Abundance Pragmatism Fails

Source: Law & LIberty
by Richard M |Reinsch II

“The Abundance movement makes a pragmatic case for more essential goods and services and isn’t really concerned with how this supply is incentivized or generated. It forsakes what advocates regard as tired philosophical debates about limited government, markets, and freedom. Of course, to argue in such a way is to choose ends that justify a variety of human actions. Supply-side progressivism can take many different courses.” (04/16/26)

https://lawliberty.org/forum/abundance-pragmatism-fails/

Ana Montes: Traitor and Bad Person?

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“Three years ago, a former staff member of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, was released from federal prison after serving around 20 years. Her crime? Spying for Cuba. For some 16 years, Montez had been secretly providing classified information to officials in Cuba that she acquired as part of her federal position. Needless to say, when she was finally caught, federal officials, especially those within the national-security state part of the government, condemned her for being a traitor and a bad person. At her sentencing hearing, Montes made it clear that her spying for Cuba had nothing to do with money. Instead, her spying, she stated, was intended to help Cuba defend itself from acts of aggression by the U.S. government, especially the national-security state part of the federal government (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA).” (04/15/26)

https://www.fff.org/2026/04/15/ana-montes-traitor-and-bad-person/

Why The Prime Directive is Evil

Source: The Findings Substack
by Paul Rosenberg

“The first problem with the Prime Directive was that it made the captains stupid. Rather than doing what they knew had to be done, they had to contend with a wrench thrown into their formerly strong minds. It was, to have fun with words, stupidizing to those captains. It made them delay rational choices. In the end they ignored the Prime Directive anyway (reason and decency demanded it) or else they found some clever way around it. … When encountering a difficult situation, a capable person considers the facts available and tries to imagine a win-win resolution. And Star Fleet officers were supposed to be great at this: That the primary attribute of a great captain, after all, and it was generally the Federation’s flagship we were observing. What we saw were these powerful minds and wills brought low by the basest of mental choices: a binary, obey-or-transgress choice.” (04/15/26)

https://thefindings.substack.com/p/why-the-prime-directive-is-evil

America’s Insane Tax-Filing Process

Source: The Atlantic
by Annie Lowrey

“If you earn a salary or an hourly wage, the Internal Revenue Service already knows how much money you make. It likely knows how much you owe or how big your refund should be too. Nine in 10 households take the standard deduction, making their liability easy to glean from payroll and banking data. Yet Uncle Sam demands that Americans fire up TurboTax, head to a storefront preparer, hire an accountant, or sit down with a sharp pencil and a strong cup of coffee to get their taxes done each spring. The average filer spends 13 hours on their 1040 — a time tax that many of our wealthy peer countries have reduced to a couple of minutes, if that. Prepopulated documents and return-free systems are common everywhere but here.” (04/15/26)

https://archive.is/c8Nl0

US GOP shot-callers delay FISA vote amid rebellion

Source: Politico

“House GOP leaders postponed a Wednesday procedural vote on an extension of a key federal spy powers program as they scramble to land a deal with hard-liners around changes — acknowledging the truly ‘clean’ extension that President Donald Trump is demanding is currently DOA in the chamber. There are ongoing discussions around modifying the clean, 18-month extension of the surveillance authority known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that Trump is ordering. GOP leaders acknowledged in private conversations Tuesday night and publicly Wednesday morning that at least some tweaks are necessary to quell a GOP rebellion that could lead to Section 702’s expiration April 20. … Democrats aren’t expected to help Republicans overcome the procedural rule, even though some of them support a reauthorization without policy changes at this time.” (04/15/26)

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/15/republicans-fisa-trump-house-00872766

The Scammers Profiting off Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

Source: Mother Jones
by Laura C Morel

“In the last year, the country’s most prominent legal organizations—such as the American Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association— have warned that scams targeting immigrants and attorneys have increased to an alarming level. Certainly, these kinds of grifts are not new in the legal world, which for years has dealt with bad actors practicing law without a license. But representatives from several legal groups and private attorneys told me that today’s scams are more sophisticated and harder to detect thanks to the proliferation of AI and social media.” (04/15/26)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/the-scammers-profiting-off-trumps-immigration-crackdown/