Tex's Place

By Bob Hoge Defamation lawsuits: they’re every journalist’s nightmare. You either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent the facts, causing your company to fork over millions of dollars, and all of a sudden you are greeted with a lot of silence around the water cooler. Or maybe you're looking for a new job. As a strong First Amendment advocate, I am always cautious about punishing news outlets or individuals for expressing their opinions. That being said, I have exactly zero sympathy for the New York Times, which just lost its first defamation case in over half a century and has to pay a maligned college basketball player close to 10 million bucks. They have been so slanted and so biased for so long now that it’s a wonder this hasn’t happened before. So many of their stories rely on “unnamed sources” and “people close to the situation.” That came back to bite them in the posterior this time around : The New York Times was defeated in a defamation lawsuit Thursday brough...

Entrance to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora, Colo. (The Colorado Sun) By John Ingold A federal judge in Denver on Thursday temporarily blocked a portion of a new state law that expanded Colorado’s public health authority over the immigrant detention center in Aurora. The ruling is a brief victory for the GEO Group in its showdown with state and local authorities over inspections intended to protect the health of those inside and outside of the facility. But the ruling doesn’t appear to settle the state’s ongoing fight with GEO over the investigation of a tuberculosis infection at the facility. That’s because Colorado cited authority under pre-existing public health laws — and not the new law — when it sued GEO in state court earlier this week for failing to comply with a public health order. Thursday’s ruling in federal court does not affect those laws. GEO, a for-profit company based in Florida, contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs En...

By Sister Toldjah  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) and Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have been very cagey anytime they've been asked about the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in their party. But while Jeffries has at least indicated areas where he disagrees with the DSA (he says he doesn't believe in defunding the police and having open borders, for instance), Schumer has been more evasive, perhaps in an effort to try and stave off a 2028 primary challenge from Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), a prominent DSA member who has been critical of his leadership and who hasn't ruled out any future political options. For instance, here's where he was in July, before DSA-backed Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democrat Senate primary, yada-yadaing about how Democrats across the board were united in opposing President Trump and defeating the MAGA agenda: Reporter: ...so, the DSA... Schumer: Trump Reporter: They want...

By Teri Christoph Things are getting more interesting by the hour in the case of former Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell. As RedState's Rusty Weiss reported earlier on Thursday, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were waiting for Swalwell when he arrived at San Francisco International Airport over the weekend. We knew that agents had seized his electronic devices as part of an ongoing federal investigation into sexual misconduct allegations that have been made against him. FBI agents also searched Swalwell's Washington, D.C., home and reportedly seized additional evidence. We're now learning more about the search warrant behind those seizures, and there's one detail in particular that is raising some very uncomfortable questions for him. According to a copy of the search warrant that was obtained by the San Francisco Standard, agents seized Swalwell's iPhone and MacBook Pro at approximately 8:25 PM Saturday. The warrant had been filed on August ...

(iStockphoto) Rising yields threaten everything, especially overextended equities By Brett Arends When it comes to stock-market downturns, listen to the Bible. Even if one is coming, "of that day and that hour knoweth no man," not even "the angels which are in heaven." But one is surely coming, and the unraveling of the long-term bond market is raising the chances that one is imminent. It is already absurdly obvious that we are in a massive stock-market bubble. Former Federal Reserve governor Bill Dudley just pointed out many of the signs, which will likely come as no surprise to regular readers of MarketWatch but which are worth repeating. While Dudley listed a number of different issues, they boil down to three big ones. First, stock-market valuations are already crazy by any number of measures. Second, the entire artificial-intelligence financial boom is now in the kind of classic Ponzi-style loop that always happens in financial manias, and which has al...

By Ben Smith Election season email is about to get worse. After years of Republican complaints about biased spam filtering, Google is giving political fundraisers a way around Gmail's usual spam filter. Google’s Verified Sender Program opens September 8 to qualifying candidates, parties, political action committees, and other political groups. Approved senders will bypass Gmail's standard spam filter. The program starts just 56 days before the November 3 midterm elections.  Google posted the change to its Help Center Monday without a formal announcement. It also began contacting political committees that day, according to people familiar with the outreach.  Google framed it this way: "This program is designed to connect people with the emails they want to receive..." Users can still unsubscribe, block the sender, or mark the message as spam. Until they do, approved political mail gets a better shot at the inbox. Only Section 527 political committees registered w...

Outgoing Texas Sen. John Cornyn (AP) By Kurt Schlichter In perhaps the least surprising revelation of this campaign cycle, besides the epiphany that the guy with a Nazi tattoo turned out not to be very nice to women, was that the Deputy Legislative Director for nominally Republican Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) just enlisted in the legions of blasphemous, demonic Democrat James Talarico. For any Texans wondering if, in retrospect, they should’ve given Ken Paxton a shot instead of sticking with the incumbent, you’ve got your answer: Hell yes. This turncoat, one Jacob Smith, had a central role in developing policy for an allegedly Republican senator, yet he slid seamlessly into the camp of the imp pushing the gender mutilation of children, socialism, DEI, open borders, and gun control. But then again, Sen. John Cornyn would be on a smooth glide path to another term as a senator if he had ever done anything to stop the gender mutilation of children, socialism, DEI, open borders, and gu...

By Nick Arama We've been treated to a lot of bad takes from the socialists of late.  The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform includes all kinds of unhinged things, including abolishing the Senate, borders, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), prisons, and even defunding the Pentagon. They've shown they're all in for "taxing millionaires" — but then can't even describe how that would work.  If there was any further evidence of how ignorant and unhinged their positions are, their position on Fidel Castro showed how delusional they truly are. DSA commemorates the centenary of Fidel Castro and demands an end to the genocidal blockade. pic.twitter.com/ApeyncJTf7 — DSA (@DemSocialists) August 13, 2026 They lauded 100 years of Castro, praising him as a "fighter" and "stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle." They're angry that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been putting pressure on Cuba to change for the benef...

By Nick Arama White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of the Presidential Personnel Office, Dan Scavino, made an intriguing post on X that had everyone talking. It's not hard to see why.  Warning for graphic language:  When you get fired for doing a spectacularly shitty job at an agency, with your badge deactivated, building access revoked, and the full “you’re dead to us” package—or when you get passed over for Ambassadorships, Boards, or Commissions—because there are candidates who are… — Dan Scavino (@Scavino47) August 20, 2026 When you get fired for doing a spectacularly shitty job at an agency, with your badge deactivated, building access revoked, and the full “you’re dead to us” package—or when you get passed over for Ambassadorships, Boards, or Commissions—because there are candidates who are actually far more qualified than you, please resist the urge to sprint to every media outlet that will platform your lying bull shit, and then falsely attack the peopl...

By Rusty Weiss A Long Island man has been arrested on federal charges after allegedly posting two videos on X in which he threatened to kill U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. Daniel Wayne Kretsinger, of Hauppauge, New York, appeared shirtless and enraged in the June 30 videos, according to a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York. In the recordings, Kretsinger vowed to travel to Washington, D.C., and “put a bullet directly between your eyes,” in a reference to Pirro, while adding he may kill President Trump. “Because you’re such a lying despicable piece of s***,” he said, according to the complaint. “I’m specifically targeting you when I come to Washington, D.C., and put a bullet directly between your eyes ****.” The terrifying video was in direct response to a post from Pirro . Kretsinger thought it was such a good idea to very publicly threaten an official that he posted a second video, stating, "I’m gonna come to DC very f***kin soon sweetheart, and I’m go...