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It's not for everyone. The post The producer that walked out on Van Halen: “I left immediately” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

It should be obvious even to the most obtuse Republican in the Senate that the Democrats will eventually regain another governing trifecta in Washington and will shortly thereafter nuke the legislative filibuster. They have openly pledged to do so in order to pass several pieces of controversial legislation, and would have done it already had it not been for contrarian Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema. Consequently, Senate Republicans should nuke the filibuster themselves if the Democrats try to shut down the government again on January 30, when the recently passed partial funding bill expires. Without the votes of non-citizens the Democrats can’t garner enough electoral support to recapture Congress or the White House. There are a number of reasons to do so while the GOP retains its thin congressional majority.Without the filibuster, for example, Senate Democrats would not be able to block passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which was passed by the House last April. The SAVE Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act — better known as the Motor Voter Law — by requiring states to obtain in-person documentary proof of citizenship before registering a person to vote in a federal election. The Democrats have used the filibuster to prevent Senate passage of this bill because they know requiring in-person proof of citizenship would deprive them of a core constituency. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) all but admits it in a statement released after the SAVE Act passed in the House. Congressional Republicans are pushing a proposal that would coerce states into instituting policies that would effectively prevent millions of American citizens from voting, stymie automatic voter registration and derail in-person voter registration drives. It is an outrage … We all support safe, transparent and secure elections. And countless studies have proved beyond a doubt that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. But Congressional Republicans want to disenfranchise millions of American citizens, seize control of our elections, and fan the flames of election skepticism and denialism. The “tell” in Schumer’s statement is the reference to automatic voter registration (AVR). As recently as ten years ago, AVR did not exist in the United States. If you wanted to vote in any election, it was necessary to visit a local agency in person, produce a valid form of identification and fill out registration paperwork. Then, in March of 2015, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed the first law in the nation providing for the automatic registration of voters using information from the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles. Upon implementation a year later, everyone obtaining or renewing a driver’s license or a state identification card in Oregon became a registered voter unless they retroactively opted out within 21 days. A decade later the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) reports that every Democrat-dominated state plus the District of Columbia has passed and implemented AVR systems similar to the Oregon model. All of these states insist that their AVR systems are models of election integrity, but the objective data suggest otherwise. Oregon has been at this longer than any other state, yet its system was still registering non-citizens to vote as recently as the 2024 election cycle. Meanwhile, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review a case involving Pennsylvania’s refusal to release data showing how noncitizens were added to the Commonwealth’s voter rolls. Pennsylvania publicly admitted that, for decades, its Department of Motor Vehicles had allowed non-U.S. citizens to register to vote through the state’s “motor voter” system. According to the state’s own analysis, “approximately 100,000 registered voters may potentially be non-citizens or may have been non-citizens at some point in time” … PILF requested the records under the National Voter Registration Act’s public disclosure provision, which requires states to make list maintenance documents available for public inspection. Pennsylvania denied the request. All of which brings us back to the need for the SAVE Act and why the Democrats will continue to use the filibuster to ensure that it doesn’t get a floor vote in the Senate. Without the votes of non-citizens the Democrats can’t garner enough electoral support to recapture Congress or the White House. This means the SAVE Act is quite literally an existential threat to their party. Consequently, the Republicans should heed President Trump’s call to terminate the filibuster and pass the bill. As Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) put it early in November, “We KNOW Democrats will nuke the filibuster as soon as they’re able to solidify their grip on power. We should act first in order to pass laws that benefit the AMERICAN people.” Yet Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-N.D.) insists that there aren’t enough Republican votes in the upper chamber to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to achieve cloture and bring the legislation to the floor for a vote. The voters came out a year ago and gave the GOP a governing trifecta in the expectation that they would govern more effectively than the Democrats. If the Republicans in the Senate squander this opportunity to keep an obsolete relic of the 18th century like the filibuster on life support, they deserve to be consigned to a lengthy sojourn in the political wilderness. The voters will likely reward them accordingly. READ MORE from David Catron: The Marjorie Taylor Greene New Deal SCOTUS Must Stop Mail-In Voting Madness Virginia Wild Card: Turnout Among Black Voters

