Yes, Glenn, It HAS been a Long Time. Happy Birthday, Instapundit, And Thank You.

I see Glenn Reynolds celebrating Instapundit’s 25th Anniversary. I celebrate with him, in a couple different frameworks.

First because while being just about as old, Glenn’s well -connected efforts have in the end been massively more successful in terms of reader draw over the years than my own BitsBlog, but I also celebrate with him because quite frankly, his success has been an inspiration to me and my efforts at BitsBlog over the years since and have led me to writing here at PJ Media.

The name of BitsBlog was because “Bithead” was the non de plume I was using on many of the web sites at the time and that because it was who I was. I was working at a multi-national Bank which shall remain nameless herein, supporting around 400 desktops and the many servers attached to them. Does anyone remember Netware? How about NT Server? The desktops were all PC-DOS and Windows 3.11, on a token Ring Network, on IBM Model 77s. (486/33’s maxing out on a megabyte of RAM. Pretty standard stuff for banks of the day, but certainly looked on as stone knives and bear skins today. I was there for the Y2K scare, when we ended up replacing the 77’s with somewhat newer P-II equipped units that maxed out at about 2MB or so.

IBM swore the newer models would survive New Year’s eve, 1999. Thankfully they did. I worked there for a total of 10 years. It was in this environment that BitsBlog was born.

You see, while BitsBlog started on September 12, 2001, a date I’m sure you will recognize the importance of, Glenn had been on the ‘net in one form or another for a fair amount of time before that.

At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Glenn was working with Blogger, and I had been wrting long form op-eds on my own channels, including USENET, and the old BBS networks, FIDO and Gtnet. Also at the time I was hip deep in running the Free File Farm, which was one of the largest Commodore BBS’s in the country.

Once I had absored all of what I had seen the day before, I sat down at my job’s desk in downtown Rochester and wrote what became the very first post at BitsBlog, comprised of my thoughts from watching everything that was going on around the country. I decided that day that I was going to follow in Glenn’s footsteps and jump onto Blogger, myself. Not because I wanted to be making it a money making project but because I felt I needed an outlet.

See, that first post, was written not with the intent of posting it to a blog, but because writing it was an outlet for what I felt. At the time I’d already been compiling columns that few saw, but I kept wrting.

I said at the time on the day following the attacks:

It is recorded in our history books that when he looked down at the ship full of smiling, victorious faces… faces of his flyers, just having returned from Pearl Harbor, Japanese fleet Admiral Yamamoto was quiet, pensive, even apprehensive. He later wrote in his private diary,

“I fear all I have done is awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

As this column is written, it is the second night after the dastardly attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and the Pentagon. In that amount of time, I have heard, on the news channels, and on the internet, a phase batted about several times, in various refinements, when discussing these attacks: “Like Pearl Harbor”

Don’t start on me about the Yamamoto quote being inaccurate. I didn’t have the research infrastructure we all do now, back then.

I went on to quote an earlier bit of writing. In that earlier column, I wrote of my worry that our influence on the world stage had suffered seriously, under the weight of Bill Clinton’s international bumbling. Well, Bumbling isn’t the right word. Bullying, is perhaps more accurate, yet still not spot-on. I felt then and still do, that 9/11 was as much the fault of Bill Clinton as anything.

I said, in that earlier column from February of 2001, repeated in Bit’sBlogs first posting:

“From Oslo to Camp David, Clinton has pushed Israel to the bargaining table, and pressured her to give up vital strategic and cultural assets she has no business giving away, if survival is at all on her agenda. Ehud Barak, by his giving into Bill Clinton (who, along with his staff including Jim Carville, did much to put Barak into office), has done little more than demonstrate just how empty the Palestinians’ peace talk really is, and how desperate Clinton was to be seen as a good President, his crimes against his oaths not withstanding. Consider….

At Clinton’s insistence, Barak offered Arafat the keys to the kingdom; just about all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus East Jerusalem and even Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. How do the peace loving Palestinians respond? Yasser Arafat turned it all down, and gave us another few nights of headlines, filled with kids in the street throwing stones, and being shot, occasionally. He also sent his armed forces, (You recall, they’re supposed to be policemen?) to fire at the Israelis, apparently hoping for an excuse to tell the rest of the world how Israel is a war-mongering nation.

