ICE, ICE, Baby
The left claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents murdered an immigrant in Biddeford, Maine. An eyewitness says differently. “The car was put into drive and was trying to hit the ICE officer,” 18-year-old Lucas Scott told The Portland Press Herald. What happened? I do not know. The left knew before it even happened. Reading from the prearranged script, the former vice president, Kamala Harris, posted online: “This is the second time in a week that ICE agents have killed someone who — by their own admission — was not the subject of their operation. Now Sebastian is dead, his killing witnessed by his three-year-old daughter wearing her Bluey pajamas. This cannot be acceptable in America.” She reigned as the border czar. What was acceptable in America then?
R.S.V.Please Stay Home
Blake Lively wasn’t the only one left off the guest list. The invitation for Kamala Harris to the still hotly-discussed Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce nuptials apparently got lost in the mail. Kidding. Swift endorsed her for president but not as a guest to her wedding. “Kamala was hurt,” one anonymous source told the Naughty But Nice Substack. “She genuinely likes Taylor and would have loved to celebrate with her. She understood the decision, but that didn’t make it sting any less.” Does Harris really care that much? Maybe she would have been a better fit running Tiger Beat magazine instead of the United States. “Taylor wanted the day to be about her marriage—not about who was sitting next to a politician,” the Substack claims another “insider” explained. “The moment a major political figure arrives, the focus shifts. She wasn’t willing to let that happen.” It was a celebrity wedding, so maybe Harris receives the invite next time around.
Holy Toledo!
Wow! After sleeping for an hour on the overnight flight, I took a train from Madrid to Toledo, where I power-napped for two hours before watching the France-Spain match with a hundred or so Spaniards. The 2-0 victory was amazing. The bar off Zocodover Square overflowed with men, women, and, yes, children. Within four minutes of victory, I stood at the bar as the only patron. To my surprise, the Spaniards appeared more subdued than, say, Seahawks fans during the Super Bowl (Tuesday has that effect on people?). And, obviously, they evaporated once the underdog home-team won. Hopefully, memories of a Spain during a World Cup semifinals victory similarly evaporates within a few days. I’m in it to win it. Spain this weekend plays the winner of Argentina-England. I watch from somewhere in Malaga. File under: Good Timing.
Makes Sense
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster’s appointment of Lindsey Graham’s sister to finish the last six month of his term makes sense on several levels. The most relevant, and this assumes Darline Graham Nordone serves as a caretaker senator, involves the difficulty of anyone setting up an office in the Capitol and launching a campaign simultaneously. An appointment who does not run means she can do South Carolina’s work effectively while however many Republicans who seek that office in this sprint of a campaign do politics. It’s South Carolina, a reliably Republican state, so maybe this matters less here than it would in many other states. It just seems like running for Senate and being a senator each require a great deal of effort.
Do You Request the Center Seat Because You’re a People Person, Too?
My luck in booking flights on Mondays and Tuesdays continued in my half-full flight to Spain. Yes, the Invisible Man sat in the center seat, which makes quite the difference in terms of comfort and sprawling out my book, notebook, and laptop as I do at home. A few years back on a Tuesday flight to Heathrow, passengers occupied a third of the seats on the plane. I got a row to myself. From 2006 until 2023, I remained on a self-imposed house arrest within the United States. I hope to leave the country once a year for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, the fuel prices cooperate. Their failure to do so this time around compelled me to cash-in the miles, which failed to send me to Lisbon, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam. They did, for whatever reason, bring me to Madrid. So, for another year I find myself in Spain.
Letter: Spanish Fly
Dan:
Did you say “Spain”? Allow me to offer two of my favorites for your discerning ear:
My Spanish Heart—Title track - Chick Corea
The Pan Piper—Sketches of Spain—Miles Davis
Have a great trip.
Tom Bone
Mashpee, Massachusetts
Daniel J. Flynn
Daniel J. Flynn, a senior editor of The American Spectator, serves as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution for the 2024-2025 academic year. His books include Cult City: Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco, Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America, A Conservative History of the American Left, and Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas. In 2025, he releases his magnum opus, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer.