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Today is a “Firehose Friday” at RRND/FND with more than 100 items awaiting your attention at our web edition. We don’t do those very often anymore, because starting earlier this year we began supplementing our 60-item email edition with extra web-only content (usually 10-20 additional items) EVERY day. But every once in a little while (like, say, during our annual fundraiser), we like to really push you toward the web edition.
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Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: The Guardian
“Tennessee’s prison chief is resigning after the failed [killing] of Christa Pike, which lawyers say was the fifth ‘botched’ [prisoner killing] under his leadership across two states since 2022. Frank Strada, the commissioner of the Tennessee department of correction, has faced mounting questions about the state’s highly secretive death penalty protocols since Wednesday evening when Pike became the first death row prisoner in the US to to be injected with lethal drugs and survive. … Death penalty lawyers said there were common threads in the five problematic [prisoner killings] under Strada, including the prisoners’ protracted suffering and questionable injection procedures, and argued that Lee should never have appointed Strada given his Arizona record.” (10/03/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/03/christa-pike-frank-strada-botched-executions
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Why Does America Keep Starving The People It Claims To Be ‘Liberating?'” (10/02/26)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1pKkOXvZLnNKj
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“There are many bad arguments against capital punishment: that an innocent person might be wrongly convicted … that the willful taking of human life is categorically evil … that a death sentence cannot be reversed … etc. There are better arguments against capital punishment: One is that capital punishment is bad for the executioners (and, this being a republic, we are all executioners), which ought to be obvious to anybody who has been present at one of those festive ‘Burn, baby, burn!’ rallies death-penalty enthusiasts sometimes stage outside of an execution or to anyone who has heard Donald Trump hold forth on the subject. … Another argument against capital punishment is that we are not very good at it.” (10/02/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/tennessee-botched-execution-death-penalty/
Source: Fox News
“A team investigating a boat-shaped formation in eastern Turkey says new evidence is strengthening its case that the site could hold the remains of Noah’s Ark. ‘In archaeology, you deal with probabilities, and we’re inching towards where we believe we will have confirmation this winter after our soil analysis is done with Sivas University, who’s our partner in this,’ Noah’s Ark Scans founder Andrew Jones told ‘Saturday in America’. The focus of the investigation is the Durupınar formation, an approximately 538-foot-long geological structure near Mount Ararat. Its shape and proximity to the region identified in the biblical account have fascinated Ark hunters for decades. The boat-shaped formation was first discovered in 1959 and has long-drawn speculation over a possible connection to Noah’s Ark.” (10/03/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/media/noahs-ark-researchers-inching-towards-confirmation-drilling-challenges-natural-rock-theory
Source: The Weekly Dish
“Emily Eakin On What Postmodernism Wrought.” (10/02/26)
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/emily-eakin-on-what-postmodernism
Source: Foreign Policy
by Ian Garner
“Four and a half years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has conquered no more than a slice of Ukrainian territory. In return, half a million Russian soldiers are dead, the economy is running on fumes, Moscow’s relationship with the West is in tatters, and the country’s reliance on China grows ever stronger. Yet there is no sign of Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking peace. his army continues its bombardment of Ukraine. The frontline voraciously consumes more Russian troops than he can recruit. What is it that drives Russia to wage this hugely costly and apparently irrational war? Could it be the individualist greed, lawless capitalism, and corruption for which the Russian elite is infamous? Or is it a collective neo-imperialism expressed in Putin’s obsession with conquest and Russia’s world-historical mission?” (10/02/26)
https://archive.is/syD6I
Source: Common Dreams
by Ralph Nader
“It is hard to read President Donald Trump’s mind—what with his chronic lies, delusions, and fake promises. His incentives to finish his term are numerous—pomp and ceremony, daily vengeance, judicial immunity, Democratic leaders, for now, opposing impeachment (see ‘Open Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries’, August 31, 2026), and immensely enriching himself using the punishing or rewarding powers of the presidency. The rewards are insatiable. This failed businessman, riven with debts and losses, revealed in his 2025 financial disclosures a profit of $1.1 MILLION AN HOUR on a 40-hour week! He probably will reap more dollars in 2026, which he has ensured would be non-taxable by his captured Internal Revenue Service (See: ‘DOJ Settlement ‘Forever’ Bars IRS Trump Audits, Sparks Backlash’).” (10/03/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/donald-trump-resign
Source: US News & World Report
“Ethiopian government forces and allied militias have regained control of the capital of Tigray, three sources told Reuters on Sunday, dealing a major setback to the opposition alliance that rules the northern region. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which leads the opposition alliance, said in a statement posted on Facebook it had retreated from the capital and that the regional government would be ‘temporarily moved out of Mekelle and operate from somewhere else.’ A source close to the pro-government militia, the Tigray Peace Forces, said its fighters entered the centre of Mekelle on Saturday afternoon, followed by the Ethiopian military. A humanitarian source and a Mekelle resident, who asked not to be named, confirmed the city was controlled by government forces. The prime minister’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.” (10/04/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-10-04/government-forces-seize-capital-of-ethiopias-tigray-region-from-rebels
Source: Glenn Greenwald
“Weekly Q&A with Glenn Greenwald.” (10/02/26)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/weekly-q-and-a-with-glenn-greenwald-2de
Source: Niskanen Center
by Rachel Levine & Liza Reed
“Last October, we posited that Congress could reach a bipartisan deal on permitting reform to address project timelines and get more transmission and clean energy built. With the introduction of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) of 2026, lawmakers are close to doing just that. Here are four ways the transmission policies in the bill, sponsored by Senators Mike Lee, Shelley Moore Capito, Martin Heinrich, and Sheldon Whitehouse this week, can build the grid we need.” (10/02/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-bipartisan-american-affordability-and-jobs-act-of-2026-4-ways-the-new-permitting-package-gets-transmission-policy-right/