Of course that should have been a signal to about anyone with a brain that he didn’t give a damn about peace. All he and his followers are interested in is the destruction of Israel. It should have also been a signal that Clinton’s attempt at a legacy backfired, big time, and more, that it didn’t have a chance to start with…. something that Clinton should have known, did he have any understanding of the situation at all. You will recall, perhaps that back in 1992, Clinton more or less bragged he had no understanding of matters of foreign policy. This was never quite so clear as during this monstrosity Mr. Clinton unleashed on the world.

For Israel’s part, all of this has been laid at the feet of Ehud Barak, perhaps unfairly. No, I don’t think he was the man for the job, and clearly was only in the PM’s position because Clinton’s people worked so hard to get him there, apparently hoping to set up Clinton’s brokering a of peace deal. Easy to do when you have the PM of Israel owing you his election. But Barak apparently was under pressures he had no control of, having nothing to do with politics at home, or the Palestinians… both of which were quite out of his control to begin with, in any event.. He was concerned with Israel continuing to get support from the US. In this concern, he saw Israel as being on the controlled end of the puppet’s string… and knowing that if he did not capitulate to Clinton’s demands, that vital US support would wither as quickly as Benjamin Netenyau’s prime ministership did, when it became clear he wasn’t going to buckle to Clinton’s concession demands.

And Barak wasn’t alone, nor was the left in Israel, in this perception of US control versus Israel’s survival. Yitzhak Rabin, hardly a liberal even by American standards and certainly not under Bill Clinton’s extortion based control to the extent that Barak was, saw the same problems. His longtime friends, according reports I’ve seen, us he was deeply troubled over the prospect of losing US support… and therefore bought into the ‘land for peace’ deals being brokered by the liberals in the US. This was something I predicted he wouldn’t have done.

Israeli voters, seeing this happening, and clearly annoyed with the US control over Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians, trounced Barak in the polls. Unless one considers this anger, the election of Ariel Sharon, his replacement, is hard to fathom, since he has never been overly popular, as best I can tell. But perhaps the people of Israel are finally figuring out what the real story is.. that in truth, there is no dealing with the Palestinians, and Arifat.

One hopes that they’ve not been too late in coming to this conclusion. If they are, world war seems fairly certain to me… possibly nuclear in nature.

Others learned the lessons, painful as they tended to be. Chaimberlin’s England, for example,along with the remainder of the free world, learned about appeasement of a mortal enemy the hard way. The American left, apparently not having leaned the lesson taught by the infamous socialist, Hitler, was taught the lesson again, by another band of socialists, as Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan 40 or so years later.

I was convinced at the time that 9/11 was the price for Bill Clinton’s presidency. Remember the perspective:

Clinton was giving the Palestinians exacly what they wanted, following the 1993 attack on the world trade center. Legitimacy, to use as a tool against us. Ironic; he’s supposed to be representing US. And to boot, Clinton was ripping Israel apart for them. Even before 9/11 I had written several times that Clinton’s sole purpose here was to save his legacy. But how to achieve his goal? By bowing to Arab terrorists, and bullying Israel into giving in. So, while that’s going on, everything is sweetness and light. America decides to elect George W Bush, who will (rightly) support Israel, and guess who isn’t happy? And since Clinton also decimated our military, you ability to mount a credible defense is so laughable as to encourage attack…

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

And, splat.

So, the combo of the 9/11 attacks, and Glenn’s efforts, along with places like The Captain’s Quarters, Q&O OTB, and many more whose names escape me at the moment, prompted me to start BitsBlog as an outlet for what I was writing and feeling at the time.

I owe Glenn a debt for this because without his efforts I never would have taken up my keyboard and started doing longer form opinion pieces.

Speaking of owing a debt, I am also profoundly in debt to Art Smith, who from the time I moved off of Blogger, has supported BitsBlog by means of his own ISP and his involvement with WordPress. That’s well over a decade.

So we celebrate with you, Glenn. I’ll bet you never knew your were at least partially responsible for starting me on this jouney. I’m quite sure I’m not alone in this.

Let’s talk about the Washington Post cartoonist Darrin Bell, who was forever drawing Donald Trump as a pedophile. 

