The glitz, the glamor … the tedium.
“Super Long Oscars 2026 Had Plenty of Holier-Than-Thou Lectures, Few Memorable Moments” is the New York Post headline. “One Battle after Another,” described by a Brit source as a “Hollywood liberal fantasy in movie form” was Best Picture. The movie presented “a mix of serious themes like political struggle, oppression and resistance with comedy.” The Free Press found the movie “unredeemable,” which was pretty must your humble scribe’s impression.
Jessie Buckey, as was not unexpected, won Best Actress for her portrayal of Mrs. Shakespeare as a pagan, half witch in the interminable “Hamnet.” Unherd detected the “whiff of a gimmick” as nagging Mrs. Shakespeare (you’re always in London and not paying enough attention to my needs, blah blah blah) so completely upstaged Mr. S. Yes, in 2026 the Oscars have a lot of girl power.
“Oscars? What Oscars?” asks Powerline’s John Hinderaker, who suggests (rightly, I think) that in a politically divided country conservatives don’t give a hoot about the left-shewing Oscars. National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar writes that it’s the night when “Hollywood celebrates its collapse into cultural irrelevance.” The evening is a “celebration of coastal elite tastes and politics,” writes Blehar. “Can the Oscars leave the woke era behind?” asks Spiked On-line (the article does offer interesting comments about a new award this year, for casting). Best Supporting Actor Sean Penn skipped the evening to visit Ukraine, host country to the socially acceptable war.
You can bet your bottom dollar with absolute certitude that nobody at the Oscars was supporting the other war. President Trump says that the U.S. has wiped out Iran’s air defenses, but he is not ready to declare a win. In an editorial headlined “The Real Nuclear History of Iran” the Editorial Board of the Wall Street declares:
So much of today’s media framing of the Iran war relies on a mythology of what came before. The gist is that Iran was contained by Barack Obama until Donald Trump mucked it up, and now the regime will really pursue nuclear weapons.
Naive is too kind a word for this deceptive, partisan history. The real history is worth rehearsing because it shows that Iran’s regime has been relentless for decades in its quest for the bomb, which is why President Trump is weakening it by force….
Critics of Mr. Trump’s bombing campaign now say it will motivate Iran to pursue nuclear weapons in earnest. But that’s what it has been doing for years. Critics also say the IRGC will now steer the ship of state, but it’s been doing that since the days of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The IRGC’s humiliation of Iran’s President in recent days only lifts that veil.
Bill Clinton faced a similar moment of truth with North Korea in the 1990s before it had the bomb, and he chose to trust Pyongyang’s diplomatic promises. North Korea lied and cheated and built a bomb anyway. Now it is building missiles that could reach the U.S. Mr. Trump chose to act instead, after his predecessors didn’t, and that is a service to the world.
Rich Lowry also addresses former President Obama’s “disproven illusion” about a nuclear Iran. The American Spectator says the administration has not defined victory, while an X post from the Institute for the Study of War finds that the military trajectory in Iran is relatively positive for the U.S. (Thanks to RCP for noticing this.) U.S. allies have begun working to open Strait of Hormuz in response to pressure from President Trump. The New York Times emphasized that the allies were “cool” to the President’s demands. The U.S. has hit Kharg Island, which raises the stakes for Iran’s oil exports. President Trump is warning of “very bad future” if NATO allies don’t help open the Strait of Hormuz. AEI’s Danielle Pletka: “No, We’re Not Losing in Iran.” Just for fun: Rumors that Supreme Leader Jr. is gay.
Formerly, we worried primarily about terrorists coming into the United States. “Terrorists Are Now Often Made in the USA” is the headline over a sobering op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Kevin Cohen, an Israeli security expert, points out that in recent terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the perpetrators were naturalized U.S. citizens or offspring of naturalized immigrants:
The violence that unsettled Western societies throughout 2025 looked nothing like the earlier era of clandestine crossings and centrally directed terrorist cells. Increasingly the danger emerges inside societies that still treat admission as the end of a security process rather than the beginning of one. The shift isn’t simply about the number of attacks. It is about where the failure occurs.
Federal agencies now warn that lone-actor violence may be among the hardest threats to detect, precisely because people who are radicalized domestically often remain invisible to investigators until they act.
Radicalization is a strange concept. Would it be rude to ask if these terrorists came to our shores pre-radicalized and we overlooked it? James Gagliano elaborates on our willful blindness. Believe it or not, some have seen loss of a family member in the Iran war as a mitigating factor in the terrorist attack on a kid-filled synagogue in Michigan. The family was a brother who belonged to the terrorist organization Hezbollah—or as the no-nonsense New York Post puts it “hez my brother.” “Why was Mohamed Bailor Jalloh [who had previously been convicted on a terrorist charge before his attack that left one dead at Old Dominion University) not in federal prison?” asks former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. Jesse Arm says in City Journal that the Jewish community must take defensive measures.
While all this is happening, Democrats are refusing to fund the Homeland Security Department. “Put Chuck Schumer on TSA Duty” is the headline over a WSJ editorial. TSA comes under DHS. Since they are not being paid to work, many are calling in sick or outright quitting their jobs. In addition to national security risks, this is no way to treat people.
The SAVE America Act, which would require an ID to vote, will likely come up for a vote tomorrow. USA TODAY has a story explaining what the act would require:
So there are a number of different types of documents that could potentially be eligible for demonstrating a proof of citizenship, birth certificates, passports, all those types of things would help folks. But it’s important to acknowledge that there are lots of citizens that don’t necessarily have these types of documents readily available.
Oh, c’mon. Readily available? I bet anyone can scrounge us these elusive documents to board a plane or get a benefit. The story goes onto quote the left stalwart Center for American Progress to the effect that 146 Americans do not have a valid passport. You don’t have to have a passport. Townhall has a story on a “Minnesota Elections Official Finally Admits What We All Knew About Illegals Voting.”
Ms. Must has avoided Tucker Carlson stories because they seem so insider baseball. And maybe because I long ago had a soft spot for the preppie populist. Apparently, the former Fox host is alleging that he is being framed as a spy. Eli Lake has a story at The Free Press.
Karol Markowicz writes that it does matter that New York’s First Lady Rama Duwaji is an enthusiastic fan of the abhorrent October 7 massacre. Also only in New York, kids, New York’s ‘Environmental Justice Communities,’ Pumps Money Into Minority Neighborhoods in What Could Be Illegal Discrimination.
Don’t miss James Bowman’s “Melania: The Age of Jeerleading” at American Greatness. A culture that once celebrated heroes now prefers sneering at them—proof that Western self-forgetfulness has turned admiration into ridicule and criticism into a spectator sport, Jim argues.
Also at American Greatness, “Is James Talarico Really a Christian X-Ray?” Hey, David French likes him, but was that endorsement the kiss of death (or more likely a source of mirth).
