Sarah Barker is not impressed by Malcolm Gladwell’s mea culpa.

Hard-boiled editors, presidents of sports organizations, communications directors who were used to being screamed at, who were used to getting their way, they all smiled and nodded along meekly to the most nonsensical garbage, adopting absurd ideological language that they knew to be absurd ideological language…

Malcolm Gladwell, well known author, journalist, columnist, and all-around influential person, both in the sports world and beyond, came clean on that front, and my goodness, hasn’t it created a stir…

Gladwell quickly moved past that bombshell—that he knew back in 2022 that what these trans activists were saying was “nuts” but that he was “cowed” into not challenging it; that he agreed

CNN on Trump’s megalomania:

President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the city’s officials brace for an immigration crackdown.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post reads. Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”

…

Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Saturday called Trump’s post “not normal.”

To say the least.

On the one hand it’s absurdly childish, which I suppose is why my first reaction was to laugh, but on the other hand it’s outrageously fascist, … Read the rest

Trump declares war on Chicago. Not metaphorically.

President Donald Trump posted a meme on social media Saturday saying that Chicago “will find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” as the city’s officials brace for an immigration crackdown.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning … Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post reads. Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War.”

As people have been saying for months, this isn’t the approach to fascism, this is the thing itself.

Rep. Mike Quigley, who represents part of Chicago, said Saturday afternoon on CNN that the post is an example of Trump “edging

It just gets worse and worse and worse.

A retired police officer was visited by her former force over social media posts “dead-naming” a transgender activist, The Telegraph can reveal.

Cathy Larkman, who served with South Wales Police for more than three decades, was shocked when former colleagues turned up at her door near Port Talbot on Sept 4.

The former superintendent said police informed her that the home visit was related to a handful of social media posts about a transgender activist named Freda Wallace.

Ms Larkam had called the activist Fred, using the “dead” male name of the now transgender woman, and this act had been reported to the police.

What??? What the fucking fuck? What “act”? … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Full circle.

Again the sublime indifference to the futures of their children and grandchildren.

One class I had to take for my Ph.D. in Environmental Science was Economics, specifically Economics of Natural Resources. It was interesting to note that in the class, every thing he taught was about maximizing profit right now. In Economics, there is no future, there is only today. The idea that someone else ends up making the money once you’re dead is anathema. You must make as much money as is possible, and that means cutting the forests down, drilling the oil, and in general making mush of the environment right now.

It’s really all about the … Read the rest

Meanwhile today –

So let me get this straight. A lesbian is thrown out of Pride at the behest of a heterosexual Member of Parliament who of course is a Liberal Democrat. What a travesty. https://t.co/Cpc9WHQQJH

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) September 6, 2025

The MP in question is Zöe Franklin.

So, good policy – if you banish all the lesbians who raise the subject, no one will ever mention it or hear about it again.

Also, completely irrelevant but hilarious – she’s got the umlaut in the wrong place in her own name!! It’s supposed to be on the e, so that people know it rhymes with showy as opposed to show. … Read the rest

Via Tim Harris in comments, Paul Krugman in conversation with a couple of scientists, a few snippets thereof.

Peter Hotez, who has done yeoman work defending vaccines, and Michael Mann, a hero of the climate change wars, have a new book about the assault on science. I spoke with them and emerged both enlightened and frightened. Transcript follows…

I felt like maybe we climate scientists had something to offer in terms of experience and insight, into how to deal with a sort of coordinated, orchestrated anti-science of the sort that Peter and Tony Fauci and others in the vaccine world were dealing with.

Like I said, we climate scientists were being vilified and attacked decades ago, before it became

We might as well give up. It’s all women’s fault, always, all the time, no matter what. He didn’t hit her, she provoked him, end of story.

Police are investigating claims that a leader of the For Women Scotland campaign group harassed a pro-trans activist by vandalising his rainbow umbrella.

They’re not investigating, or just plain recording, the obvious fact that an anti-women activist harassed women who dared to speak up for their own rights.

Police Scotland has faced intense criticism from gender-critical campaigners and MSPs for allowing Tom Harlow, of the Cabaret Against the Hate Speech group, to disrupt a rally outside Holyrood on Thursday by attempting to drown out speeches with amplified music.

The force defended its

On and on it goes: the rule that says women are of no importance at all and can be bullied and slandered at will, while men who claim to be women are saints, diamonds, gods, martyrs, angels.

Look at Ian Bristow for example.

A Liberal Democrat councillor has been suspended after posting a threatening image aimed at gender-critical women.

Ian Bristow, a councillor in Hertfordshire, tweeted a picture of a girl aiming a gun, alongside the words “Shut the f— up, Terf”.

A councillor did that. A man grown up enough to be elected to office.

The image was sent to Natalie Bird, a gender-critical party member who was removed as a prospective parliamentary candidate for Wakefield in 2018 because

PBS has a few samples from Kennedy’s deranged testimony.… Read the rest

From a public Facebook post:

I’m no political expert, but I’ve lived inside the Beltway for the last 30+ years, worked briefly on the Hill as a mere child, and have had a backseat to a lot of what DC has to offer—I don’t think I’ve ever had a political experience quite like the RFKjr hearing today.

