There are six Americans changing their diets to align with the new food pyramid, according to USDA Associate Commissioner for Surveys and Futility, Anna Clark.
“While it can be difficult to track trends in who chooses to adhere to governmental dietary guidance, a pattern emerged relatively quickly,” the Associate Commissioner reported. “All six are in Mr. Moore’s freshman health class at Central Fairview High School.”
Way back in 2019, while conversing on Ricochet, I noticed a connection between Augustine and John Stuart Mill: They both talk about desire as part of how we know what is good.
Took me a while to get it all written up, and for some reason, between one scholarly journal and another, I cut most of the Augustine out of the paper. Not to worry–Aristotle and Boethius stepped in, they picked up the slack, and the paper is now published here.
The general idea is pretty simple.
Everyone saw this coming. Despite the ceasefire agreed to in October 2025, Hamas refuses to disarm, as they’d promised. Thus, Israel will have to disarm them by force. Hamas has made a token effort to disarm, but it doesn’t fulfill the original promise:
Israel and the U.S. have said Hamas needs to give up its weapons in compliance with the cease-fire agreement. Hamas is open to giving up what is left of its stock of heavy weapons, but won’t turn over its small arms, Arab officials said. Israel estimates the group has 60,000 rifles and 20,000 fighters.
There are all sorts of ways to end up dead. Disease, accidents and crime are among the common ways to be done in. Natural disasters can trap you. Drug overdoses or reactions can kill. Animal attacks can get you. So can war.
In 99 Ways to Die And How to Avoid Them, Ashely Alker, M.D., enumerates the different ways the Grim Reaper can take you and offers strategies for avoiding his grip.
The author knows something of both death and its avoidance. Dr. Alker describes herself as a death escapologist. In plain language, she is an emergency medicine doctor. She divides the book into thirteen categories of causes of death: infections, vaccine-preventable diseases, heart diseases, brain diseases, sex, drugs, animals, poison, food, travel, crime, environmental issues, and warfare. Each section has chapters explaining specific risks. (An example: the sex section has a chapter on risks associated with pregnancy.) There is some overlap: some diseases poison you and some of the risks associated with food spill into infection and poison.
I grabbed Musings of an American Redhead in Thailand by Duke and Wiphawan Tate for two dollars on Kindle because a.) I would get to read an up-close account of the author’s experiences in my birth country, and b.) a disappointed reviewer gave it a low rating because it contained so much first-person perspective. Well, of course it does. I thought. Look at the title, sir!
I’d show him.
Even the worst places can have good memories.
Since we may see it invoked any day/week now, I thought a thread featuring a historical timeline of such occasions would be timely, as well as helpful for easy future reference if needed.
The Insurrection Act has been invoked 30 times since its enactment in 1807, by 15 presidents. Here’s the listing thereof:
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/124274-questions-about-wreaths-across-america-2026-01-14
The above link is to a Patriot Post detailing the money made by the family (and other organizations) that runs Wreaths Across America. It also reviews the past issues the Wounded Warrior Project encountered, but has since rectified. It is difficult to know whom to trust.
Is it just us, or did this week seem even crazier than usual? We didn’t have time to cover all the crazy in the news, and had to settle for trying to select the most stupid crazy thing said this week, though even that was a hard selection to make. But we gave a group award to everyone involved in trying to persuade the Supreme Court that boys should be allowed in girls sports. So much to work with.
We considered whether and how the Insurrection Act might work in the case of insurrectiony Minnesota, and then move on to our main event today: is America in fact the “best regime” in the classical, Platonic/Aristotelian meaning of the term (Steve and Lucretia say Yes, while John is confused and cantankerous as usual), and if so does this help explain the left’s deep hatred for America?
Sometimes you’ve just had enough. Bill Barr, two-time Attorney General and author of One Damn Thing After Another, knows the feeling. He joins James, Steve, and Charles today to discuss the legal grounds for the extraordinary rendition of Nicolás Maduro and the options available to federal law enforcement as the Twin Cities tiptoe around an insurrection.
The trio speculates on whether the US is reversing its position on Iran, considers the supposed price tag on a Greenland buy, and James declares that he has absolutely no opinion on the new Star Trek series. Not a one. Zip, zero. Don’t bother asking…
Watching the flotsam and jetsam on our information water bodies, I despair for our world. If I turn it off, will I miss some important warning of something headed my way? If I turn it on, will I be sucked into the mass formation psychosis that social media generates and maintains?
