Posts on Friday, June 12, 2026

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Knicks owner James Dolan could be forced to bury the hatchet if the team clinches an NBA championship — for potentially the biggest ticker-tape victory parade in New York City’s history. The Knicks’ instant-classic Game 4 victory Wednesday over the San Antonio Spurs puts the team one win away their first NBA championship in 53 years – and amped up talks about a befitting mega-celebration, insiders said. Jinxes be damned, officials were said to have met in City Hall on Thursday afternoon to hash out the logistics of a throwing a ticker-tape parade as soon as next week —

As more and more revelations come to the fore about Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who just won the Democrat primary this week, many Democrats seem to have adopted a simple mantra regarding his campaign: Vote for the Nazi: It’s important. The saying echoes a slogan from campaigns past — one that supporters of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Platner’s opponent in the general election, would do well to employ against Platner. The slogan demonstrates how Democrats will embrace a candidate — any candidate — so long as that person opposes President Trump.

OK, let’s go to Scott Pelley. Here’s the headline from the Daily Mail. “Teary-eyed Scott Pelley goes scorched earth on Bari Weiss as he calls for her removal and describes CBS firings like his family being murdered.” He says at one point he started to tear up when talking about his former colleague, executive producer Tanya Simon, being fired an,d said it felt like “your spouse being murdered.” Victor Davis Hanson: They always do that. I mean, anybody who’s in the arena and espouses political views, “I was almost murdered, Jack. I was swatted.

It would be the first time Congress has allowed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to lapse since the law passed in 2008. It grants the government powers to spy on foreign nationals living abroad as part of counterterrorism efforts without requiring warrants. Congress has struggled for months to reach a deal that placates privacy hawks on the left and the right, who demand restraints they say are necessary to prevent the law from being abused. They argue that there are insufficient guardrails on the government’s sweeping up private information about Americans.

C.S. Lewis is the most effective Christian apologist in the modern era, and by that I mean the last 200 years or so. Perhaps his most effective work is The Screwtape Letters, which was written from the perspective of an imaginary demon (Screwtape) instructing his nephew (Wormwood) on how to seal the eternal fate of his “patient.” Lewis found no joy in writing it. He confessed, “The world into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before it was done.”

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a top contender to be the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, has a history of downplaying the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood — now designated a terrorist group by the U.S. — and even defended a brazen power grab by the Islamist group’s leader during the Brotherhood’s brief reign in Egypt. El-Sayed, who is seeking to be the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate, signed onto a 2012 statement which defended the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule of Egypt and further defended a massive power grab by Mohammed Morsi, the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Keep in mind the FISA (702) extension already passed the House, and the bill is sitting in the Senate where the ever-predictable John Thune is not bringing it up for a vote. This morning the House tried to pass a short-term FISA (702) extension for three weeks (ending July 2). The measure failed by a vote of 218 to 198. In addition to Democrats, nineteen republicans also voted against it. The Democrats are claiming their lack of support surrounds the appointment of Bill Pulte as Acting DNI effective June 19, and their concern that Pulte will weaponize the FISA (702) authority to conduct political surveillance.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has immediately suspended federal funding to the lead homeless agency in Los Angeles amid allegations of “obvious fraud” and “wanton mismanagement.” HUD’s inspector general, Brian Harrison has also launched an investigation into the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and its leadership, Fox News Digital reported Thursday. The scandal-plagued agency has received nearly $1 billion in federal funding since 2021, even as the homeless crisis exploded on city streets. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, led by Vice President JD Vance, said in a statement on X Thursday that it is —

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Thursday that the Trump administration has located 146,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were trafficked into the United States during the Biden administration and subsequently lost. During a news conference at the Department of Justice with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other Trump administration officials, Mullin credited a joint effort between DHS, ICE and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for finding the missing children, which he said President Trump has made a high priority. Unfortunately, nearly 300,000 minors remain unaccounted for, according to Mullin, although officials continue to search for them.N

A Scottish court found a man guilty of making sexual comments to a group of young girls before grabbing and shoving one of them to the ground, BBC News reported Thursday. (snip) Bulgarian migrants Ilia Belov and his sister Nadjedzha Belova have been found guilty of attacking a group of young girls, aged 12-14, in Dundee last year. The attack went viral on X after one of the victims unveiled an axe.