This end of week news/commentary/podcast cycle has been busier than usual, at least in part due to the September 10 murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Instead of either leaving out a lot of important stuff, or running a “hybrid” edition with extra content on Monday (which just might happen anyway!), we’re hitting you with an extra, short “weekend special edition” — five news stories, ten opinion pieces, five audio/video links. Enjoy!
Naturally, I’ll also remind you that we’re a reader-supported publication:
“Tyler Robinson, the man suspected of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a campus event at a Utah university, had eluded authorities for more than a day. However, after his father recognized him from photographs distributed by authorities, a series of events ultimately led to the 22-year-old Robinson being taken into custody.” (09/12/25)
“The two Trump administrations have launched as many airstrikes at overseas targets as any other administration. Although childish and superficial, his renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War doesn’t telegraph a love of peace. Nor does his authorized strikeon a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean. His policies in the Middle East have amounted to little more than giving Israel the greenlight to do as it pleases. Then there were his attacks on nuclear sites in Iran and his constant threats to send troops to root out cartels in Mexico. Whether or not you agree with these policies, they don’t adhere to any principled non-interventionist philosophy.” (09/12/25)
“America has always prided itself on not being a socialist nation. But President Donald Trump now hails a new ‘golden age’ — sold with the optimism of Ronald Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’ but built on Washington’s intrusion into corporate ownership. The federal government already imposes one of the world’s most progressive tax systems, runs health care, subsidizes education, guarantees pensions, and now wields voting powers in corporate boardrooms. When bureaucrats become shareholders, it is not a sign of national strength, but of institutional failure.” (09/12/25)
“After Charlie Kirk was killed, as his friends mourned a loving husband and adoring father, the argument over his legacy began. Liberals — and some conservatives — remembered a debater who believed in reason, persuasion, and electoral politics. ‘Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way,’ wrote Ezra Klein. ‘He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him.’ That column angered leftists, but it wasn’t for them. It was for liberals, who decried what campus political debate had become; the ‘safe spaces,’ the language tangled by critical theory, the protesters who made right-wing politicians look good.” (09/12/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by George G O’Neill Jr.
“President Donald Trump for decades has weathered scandal after scandal: bankruptcies, public divorces, and lawsuits which threaten financial or political ruin with the possibility of imprisonment. In spite of all this, he was able to persevere and vanquish or at least neutralize his opponents and twice win the presidency. It was an amazing test of personal fortitude and focus. Even his detractors were impressed. Yet after successfully navigating all these daunting travails, Trump appears to be spooked by calls from his own base to release the Epstein files. His bizarre and extraordinary response to the recent publication of a birthday card given to Epstein and bearing Trump’s signature only intensifies the serious concerns of the American public.” (09/12/25)
“For 715 consecutive days — every single day — I put on full protective gear in the ICU at Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center, fighting Covid-19 on the frontlines. I never took a day off, because when lives hang in the balance, doctors don’t get the luxury of excuses. We act. We fight. We serve. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was created to serve with that same urgency — to protect Americans from infectious disease through science, transparency, and rapid response. But what the public got instead during the pandemic was an agency more obsessed with narratives and control than with saving lives.” (09/12/25)
