Feb 8, 2026
Tom Holland is one of the world's most respected historians. He isn't a preacher. In fact, he grew up as a "precocious atheist" who wanted to debunk the BIBLE.
But after decades of studying the ancient world "f rom the Caesars of Rome to the rise of Islam " he came to a shocking conclusion.
President Donald Trump on Friday said he will issue an executive order "shortly" laying out the "legal reasons" for national voter-identification requirements. Trump, in posts late Friday to Truth Social, said he wants voter-ID laws implemented for the 2026 midterm elections, even though legislation mandating them appears poised to stall in Congress. read more
Michael Wolff steps inside the chaos swirling around Trump World"from Wolff's bombshell federal lawsuit against Melania Trump, which he says could finally force sworn answers about the Trump"Epstein relationship, to the extraordinary legal fight over where the First Lady actually lives.
As Wolff argues that anti-SLAPP laws may become a frontline weapon against what he calls the White House's assault on free speech, he and Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty dissect the implications of Melania's alleged full-time life in New York, her separate Trump Tower apartment, and the branding empire she's quietly building. read more
A conservative lawyer issued a blistering takedown of President Donald Trump's attempt to prosecute six Democratic members of Congress.
Andrew McCarthy, a Fox News legal analyst and National Review editor, said an effort by the Justice Department to criminally charge the Democrats made another Trump impeachment more likely.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison in Russia after being poisoned with a deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuadorian dart frogs, the UK and other allies have revealed. read more
Just take a pebble and cast it to the sea
Then watch the ripples that unfold into me
My face spills so gently into your eyes
Disturbing the waters of our lives
Shreds of our memories are lying on your grass
Wounded words of laughter are graveyards of the past
Photographs are grey and torn, scattered in your fields
Letters of your memories are not real
Well, sadness on your shoulders like a wornout overcoat
In pockets creased and tattered hang the rags of your hope
The daybreak is your midnight, the colours have all died
Disturbing the waters of our lives,
Of our lives, lives, lives
Songwriters: Gregory Lake
Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Take A Pebble (1970) live
www.youtube.com
Part of the conversation that interested me, btw, is that of Cultural Christians... those who live by Jesus' parables of morals and ethics without identifying as believers.
Those sayings only seem like common sense to them.
"I mean, I think basically that most of
us in this country are cultural
Christians just instinctively.
Uh, and I
think there is no one who's more
culturally Christian than the atheist...
who says, "I don't need some, you know,
bronze age sky [music] fairy telling me
how to behave because I just know how to
behave. I'm a good person.
I don't need
the Bible to tell me to care for the
weak and the poor and the refugee...
manifesting the fact that they are the
result of centuries worth of biblical
weathering.
So in a sense, [applause]
in a sense to be a cultural Christian is
still to believe stuff.
It's still to believe stuff that to say
a Roman, a pre-Christian Roman would
have seemed mad and not at all
self-evident."
- Tom Holland (about 5 mins in)