Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. Like all the other amendments to the Constitution, the Fifth Amendment operates as an express higher-law restriction that the people of the United States have placed on federal officials. The idea is that federal officials are expected to obey our higher law just as they expect us to obey their lower laws. … No more. Today, it is undisputed that the president, the military, and the CIA wield the omnipotent power to deprive people of life (i.e., kill them), without due process of law. In other words, federal officials are no longer complying with the Fifth Amendment restriction on their power.” (05/22/26)
“SpaceX tried to launch its new Starship V3 megarocket for the first time ever this evening (May 21), from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas. Technical issues cropped up late in the countdown, however, and SpaceX couldn’t resolve them in time to get Starship V3 off the ground. … the next opportunity for a liftoff is Friday evening (May 22), likely in the same window as today’s try — 6:30 p.m. EDT to 8 p.m. EDT (2230 to 0000 GMT). … Starship is a fully reusable vehicle consisting of two stages — a giant booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship, or simply Ship. SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity colonize the moon and Mars, finish deploying its Starlink megaconstellation in Earth orbit and do pretty much everything else the company wants to do in the final frontier.” (05/21/26)
“Of all the names that could appear in a Western-backed plan for postwar Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the strangest. The former president was once known for Holocaust denial, anti-Israel speeches, claims that gay people don’t exist in Iran, support for his country’s nuclear program, and the violent repression of domestic dissent. Yet according to a new report in The New York Times, the United States and Israel considered him as a possible political leader after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei …. The story sounds too crazy to be true. But if it is true, it shows just how little the Trump administration understands the way power works in the Islamic Republic.” (05/21/26)
“Beginning about 25 years ago, shortly after ending my rural primary care practice as a Board Certified Internist, I began to recognize that from the 1960s through the end of the 20th century, there were a series of illnesses that I initially referred to as ‘fad’ diseases. Given that each of these diseases were in vogue for at least a decade (a bit too long to be a fad), and in an attempt to be more ‘woke,’ I now refer to these conditions as ‘meme’ diseases.” (05/21/26)
“A Turkish court on Thursday issued a ruling that effectively removed the head of the country’s main opposition party by annulling a 2023 congress that elected him. The move deals a serious blow to the beleaguered Republican People’s Party, or CHP, as it struggles under waves of legal cases targeting its members and elected officials. An appeals court in Turkey’s capital Ankara declared the CHP congress that picked Ozgur Ozel as chairman to be null, ordering that he should be replaced by his predecessor Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Last year, a lower court ruled against claims of irregularities and misconduct surrounding Ozel’s election but Thursday’s decision overturned the original verdict.” (05/21/26)
“[T]he American frontier A.I. companies aren’t betting everything on A.G.I. even if it looks like they are. The value of dominating A.I. and getting your models embedded everywhere is enormous even if they are just a ‘normal’ revolutionary technology. The winner doesn’t necessarily take all, but it can take a lot. They aren’t betting everything on A.G.I.—but America might be, in the sense that, if we focus exclusively on giving these companies what they want, their wins might not translate readily into American “wins” in the economic and geopolitical contest with China.” (05/21/26)