I couldn’t take a lot of photos because I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to kick me out for causing a disruption. Clips you may have seen on TV cannot possibly recreate the sheer extended bizarreness, dystopia, and surrealism of this event.

RFKjr has absolutely no respect for anyone at all, not even for FOTUS, the hand that feeds him.

I still wonder why he keeps advertising himself this way, as if he were charismatic and irresistible instead of toe-curlingly creepy. That stuck in the throat voice is torture to listen to, and his posh boy demeanor is torture x 10.

Also the “our founder” bit as if he were not talking about himself.

JK Rowling is threatening to sue our founder Jo Maugham unless we back down.

We look forward to seeing them in court. pic.twitter.com/WmhD1AiVzE

— Good Law Project (@GoodLawProject) September 5, 2025

… Read the rest

So there’s this fella Tom Harlow who calls himself “Cabaret Against the Hate” and chats about it as if it were a group but it’s really just the one guy. His thing is to make noise where women are talking and/or protesting. That’s it, that’s the cabaret: just drown out women talking. I wrote a post about him in October 2023.

He was in Glasgow yesterday making noise to drown out women talking and protesting.

Does that twat look "alarmed, upset and frightened" pic.twitter.com/aKn8wnXBYj

— lizmac #SALVO #ClaimOfRight (@elizabethm46248) September 5, 2025

… Read the rest

Yesterday at Westminster Magistrates’ Court:

A trans campaigner would have won “kudos” over the arrest of Graham Linehan, a prominent gender-critical activist, a court heard.

The Father Ted and IT Crowd creator is on trial accused of harassing a trans teenager with social media posts and damaging their mobile phone in October last year.

The 57-year-old told police his online posts about 18-year-old Sophia Brooks did not constitute harassment, Westminster magistrates’ court heard on Thursday.

Sophia Brooks aka Tarquin. He’s a male “trans teenager”.

During cross-examination, Sarah Vine KC, defending, said Brooks, a former police volunteer, wanted to get Linehan arrested for “kudos”.

She said that, as a prominent gender-critical campaigner, getting Linehan arrested would have been a “massive

This is a very nice Jolly Old England-type souvenir.

#FreeGrahamLinehan pic.twitter.com/XvXsTCp7HN

— Ashley (@Ashley__USA) September 4, 2025

… Read the rest

Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers

Cool. In a few months or weeks it will be people who criticize Trump.

By ordering the U.S. military to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat, President Trump used the military in a way that had no clear legal precedent or basis, according to specialists in the laws of war and executive power.

Mr. Trump is claiming the power to shift maritime counterdrug efforts from law enforcement rules to wartime rules. The police arrest criminal suspects for prosecution and cannot instead simply gun suspects down, except in rare circumstances where they pose an imminent threat to someone.

By contrast, in armed conflicts,

Circular firing squad.

I'm a fan of Janice Turner, and unlike her, both a fan and a friend of @Glinner. These lines are beneath Janice IMO. "Linehan, whose obsessive, narcissistic, often cruel social media presence has done more harm than good to the defence of women’s sex-based rights… 1/5 https://t.co/9UNP0VrYBE

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025

And I can assure you that it is as nasty as it gets. Everyone I know who has suffered at the hands of these lunatics, who have the police in their pocket, has been deeply and personally affected by it. Lucky you if you don't know that from experience. 3/5

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) September 4, 2025

I'm not going to add

A former Detective Chief Inspector at the Metropolitan Police is not impressed by recent events.

Is the Met on an inadvertent campaign to make Nigel Farage the Prime Minister? Politically he is the only winner from the arrest of the comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport on Monday, for a series of posts made on the social media platform X earlier this year.

The circumstances behind the arrest, by armed officers, are so bizarre that they almost beggar explanation. As a former Detective Chief Inspector in the Metropolitan Police I have a fairly good sense about what happened in this case – and how it could have been avoided.

By not having damn fools running the place is … Read the rest

I go outside for a few hours and all hell breaks loose.

A disgraced transgender police officer is believed to have reported gender-critic Father Ted creator Graham Linehan to the police over his social media posts.

Former Pc Lynsay Watson, who was born Alex Horwood, was sacked by Leicestershire Police for gross misconduct in 2023 after allegedly harassing a free speech campaigner and critic of gender ideology.

An anonymous social media account, believed to be linked to Watson, boasted in April this year of reporting Linehan, the Father Ted writer and gender sceptic, to the police over several social media posts he made about transgender issues. The account encouraged other transgender activists to do the same.

Watson has a well-documented

Sarah Phillimore explains why women don’t get the anxious tender obsequious concern and protection that is lavished on our trans siblings:

The police have long lived in the shadow of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the righteous anger directed at their failure to act promptly or at all to find his killers. The Macpherson report of 1999 was clear that as the police were institutionally racist, they could not be trusted to make proper assessments of any report of racial hatred and must therefore simply accept all complaints and investigate them thoroughly.

The ‘investigate’ bit often got neglected and soon a two tier system gained root – criminal offences and the ‘non crime hate incidents’ where any complaint, no