More On UK Press And Policing

Carl Benjamin, a UK YouTuber who posts as Sargon of Akkad, raises a question that exposes another puzzling difference between both the press and the criminal justice systems in the US and the UK. But before I get to that, I have a problem with UK pronunciation. Benjamin attended Birkbeck College at the University of London, which is mid-ranked, and he seems to have a more or less standard university-level pronunciation, but he mumbles. I find him so hard to follow that, as with many UK and Australian YouTubers, I have to turn on closed captioning to be sure of what tbey're saying.

And frankly, I think that with surprising frequency, it's because these people mumble, not because of their usage. There's an enormous tolerance for mumbling in both Australia and the UK, and that includes people like politicians and broadcast professionals who shouldn't be mumbling, at least in the US. I'm more and more convinced I wouldn't be happy anywhere in the British Commonwealth, but the fact that everyone mumbles is just the least of it.

Mumbling or not, Benjamin points to a story in the Guardian that I haven't been able to locate, but I did find an equivalent version here: UK Police Arrest 12 in Far-Right Terror Plot.

This story has rapidly evolved into one of the most scrutinized incidents related to national security in the UK for the week. This is not only due to the size of the crowd that was supposedly planned to be attacked but also due to the bigger picture in relation to the overall threat level of terrorism in the country. The police stated that the case involves “right-wing terrorism.”

The central gathering in relation to this investigation was the UK Ijtima, which is an important Islamic conference organized at the Shrubland Hall in Suffolk. This was one of the biggest Muslim religious gatherings in the nation and featured an estimated attendance of 15,000 individuals over the weekend. While the sheer size of the event made it important from a public perspective, it is the claim that a group with far right tendencies planned to launch an attack against the event that led to the heightened security concerns. Counter terrorism authorities claimed that the event was brought to an end prematurely following the discovery of what they termed as credible and serious threat. This ensured that thousands of individuals attending the event were able to leave safely without any incident, since there were no reports of anyone getting injured.

The incident also fits a wider pattern in which extremist actors target public events for maximum impact and visibility. In this case, the symbolic value of a major Islamic event would have made it an especially potent target for anti-Muslim violence, which is why the police response was so urgent and heavily coordinated.

Farther down, there's a subhead, "What Police Have Said So Far":

Police have stressed that the investigation is ongoing and that searches are still being carried out. They have not released a detailed operational timeline, nor have they named the suspects publicly. That is consistent with the early stages of a counter-terrorism case, where disclosure is limited to avoid compromising further arrests, evidence gathering, or eventual prosecutions.

By now, the established facts are obvious – 12 arrests, a potential plot by far-right terrorists, a Muslim rally that attracted some 15,000 people, an early shutdown of the event and search operations in England. The rest of the story depends on what information police and prosecution get in the course of their investigation. Should there be any charges brought, the criminal process would help to understand whether those suspects had been working within the larger organization or not. It is especially significant how the authorities have labeled the incident as terrorism and not just a hate crime. It means that police considers the accused activities to be the ones that went beyond extreme statements and reached the point of a planned mass murder.

So, all police are saying is that this plot has gone beyond just crazy talk and reached the stage of a "planned mass murder" -- but because this is just preliminary, this is all they'll say. As far as I can see, this just isn't how these things are done in the US. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What type of substantiating information does US law enforcement provide when announcing an investigation into a terrorist conspiracy?" It answered,

When U.S. law enforcement agencies—primarily the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ)—announce an investigation, arrest, or indictment involving a terrorist conspiracy, they substantiate their claims using specific types of evidence detailed in public press releases, press conferences, and unsealed court affidavits. Because a legal "conspiracy" requires proving an agreement and an "overt act" taken toward committing the crime, the information focuses heavily on intent and pre-operational activity.

The primary categories of substantiating information provided include:

Encrypted Messaging Chats: Explicit discussions of targets, timing, and tactics extracted from platforms like Signal, WhatsApp, or Telegram.

Undercover Operations: Statements, audio, or video captured by undercover FBI employees or confidential informants who posed as fellow extremists or arms dealers to document the suspect's intent.

To establish that the plot moved beyond mere talk, law enforcement details the "overt steps" the suspects took:

Seized Blueprints and Manifestos: Handwritten or typed operational guides outlining targets, bomb-making instructions, and strategic objectives (e.g., specific target logs like "Operation Midnight Sun").

