“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday the country’s military had deployed a domestically developed FP-7 tactical ballistic missile in the war against Russia for the first time. … Zelensky did not specify the target, but published a video of a missile launch at night. The Ukrainian defence firm Fire Point had previously postponed the first combat deployments of its ballistic missile on several occasions. … By developing its own ballistic missile weapon, Kiev aims to achieve parity with Moscow in terms of military capability. Ukraine has already deployed short-range ballistic missiles from old Soviet stockpiles during the war.” (10/01/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq is not as ignominious as the withdrawal from Afghanistan after some 20 years of occupation, nor does it resemble the humiliating U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam but it can be — and should be — an opportunity for Americans to engage in some serious soul-searching about the concept of foreign interventionism that has become a normal and permanent way of life for the American people. This is especially true given the ongoing fiasco of President Trump’s unconstitutional war on Iran, which has wreaked untold death, destruction, suffering, injuries, and impoverishment on the Iranian people, just like U.S. interventionism did to the people of Iraq under the rubric of bringing them ‘freedom.'” (10/01/26)
“SpaceX’s latest astronaut launch just set a new space record. The company’s Crew-13 mission for NASA arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) today (Oct. 1) at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), 7 hours and 55 minutes after it launched from Florida’s Space Coast. That’s the fastest any American spacecraft has ever reached the orbiting lab, NASA officials said. … In May 2020, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts reached the orbiting lab just 3 hours and 3 minutes after lifting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. … Crew-13 delivered four astronauts to the orbiting lab: NASA’s Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The quartet will live and work in space for the next six months.” (10/01/26)
“A major consequence of the American Revolution was the preservation of the free-market realities engendered by the long tradition of salutary neglect, threatened by the remnants of England’s monarchical leviathan. The American colonists proved to be an exception to English constitutionalism, having no direct representation in Parliament and being at the whim of royal prerogative as a colonial venture under the executive authority of foreign policy. The colonies ended up being outside English polity and thus subject to the whims of mercantilism rather than allowed to continue prospering under the spontaneous capitalism of the mother country. And so, the people revolted.” (10/01/26)
“Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Pfizer and its CEO, Albert Bourla, accusing the drugmaker of misleading consumers about the safety and effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine. … Uthmeier filed the lawsuit in state court, alleging that Pfizer told consumers its COVID-19 vaccine was safe while failing to disclose potential risks, including heart inflammation and other adverse events. Pfizer, according to the lawsuit, urged people to get the shot to protect others, even though the company never tested whether the vaccine stopped the virus from spreading. … Pfizer said in a statement the state’s allegations have no merit and that it would respond to the suit in due course.” [editor’s note: While Uthmeier is a grandstanding pol with a history of frivolous publicity-seeking and political corruption, there does seem to be a case here; the discovery phase should prove quite interesting – TLK] (10/01/26)
“Forbes recently dropped its 2026 Forbes 400 list: The 400 richest Americans today are worth a combined $8 trillion. Elon Musk, at the tip-top of the list, is worth an estimated $908 billion. If you spend your life thinking about taxes, as I do, a list like this naturally raises the wealth-tax question. One might think such a list would make an argument in favor of wealth taxation. If you think hard about the numbers, however, it actually shows how bad some arguments are in its favor.” (10/01/26)
“The Supreme Court announced Thursday it will decide the legality of President Trump’s mandatory detention policy, putting one of his banner immigration programs on the justices’ docket for their upcoming term. The Trump administration argues it can detain people without bond if they’re found to be in the country unlawfully, even if they have been living on U.S. soil for years. It’s a significant expansion of the government’s immigration powers. The push has fueled thousands of cases claiming the policy exceeds federal law, creating an avalanche of work for judges across the country, who are racing to keep up. The case marks another major confrontation between the Trump administration and the conservative-majority court. However, the justices opted against taking up a broader legal question of whether Trump’s policy violates constitutional due process protections. As of now, the court will only decide if the policy follows federal law.” [editor’s note: Under the “supreme” federal law — the US Constitution — it’s literally impossible to “be in the country unlawfully” – TLK] (10/01/260
“There is no greater myth regarding American exceptionalism than the view that only the United States has always seen the promotion of ‘liberal democracy’ as part of its national identity. In actual fact, the United States pledges itself to ‘liberal democracy’ the world over only when its military designs are compromised or stymied. The model was President Woodrow Wilson’s ‘war to end all wars’ during World War I. When Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917, he famously stated that the ‘world must be made safe for democracy.’ Wilson understood that the American people were not interested in a conflict as part of a larger geopolitical battle, but would rally around the idea of a moral crusade to permanently eliminate militarism and establish a lasting global peace.” (10/01/26)
“The Labor Department reported Thursday that seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims fell by 1,000 to 197,000 for the week ending September 26, the lowest reading since mid-July. The prior week’s figure was revised up by 1,000, from 197,000 to 198,000. The four-week moving average of claims slipped 2,500 to land at 200,000, a level that irons out the noise of weekly fluctuations. That figure was also revised up by 250 from the prior week, to 202,500. Continuing claims — a measure of insured unemployment and a proxy for the number of people currently receiving benefits — fell by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.701 million for the week ending September 19, the lowest since March 2023, according to Bloomberg. The insured unemployment rate held at 1.1%.” (10/01/260
