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Remembering Dolly Parton

Thank You, Dolly Dolly Parton always seemed like a beloved aunt to me growing up. That is the odd miracle of her life. A girl from a cabin in the Tennessee hills, so poor her father paid the doctor who delivered her with a sack of cornmeal, became someone the whole country claimed as kin. Singers, presidents, ballplayers, rock stars, and people who never bought a country record all said the same thing when she left us: there will never be another. The Opry Girl She was a teenager when she walked onto the Grand Ole Opry stage. Johnny Cash introduced…

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The Future is Now

Politics on the Ground, Compute in Orbit I’ve never been a futurist, much less a maximal one. But Elon Musk has shown me that, in the words of the late George Allen, the future is now. Allen did not mean the distant horizon had arrived on schedule. He meant he refused to treat the present as a waiting room. He traded future draft picks for veterans who could win games immediately because he rejected the idea that the important results belonged to some later, more convenient decade. The motto was operational. It still is. I have spent years treating artificial intelligence…

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Why the Midterm Polls Are Already Broken

The Pressure Line the Polls Refuse to Measure The numbers lied in Michigan. They lied in Wisconsin. They will lie again. In Michigan, the final wave of public polls showed Abdul El-Sayed ahead of Haley Stevens by double digits. Some had him up fourteen, eighteen, even twenty points in the closing days. The actual result was a one-point race. Stevens conceded, but the margin told the real story. In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, the DSA-aligned state representative, led late surveys by twenty points and more. Marquette and others had her comfortably ahead. She lost by a fraction of a point to David…

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Speak for Mackinac, Speak for America

Creaturehood and the American Character I have a practice that keeps me honest. From time to time I sit with the full weight of every oath I have ever sworn. Not the polished ones of adulthood, but the first ones: the clumsy, absolute promises of early childhood, the ones made when the world still felt straightforward and my word felt like the only currency that mattered. I do not treat them as relics. I treat them as live obligations. The man I am now must answer for the boy who made them. Circumstance matters. The light I had at the time…

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The Agriculture Lobby’s Amnesty Bill

SAWA: The Sneer at American Workers In April I went through the DIGNIDAD Act section by section and called it what it is: an awful amnesty bill slicker and roughly four times larger than the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli scam. It still sits in committee. It should die there. Now comes the industry-specific sequel. H.R. 9535, the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026, introduced by House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson, arrives wrapped in the language of modernization and food security. Supporters insist it contains no pathway to citizenship. They call it practical reform so farmers can secure a legal workforce. Read the bill.…

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The Man Who Never Stopped Talking Went Silent

Fauci Took the Fifth 111 Times Anthony Fauci spent years as the most ubiquitous face in American life. He was on every network, every morning show, every late-night desk. He issued decrees, corrected presidents, and cultivated the image of the indispensable expert. In the private pages of the diary Rand Paul forced into the open, the same diary examined in these pages earlier this week, he marveled at his own “explosive and really unimaginable” fame and noted with satisfaction that he had become “the most famous and talked about person in the country.” Today when the country finally demanded answers under…

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Thune’s Excuses

When Leadership Becomes Explanation John Thune sat down with Sean Hannity and offered the same defense he has repeated for months. Here is the exchange on eliminating the legislative filibuster: Hannity: Getting rid of the filibuster: nonstarter? You don’t have the votes? Thune: Well, we don’t. And I’ve actually, I’ve had this conversation with the president many times, I think as you know. I actually suggested at one point that they, his team, come up and sit down and visit with some of my colleagues. So they came up, about twenty Republican senators, and fifteen were a no on getting rid…

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The Fauci Diary

The Man Who Measured Fame Against the Dead They told us it was science. They told us it was sacrifice. They told us the man at the podium was the steady hand, the truth-teller, the one who put country above self. The diary says otherwise. While families watched parents and spouses die alone behind glass, Anthony Fauci sat at his desk and measured his own celebrity in real time. He logged the rising body counts and, on the same pages, the flattering profiles, the front-page stories, the op-eds that declared him indispensable. He recorded that his fame had become “explosive and…

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A Contrast for America

One Hundred Days. One Decision. One hundred days from the midterms, Speaker Mike Johnson draws the line with the clarity the moment demands: common sense or crazy. America or communism. The choice is yours. In 100 days, the people of this country have a critical choice: common sense or crazy.As the Democrat Party surrenders to the extreme far Left, Republicans continue to deliver for the American people. But we aren't finished yet.It's time to choose between our country and… pic.twitter.com/U3IncYxp0P— Mike Johnson (@MikeJohnson) July 26, 2026 It's time to choose between our country and communism. It's a contrast for America, and…

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Rand Paul’s Relentless Document War

The Paper Trail They Tried to Bury Rand Paul does not traffic in vibes. He collects documents. While most of Washington moved on, while the same officials who shaped the COVID response collected awards, wrote memoirs, and settled into think-tank sinecures, Paul kept prying open the record. One FOIA fight, one transcribed interview, one redacted package at a time. The result now sits in his Senate Homeland Security “Reading Room”: a growing archive that maps the distance between what the public was told and what the people in charge actually knew, funded, and protected. Follow the money. Follow the research. Follow…

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