It’s been said that there’s no use proposing that Donald Trump moderate his rhetoric, but with presidential approval ratings being what they are, a friendly reminder about duties and decorum might be just what the doctor ordered. Daniel Mahoney, author and professor emeritus at Assumption College, joins James and Steve to discuss his latest piece, “Discipline at a Moment of Power.”
Plus, the fellas consider this morning’s breaking news about the SCOTUS ruling on “emergency” tariffs, applaud Marco Rubio’s performance in Munich, and reflect on the passing of Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall.
In my continuing frustration that “woke” language is unclear, makes understanding each other harder, and thus actual communication less likely, with errors and misunderstandings more likely, today’s entry is a story from WCVB, an ABC news station in Boston, Massachusetts.
The story being reported by WCVB is about the man who pretended to be a woman and shot up a high school hockey game in Pawtucket, R.I. Specifically, the story is about the bystander who first tackled the shooter. The bystander got his finger caught in the pistol’s slide, preventing the shooter from continuing to use that gun.
More than that, I discussed it on the Company of Makers podcast on February 17. Feel free to watch.
Now that we’re back into the campaign swing, Beyond the Polls is grooving into familiar rhythms. That means we’ve got a weekly rant, a great guest, and an ad or two worth diving into. This week, Ryan Girdusky, host of “It’s a Numbers Game,” joins Henry to discuss how the GOP is only just finding its footing a decade into its shakeup.
Plus, Henry gives an update on Trump’s approval rating, salutes Gallup for its many years of tracking that metric, and takes a look at a couple of bold primary spots: one out of the Texas Senate primary, the other from Illinois-8.
Richard Epstein unpacks what the equal time rule actually is, where it came from, and why it still applies to broadcast television decades after the demise of the Fairness Doctrine. He also explores the original justification for FCC regulation based on spectrum scarcity, the uneasy relationship between free speech and campaign finance law, and whether the logic behind these rules makes any sense in a world of YouTube, podcasts, and limitless media platforms
The tally of EU election interference stood at eight when news broke of German Chancellor Merz’s bid to interfere with the impending Hungarian elections. Nobody fixes an election like the Germans, and they are trying to extort Elon Musk’s X to provide data on Hungarian X usage so that Germany can stage interference number nine. Because when the EU talks about “their” democracy, the people aren’t counted.
Thanks to Mike Benz, national treasure, for spotting this one.
I hate to steal a line from other writers, but . . . another day, another mass killing by a crazed trannie. (Long, weary s-i-i-i-gh.) When will the national trans nightmare ever end?
This time it was a 56-year-old man — and I emphasize “man” — named Robert Dorgan who shot up a high school hockey game in Rhode Island. His intended targets were apparently family members, but if others get hurt or killed in the midst of a murderous trannie’s tantrum, well, too bad. Hell hath no fury like a trannie scorned.
Julie Young, founding president of the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), turned a two-page concept paper for a “web school” into the first statewide online public school while battling resistance from districts and unions at every step. During her 17 years at the helm, Julie grew FLVS from a small local pilot serving 77 students in 1997 into a national leader that currently educates over 200,000 Florida students annually. In today’s episode, she reveals how she navigated opposition, won over legislators, secured performance-based funding, created FLVS district franchises, and trained educators, while ensuring students received high-quality online education. Julie also delves into the differences between the emergency “Zoom schools” of the COVID era and well-designed virtual programs.
Julie Young is the co-editor of Virtual Schools, Actual Learning: Digital Education in America and author of the upcoming book Say Yes, How Virtual Became a Reality.
Mostly, it was. Although Alan Turing and other WWII-era scientists would play a role, there’s wide agreement that AI didn’t really get off the ground until a trio of Americans organized an academic conference in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1956. That’s when the new field got its name: artificial intelligence, a term coined by the conference organizer, John McCarthy.
Whatever McCarthy would later do as a scientist, he’d proven himself to be one of the best advertising slogan writers of all time: Artificial Intelligence as a concept was easy to grasp, and the term sparked the public imagination. It caught on instantly.
