“In the short run, Democrats’ victory in gerrymandering Virginia to create four new blue Congressional districts is a good thing. It will restore balance to the critical 2026 House elections to offset Republicans’ Texas gerrymandering which created four new red districts. President Donald Trump was technically right when the night before the Virginia vote he told a conference of supporters, ‘I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is but it’s not good.’ Of course what Trump really meant is that gerrymandering is bad when it disenfranchises Republicans but good when it disenfranchises Democrats. Here’s what we do know: partisan gerrymandering is an affront to democracy by letting politicians pick their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.” (04/26/26)
“The foundation of international trust has cracked, and partnerships have been broken. The world can no longer trust the United States. The bond between Europe and the U.S. has been frayed. And the hard-won emerging trust between Iran and its Gulf neighbors, which had held the hope of a safer region, has been badly wounded. There are only losers in this war: the Gulf states, Ukraine, America, and, of course, the Iranian people. An important long-term geopolitical loss suffered by the U.S. is the accelerated erosion of its hegemony and the continued transfer of trust to China.” (04/24/26)
“The absolute BEST way to end the gerrymander wars would be to abolish Congress (and the rest of the US government). I’m all for it, but I sense I’m in the minority on that suggestion. There’s an easier — or at least simpler — way to get it done, while still catering to the fantasy that it’s possible for a politician to ‘represent’ the rights and interests of the diverse populations who elect him or her. It’s a two-step process: First, Congress repeals the Uniform Congressional District Act. Second, each state goes from ‘single-member district’ elections to ‘at-large statewide’ elections with Ranked Choice Voting.” (04/23/26)
“You might spend your Saturday mornings sipping coffee, attending a kids’ soccer game, or just recovering from a tough week at work. Not Paul Heaton. He recently spent a weekend persuading ChatGPT to confess to a crime it didn’t commit. … In his exchange with ChatGPT, Heaton used the Reid technique, the confrontational interrogation method first developed in the 1950s that has since been adopted by police departments all over the country. The man for whom it’s named, John Reid, published his methodology after winning acclaim for getting a man named Darrel Parker to confess to raping and murdering his own wife — an origin story with a haunting twist. It worked. … One of the problems with the Reid technique is that its primary function isn’t to gather evidence and generate leads, it’s to extract a confession from the person police already believe committed the crime.” (04/23/26)
“Trump’s embrace of endless wars already has killed and injured tens of thousands, displaced millions, squandered tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, driven up prices on gas and other necessities, created a global economic crisis, and risked wider catastrophe and World War III. And don’t forget Trump’s genocidal threats to ‘wipe out’ Iranian civilization, implying a potential nuclear attack. Faced with the threat of more endless war in Iran and beyond, Congress must do everything in its power to stop Trump. One tool Congress hasn’t used is its power to immediately cut off money for wars in Iran and beyond. With constitutional authority over government spending, Congress can use its rescission power – that is, the power to rescind, or take back, money previously appropriated to government agencies.” (04/23/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Thiago VS Coelho
“The Good Food Institute openly says it works with governments to advocate public investment in alternative proteins, while New Harvest says that ‘publicly-funded groups like ours’ are needed to steer cellular agriculture toward the public good. By GFI’s own 2024 policy report, governments were estimated to disburse about $560 million on alternative proteins in 2024, with cultivated meat alone drawing $84 million in public investment that year, double the previous high. In the United States, USDA already put a historic $10 million grant into Tufts’[s] National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, where the research agenda includes consumer acceptance, willingness-to-pay, scalable cell lines, serum-free media, scaffolds, and process optimization. That is not a picture of a market proving itself. It is a picture of advocates trying to socialize the cost of proving whether a market exists.” (04/23/26)
“Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s distinction between medical and recreational cannabis is hard to reconcile with the relevant scientific and statutory criteria.” (04/23/26)
“Virginia voted, and the Democrats treated the Republicans and Independents in the state like Bill Clinton treated so many women over the years – forcing their will on everyone else. If southern and rural Virginians didn’t want to be overpowered into submission, they shouldn’t have worn such a short skirt. In an election decided by three points after last year’s Governor’s race was won by the Democrat by more than 15 points, Democrats switched the state’s Congressional district map from six Democrats and five Republicans to 10 Democrats. Hitler would be proud. This is why we are a Constitutionally Limited Republic and not a democracy.” (04/23/26)
“In 1966, the famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow came up with a description of a mental bias that became known as ‘Maslow’s hammer.’ ‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, I suppose it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail,’ Maslow contended. Or, as some have reworded his theorem: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is a good diagnosis for how President Donald Trump has trapped us all in his unnecessary war with Tehran. A war from which he can’t find a good exit.” (04/23/26)
