The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Behind Enemy Lines In NOVA, The Fairfax County GOP Met Today

Posted on | February 28, 2026 | No Comments

by Smitty


The lower half of the Fairfax High School auditorium was full, as just over 400 delegates from the various districts met. The population of the county is over a million, and votes +20D, but that is no excuse for failure to participate, especially for State-wide contests.

Proceedings opened just ahead of 0930 with prayer and parliamentary flourishes. Springfield Supervisor Herrity gave a keynote; County Chairman candidates spoke, including incumbent Katie Gorka (husband Sebastian present also). Voting was orderly. Various other local and State candidates, including November hopefuls. We heard from Senatorial primary candidates:

I’ve seen road kill that is more useful than Senator Mark “Bucky” Warner. A dead deer is a non-negative thing. Bucky, on the other hand…

Also a couple of House of Representatives hopefuls for Virginia 8:

The reason for my presence (not having had bandwidth for the Fairfax GOP since the Tea Parties (or blogging, for that matter)) came in the form of the second keynote: Virginians for Fair Maps, whose server appears to have been slashdotted at the moment.
Not unlike what happened to Winsome Sears last November in the Gubernatorial race. The victor was someone who, at the risk of hyperbole, seems like she fell out of Revelation Chapter 17.

Finn Lee spoke in lieu of Mike Young against the 21Apr referendum.

  • Tazwel County submitted a lawsuit. VA Supreme Court allowed both the case and the referendum to continue. Nice double bind: if the measure fails on 21Apr, VA Supreme Court is all “Never mind.” If the measure succeeds, “The people have spoken.” We did speak, in 2020, in favor of a non-partisan commission to do this thing, but Grabby Abby is unconcerned with these pesky details.
  • RNC has submitted a suit, as well.

Here is their ad:
Here is there 30sec YouTube ad:

Estimated turnout for this referendum, according to Lee, is around 20%. Polls show over half of voters are opposed, but a phone sample does not qualify as a vote.
TPUSA, he continued, is planning on knocking doors. But it’s up to everyone to get the word and the vote out. Finally, Lee cautioned against relying upon USPS to deliver anything. Put your ballot into a box or, better still, feed it into the ballot scanner on 21APR.

I left the meeting intact, which is more than can be said of the IRGC. But the Democratic Party is very much a wounded, cornered animal right now, if not as bad off as their fellow anti-Trump buddies in Iran.

We can expect the Democrats to fight tooth and nail for every last scrap of political power they can retain. 2028 is a vastly important mid-term, conceivably the “most important mid-term of our lifetimes”. Why would I trot out this tired cliche? Because the 120th Congress that gets sworn in next January will be priming the Census Bureau for the decennial census. And if that census is conducted honestly, and illegal aliens (the modern 3/5 Compromise for the Democrats) are omitted, then they stand to lose double digit seats in Congress.

Forward this post and get every Virginian who can legally cast a ballot to participate.

P.S.: Yes, I haven’t been doing much beside gag jokes on X in years. Grabby Abby in general, and this referendum in particular, are some scary stuff. Ron Wilcox pinged me to attend the meeting today. Will have to see if he’s going to do a rally or something.

Category: Census, Congress, Democrats, Politics, Republicans, Virginia

‘Major Combat Operations’ in Iran UPDATE: Is the Ayatollah Dead, or Not? UPDATE: He’s ‘Pining for the Fjords’

Posted on | February 28, 2026 | No Comments

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

UPDATE 5:10 p.m. ET: The Associated Press:

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the United States, Israeli officials told The Associated Press on Saturday. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. or Iran on his status.

The old Monty Python parrot sketch reference via Aaron Walker at Twitchy. It is elsewhere reported that pretty much the entire military leadership of the Tehran regime has been eliminated and, if indeed the Ayatollah himself has now shuffled off this mortal coil, the Islamic Republic is done, finished, kaput. War is over, we win.

We do not know what comes next, of course, but the Left’s predictable noise about a long war in Iran appears to be immediately void. In a one-day lightning strike, the U.S. and Israel have destroyed the Shiite theocracy, and whatever happens now, the future in Iran will be different.

But the protesters already had their signs printed!

 

* * * PREVIOUSLY (8:36 a.m. ET) * * *

A couple of weeks ago, it was noticed that roughly one-third of the U.S. Navy was within striking range of Iran, at a time when Iran was “negotiating” over their nuclear program with the Trump administration. One must put “negotiating” in quotation marks, because Donald Trump clearly had in mind a specific outcome — the elimination of Iran’s nuclear threat — and the Iranians did not seem to understand the consequences of not giving Trump what he wanted. That was the fuck around stage of the process, and we have now reached the find out stage:

The US and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran Saturday morning in response to the regime’s refusal to dismantle its nuclear program after weeks of negotiations — targeting military infrastructure and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran.
The attacks — which the Department of War called “Operation Epic Fury” — follow a massive US military buildup in the Middle East and come after President Trump repeatedly warned Tehran that it would face consequences if it didn’t make a deal with the US.
Iran then launched missiles towards Israel in a retaliatory attack as officials claimed the response would be “crushing.”
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” Trump said in an eight-minute video address on Saturday.