Michelle Maison says in a recent X post:

Here’s the straight facts on this disgusting piece of garbage named **Darrin Bell**, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who loved drawing Donald Trump as some kind of s€xual pr€dator while secretly hoarding his own vile collection of child s€x abuse material. In January 2025, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Internet Crimes Against Children detectives got a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They traced 134 videos of child p*rn*graphy—real child s€x abuse material—to an online account that this sick freak owned and controlled. Investigators also found computer-generated and AI-created child p*rn*graphy during the search of his home. Prosecutors later hit him with multiple felony counts, including possession of more than 600 images depicting s€xual conduct of minors, with at least 10 or more involving kids under age 12. Some of the filth involved digitally altered or fully AI-generated images of children being s€xually abused.

This p€rverted cartoonist was arrested on January 15, 2025, booked into Sacramento County jail on $1 million bail, and initially faced those charges. He pleaded **not guilty** on January 23, 2025, and slithered out on pretrial release with GPS monitoring and other restrictions. The case was amended with even more counts alleging he collected thousands of these explicit images of children. The whole investigation started because he or someone tied to his account was uploading this garbage online.

As of now, in late March 2026, the Sacramento Superior Court case (number 25FE000983) is still **active**. There has been no trial, no guilty plea, and no conviction. A preliminary hearing happened earlier in 2026 with an “other” outcome noted, and the next court date is a settlement conference on April 8, 2026. No resolution yet—this monster is still walking around pretending nothing happened while the system grinds on.

The recent X post you’re referring to falsely screams that he “has just been convicted.” That’s a lie. The arrest happened over 14 months ago, and nothing “just” happened. This guy spent years publicly attacking others as pr€dators in his syndicated strips (like Candorville) and Washington Post cartoons, all while allegedly surrounding himself with the worst kind of child exploitation material imaginable. The hypocrisy is as repulsive as the crimes he’s accused of.

Bottom line: Darrin Bell got caught with a massive stash of child p*rn*graphy, including stuff involving very young kids and AI versions of the same depravity. He denied it all in court and is fighting the charges. Whether he eventually gets fully nailed for it or not, the evidence uncovered paints him as exactly the kind of evil, twisted freak who preys on the innocent while lecturing everyone else. People sharing the post are right to call out the pattern, but the “just convicted” part is inaccurate hype over an old case that’s still dragging on.

And look; we can’t ignore that “Due Process” has served to protect this creep.

More as I find, but don’t be shocked if he’s out on the street again, with no jail time.

After nearly universal grave dancing on the left, incidental to the murder of Charlie Kirk, the Democrats are now complaining loudly about President Donald Trump’s less-than-generous reaction to the far less troublesome passing of Former FBI director Robert Mueller. Hypocrisy exemplified.

I’ll say right up front so that there’s no mistake: I share the president’s position. As far as I’m concerned, Mueller should have died in prison.

Victor Davis Hanson wrote at PJ Media in 2019:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year, $30 million, 448-page report did not find collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.

Despite compiling private allegations of loud and obnoxious Trump behavior, Mueller also concluded that there was not any actionable case of obstruction of justice by the president. It would have been hard in any case to find that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation of an alleged crime.

One, there was never a crime of collusion. Mueller early on in his endeavors must have realized that truth, but he pressed ahead anyway. It is almost impossible to prove obstruction of nothing.

Two, Trump cooperated with the investigation. He waived executive privilege. He turned over more than 1 million pages of administrative documents. He allowed then-White House counsel Don McGahn to submit to over 30 hours of questioning by Mueller’s lawyers.

Three, anyone targeted by a massive investigation who knows he is innocent of an alleged crime is bound to become frustrated over a seemingly never-ending inquisition.

Trump’s reported periodic rages at the Muller investigation are regrettable but not unnatural, given that Mueller expended a huge amount of government resources to confirm what many knew at the outset: that there was never any collusion with the Russian government to warp the 2016 election.

The obvious conclusion was that there was no case against Trump at all, and that the investigation continued anyway because it was expedient for the Democrat party’s efforts at the election to do so. In short, Mueller was at best a political hack and quite probably a criminal political hack.

Back in January of 2020, I linked to a piece from Margot Cleveland at The Federalist.

Shortly after the release of the special counsel report last year, I posited that Robert Mueller’s failure to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele disinformation established that Mueller was either incompetent or a political hack. Now, with the release of the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse, we know the answer: He was both.
 