Long after President Trump’s term in office ends, there will be lawfare about what he has done. When the dust settles on his war against the drug lords, there will still be a lot of litigation on things such as the announcement he made on Friday that all things that were done by former president Biden via the “autopen” were cancelled. Trump wrote on Truth Social that, Any document signed by Sleepy Joe Biden with the Autopen, which was approximately 92% of them, is hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect. The Autopen is not allowed to be used if approval is not specifically given by the President of the United States. The Radical Left Lunatics circling Biden around the beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office took the Presidency away from him. I am hereby cancelling all Executive Orders, and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden, because the people who operated the Autopen did so illegally. Joe Biden was not involved in the Autopen process and, if he says he was, he will be brought up on charges of perjury. How far back does that go? In 2024 alone, Biden signed 19 executive orders, granted 39 pardons and commuted about 1,500 sentences. In total, Biden “signed” 162 Executive Orders, 89 pardons and and 4,165 commutations. From what Trump wrote we have to conclude that he wants to wipe the slate clean of all Biden’s EOs, pardons, and commutations. That’s more pardons and commutations than any other president. Trump excels at throwing everything up in the air and seeing how it settles to earth. He’s done it again with his Friday declaration. Biden’s Executive Orders range from the first, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” to the last, “Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay.” In all these cases, it will be up to the Justice Department to prove, in the resulting lawsuits, that Biden signed them with the autopen and didn’t specifically approve each one. How will they prove that? Well, first off they don’t have to. The burden of proof will be on the plaintiffs. They’ll have to prove that Old Joe either signed the document in question or specifically authorized the use of the autopen for that purpose. In defense, the Justice Department may be able to start with forensic evidence showing that Biden didn’t actually sign the documents in question. It may be that an autopen signature is different from an actual one. We don’t know if there is such evidence or how it can be derived. There may be videos showing which were — and were not — signed by Biden in person. But that doesn’t conclude the inquiry. Lawsuits will go back and forth, and to the higher courts, about whether Biden knew and specifically intended that the EOs, pardons, and commutations and such were going to be effective. Will Trump and the Justice Department try to re-imprison people who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted? If so, each of those people will be entitled to a trial on the circumstances surrounding the pardons and commutations. This is a huge mess for which lawyers will find employment for years to come. It’s much less clear that each person — or class of people — affected would have the right to a trial on the question of Trump’s action cancelling Biden’s Executive Orders. Trump could have saved himself the effort by — as this column recommended — cancelling all of Biden’s Executive Orders by his own EO on the first day he resumed office. A further problem is in that a future Democratic president who could (and probably would) cancel the defense of any or all of the lawsuits that are brought against Trump’s action, presuming that the litigation isn’t concluded by the time Trump leaves office (and presuming his successor, Heaven help us, is a Democrat.) There are problems, too, for those challenging Trump’s order. How can they counter evidence that Biden was overcome with senility at the time he supposedly signed the documents? How could that Biden have actually signed them and knew what he was doing when he did? These people cannot rely on Old Joe’s testimony. He’s reportedly too far gone into senility for that. Trump’s threat of a perjury indictment against Biden in the event of such testimony might be something to dissuade all involved to not try to obtain Biden’s testimony. So where does that leave us? If the Justice Department tries to re-imprison those pardoned or had their sentences commuted, that will definitely lead to lawsuits to sustain the pardons and commutations. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department must have been consulted before Trump made his Friday declaration. How will they act to pursue it? And how will they sustain Trump’s erasure of all of Biden’s executive orders? There are any number of other documents Biden signed with the autopen including presidential directives that are still secret. How will they be treated under Trump’s new order? Trump excels at throwing everything up in the air and seeing how it settles to earth. He’s done it again with his Friday declaration. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Striking the Unknown William F. Buckley, Jr. and Tucker Carlson Happy Birthday, Marines

