judge, Jury, and Caribbean Executioner

    The Week America Became Judge, Jury, and Caribbean Executioner

    September began with a bang—and 11 bodies floating in the southern Caribbean. President Donald Trump, in a tone that straddled triumph and reality TV cliffhanger, announced that the U.S. military had “destroyed” a Venezuelan vessel, killing alleged members of Tren de Aragua. Alleged being the operative word. Alleged as in “we’ll circle back with details

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  • Ceasefire, Interrupted: Israel Bombs the Meeting About Peace

    Ceasefire, Interrupted: Israel Bombs the Meeting About Peace

    There’s an old joke about Middle East negotiations: the closer the diplomats get to an agreement, the louder the bombs outside the hotel. On September 9, that punchline wrote itself when Israel decided the most efficient way to respond to Hamas’s leadership meeting in Doha—called to weigh a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal—was to obliterate the venue

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  • When Drones Mistake Neighbors’ Airspace for Buffer Zone: NATO’s Midnight Wake-Up Call

    When Drones Mistake Neighbors’ Airspace for Buffer Zone: NATO’s Midnight Wake-Up Call

    Some stories write themselves; others are written at 3 a.m. by frantic air defense operators staring at radar screens while politicians rehearse their outrage in bathroom mirrors. The overnight drone incursion into Polish airspace belongs to the latter category, a saga of buzzing machinery, scrambled jets, and the uncomfortable realization that Article 4 of NATO

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  • 107 Days of Recklessness: The Democrats Let Ego Write the Playbook

    107 Days of Recklessness: The Democrats Let Ego Write the Playbook

    Kamala Harris has decided the best way to heal the wounds of 2024 is to re-open them in hardcover. 107 Days, her memoir about the hundred-odd days between Biden’s exit and her own defeat to Donald Trump, isn’t even out yet and already it has Democrats chewing the furniture. The headline excerpt: it was “recklessness”

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  • When Drones Mistake Neighbors’ Airspace for Buffer Zone: NATO’s Midnight Wake-Up Call

    When Drones Mistake Neighbors’ Airspace for Buffer Zone: NATO’s Midnight Wake-Up Call

    The Uninvited Nocturnal Ball Somewhere between the cosmic nudge of late evening and the brittle patience of dawn, something peculiar happened above Poland. Imagine a nocturne for air defense: an unexpected ballet of over 415 drones and more than 40 missiles gliding where they were neither invited nor expected. Just when Warsaw was narrowing its

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  • Charlie Kirk Assassination was a Travesty but Spare Us the Martyrdom

    Charlie Kirk Assassination was a Travesty but Spare Us the Martyrdom

    First, the only thing that should be easy to say I don’t condone political violence from anyone, toward anyone. A man was killed while speaking, a family lost their person, and that is a human tragedy before it is a headline. Full stop. It deserves grief, not grift. It deserves time to breathe, not instant

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  • One Day, Three Flexes: The Roberts Hold, Midway Blitz, and the Birthday Book That Wouldn’t Die

    One Day, Three Flexes: The Roberts Hold, Midway Blitz, and the Birthday Book That Wouldn’t Die

    The news cycle didn’t just turn over. It did somersaults, pirouettes, and then flopped onto the couch clutching its side. By breakfast, Chief Justice John Roberts had played human sandbag for Donald Trump’s freeze on nearly $5 billion in foreign aid. By lunch, Chicago was choking on “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration raids, a branding exercise

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  • The Birthday Book Blues: How Epstein’s Guest List Became Trump’s Latest Hallmark Special

    The Birthday Book Blues: How Epstein’s Guest List Became Trump’s Latest Hallmark Special

    America has always had a gift for taking the grotesque and wrapping it in party favors. We can turn a banking collapse into a Netflix documentary, a constitutional crisis into a coffee-table book, and now, Jeffrey Epstein’s rolodex into a “birthday book.” Imagine the scrapbooking aisle of Michael’s, but curated by Ghislaine Maxwell. This week,

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