In addition to the expected outcries from Democrats, who are not just anti-Trump but objectively pro-Iran, this event will trouble many of Trump’s most loyal supporters, whose ideas of an “America First” foreign policy certainly do no include a joint U.S.-Israeli strike against Tehran. What Trump is doing now is very much the kind of thing neoconservatives have advocated for many years, and yet the most prominent neocons have been anti-Trump since 2015. In other words, Trump is disappointing many of his friends by doing what should please many of his enemies. My own concern is for the U.S. troops involved, wishing them success, decisive victory being the shortest route to peace.

UPDATE 12:55 p.m. ET: So you were promised updates and updates ye shall have, but confirmed facts are unfortunately scarce:

Initial indications from intel sources are that Ali Khamenei has at least been hit in the attack, and that the IRGC’s top commander has been killed. The Times of Israel followed up on a report from KAN:

Israel “assesses” that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was likely killed in an Israeli strike earlier today, Channel 12 says, citing unnamed Israeli sources. It says there are “growing indications” to this effect.
There is no official confirmation of the report.
The TV station had minutes earlier said the Israeli assessment was that Khamenei was “hurt at the very least, ” and that this was not an assessment based on satellite imagery showing Khamenei’s presidential compound being flattened, but rather on information from unnamed sources.

The Jerusalem Post corroborates that report, albeit with a bit more caution:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been cut off from contact, and there is no certainty about his fate, Israeli officials told Walla on Saturday afternoon. Iranian officials promised to release a recording from Khamenei soon after Israeli strikes targeted his Tehran compound.
The preliminary assessment among Israeli officials was that Khamenei was hurt in the strike. No official confirmation has been received by Israeli, American, or Iranian sources. …
Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Pakpour are believed to have been killed in Israeli attacks, two sources familiar with Israel’s military operations and one regional source said.
Israeli and Iranian sources said earlier on Saturday strikes on Iran killed several senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and Islamic Regime political officials.

Unless and until we see a mob of enraged Iranian civilians dragging the Ayatollah’s corpse through the streets of Tehran, we’re unlikely to have actual confirmation. What we can confirm, however, is that a lot of Democrats are busy making jackasses of themselves.

.



 

Category: Donald Trump, Iran, Israel, Military

In The Mailbox: 02.27.26 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | February 28, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Self-Defense Is Legal in Michigan
Director Blue: 1984 – The Graphic Novel, 
EBL: Mr. Nobody Against Putin, Panic at CNN, Cobia for grilling, The Great Blizzard of 1888, and Andersonville
Twitchy: “Heated Rivalry” Stans Discover Real Hockey Players Aren’t Their Fanfic Boyfriends, Ilhan Omar Claims US Loves Striking Muslims During Ramadan, Gets Rekt, and Nice Business You’ve Got There – Be A Shame If Dems Broke It Up Because You Backed Trump
Louder With Crowder: Famous Hollywood actress inexplicably wants you to boycott cheeseburgers to protest Trump deporting people, Crazy person dressed in trans flag has hysterical meltdown at city council meeting over they/thems “crying out for justice”, NY taxpayers paid 14 people up to shovel the same pile of snow, thanks to Mamdani, It’s all happening! Jasmine Crockett earns the coveted Cardi B. endorsement in the Texas primary, and White liberal tells Black woman that minorities have no idea how to get a voter ID on their own. BIG mistake
Vox Popoli: Unquiet on the Western Front, The Farmer’s Almanac is Dead, BIOSTELLAR: Space Fleet Academy, The End of Ideology in Britain, and The Core of the Epstein System
According To Hoyt: The War On Things That Work, Your Friday Post, Go on, Take a step, It’s A Trap, and The Weight of Honor
Upstream Reviews: Tenure 3 – Extra Credit
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: Family Voting In The Yookay?
Stoic Observations: The Suspicions of Post-Modernity
Draw & Talk Comics: Is 2026 The Year I Quit Comics?
Based Book Sale: Help Out A Based Author
Postcards From Barsoom: The State of Canada
Cedar Sanderson: Tanager’s Fleet