And in despair I bowed my head; ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ‘For hate is strong and mocks the song. Of peace on earth, good will to men. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow / Jean Baptiste Calkin This past weekend brought the first Sunday in Advent. Liturgically, Advent is not part of the Christmas Season, which begins on Christmas Eve. Quite the contrary, it’s a time for vigilance rather than joy, based on the belief that something or Someone wonderful is coming to uplift men’s souls. But in the corporeal world, the Christmas Season has already begun, with decorations everywhere, nonstop cable Christmas movies, and Yuletide music all around. The last category gave me an idea. There may not be Peace on Earth right now, but there are more peaceful spots than last year. All my life, I’ve heard the most common cliché of the season — Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men. This is a secularized misrepresentation of the actual Luke Gospel line, Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace to people of good will (Luke 2:14). Specifically, men in general shouldn’t get a blanket best wishes — only good men and women. However, I dismissed the phrase for a long time, aware that on the Tolstoyan scale, War far exceeded Peace on Earth. I was too young to fight in Vietnam, but a couple of older kids in my orbit were scared to — and of — death in 1972. I remember one friend looking ashen when ordered to report to the draft board with a low lottery number. He came back beaming. “I don’t have to go,” he said. “That’s great, Jerry,” I said. “How come?” “I told them I was allergic.” “Allergic to what?” I asked. “Little yellow men trying to kill me,” said Jerry. It was a politically incorrect time. I paid some attention to the Vietnam War after that. I recall feeling disgusted watching the 1975 fall of Saigon on the news, sorry for the men who died for nothing, and glad Jerry wasn’t one of them. But nothing enraged me more in college than nightly viewings of Ted Koppel on ABC’s Nightline citing day number something of America Held Hostage. That is until the then worst President in American history announced the deaths of eight servicemembers in a catastrophic hostage rescue attempt in Iran. But then came the 80s, and a kind of Pax Americana for the whole decade. If you didn’t count the Cold War, which our President won, and a four-day firefight in Granada, which our country won. Maybe I should’ve given more thought to the Christmas carols at the time, and the peace on Earth bit, but the decade’s other music and the movies were too good. You couldn’t say the same for the 90s, or the goofball President that led into them. The New Year had barely started in 1991 when the Gulf War did. U.S. troops performed magnificently, better than the President did in stopping it. Later that year, he was totally surprised by the most momentous event of the second half of the 20th Century — the fall of the Soviet Union, from the strategic blows his predecessor had dealt it. “We were stunned,” wrote Bush National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. “The coup was a complete surprise.” A worse surprise came 10 years later, at the turn of the century. Nearly 3,000 people murdered in New York and Pennsylvania by 19 jihadists. The military response by the President lasted a lot longer than his father’s Gulf War — nearly 20 years of war. It ended much like Saigon, with Americans fleeing and people falling off aircraft wings, under the command of the now worst President in American history. And while he was President, two more major wars broke out — one in Europe, another in Gaza, after Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and brutalized more innocents. The current President ended that last war, and is working hard to end the other. He has also helped to stop several other military conflicts, such as India versus Pakistan and Thailand versus Cambodia. There may not be Peace on Earth right now, but there are more peaceful spots than last year. Tragically, one of them is not Nigeria, where, so far this year, 7,000 Christians have been killed. The jihadists responsible aren’t men of good will and don’t merit our own. They deserve a less cheerful American response. But America itself is plagued by mindless hatred. I’m not referring to the godless educated class that dominates the Democratic Party, like those who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination and murder their own unborn children. Only God can help or punish them. But the lost black youth for whom life has little meaning, who blast each other every night in Democrat-run cities, who assault helpless white people in packs and hurt them to the point of death — many of them know no other way. There are no fathers at home to teach them. But if I could give them some advice, it would be this, as ridiculous as it may sound to them: This Advent-Christmas season, apart from guttural antihuman rap music, listen to a few classic Christmas carols of the sacred kind. Before your teachers and leaders indoctrinated you into the hopeless pit of racism, your grandparents and great grandparents created and sang Gospel, the most gorgeous, angelic American music ever heard. Some of the Christian carols have the same soul–stirring poetry put to brilliant melody to welcome, not darkness and death, but something or Someone wonderful. READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: A Great American Thanksgiving The Wreck of Feminist Hollywood A Gut Punch in the Culture Fight Have yourselves a romantic little Christmas. Get your love interest my Yuletide romance fantasy novel, The Christmas Spirit. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever fine books are still sold.