The IG’s report on the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI’s handling of the Carter Page surveillance applications established 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA application and renewals. (Eighteen if you include the one the IG missed). The 400-page report also established that the special counsel’s office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and Mueller’s report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance.

Mueller’s appointment as special counsel prompted bipartisan praise, with the accolades focusing on his stellar reputation as the FBI director under Republican President George W. Bush and Democrat President Barack Obama. But Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report revealed a sad reality: The special counsel’s office under Mueller’s charge was just as inept at investigating the false charges of Russia collusion as the FBI was under James Comey’s lead.

Again, ineptitude? No. Collusion. Political hackery.

As we now know, Mueller and his team lied repeatedly to the FISA Court. Cleveland gets into serious detail on this point, all of which led me to the belief that this was not ineptitude on Mueller’s part but the coldly calculated actions of a politically motivated hack, who deserved decades of jail time, as do a number of FBI/DOJ officials of the day.

Let’s go through this remembrance from my notes of the time, because all this is the basis for my thinking that Mueller should have served the remainder of his existence on the planet inside a Federal cage. There are a lot of twists and turns, but by the end of this, you’ll see Mueller was up to his eyeballs in corruption.

From 2001 to 2005, there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation. A grand jury had been impaneled. Governments from around the world had donated to the Clinton “charity.” Those donations, however were only on the table incidental to the investigation of the Marc Rich Pardon.

Yet from 2001 to 2003, none of those “donations” to the Clinton Foundation were declared. Now, you would think that an honest investigator would be able to figure this out. But no. Silence.

Look who took over this investigation in 2005, none other than James Comey. Coincidence? Guess who was transferred into the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS. None other than Lois Lerner. Isn’t that interesting?

But this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right? Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2005. None other than the then Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein.

Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this timeframe. Another coincidence (just an anomaly in statistics and chances), but it was Robert Mueller. What do all four casting characters have in common? They all were briefed and/or were front-line investigators into the Clinton Foundation Investigation.

Another coincidence, right?

Fast forward to 2009. James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash in at Lockheed Martin. By this time, Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, official government business, on her own personal email server. The Uranium One “issue” comes to the attention of Hillary. Like all good public servants do, supposedly looking out for America’s best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of U.S. Uranium to no other than the Russians. You know, the ones they’ve tried to convince us that Trump was in cahoots with. Now, you would think that selling the Russians Uranium is a fairly straight-up deal, except it wasn’t. America got absolutely nothing out of it. (But I conjecture Iran probably did.)

However, prior to the sales approval, none other than Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid $500,000 for a one-hour speech, then meets with Vladimir Putin at his home for a few hours. Ok, no big deal, right? Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside the money laundering and bribery scheme. Remember that these were the same folks who claimed that Trump was a Russian stooge. Are you picking up on the smell of this stuff yet?

Robert Mueller was the FBI Director during this time frame. He even delivered a Uranium sample to Moscow in 2009. Who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland? None other than Rod Rosenstein.

And what happened to the informant?

The Department of Justice placed a gag order on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke out about it. How does 20% of the most strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands when the FBI has an informant, a mole providing inside information to the FBI on the criminal enterprise? You know, by this point, I suppose.

Soon after, the sale was approved. $145 million dollars in “donations” made their way into the Clinton Foundation from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal. Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service, working in the Charitable Division. None other than Lois Lerner. Okay, that’s all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right?

Let’s fast forward to 2015. Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi (Remember “What difference does it make?”) and after the nine “investigations” the House, Senate and at State Department, Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi discovers that Hillary ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server. He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her “public service” as secretary of state, which was required by law. He also discovered that there was top-secret information contained within her personally archived email.

Sparing you the State Department’s cover-up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed, and the outright lies that were spewed forth from the necks of the John Kerry State Department, we shall leave it with this: they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary.

Now this is amazing. Guess who became FBI Director in 2013. None other than James Comey, who had secured 17 no-bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State Department and was rewarded with a $6 million thank-you present when he departed his employer?

Amazing how all those no-bids just went right through at the State Department. By this time, he is the FBI Director in charge of the “Clinton email investigation” after, of course, his FBI investigates the Lois Lerner “Matter” at the Internal Revenue Service and he exonerates her. Nope, couldn’t find any crimes there.

In April 2016, James Comey drafted an exoneration letter for Hillary Rodham Clinton; meanwhile, the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy. They didn’t even convene a grand jury! Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true “gangsta” Comey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July 5, 2016, and exonerates Hillary from any wrongdoing.