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Killing Cartel Bosses Won’t Solve Mexico’s Organized Crime Problems, also, Cuba and the U.S. Are Bogged Down in History
American Greatness: YouTuber Gets Slap on the Wrist For Alleged Snowball Assault Against NYPD Officer, Maryland Woman Notifies CPS Over Turning Point USA December High School Event, Good Business for Small Businesses in Alaska: Saving Alaska Native Corporations, NJ Governor Mikie Sherrill Loudly Booed Right After Jack Hughes Gets Standing O at Hockey Ceremony, and National Defense: Is Immunity for Glyphosate Makers a Betrayal of the MAHA Movement?
BattleSwarm: Ted Cruz Endorses Crenshaw Opponent Toth, “Tony Gonzales Is A Wicked Man”, Texas 2026 Republican Primaries: Comptroller and Railroad Commissioner Races, Microsoft Considered Harmful, and LinkSwarm for February 27
Behind The Black: Mars’ fast moving gigantic lava floods, Japanese rocket startup Space One to attempt third orbital launch this weekend, China outlines plans for manned space program, Isaacman announces major reshaping of Artemis program, and NASA’s corrupt Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel: NASA must be bigger and have more control!
Cafe Hayek: Trump’s Pronouncements About Tariffs Are Ludicrous, Nobel-laureate Vernon Smith on Trump’s (Mis)Understanding of Trade, An Open Letter to Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV), Beck Bungles the History and Economics of Trade, and Perhaps I Am Indeed “a Closed Minded Globalist”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Don Surber: The facts about Trump and Epstein
First Street Journal: The absolute insanity of “sanctuary” policies
Gates Of Vienna: Culture-Enriching Serial Gang Rapists in Heinsberg-Unterbruch, Our Muslim Troubles: A Video Series, Part Two, and The Malleability of Truth
The Geller Report: New York City Muslim Crowd Calls for New, ‘Stronger’ October 7 Jihad Massacre, Churchill Desecrated, Soros DA Alvin Bragg Released Career Criminal Who Assaulted NYPD Police Officers, Susie Wiles Lawyer Categorically DENIES He Allowed Biden FBI To Secretly Record Their Conversations, and Democrat “TRAILBLAZER” – First Openly Trans Lawmaker Pleads Guilty to CHILD SEX Charges (As Young As 3)
Hollywood In Toto: Kimmel’s Free Speech Brigade Silent Over Bari Weiss Cancellation, Are Critics Review Bombing Scream 7? Genre Mashup Night Patrol Lacks Bite, Humor, Testament of Ann Lee is Cinematic Test Worth Taking, and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Hurts Its Own Cause
Legal Insurrection: Judge Bans Bakersfield College From Punishing Professor Over DEI, Yet Allows Required Training, Crazed Leftist Who Yelled at Senator Jeff Flake Over Kavanaugh Vote Gets Job in Mamdani Administration, Pro-Abortion Prof Backs Out of Notre Dame Leadership Role After Protests, Ridicule Just Might Be the Republicans’ Most Powerful Weapon, and DOJ Charges 30 More People in Anti-ICE Minnesota Church Invasion
Nebraska Energy Observer: SOTU, Trump on Jefferson, It’s just a Refinery, Miracle V,2 and V.2.1, and Monday Maunderings
Outkick: ‘They Take Too Much Money’, Atlanta Falcons Fire Former Michigan Assistant Amid Sexual Assault Investigation, Cadillac Gives Mario Andretti The Ultimate Salute With Car Name, Here’s Why The Leaked MLB Salary Cap Proposal Means We’re Headed For A 2027 Lockout, and Sophie Cunningham Goes All-Natural By The Pool & The Great Brooks Nader Debate
Power Line: When you say nothing at all, Wrong-way Abdiasis, Something happening here, So much habeas, and Do Americans Hate ICE?
Racket News: Gone Fishing – How The FBI Can Spend Years Trying To Hook You
Shark Tank: Nine FL State Senators Back Byron Donalds For Governor
STUMP: Demographics v. Public Finance
The Political Hat: Quick Takes – Dead Canadian Babies, also, Firing Line Friday: Sports, Persecution, and Christians
This Ain’t Hell: Some action on barracks? Maybe, Army shoots down eebul drone, and Texas Dem, When the chickens come home to roost: Pakistan versus the Taliban, Valor Friday, and The surging of airpower to the Middle East does not mean “another forever war”
Transterrestrial Musings: Hiatus, A Good First Step, and Celebration
Victory Girls: Suddenly Tim Walz Has A Plan To Fix Fraud, Eventually, also, Ilhan Omar’s Heckling Wasn’t Unavoidable. It Was Immigration Politics
Watts Up With That: EPA’s CO2 Reversal Is Welcome Opening For Developing World, Bloomberg Net Zero Obituary, We Didn’t Just Get Expensive Electricity – We Built a System That Makes It Inevitable, RealClear Politics Is Right – The Climate Hoax Is a Massive Financial Scam, and Rooftop Solar: Is There a Case? (Part III)
The Federalist: Don’t Let Miserable Media Hacks Suck The Joy Out Of U.S. Hockey’s Gold Medal Wins, Study Shows Voting Republican Saves Lives, Viral Twenty One Pilots Song ‘Drag Path’ Offers A Christian Antidote To Gen Z Angst, Parents, Staff Claim Expensive Nashville Christian Prep School Has Gone ‘Woke’, and This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Mark Steyn: Strangers in the Night, “Hallmarks of Hate”, Live Around the Planet, I Am Your Karma, and The State of the State of the Union

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Tools & Home Improvement
New Releases – Tools & Home Improvement
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software


 

Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.27.26 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | February 27, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The worst thing produced with AI so far – or the best?
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: A Day at the Alamo with Davy Crockett (1836), The Tlaib Dossier by DataRepublican, and With JFK on PT-109 (1943)
357 Magnum: Good Guys 1, Bad Guys 0, also, British Cops Didn’t Just Ignore Rape Gangs, They Trafficked British Girls
EBL: Vanished, February Fennel Fish, American Chestnut, Colt .45, and MAGA SOTU
Twitchy: Rep. Ro Khanna Plays “Didn’t Know That” Card When Pinned Down On Epstein Files & Democrat Doxxing, Hillary Explains Why Ghislaine Maxwell Was At Chelsea’s Wedding, and Stitt Storm In Oklahoma
Louder With Crowder: Gavin Newsom praises school superintendent who came here illegally…and who just got raided by the FBI, Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores will cost taxpayers $70 million just to “study” if it’s possible, Squad Democrat has no original material, so she slanders ICE agents as the “KKK”, Democrat Senator, with a straight face, claims that demanding voter ID will help people CHEAT in elections, and Nancy Pelosi malfunctions when CNN asks how it felt to see Elizabeth Warren give Trump a standing ovation
Vox Popoli: The Israel-China Intelligence War, The Corpse Wasn’t Epstein, Ahistorical Heresy, Victory Lap, and ConJournoPros
Upstream Reviews: Dracula’s Guest
Cedar Sanderson: Invisible Horses
Defending The Wood Perilous: Hell is a Holodeck,
The Bugscuffle Gazette: After Action Report, also, Unfeminism
Stoic Observations: The Grumpy Old Man Problem
Ammo.com: How old do you have to be to buy a gun?
Weird Catholic: The Pierced Heart of Mary

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: USAF’s Antique Roadshow of Logistics, also, Secondary I&W of China Getting Ready For War
Don Surber: Highlights of the Trump, also, Taladro, bebe, taladro
Racket News: What The Longest SOTU In History Didn’t Clarify, also, The NYT Makes Sports Miserable

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Snacks & Sweets
Survival Foods
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software


 

Category: Linkagery

The Worst People in the World (Part II)

Posted on | February 27, 2026 | No Comments

You will never understand liberals until you read Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. However often I’ve recommended that book over the years, I occasionally feel the need to repeat the recommendation for the simple reason that Sowell demystifies what would otherwise be incomprehensible, i.e., the persistent tendency of the Left to make their own good intentions an argument for supporting policies that are objectively harmful to the very people that liberals claim to be “helping.” Liberals think of themselves as morally and intellectually superior (i.e., “the Anointed”) and regard others as ignorant, at best, if not indeed immoral (“the Benighted,” as Sowell says). Because liberalism is so prevalent in the education system and the media, it is possible for the liberal to go through life with this attitude and never be forced to examine their own belief system.

It is not anomalous, but is instead a logical consequence of this problem with the Anointed that objectively bad people are often the loudest voices on the bandwagon of the latest liberal crusade. If all the most prestigious media outlets are proclaiming that it is a moral duty to oppose ICE agents engaged in deporting illegal aliens, we can then predict that the anti-ICE protests will attract various deranged fanatics who, having no objective basis for feeling good about themselves, seek an ego-boost by aligning themselves with the Anointed crusade. Hence, Renee Good.

Renee Good’s life was a series of failures. She had three kids by two different fathers, losing custody of two of her own children, then took up with a lesbian “wife” and decided to move to Canada before relocating to Minnesota and joining the anti-ICE protests there. What accomplishment in her own life could Renee Good cite as a success? On what basis could she think of herself as entitled to lecture others on right and wrong?

It was during the 2013 Kaitlyn Hunt controversy that I began repeating a simple slogan: “Bad causes attract bad people.” Here you had a story that the liberal media was trying to sell as a fight against homophobic bigotry — 18-year-old high school senior prosecuted for her involvement with a 14-year-old freshman girl — but if you looked past this victimhood narrative, the facts of the case were such that Kaitlyn was scarcely a martyred heroine. She had clearly broken the law and, according to the younger girl’s parents, had obsessively stalked her victim even after the parents had warned her to stop. Prosecutors had offered Hunt a plea bargain, as is common in statutory rape cases because prosecutors do not like having to go to court in circumstances where they must rely on the “consenting” victim being forced to testify. Every year, hundreds of statutory rape cases are settled by this kind of plea bargain, but for some reason Kaitlyn Hunt’s family decided that the deal offered by prosecutors wasn’t lenient enough and instead launched the #FreeKate movement, portraying their daughter as the victim of homophobic prejudice.

Kaitlyn Hunt’s 2013 mug shot

Lunatics came out of the woodwork to jump onto the #FreeKate bandwagon and, because my blog was one of the few that was regularly following the story, these lunatics turned on me with a rabid frenzy, spewing all manner of threats and imprecations. And in every instance where it was possible to identify these people (most of whom were hiding behind online pseudonyms), they could best be described as unsavory.

When caught in the midst of such a lunatic frenzy (which has happened a few times over the years), I find it necessary to remind myself that I’m a professional journalist. I’m not an idealist crusading for a cause, but rather a guy trying to make a living as a writer. “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money,” to quote Samuel Johnson, and if you’d like to hit the freaking tip jar, this would be as good a time as any.

The #FreeKate firestorm was, as I say, one of those moments when I had to step back and take stock: “Why am I doing this? What is my objective purpose here?” and then I remembered: MEDIA BIAS!

