Desk Notes | The Permission Structure Is Working Exactly As Designed

Jay Jones fantasizes about assassination. Spanberger refuses to condemn him five times. The media gives it 63 seconds. This is how Democrats normalize political violence.

I know this edition of Desk Notes is late. I’m still figuring out the timing and schedule to get this thing done and out on Fridays. Clearly, I’m failing. It might be time to rethink my milk pickup day, or accept that "Desk Notes" might occasionally arrive on Saturday mornings with your coffee instead of Friday afternoon, which will be necessary if I also want to provide an audio/video component for Desk Notes. I’m still workshopping it. Stand by.

Anyway, today when I got back from picking up our milk, I walked into the living room to find this:

Seriously, does this not look like an album cover? Drop your band name suggestions in the comments. I’m thinking something like "The Ruff Riders" or "The Bone Crushers."

Anyway, is anyone else getting excited for fall? There’s nothing I love more than good sweater weather, and I am ready for it. More importantly, fall means we start heading back up to camp on the weekends. I’ll be sharing more behind-the-scenes glimpses with you guys, off-grid living, the whole nine yards.

I cannot express how much I love spending weekends at our little camp. It’s a lot of hard work because we have virtually no modern conveniences —we’re talking lanterns, a wood-burning stove, the works. But at the same time, it’s incredibly rewarding. Each season, we put a little work into it, and by the end, our reward is seeing the changes we made actually stick.

My favorite part? The stillness of the mornings and evenings, when the only sounds are the flame of the lantern and the crackle of the wood stove. No notifications. No headlines. No politicians saying insane things on X. Just quiet.

We’re hoping to head up next weekend to start reopening camp for the season. I promise to share more of this with you here, because it can’t always be news, politics, and leftists’ meltdowns. Even I need some touch grass/wood stove therapy.

Anyway, let’s get into it.

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From the Archives

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In Desk Notes

Feature: How Democrats Normalized Political Violence - We’re diving deep into the permission structure that enables political violence on the left. Jay Jones’s assassination fantasies were bad enough, but Abigail Spanberger’s five-count dodge on that debate stage? That’s the real story. Plus: a man arrested with 200 bombs outside a Supreme Court Mass gets almost zero media coverage, while the Left manufactures a victim from a house fire that investigators confirm wasn’t arson. The pattern is impossible to ignore if you’re actually looking.

Also Featuring:

• Katie Porter’s viral meltdown double-feature - threatening to walk out of interviews + screaming at staff = California’s gubernatorial front-runner, apparently

• Chicago Border Patrol shooting with competing narratives - unreleased body cam footage will tell us who’s lying

• AOC body-shames Stephen Miller, then delivers the world’s lamest non-apology when her own base calls her out

• Taylor Swift wants kids = feminist existential crisis (the nihilism is chef’s kiss)

Ok let’s get into it!

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The Permission Structure: How Democrats Normalize Political Violence

Earlier this week, I wrote about Jay Jones, Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General candidate, who fantasized about shooting a Republican colleague in the head and wishing his wife could watch their child die. If you missed that, go read it. I’ll wait.

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