In this episode, Bethany spoke with Christina Smith, a mom of 1.75 and the Consumer Center Director for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, about how American moms who are MAHA can also stay sane.
Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here: The Perils and Rewards of Raising Children
Language warning: There are a couple of f-bombs in the quotes, but I wanted to provide an honest feel for Kevin Wilson’s writing style. That said, this is one of the most rewarding and inspiring books I’ve read in a long time.
The English Department at the school where I teach has a “Writer In Residence” every year: an author who spends 3 – 4 days guest teaching English classes and then speaking to the upper school students at an assembly. This year’s writer was Kevin Wilson, a literature professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, and author of several bestsellers, including The Family Fang and Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine.
Islam’s Human Shields
On X (formerly Twitter) there have been some exchanges between Professor Gad Saad and Ambassador Richard Grenell. Saad has authored several books and his latest, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, is scheduled for release May 12, 2026. Saad’s experience as a Lebanese Jew whose family narrowly escaped Islamic violence shapes his understanding of Islam. His studies have helped him understand how the West is an enabler and may well fall as a result. Grenell has pushed back on some of Saad’s posts, decrying painting all practitioners of Islam as a threat. Grenell also emphasizes the First Amendment protections for beliefs and peaceful practice.
As I followed this exchange, I saw a truth in both viewpoints. As a firm believer in the First Amendment (and all civil rights recognized by our Constitution), I struggle with how America battles Islam within a constitutional framework. Can it be done? I don’t know, but maybe this reframing of the issue is a start:
The Regensburg Lecture, The Islam Peace Lie
James Schall’s The Regensburg Lecture — a commentary on Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 address at the University of Regensburg in Germany. (Originally posted on my Substack.)
I first read this book in February of 2013 and read it again in 2015 in the face of attempts by Muslims, media, Obama and others to claim that “Islamic terrorism is not Islamic” after the devastating attack in Paris. (Probably time to bring it out again to at least skim my highlights.) Such claims fly directly in the face of history, the Koran, Islamic tradition, and numerous events and discussions, including the response to Pope Benedict’s Regensburg lecture covered in this book, which I consider to be extremely important for the trinity of faith, reason, and truth in our time — both relative to Islam and secular attacks on that holy trinity of meaning.
Prediction: We Win. They Lose.
As the wise man once said, making predictions is hard, especially about the future.
Nonetheless, success comes to those who predict they will be successful. What is happening in Iran today is 47 years overdue because we were afraid to predict success. We are winning. We will win. The bad guys are losing. They will lose.
The Race for the Bomb
Before World War II, the international physics community was small, a clubby group of scientists who were all friends. Werner Heisenberg’s attendance at the 1939 Summer School of Theoretical Physics in Ann Arbor, Michigan, illustrates this. He stayed with his good friend Samuel Goudsmit, a Dutch Jew who came to the US in 1927. Heisenberg also met two other friends on that trip, Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer. The next month, World War II began, sundering these friendships forever.
In The Greatest Scientific Gamble: A Story of Impossible Odds, Rival Scientists, and the Atomic Bomb, Michael Joseloff explores the mid-century physics community and the race to develop the atomic bomb. It examines both the US and German efforts.
Over the next four years those at the Summer School joined different efforts to develop a bomb. Heisenberg for the Germans, the others for the US. Fermi developed the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Oppenheimer headed the Manhattan Project, developing two different types of atomic bombs. Goudsmit joined Alsos, devoted to determining how far Germany’s atomic program had gotten. Joseloff shows that much of the US effort was motivated by fear that Nazi Germany would develop a nuclear bomb first.
Anti-Cop Terror in Pennsylvania
Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, is a tiny town roughly fifty miles west-northwest of Philadelphia, at the edge of what the Census Bureau considers that city’s metropolitan area. This past Sunday, a state policeman was killed in the line of duty near Honey Brook, and the circumstances suggest a broader problem.
Around 8 PM local time, Cpl. Timothy O’Connor Jr. received a report of an erratic driver on a country road just south of Honey Brook. When he pulled the driver over, the driver shot and killed Cpl. O’Connor then turned the gun on himself.
“The Ashes of Ingrid Bergman”
I don’t mean the words in this post title in the way you might expect. Although Ingrid was cremated, her ashes were divided. Some were scattered at sea off the Swedish coast, and the rest were buried near her parents’ graves in Stockholm.
What I’m talking about, though, is an event from 1950, thirty-two years before Ingrid died, when she was held up on the US Senate floor (in what might today be referred to as a “slut-shaming” speech)—surely by one of the most grandstanding and moralistic US Senators in history—Edwin C. “Big Ed” Johnson of Colorado.
