R Magic Brow

In the wake of the U.S. strikes on Iran, host Bill Maher welcomed Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to Friday's episode of "Real Time." During the panel discussion, the topic turned to the strikes. That's when Maher seemed to set a trap for the California senator.Reading from a Department of Justice memorandum opinion on presidential authorization to use military force, Maher began, "The president had the constitutional authority to direct the use of military force [...] because he could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest."Maher then revealed the source of the quote.Maher then asked Schiff whether the reasoning was sufficient."That's too vague for you?" Maher asked."Totally vague," Schiff responded, seemingly still thinking this was a quote from the Trump administrationMaher then revealed the source of the quote."OK, because that’s from Obama about Libya," Maher said, catching Schiff off guard after using a trick question.RELATED: Shock NBC poll reveals American voters' true feelings about ICE and Democrats The statement referred to the legal justification used by the Obama administration when the U.S. joined NATO military operations in Libya in 2011. However, Schiff didn't know Maher was quoting Obama but assumed the words came from Trump after the recent attacks on Iran.When Schiff realized the words weren't Trump's, he justified Obama's words and shifted by discussing another debate during the Obama presidency over potential U.S. military action in Syria."Well, Obama made the argument initially that he could go into Syria without authorization. I and many others pushed back on that argument. Ultimately, he did not go forward with going after Assad, even though Assad was gassing his own people, because he thought he might lose the vote in Congress," Schiff said.RELATED: Trump says war against Iran is nearly over — and gives regime warning 'not to try anything cute' Photo by MEGA/Getty ImagesThe senator argued that Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over decisions to go to war during Trump's administration but never criticized the statement Obama made."We are unquestionably at war now. The founders made an extraordinary decision at the time, which was not to give that power to the president but to give it to the Congress because they were worried, as Hamilton said, that a president would grow too fond of making war," Schiff said.Schiff doubled down, warning that presidents could increasingly bypass Congress when authorizing military action."After Venezuela, after the earlier Iran conflict, after bombing Nigeria and Iraq and Syria, he's grown too fond of this. And Congress ... needs to step up, assert its role, or it is going to be gone for good. And then, any time a president, for any reason, anywhere in the world, for any length of time, will feel free to make war. And that would be hugely dangerous for the country," Schiff saidLike Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

After months of public back-and-forth, Netflix’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery is dead. Paramount won. The company on February 26 said it had completed its purchase, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said regulators would approve it “pretty quickly.”Some observers blamed Netflix’s loss on the Trump administration. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) labeled the Paramount deal a “disaster,” and allies implied that administration officials leaned on Netflix to stand down.Netflix profits when audiences stay home. Theaters, restaurants, and the broader ecosystem built around going out don’t.That’s revisionist history. Netflix lost for two reasons: Paramount offered more money, and Republicans have grown far less willing to wave through consolidation by mega-firms that already squeeze consumers and tilt the culture war leftward.Paramount outbid NetflixStart with the obvious. Netflix offered a little over $27 per share. Paramount offered $31 per share — roughly $111 billion in total value.Netflix couldn’t match that price. Paramount could. Netflix walked.That’s math, not corporate intrigue.Why Washington had concernsMoney explains why Netflix lost. Politics explains why so few people in Washington felt inclined to rescue it.Carr said Netflix’s bid raised “a lot of concerns.” President Donald Trump signaled skepticism. So did many congressional Republicans. They saw a company that already dominates streaming trying to turn itself into the dominant media conglomerate — and they saw the costs landing on consumers, creators, and competitors.Consumers would have taken the hit first. As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) noted during merger hearings, Netflix’s expansion has marched alongside higher prices. Subscribers pay more, then sit through more ads. The company pushes customers toward “cheaper” tiers that still interrupt programming people already bought access to watch.Filmmakers would have taken the hit next. Director James Cameron warned that the sale would be “disastrous for the theatrical motion picture business.” Netflix profits when audiences stay home. Theaters, restaurants, and the broader ecosystem built around going out don’t.RELATED: CNN’s biggest nightmare is one step closer to finally coming true Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesThen comes culture. Paramount’s programming spans the spectrum. Nobody confuses it with a conservative company, but nobody defaults to treating it as a progressive messaging machine either. Its catalog ranges from right-coded “Yellowstone” to newer, openly left-wing “Star Trek” entries, with plenty of mainstream fare between.Netflix plays a different game. Its board includes former Obama administration official Susan Rice. Critics on the right point to its content tilt, including an Oversight Project analysis that found left-leaning programming outnumbered right-leaning programming by a wide margin. Even Netflix’s CEO recently tried to walk back a 2020-era post supporting Black Lives Matter, a retreat that looked less like conviction than belated damage control.Monopoly defeatedFor years, conservatives answered complaints about corporate media with a libertarian shrug: Let the market decide. That posture collapsed once the market stopped functioning like a market. A handful of firms now gatekeep distribution, advertising, and cultural prestige. Consumer choice matters less when one company controls the pipes.Netflix seemed to miss that shift. It still spoke like the scrappy upstart that crushed Blockbuster, not like the biggest player trying to swallow a legacy studio and reshape the entire ecosystem on its terms.Netflix will survive. It will keep producing content, and it will keep pushing its worldview in much of that content. It just won’t do it with control over Warner Bros. Discovery — or over the broader media landscape.

