The Political Orphanage, 02/16/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“How to Build a Commune: Samwise Rodriguez.” (02/16/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/how-to-build-a-commune-samwise-rodriguez
Author: Thomas L. Knapp
Jesse Jackson, 1941-2026
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The Rev Jesse Jackson, the civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran strongly for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, has died. He was 84. … Jackson had had progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for more than a decade. He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He was also twice hospitalised with Covid in recent years. A fixture in the civil rights movement and Democratic politics since the 1960s, Jackson was once close to Dr Martin Luther King Jr.” (02/17/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/17/jesse-jackson-civil-rights-icon-dies
The Constitution is not a bargaining chip for a budget negotiation
Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko
“The downside of the budget impasse is that it has made police state tactics a point of negotiation. In any other era, if a local police department were doing what ICE and Border Patrol have done in Chicago, Portland, and Minnesota, a state attorney general or federal government would have launched investigations, and the architects of the policy — Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski — would be sweating out questions at oversight hearings. Instead, we’re talking about these abuses in the context of a budget fight. And that risks giving the impression that basic constitutional rights and restraints on police and executive power that date back to the Founding are, actually, negotiable. I guess we’ll see over the next couple weeks if the Democrats believe they really are.” (02/16/26)
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-constitution-is-not-a-bargaining
Israel: 28 arrested after ultra-Orthodox riot
Source: Independent [UK]
“Israeli police arrested 28 people after a large mob of ultra-Orthodox men chased two female IDF soldiers through the streets. Chaotic scenes broke out in the city of Bnei Brak amid anger over conscription orders, with police using stun grenades to control the situation. Footage from Sunday afternoon shows two women being escorted away by police while a huge crowd of men chased after them, shouting and kicking wheelie bins along the street. The rioters injured five police officers, overturned a patrol car and set fire to a police motorcycle, reports say. … Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, was forced on Sunday to deny that his rhetoric was responsible for inciting violence against Israel’s military forces. The rabbi ordered students at ultra-orthodox schools to ignore, on religious grounds, conscription orders to the IDF, an order usually received at the age of 18.” (02/16/26)
The “F” Word
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“If you asked me to call it as I see it, I’d say President Trump is fasc-ish, fascist lite, or ‘semi-fascist.’ And until recently, writer Jonathan Rauch (whom I’ve long admired) would have agreed with my assessment. But in his Atlantic piece, ‘Yes, it’s Fascism,’ Rauch pulls a Jason Stanley. That is, he comes up with his own laundry list of purportedly fascist indicators to prove that President Trump is, indeed, a fascist, which suggests Trump is uniquely evil in American history. … In setting out to prove that Trump is a fascist, Rauch proves that the President is just an odd species of progressive and that past progressive presidents were fascist, too. Progressivism, after all, is a form of fascism.” (02/16/26)
Robert Duvall, 1931-2026
Source: Hollywood Reporter
“Robert Duvall, the steely-eyed actor whose performances in the first two Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini, Lonesome Dove and The Apostle made him one of the finest actors of any generation, has died. He was 95. Duvall, who received an Academy Award — one of his seven Oscar nominations — for his performance as an alcoholic country singer in Tender Mercies (1983), died Sunday at home on his Virginia ranch, his wife, Luciana, announced. … Duvall’s line in Apocalypse Now, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ became the stuff of movie legend. With jets flying overhead and shells exploding nearby, the scene, shot in the Philippines, was done, amazingly, in one take.” (02/16/26)
Media Freedom … if We Can Keep it!
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul
“Big media and big government are in bed together and they hate the fact that we can communicate with each other without their filters and influence. They long for the days when they could shovel down our throats just what they wanted us to hear and believe. While we may be winning this battle for free expression, we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we have won the war. We must remember just a few years ago during COVID that all it took to have your platform wiped off the face of the earth was to dare question the ‘wisdom’ of Anthony Fauci. Even today there are forces seeking to use the power of the state to silence opinions they disagree with.” (02/16/26)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/media-freedomif-we-can-keep-it
Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launch drills
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) began on Monday a navy exercise in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, state media reported. The intensive drills, named ‘Smart Control of Hormuz Strait’ were being conducted by the IRGC naval forces, and under the supervision of the head of the IRGC, state TV reported. The drill aimed at testing the readiness of operational forces in the face of ‘possible security and military threats,’ the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The exercise comes amid growing tensions with the US, both over Iran’s nuclear program and its deadly response to anti-regime protests last month.” (02/16/26)
https://www.dw.com/en/iran-launches-strait-of-hormuz-drills/a-75990650
“Kennedy’s Coup” signaled regime change doom loop for US
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
“A look back at Diem’s assassination, setting off the Vietnam War — who says Washington isn’t led by the same self-destructive characters throughout time?” (02/16/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/diem-coup-assasination-vietnam/
We celebrate civil rights heroes only after they stop making us uncomfortable
Source: Sacramento Bee
“Every February, Black History Month invites Americans to honor the giants of the civil rights movement. We commemorate them in speeches and street names, reassuring ourselves that their struggles belong safely to the past. But history tells a less comforting story. We tend to celebrate Black moral courage only after it has been stripped of urgency — after its disruptions have been neutralized and its challenges to power rendered harmless. The figures we now hold up as national icons were once dismissed as dangerous or destabilizing by moderates and institutions that claimed to support equality while resisting its consequences. This pattern is not accidental. It is structural.” (02/16/26)
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/us-viewpoints/article314715171.html