None of the scenes I see playing out in Iran or Minnesota are occurring in my own neighborhood, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, or that the outcomes of those conflicts will not affect my life in some way. If I “like” and “repost” X (formerly Twitter) postings, am I doing “my part”? Is my online activity contributing to any desired end?
I don’t have much time to put together a thorough essay. But when I hear an argument on a subject on which only one side seems logical to me, I worry that I am missing something.
The United States Supreme Court heard arguments this week on challenges to laws in Idaho and West Virginia that prevent (“biological”) boys and men who claim to be “transgender” girls and women from competing in girls’ and women’s sports in school environments. The challengers seek to prevent a school from limiting participation in “girls'” sports teams to girls. If successful, the challenges would require schools to allow a boy who wants to participate on a “girls'” sports team to do so.
Thursday marked the birthday of the oldest bar in NY – Fraunces Tavern. The Tavern doors opened on January 15, 1762, although the building itself dates to 1719. It was constructed as a mansion house by Stephen DeLancey with bricks imported from the Dutch Republic. It is the oldest surviving structure in Manhattan. Throughout its history it served as a private home, a tavern, a meeting place for the Sons of Liberty, the location where the treason of Benedict Arnold was discovered, a venue for peace negotiations with the British and most famously as the location for George Washington’s farewell party.
In September 1780, a NJ farmer was in the tavern and was told by the taverner that British soldiers had been in and were toasting to American General Benedict Arnold. It appeared that Arnold was involved in some conspiracy to betray the cause and hand over West Point to the British. Once back to Jersey, that information made its way to General Anthony “Mad Anthony” Wayne and then to Washington himself.
With an election year upon us, it’s time to brace yourselves for candidates making their way onto your television, tablet and smartphone screens with messages catered to inspire and outrage you, the coveted primary voter. This means Henry is back with the Ad of the Week, this time taking a close look at Illinois’ Senate frontrunner Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Democrat looking to replace soon-to-be-retired Dick Durbin. For contrast, we head south to Texas, where Chip Roy aims to leverage his name recognition in a bid to be the Lone Star State’s next Attorney General.
And in light of Mary Peltola’s announcement that she’ll challenge Dan Sullivan for his Senate seat, Henry takes us out with a rant about the latest in the Democratic Party’s gambit to retake the upper chamber.
President Trump’s recent embrace of economic proposals runs sharply against free-market orthodoxy, exploring three headline-grabbing ideas: capping credit-card interest rates, banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes, and restricting dividends and stock buybacks by defense contractors. Why is a Republican president advancing policies more commonly associated with progressive populism? Drawing on economic history, constitutional law, and real-world market behavior, Epstein argues that price controls, capital restrictions, and politicized contracting consistently backfire, harming consumers, workers, and innovation alike. The conversation situates Trump’s proposals within a broader populist strategy, assesses the political incentives behind them, and warns that ignoring basic economic lessons risks repeating some of the most durable policy failures of the past.
I’m sure many of you remember the story, from November 2025, of the football (when I say “football” in this post, I mean “soccer”) match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv, held at Villa Park in the city of my birth, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK. The city where the “bin men” have been on strike since January 2025, and where the garbage has been piling up in the streets, and the rats have been running free, ever since. Birmingham. Home of the Lunar Society (which comprised, among others, eminent Victorians such as Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin) and the Arts and Crafts movement led by city native Edward Burne-Jones and his Oxford friend William Morris. A beautiful and once resurgent city (Britain’s second-largest) with more canals than Venice, whose city council declared itself bankrupt in September of 2023, and which is currently selling off assets hand-over-fist, among ongoing debate as to whether or not the cry of bankruptcy was justified, or simply politically expedient in the face of insurmountable DEI “pay equality” demands and spiraling out-of-control costs for its new city-wide IT system.
My Dad’s family were Aston Villa fans since time immemorial, or at least since Villa was founded in 1874. Until 2020 or so, when 97-year old Auntie Pat gave them up, the family had held season tickets since they were first offered. And as long as Auntie Pat was able to drive (a fearsome experience–even in her younger years–if one was in the passenger seat), and as often as she could, she went to the matches, where she alone was allowed to park her Ford Ka right at one of the stadium gates, from whence someone would escort her to her seat as if she were the Queen of England. (One of the late Mr. She’s most treasured memories was attending a Villa match with Pat in the early years of the twenty-first century. She invited him so he could have the chance to witness some “proper football.”)
