COLD SPRING SHOPS.

With the vast majority of funding flowing directly to them, State DOTs are, in effect, in charge of the federal highway program. If they are to claim credit for successes, they need to be held accountable for their failures. While local-led planning and project delivery could get things wrong just as much as state DOTs do today, they may also end up being more accountable to the priorities and nuances of communities, based purely on their proximity. When your city or county misspends money or fails to take care of obvious needs, it’s a lot easier to hold them accountable than a faceless, faraway, typically unelected state transportation agency.

As an indication of just how far away they are from thinking about outcomes, one of AASHTO’s top talking points revolves around how good they are at spending other people’s money quickly.  Obligation rates, meaning simply the speed at which federal dollars are spent by a recipient, do not imply any measurement of success based on outcomes. If anything, the use of obligation rates as a metric should be scrutinized. What are you getting for that spending? Are results improving at unprecedented rates? Or are DOTs just prioritizing funding any investment as fast as possible?

A chain restaurant built around burgers and margaritas took a shot at a steakhouse for having standards. The hypocrisy is thicker than their queso.

Ruth’s Chris made clear their policy reflects the experience they intend to provide, which includes maintaining an environment that matches the price point and expectations of their guests.

Business casual isn't a burden; it's the baseline for a place charging top dollar for eating cow.

This entire episode exposes how deranged parts of our culture have become. To many of our friends on the left these days, I'm apparently a male chauvinist because I open doors for women, help carry heavy bags, and still say, "Please, may I?" and "Thank you."

I taught my daughters those same habits without even realizing how much it mattered. Years ago, we stopped for gas in southern Ohio during a wedding trip. They used proper manners with the cashier, who stopped what she was doing, praised how well-mannered they were, and credited their upbringing. That moment sticks with me because it shows how rare basic courtesy has become.

Samuelson soon became popular for his ability to explain agribusiness and food production in an understandable way. He and Armstrong would talk about agriculture from a studio in Chicago over hundreds of networked stations. He would explain corn production and beef demand to thousands of suburban housewives, among others. He was named Prairie Farmer Honorary Master Farmer and inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2003.

The station had that one month to expand the staff to what would become a 24-hour all-news station.

Hultman said early on, he anchored evenings with John Madigan — also a longtime political editor and commentator at WBBM Newsradio, whose daughter, Amy Madigan, so happens to have won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress just on Sunday of this week.

Quoted in the 1988 book "WBBM Radio: Yesterday and Today," Hultman said newsradio found its niche upon realizing it didn't have to compare itself to other media.

"We're not a newspaper, and we're not just a headline service," Hultman was quoted. "We give listeners a little information about a lot of different things, and we give it to them as it's happening."

A relatively new center-right student publication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is triggering some students and staff, as stacks of the magazine have been repeatedly and maliciously thrown away since last fall.

The Madison Federalist were tossed in campus trash bins, just the latest incident in a string of dumpings, said student Ben Rothove, editor-in-chief.

“We have had suspected tossings since the first print edition of The Madison Federalist in February 2025,” Rothove told The College Fix in an email Thursday.

“However, our first confirmed tossing happened in October,” he said. “A university employee saw me refilling a stack that had been tossed. The employee then pulled me aside and told me that another staff member had tossed the stack. According to this employee, a small group of university staff members looked through the edition and mocked its contents.”

For nearly a year, Larijani has headed the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s highest security body. Israel promoted him again last month, eliminating most of his superiors and leaving him as the highest-ranking security official still standing. Since that day, he had been viewed as one of, if not the most powerful man in the regime left alive.

As head of the SNSC, he sat at the center of Iran’s war effort. After Israel beheaded the regime’s leadership, he was one of the few remaining figures capable of convening the emergency council—one he may not have participated in directly, but over which he almost certainly wielded significant influence. He was also likely among the shadowy Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders standing behind the maimed Mojtaba Khamenei, pulling the strings of the new Supreme Leader.

Larijani unwisely tempted Israel.

I have had to read endless news stories (both mainstream and from various blog-teams) about the depredations committed by one subset. How often does one read about some violent and sometimes vicious assault in a public place, a brawl in a fast-food outlet or entertainment venue, or a smash-and-grab robbery … and scroll down to the mugshot(s) of the arrested perpetrator(s), the surveillance camera stills or on-the-spot posted video, and think to oneself, “Yep, about what I thought…”

Could we perhaps dial down our angst just a little? If, as is mercifully common, you have been spared one of the handful of genuine problems that your grandparents might have recognized as such, then “Cheer up” is pretty solid advice, all told. I know, I know. You don’t like the president? Neither do I. And you wish that some of the laws that bind you were different? Me too. And you think that things could be better than they are? You’re right. They could. But is that really a reason to be so down on your country? Surely one doesn’t need to be a Stoic to conclude that doom and gloom are to be avoided until avoiding them proves impossible rather than embraced as a lifestyle choice.

The United States has many problems at present. But this was also true in 1980, 1950, 1920, 1890, and at each and every earlier juncture. Pick a date at random since 1776, and one will invariably discover all manner of cultural, social, political, and economic issues attached to it. Why? Because America is run by people, and because people are flawed. Because there are no solutions in statecraft, only trade-offs. Because democracy is a process, not a guarantee of perfection. It is, of course, virtuous for a free people to attempt to improve the country they inherited. But it is a grave mistake to believe that anything short of the establishment of heaven on earth represents failure. What we have in the United States right now — it’s not a matter of if or when or after or before, but right now — is a miracle. >This country — as it is. This economy — as it is. This culture — as it is. This constitutional order — as it is.

Under the camouflage of Shiite puritanism and otherworldliness, the ayatollahs proved even more corrupt (and far more incompetent) than the Shah’s entourage. They fought a destructive eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s overrated Iraqi dictatorship and showed they were mostly just as militarily incompetent.

Over decades, they killed and wounded thousands of Americans by bombing U.S. embassies, barracks, and bases in the Middle East—without directly confronting the American military. For years, they sent lethal shaped charge IEDs to the Shiite insurgents to slaughter and maim thousands of Americans in Iraq and to the Taliban to do the same in Afghanistan.

At the first sign of popular protests, the regime never hesitated to gun down thousands of unarmed protesters. And, of course, they were abject hypocrites—hating the West, damning the Great Satan—and sending their pampered children to universities in America. The apparat proved quite earthly in its desire for money, estates, foreign travel, and the good life.