If the regular media were doing their job correctly, there would be no reason for me to dig in on something like the Kaitlyn Hunt saga. But you had major media outlets — including ABC’s 20/20 show — promoting the #FreeKate victimhood narrative, and here I was just a guy with a blog trying to fight back against that narrative, while being threatened by an online swarm of raving lunatics: “Bad causes attract bad people.”

Memories of that experience came back to me early this morning when I saw some of the weird Trump Derangement Syndrome reactions to the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s gold medal victory. One of the weirdest reactions was when the official NHL account posted to its X account a picture of a player who wasn’t even on the U.S. team, Washington Capitals center Dylan Strome, posing with his daughter at Disneyland, with a caption praising Strome as “the ultimate girl dad.” In response, a bunch of “pronoun people” (as Greg Price calls them) jumped in with vile comments ranting against the U.S. hockey team.

Do you see the relevance to The Vision of the Anointed? Because they are liberals, supporting the current crusade of the Anointed, these people believe they’re on the side of the angels and are justified in making hateful comments about a guy who actually had nothing to do with whatever it is they’re angry about. Dylan Strome and his wife were shocked and confused, and the NHL ended up deleting the tweet.

Daniel Friedman commented on this weird brouhaha:

A lot of progressives are really bad people, and the fact that these bad people think they’re good people — the best people who have ever lived — makes them much, much worse people.

Bingo! They are the worst people in the world (the reason the headline says “Part II” is because I’d previously used the same headline for a post last month about Slate’s Heather Schwedel). The point that Friedman makes is very important: It is precisely because “these bad people think they’re good people” that they are so despicably bad. Their belief in their own inherent righteousness makes them dangerous fanatics.

Once you figure this out — that the self-professed “good intentions” of liberals are, as Sowell says, an exercise in self-congratulations — everything else about them becomes transparent. And maybe that insight is valuable enough that you’ll consider it a good idea to hit the freaking tip jar, because I’m not a blockhead. Just doin’ my job here . . .



 

Category: Media Bias, Progressivism

An Odd Sequel to the Bubba/‘Brittni’ Saga

Posted on | February 26, 2026 | No Comments

The late Fred ‘Bubba’ Copleand (left) as ‘Brittni Summerlin’ (right)

It’s been more than two years and most readers have probably forgotten the disturbing story of the late Fred “Bubba” Copeland:

Copeland was the mayor of Smiths Station, a town of less than 7,000 people in Lee County, Alabama. He was also a freakazoid, secretly pursuing transgender fantasies that he posted online using a persona he called “Brittini Blaire Summerlin.”

Habitually working in “file-it-and-forget-it” mode, the tragic tale of Bubba/“Brittini” hadn’t crossed my mind recently, but then Glenn Reynolds called attention to a campus controversy:

The TPUSA chapter at the University of Montevallo rescheduled the mid-February “Change My Mind”-style event after administrators postponed the original date, citing safety concerns.
Now scheduled for March 5, it will still feature conservative commentator and 1819 News founder Bryan Dawson and be a “pick up the mic” format encouraging open debate, according to TPUSA Montevallo’s Instagram page.
“Montevallo caved to the liberal mob on campus who staged a walkout as a protest for the university allowing me to speak,” Dawson posted on his Facebook page. “Montevallo cancelled the TPUSA event citing this and security concerns due to death threats towards me.”
Dawson’s planned appearance had prompted a walkout by several dozen students earlier in the month who said they felt unsafe with the speaker selection, citing his criminal past, the Vallo Vision News reported.

You might not be able to add the 2+2 connection there, so I will give you further information from the Montevallo student newspaper:

Organizers say they consider the [walkout] a success, with 20 to 30 students taking part.
Dawson is president and CEO of conservative news outlet 1819 [News], and student protesters are upset with his invitation to campus. . . .
Protest organizers, who asked to be identified only as A.O. and J.S., believe this decision will only bring harm to their already hurting university. A.O. says if they were an incoming freshman on a campus tour and “someone with that background was sitting in front of a place, one of two places to eat on campus, I probably wouldn’t have ended up here.”
“That background” referring to Dawson’s felony filled background of cocaine trafficking, serial car theft, attempted murder and the releasing of information that led to the suicide of Alabama mayor and pastor Fred “Bubba” Copeland.

A-ha! So now we know what it’s really about: The students regard Dawson as persona non grata because it was his site that exposed Bubba/“Brittini,” who committed suicide a few days after the first story about the mayor’s freakazoid life was published by 1819 News.

Let me now remind you, however, that in his/“her” online persona, Bubba/“Brittini” appears to have harmed real people that he/“she” knew in real life, using their names and photos:

Ansley Summerlin, who alleged Copeland used her identity, told WTVM her name and likeness appeared on multiple porn sites.
“I had some people start sending me photos that were posted of me on multiple porn sites, I guess you could say that also had pictures of ‘Brittini,’ as well,” she said. “And he proceeded to use my first and middle names on these sites. And I believe there are about nine sites now that have five or six photos of my face and my name across the net.”
The second alleged victim, identified as a “local hairstylist in Smiths Station,” also discussed her likeness being used in Copeland’s writings.
“It said my first and last name,” she said. “And it was basically describing the way that I look and intensified, I guess, as a porn star. And it went into very graphic detail. I didn’t get past the first page because I honestly couldn’t stomach it.”

