“Legitimacy doesn’t come from official recognition. Government attention is poison to innovation. Look at Bitcoin: the moment government began paying attention, regulators attacked it with taxes, rules, and other interference. This destroyed much of the freedom and utility of cryptocurrency. Keep your filthy government off my life! Government doesn’t need a process to smother every human activity. Life doesn’t need to be micromanaged by politicians. Liberty — freedom tempered with responsibility — is enough. The market regulates itself when freed from government meddling. Dishonest companies go broke without government protecting them from competition or from cheated customers. Anyone seeking government protection from competition or consequences is in the wrong. Monopolies can only persist with government help. Irresponsible individuals never learn to be better when protected from consequences, or from their victims, by government rules.” (12/03/25)
“India’s government revoked an order on Wednesday that had directed smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung to install a state-developed and owned security app on all new devices. The move came after two days of criticism from opposition politicians and privacy organizations that the ‘Sanchar Saathi’ app was an effort to snoop on citizens through their phones. … While the order for it to be installed universally was revoked, the government continued defending the app on Wednesday, saying the intent had been to ‘provide access to cybersecurity to all citizens,’ and insisting that it was ‘secure and purely meant to help citizens.'” (12/03/25)
“The history of the twentieth century is, in large part, the story of competing totalitarian ideas put into practice, and the destruction, immiseration, and death they produced. … A quarter of the way into the twenty-first century, the difference between then and now could not be more stark. While ours is a moment racked by popular discontent, the diminution and desecration of formal and informal institutions (often at the hands of these institutions’ ostensible leaders), and a significant increase in the breadth of ideas in circulation, there has been very little in the way of legitimately new ideas this century, either at the level of ideology or public policy. Indeed, most of the bad ideas in circulation today are old bad ideas, not new bad ideas.” (12/03/25)
“U.S. private payrolls unexpectedly declined in November, the ADP employment report showed on Wednesday. Private employment decreased by 32,000 jobs last month after an upwardly revised 47,000 increase in October. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private employment rising by 10,000 jobs after a previously reported 42,000 rebound in October. The ADP report is jointly developed with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. The monthly estimate has historically diverted [sic] from the government’s private payrolls count produced by the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS will release the closely watched employment report for November on December 16.” (12/03/25)
“The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith to have him testify during a closed-door hearing on Dec. 17. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote Smith on Wednesday to inform him of the subpoena as the committee investigates Smith’s and the Biden administration’s efforts to prosecute President Donald Trump. … Smith’s investigation of Trump ended when the Supreme Court in July 2024 ruled that presidents have broad immunity against prosecution for actions taken while in office, including the matters being investigated by Smith.” (12/03/25)
“Trump’s cynical abuse of the pardon power to reward allies or simply to enrich himself and his family is obviously corrupt, which is hardly news. But as Lord Acton knew, absolute power does not corrupt only those who wield it: It ‘corrupts absolutely’ those who are adjacent to it, who are servants of that power. It is difficult to imagine that figures such as Pete Hegseth would be doing what they are doing … without the promise of a pardon should it come to that. … Congress lately cannot manage to perform even its most basic functions, and so this is not exactly a ripe time for a constitutional amendment. But we should begin the work of converting the president’s unilateral pardon power into something less corrupting, for example by requiring that pardons be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate — even a simple majority would be an improvement.” (12/03/25)
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information, which could have endangered American troops and mission objectives, when he used Signal in March of this year to share highly-sensitive attack plans targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to four sources familiar with the contents of a classified Inspector General report. The repercussions of Hegseth’s action, two sources told CNN, are less clear since the IG concluded that the defense secretary has the authority to declassify information and Hegseth asserted he made an operational decision in the moment to share that information, though there is no documentation of such a decision. An unclassified version of the report is set to be publicly released Thursday. The classified report was sent to Congress on Tuesday night.” (12/03/25)
“Donald Scott was killed in his home by an ad hoc team of raiding cops who were looking for marijuana — but the larger prize may have been his 200-acre Malibu ranch.” (12/03/25)