Italy gave the world Caravaggio, Verdi, and the sort of architecture that makes tourists weep into their gelato. A place of operas, cathedrals, couture, and cuisine. And yet, this week, its parliament passed a law more at home in a nation struggling with social collapse: a statute defining femicide, the intentional killing of a woman or girl because she is female, as a separate crime, punishable by life imprisonment. A country famous for worshipping its mothers and grandmothers is now reading out statistics that belong in a crime thriller. The vote was unanimous. Italy’s famously quarrelsome parliament suddenly agreed on something — the political equivalent of a taxi in Naples using a turn signal. Giorgia Meloni welcomed the law, calling it overdue. Few disagreed. Italy recorded 106 femicides in 2024, roughly one every three days. That’s a rhythm no civilized country should ever grow accustomed to. Especially not Italy, a nation that has spent centuries perfecting beauty only to find itself tallying bodies at a pace that would shame much poorer and less stable states. This forces a blunt, unavoidable question: why would a supposedly refined Western nation need a specific law for something so barbaric? Why must a country of galleries and grandmothers now legislate against the murder of women as if drafting instructions for a failing state? One thing is obvious: ordinary Italian men (and women) aren’t suddenly possessed by some murderous mania. The average Italian male is far more interested in football lineups, family lunches, and finding a stretch of sidewalk not colonized by Vespas. And yet the killings continue. That contradiction tells us the violence isn’t rising organically from Italian culture. Something else is colliding with it. For well over a decade, Italy has absorbed large waves of unchecked immigration, particularly from North Africa and parts of the Middle East — regions where violence against women is a grim routine. Countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Libya repeatedly rank high for domestic violence, forced marriage, and gender-based killings. In many of these societies, often shaped by deeply traditional interpretations of Islam, “honor” dictates what women may do and “dishonor” is treated as an offense punishable by the family itself. Femicide there isn’t concealed. It’s treated as part of the moral order, not a violation of it. A daughter speaking to a boy her father disapproves of, a wife seeking divorce, a sister refusing a forced marriage — these are the decisions that can cost a woman her life. In Italy, these patterns don’t magically vanish at the border. A culture that normalizes male ownership doesn’t evaporate because someone has filed for asylum. A worldview shaped by the belief that a woman’s disobedience is a provocation doesn’t evaporate at the border or dissolve in a police queue. Add the shock of migration — poverty, humiliation, status turned to dust — and those old norms can grow even stronger. Just like people, norms travel. Customs cling. People don’t wash off their worldview in the Mediterranean Sea. Many arrivals come from regions where a woman’s independence is seen as an insult, where the idea of female autonomy threatens not just one man’s authority but the entire social order. When those men arrive in a country where women dress as they like, walk where they like, choose whom they love, and say “no” without hesitation, the cultural collision is destined to turn ugly. Italy is a nation shaped by Catholicism. Family loyalty may be loud and overbearing, but it has never carried the logic of blood punishment. Italian culture has many sins, but femicide as a moral duty isn’t one of them. The idea that a woman’s choices could stain a family’s name or demand violent “correction” has no roots in Rome, Naples, Florence, or anywhere else on the peninsula. That mindset is a foreign import, and Italy’s now paying the price for pretending all cultures treat women the same. Immigrant-perpetrated violence against women is disproportionately high. Over the last ten years, as migration surged, so did the numbers most politicians refuse to say aloud. Rape cases spiked, sexual assaults climbed, and the profile of offenders shifted in ways no amount of earnest speeches can hide. Cities like Milan, Turin, and Bologna have seen marked rises in attacks carried out by young men from North Africa and parts of the Middle East — men arriving from places where boundaries between “courtship” and coercion barely exist. Italian women report being harassed in parks, on public transport, outside nightclubs, and increasingly in small towns that once saw little more than petty theft. The new femicide law is Italy’s attempt to break that cycle. By naming the crime directly, the state is admitting that women are being targeted for a specific reason: because they are women living in a society that allows them choices unimaginable in the countries some perpetrators come from. Freedom, here, is the provocation. Autonomy, the insult. This is Italy, at last, telling the truth. A nation that spent centuries sculpting order and beauty can no longer ignore the violence now spreading through its streets and homes. But a law, however strong, cannot undo years of reckless policy. It can’t demand assimilation after years spent refusing to ask for it. It can’t fix the consequences of importing communities with profoundly different views on females, family, and social hierarchy. And so Italy now stands in a strange, shameful paradox. A country famous for worshipping its mothers and grandmothers is now reading out statistics that belong in a crime thriller. A nation built on family and fellowship is confronting a kind of brutality that feels torn from another century and imported into the present. The new law is necessary. It may even save lives. But unless Italy confronts the cultural roots of this crisis with the same honesty it finally showed in parliament, the measure will become another well-intentioned plaque on a wall that keeps cracking. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: The Discipline Dividend: How Conservatives Defend What Liberals Dismantle A PSA to Women: This Type of Man Won’t Save You When It Counts The Hedge-Fund Arsonist Now Campaigning as California’s Savior