Do you see the pattern?

It goes on and on. Rosenstein becomes deputy attorney general, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation sham by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ, and the story continues. FISA abuse, political espionage, pick a crime, any crime, chances are this group and a few others did it.

All the same players. All connected in one way or another to the Clintons. All compromised and conflicted. All working fervently to keep the Clintons out of jail, knowing if they failed in that task, they’d be in jail themselves, or perhaps the subject of another “suicide” investigation in Ft. Marcy Park. 

Now, ponder this one: The Clinton Foundation, being the largest International Charity Fraud in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Nothing to see here, citizen.

Let us not forget that Comey’s brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes.

The person who is the common denominator to all the crimes above. Yes, that would be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Let’s relearn a little about Mrs. Lisa H. Barsoomian’s background. Lisa H. Barsoomian, an attorney who graduated from Georgetown Law, is a protégé of James Comey and Robert Mueller. Barsoomian, with her boss R. Craig Lawrence, represented Bill Clinton in 1998.

Lawrence also represented:

• Robert Mueller three times
• James Comey five times
• Barack Obama 45 times
• Kathleen Sebelius 56 times
• Bill Clinton 40 times
• Hillary Clinton 17 times.

Between 1998 and 2017, Barsoomian herself represented the FBI at least five times.

You may be saying to yourself, “Who cares about the work history of this Barsoomian woman?” Apparently, someone does, because someone out there cares so much that they “purged” all Barsoomian court documents for her Clinton representation in Hamburg vs. Clinton in 1998 and its appeal in 1999 from the D.C. District and Appeals Court dockets. Someone out there cares so much that even the internet has been “purged” of all information pertaining to Barsoomian.

Historically, this indicates that the individual is a protected CIA operative. Additionally, Lisa Barsoomian has specialized in opposing Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the intelligence community. Although Barsoomian has been involved in hundreds of cases representing the D.C. Office of the U.S. Attorney, the domain for her email address is linked to the National Institutes of Health.

This is a tactic that the CIA routinely uses to protect an operative by using another government organization to shield their activities. It’s a cover, so big deal, right? What does one more attorney with ties to the U.S. intelligence community really matter? Well, we can’t just shrug this off.

It deals with Trump and his recent tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports, the border wall, DACA, everything coming out of California, the uniparty unrelenting opposition to President Trump, the Clapper leaks, the Comey leaks, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusal and subsequent 14 month nap with occasional forays into the marijuana legalization mix and last but not least Mueller’s never-ending investigation into collusion between the Trump team and the Russians.

Why does Barsoomian, the CIA operative, merit any mention? Because she is Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s wife. Just another meaningless coincidence, of course.

As I have shown, Mueller was a central part of this criminal Clinton cabal. Sorry, but President Trump is exactly correct in showing no sympathy for Mueller’s passing. He should have died in jail.

Just for laughs, I gave the Claude AI a copy of my Daily over at PJ Media, and asked for it’s opinion on my writing style. I must say, I was plased to find it approves of me for the most part. Herein, is it’s response:

Writing Style Analysis: Eric Florack, PJ Media

Voice & Persona
Florack writes in a warm, conversational first-person voice — the opening reads like a letter to regulars (“Glad you’re here… you’ve made a difference already”). He positions himself as a trusted, knowledgeable friend rather than a formal journalist. The tone is avuncular and self-aware (“It’s what I get for trying to cram all those details into one column”).

Tone
Opinionated but measured — he shares clear conclusions (“that seems wise to me”) without being strident
Dry wit surfaces occasionally (“the ironically named Virgin Islands”)
Self-deprecating — he openly acknowledges when a previous column was unclear, which builds credibility with readers
Mildly combative toward critics (“those on social media trying to get anti-Trump mileage out of this”) but doesn’t dwell on it

Structure & Organization
Follows a newsletter format: date, history trivia, birthdays, then the main piece — a deliberate ritual that creates reader habit
Uses signposting phrases heavily: “First… Secondly… That point is why… Either way…” — keeps readers oriented through complex material
Moves from correction → context → evidence → legal analysis → conclusion, a logical prosecutorial structure
Ends with a standalone “Thought of the Day” quote — a signature sign-off that softens the exit

