Measles Hits an ICE Facility: What Happens Next.— When infectious disease and incarceration collide, the outcome is predictable
The EPA Just Made Our Air Less Safe to Breathe— Repealing the Endangerment Finding will shape our clinical reality for years to come
In South Korea, ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life in prison after he was found guilty of carrying out an insurrection in his country when he declared martial law in 2024 to try to seize control from the opposing political party.
Kremlin officials used the February 23 Defender of the Fatherland Day holiday to set conditions to mitigate any domestic backlash that may result from limited rolling reserve involuntary callups in the future.
Jesse Jackson Witnessed Martin Luther King Jr.’s Assassination. Here’s How He Carried the Torch for the Civil Rights Movement Into the Future. ‘I am somebody.’ The Common Ground speech.
Robert Duvall, a Chameleon of an Actor Onscreen and Onstage, Dies at 95. I saw him in To Kill A Mockingbird, The Godfather, The Conversation, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and a bunch of other projects.
Eric Dane Dead at 53, 10 Months After Announcing ALS Diagnosis. In the final year of his life, the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Euphoria’ actor was a leading advocate for ALS research.
Stephen Colbert’s interview with one of the Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, James Talarico. Talarico is a Matthew 25 Christian, which I espouse.
Heather Cox Richardson, February 15, 2026: “At the Munich Security Conference last year…Vice President J.D. Vance announced the U.S. was switching sides in global affairs. Henceforth, it would work to destroy the values of representative democracy and the global systems of trade and security that the U.S. and partners constructed after World War II.
“In their place, officials in the [regime] and their media allies have embraced the Great Replacement theory that says Brown and Black migration to Europe and the U.S. is destroying ‘western civilization.’ Such migration must be stopped, they argue, and Brown and Black people purged from the U.S. and Europe. The end of equal rights for migrants will enable white Christian men to dominate society and pass laws that reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal hierarchies…”
“In his speech to the conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was less confrontational than Vance was last year, but the message was the same. He attacked all three of the pillars on which the U.S. has previously stood in foreign affairs. Global trade has ruined the U.S. economy, he said, while international institutions have undermined sovereignty, and ‘a climate cult’ has imposed energy policies that are ‘impoverishing our people.’
Newsweek: “On the surface, the applause for… Rubio’s weekend speech at the Munich Security Conference suggested he had assuaged European concerns. In reality, the speech underlined the immense division between Europe and America. It may have deepened it.”
MUSIC
VOTE for this year’s San Diego Music Awards! Rebecca Jade (the first niece) is up for Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Song – Not Me No Way, and for Artist of the Year. You may vote once per day.
Philadelphia is suing the regime over the decision to remove an exhibit at Independence National Historical Park depicting the factual history of slavery in the United States.
FOTUS’s second term delivers massive gains for billionaires as working Americans face cuts and rising costs
New CDC guidance could revive childhood meningococcal disease, a rare but deadly disease
Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Year-End 2025 Update from the Council on Criminal Justice(CCJ)
The RootsTech 2026 schedule is live. The world’s largest family discovery event will be taking place March 5-7. Register to hear inspiring speakers, watch exciting keynotes, and get expert help discovering your family story.
Bruce Bilson Obituary: Director on The Patty Duke Show, Get Smart, Hogan’s HeroesPlease Don’t Eat the Daisies, The Doris Day Show, The Odd Couple, Love, American Style, B.J. and the Bear, Barney Miller, The Fall Guy, Hotel, Dinosaurs, The Sentinel and Viper, among others
Forty years ago, they slipped the surly bond of earth
Baseball HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2026: Center fielders Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones, and second baseman Jeff Kent.
The Trial of the Century: On the hundredth anniversary of Tennessee v. Scopes.
New York’s Grand Central Terminal Helped Provide the Blueprint for American Cities. It Happened by Accident
Now I Know: Why Does Toothpaste Make Orange Juice Taste So Awful? and Why Isn’t This Tennis Ball Bouncing? and The Meal That Makes You See Tiny People? and The Panhandle That Failed and Not The Frisco Kids and The $3 Grocery Bag That Became a Global Status Symbol and Every Rose Has Its … Jalen?
