Hey, everyone …
THANK YOU to subscribing contributors WSS3, MM, and ES, and to long-time supporters RB and SZ! Their contributions yesterday, totaling $170, bring our annual fundraiser total (as of 5am) to $925.50!
That gets us to 1/3 of our goal (once we’ve raised $2,751.50, supporter GL will “match funds” to make it $5,503) … and once we reach that goal, I’ll stop hectoring you about money completely for the rest of the year, and almost completely until next October. So:
We don’t do FIREHOSE FRIDAYS very often these days, in part because we now include extra web-only content, above and beyond our 60-item email digest, EVERY day, but it’s worth turning on the water every once in a while both to call attention to how much content we’re collecting for you and to drag you over to the web edition where you might …
… and today we’ve got more than 100 news stories, opinion pieces, and audio video links lined up for you at the web site.
Since the firehose is already on at both the content and fundraising ends, let’s keep it on over the weekend — our “mini-goal” is to hit the $1,500 mark by 5am on Monday. I’ve already given you that URL in big letters twice above.
Have a happy, healthy, and prosperous weekend!
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: Persuasion
by Damon Linker
“The midterm elections are now less than three weeks away—and I think we’ve seen more than enough to conclude that, short of a systemic polling error on a scale surpassing anything we have seen before, Republicans are going to get their asses kicked. … Assuming that’s how things play out and the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, what will that mean for the short- and medium-term future of the country? The short answer, I’m afraid, is not much. The political fact of our time is that ours is a populist era.” (10/16/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/not-to-be-a-pessimist-but-these-midterms
Source: Jonathan Turley
by Jonathan Turley
“‘Who Gets to Tell the Story?’ That question was supposed to be the theme of a ‘press freedom’ event this week at Columbia University, home to one of the world’s leading journalism schools. However, as first reported by the Columbia Spectator, the event was canceled after student journalists had the audacity of offering their own views on the coverage of the alleged Cornell rape case. After the independent student newspaper The Sundial ran a column by deputy editor Nikos Mohammadi and writer Christina Ma criticizing the one-sided coverage of the allegations, the Columbia students went into a familiar groupthink, cancel mode. The students were shocked that Mohammadi and Ma took the invitation to ‘tell the story’ literally by offering a different perspective on the still developing case.” (10/17/26)
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/10/17/columbia-student-group-cancels-press-freedom-event-after-a-student-column-criticizes-the-cornell-case-coverage/
Source: NBC News
“Thousands of young Albanians gathered outside the Education Ministry in the center of the capital Tirana on Saturday on the fifth day of a growing student-led movement to force Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign. The protest turned violent when a group of young people wearing masks hurled rocks at riot police, who responded with stun grenades, tear gas and a water cannon. Demonstrations over corruption and a lack of jobs have begun spreading throughout Albania. In Tirana this week, protesters smashed windows, set alight government buildings and clashed with police.” (10/17/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/albanian-anti-government-protesters-clash-police-tirana-rcna604009
Source: Yascha Mounk
“Eliot Cohen on Why America Keeps Losing Wars It Should Win.” (10/17/26)
https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/eliot-cohen
Source: The Realist Review
by James W Carden
“[A]t the heart of the new Progressive foreign policy is a very old and very tired idea indeed, and one that is shared with equal fervor by corporate Democrats such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan, and the legacy media: That the post-World War II global order must be defended against all comers. Progressives like Sanders and AOC are able to separate themselves from corporatists like Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer by camouflaging their principal concern—the preservation of American global ‘leadership’—through repeated references to their own parochial social concerns. In other words, the foreign policy alternative politicians like Sanders and his proteges within certain precincts of what I call Restraint, Inc. (including the Center for International Policy, the Institute for Policy Studies, and most (but not all) of the researchers and scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft) is no alternative at all.” (10/16/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/the-pluralism-gap
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“I have come to believe that James Talarico, the Democrats’ Senate candidate in Texas, is generally sincere in his beliefs. I trust he won’t take that as a compliment. Like most admirers of Donald Trump, like teachers who believe they are underpaid, like people who believe that the sun is a fiery chariot driven by Apollo, etc., Talarico sincerely believes things that are not true.” (10/16/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/james-talarico-billionaires-capitalism/
Source: New York Times
“Prosecutors who had failed to convict Mr. Simpson of murder have given little credence to the notion of an accomplice. The police, too. Many people considered the details of Mr. Simpson’s hypothetical confession a fantasy, part of a desperate effort to cash in on his waning fame and notoriety amid growing money struggles and scrapes with the law. But today, more than 30 years after the ‘trial of the century,’ newly uncovered evidence suggests that Mr. Simpson’s account should not have been so readily dismissed. A New York Times examination, based on recently unsealed court files, interviews and other evidence, details long-hidden information about the missing murder weapon, Mr. Simpson’s supposed efforts to cover up the crime, as well as the possibility of an accomplice. … The double murder prosecution of Mr. Simpson, who was acquitted by a jury, remains one of the most scrutinized cases in popular culture, spawning endless theories.” (10/18/26)
https://archive.is/kUNf4
Source: The American Conservative
“Andrew Day and Luke Nicastro discuss the Trump-Putin diesel deal, the Trump-Zelensky spat, the ‘energy ceasefire’ that wasn’t, Ukraine’s grim prospects this winter, and a new book on progressive foreign policy edited by Matt Duss, A World for All.” (10/16/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/tac-right-now-trump-turns-on-zelensky/
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert
“Nobel laureates helped explain how expectations shape spending decisions, inflation, and the effectiveness of economic policy. Yes, that feels obvious.” (10/16/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/expectations-matter-this-years-economics-nobel-explains-why/
Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye
“A religious undecided voter questioned James Talarico on abortion.” (10/16/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/the-bible-doesnt-prohibit-abortion
