Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mike Brownfield
“For more than two decades, Flying Goat founders Norm Yost and Kate Griffith have built their family-owned winery into one of the region’s most innovative and celebrated producers—pursuing their own vision of what their winery should be along the way. But last year, county officials and the leaders of the local vintners’ association decided that they know what’s best for Flying Goat. In February 2025, the board created a wine ‘Business Improvement District,’ or Wine BID, requiring all local wineries to pay a 1% assessment on sales to fund regional marketing efforts. The ordinance also forces wineries to become members of the Santa Barbara County Vintners’ Association, which controls how the money is spent. … The problem is, Norm and Kate don’t want anything to do with the Wine BID because they don’t agree with its marketing or lobbying activities — including paying for overseas trips for its leaders.” (06/03/26)
“The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the military will continue its ground operations in southern Lebanon, hours after Israel and Lebanon agreed to implement a US-backed ceasefire to end hostilities. … ‘The IDF will, at this stage, continue its fire and ground operations, remain in the security zone in Lebanon up to the yellow line – including in the Beaufort area – and without the return of the population, while continuing to dismantle terrorist infrastructure on the ground,’ he said in a statement. … The IDF also issued a warning this morning saying fighting will continue in southern Lebanon as it urged people to ‘refrain from heading south of the Zahrani River.’ Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported several people were wounded in Israeli strikes in the southern Tyre and Nabatieh areas, which have seen repeated attacks in recent weeks.” (06/04/26)
“There is a particular intellectual posture that has become distinctly fashionable at the edges of the liberty movement. It goes roughly like this: a public figure makes a contested empirical claim. Experts in the relevant field find the claim unsupported by the available evidence and say so. The figure, rather than producing better evidence, reframes the disagreement as persecution and blames ‘the establishment’ for it. Sympathetic bystanders, some of them part of the pro-liberty movement, often rally to the outsiders’ defense, not because they sincerely agree with the underlying evidence, but because they see an outsider being criticized ‘by the establishment.’ The liberty tradition, they argue, must side with the outsider, regardless of evidence. Such reasoning is unpersuasive and it may come at a reputational cost for the pro-liberty movement.” (06/03/26)
“In a severe political blow to President Donald Trump, the House of Representatives voted for the first time on Wednesday, June 3, to end the war in Iran. The 215-208 vote, which was mostly symbolic, marked a new period of congressional unease with the conflict in the Middle East amid an impasse in peace negotiations. Strikes in the region have continued in recent days despite the White House’s assertion to lawmakers that hostilities have ended. Four Republicans joined with Democrats to support a resolution asserting the legislative branch’s war authority and blocking further hostilities in the region. It came just two weeks after the Senate advanced a similar measure.” [editor’s note: The war was illegal the instant Trump started it without the required constitutional declaration. These theatrics are no substitute for impeachment and removal – TLK] (06/03/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“[T]he only real argument for the legalization of marijuana is freedom. It doesn’t matter if marijuana has no medical benefits and that advocates of the legalization of medical marijuana just want to get high. Just like it doesn’t matter if using marijuana for recreational purposes is addictive, harmful, risky, unhealthy, immoral, sinful, or dangerous. It is not the business of government at any level to concern itself in any way with the eating, drinking, and smoking habits of Americans. It is not the business of the American Enterprise Institute or any other conservative think tank. It is not the business of Naomi Schaefer Riley or any other nanny-state, conservative drug warrior.” (06/03/26)
“Ukrainian attacks killed four people in the Russia-annexed Crimea peninsula, Kremlin-installed officials in the region said on Thursday, one day after Moscow and Kyiv traded strikes on each other’s cities. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-appointed head of Crimea, said Ukrainian forces had hit a non-residential part of Simferopol, the peninsula’s main administrative town, killing three people and injuring seven. Aksyonov later said on Telegram that one person had been killed and three wounded when a Ukrainian drone struck a commuter train in eastern Crimea. Ukraine did not immediately comment.” (06/04/26)
“Americans aren’t interested in reinstating a military draft, but that’s not stopping the government from ‘streamlining’ Selective Service registration — for young men’s own good, we’re told. That’s right, the government is automating draft registration, using the excuse that it’s saving registrants from the legal peril inherent in choosing to not register. The real reason, of course, is that fewer men were voluntarily registering, and the government wants to gloss over that mass rejection by potential draftees.” (06/03/26)
“Seven states are suing the Trump administration over a nearly $1 billion deal to end French energy company TotalEnergies’ offshore wind development off the East Coast, accusing the deal of being ‘unlawful.’ In March, the U.S. Department of the Interior reached a $928 million deal with TotalEnergies to halt construction of the wind farms and redirect the investment into domestic fossil fuel initiatives. … Attorneys general in seven states in the Northeast, including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, alleging the Trump administration illegally used nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars for the deal. The coalition also accuses the deal of violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which restricts the Interior Department’s ability to cancel offshore wind leases.” (06/03/26)
“It’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. Architecture shapes incentives; incentives shape outcomes.” (06/03/26)