Proving "material support to terrorism" involves tracing the flow of goods and money.

Weapons and Ammunition Stockpiles: Detailed manifests of seized equipment, including firearms, body armor, and specialized equipment like armed drones.

Benjamin notices the game the UK police are playing here. At 4:22:

I would think this is a massive terror cell spread across the country of right-wing extremists, I guess. Just far-right terror, extreme right-wing terror, as they call it, and 12 of them have been arrested 'cause they were gonna do what? to one of the largest gatherings of Muslims in the country? Do we not want more information about this? I'm surprised Keir Starmer hasn't mentioned this. I can't believe that the mainstream, Keir Starmer, Ed Davey, you know, the Greens, they're not all condemning this. I thought Muslims were the face of modern Britain, guys,and you found this 12-person terror cell across the country that I assume was going to do something terrible at this event, and yet we don't have any real information on this.

And not only that, but, at the link above,

Counter terrorism authorities claimed that the event was brought to an end prematurely following the discovery of what they termed as credible and serious threat. This ensured that thousands of individuals attending the event were able to leave safely without any incident, since there were no reports of anyone getting injured.

So "authorities" learned of this terrible, terrible threat, but all they needed to do was suggest the Muslims go home early, and no bomb exploded, there was no mass shooting, everyone was fine. Well, I'm the coordinator of our neighborhood rhinoceros patrol. Rhinoceroses are very dangerous creatures. The fact that we have no rhinoceroses in our neighborhood is due entirely to my effective coordination of the rhinoceros patrol. The link above concludes,

At the political level, the case may feed discussions about online hate networks, extremist forums, and the need for stronger prevention measures. Far-right violence often grows in environments where anti-Muslim ideas are normalized, repeated, and escalated. If the allegation in this case is substantiated in court, it will likely become another example of how ideological radicalization can move from rhetoric to concrete operational planning.

The strongest immediate conclusion is that British police acted in time to disrupt a potentially devastating attack on a major Muslim gathering. The deeper consequence is that the case once again places far-right extremism at the center of Britain’s security debate, where it belongs as a live and serious threat.

The only thing I can conclude from a US perspective is that this UK investigation has been at best half-baked. It sounds as thougn just a little more work -- that is, if there's any substance at all to these allegations -- would have brought up just a small fraction of the kind of evidence that US law enforcement would bring to the announcement of any such conspiracy. The US attorney would be standing beside tables of guns, ammunition, homemade bombs, tapped phone coversations, on and on. In the UK, nothing remotely like this.

Hey, I'm sorry, all this chatter about how the US and UK are so similar is just baloney. The whole UK system has enabled this for hundreds of years. A lot of work that was done by the US Founders just never got done in the UK, and we're seeing the result.

Another UK Police Scandal

There's been very little in US media about the murder of retired UK Reform politician Ann Widdecombe, which took place at her home in southwest England, apparently on July 8.

The murder of former British politician Ann Widdecombe has sent shockwaves through the country’s political circles, with the case now referred to the counterterrorism police.

Widdecombe, 78, was found dead at her home in southwest England last week with what police had described as “serious injuries”.

On Friday, Devon and Cornwall police arrested a 28-year-old white man on suspicion of her murder. But on Monday, the man in custody was rearrested by counterterrorism police, now on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of “terrorism”.

Head of the national counterterrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said on Monday they were “pursuing multiple lines of inquiry to establish the motivation for this attack”.

“Our priority is progressing this investigation quickly,” Taylor said.

As we've begun to see, what we in the US would approach as routine law enforcement activity has become highly politicized, and the police seem to be terrified of releasing specifics on any case that could have potential racial or political implications -- except to reassure the public, as we see above, that the alleged perp in this case was white. But it would appear that the man's motives had nothing, no, nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the victim's politics. According to Wikipedia,

As a member of the Conservative Party, she was the member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone and The Weald and its predecessor Maidstone constituency from 1987 to 2010. She joined Reform UK (then called the Brexit Party) in 2019.

. . . Ideologically, Widdecombe identified as a social conservative and emphasised traditional values. During her time in the House of Commons, she opposed the legality of abortion, opposed granting LGBT people legal rights such as equalisation of the age of consent, and opposed the repeal of Section 28. She supported the reintroduction of the death penalty for murder, and opposed all forms of assisted dying. She supported rigorous animal protection laws and opposed fox hunting.

