“Authorities in Florida are accusing a 51-year-old woman of shooting and killing two ex-husbands on the same day this week. Susan Erica Avalon was arrested on Thursday on charges of second degree homicide in Manatee County, where her first ex-husband lived, according to Sheriff Rick Wells. … When investigators told her they are there to speak to her about her ex-husband, she responded, ‘which one?’ Wells said. Investigators then began digging into Avalon’s second ex-husband, who lived in Tampa. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office requested the help of the Tampa Police Department to check on the man and found he had been shot and killed in his home. … Authorities believe Avalon first went to Tampa to kill her second ex-husband before heading to Manatee County and shooting her first ex-husband, the 54-year-old man, Wells said.” (12/20/25)
“I’m pretty sure I won’t be around long enough to see anarcho-capitalism — or what I call market-ordered anarchism — prevail in the United States. I’m just as sure that I won’t see government strictly limited to protecting individual rights and never violating them (if that’s coherent). So that’s a wash. But it doesn’t follow that discussing individualist, pro-property, free-market alternatives to the current, virtually out-of-control political system in America is time wasted. Far from it! If we want to progress toward liberty, we’d better get a move on.” (12/19/25)
“One interesting source of efficiency is removing unnecessary steps in the production process. For example, in an assembly line, if you raise the conveyor belt, the workers will not have to bend and lift objects. Modern writers often use scare quotes to describe ‘scientific management’ or ‘Taylorism,’ creating the impression that time-and-motion studies were instruments of oppression aimed at individual workers. But from Potter I learned that time-and-motion studies were used to discover ways to improve manufacturing processes. Raising the height of the conveyor belt is an example of scientific management that is a win-win for workers and for the manufacturer.” (12/19/25)
“Trump did not oppose the Iraq War at the time, but he did present himself as a critic after it went south. His most consistent reason for his opposition was that America had failed to seize Iraq’s oil, despite the fact that doing so would have been a war crime. … Trump has long benefited from his contrast with the second Bush administration’s failed experiments with nation building. He has dismissed his Republican critics as neoconservatives, and some left-wing populists credit him for moving his party away from Bush-style interventionism. Yet Trump’s saber-rattling against Venezuela confirms that his argument with neoconservatism was never about the hubris of exporting democracy or a faith in pacifistic leadership. Trump’s main complaint about Bush was that he squandered an opportunity to enrich the U.S. by caring too much about international law and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” (12/19/25)
SourceS: Responsible Statecraft
by Stavroula Pabst
“By leveraging the dual-use nature of many of their products, where defense technologies can be integrated into the commercial sector and vice versa, Pentagon contractors like Palantir, Skydio, and General Atomics have gained ground at home for surveillance technologies — especially drones — proliferating war-tested military tech within the domestic sphere.” (12/19/25)
“Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been sentenced to 17 years in prison after a Pakistani court found them guilty of illegally retaining and selling valuable state gifts. The sentence, handed down on Saturday, capped a years-long saga that saw the duo accused of selling various gifts – including jewellery from the Saudi Arabian government – at far below market value. They have denied all charges. In order to keep gifts from foreign dignitaries, Pakistani law requires officials to purchase them at market value and to declare profits from any sales. But prosecutors claimed that the couple profited from the items after purchasing them at an artificially low price of $10,000, compared with their market rate of $285,521.” (12/20/25)
“Since Jeffrey Epstein’s second arrest in 2019, the Clintons have spent considerable effort distancing themselves from the enigmatic financier, and they are currently fending off House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who threatened contempt proceedings after the political power couple refused to testify this week regarding their relationship to Epstein. … Yet as Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign ramped up, it was Epstein looking to duck the Clintons. Epstein was facing increasingly dire legal consequences in South Florida, stemming from his years-long sexual exploitation of young women and girls. The glare of a presidential campaign risked unraveling what Epstein and his friend and ally Ghislaine Maxwell had so effectively constructed over the years, as they were increasingly associated with the spectacle of ‘Clintonworld.'” (12/19/25)