Alabama police announced murder charges against the mother of a missing toddler on the birthday of the girl, who would have turned 3 years old.Adrienne Reid reported the child missing on Feb. 16 from their apartment on Apache Drive, according to a Facebook post from Enterprise police. They said they determined she was lying and arrested her the next day.'A 53-day campaign of deceit, lies, manipulation, and destruction of evidence.'"Through the careful and methodical work of investigators, we have reached the heartbreaking and horrific conclusion that ... her mother, her caretaker, the one that should have been there to keep her safe, willfully murdered Genesis and placed her in a duffle bag and discarded her in a dumpster," Enterprise Police Chief Michael Moore said.Moore said police believed that the girl had not been since Christmas Day, and they were able to obtain video from a neighbor's security camera that showed the mother walking toward the garbage dumpster of the complex with a rolling duffel bag at about 11:30 p.m.The next day, she was seen on video returning to the dumpster with toys and other belongings of her daughter.The Coffee County Sheriff's Office is tasked with searching for the girl's remains at the Coffee County Landfill."I need the public to understand that this will not be an easy or fast search," Coffee County Sheriff Scott Byrd said."The subject dumpster where the bag we are looking for was picked up on December 26. It was compacted in the truck that picked up it," he explained. "It was taken to a distribution facility and compacted again. It was taken on another truck to the landfill where it was processed further with bulldozers and a compacting machine."Coffee County District Attorney James Tarbox excoriated the mother in a statement about the case."The evidence shows that Adrienne Reid killed her daughter, literally threw her in the trash, and then engaged in a 53-day campaign of deceit, lies, manipulation, and destruction of evidence, before she finally reported her missing on February 16," he said.RELATED: Teen girl went missing after going to meet 51-year-old at boarded-up pink cinder-block home — police later find severed leg "Her conduct speaks for itself, and I believe this preliminary decision to seek the death penalty conforms to our community's beliefs about this case and our shared values about how we value and seek to protect the most innocent among us, our children," Tarbox concluded.Moore concluded the press conference by saying his faith provided some solace while confronting the alleged evil perpetrated on an innocent child."I believe that Genesis's earthly body is no longer what defines her, and that she is now in a place far greater than anything this world could offer, surrounded by a love and power beyond our understanding," he said.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Fifteen years ago, when Glenn Beck was still working at Fox News, he issued a dire warning: “Radicals, Islamists, communists, and socialists will work together against Israel, against capitalism ... to overturn stability.”Are we seeing that prophecy come to fruition today?On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn addresses the recent New York City bombing attempt and connects it to his former prediction. Last weekend, two men with possible ISIS ties were charged with terrorism-related offenses after allegedly attempting to detonate two improvised explosive devices at a protest outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City’s Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani. The incident occurred amid clashes between a group protesting the Islamification of New York City and a group of counter-protesters.“But that’s not the troubling part of the story,” Glenn says. “The most troubling part is what happened afterward. The new mayor of New York condemned the protest itself as hateful and racist, but he avoided acknowledging the ideological context behind the attack on the other side.”“At the same time, there are reports circulating that the mayor's own wife had previously liked social media posts celebrating the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel,” he adds.“Why does any of this matter?” Glenn asks.Because “what leaders excuse or refuse to confront often becomes what a society learns to tolerate.”“There is this growing ideological alliance between two movements that have historically had two very different worldviews: radical Marxism and radical Islamism,” Glenn says.History, he argues, proves time and again that “when movements share the same enemy,” which in this case is “Western civilization” and everything it values, “a temporary alliance” will form between those movements, regardless of how conflicting their core ideologies.The key word there is “temporary,” he says, as the union only holds so long as the enemy breathes.Glenn gives the example of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 when Shia religious scholars banded together with “Marxists and communists and secular revolutionaries” — marching “arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand” to “destabilize Iran” and ultimately overthrow the shah.But “once the Islamists consolidated power under the Ayatollah Khomeini, they turned on their former Marxist allies. The communists were imprisoned; the revolutionaries were purged. They were executed, and they were tortured,” Glenn recounts.What we’re seeing right now in New York City, Dearborn, Minneapolis, and even parts of Texas (not to mention Great Britain and France) as Muslim radicals and far-left groups coalesce is more “red-green alliances” that will likely end “in one side eating the other,” he warns.“Ideology matters because history shows that civilizations don’t collapse from a single attack. They collapse when they lose the ability to recognize the attack for what it is. Iran learned that lesson in 1979. Europe is learning it right now. And America is seeing the early warning signs.”“The solution ... is not hatred. ... The solution is also not naive or stupid compassion,” Glenn says.The answer, he says, is to “welcome those who come here to be Americans the right way, and remove those who came here the wrong way, and those especially who have come here to change or harm America.”This equates to “deporting the individuals who openly support terrorism,” “refusing to tolerate violent ideological movements,” and “having the courage to discuss the problem honestly even when it's uncomfortable.”“The most dangerous moment any civilization ever faces is not when the extremists appear, because the extremists have always been here. ... The most dangerous moment is when leaders and citizens convince themselves that speaking about the threat is worse than the threat itself,” Glenn says.“It’s not too late to pull back on the reins, but it is growing late.”To hear more, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.