2. Yesterday Secretary of War Hegseth reprimanded the Axis media for its deceptive and anti-American propaganda in covering the Iran operation. Hegseth was right: the inattentive American—you know, like most of them—would get the distinct impression that the United States is losing the war. Amazingly, it appears that the Axis wants Iran to prevail—all the better to hurt President Trump and help Democrats win the mid-terms. Worse yet is social media, where conservative isolationists, anti-Israel bigots and the Mad Left gleefully circulate Iranian propaganda as if it is reliable. I have a friend, a conservative who holds every anti-Israel, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory imaginable (Jews sabotaged the “Titanic” and brought down the Twin Towers in a false flag operation, etc.) He is convinced that Netanyahu is dead, for example, based on “alternative news sources.” This wouldn’t happen if there were any trustworthy news sources, but there aren’t.

3. No, Tarik Skubal is not a “traitor.” I used to think baseball fans were smarter than other sports fans, but social media has disabused me of that fantasy. Skubal, for you sad, self-deprived non-baseball followers, is the best pitcher in the American League, having won the Cy Young Award two years running. This is his free-agent year, and if he pitches as well in 2026 as in 2024 and 2025, he stands to get a long-term contract worth nearly a half-billion dollars. The World Baseball Classic in going on right now, with MLB stars scattered into teams representing many nations, including the U.S., which, as it should, appears to have the strongest squad. Skubal was on it, but vowed only to start one game for the U.S. before returning to the more measured intensity of Spring Training with his team, the Detroit Tigers. For this exquisitely reasonable act of risk-avoidance, Skubal is being roasted on “X”, baseball blogs and sports call-in shows for being a “traitor.” Of course, none of these critics have heard of the Golden Rule: it’s fine to demand that someone else risk a catastrophic injury that could cost him mega-millions to win a meaningless (to most people) exhibition championship the U.S. should be able to win anyway, but I’d wager not one of these lounge-chair heroes would choose risk over a fraction of Skubal’s looming fortune if they were in the same position.

4.Today’s “Bias Makes You Stupid” feature: this. [Gift Link] Sony’s film division CEO extols his business, dismisses the doom-sayers, insists that the catastrophic drop in movie theater box office can be reversed (In 2019, there were 1.24 billion movie tickets sold in North America. In 2025, there were 780 million, a decline of 37%.) and explains that the only problem is that movies aren’t in theaters long enough, so everyone waits for them to be sort-of free on streaming services. Guess what he doesn’t mention, or even hint at? Hollywood makes terrible, politically obnoxious, virtue-signalling movies now that are more concerned with promoting DEI, LGBTQ+, anti-American, “good illegal immigrant” propaganda than either thoughtful adult dramas or family entertainment. “Snow White.” “The Bride.” Wait until the Oscars, when one presenter and award-winner after another decides to insult and denigrate half of the U.S.

I love movies too, especially good ones. Too bad Hollywood forgot how to make them.

5. Just a little reminder that there are terrible people out there...A U.K. judge this week sentenced Amanda Wixon, a mother of 10 (!), to 13 years in prison for forcing a woman to work as her “house slave” for more than two decades. The de facto slave was a teenager when she was taken into the Gloucestershire home, and suffered over 25 years of horrific abuse.

The 56-year-old Wixon forced the victim to do work and chores for the family, regularly assaulted her, and deprived her of food and health care. She would regularly beat the victim, who is now in her 40s, and knocked out her teeth on one occasion. She would also squirt washing-up liquid down her slave’s throat, splash bleach in her face and repeatedly shaved her head.

OK, that part isn’t so bad….

Why the un-named woman put up with this doesn’t make sense from what I could discern from the 13-day trial. She is described as having a learning disability, but now is said to be attending a college. And how did this situation escape notice by anyone outside the home for so long? As usual with UK criminal justice, the sentence is ridiculously mild for such a crime. Also: surely some of those ten children are adults by now. Are they being prosecuted as accessories? If not, why not?

6. Returning to more routine ethics outrages: The U.N. again is presuming to employ its warped international priorities and values to attack the nation that hosts its useless organization and that the U.N. relies upon for its existence. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination warned last week that “hate speech” from U.S. political leaders, including President Trump, and intensified immigration enforcement near “schools, hospitals and faith-based institutions,” has sparked “grave human rights violations.”

The United Nations is ethically estopped from criticizing anyone for “human rights violations,” especially after doing its best to let Hamas escape responsibility and just desserts for its terrorist attack on Israel.

Our leaders have shared harmful stereotypes about migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, “portraying them as criminals or as a burden,” the panel blubbered. (Too many of our illegal immigrants are criminals and a burden.) The panel also wrote that derogatory and dehumanizing language “fosters intolerance” and may incite racial discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech, particularly on the internet and social media, noting it was deeply concerned about the insufficient measures to prevent and address racist hate speech.” Yeah, we know the U.N.’s members prefer censorship and criminal penalties for inconvenient opinions and facts.

The U.S. official response was, to paraphrase, “Bite me.”

Perfect.