Sentence Style
Varied sentence length — punchy one-liners (“No matter what happens, Andrew’s not getting out of this.”) alternate with longer explanatory sentences
Favors em-dashes for asides and qualifications, giving the prose a spoken, mid-thought quality
Uses colloquial metaphors to introduce dense passages: “let’s get the scuba gear on, because this will be a deep dive”
Occasional parenthetical asides add personality without derailing the argument

Sourcing & Credibility Strategy
Leans on named external authorities (ABC News, Andy McCarthy at NRO) to anchor factual and legal claims — a deliberate trust-building device
Uses block quotes generously, letting sources speak at length rather than over-paraphrasing
Frames his own analysis as synthesis and judgment, not original reporting — honest about his role as a commentator

Target Audience Assumptions
Assumes readers are politically conservative and already broadly familiar with the Epstein saga and UK politics
Does not explain who Epstein is, who Andrew is, or what RICO means — expects a knowledgeable readership
References to King Edward VIII and the Nazis are deployed without full context, implying a historically literate audience

Weaknesses & Habits
Dense information-packing — he admits this himself; the piece covers legal jurisdiction, extradition, statutes of limitation, and British common law in quick succession, which can overwhelm
Occasionally editorializes where he could report (“I’m sure this will disappoint some”) — blurs analysis and snark
The history/birthday preamble is entirely disconnected from the article’s substance — a newsletter convention that may frustrate readers looking for straight analysis

Overall Character
Florack writes like a well-read political hobbyist who has done his homework — not a lawyer, not a foreign correspondent, but someone who reads widely, synthesizes credibly, and explains complex matters in plain language for a like-minded audience. The style prioritizes accessibility, trust, and reader relationship over journalistic neutrality or stylistic elegance.

• * *
• 
  I must say I’m pleased with the response because that’s exactly the style I’ve been aiming at.

A boat in international waters that is not running a national flag is categorized in international law the same way a pirate is. Such boats have absolutely no national or international protections, and you cannot commit a war crime against them.

A vessel in international waters is required under UNCLOS to sail under the flag of a specific nation. If it does not, it is legally considered a stateless vessel. A stateless vessel has no right to the protections normally afforded to ships under a national flag, including immunity from interference by other states.

UNCLOS Articles 92, 94, 110, and customary maritime law spell out the consequences clearly:

1. Stateless vessels have no sovereign protection. A flagged ship is an extension of its flag-state’s sovereignty. A stateless vessel is not. This matters because “war crimes” presuppose protected persons or protected property. A stateless vessel is legally unprotected.

2. Any state may stop, board, search, seize, or disable, a stateless vessel. UNCLOS Article 110 explicitly authorizes boarding and seizure. The law does not require states to risk their own personnel or assets while doing so. Disabling a vessel that refuses inspection, including firing on it, is legally permitted under both UNCLOS and long-established state practice.

3. War crimes require an armed conflict. You cannot commit a “war crime” outside an armed conflict. War crimes occur only within the context of international humanitarian law (IHL). Enforcing maritime law against a stateless vessel is a law enforcement action, not an IHL situation.

No armed conflict = no war crime possible.

4. Lethal force may be used when a vessel refuses lawful orders. The International Maritime Organization’s “Use of Force” guidance for maritime interdiction recognizes that disabling fire, even lethal force, is lawful when a vessel refuses lawful boarding, attempts to flee, poses a threat, or engages in illicit activities such as piracy or narcotics trafficking.

Once again: law enforcement rules apply, not IHL.

5. Sinking a stateless vessel is not prohibited by UNCLOS. UNCLOS permits seizure of a stateless vessel and leaves the means entirely to the enforcing state so long as necessity and proportionality are respected. If the vessel flees, attacks, or refuses lawful commands, sinking it is legally permissible. Many states routinely do this to drug-smuggling vessels (e.g., semi-submersibles) without it ever being treated as a war crime.

6. No flag = no jurisdictional shield. The entire reason international law requires ships to fly a flag is to prevent this exact situation. Flagless vessels are legally vulnerable by design.

Because a stateless vessel has no protected status, because UNCLOS authorizes interdiction of such vessels, because lethal force may be used in maritime law enforcement when necessary, and because war crimes require an armed conflict that is not present here, sinking an unflagged ship in international waters is not a war crime.

