NPR tells us:

Wednesday at Utah Valley University was supposed to be the start of what Kirk was calling, “The American Comeback Tour.” It was slated to take him to nearly a dozen colleges, from Utah to Virginia, Minnesota to Louisiana.

This is what Kirk did often – he went to colleges across the country, holding court, casting doubt on liberalism and challenging anyone within shouting distance of a microphone to take to it and argue with him.

His conservative friends and followers describe Kirk as a Christian, a father and the nicest person they knew — someone who engaged in the “free marketplace of ideas,” as Johnson put it on CNN.

Kirk was provocative and often clips of

Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Imbalance.

As someone who knows people on the same list of targets as the Hortmans and the Hoffmans, I do find this dispiriting, and the national government response of a half-mast flag at the Federal Buildings is a reminder of the lack of concern that the President had, choosing to golf rather than attend the funeral or even to visit when Melissa Hortman was lying in state, to be a reminder that the government is in the hands of people whose grief is dependent on the dead’s political persuasion. The RW conspiracy mongers who claimed that the murders were a result of Hortman voting for a budget deal that Republicans also voted … Read the rest

Golly. I just learned that (some? many?) UK universities have a “gender expression fund”.

UCL is one.

Many people experience feelings of stress and anxiety at the disconnect they feel between their gender identity and appearance. We have created the Gender Expression Fund to provide financial assistance for students to purchase items that will make them more comfortable with their gender presentation and, we hope, improve their wellbeing.

Grants can be used to purchase gender affirming products such as clothing, binders, packers and beauty products.

Grants can also be used towards travel to medical or therapy/counselling appointments, but we are not able to provide funding for treatment or other medical procedures.

We anticipate grants will usually be around £50,

Sure enough, they’re Reichstag Firing it already.

[Utah Governor] Cox’s impulse to appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” was on display this morning in a press conference, where, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel and local leaders, he announced the arrest of Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Kirk’s killing, on Wednesday.

“This is certainly about the tragic death, political assassination of Charlie Kirk. But it is also much bigger than an attack on an individual,” Cox said. “It is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who

Don’t mention the women.

It was predictable that August in Edinburgh would see a flare-up of the gender wars. Scottish politics has been pivotal in the UK-wide battle over gender self-identification, and the issue has come up at the Edinburgh festival before. Probably no one would have expected the National Library of Scotland to be the battlefield. But when a bestselling gender-critical anthology, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, was excluded from a centenary exhibition, that is what happened.

Trying to make the women who wouldn’t wheesht wheesht is a fool’s errand. They told you they wouldn’t wheesht!!

Its editors, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Susan Dalgety, were already upset when they learned that their book had not been chosen

Jenny Murray points out an important distinction.

At last, evidence of a bout of common sense in relation to the policing of tweets. Sir Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said this week that non-crime hate incidents should be scrapped and that officers must separate ‘the offensive from the criminal’.

If follows Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley’s comments that he will talk to new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood about a proposed change in the law meaning police officers would not be required to record and investigate complaints about tweets unless it is clear the suspect intended real harm and violence.

She notes that this is obviously prompted by what the cops did to Glinner last … Read the rest

Oh honestly. The levels of spite and petty malice here.

In early August, I received this letter from UCD, awarding me the James Joyce Award, "the highest honour any student body in Ireland can bestow." Their reasons for giving me this prize were deeply moving and I felt honoured.

By an unhappy coincidence, the Polari Prize nonsense… pic.twitter.com/ZRe5eNTeb0

— John Boyne (@JohnBoyneBooks) September 12, 2025

By an unhappy coincidence, the Polari Prize nonsense blew up the following day and, from my very first reply, my messages over the next 6 weeks were completely ignored, as were messages from my agent.

This morning, under threat of legal action, they finally deigned to respond, simply informing me that they were withdrawing the

I’m seeing a lot of grief and anguish for Charlie Kirk on the left.

You know what I didn’t see? The same kind or amount of grief and anguish for Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, not on the right and not even on the left.

Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were wounded in politically motivated shootings early Saturday, Gov. Tim Walz said. Authorities have also identified a suspect who is still at large.

Why the difference?… Read the rest

Now if only we could have done that.

Bolsonaro found guilty of plotting coup

Four out of the five Supreme Court justices tasked with judging the former leader found him guilty. One judge voted to acquit him.

The 70-year-old has been convicted of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2022 election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

While the plot failed to enlist enough support from the military to go ahead, it did culminate in the storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro’s supporters on 8 January 2023, the justices found.

Sound familiar at all?

The charges carry heavy sentences and could add up to a prison term of more than

Couldn’t happen to a nastier guy.

DC has shelved its Red Hood comic book series following writer Gretchen Felker-Martin sharing posts on Bluesky that joked about the shooting of Charlie Kirk, who was killed by an assassin’s bullet Wednesday.

“Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk,” read one post. “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi bitch,” read another by Felker-Martin. The writer is trans, while Kirk was known for his anti-trans stance. Felker-Martin’s Bluesky account is now deactivated, but those posts were screenshotted and widely spread before DC canceled the series.