Following her retirement, she continued to make frequent television appearances. According to the first link above,

On Friday, the police issued a statement saying they had launched a murder investigation, but said they had “no information that this is a politically motivated crime” and that it was not being treated as terror-related.

By Saturday, police said a 28-year-old white British national had been arrested in South Yorkshire by officers from the counterterrorism police and South Yorkshire police.

So far, little information is available on why counterterrorism units have taken on the case.

On Monday, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said “new information” had come to light over the circumstances of Widdecombe’s death but said the suspect was not known to the country’s counterterrorism programme, Prevent.

“The police have cautioned against speculating about the case. That is the right thing to do for Ann’s family and friends. It is also vital that the police are given the space they need to carry out their work. For now, what matters most is supporting the investigation,” Mahmood said.

This is puzzling to me. We in the US haven't really had problems assimilating the facts of a somewhat similar case, the assassination of Charliie Kirk by an individual with generally leftist and pro-trans views. The judge in last week's preliminary hearing is generally regarded as performing a valuable public service in providing a forum in which all the prosecution's evidence could be reviewed in detail; he had the option of simply ruling from the bench that probable cause existed to go to trial, without a full hearing. The consensus appears to be that this process went a long way to discrediting conspiracy theories about the case.

Instead, the police in the UK seem to be squeamish about releasing much of anything at all, and we can only surmise that the fear is that if the public knew the facts before they've been properly curated, there might be riots. Nevertheless,

Now, Counter Terrorism Policing South East has confirmed it is leading the investigation after "new information and evidence has come to light".

Late on Monday night, The Times reported her killing is now being treated as politically motivated.

Police had suggested on multiple occasions that neither terrorism nor politics appeared to have played a part in the attack.

Reaction to the case strikes me as inchoate. For instance,

Britain's populist Reform UK called on Wednesday for all lawmakers to be given "full security" if they want it after the murder ​of Ann Widdecombe, a prominent member of the party led by veteran Brexit campaigner, ‌Nigel Farage.

But that wouldn't have protected Widdecombe -- she'd been out of parliament since 2010. In the US, numerous retired members of congress, like Newt Gingrich, Jason Chaffetz, and Trey Gowdy have high public profiles, but even if they had some level of security via the Capitol Police while in office, they have no official protection when out of it. And while former US presidents and their families receive Secret Service protection for life, former vice presidents retain it for only six months after leaving office.

I suspect that the real issue is more basic, a certain refusal to trust the public with information on issues that could be controversial. The US is more or less acclimated to leftist violence, even if legacy media is still unwilling to acknowledge it. The UK appears to be waking up to this only just now.

Mark Halperin On Post-Platner Maine

Mark Halperin continues to rebuild his reputation as a serious commentator with a piece at The Free Press, Ditching Platner May Not Be a Win for Democrats. I think he has a handle on the dilemma:

It was the rise of Platner, far more than the downfall, that tells us much about the energy in the Democratic Party today, which has also been exemplified by the success of Zohran Mamdani and other socialists and super progressives in mayoral, House, and Senate races. These candidates’ platforms can almost be summed up by those four piquant words from the closing paragraph of the ousted oysterman’s letter Friday giving up the Senate nomination he had so easily won, which I now repeat because, my goodness, who ends a campaign that way: “F*ck ICE. Free Palestine.”

That wave among the Democrats points to the two biggest questions facing Democrats in Maine: Will the party back another Senate candidate from its radical, populist wing? And could a candidate like that take out the popular incumbent, GOP senator Susan Collins?

Platner had a unique charisma, and the talent scouts who discovered him had things at least half right: a certain hard core was going to stick with him no matter what. But the hard core was certainly overrepresented in the primary vote. Still, Platner post-withdrawal represents a whole second set of problems: his endorsement of a new candidate, if he gives it, is both a curse and a blessing. There's no question it will give the new candidate a good part of the hard core that voted for him in the primary, but it will also mean that candidate has been endorsed by a rapist.

The other factor for Halperin is Susan Collins:

Susan Collins has developed a political reputation that few senators of either party enjoy: She consistently performs better at the ballot box than many analysts expect and polls project.