ICE
Video Contradicts DHS Claims About Killing of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Heather Cox Richardson: “Video from the scene shows Pretti directing traffic on a street out of an area with agents around, then trying to help another person get up after she had been pushed to the ground by the agents. The agents then surround Pretti and shoot pepper spray into his face, then pull him to the ground from behind and hit him as he appears to be trying to keep his head off the ground. An agent appears to take a gun out of Pretti’s waistband during the struggle, then turns and leaves with it. A shot then stops Pretti’s movements, appearing to kill him, before nine more shots ring out, apparently as agents continued to fire into his body.It looked like an execution.”
As William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove noted: “Alex Pretti was killed by people who celebrated his death. They do not need better training. They demand a moral movement to disarm them and reconstruct democracy.”
Legal scholars and political scientists say the regime’s escalating ICE operation, National Guard brinkmanship, and Insurrection Act threats in Minnesota closely resemble conditions identified in civil war simulations, raising alarms about constitutional collapse and violent state-federal conflict. “We don’t need no stinkin’ warrants.”
A photo taken during a protest in south Minneapolis after federal agents killed Alex Pretti encapsulates a story unfolding on America’s streets.
Nurse Alex Pretti’s Death and the Symbolism of the Human Body
A small fraction of U.S. history (old paper money)
‘Jeopardy!’: Four-Time Champion Eric Berman Dies at 60
Is this the Gumby & Pokey / Davey & Goliath crossover episode?
The Opposite of the Drive-Thru Window? You’re in your car. You get your burger without leaving your car. So maybe it’s the same, but… not? and The Accidental Igloo That Saved a Life and A Planely Bad Way to Quit
Orange
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles: he has an “alcoholic’s personality,” drawing a comparison to her father, legendary NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall, who struggled with alcoholism before getting sober.
In March 2023, reporter Hugo Lowell revealed exclusively in the Guardian that a federal criminal investigation was examining TMedia – the company that owns the his social media platform, Truth Social – in connection with its acceptance of $8m in loans with suspected Russian ties. Those loans helped keep the company afloat long enough for him to take it public last year, when he netted an additional paper fortune of about $4.6bn. TM sued the Guardian for defamation and $250m in damages. In late November, the judge threw out the case, pointing out that the plaintiff was required to show that “the [Guardian] either knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for its truth” – but he found no such evidence. This was a victory not only for the Guardian but for journalists everywhere.
Reflections of a Census Bureau Employee: MAGA Callers Share a Common Delusion.
3600 Seconds
CBS News’ new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, abruptly postponed a segment of “60 Minutes” about Venezuelan men who the regime deported to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison, known as CECOT, in El Salvador.
Several veteran correspondents questioned Weiss’ decision. In an email to her colleagues, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said the team “requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story,” she said.
Was Weiss’ decision by design? Or was she merely derelict in her job? CBS News’ censorship spectacularly backfires. Terry Moran: She skipped five different screenings of the 60 Minutes story as it was being written and cut…. Finally, on Thursday, Weiss watched a video of the segment and offered a few suggestions, which were integrated into the script.
Postponing the segment did not prevent it from trickling into public view. Internet sleuths discovered that a Canadian network had briefly published the segment, and a bootleg version of the video began circulating on social media.
Someone thought that, for cBS, the c is now silent.
Jerry Kasenetz, a King of Bubblegum Pop Music, Dies at 82. With his producing partner, Jeffry Katz, he made lightweight ditties that soared up the charts in the late 1960s by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, the Ohio Express, and others. (Music links within.)
Extended interview: Sean Ono Lennon on CBS Sunday Morning. Film: WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko – The Academy Award® winning Animated Short
Empathy is the new Christian battleground (I’m pro-empathy)
The casino-fication of news: New partnerships between the prediction market Kalshi and cable TV networks will transform every news event into a betting opportunity.
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. ADOPTED 10 December 1984 BY UN General Assembly resolution 39/46
At least 31 languages have a word very similar to ‘huh?’
