“To truly feel the force of America’s cultural attraction you have to be born outside of it. The natives see the cracks up close and learn to take the whole thing for granted. Growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, none of my friends had to be convinced of America’s appeal. Its jeans-clad, Ray-Ban-wearing, moon-dancing cultural exports were the opposite of propaganda. They were the natural overflow of a society so confident in its own desirability that it never had to make a case for itself. … it made American leadership feel less like domination and more like the natural order of things. The slow erosion of that dominance over the past decade is therefore not just a commercial setback for studio execs but a change in how American power operates.” (02/24/26)
“The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a controversial Texas law requiring age verification to access online pornography. Enacted by the Republican supermajority in the Texas legislature in 2023 and aggressively defended by Attorney General Ken Paxton, the court’s 6–3 decision against stakeholders in the online adult industry marked a significant shift in how the state may regulate access to lawful speech online. … Texas House Bill 1181 is presented as a child-protection measure. But it is part of a political project — one that seeks to normalize identity-gated access to lawful speech and to expand state power over digital life under the moral cover of protecting minors. … Once built, such systems are easily repurposed to censor disfavored groups. The danger is not only in restricting access to online pornography but in establishing a precedent for government-mandated checks.” (02/24/26)
“Federal authorities are barred from conducting an ‘unsupervised, wholesale search’ of electronic devices that they seized from a Washington Post reporter’s Virginia home while investigating allegations that a Pentagon contractor illegally leaked classified information to the journalist, a magistrate judge ruled Tuesday. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter said he will independently review the contents of Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s devices instead of allowing a Justice Department ‘filter team’ to perform a search. He denied the newspaper’s request for an order requiring the government to immediately return the devices to its reporter. Judge Porter said he balanced the need to protect Ms. Natanson’s free speech rights with the government’s duty to safeguard top secret national security information.” (02/24/26)
“Congress has not had any hearings about going to war in Iran, never mind authorized a war. And we should be clear, Congress’[s] failure to greenlight a war doesn’t mean the president is free to launch one. It means, as a constitutional matter, a war would be illegal. Think of it this way: If I don’t have your permission to enter your home and take what I want, we’re not in a gray area. The legal default setting is that you don’t have permission to rob a person unless expressly told otherwise. … If you are in favor of the constitutional process only when you like the results, you aren’t actually in favor of the Constitution.” (02/24/26)
“Britain’s data privacy watchdog slapped online forum Reddit on Tuesday with a [bribe demand] worth nearly $20 million for failures involving children’s personal information. The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued the penalty worth $19.5 million because the failures resulted in the platform using children’s data ‘unlawfully.’ … The U.K. privacy regulator has been escalating scrutiny of online platforms over child safety. Earlier this month it hit MediaLab, owner of image-sharing site Imgur, with a [bribe demand] of about $335,000 over similar failures and it has also been investigating TikTok since last year.” (02/24/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The Epstein files have revealed the names of many wealthy and prominent people within Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit, many of whom are now justifiably going down because of their affiliations with Epstein. But the real rot regarding Epstein relates to the extremely sweet sweetheart plea bargain he received from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida. … Epstein was permitted to plead guilty to lesser state criminal charges. He then was permitted to serve a 13-month sentence in county jail rather than a state prison. He was also allowed out 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. He returned to jail each night to sleep. Now, that is what I call a super sweet sweetheart deal for a person charged with horrific sex-related crimes with minors.” (02/24/26)
“Malicious streetlights are an evil trick from Dark Data Journalism. Some annoying enemy has a valid complaint. So you use FACTS and LOGIC to prove that something similar-sounding-but-slightly-different is definitely false. Then you act like you’ve debunked the complaint. … the inverse evil trick is saying something ‘directionally correct,’ ie slightly stronger than the truth can support. If your enemy committed assault, say he committed murder. If he committed sexual harassment, say he committed rape. If your drug increases cancer survival by 5% in rats, say that it ‘cures cancer.’ Then, if someone calls you on it, accuse them of ‘literally well ackshually-ing’ you, because you were ‘directionally correct’ and it’s offensive to the victims to try to defend assault-committed sexual harassers.” (02/24/26)
“The Trump administration is suing New Jersey over a state order that prohibits [ICE gang thugs from abducting victims] in nonpublic areas of state property, such as correctional facilities and courthouses. The Justice Department lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Trenton, challenges Gov. Mikie Sherrill ’s Feb. 11 executive order, which also bars the use of state property as a staging or processing area for [gang abduction activity] Sherrill, a Democrat who took office Jan. 20, ‘insists on harboring criminal offenders from federal law enforcement,’ the lawsuit said, accusing her of attempting to obstruct federal law enforcement and thwart President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.” (02/24/26)
“Eric Peters from Eric Peters Autos joins me for our weekly discussion. With everything in the world that’s jumping the shark right now, we have a lot to discuss.” (02/24/26)