Her 2020 reelection campaign remains seared into the minds of both Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ Senate leader, and Collins herself. For much of that race, public polling showed Democratic nominee Sara Gideon leading. In the closing days, the RealClearPolitics polling average had Gideon ahead by roughly 6 percentage points. On Election Day, Collins won by more than 8 points, a margin and victory that became one of the biggest polling surprises of the 2020 cycle.

This is one more reason I question why Real Clear Politics has the reputation it does, although to its credit, RCP linked Halperin's essay. But as we've also seen here from clips of his YouTube channel, Halperin is also skeptical of the Democrat replacement field:

Running statewide is a little like launching a Broadway show. Opening night arrives whether you’ve finished rehearsing or not. And based on the résumés, recent electoral failed pasts, and early efforts to replace Platner, the cast of characters vying for the Senate slot would struggle to earn supporting roles in a Bayonne, New Jersey, dinner theater production of Pippin, let alone take on an incumbent senator from a standing start.

The eventual nominee’s tasks include, but are not limited to: assembling—or reassembling—a political organization. Becoming well-known by voters across the state. Building a fundraising operation to pull in millions of dollars quickly. Preparing for debates on issues ranging from national security to AI to trade policy. Parrying the opposition research that will come from Team Collins. And replying to an endless stream of questions about the Platner of It All. This is sort of what Kamala Harris tried and failed to do in 2024.

He also sees an incongruity in the whole Platner phenomenon:

And it is worth noting, with irony and hilarity, that when Platner was tapped, he was created by Dr. Frankenstein consultants in order to appeal to both men and working-class voters. Yet the recent polling indicates his support was disproportionately from women and college-educated voters, the heart of the anti-Trump base of the party. To beat Collins, the new nominee is almost certainly going to have to do better than Platner did with men and the actual blue-collar folks of the Pine Tree State. Republicans are going to exploit every biographical element, past vote, and piquant quote to try to stop that from happening.

The information we can find on polling for November prior to Platne's withdrawal suggests Platner wasn't running away with the election himself:

Democratic upstart Graham Platner holds a slight lead over Republican incumbent Susan Collins in a general election matchup for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat should he win next week’s primary, according to a UMass Lowell/YouGov poll issued Thursday.

The survey of 650 likely Maine voters shows Platner has the support of 48% of respondents, compared to 43% for Collins, with 6% undecided and 2% supporting another candidate. A gender gap exists among polltakers who back each candidate: 54% of women and 42% of men support Platner, while Collins earns the support of 35% of women and 51% of men.

The survey found 43% of respondents have a favorable view of Platner, while 41% view him unfavorably, 14% have no opinion of him and 2% have never heard of him. Thirty-six percent of respondents view Collins favorably compared to 53% of respondents who view her unfavorably, while 11% have no opinion of her.

And we need to keep in mind Collins's history of outperforming the polls -- in 2020, by 14%. This would confirm the speculation that Democrats engineered the rape allegation so that Platner could be forced out before the deadline to find his replacement; Republicans would have preferred the whole thing come out much later.

But you know what? I'm really starting to root for my fellow Bethesdan, Mark Halperin.

Candace Owens And The Tyler Robinson Probable Cause Hearing

I've basically been tuning out the whole Candace Owens conspiracy theory over Charlie Kirk's assassination for the past eight months or so, but the level of convincing detail in the prosecution's case against Tyler Robinson in last week's probable cause hearing has made me want to bring myself up to date. The clearest version of the whole controversy I've seen is this:

As far as I can tell, there seem to be two competing theories for how and why Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025.

The first, of course, is the story we’re hearing in court: Tyler Robinson hated Charlie’s so-called “trans-phobia” and murdered him with a German rifle for ideological reasons. Supporting evidence includes Robinson’s romantic relationship with a trans person, his confession(s), his DNA, his fingerprints, his text messages, ballistics data, bullet shells, video surveillance, eye-witness testimony, and much, much more.

The other theory?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — along with Charlie’s (backstabbing) widow Erika Kirk, the French government, Egyptian planes, and traitorous, evil turncoats in Turning Point USA — discovered that Charlie was going to abandon Israel, so they staged a fake shooting in a Satanic pentagon, used Tyler Robinson as a patsy, killed Charlie with an exploding microphone, and then stole the organization he built from the ground up.

The probable cause hearing has gone a long way to discredit the second theory. According to Douglas Murray at The Free Press,

It looks like we may be about to see a conspiracy theory fall apart in real time.