Here’s a bit of reminiscence from Auntie Pat, of what “match day” at Villa Park was like, a century-or-so ago:
Kate Baker Demers, Executive Director of Children’s Scholarship Fund–New Hampshire, joins the podcast to share how a determined mom helped transform New Hampshire into a national leader in education freedom. Kate traces the origins of the state’s school choice ecosystem, from launching New Hampshire’s first education tax credit scholarship program to advancing the creation of Education Freedom Accounts (education savings accounts) that now serve thousands of families.
In this episode, Kate explains how grassroots leadership, persistence through political controversy, and an unwavering focus on families expanded educational opportunity, especially for low- and middle-income students. We also explore what’s next for the school choice movement, including the promise of the new federal scholarship tax credit and why it could be a game-changer for education access nationwide.
In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Center for Strong Public Schools’ Alisha Searcy and Great Hearts Academies’ Dr. Helen Baxendale interview award-winning author and biographer Dr. Jung Chang, whose international bestsellers have illuminated three generations of her family’s experiences across 20th- and 21st-century China. Dr. Chang reflects on the powerful lessons drawn from the lives of her grandmother, mother, and herself under Chairman Mao’s tyranny, emphasizing the importance of personal memory in confronting totalitarianism and educating younger generations. She discusses the role of her memoir alongside works by figures such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Elie Wiesel in exposing the tragic human cost of 20th century’s most murderous regimes. Turning to her co-authored biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, Dr. Chang offers her assessment of Mao’s character, the catastrophic loss of over 70 million lives under his Communist rule, and the enduring myths and lies surrounding his despotic legacy. She explores China’s rich pre-Communist history, including the often misunderstood reign of the Empress Dowager Cixi, the central role of women in shaping modern China, and her motivations for writing Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister. She also examines Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s (the “Architect of Modern China”) economic reforms in the late 1970s, President Xi Jinping’s revival of Maoist-style political state control, and concludes with a moving discussion of Fly, Wild Swans, as a tribute to her mother, including the final chapter on why she could not return to China to be at her mother’s deathbed.
Waiting for the Korean airport bus on Dec. 31 (by the sign with an upside-down big ol’ jet airliner), there were just four of us: a Korean family of three and me. I was going to the US, they were going to Jeju Island. The son, I’d guess about 8 or 9, was yodeling at a good volume. Swiss Miss, Slim Whitman yodeling. For more than five minutes. It’s not the kind of thing you easily forget.
The normal Oklahoma winter weather surrendered, so we had highs in the 60s. Nobody complained about climate warming or global change. It was a nice ten days.
The Declaration of Independence is not, properly understood, a historical document. It is a statement of beliefs and principles describing the proper relationship between the individual and the state, and how the individual should view others in political matters. As such, it is not tied to a moment in time – 1776 – but should serve as the foundation of the American Idea for all time.
What does that mean, and what can it mean for you? Join Jeff and Dr. Adam Seagrave as they discuss our Declaration, and how “faith, hope, and love” informed the American founding, and can guide us today.
Yikes. I’ve been a follower for decades. One of the late Mr. She’s proudest boasts was that he’d taught his British-born wife to drink American Whiskey and to watch American football.
And nothing has changed since he died more than five years ago.
My team has always been the “Stillers.” Lordy me. One of the most storied teams in NFL history, winner of no fewer than six Super Bowl championships, and so many individual records.
Scott Adams has caught the last train out. A very funny man. A huge success with Dilbert, but I liked his books better. His experience as a hypnotist showed him the many ways that manipulators are at work in society, and I was always particularly grateful for those insights. We shared a battle with prostate cancer, although mine is going a lot better than his did. He was articulate and thoughtful in his writings.
About the only thing I ever had against him is that the success of Dilbert cut into the circulation of “On the Fastrack,” a truly brilliant comic strip written and drawn by my old friend Bill Holbrook. And that wasn’t even his fault; any editor who really cared could see that the strips were quite different, certainly not duplicates just because they both did office humor. Ah, well.
Any attack on a house of worship is a calamity. But this particular attack especially touches and enrages me. The latest attack was the burning down of a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, the oldest in the state.
