“Tehran and the UN nuclear inspectorate have reached an agreement that will allow UN inspectors to return to inspect all of Iran’s nuclear sites, including those bombed by Israel and the US in June. The breakthrough, confirmed by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came during a three-hour meeting on Monday between Grossi and the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Cairo. Agreement on the return of the UN inspectors is one of the preconditions set by European leaders for them to defer a plan to reimpose sweeping UN sanctions on Iran at the end of this month. … One of Iran’s concerns is that the IAEA, an agency distrusted by Iranian conservatives, would feed the information it garnered to Israel or the US on the state of its nuclear plans and this would be used to refine further military assaults on Iran’s nuclear sites.” (09/10/25)
“Caring about people means caring about their liberty. Liberty is a universal principle. It isn’t just for me, those I like, or those who agree with me. It’s for everyone or it’s not liberty at all. If I didn’t care about people, I would demand my rights while trampling yours; anything to get my way. But that’s not liberty; it’s tyranny dressed up with moralizing words. Liberty is the foundation of a life worth living. It’s the ability to make your own choices, pursue your own happiness, protect your own property, and build your future without anyone’s boot on your neck. It’s a two-way street.” (09/10/25)
“In a major decision, a state appeals court Wednesday ruled that Florida’s ban on openly carrying guns is unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal, pointing to U.S. Supreme Court rulings on Second Amendment issues, said the open-carry ban is incompatible with the nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation.’ ‘No historical tradition supports Florida’s open carry ban,’ Judge Stephanie Ray wrote in a 20-page opinion joined by Judges Lori Rowe and M. Kemmerly Thomas. ‘To the contrary, history confirms that the right to bear arms in public necessarily includes the right to do so openly. That is not to say that open carry is absolute or immune from reasonable regulation.'” [editor’s note: The Second Amendment says EXACTLY that the right to keep and bear arms is absolute and that there’ no such thing as “reasonable” regulation – TLK] (09/10/25)
“Today’s right-wing politics don’t revolve around results or competence, nor even an identifiable ideology. The central organizing principle of the Trumpian right — to the extent that there is an organizing principle other than ‘Do things that benefit Donald Trump personally’ — is the performance of toughness and the pantomime of warrior culture.” (09/10/25)
“Rolling across the rugged, rusty red terrain on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover came upon some rocks with peculiar green, blue, black and white dots. After detailed image analysis, scientists have come to a potentially encouraging conclusion: If those speckled rocks were formed like they are on Earth, they might be evidence of past life on the dusty planet. The rocks ‘very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting,’ acting NASA administrator Sean P. Duffy said in a news conference Wednesday. The findings were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The rocks, or mudstones, are composed of finely packed sediment and covered in specks resembling poppy seeds and leopard spots. The colorful features, the study found, are minerals that — on Earth — have traditionally been created from microbial activity.” (09/10/25)
“When Justice Department officials anonymously floated the idea of prohibiting gun possession by transgender people last week, they may have hoped to score points with President Donald Trump’s base or get a rise out of ‘woke’ Democrats. Instead, they elicited howls of outrage from every major gun rights group. It is not hard to see why. This half-baked proposal, which has no obvious statutory basis, is flagrantly inconsistent with ‘the right of the people’ to ‘keep and bear arms’ — a right that Trump claims he is keen to protect.” (09/10/25)
“The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a transgender boy may use the boys’ bathroom in a South Carolina public high school while he pursues a challenge to a state law requiring students to use the bathrooms for their sex as ‘determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.’ The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. It applied to a single student and stressed that it was ‘not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation.’ Rather, in rejecting South Carolina’s request to bar the student from the boys’ bathroom for now, the order said the state had not cleared the high bar for securing an emergency ruling in its favor. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch noted dissents but did not offer reasons.” (09/10/25)
“Kiki’s Delivery Service, Studio Ghibli’s 1989 masterpiece, captures genuine moments of a young witch trying to make it on her own. Moreover, it highlights the fundamental nature of cost and choice. The logic of cost is deceptively unintuitive and often difficult for students and laymen alike, mainly because common usage defines it as losing money. Typical notions of cost also often refer to inherent qualities of objects, e.g., a loaf of bread costs $5, and as an inevitable, negative outcome. The economic way of thinking clarifies a deeper meaning of cost, and Kiki shows this in one standout scene.” (09/10/25)
“President Trump once quipped, ‘I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.’ Well, he wasn’t standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, but he nonetheless tested the limits of his ability to get away with extrajudicial execution on September 2 by ordering the deaths of eleven people in an alleged drug-smuggling boat off the coast of Venezuela. Trump’s action was criminal and impeachable.” (09/10/25)