It was clear the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of a crowd of 3,000 people at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, who the main suspect was. Surveillance footage showed Tyler Robinson getting down from the rooftop where the fatal shot appeared to have been fired. He had already penned a handwritten confession and a set of texts to his lover admitting the crime. The next day, Robinson’s mother recognized her son from a photograph released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and his parents arranged for him to speak to a family friend who was a retired sheriff’s deputy. The family friend convinced Robinson to turn himself in on September 11.

Of all the shocking things that happened in the immediate aftermath, perhaps the most shocking was how hard some online commentators tried to ignore everything about the case. Instead, they blamed almost everyone but Robinson for the shooting. At various times, the accused have included the Israeli government, Egyptian spy planes, Kirk’s colleagues at Turning Point USA, his widow, and people in the crowd that day who were wearing maroon-colored shirts.

Worse still is that two of the people who have diverted attention from the actual effort by prosecutors to put Robinson on trial for Kirk’s murder are Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, who were once close to Charlie Kirk. For almost a year, both Owens and Carlson attempted to poke every hole they could imagine in the government’s case and point the finger at anyone other than Robinson, whose preliminary hearing began on Monday in a Provo court. A judge will decide whether the evidence against Robinson is strong enough to proceed to a trial. Robinson has not entered a plea in the case.

Two commentators who had previously sided with Owens and Carlson, David Freiheit, who posts as Viva Frei, and Megyn Kelly, have eased their stances and now say that at minimum, prosecutors have established that there's probable cause to send the case to trial, even though this is a "low standard". Other commentators, including Micheal Lebron, who posts as Lionel, and Carlson himself, continue either to support Owens directly or support her right to promote a conspiracy theory.

Although David Freiheit in particular has criticized Judge Tony Graf Jr for holding the lengthy probable cause hearing when he could simply have ruled that probable cause exists from the bench, it's plain that bringing the prosecution's evidence out in the public hearing has minimized the effect of the conspiracy theories.

Although Robinson's defense team objected to showing his autopsy report in court, testimony from Utah State Bureau of Investigation Agent David Hull listed his death as a homicide caused by a gunshot wound to the neck.

The testimony included no indication that the forensic pathologist who handled the autopsy found anything inconsistent with that conclusion, ruling out theories involving an exploding microphone.

. . . The video isn't the only evidence that prosecutors say places Robinson at UVU, however. They have surveillance video of a Dodge Challenger coming and going. He allegedly encountered a Spanish Fork police officer who ran his license plates. And his DNA was allegedly recovered from a screwdriver found near the sniper's perch and on the suspected murder weapon, hidden in a "wooded area" just steps away from campus.

. . . Again, investigators alleged they can place Robinson on campus multiple times the day of the murder with video, physical and digital evidence.

They say he arrived in the morning, entered the campus, left, and came back later with different clothes on, following virtually the same path. And they showed a compilation video taken by UVU surveillance cameras showing all of that.

. . . Another conspiracy theory promoted on social media claims that there are "many" young men who decided to wear maroon shirts and light shorts on the day Charlie Kirk was killed, stating "without a clear image, they certainly cannot declare it is Tyler Robinson."

A compilation video played in court shows the suspect in two different outfits — one of which included a maroon T-shirt. In the other, he wore a black, long-sleeved shirt. Prosecutors have alleged Robinson appears to be both of them, and they also have video of the suspect getting out of a gray Dodge Challenger in the school's parking garage — the same kind of vehicle Robinson drove.

. . . The defense tried hard not to allow the public to hear testimony from Twiggs or see text messages, Discord chat logs or the handwritten note Robinson left for Twiggs — all three of which include what appear to be admissions of guilt. Graf allowed that evidence, however,

and the defense showed nothing to indicate there was a foreign conspiracy involved in Kirk's murder.

This is actually all pretty boring stuff. I hope it will have the effect of diverting attention from Owens and Carlson.

People Like Us!

A while ago, I surmised that Graham Platner was never actually vetted; it was enough that he was People Like Us, preppie, Ivy-adjacent trustfunders. A detailed piece in the Washington Free Beacon profiles two of the talent scouts who promoted Platner, Morris Katz and Daniel Moraff.

Katz, 27, became a bona fide Beltway celebrity after helping Zohran Mamdani defeat a profoundly unpopular sex pest in the New York City mayoral election. He helped recruit Platner to run in Maine, and made a slickly produced launch video of the unemployed business owner cosplaying as a working-class everyman.