Archaeologists Find Evidence of a Bronze City in Kazakhstan
Now I Know: The Cost of Being a Simpsons Superfan and A Free Race Ticket, With Ups and Downs, and The Book That Got Americans Hanged and The Worst of the Best is Still Pretty Amazing, and Let’s Have a Book Burning? and The Country of Cookie Dough
Hepatitis B Vaccine Recommendation For Children Changed By CDC As Academy Of Pediatrics Opposes Decision
U.S. Wants to Scrutinize Foreign Tourists’ Social Media History. Even visitors from countries like Britain and France, whose citizens don’t need visas, would have to share five years’ worth of social media.
By the River, the second movement of the ‘Florida Suite’ by Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
J. Eric Smith’s Best Albums and Best Music Videos of 2025
One of my favorite companies, Joel Whitburn’s Record Research, has a future.
Seattle-based musician and chocolatier Aaron Lindstrom wanted to create a space that combined his two passions: chocolate and music. Cocoa Legato is a unique bean-to-bar chocolate factory and café that hosts live music performances and focuses on producing naturally vegan dark chocolate. 12/01/2025
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 23: An excavator works to clear rubble after the East Wing of the White House was demolished on October 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. The demolition is part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a multimillion-dollar ballroom on the eastern side of the White House. (Photo by Eric Lee/Getty Images)
Wrackful. Meaning – adjective: Ruinous. In Sonnet 65, Shakespeare laments time’s “the wrackful siege of battering days.” You can almost hear the timbers groan and the sigh of loss.
AWS outage spotlights the global economy’s fragile foundations
American e-waste is causing a ‘hidden tsunami’ of junk in Southeast Asia
The World Is Running Out of Fresh Water. What Happens If We Do? The pace of freshwater depletion is staggering. An area twice the size of California is drying up annually.
Does Brazil have an app that can upend digital finance?
One of 20 Million in the US With Long COVID. RFK Pulled the Rug From Under Us.
Americans remain pessimistic about the country’s direction and the state of the country.
Why So Many Gen Z-ers Are Drawn to Conservative Christianity
Labor Unions, EFF Sue Administration to Stop Ideological Surveillance of Free Speech Online
John Dickerson: What Hamilton warned in the Federalist Papers #1
June Lockhart obituary: American stage and screen actor who enjoyed huge success on the television shows Lassie, Lost in Space, and Petticoat Junction.
The Jewish Prisoners Who Escaped From a Nazi Death Camp
Ernest Shackleton’s journey was most likely doomed before it began
Why Paris Designed Its Peculiarly Popular Grand Graveyards to Evoke a Celebration of Life Amid All the Death
In honor of the 200th anniversary of the completion of the Erie Canal, History of the canal system of the State of New York together with brief histories of the canals of the United States and Canada / by Noble E. Whitford v.1 (1906)
Now I Know: Where the Other Two Musketeers Went and Hackers, Pre-Internet Edition and The $10,000 Blade of Grass (Dali and Ono) and The “Baseball versus Beer” Loophole and Our Anti-Photographic Memories?
Daily Kos: “Normal people looked at the demolition… and asked, ‘Hey, shouldn’t an official body, like the National Capital Planning Commission, have to sign off on the demolition?’
“No, you sweet summer child. According to him and his allies on the NCPC, the planning commission need only sign off on the construction of buildings, not their demolition.
“What kind of person who heads a planning commission charged with the overall planning of the nation’s capital would agree to this?
“Oh, that would be Will Scharf. Scharf is the White House staff secretary, and he is also now the head of the NCPC. Does Scharf have any experience in urban planning or architecture, or anything really?
“Nope. You all get one guess as to why Scharf has not one, but two high-level government jobs? Yes, he was one of his former criminal defense attorneys.”
Borowitz: FOTUS “would continue his father’s proud tradition of gleeful destruction [Steeplechase Park] when he demolished the Bonwit Teller Building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to clear the site for his Tower. After saying he’d try to preserve the building’s priceless Art Deco friezes so that they could be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he discovered that it would cost $32,000 to remove them intact. As a clever solution to his problem, he had his workmen smash them to bits.”
MUSIC
Take Me Down To Stewy’s – Jackson Simpson (feat. Azel & Grey Mizzy), a tribute to the many Stewart’s Shops, a chain of convenience stores located in Upstate New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Last Time (I Seen the Sun) – Alice Smith and Miles Caton
Empathy is the new Christian 
A MAGA 