“The Democratic Socialists of America are proving an old principle of politics: You can win a lot of votes by promising ‘free stuff’ — and not worrying if you could possibly deliver. Analyst Adam Michel of the free-market Cato Institute just tallied up the DSA’s agenda, and guess what: ‘The entire wealth of the richest Americans, plus every dollar of corporate profit and maximum top income tax rates’ fails to pay for the socialist program. The DSA vows to provide universal health care (cost to the government: $29.9 trillion to $75.4 trillion over the next decade), slavery reparations ($13.5 trillion to $28 trillion), jobs guarantees ($4.4 trillion to $60.4 trillion), housing for all ($3.4 trillion to $16.6 trillion) and several other big-ticket goodies. The mind-blowing total: $71.2 trillion to $211.6 trillion, spiking federal spending to 57% of GDP on the low end, and 92% on the high end.” (09/01/26)
“Amid public discontent and warnings from Pentagon leaders that the Iran War undermines military readiness, President Donald Trump has settled on a new strategy: lower the temperature on military hostilities and focus instead on strangling Iran’s economy. Middle East experts told The American Conservative that this approach won’t fundamentally change Tehran’s own military strategy, at least not in ways congenial to American interests. Moreover, in practice it is leading to skirmishes centered around the Strait of Hormuz, where the U.S. aims to blockade Iranian ports while securing free transit for allied countries. Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians face dire threats to their livelihoods, as revealed by first-hand testimonies shared with TAC.” (09/02/26)
“Labeling the anger at Flock as a reaction to ever-present surveillance in contemporary society seems accurate, but this doesn’t explain why it’s happening right now. Not only has Flock been around for some time, but ALPRs are even older. My colleague Conor Friedersdorf was sounding the alarm a decade ago. ‘Your diminished privacy is their product. And the police are their customers,’ he wrote in January 2016. Some anger focuses on governments that spend huge amounts (including money obtained through opioid settlements whose funds were earmarked for community aid) on technology during a moment of economic worry. More damaging to Flock’s reputation has been a series of cases of police officers allegedly abusing their access to the system to stalk people, typically current or former love interests.” (09/01/26)
“As we write this, it technically is not a hung jury, under Massachusetts judicial procedure, though the first report by the jury that they could not come to a unanimous decision, the judge could and did send them back to deliberate more. This apparently can be done twice before it is officially a ‘hung jury.'” (09/01/26)
“When Karla Padilla started her sentence at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, Calif., in 2023, a guard singled her out. Over the next 15 months, the guard strip-searched Padilla so frequently that anyone near her risked being searched too, and other inmates began keeping their distance whenever that guard was on shift. Most prisons across the country conduct strip searches under a federal policy that requires women officers to inspect incarcerated women. The officer instructs them to remove their clothes, shake their hair, open their mouths, lift their breasts or genital area and then bend, squat and cough. On one particularly cold day in November 2023, while Padilla was cleaning the chapel, the guard demanded that Padilla strip for a search in full view of four male guards stationed there.” (09/01/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Alex Tokarev & Noel Tokarev
“After 30 painful weeks of waiting, the NFL season is back. Once again, America gets three things it can count on: Sunday night football (pastors, avoid long sermons), Monday-morning quarterbacking, and politicians pretending to be experts in stadium economics. Chicago, Kansas City, and Buffalo offer three variations on the same old scam. Corporate fat cats who own professional sports teams demand multibillion-dollar facilities. With good friends in high places, the rich are conspiring to force the taxpayers to pick up the tab.” (09/01/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Abigail R Hall & Patrik S Ward
“When Shively Police Officer Asad Zahir was arrested for improperly using Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Reader, it added yet another data point to the growing list of state and local police abusing surveillance technologies. … Zahir is accused of carrying out more than 2,000 unauthorized searches to monitor and target his ex-girlfriend. More than 240 of these searches occurred while Zahir had an active order of protection against him. … The response of the Shively Police Department and other local officials is even more troubling. While discussing the arrest, officials were quick to frame Zahir’s arrest as a triumph of internal oversight and as the direct result of individual malfeasance. … Without a doubt, the individuals who abuse these technologies deserve blame and should be prosecuted. But the ‘few bad apples’ defense conveniently shifts public attention away from much deeper problems.” (09/01/26)
“In 2024, Floridians voted, by a margin of 55.9% to 44.1%, to legalize recreational marijuana. Unfortunately, the threshold for passage of ‘Amendment 3’ was 60% and the measure failed. So far so bad … but it gets worse. Nearly two years later we’ve learned that state government officials misappropriated millions of dollars in taxpayer money; funneled it through a charity founded by governor Ron DeSantis’s wife and into Republican PACs operated by the man who later became the state’s attorney general, with the approval of the then sitting attorney general, now a US Senator; and poured it into a campaign to defeat the measure. We know this because someone leaked a grand jury report on the matter to CBS News Miami.” (09/01/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Sarah McLaughlin
“In the United States, campus speakers, online expression, blockbuster movies, and printed books are all, of course, protected by the First Amendment. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re protected against influence and censorship by foreign powers, particularly the Chinese government. This censorship may go under the radar for many Americans, but make no mistake: It can influence not just what you encounter in the secular world, but maybe the spiritual one, too. A report this week from the National Catholic Register paints a disturbing picture: A U.S.-based Catholic organization chose to disinvite a speaker from its conference at the University of St. Thomas in Houston after facing direct pressure from Chinese officials. Apparently even the speaker lists at religious events in the U.S. cannot escape pressure from foreign officials who vest in themselves the authority to censor the world.” (09/01/26)
“In April 2025, Louisiana District Court Judge Alvin Sharp declared Duncan innocent of the crime for which he’d been convicted and sentenced to death nearly 30 years earlier. It would take another seven months before he was finally released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola. … Duncan was arrested in 1993 for raping and murdering Haley Oliveaux, the 23-month-old daughter of his girlfriend. … Duncan had no history of sex offenses or abusing children. He was convicted primarily because of testimony from Steven Hayne — a now-disgraced medical examiner who performed the vast majority of autopsies in Mississippi for two decades — and his sidekick Michael West, a notorious forensics fraud best known for finding ‘bite marks’ and matching them to alleged perpetrators. Duncan is the ninth person to be exonerated after being convicted with testimony from Hayne, West, or both.” (09/01/26)