"Like Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Katz is a child of the New York cultural elite, but is fluent in the anti-elite language of progressive populism," the New York Times wrote earlier this year in a profile headlined, "He's 26 and Ready to Fix the Democrats' Strategy."

Like Platner, Katz is a child of privilege who abhors capitalism, functioning societies, and opponents of terrorism. His great-grandfather "made a fortune in hosiery," the Times reports. His grandfather, Harry Jay Katz, was a notorious libertine described as a "playboy prince of darkness" with a "multi-million dollar trust fund." He claimed to have slept with 4,000 women, and ran a vanity publication whose poetry editor, Ira Einhorn, would go on to be known as the "Unicorn Killer" after murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1977.

. . . A left-wing activist with degrees from Brown and Yale, Moraff is the "mad scientist" who helped recruit Platner because he wanted Democrats to nominate "real human beings" who oppose Israel and capitalism. He is the grandson of Seymour Ginsburg, who founded the predecessor to Toys "R" Us and served as the toy chain's first president.

. . . Moraff, 34, reportedly likened Platner to Barack Obama in the early days of the campaign, and didn't bother to subject the candidate to a normal vetting process—an ill-advised decision, in retrospect. Along with his business partner and fiancée, Leanne Fan, Moraff was convinced that Platner was a "historic figure" destined to lead a "revolution."

. . . On Friday, we learned that Moraff and Platner had more in common than anyone dared to imagine. While living off his family wealth and "working" on Democratic campaigns in the Pittsburgh area, Moraff developed a reputation as "the most hated staffer in the region."

In 2022, Moraff was banished from congresswoman Summer Lee's (D., Pa.) campaign after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. "None of his current embroilment really surprises me because he doesn't have boundaries with women, nor much of an ethical code," a former Pittsburgh organizer told Payday Report.

So there we are, everyone is a member of a tiny club, no other vetting required. The current front runner to replace Platner is in a similar mold, a blue-collar-seeming manly man with a problematic past:

Maine Democrats are so desperate to replace accused rapist Graham Platner with another rugged “working-class hero” type that the left wing has thrown its support behind an Allagash logger — despite a past that’s anything but progressive.

. . . Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and longtime union member who served as president of the Maine Senate from 2018 to 2024, looks like the natural successor to Platner — at least on the surface.

. . . Jackson, 58, campaigned with both Platner and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the “Fighting the Oligarchy” tour at the University of Maine in May. He is a longtime ally of the Vermont socialist, having been one of the few Democratic National Committee superdelegates to endorse him over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

This week, the political organization founded by Sanders after his unsuccessful 2016 presidential run, Our Revolution, said it was throwing its “full organizing machine” behind Jackson’s Senate bid, stating he “spent his life in the fight working people are asking for.”

. . . In fact, Jackson launched his career as a Republican when he first ran for the Maine legislature in 2000. After losing, he tried again in 2002, but as an Independent. In 2004, he morphed again and became a Dem.

But even after that, some of his positions remained very much right of center. In 2009, he voted against same-sex marriage in the Maine Senate and has long thought abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape or incest — even when the mother’s life is in danger.

In 2011, he voted for a state bill that would have declared a fetus a person and in 2013, for mandatory abortion-counseling legislation.

Jackson apparently has his own problems with women:

A progressive advocacy group on Tuesday accused former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson of striking a female colleague with a bottle he threw during a state Senate caucus dispute years ago, complicating his emergence as the leading Democrat contender to replace Graham Platner on the November ballot against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

. . . In a post on X, the group said Jackson, "in a heated disagreement, struck a female colleague with a bottle he threw at her" during a caucus meeting when he served as Senate president, and it described the episode as "a widespread open secret" in Maine politics that was "not an isolated incident."

At about 3:00 in the video embedded above, Mark Halperin and his guests roast the top three of roughly a dozen potential replacements for Platner, deriding them as "top tier" and the "crème de la crème" -- "These are the A team that's gonna do the impossible task of beating an incumbent senator, Susan Collins, in less than 100 days." Discussing the incongruous background music in Troy Jackson's announcement video, Halperin says, "You wouldn't put that in a deodorant ad. That's the music they play when you're in a sleep study, and they're tryng to put you to sleep."

