“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement. In 1967, novelist Gwyn Griffin published a World War II novel, ‘An Operational Necessity,’ that 58 years later is again pertinent. According to the laws of war, survivors of a sunk ship cannot be attacked. But a German submarine captain, after sinking a French ship, orders the machine-gunning of the ship’s crew, lest their survival endanger his men by revealing where his boat is operating. In the book’s dramatic climax, a postwar tribunal examines the German commander’s moral calculus. No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. … The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself.” (12/02/25)
“Republican Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn in a congressional special election in the western Nashville suburbs, which was being closely watched for signs of Republican weakness going into congressional midterms next year. The Associated Press called the race at 9.47 EST with Van Epps holding a 52% to 46% lead. … Donald Trump carried the district by 15 points in 2020 and 22 points in 2024. But special elections can be unpredictable, and polling placed Behn within a few points of Van Epps in recent days.” (12/02/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Last month, the United States Conference of Bishops issued a remarkable ‘Special Message’ condemning the grave mistreatment of immigrants at the hands of the U.S. government. According to the conference’s Office of Public Affairs, ‘It marked the first time in twelve years the USCCB invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops.’ To their everlasting credit, the bishops made it clear that there is no way to reconcile what the U.S. government is doing to immigrants with God’s laws. … But the bishops and the mainstream-press commentators are wrong. There is no ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ that can ever make America’s immigration-control system work in a gentile, kind, benevolent, and Christian-like manner. The mistreatment and abuse of immigrants that the Catholic bishops condemn is an inherent part of the immigration-control system that exists to ‘secure the border.’ They are inseparable.” (12/02/25)
“Costco Wholesale Corp. joined a fast-growing list of businesses suing the Trump administration to ensure eligibility for refunds if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the president’s signature [and illegal] global tariffs policy. The nation’s biggest warehouse club chain is among dozens of companies to file lawsuits in a U.S. trade court since late October challenging President Donald Trump’s use of an economic emergency powers law to impose the levies, according to court records. It’s one of the biggest corporate players to jump into a fight largely driven this year by small businesses and Democratic state officials. The Supreme Court heard arguments on Trump’s tariffs on Nov. 5. The justices put the fight on a fast-tracked schedule but didn’t say when they intend to rule. In the meantime, businesses of all sizes have brought cases pressing similar legal claims with the goal of avoiding uncertainty about their eligibility for refunds if the court rules against Trump.” (12/02/25)
“Ten years ago, Pakistani-born terrorist Tashfeen Malik and her U.S.-born husband Syed Farook murdered 14 people in an Islamist terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. It was the deadliest foreign-born terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 and inspired then-candidate Donald J. Trump to call for ‘a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.’ We figured it out a long time ago: Very little was going on. Donald Trump won the 2016 election with a victory almost unimaginable without the threat of terrorism that he and his supporters inflated at every opportunity. But terrorism was a small threat then and is even smaller today.” (12/02/25)
“Too many Americans who say they believe in free speech mean only their speech. Adopting progressive dogma, the Biden administration claimed that free speech had limits, and broadly suppressed dissenting views. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to restore traditional (and constitutionally mandated) protections, but his administration’s adherence to that order has been situational.” (12/02/25)
“The right to trial by jury will be pared back in Britain in an attempt to clear a backlog of cases clogging up the justice system, the government announced Tuesday. Justice Secretary David Lammy said overload and delays had created ‘an emergency in our courts’ that risks collapsing trust in British justice. The U.K. court system has struggled to clear a backlog of cases built up since the COVID-19 pandemic. The government says there are almost 80,000 cases waiting to be heard in criminal courts in England and Wales, more than double the pre-pandemic figure, with some cases taking several years to reach trial.” [editor’s note: Yeah, “no jury trial for you, a government official will decide” just SCREAMS “trust British justice” – TLK] (12/02/25)
“Reason Roundup newsletter writer and associate editor Liz Wolfe goes live with Reason’s writers and producers to give you an exclusive look at what’s coming next from our newsroom.” (12/02/25)
“The pandemic saw a new breed of people who had become experts overnight but knew very little about the issues. They constantly appeared on TV with sinister messages about the need for lockdowns and many other interventions …. State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell stood his ground and advised that Sweden should not change its policy, which was to keep the society open and not mandate face masks, which were rarely seen in Sweden. Sweden was a lone star in the darkness. I think it was the only country that didn’t panic and did the right things, and it had the lowest excess mortality in the whole Western world during the pandemic (excess mortality is the increase in all-cause mortality during the pandemic compared with prepandemic levels).” (12/02/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Michael S Milano
“Each day we are reminded of this legal imposition by the familiar phrase stamped on every US dollar bill: ‘This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.’ Innocuous on the surface, but these words conceal a profound immorality that strikes at the heart of voluntary exchange. If a man of sound mind agrees to settle a contract in X, then he should be obligated to pay X. Forcing him to accept anything other than X as payment is an egregious violation of contractual and property rights.” (12/02/25)