Take my word for it when I tell you that this was arguably not even the worst thing that Bubba/“Brittini” did in his/“her” online fantasy persona. You can browse through the archives at 1819 News if you’re curious, or just trust me when I say that it was very, very bad.

Because of my file-it-and-forget-it habit, I hadn’t followed up on the story — like, the guy’s dead, what else is there to report? — which is why I didn’t realize that a tear-jerker sob story about Bubba/“Brittini” was published by a swanky magazine and it won a Pulitzer Prize!

The article in question omitted the most sordid aspects of what Bubba/“Brittini” did online — and I repeat, this was very, very bad stuff — and instead tried to paint the small-town mayor as a sympathetic figure victimized by an EVIL RIGHT-WING WEBSITE!

While ethical arguments about how 1819 News handled the story are worthy of discussion, I would like to point out that Taylor Lorenz has “doxxed” people who were a lot more innocent than Bubba Copeland.

The protest against Bryan Dawson was, in fact, an attempt to punish and silence 1819 News for publishing the truth about Bubba/“Brittini,” but the students also mentioned Dawson’s criminal record.

In 2007, when he was 22 years old, Bryan Dawson was a serious drug dealer in Colorado. If you know anything at all about drug dealers, you know that “serious” means capable of deadly violence. He very nearly killed a guy he suspected of being a snitch, and could have been sentenced to hundreds of years in prison. A plea bargain got him a 16-year sentence, and while in prison, Dawson became a Christian. He was later released to a halfway house:

After graduating from the program, he was able to transfer his parole to Alabama, where his wife was living.
A friend of Dawson’s helped him get an affiliate relations manager job with USA Radio Networks, which syndicated several big-name talk show hosts such as Steve Deace. Dawson helped market the network’s news segments to stations across the country.
“I was the new guy. I didn’t know the rules, and so you know, I was told that this would never work when I originally pitched it to the team, but I thought it would, and it did,” Dawson said.
His success led him to work for Lee Habeeb on expanding “Our American Stories,” which gave Dawson the experience and skills he would soon use to help launch 1819 News.
Dawson said after the 2020 election, he turned his focus away from national news to the local level. That’s when Caleb Crosby with the Alabama Policy Institute called him about starting a state-focused radio show.

This is an amazing story, and one that Dawson has told at length — his testimony on the saving power of Christ. Which may explain a couple of things. First, why did 1819 News make the decision to publish that story about Bubba/“Brittini”? It may have something to do with the fact that Bubba Copeland was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” pastoring a Baptist church while engaging in heinous online behavior in his “Brittni Summerlin” persona. But surely Dawson would not have expected Copeland’s suicide, because how was Copeland’s situation worse than what Dawson himself had faced when he was sent to prison?

Christians are supposed to be courageous, able to withstand the worst through faith in Jesus, emulating the Savior who was willing to suffer death for our sake. However unfair we may consider our own suffering to be, it cannot be worse than what Jesus suffered. We ought never complain when we are chastised, because our sins give us no room to say our suffering is unjust. If we have any blessings in our life, how much more grateful to God should we be, knowing how unworthy we are?

How does God choose His servants? Those of us of Calvinist leanings ponder Romans 8:28-31, and then look at such an example as Bryan Dawson — plucked out of a prison cell and raised up for a duty that he surely never contemplated during his outlaw career in Colorado. If it pleased God to have such a servant, who are we to object, so long as Bryan is faithful to his calling and does the Lord’s work?

The decision to publish the Bubba/“Brittini” story must be considered in this light. What would I do if such a bombshell story just landed in my lap? How could any editor say no to such a story? Bryan Dawson has been widely condemned for that decision, but has repeatedly pointed out that his critics aren’t willing to reckon with the worst aspects of what Bubba Copeland did. Esquire magazine won a Pulitzer for soft-peddling the heinous nature of what Copeland was doing online, and where are the awards for the guys at 1819 News, including reporter Craig Monger, who broke the original story? Talk about an injustice . . .

Anyway, the students at the University of Montevallo who protested against Bryan Dawson’s appearance are idiots and cowards, and I’m glad they’ve failed to prevent him from speaking on campus.



 

Category: Alabama, Crime, Education, Journalism, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 02.24.26

Posted on | February 25, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’ll be on the road for the next couple of days en route to Confinement, Mike Williamson’s mini-convention/house party outside of Nashville. Blogging may be sporadic, but I think Rule 5 Sunday and the FMJRA will get done on time. I mean, that’s what you guys are paying me the big bucks for, right?  😉
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

I mean…are openAI, Anthropic, and Google even trying?