A guest says, "The bigger problem in the video is he's talking to voters, but voters aren't gonna have a say in this, so who cares?" Halperin concludes,

You're gonna have to be a major leaguer to beat Susan Collins. And these peopole aren't even talking about, like, AI or China. And the Collins people are sitting back and laughing at all this. Their view of theae videos matches, at least, my own. . . . It's gonna take so much to raise the money, to do everything you need to do, and first they gotta win the nomination. . . . Here's the dynamic I'm going to predict. These candidates are not interesting. Platner is notr gonna go away, and reporters are going to ask all these candidates, for a good long while, "What did you think of Platner? Why didn't you abandon Platner sooner?"

But the informed consensus seems to be that the Democrat establishment unleashed the rape allegation when it did to get Platner off the ticket in time to replace him, because he was already losing to Collins in the polls -- but they did it without a clear replacement. Who can they find who can outperform Platner against Collins?

McConnell Indisposed, Wife In China

Via Breitbart News,

Conservative activist Laura Loomer and journalist Desiree Townsend both claimed Monday that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been declared “brain dead,” citing unnamed sources.

A very high level source told me Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead and machines are keeping him alive, but he is a vegetable and “never coming back.”

So why is his wife @ElaineChao in China instead of by his side?

Is she a Chinese CCP spy? How does the wife of one of… https://t.co/hxTHMPHZEM

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 6, 2026

I've always thought Mitch McConnell was brain dead even when he was alive, that's a dog bites man story. The bigger question is who is his wife, Elaine Chao, and why is she in China? We know she was Secretary of Transportation under Trump 45 and Secretary of Labor under Bush fils, but I took that as simply a payoff to Mitch. It turns out the story is much more complicated. From a 2019 piece at CNN:

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s family has deep business ties to China – placing the key Cabinet official in a potentially conflicting position with the Trump administration’s confrontational posture toward the US’ major economic rival, according to a report from The New York Times. The Times investigation outlined Chao’s ties to Foremost Group, her family’s shipping business. The report noted that while Chao “has no formal affiliation or stake” in the company, she and her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have received millions in gifts from Chao’s father, who used to run the company, along with political donations from her family.

Chao, according to the report, has boosted the company in China, whose government runs a bank that has loan commitments from the shipping company in the order of “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The report said in addition to the shipping company, Chao’s family has other ties to official China, including board positions in state companies and a close relationship between Chao’s father and former Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin.

. . . Chao was previously the Labor secretary during the Bush administration, and from the outset of the Trump administration, she has been the head of the Transportation Department, which, as the Times noted, makes Chao the top official overseeing the US shipping industry.

Via People,

According to a report shared by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America, “Chao said maintaining stable U.S.-China relations serves the interests of all parties, and expressed the willingness to continue making efforts to promote practical cooperation and people-to-people exchanges between the United States and China.”

While McConnell’s office has been tight-lipped about his health and the 84-year-old has not made a public appearance or spoken to reporters since his admission on June 14, Chao finally broke her silence through a spokesperson on Tuesday, July 7, in a statement to multiple outlets, including Louisville CBS affiliate WLKY and The Daily Beast.

A spokesperson for Chao told those news organizations in a statement that “the secretary was on a long-planned trip in China to support her family’s philanthropic endeavors.”

“During the trip, she met with a number of people, including the US ambassador,” the statement said. “The Senator’s health did not warrant an immediate return to the US.”

. . . Since leaving Trump’s administration in January 2021 following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Chao was tapped to serve on the board of directors for the Kroger supermarket chain “and technology companies in the mobility space,” according to an official biography. She also serves on the board of the Kennedy Center and the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics organizing committee.

Chao, 73, married McConnell in 1993 and later became the first Asian American woman to serve in a president’s Cabinet. She immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a child and became a U.S. citizen as a teenager.

McConnell is one of the wealthiest US senators, but this is almost entirely due to gifts from Chao's family (her sister runs the family shipping business).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, received a personal gift from a family member worth between $5 million and $25 million, according to his annual financial disclosure report, which was released on Friday morning.

The gift came from Chao’s father, Dr. James S.C. Chao, a wealthy Chinese-born businessman, and it boosted McConnell’s personal worth from a minimum of $3 million in 2007 to more than $7 million.

