It’s a FIREHOSE FRIDAY at the freedom movement’s daily newspaper — we’re “web-only” today, with more than 100 news stories, opinion pieces, and audio/video links (too many to fit well in an email edition) at:
After a $55 start to our year-end fundraiser, we had a “zero-dollar day” yesterday. Our total remains (as of 5am on Friday, October 3) at $55 toward our goal of $5,501.
Thanks to reader GL’s generous “matching funds” offer, we only have to raise half of that $5,501 from the rest of you … so we’re THEORETICALLY already at $2,805.50.
The catch? We have to raise that first half to get the other half. And that is where you come in.
We’re a reader-supported publication. You’re a reader. Your one-time or recurring donation, in any amount, MATTERS.
We’ve been bringing this publication to you for nearly 23 years now as Rational Review News Digest, and for another 11 years before that in previous formats (Freedom News Daily and Libernet). It’s a labor of love, but we also have to eat, so please consider the value you find in our work and return some of that value at:
“Hamas will demand key revisions to Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire proposal but is likely to accept the plan in coming days as a basis for renewed negotiations, analysts and sources close to the group say. Trump imposed a deadline of ‘three or four days’ from Tuesday for Hamas to give its response to his 20-point plan, which aims to bring the two-year war in Gaza to a close and allow an apparently indefinite international administration of the devastated territory, or ‘pay in hell.'” (10/02/25)
“‘We Will Never Be Rid of Google’ (The New York Times, September 30) is quite a headline for the same Julia Angwin who wrote the book on MySpace. Angwin’s comprehensive unofficial account was published in 2009 as Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (not ‘We Will Never Be Rid of MySpace’). Its subtitle didn’t remain current for long …. Still, the snapshot of the then-hip site, not yet a punchline in a David Pogue Times column exemplifying when ‘a hot property becomes a lame has-been’ (alongside action star Steven Seagal, well after his career transition from Hard to Kill to direct-to-video, and the Macarena dance craze), remains an instructive case study.” (10/02/25)
“Rich, Lori, and Riley discuss the Government shutdown, how best to vet and evaluate your sources of information, and the troll manages to find a way to be wrong even when he’s right.” (10/02/25)
“Bitcoin rose to $120,000 for the first time since setting a record high seven weeks ago as speculation increases that the US government shutdown will drive investors to safe-haven assets. … The largest digital-asset by market value rose for a sixth straight day, and is up about 10% since Friday. Bitcoin was around 2% higher at $120,163 as of 2:37 p.m. in New York. It reached a record $124,514 on Aug. 14.
Smaller, more volatile tokens were up even more, with Solana rising 5.7%, Litecoin advancing 6.7% and Dogecoin strengthening 4.7%.” (10/02/25)
“In the same week in which President Donald Trump announced that he was federalizing 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers and dispatching them to the streets of Portland, he quietly signed a Presidential National Security Memorandum that purports to federalize policing. The Memorandum, just like the federalization of troops in Oregon, completely disregards constitutional safeguards against such practices. Here is the backstory.” (10/02/25)
“A massive fire erupted on Oct. 2 at an oil refinery in Southern California, officials said, producing giant flames visible across the Los Angeles basin. … The El Segundo facility was built in 1911 and is the largest producing oil refinery on the West Coast, according to Chevron. The refinery processes more than 276,000 barrels of crude per day.” (10/03/25)
“The federal government just accumulated an additional $2 trillion in debt over the last 12 months. That’s the kind of debt surge America usually racks up in wartime or during major national emergencies. But today, as Republicans and Democrats engage in another budget-driven shutdown drama, we are not at war. There is no pandemic. The economy is humming. And another shutdown is happening. Yet it will solve nothing about the fact that the political class is burning through money at a pace that would make former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war cabinet blush.” (10/02/25)
“Munich Airport in Germany was forced to close for almost seven hours overnight after a wave of drone sightings, the latest European aviation hub to shutter over unexplained drone flights. A total of 17 flights were grounded shortly after 10 p.m. local time on Thursday, affecting nearly 3,000 passengers, the airport said in a statement. In addition, 15 arriving flights were diverted to the German cities of Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Frankfurt, as well as Vienna in neighboring Austria, the statement said. … Europe has been on high alert in recent weeks due to a string of drone sightings, as well as alleged incursions by Russian drones into NATO airspace over Poland and Romania, and the alleged violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets.” (10/03/25)
“Current taxation is a form of robbery where specific privileged individuals (politicians and bureaucrats) have the sole right to ‘legally’ steal. Typically, if my money were taken and used against my will, it would be called theft, just as we would declare it if a heroin addict stole another man’s money and used it for drugs. We move into the realm of robbery when those stolen goods are confiscated under the threat of violence or harm. Under direct taxation, if you refuse to go along with the confiscation of your money — refuse to pay your taxes — you will be jailed, where you could face actual physical harm.” (10/02/25)