Somerset Maugham once said that the well-dressed man is the one whose clothes you never notice. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would probably settle for “no slippers at TSA.” Has America turned into a nation of slobs? Duffy seems to think so. He recently launched a campaign encouraging travelers to dress like adults, arguing that sartorial choices influence behavior, especially on airplanes. “Whether it’s a pair of jeans and a decent shirt, I would encourage people to maybe dress a little bit better, which encourages us to maybe behave a little better,” he said. And, more bluntly: “Let’s try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport.” He’s spot-on: sloppy dress reflects a lack of self-respect and projects immaturity, which, in turn, sets a poor example for youth. Maybe the novelty attire should stay in the hamper, and the kids should get dressed. Modeling maturity is the right thing to do. But Duffy’s proposals transcend air travel. Too many adults dress as if childhood never ended. Pajamas, hoodies, sneakers, and far too many ironic novelty tees have become standard — especially for men, who no longer see value in presenting themselves as grown-ups. There was a time when appearance conveyed responsibility, discipline, and self-respect. Today, comfort and irony carry the day. What do we make of the 48-year-old father/accountant wearing a Pokémon T-shirt to parent-teacher night, or the 31-year-old commuter programmer sporting a Saquon Barkley jersey at 8 o’clock Mass? These attacks are too easy, and too fun, and seem almost too mean-spirited to be justified. But they are not — and Duffy is on to something. Dressing like a sixth grader conveys a lack of attention to what it means to be an adult. Men of earlier generations dressed like adults because they wanted to be grown-up. Little boys wore shorts to signal childhood, and when they came of age, they aspired to look the part: shoes polished, trousers pressed, ties carefully knotted. Shoes were investments, worn for decades and broken in with care. Socks were smooth, over the calf, and never crumpled. Shirts were dry-cleaned and hung neatly in closets. Coats were substantial, enduring, heavy with presence. Hats completed the ensemble — fedoras, Homburgs, flat caps procured on travels. The clothes made the man and conveyed a sense of thoughtfulness, discipline, and responsibility. If you doubt it, watch almost any film from Hollywood’s golden age. Cary Grant, Sean Connery, William Powell, David Niven — men who could hail a cab, solve a crime, drink a martini, and still look like adults while doing it. We don’t need every dad in a cul-de-sac to dress like he’s walking onto the set of The Thin Man, but come on, maybe give a little effort! No one is asking Little League coaches to show up in a three-piece and a fedora. But there’s a big stretch of common sense between Cary Grant in a chalk-stripe suit and a dad who looks like a hobo tumbling out of a boxcar. Once you start noticing these choices, it’s hard to unsee them. Today, comfort has replaced discipline. Hoodies, sweatpants, sneakers, flip-flops, and casual tees dominate. Fathers in goofy garb, sporting clothes branded with “I Paused My Game to Be Here” and “The Dadalorian: This Is the Way,” have replaced dressing like an adult. When did everyone decide they had to be “cool”? These novelty tees are not doing the job. You’re a financial advisor, married with kids, living in a suburban cul-de-sac — you’re not cool. That’s okay. Stop trying so hard. As Duffy observes, proper attire could improve behavior and just might have a much wider cultural knock-on effect. In short, adults need to grow up and dress with more intent. There once was a standard. Grown men tried to present themselves as adults: cops, firemen, farmers, bellboys, salesmen, clerks — they tried to look the part. Trousers — yes, they used to call them that — never sagged, shoes were not sneakers, and ties — yes, people used to wear them — were subdued yet versatile. Sure, there were outlier slobs, but at least they were outliers; now they are the norm. So next time you see little kids in the supermarket in pajamas, look at their fathers. Chances are they’ll be sporting a “DILF: Devoted Involved Loving Father” tee. Maybe the novelty attire should stay in the hamper, and the kids should get dressed. Modeling maturity is the right thing to do. Dressing consciously, with a bit of respectful attention, signals to kids a standard worth maintaining. Suppose just a few men reclaim even a portion of that discipline — it might signal something to themselves, to society, and to the next generation that little things matter. Sean Duffy is onto something: a little formality could go a long way. So the moral is this: Dress like a grown-up — your kids, your neighbors, and the TSA will thank you.” READ MORE from Pete Connolly: The Great Gatsby at 100 Yes, New York Times, A Christian Can Be Both Pro-Life and Pro-Secure Borders When Youth Sports Stopped Being Fun