By then, Ingrid had already made some glorious movies: starring as Paula Alquist Anton, the unfortunate wife of manipulative narcissist Gregory in Gaslight; and as Hitchcock’s muse in a trio of his masterpieces, Spellbound, Notorious, and Under Capricorn. And—in her greatest triumph, IMHO—as Ilsa Lund in the impeccable and heroic Casablanca, perhaps the greatest and best movie ever made.
To paraphrase—awkwardly—that 70s-era lyric, “International Law! What Is It Good For? Absolutely. Nothing! Good God!”
Lucretia host’s this week’s episode, which combines her skepticism of international law, especially as it relates to our current military operations against Iran, along with her impatience with our willful refusal to take radical Islam seriously, now that Islam-inspired violence in the U.S. is now a daily occurence.
Things we didn’t ask for and don’t want
How Can We Possibly Trust Science Anymore?
The scientific community has seriously betrayed the American public, and their reliability and reputation are in jeopardy as a result of the deceptions and fraudulent acts they have perpetrated. After the poor guidance and literal lies that the members of medicine and science have told us over the last few years, we have to ponder: where do we go for the truth?
There are many reasons for scientists taking a deceptive approach to their research, and by exploring them we may learn how to overcome the compulsion to misrepresent results.
Your stories of the week:
- A Texas man faces more jail time for cheating at a bass tournament than some do for murder
- Speaking of getting away with murder… It’s good to be a Democrat
- NYT economist on “affordablity”
- A bad week for the Jews?
(Photo of Curtis Lee Daniels – Wood County, TX Sheriff Department)
Too High a Price
One of the many tiresome habits of the MSM and academic Islamist apologists is the regurgitation of the lie that the Islamic texts that expressly call for violence against non-believers are (a) context-specific and only applicable to events in the early formational years of Islam, and/or (b) merely relevant in the context of self-defense when attacked by infidels. They don’t really call for violence.
Lt. Col. Brandon Shah
Let Them Eat MRE’s
Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Stephen Colbert, and many more of the usual suspects are whining about steak and lobster costs in the defense budget. Needless to say, they have never served in the military, nor do they understand military life. After the January 6 riots, they housed National Guard service members in parking garages.
I’m extending my little finger to them because they do not deserve the very best of displaying the impudent digit.
For decades, war game experts have produced dire predictions for American-Iranian war scenarios. While it’s still early days, the circumstances are much more favorable than strategists had supposed. Noah Rothman returns to break down what’s going right in Iran, what remains worrisome and uncertain, what the public ought to anticipate, and what the administration ought to tell them. (Noah also gives us a quick preview of his upcoming book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America.)
The fellas wrap the interview with theme-appropriate drapings: Brits are removing their greatest citizens from the nation’s banknotes, reminding us of waning resolve from Western allies, and a thwarted terrorist plot in New York has the media and politicians twisting into knots to conceal the truth.
Epic Fury: Without regime change, a failure?
The US/Israel’s June 2025 bombings of Iran’s nuclear facilities supposedly destroyed Iran’s nuclear program and killed its scientists. The economic sanctions that have been in place for years have supposedly destroyed Iran’s economy. And yet, nine months later, the US/Israel launched Epic Fury because Iran was supposedly close to getting a nuclear weapon and planning major attacks.
So far, Epic Fury has replaced one Khamenei with another Khamenei. Iran continues to fire missiles, drones and cluster bombs at its neighbors. There is no resistance inside Iran aiming to overthrow the regime—no coups, no protests, etc. Without regime change, does anything suggest that the bombing of Iran is not going to become an annual event, costing American lives and treasure, without end? And if that is the case, what is the point?
Summer Reading
“Dr.” Jill Biden will release her memoir, View from the East Wing, in June. Just in time for you to read it on your summer beach trip. Jill says the book will:
…share the good moments that lifted me and the difficult ones that challenged me. I also reflect on how this chapter in our lives came to a close when Joe made the unprecedented decision not to seek re-election and pass the torch—what that moment meant for our family and for me personally after years of public service together.
Tribalism all the way down
In one-party states, turnover is rare. So when Dick Durbin gives up the Senate seat he’s held since 1997, we’d expect some movement. And, wow oh wow, are ambitious Illinis on the move! To introduce us to the ensemble casts crowding up key races, Henry sits down with Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey.
Henry also explains the Iron Law of Primaries and digs further into early findings on public attitudes about the war in Iran. Plus, we have competing ads from the Illinois Senate race, along with an attack ad against Thomas Massie that indicates midterm party priorities. (And we’re flagging an innovative ad featuring Bobby Rush that uses artificial intelligence to boost his endorsement of Jesse Jackson Jr.)