To refresh your memories of Felker-Martin’s novel that had JK Rowling sadistically murdered:

A horror novel by a transgender author that features the death of

The San Francisco Chronicle points out:

The reaction of Second Amendment absolutists and their enablers to the slaying of conservative activist Charlie Kirk Wednesday during his rally at Utah Valley University was as predictable as it was dangerous.

In a moment that begged for calm and unity, Democrats — even those who loathed Kirk politically — offered condolences and railed against political violence. Meanwhile, Republicans, who control Congress and the White House (and, let’s face it, the Supreme Court) were much less likely to condemn political violence, and none suggested they should pursue gun safety measures…

Kirk himself was prone to inflame tensions in the wake of tragic violence. “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price,” he once

Live by the sword…

Charlie Kirk (2023): "I think it's worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe." pic.twitter.com/sEHw5suXEW

— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) September 10, 2025

What is the result of this having the Second Amendment?

It’s an exceptionally high level of gun deaths.

Nearly 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the number of gun deaths in the U.S. fell for the second consecutive year,

Belief in magic gender is mandatory in The New Party.

Gender-critical MPs have “no place” in Jeremy Corbyn’s new hard-Left party, his co-founder has said.

Zarah Sultana, who was suspended by Labour last year and quit the party last month, said there was “no room” in the party for people who don’t have “pro-trans” values amid an escalating transgender row between party hopefuls.

What is “hard left” about believing in magic gender? It’s not hard left or soft left or any kind of left at all. It’s just dumb.

“Ms Sultana told the Pod Save the UK podcast on Tuesday: “If people don’t have pro-trans, pro-migrant, anti-racist values, there are plenty of other political spaces you can enter but … Read the rest

Originally a comment by maddog on A red line for the Greens.

Trans people have been massively targeted over the past few years, entirely wrongly, by a great number of people, and they just want to go and live their lives.

T have not been “massively targeted.” The entire T enterprise is a literally massive targeting of women, gay men, and lesbians, and of children that they can groom to their cause. T also ” massively target” anyone who supports women, gay men and lesbians, or who opposes the mutilation of children for a false ideology.

To the extent T have been “targeted,” it’s entirely rightly, because it’s simply false that men can be women or that women can … Read the rest

Is this the new Reichstag fire? I think we can be pretty sure it won’t go well for Team Not Crazy.

Though no motive has been disclosed, the circumstances of the shooting fueled concerns that it was part of a spike of political violence that has cut across the political spectrum.

Well of course it is; what else would it be? Violent and political but not part of the spike in political violence? How would that work? I do wish journalism could skip the meaningless banalities.

Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point

Putin is like that kid who keeps slapping or pinching or tripping smaller kids because he wants an easy fight.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has denounced Russia’s “reckless behaviour” after drones violated Polish airspace, and said the alliance’s response [was] “very successful.”

“A full assessment is ongoing. But of course, whether it was intentional or not, it is absolutely reckless, it is absolutely dangerous,” Rutte said after talks among NATO members.

He said his message to Russian President Vladimir Putin was clear: “Stop violating allied airspace, and know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Putin rolls his eyes.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that Poland has no

The fix is in.

The feminist group that secured the landmark Supreme Court ruling asserting that sex is binary has raised fears that a “Nicola Sturgeon crony” has been put in charge of implementing it in Scotland.

Minutes of a Scottish government working group set up to consider revisions to allegedly unlawful gender self-ID policies in place across the public sector reveal it was initially led by Louise Macdonald, director-general for communities.

Macdonald, then working in the charity sector, was hand-picked by Sturgeon to co-chair the then first minister’s independent taskforce on women and girls before joining the government in 2022 as director-general for the economy.

Fox guarding henhouse much?

Macdonald displays “she/her’ pronouns on her online CV and

Trade unions vow to continue trashing women.

Trade unions have vowed to oppose the Supreme Court ruling on transgender issues and have called official guidance on single-sex spaces “flawed”.

Delegates at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) voted unanimously in favour of a motion which said the April ruling went against the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

…

The unions’ motion added that since the Supreme Court ruling “there has been a surge of transphobic hate promoted by the far-Right for political advantage”.

Jenny Black, a transgender woman from Unison, told delegates: “This is not the preserve of the far-Right. It’s the Left as well, and it’s the Labour Government as well. They’re using this as a political

Sorry, it’s policy.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley had a bruising encounter with the BBC’s Emma Barnett on the Today Programme this morning over the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan. Rowley refused to say the arrest was a mistake, instead blaming “national policies” and Home Office rules. Rowley said he wouldn’t “pore over one case”.

How interesting. This “one case” is a matter of grotesque police overreaction and bullying, and the Comish sneers that he’s not going to bother paying attention to it. Bro it’s your job to pay attention to it. It’s also probably your job to say something less stupid in response to questions.

Barnett went on to ask whether the officers were “scared” not to arrest

The Scottish Greens are deranged.

The newly elected co-leaders of the Scottish Greens have said anyone who does not accept that trans women are women has no place in their party.

Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, who were chosen last month to succeed Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, used an interview on the BBC’s Scotcast to make clear that backing trans rights is a “red line” for the Greens. Anyone who does not accept that men are women has no place in their party.

That’s going to be a very tiny itty bitty barely visible party then.

Asked if someone who was committed to the climate cause but did not believe trans women were women would have a home