“The Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to throw out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders who were sentenced to prison terms for leading members of the far-right extremist groups in attacking the U.S. Capitol to keep President Donald Trump in office over five years ago. Trump commuted the prison sentences of several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders last January in a sweeping act of clemency for all 1,500-plus defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. The request by the Justice Department would go a step further and erase the convictions for the extremist group leaders, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. … Juries in Washington, D.C., convicted the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders of orchestrating violent plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.” (04/14/26)
Source: Ludwig Mises Institute
by Alejandro A Tagliavini
“We have long normalized the idea that economics is the use of scarce resources. The problem is that, if resources are scarce, the only option left is to decide how to allocate them, leading to a real struggle — sometimes violent — between the parties to see who gets what little there is. … Creation is infinite; it has no limits as long as the order of the cosmos—the order of nature that predates humankind — is respected. In contrast, rationalism, state constructivism, and attempts to impose an ‘order’ that — not arising spontaneously from society — must be coercively imposed using the monopoly on violence that states claim for this purpose clashes with social nature and enters into a conflict that only destroys.” (04/14/26)
“Begoña Gómez, the wife of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been charged with embezzlement, influence peddling, corruption in business dealings and misappropriation of funds at the end of a two-year investigation by a judge in Madrid. Gómez, 55, has been accused of using her influence as the wife of the socialist prime minister to secure and manage a post at Madrid’s Complutense University, and of using public resources and personal connections to further her private interests. … The investigation into Gómez was triggered by a complaint from Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a self-styled trade union with far-right links that has a history of using the courts to pursue those it deems a threat to Spain’s democratic interests.” (04/14/26)
“Yesterday, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers issued its annual Economic Report of the President. Like every year, it’s a wide-ranging analysis of several hot-button economic topics. While I can’t speak to the reliability of the analysis in every chapter, one thing that stands out is the chapter on housing supply. Like any policy document written by committee and expected to rationalize even the least justifiable policies of an administration, it doesn’t get everything right. Yet it doesn’t get everything wrong either.” (04/14/26)
“Trump is not the first president to fall out with the Holy Father. That said, this latest outburst is worlds away from the ‘elegant row’ between Theodore Roosevelt and Pope Pius during the Second World War, or the cordial scolding given to Bill Clinton by Pope John Paul over abortion legislation. Trump’s tantrum comes after months of tension between the White House and the Holy See – where, much to his dismay, religious officials have failed to don their MAGA hats and cheer on America’s war with Iran. … American Catholics – who comprise both 20 per cent of the US population and 22 per cent of those who cast their vote for Trump in 2024 – will no doubt be baffled by Trump’s attacks on the pontiff. Moreover, his AI-powered Jesus impersonation managed to upset even the most enthusiastic of evangelical MAGA loyalists.” (04/14/26)
“There’s money to be made in California this spring, no start-up pitch or buzzy screenplay required. Instead, signatures are one of the state’s most coveted commodities: Campaigns are paying $15 apiece to those willing to collect them. Petition distributors can thank Sergey Brin for this pay bump. In an effort to kill California’s proposed billionaire tax, the Google cofounder and other local tycoons are funding a political group that has hiked the going rate for signatures collected in support of countermeasures. In all, foes of the wealth tax are expected to spend $75 million in their attempt to quash the proposal.” (04/14/26)
“The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah will not abide by any agreements that may result from the direct Lebanon-Israel talks in the United States, negotiations it firmly opposes, a senior Hezbollah official said Monday. Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking member of Hezbollah’s political council, spoke on the eve of the talks expected in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the U.S. It will be the first time in decades that envoys from Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations, meet face-to-face in direct talks. ‘As for the outcomes of this negotiation between Lebanon and the Israeli enemy, we are not interested in or concerned with them at all,’ Safa told The Associated Press. ‘We are not bound by what they agree to,’ he added in a rare interview with international media.” (04/14/26)
“In March 2026, three prominent thinkers died within a day of each other. Lavish obituaries immediately marked the deaths of the always-wrong environmentalist Paul Ehrlich and the often-obscure political philosopher Jürgen Habermas. But for two weeks after the death of Robert Trivers, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin, not a single major news source had noticed his passing. This despite Trivers’s singular accomplishment of showing how the endlessly fascinating complexities of human relations are grounded in the wellsprings of complex life. And despite the fact that the man’s life was itself an object of fascination. Trivers was no ordinary academic. He was privileged in upbringing but louche in lifestyle, personally endearing but at times obstreperous and irresponsible, otherworldly brilliant but forehead-slappingly foolish.” (04/14/26)