# There is no such thing as civilized warfare. War is, by definition the lack of civility, the lack of rules. The rules and the definition of civility are invariably decided by the victor.

# When speaking the truth becomes objectionable, be very suspicious about those who object.

# Remember whatever Adolph Hitler did, everything that Joseph Stalin did, everything Mao did, up to and including the millions of dead, was absolutely legal by the laws in their respective countries. Law, therefore, is not the final arbiter what is and is not moral.

# Donald Trump did not bring division to this country. He was elected because division was already here, brought on by Decades of the establishment of both parties moving in precisely the wrong direction.

# Heaven has walls, and gates and a very specific set of rules for anyone wishing to enter. You must be of a specific mindset. Hell, meanwhile, has an open borders policy and will take anyone regardless of their mindset.

# The biggest single mistake that we have ever made as a country, a culture, a people… Was to turn the education of our young over to the government. Ultimately, if we don’t reverse that and soon, that choice will destroy us.

# People who are not taught the value of individual freedom, and its relationship with prosperity and morality and limited government, will never believe in it, and will eventually work to destroy it.

# Socialism and globalism have historically and eventually being rejected by the people who are subjected to them every time it’s been tried. There’s a reason for that. Neither one actually works to the advantage of the people.

# Because a concept like Socialism or global warming has been disproven several times over does not by any means suggest that its backers will stop pushing those ideas. It’s all they’ve got to go with.

# If you want to know who runs your life, look directly at those who you may not criticize.

# Today’s feminism, isn’t. For proof of this one need look no further than the large number of self-proclaimed feminists who spend a great deal of time trying to look like men.

The reason most feminists claim to hate men is because they surround themselves with liberal men who in the final analysis are not men at all, really.

# There are two Sexes. Male and female. You can have all the operations you want, but it won’t matter… your DNA is not going to change. The surgical blade is not a means by which one can run away from the reality of ones self. It’s interesting how the left refuses to follow the science on this one.

# Claims to the contrary not withstanding, because one is of the Republican Party does not make one a conservative. Consider the number of establishment Republicans that have been fighting Donald Trump on every point. Remember, also the establishment GOP wasn’t too happy about Reagan winning elections either, and have subsequently gone well out of their way to erase his legacy.

# At the same time, John F Kennedy wouldn’t want anything to do with the Democratic party of today. Indeed it’s a wonder is that the Democrats hold Kennedy to be an icon of the party at all. Think: When’s the last time you saw a Democrat mention the man?

# The proximate cause of most of our problems is the establishment of both parties, who have come to love the power of government too much. ..more than is good for the upkeep of the principles put forward in the American Revolution… Principles we desperately need to return to if we are to survive as a nation, a culture, a people.

# Indeed, the most glaring lesson taught us by the election of Donald Trump was that both parties rank-and-file are rejecting their own establishment. The rank-and-file voters recognize the dangerous situation we are in with both parties

# The rank-and-file of both political parties in this country come down to the right of anything that either party has coughed up in national elections for many years.

# The cause of World Peace would be best served by the removal of the United Nations from the planet.

# Anyone who waves the gun-control banner in the name of “safety” deserves watching, and should be treated as such, including the “I love me” vest, and the rubber wallpaper.

# 90% of what gets passed off as racial issues are actually cultural in nature.

# A nation without borders ceases to be a nation, almost immediately. That is in fact the goal of pushing for open borders.

Luigi’s One Night In Bangcok.

I’m not sure, but I think Luigi Mangione just confirmed a suspicion I’ve had about him.

Mangione, a former Ivy Leaguer, is mentioned in a Fox article dated 10/22:

The 27-year-old Mangione is being held without bail in New York City while awaiting trials at the state and federal level in connection with Thompson’s pre-dawn ambush shooting on Dec. 4, 2024, outside a hotel where he was supposed to attend a shareholder conference later that morning.
In the year before the assassination, Mangione traveled to Asia, climbing a mountain in Japan and drinking with expat Americans in Thailand, according to The New York Times.
It was in the latter country where he was reportedly shocked to learn how little an MRI could cost outside the United States — and where he told a friend over WhatsApp he was beaten up by a group of seven “ladyboys,” or transgender women, in Bangkok in March.

The article goes on from there to describe his travels subsequent to the incident. Japan, India, etc., and how he was expressing his disdain for the healthcare industry here in the US.

