Source: The UnPopulist
by Kenneth Silber
“Its existence will raise confusing and difficult questions for earthlings that authoritarians won’t have the credibility to negotiate.” (04/24/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/only-liberal-societies-can-handle
Source: New York Post
by staff
“Expect the fight against fraud to dominate the Republican agenda in Congress and on the campaign trail in the months ahead: It’s past time to stop the theft of tens and even hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars from programs meant to help the sick, needy and otherwise vulnerable. Wednesday saw Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) unveil the Protecting American Taxpayers Act, a major package of legislation produced by the DOGE Caucus, a group of senators aiming to continue the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, the executive branch agency spearheaded by Elon Musk that targeted fraud and waste.” (04/25/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by Jerry Long
“At this very moment the President is at the peak of his cognitive powers. He will not get saner at 80, and the odds are pick ‘em that when he does shuffle off this mortal coil he will attempt to take all of us – and the copper wiring from the coil – with him. Yet Trump’s defenders sicken me more than Trump. They constantly claim deeper perspectives for his actions, as though the Trump Presidency were an inverse Picture Of Dorian Gray, and locked away in the Oval Office was a pristine portrait growing more fair with each act of indecency. But the moral leper behind the Resolute Desk is the reality, and no tacky amount of gold or cheap bordello flourishes can camouflage its pustules.” (04/24/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/24/the-cadaver-synod-of-pope-donald/
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“Amid a spate of cellphone and social media bans for young people around the world, there’s a parallel, quieter shift taking place in education. It is away from the ubiquity of digital technology and back to the analog tools of paper, pen, and pencils. And, in an interesting twist, this change is being led by the Scandinavian nations that pioneered the shift to ed tech learning more than a decade ago. Today, they are grappling with restoring – or, rather, redefining – what contributes to meaningful and enduring education.” (04/24/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Kelsy Achtenberg
“Before we can improve school, we have to ask a deeper question: What is school actually for? For us at The Innovation School, that question didn’t lead to a packaged curriculum or a scripted program. It led us to a philosophy that has shaped how we see children, learning, and the role of a teacher. That philosophy is the Reggio Emilia approach. It began after World War II in a small town in Italy, when a community led by educator Loris Malaguzzi set out to reimagine what education could be. After the destruction of the war, they wanted a system that wasn’t built on compliance or rigidity. They wanted one built on curiosity, real-life experiences, and human potential.” (04/24/26)
Source: Racket News
by Matt Taibbi
“The SPLC was just indicted for one kind of fraud. Twitter was investigating another. When you get paid big bucks to find hate, you won’t NOT find it.” (04/24/26)
https://www.racket.news/p/twitter-files-southern-poverty-law
Source: EconLog
by Maurizio Bovi
“Centuries of argument have left a stubborn question unresolved: how much economic inequality is acceptable? Unlike inequalities rooted in race, gender, or disability — which typically attract broad moral condemnation — economic inequality in income, consumption, and wealth remains fiercely contested. That contestation does not result from a flaw in the debate; it is the debate’s defining feature.” (04/24/26)
https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2026/boviinequality
Source: Batya Ungar-Sargon
by Batya Ungar-Sargon
“An explosive new indictment was handed down against the Southern Poverty Law Center this week, accusing the storied civil rights organization of 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and money laundering. The Department of Justice is alleging that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled over $3 million from donors to leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, Unite the Right, and the Nazi Party, among other extremist organizations. … Paying millions of dollars to Nazis and Klansmen would be bad enough. But the indictment alleges that the SPLC went beyond that, actually underwriting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, providing material support and supervision to what the Left turned into the symbol of Right-wing hate.” [editor’s note: Ungar-Sargon does have a little credibility on Charlottesville — on the “right” she was one of the few who didn’t try to perpetrate the “Charlottesville Hoax” Hoax – TLK] (04/26/26)
https://www.batya-us.com/p/for-years-the-left-used-the-unite
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Mollie Engelhart
“[T]he truth is, the government was never going to save us. It was never designed to move faster than the people. It responds to pressure, to markets, and to what we tolerate and what we demand. Right now, we are still funding the very system we say we want to change. The only real power we have is how we spend our money, our time, and our energy, and that power has to be exercised consistently. It is easy to vote one day in November. It is hard to change how we spend our money every single day. It is hard to change how we eat every single day. It is hard to choose, over and over again, to support something different when the system is designed to make the alternative less convenient.” (04/24/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/government-cannot-make-us-healthy/
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Muhammad Saad
“In 1863, Francis Lieber, the Prussian-American jurist commissioned by Abraham Lincoln to codify the laws of land warfare, wrote that no soldier may kill an enemy ‘who has laid down his arms.’ War, however brutal, must remain an act performed by a morally responsible agent who can account for what he has done and to whom it has been done. The Lieber Code was imperfect. Its application was racially selective and its humanitarian ambitions frequently betrayed in practice. But its foundational premise survived two world wars, the drafting of the Geneva Conventions and the development of every weapons system from the machine gun to the precision-guided munition. Its premise is that lethal force requires a human being who can be identified, interrogated, and held to account. Today, AI-powered targeting systems fundamentally break this premise.” (04/24/26)