“America has been a great innovator in the realm of elections, introducing many methods new developments from party primaries to early and mail voting. Some innovations fall by the wayside, while others catch on and become standard. Why trade this ferment of democracy for an arrangement where permission from Washington is required for anything new? Why risk foisting a bad method on everyone because someone in Washington liked it? Above all, the Framers did it this way because they feared that a ruling national faction, whether based in Congress or a White House, might someday gain power over election administration nationwide and use it to entrench themselves in office.” (09/09/26)
“What don’t I know? I don’t know exactly how you should live or every detail of your situation. I don’t know how to solve every possible random problem in the world. I don’t know what complications might arise. I don’t know solutions I can’t see or haven’t thought of. All the variables; the consequences of any potential solution. I don’t know how, or if, society should be run. I don’t know, and I accept it. While I’m comfortable saying I don’t know, there are also things I do know. I know that no one else knows those answers, either. If they claim to, they are being dishonest. Those who make up legislation are often even more ignorant about the topics they legislate on than the rest of us.” (09/09/26)
“The state should not be dismissed as evil, but neither should it be romanticized as inherently good, a focus of moral value in and of itself. There are legitimate and difficult questions about whether there is a collective ‘will’ that the state discovers and enacts. The most plausible, and modest, claim is that people use the technology of ‘state power’ to provide mutual protection and achieve shared goals. The alternatives to this modest view of the state are a wide and haphazard range of different moral and practical collectivisms, imposed by central authorities. We can agree that the state must have police authority, but endowing the state with moral authority is simply incompatible with liberalism.” (09/09/26)
Source: The Erick Erickson Show
by Erick-Woods Erickson
“The people who brought us tariffs and said they’d cost us nothing now insist that putting stay-at-home moms on welfare will cost us nothing, too, so long as they get to keep picking the winners and losers. Moms who go to work get to subsidize those who do not. The GOP gets to open a new front in the culture war, pitting moms against moms. Superficially, the policy sounds good. Children raised in stable two-parent homes outperform every other group in school and in earnings, and a policy that makes those homes easier to build deserves a hearing. … The Vice President’s heart is in the right place, but his plan is a terrible idea. In the face of rising socialism, the Vice President is offering socialism-lite. And just as Diet Coke is never as popular as regular Coke, Diet Coke Socialism can’t beat the real thing either.” (09/09/26)
“A rare leak of significant opposition among top U.S. military brass to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s intention to keep more than 50,000 American forces on alert in the Middle East reports a ‘more dire’ outlook for the Iran conflict’s effect on U.S. military readiness globally. According to the Washington Post, a source familiar with the generals’ assessment reported that the brass viewed the six-month war as ‘too much for too long.’ The leak was prompted by the Pentagon’s decision to keep some forces in the region into fiscal year 2027. U.S forces have been pulled from areas of the globe more strategic to U.S. interests than the Persian Gulf for a needless attack that turned into yet another American quagmire in the Greater Middle East, thus degrading worldwide training and readiness for more important missions.” (09/09/26)
“And then there were fewer. That’s the reality in higher education this academic year. About two dozen colleges and universities announced plans to shut down before graduation this past spring; more than 80 colleges closed or merged between 2020 and 2025. And more than 440 private colleges are at significant risk of shutting down in the near future — about a quarter of the nationwide total. Even sports powerhouses like New York’s Syracuse University are beginning to struggle financially, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Where I’m from, near Philadelphia, at least a dozen institutions of higher education are in perilous financial shape: They just aren’t enrolling enough students to pay the bills. It’s a gloomy picture for alumni and academics — but there’s a silver lining. These failing schools could be the launching pad for higher education’s fundamental transformation.” (09/09/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“About 15 years ago, the great drug war boogeyman was bath salts. Instead of using these salts in the bathtub, people took to swallowing, snorting, injecting, smoking, and otherwise ingesting them. Fentanyl, a type of synthetic opioid more potent than heroin and morphine, soon replaced bath salts as the great drug war boogeyman. More recently, the new drug war boogeyman was nitazenes, another type of synthetic opioid. Nitazenes were said to be more potent than not only heroin and morphine but also fentanyl. The newest drug war boogeyman is kratom — leaves from a tree native to Southeast Asia that are used to increase energy and alleviate pain, coughing, anxiety, and depression.” (09/09/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“The lesson of 9/11 should be that war is not the answer to any of the problems facing the United States. After inflicting violence and chaos on country after country for twenty-five years in a ‘global war on terror’ that has evolved into a Zionist genocide and a revived Cold War against Russia and China, the widespread public opposition to Trump’s war on Iran suggests that most Americans have finally learned that lesson. Unfortunately, powerful sections of our corrupt business and political elites have not.” (09/09/26)
“Age is the great underrated factor. If you want to know how much home equity someone owns, knowing their percentile for their age is less informative than simply knowing their age. Almost everyone starts with low housing wealth, yet a large majority end up with massive housing wealth.” (09/09/26)