The Not-So Reckless Attack on Iran | Richard Epstein
Now that the United States and Israel have launched a large-scale preemptive attack against multiple sites in Iran with the explicit purpose of bringing about regime change in Iran, the question on everyone’s lips is what will happen next. My own answer takes two parts: No one quite knows, but with the death of the Ayatollah, the worst possible future outcome is better than the status quo ante. After all, right now, large numbers of Iranians are dancing on his grave after the announcement of his death, and Iranians across the globe have joined in these celebrations. Nonetheless, the extensive commentary written after the strikes began has vigorously taken the opposite position. New York politicians like Chuck Schumer, AOC, and Zohran Mamdani bash the decision as leading to an endless quagmire. The media commentary savages the attack by using the word “reckless,” which includes the usual suspects who use that term, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, who claim that the attack is “reckless” because no one knows where it will lead. But the term reckless is not properly applied to aggressive actions that seek to upend the status quo. An independent judgment has to be made as to whether the risks are large in relation to the projected rewards.
So start with the negotiations. The critics of the attack, like the Council on Foreign Relations, start with a rosy analysis of Iranian intentions. It then concludes by praising the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for stating that “progress” has been made through the “most intense” negotiations to date, but who nonetheless refused proposals to suspend Iran’s nuclear enrichment programs. The Minister was just “trying to be imaginative in addressing U.S. concerns.” More than one sucker is born every day. That is not the way to evaluate another stall tactic, like those in use for many years, given that Araghchi was not prepared to say that Iran no longer regarded the United States as the embodiment of Satan. The proper response from the United States was to set a date after which it would act militarily, no further questions asked, unless a definitive agreement to dismantle had been reached beforehand. Treat any feeble sign of some future concession as probative, and a day of reckoning will never come for mass slaughter on the streets of Iran — a humanitarian matter that does not figure significantly in the condemnations of the US and Israel. Who knows when the clock ran out after 1980, but the Trump team was right to conclude that the time for negotiation was over.
Washington State Democrats passed the Income Tax
After nearly 24 hours of verbal debate, the turning down of nearly all Republican amendments by the majority Democrats, and the denial of press passes to local journalists not in the Legacy Propaganda Media, the blatantly unconstitutional “Millionaires Tax” passed on a 51-46 vote. A couple of Democrats voted NO, but not enough to make any difference. For over 40 years, the Democrats have been salivating over an income tax, and now they have it. At 9.9%, this will make Washington the highest-taxed state in the country.
The Washington State Constitution forbids a graduated income tax, stating that all taxes must be equal on equivalent classes of citizens, which their tax is obviously not. State Democrats have stated for the record that the initial 1-million-dollar “exemption” written into the law can be changed at any time with a simple majority vote, and that they intend to do so as soon as they can, making certain that all citizens will be subject to the tax in a few years. What’s really evil is that they attached an “emergency” provision to the bill, forbidding any citizen initiatives to overturn the bill. This is especially rich, given that the tax doesn’t take effect until 2029! Emergency?
New E-Introductions to Augustine
I’m airing new videos on Augustine on YouTube and Rumble. Ever wondered just what that guy’s deal was? Ever heard the hilarious story of how he got railroaded into being a pastor? Ever wondered what to make of that whole Christian conversation about creation, corruption, and free will? Maybe you don’t even know who I’m talking about, in which case–ever wondered why you should be wondering things about people like Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas? I hope I can help.
Can We Go Back to the Old Days?
Can we go back to the “old days”, even if they were three months ago, a year ago, or ten? Today’s world keeps feeling more bizarre, unnecessarily rude, crude, and more complicated.
I don’t know about you, but I was raised with certain simple standards of decency and common sense. I’m no prude — I made it through the hippie 60s as a tie-dyed t-shirt, ripped jeans kid, along with the sex, drugs, rock and roll era of the 70s, the discos, more drugs, platform shoes, and sequins of the 80s, the grunge of the 90s. Somehow, I’m still intact.
Despite the existence of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal law that has been in place for 50 years, many parents face acrimonious, heartwrenching, and expensive fights to ensure that their children’s unique needs are met. Debra Tisler, founder of Emergent Literacy and an educator with 30 years of experience, joins the podcast to talk about the obstacles that parents face, the hostile and litigious due process regime, and why Congress has not reauthorized the law for over 20 years. Debra suggests opportunities to better serve students and families, including expanding education freedom programs that enable families to find and afford the best education option for their child’s needs without exhausting and costly lawsuits.
🔗 Links & Resources:
King Forward, Fall Backward
Winter just PRETENDED to fade here on the Korean Peninsula. Kim Jong Un took off his wool garb, switched to a snazzy black leather jacket from Pyongyang Big and Tall, and everything seemed on track for spring. Then it got cold, with a mighty wind.
Never mind. I’m here for another in a series of tributes to the great Larry King USA Today columns. (Consider these posts something of a “sigh op.”) Let’s hit it and quit.