On this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools and Mary Tamer of MassPotential speak with Dr. Richard Phelps, the author of Pioneer Institute’s recent paper, Post-MCAS Assessments and Accountability in Massachusetts, to unpack the past, present, and future of K-12 accountability in the Commonwealth. Looking back at the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA), Dr. Phelps explores how rigorous academic standards and the original MCAS testing system helped propel Massachusetts to the top of national and international rankings in reading, math, and science. Phelps explains how Massachusetts’ 2010 adoption of Common Core national standards and the shift away from the original MCAS framework led to a dramatic decline in academic performance on NAEP after 2011. Shifting to today, Dr. Phelps discusses the implications of the 2024 ballot initiative that eliminated MCAS as a high school graduation requirement. He outlines the major takeaways fromPost-MCAS Assessments and Accountability in Massachusetts, including recommendations for statewide end-of-course exams, as well as the weaknesses of portfolio assessments. He underscores why strong, independent academic oversight is essential in a post-MCAS landscape. He advocates reinstating an independent Office of Educational Quality and Accountability to deliver transparent, data-driven evaluations of school districts and ensure Massachusetts maintains high academic expectations for all students.
Does Islam owe its existence to rape? Its founder had only a handful of followers until he declared that there was a divine imperative to raid, rape and enslave, after which young men from raiding tribal cultures flocked to the new movement. He expressly urged young Arab men to go after the “yellow-eyed” (apparently some reference to blond Byzantine women) as a religiously endorsed mission. As the expanding Islamic empire entered its third century, the pagan Vikings had established a thriving business of taking captured, fair-complexion Slavic women downriver to satisfy the ravenous demands of Muslim slave markets.
If anyone thinks this is an abandoned archaic practice or value, I would invite a look at the attitudes and behaviors of young Muslim men in Rotherham, UK, in Germany or in Sweden. Islam does not evolve or grow out of attitudes or practices. It is bound by the literally misogynistic directives of its founder, who also once declared that the majority of denizens of hell were women condemned due to ingratitude and general bitchiness. Men may have four wives (Mohammed later received a divine directive to exempt himself from any such limitation), but an unlimited number of infidel female captives.
In December 2025, former US Senator Ben Sasse announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. That’s the primary topic for this far-reaching conversation about mortality, faith, and what truly matters when time is short. Sasse reflects on “redeeming the time”—holding ambition lightly, loving family more deliberately, and resisting the urge to make politics or professional success the center of life.
The discussion also covers Sasse’s thoughts on the failures of Congress; the dangers of a fragmented, attention-starved republic; the crisis of higher education; and the moral challenges of technological abundance. Sasse speaks candidly and movingly about regret, forgiveness, prayer, and suffering—arguing that while death is a real enemy, it does not get the final word.
The Federalist, or more broadly known as the Federalist Papers, is looked on as the definitive defense of the Constitution as written in 1787, and by that, a clear explanation of its contents and rationale. Whether it’s those things or not, how should you study them? Should you at all? If so, what do you need to know before turning to Hamilton’s Federalist 1?
Chris Burkett, Professor of Political Science, joins Jeff to explain the historical and political context around this collection of essays when they were written, and how best we can read and understand them today.
Jonathan Leaf is a playwright, screenwriter, author and journalist, who’s won a slew of awards, has been compared to Saul Bellow for his “literacy and seriousness,” has written a half-dozen books, and also written for The New Yorker, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The American, National Review, The New Partisan, The New York Press, The Weekly Standard and The New York Sun.
His latest book, The Primate Myth, upends the common knowledge that humans are a subspecies of ape. Primatologists Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal were completely wrong. If anything, we are a subspecies of dog. Modern technology proves it, and, by giving us an accurate portrait of human nature, explains our penchant for sports, fashion, war, altruism, financial bubbles, suicide and homosexuality, among many other things.
Sabai dee baw, tuuk tuuk kon, Sabai dee baw? This Lao greeting, roughly translated in my brain as “Are you comfortable and good?” we sang at the opening of each Laotian church service in San Diego, where my parents were supporting the work of the Lao pastor there. “Are you comfortable and good, one and all? Are you comfortable and good?” (The proper response to “Sabai dee baw?” is “Sabai dee.” “I’m comfortable and good”–I have well-being.) The rest is a blur–me at thirteen years old, a bright, dry new city after New York and Pennsylvania, metal folding chairs, a few songs, and some teaching in Lao, which I didn’t really follow.
