“A couple of weeks ago I [Max Rangeley] gave this speech on EU bureaucracy, followed by a panel discussion at the Martens Centre think tank in Brussels. The Martens Centre is the think tank of the EPP, the largest political group in the European Parliament. The European Commission massively understates the cost of bureaucracy — but what can be done?” (02/19/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“In late January 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced investigations into two of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) most senior officers …. These investigations capped a wave of high-level purges that began in 2023 and steadily hollowed out the PLA’s senior leadership. At one point, the CMC, China’s supreme military decision-making body, was reduced in functional terms to Xi himself as chairman and the anti-corruption chief Zhang Shengmin as vice chairman. … To understand what these developments mean, one must understand the architecture of Chinese politics. China is not merely an authoritarian state. It is a Leninist party-state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dominates every lever of power, the PLA functions as the party’s armed wing, and central authority increasingly overrides provincial discretion. The recent purges illuminate not dysfunction, but design.” (02/19/26)
“Some readers may be wondering why anything written about culture and politics over 2000 years ago could possibly have contemporary relevance. Fred D. Miller J.R. makes a strong case that Aristotle’s views remain relevant in his recently published book, Aristotelian Statecraft. In particular, Miller demonstrates that we can still learn a lot from Aristotle about the relationships between moral character, culture and political systems.” (02/19/26)
“New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is going after gig workers. To do his dirty work, the mayor is using holdovers from the Biden administration (who oppose independent contractors), reports C. Jarrett Dieterle at Reason magazine. … Mamdani’s war on freelancers will be costly not only for gig workers and the companies that help them function but also for customers.” (02/19/26)
“Trump is issuing subpoenas demanding social media platforms hand over data about ICE protesters but the ‘Twitter Files’ agitators couldn’t care less.” (02/19/26)
“The Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that Amazon.com must face lawsuits brought by families with relatives who took their own lives by consuming sodium nitrite they bought on the online retailer’s platform. It rejected a lower court’s ruling that the families could not pursue negligence claims under a Washington state product liability law, because suicide was a superseding cause of their relatives’ deaths. … They said the Seattle-based retailer has known of the link between sodium nitrite and suicide for years yet continued to sell the product without restrictions.” [editor’s note: The people who killed themselves had every right to do so. They were not their relatives’ property – TLK] (02/19/26)
“For the first time during Operation Metro Surge, a federal judge has imposed stiff consequences on a government attorney for ICE’s violation of a court order related to the release of a detained immigrant. Judge Laura Provinzino found Special Assistant United States Attorney Matthew Isihara in civil contempt during a Wednesday afternoon hearing. Judge Provinzino issued a civil contempt order against Isihara in a habeas case, ordering daily fines of $500. She said her goal is to ensure the government complies with her orders regarding a detained Mexican immigrant from Big Lake, Minnesota. … Isihara blamed a massive caseload and ‘not enough staff’ in the U.S. Attorney’s office to handle all the civil litigation connected to Operation Metro Surge.” (02/18/26)
