Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Elon Musk is right about the EU

Source: spiked
by Brendan O’Neill

“Musk’s irate philippics against the Brussels machine might be driven by self-serving impulses. His conversion to what we might call the Brexit spirit followed the EU’s slapping of a €120million fine on X for breaching the transparency rules in its authoritarian Digital Services Act. In response, Musk taunted EU officials on X and openly called for the EU’s dismantling. ‘The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people’, he tweeted. So it was the EU’s meddling with his bank balance, rather than its meddling with the European people’s sovereign rights, that pushed him over the edge into Euroscepticism. He’s still right, though.” (12/08/25)

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/12/08/elon-musk-is-right-about-the-eu/

Thomas L. Knapp

Fight Over Trump’s Power to Fire FTC Member Heads to SCOTUS

Source: US News & World Report

“The U.S. Supreme Court is set on Monday to weigh the legality of Donald Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission member in a major test of presidential power that could imperil a 90-year-old legal precedent. The court will hear arguments in the Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that the Republican president exceeded his authority when he moved to dismiss Democratic FTC member Rebecca Slaughter in March before her term was set to expire. The case gives the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, an opportunity to overturn a New Deal-era Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that has shielded the heads of independent agencies from removal since 1935.” (12/08/25)

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2025-12-08/fight-over-trumps-power-to-fire-ftc-member-heads-to-us-supreme-court

Thomas L. Knapp

Agree with him or not, Noam Chomsky’s ideas are still worth grappling with

Source: Orange County Register
by Sal Rodriguez

“Today marks the 97th birthday of Noam Chomsky, known both for his status as ‘the father of modern linguistics’ as well as his prolific political commentary. I’m aware that as the opinion editor of an editorial page that tilts libertarian he’s an unusual figure to highlight, but he was intellectually influential to me ever since I read a booklet of his (‘9/11’) sometime in 2002 (I would’ve been 11). Though I came to identify more with thinkers like Milton Friedman, Chomsky is still someone whose writings and speeches I return to.” (12/08/25)

https://archive.is/8l2Bh

Thomas L. Knapp

Don’t Pay, Don’t Play

Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“The European Commission is fining the X platform 120 million euros (140 million dollars), for ‘transparency failures’: not sharing advertising and user data with the EU and not making it easy to censor account holders. As Reclaim the Net reports, the European Union wants platforms to open themselves to what it calls ‘independent research.’ In practice, this means that ‘academics and NGOs, often with pro-censorship political affiliations’ get special access to the data, ‘exactly the kind of surveillance the [Digital Services Act] claims to prevent.… The EU is angry that X is not policing speech the way it wants.’ My advice to Elon Musk is to shut down X (formerly Twitter) throughout the EU. And refuse to pay the fine.” (12/08/25)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/12/08/dont-pay-dont-play/

Thomas L. Knapp

Mexico: Car bomb kills five in front of police station

Source: CBS News

“Mexican authorities on Sunday said at least five people died and three more were injured after a car exploded near a police station in the restive western state of Michoacan. The explosion took place shortly before noon local time on Saturday in front of the police headquarters in the coastal city of Coahuayana, according to Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, which has taken over investigation of the case. The state prosecutor’s office raised the initial toll from three fatal victims to five, adding that three of them were local police officers. … At least three of the six drug cartels that the Trump administration has designated as terrorist organizations – Jalisco New Generation, United Cartels and The New Michoacan Family – operate in Michoacán, in addition to a slew of homegrown armed splinter groups, some supported by the Sinaloa Cartel.” (12/08/25)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/car-bomb-deaths-officers-police-station-michoacan-mexico/

Thomas L. Knapp

Bannon, Mearsheimer: Trump’s Ukraine Plan Won’t End the War

Source: The American Conservative
by Harrison Berger

“Russia hawks in Congress and their allies in corporate media have been on the warpath against the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan for ending the Ukraine war, dubbing the plan a ‘Russian wish-list.’ The MSNBC host Rachel Maddow went so far as to hold it up as proof that ‘the Kremlin runs U.S. foreign policy.’ … Yet there are also criticisms of the plan from the other end of the ideological spectrum. Among the most prominent voices who argued from the start that the United States should never have been drawn into the Ukraine conflict are the War Room host and former White House advisor Steve Bannon and the University of Chicago’s Professor John Mearsheimer. They now warn that far from being a ‘Russian wish list,’ the Trump administration’s plan may not actually address the underlying political problems that ultimately caused the Ukraine proxy war.” (12/08/25)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/bannon-mearsheimer-trumps-ukraine-plan-wont-end-the-war/

Thomas L. Knapp