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: What’s the Opposite of Diversity?
EBL: Queen Snapper, also, Street Sicilian Food
Twitchy: Trump’s Hilarious SOTU Dig At Pelosi Makes Her Wish She Could Rip Up His Speech All Over Again, Trump Gets Democrats To Reveal Their Main Priority With “Stand Up” Request, and TN Democrat Gov Hopeful Lies About Sen. Blackburn’s Olympic Hockey Congrats – Scores Own Goal
Louder With Crowder: Texas voter reduced to literal tears she felt forced to vote for a white man over Jasmine Crockett, California fire victims can’t rebuild, but they did receive FINES for not clearing their brush in time, Sheriff loses it after California parole board releases serial child predator serving three life sentences, Father opposed transitioning his ten-year-old son, so Iceland’s government took the kid away, and AOC and Mamdani join forces to promote taxpayer-funded childcare for illegals, and of course, it’s in a foreign language
Vox Popoli: The Pieces are in Place, The Art of War in the Taiwan Strait, You Can Be Effectively Smarter, 2 Billion Generations of Nothing, and The Ineducable Meets the Inevitable
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Non Permissive Environments
Born Lucky: A Strange (But Nevertheless Typical) Story
Jim McCoy: Writing Diverse Characters
Incensepunk Magazine: Office of New Evangelizations

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Companies Are Skeptical of Venezuela’s Oil Fields, also, Is the Nationalist Revolution in Britain Real?
American Greatness: The Left’s Elastic Principles On Judicial Authority, White House Blasts CNN & MSNOW For Ignoring Angel Family Remembrance Ceremony, Former Obama White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler Resigns From Goldman Sachs Amid Epstein Fallout, The Bigger Problem that the Tim Walz NGO Scandal Has Exposed , and AOC’s Ignorance Is No Laughing Matter
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 76 – An Alaskan in Texas
BattleSwarm: Texas 2026 Primary Election Roundup, American Drone Alternative To Chinese Drone Is Chinese Drone, LinkSwarm For February 20, China: Four Years Of Crashing Margin, and EPIC City Update – More Lawsuits!
Behind The Black: The weird landscape of Mars’ death valley, The exterior of Gaudí’s church masterpiece now complete after 144 years of construction, Chinese astronauts provide their perspective on the cracked Shenzhou-20 window, Webb tracks Uranus’ atmosphere over 15 hours, and NASA to return SLS to assembly building tomorrow
Cafe Hayek: Doug Irwin on Trump’s Punitive Taxes On Americans’ Purchases of Imports, Enough With the Misleading Mercantilist Language, Another Open Letter to Scott Bessent, Talking with Scott Atlas, and The Data on 2025 U.S. GDP Are Now In
CDR Salamander: The Russo-Ukrainian War Hits Four
Da Tech Guy: The Democrat Tom Hagen Math Congress & Canine (Or the “Dog that Didn’t Bark”) Edition
Dana Loesch: SOTU Recap
Don Surber: The California Mafia
First Street Journal: That thing that never happens has happened again, This is what country people do, No one is above the law, and that includes our immigration laws, and World War III Watch: Yet another leftist wants to send Other People off to war
Gates Of Vienna: Our Muslim Troubles – A Video Series, Part One, The Truth is Fungible, “A Black Hole of Marginalization and Degradation”, Rupert Lowe: “It Has to Be That the People in Charge Are Villains”, and How to Eat an Elephant — One Islamic Bite at a Time
The Geller Report: “We Did Not Come Here To Coexist. We Are Superior to Everyone Else. They Have to Worship Allah”, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Blocks US From Using RAF Bases for Strikes on Iran, Virginia Democrats Move to Slash Mandatory Prison Time for Rape, Manslaughter, Child Porn Crimes, Susan Rice Threatens -“IT’S NOT GOING TO END WELL FOR THEM”, and Mamdani Begs Residents to Shovel the Snow and DEMANDS FIVE IDS To Pick Up A Shovel
Hollywood In Toto: Here’s Why U2, Springsteen Joined Anti-ICE ‘Resistance’, Ethan Hawke Does Stunning 180 on Political Talk, Gutfeld Defends Silence of the Lambs While Actors Stay Silent, Dead Man’s Wire Does ’70s Era Filmmaking Proud, and Why Midwinter Break Is Unlike Most Faith-Based Films
Legal Insurrection: White House Prioritizes Domestic Phosphorus, Glyphosate Production for Food Security, Villanova U. Prof Says Academia Should be Used as a ‘Trojan Horse’ for Socialism, NYPD Officers Pelted With Snowballs; Leftists Shrug ‘So What’, Democrats Skipping State of the Union for Progressive Rally, and ‘Snow Hurricane’ Energy Reality Check – You Can’t Heat Homes With NetZero Promises
Nebraska Energy Observer: Meanwhile, in Europe, Reordering the World, The Suicide of France, Reflective Friday, and Bearing Down
Outkick: Trump Says US Women’s Hockey Team Will ‘Soon’ Visit White House, Team USA Goalie Named Presidential Medal Of Freedom Recipient During SOTU, Boomer Esiason Shredded Team China’s Eileen Gu – Totally ‘Insufferable’, Diversity In Basketball Continues To Trigger Players And Commentators, and Olivia Culpo Sets The Offseason Standard For The 49ers WAGs During Their Annual Bikini Vacation
Power Line: Shadow government, The Real State of the Union, Following the “Science” on Gender, Dumbest Spin Ever, and Thanks, we needed that
Shark Tank: Rep. Fine Brings Service Dog To SOTU To Highlight “Protecting Puppies From Sharia Act”
Shot In The Dark: George Wallace On Line 2, Volunteer Criminals, Mexico – A Modest Proposal, and  Innovation!
STUMP: 2024 U.S. Top Causes of Death by Sex and Age Group – Finalized
The Political Hat: Quick Takes – Green Madness, Firing Line Friday – Resolved: That the Marketplace Is Not a Social Enemy, and Colorado vs. BOTH The 1st & 2nd Amendments
This Ain’t Hell: France Demands US Ambassador’s Presence – Snubbed, New NASA contract available, Armed man who illegally entered Mar-a-Lago secure perimeter gets shot and killed, Airman and his husband indicted for defrauding millions from the War Department, and Respects to Mr. Uecker
Transterrestrial Musings: Making Space Important, Brutal, Business As Usual, and How Long Can This Go On?
Victory Girls: USA Hockey Gets Gold Medal Honors At White House And SOTU, Gavin Newsom’s Atlanta “I’m Just Like You” Moment, and JP Morgan Admits They DID Debank President Trump’s Accounts
Watts Up With That: Recognizing Failure, Some Liberals Are Reshaping Their Climate Messaging, United Nations Launches New IPCC for Artificial Intelligence, Bernie Sanders Issues Dire Warnings, Wrong, Oceanographic Magazine, Sea Level Rise in Hawaii Is Not a Looming Catastrophe, South Fork Wind Malinformation, and After the Endangerment Finding, States Must Prove CO2 Harms – Wisconsin Can’t
The Federalist: It’s Not Racist To Say Muslims Can’t Tell Us To Reject Dogs, Cheap Gas, Less Crime, Lives Saved, And 4 Other Victories Dems Refused To Cheer At SOTU, Biden-Appointed Judge Has No Idea What Easy Words Like ‘Shall’ Mean, Abigail Spanberger Is Playing Blindfolded Darts With Her Lame SOTU Response, and Newsom Spox Indicates He Will Only Talk To Journalists Who Agree With Him
Mark Steyn: Romancing the Stone, A Presidential Medley, Part Two, Remembering Rush: Five Years On, The Non-Far Left and its Friends, and When They Go Low… He Goes High