McConnell's overall net worth was estimated at $34,137,534 in 2018, making him the 7th wealthiest senator at that time. This is primarily due to investments of the Chao family's money. It's hard to avoid thinking that whatever McConnell's actual health condition, it doesn't make much difference; his wife and her family have been running the whole show for years. Nevertheless, this YouTube on McConnell's condition is hilarious:

LA Metro

The Skid Row Express (also known as the D line expansion) is set to open in LA soon. Skid row junkies will soon be able to travel from their homeless camps downtown to new homeless camps in Westwood, with convenient stops at Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for naps, open air… pic.twitter.com/GPSGsAs9Ny

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) July 1, 2026

Urban transit in the US is a festering sore. Ridership, especially on subway and commuter rail systems, has diminished since COVID, while transit overall is significantly less safe. Los Angeles is no exception. A recent piece in City Journal, which in 2024 broke the story of Haitians in Temporary Protrected Status, outlines the problem:

Every day, thousands of Los Angelenos take a deep breath, step out of their houses, and plunge themselves into a transit experience straight out of Mad Max. The city’s buses have become rolling homeless shelters, replete with drugs and feces. Its trains are home to murder and mayhem. As Daquan, a daily rider who works near the North Hollywood station told us, “You could kill somebody down there and just get away with it.”

The transformation has been swift and stark. Between 2020 and 2025, crime in the system more than doubled. What drove the change? L.A. Metro’s dedication to creating an equitable transit system, where all Angelenos—drug-addicted, homicidal maniacs included—can effectively ride free, without consequences.

. . . Activists and their allies in city government have spent years laser-focused on driving cops from the L.A. Metro’s buses and trains. Their argument: making people pay to use the trains is racist.

. . . Obviously, none of this is working. . . . Adjusting for ridership, battery and aggravated assaults both increased by more than 100 percent, and narcotics offenses rose by more than 800 percent.

The lawlessness starts at the entrance: about half of L.A. Metro riders don’t pay, according to data analyzed by Davis. By comparison, Metro’s fare-evasion rate was between 3 percent and 7 percent across stations in 2007. Most importantly, more than 90 percent of violent criminals on the Metro evade fares, meaning the sort of people who go on to stab old ladies in the neck could have been caught by fare enforcement, but aren’t. Despite L.A. Metro’s numerous pilot programs and quasi-safety measures, the one method proven to work for the system is the one method board members are reluctant to try: classic policing.

Kansas City discovered that free buses don't work:

Turns out there’s no such thing as a free bus ride. Kansas City started charging fares again this month to ride the bus, six years after making them free. The area’s transportation authority said it chose requiring users to pay over continuing to impose service cuts.

. . . There is voluminous evidence that charging fares, and enforcing them, helps keep troublemakers out. Randy Clarke, the head of D.C.’s Metro system, credits a crackdown on fare evasion with improved public safety. “Not everyone who fare-evades commits crimes, but almost universally, everyone who commits serious crimes fare-evades,” Clarke told Santi Ruiz on the “Statecraft” podcast. “Not many people are going to tap in and then do armed robbery.”

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system in California found that installing hardened fare gates on its subways contributed to rising revenue while reducing crime and decreasing upkeep. BART performed almost 1,000 fewer hours of corrective maintenance in the first six months after the new fare gates were installed.

Here's a vignette of fare enforcement at tbe Bay Area Rapid Transit system:

Meanwhile at a BART fare evasion gate in SF (to save $2.55) pic.twitter.com/TdSxenaeeu

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 2, 2026

According to San Francisco media,

"I hope she wasn’t hurt and I hope she received a nice ticket to pay for fare evasion," says BART Director Liz Ames, speaking to NBC Bay Area about the viral incident.

Ames tells the station that BART revenue is rising and fare evasion has plummeted thanks to the new, mostly evasion-proof fare gates — and, consequently, crime is down as well, Ames says.

Trump-supporting former BART director Debora Allen also got a call for comment from NBC Bay Area, and she was happy to take credit for spearheading the new fare gate project.

"I think it’s great. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done at BART in many, probably decades," Allen tells the station.

Ames added that revenue is up about $10 million, possibly thanks to the fare gates, and if that keeps up each year, the $90 million project to install the gates will have paid for itself in less than ten years.

When I was in tech back in the day, I had lots of assignments in the San Francisco area, and riding transit back then was an enjoyable experience. It was actually always better than in LA, but apparently things changed, and the two cities are about equally bad. Fare enforcement, at least in San Francisco, might turn things around.