Oddly, I’d had the impression that I knew Lao, as I had spoken something close to that with my neighborhood friends in Northeast Thailand. I hadn’t realized the degree to which my grasp of that language had eroded each term I’d gone off to boarding school, starting at eight years old. For reasons unclear to me, I was left instead with a standard Thai, which sounds the most familiar to me even now. Another discovery, which I had to make the hard way back then, was that the two languages weren’t necessarily mutually intelligible.
I went to Walmart yesterday. I picked up one item. I brought it to the self-checkout area. I scanned my item and then placed it in the bag that I had pulled out of my pocket. Living in New Jersey, I am fortunate to have politicians who save me from the evil of store-provided shopping bags. I then hit the button to print my receipt.
It was at that moment that two women rushed over to me, yelling, “Fi-Sta, Fi-Sta.” One of the women snuck up from behind, but the other I saw literally running over to my register. Now, I do not mean any disrespect to our immigrant population, but I could not even guess at what “Fi-Sta” meant. My daughter is a freshman in college down in Virginia, and she called us up one day, surprised to tell us the people at her Walmart both “smile and speak English.”
I kid you not. I read this piece by @MattShumer, and here is my thinking:
First, I now understand that AI (whether right now, or within the next year) can do anything, as long as it can get to the thing it wants to change. It can crack any encryption, break any firewall, impersonate anyone or anything. It does this with little or no input from a person.
While Republicans are catching up or holding their own in some states, they are still losing elections in places where they should be winning, like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.
As a full-time political operative back in the 1980s and early 90s, I remember Colorado being a reliable, even sleepy, Republican state. The GOP controlled the governorship, both US Senate seats, and five of the state’s then-seven congressional districts (they now have eight).
Responding to Marco Rubio’s warning to the Munich Security Conference about the possibility of European civilizational erasure, a high-level Eurocrat rejected what she called “European-bashing”, declaring:
Is there anything more felicitous in this fractious world than a polite encounter with a random stranger in public?
Spend too much time online, and it’s easy to fall into a sort of paranoia that everyone is out to get you. Social media misbehavior has become so pervasive that it’s hard to imagine running into a person whose politics you are unaware of, and who is unaware of yours, and who does not, at least in the moment, appear to care.
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, is the best-known British poet of the Victorian Era. Today’s world views Tennyson as an old man, in a wide-brimmed Spanish hat, wearing a flowing black cape and long white beard, thoroughly establishment. But Tennyson was young once, a groundbreaking literary avant-garde.
The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief, by Richard Holmes, examines the Tennyson who came before the aged, establishment peer. It traces his life from his birth through the death of his good friend, Edward FitzGerald.
His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was a beneficed Anglican minister, solidly gentry. But they were from a poorer branch of the family. George had a violent temper and drifted into insanity and alcoholism. Alfred was the fourth of twelve children. As Holmes shows, several of the others also had bouts with insanity and alcoholism.
I’m reading a biography of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. In setting the stage for discussion of the Battle of Kernstown – Jackson’s only defeat – the author gives a brief description of Jackson’s opposite number: hero of the Mexican War, Union Brigadier General James Shields. In that short synopsis, he drops the following nugget… that prior to the war, while a public official in Illinois, Shields was the subject of some “scurrilous” newspaper articles. Though published anonymously, they were widely believed to have been penned by Abraham Lincoln. Shields was so incensed that he challenged Lincoln to a duel.
Whether free and fair elections can be saved with the SAVE Act is the first topic of debate this week, along with a celebration of the Trump Administration rolling back the EPA’s power to make our energy scarce and expensive. Steve describes this bold step as the “Inchon Landing” in the war against the administrative state. Forget Nixon-to-China cliches: only Trump could take such a bold step that no other conventional Republican would dare take.
We also spend a good deal of time recalling the passing, ten years ago now, of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose shadow over contemporary jurisprudence continues to lengthen. We think Scalia is displacing Holmes as the most significant jurist of the last century for his enduring influence and for his central role in reviving constituitional originalism, even though he once described himself as a “faint-hearted originalist.” There’s a paradox at work in Scalia’s jurisprudential legacy that requires someone like G.K. Chesterton to understand—and that, kids, ought to be a strong hint as to exactly what it is.
Jonathan Leaf is a playwright, screenwriter, author and journalist, who’s won a slew of awards, has been compared to Saul Bellow for his “literacy and seriousness,” has written a half-dozen books, and also written for The New Yorker, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The American, National Review, The New Partisan, The New York Press, The Weekly Standard and The New York Sun.