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.23.26

Posted on | February 24, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Happy 66th birthday to the Tenno Heika!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.
OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: John Brennan’s War On Trump, A Day With Teddy Roosevelt At The Battle Of San Juan Hill (1899), What Was Found Under The Pyramids Could Rewrite 12,000 Years Of History, A Day on the Underground Railroad (1849), and The Great Chicago Fire (1871)
357 Magnum: UPS Airlines Flight 2976 as Seen From the Ground
EBL: Snowday, Sheepshead (Atlantic), The Little Drummer Girl, Canada Sadz, and Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth
Twitchy: David Hogg Brought Up To Speed On Fast & Furious Scandal, Tim Burchett Schools Bernie Sanders On How Simple It Is To Get Your Birth Certificate, and Newsom’s Comms Director Launches F-Bomb At Journalist Seeking Proof Of Gov. Hairgel’s Dyslexia
Louder With Crowder: Occasional Cortex fights back tears as she continues to meltdown over her embarrassing Munich performance, Katie Porter announces her new “F*** Trump” campaign slogan, thinks she’s being original, Scott Jennings lays waste to Dem congressional candidate, exposing the left’s agenda to import MORE illegals, Leftists stage anti-ICE interpretive dance outside Trump-Kennedy Center, and it’s even more cringe than you can imagine, and Add lily-white Gavin Newsom to list of libs who don’t think Black Americans know how to get an ID to vote
Vox Popoli: Most Science is Fake, Armchair Observations, Birdwatching with AI, The Undefeatable Trilemma, and When History Rhymes
Stoic Observations: It Used To Mean Everything – Now Nobody Cares, also, The Stoic Circle
Cedar Sanderson: Emotion’s Thrall
Upstream Reviews: War Demons
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Bachelor Chow
Mazelit Airaksinen: Cali Nurse Who Says Jews Use “Satanic Dark Magic” Under Investigation

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, The New Battleship, and China’s Goal – Control & Take
Dana Loesch: The Drama At The Olympics May Be More Entertaining Than The Games, also, Iron Lung Bypasses Big Hollywood Putting Studios On Notice
Don Surber: Starmer wants to kneecap our Department of War, also, Alabama & Team USA Defeat Canada
Elizabeth Nickson: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi – Could This Be The End Of “Royal” Familes & Our Disgusting Elites?
Racket News: FBI Probed Actions Of Trump’s Legal Team While He Was Still in Office, also, The Swamp Log
STUMP: The Week In Meep – Shoveling Snow In NY, First Sunday of Lent, & IKEA!, 

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New Releases – Automotive
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software


 

Category: Linkagery
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