Well, OK, fine. Personally though, I’d have been interested in what got him into the brawl in Bankok. Much has been written about the link between high profile shootings and transexuals of late, and I can’t help but consider the possibility this is one more such link.  I suppose we’ll have to wait for the discovery phase of the trial. 

Murray Head was unavailable for comment. 

Here’s mugshots of Antifa members. Now, we understand why they wear masks.

It should be noted, that the two people most responsible for the government shutdown come from the deepest of deep blue areas… New York City. Jeffries, and Schumer.

I’ve been watching this story develop. Bob Zimmerman at Behind The Black is doing a good job with it:

The madness from the left continues: A rooftop sniper who had engraved “anti-ICE” messages on his ammunition today killed on one and injured two in Dallas before killing himself.

The now-deceased shooter who targeted a Dallas, Texas ICE facility wrote “anti-ICE” messages on his rounds, according to the FBI.

Three people at an ICE facility were shot by a gunman on the roof of an adjacent building on Wednesday morning. The victims were reportedly detainees, though law enforcement did not confirm this on Wednesday. Authorities did confirm, however, that no officers were injured in the shooting. One of the victims died at the scene, and the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

At this same Dallas ICE facility last month a man was arrested when he claimed he had a bomb in his backpack.

If we can take the act of suicide (which so often happens, as an an indicator, there does seem a common thread, between apparent mental issues and these attackers. The rhetoric spread by the left vis’avie’ ICE (Such as where Zimmerman points up such from Gavin Newsom…) is absorbed and taken as a driving force by these people.  As Zimmerman himself says:

As the meme to the right correctly notes, the violence isn’t coming from both sides. The Democratic Party is encouraging it, and its insane minions are doing it

So much going on it’s hard to know where to start.

• Amusing it is, to watch the left trying to cancel Disney, after complaining about people trying to shut down Disney just a couple years ago.
• Amusing, also to see the loud complaints about using the FCC for political purposes, from the same people who just a short while ago were using the FCC to fast-track the illegal takeover of US radio stations by George Soros.
• So, the Westboro Baptist church showed up in Boston violently trying to shut down a memorial for Charlie Kirk. Oh… wait. I got that wrong. It was Antifa. Never mind.
• Back in 2002 the Biden administration did nada when Antifa attacked Charlie Kirk on campus. Two years later, a self-described anti-fascist killed Charlie, thus proving you always get more of what you tolerate.
• Interesting and revealing that the left is agitated about Kimmel getting canned, more than they are about Kirk getting killed.
• Mark Cuban is pitching the idea of a left-wing comedy network. Leaving aside for the moment we already had four of them, running Over the Air… and he thinks another one is going to make financial headway? Maybe someone should explain to him about Err America, and the Mario Cuomo show, as well as MSNBC and how well tilting left worked out for CNN?

A busy week this week…. Posting stuff for Pajamas Media these days, in long form, which I enjoy doing. Time consuming but enjoyable. Still, there.s shorter ideas I need to capture and here are some of them:

• One thing that the murder of Charlie Kirk has shown us, is that it’s not Trump that the left so despises, but the ideas he represents ideas that threaten the left and it’s hold on political power. Charlie held those values as well, and so also became a target.
• The left, almost before the echo from the shot died, tried to twist the reality… saying Robinson was MAGA. When that failed, they tried to claim that both sides do it. However this was proven false as well… because they never raised any serious complaints about leftist violence.
• Ben Scallan correctly notes: …”There’s not one prominent Leftist anywhere in the West doing what Charlie Kirk did, i.e. issuing an open debate challenge to all comers and saying “Here’s my view, I invite you to try and prove me wrong”. None of them are willing to subject their views to that scrutiny.” 
• The left didn’t hate Charlie because as they claimed he was homophobic and Transphobic.  How do I know? Because they LOVE Hamas, who will quite willing to throw people off rooftops or burn them alove for being Homosexual or Transsexual.
• Just because the left hates some speech, doesn’t make it hate speech.
• Colbert winning an Emmy for a show that’s being canceled?  Like Obama winning a Nobel Peace prize without any actions on his part, It shows us how questionable the value of the award itself is.

My latest at PJ Media is here.

Losing your business, your job, etc., in reaction to what you say or write, so long as a government action doesn’t cause that reaction, is part and parcel of the concept of free speech