“California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) wants you to know that he is evolving. Newsom is facing a rising radical movement among Democrats, including a surging contingent aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America. He is struggling in polls and therefore eager to show the skill identified by Darwin that allows certain species to thrive in their environment: adaptation. Newsom has recently declared capitalism a failure. He is now joining his competitors for president in offering up the Supreme Court and its independence to the far left. His free fall into rage politics is a cautionary tale for those who want to return the Democratic Party to more centrist positions. Often called a ‘political chameleon’, Newsom seems to be morphing into the actual species that evolved to adjust to its environment, including more nimble feet.” (09/14/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“A government ban here in America would do nothing to keep AI Superintelligence from advancing; it will continue to advance, just not as much here in the U.S. It would progress in other countries or here in America, but underground. Sanders’ Act would help other countries like China to advance with us out of the way. Handing AI Superintelligence into the hands of government bureaucrats is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve heard in a while coming out of D.C. or Vermont. We do not need a centralized, unaccountable government superpower in control of all this information. We need strict, real-world legal liability, property rights, and contract enforcement rather than preemptive federal licensing.” (09/13/26)
“When I was coming up in the conservative movement, one of the hallmarks of Republican grievance was the belief that the ‘mainstream media’ was controlled by liberals and had a systemic bias against conservatives. The political and cultural right responded to this imbalance by building an industry designed to reduce public trust in mainstream media—hammering the ‘liberal bias’ narrative relentlessly. But they didn’t stop there. They also built an entire competing media ecosystem. And they had a roughly fifteen-year head start on doing it. By the time Trump arrived in 2015, the infrastructure was already firmly in place.” (09/13/26)
“The main criticism of liberalism is that liberals lack a theory of power. Liberalism sees itself as the enjoyment of a life of peaceable private cultivation absent the onus of public duty. The critique is that the private and civic life of individuals is also profoundly shaped by values and economic relations. Liberalism is seen as not able to formalize the relationship between wealth, power, and culture. This point was best made by one of liberalism’s most prominent, and dare I say most insightful, critics: the Nazi jurist and political thinker Carl Schmitt. His ideas, largely for the worse, are currently very influential on liberalism’s opponents.” (09/13/26)
“‘My name is Randy Villegas, and I’m for Medicare for All.’ That was how Villegas, a 31-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress, opened a health care town hall in late August for close to 100 residents, most of them Latino. He was speaking at Salon Juarez, a dance hall that hosts quinceañeras and weddings in a historic section of Bakersfield known as Old Town Kern. Preceding him on stage was Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), the progressive House member who is flirting with filling the left lane in the 2028 presidential race. Sandy Reding, a president of the California Nurses Association (CNA), one of America’s most left-wing unions, spoke before Khanna. The Working Families Party, which supports progressive populists across the country, had a table along one side. You wouldn’t know that this is one of America’s most hotly contested swing seats.” (09/14/26)
“When was the last time your doctor actually examined you? I do not mean when someone checked your blood pressure, copied your medication list, looked at your laboratory results, or listened briefly through a shirt before returning to the computer. I mean examined you. Looked at you. Watched you breathe. Felt your pulse. Looked at your eyes. Examined your neck. Listened carefully to your heart and lungs. Palpated your abdomen. Watched you walk. Noticed the color of your skin, the movement of your hands, the expression on your face, and the thousand other small pieces of information that a human body offers to someone who has learned how to observe it. For most of the history of medicine, this was not an optional ritual performed before ordering the ‘real tests.’ This was medicine. Today, increasingly, it is treated as something quaint, inefficient, or unnecessary.” (09/13/26)
“American law recognizes the right of a jury to acquit a defendant ‘in the teeth of the facts.’ We call it ‘jury nullification’: The jury decides that even though the defendant did X, the law forbidding X is wrong, at least in that case. Prosecutors hate that because they prefer convictions at any cost. Judges hate it, because they like to be in charge and don’t think anyone should be free to ignore their ‘instructions.’ The lone juror in the Clancy case is a flip side of jury nullification. He decided, based on the evidence he’d seen and the testimony he’d heard, that she was guilty, and he wasn’t going to let himself get bullied into saying otherwise. The effect isn’t as broad as acquittal — the prosecutor is free to bring the case again — but it’s the same principle. Jurors get to vote their conclusions and their conscience. Period. That’s important.” (09/13/26)
“Millions of people today refer to their rights by amendment number, as if they get them from the Bill of Rights. They talk about their ‘2nd Amendment rights,’ but they have it completely backwards. The founders didn’t write the words as a permission slip for the people. They aren’t a ‘gun permit.’ They are a restraining order for government: hands off our natural rights. There is no clearer restraining order than the 2nd Amendment. It doesn’t grant a right. It recognizes one that already exists, and issues a direct command to government.” (09/12/260
“Politicians generally operate within their partisan bubbles, as they stake out poll-tested positions that conform to the political lean of their districts and the priorities of their party. Once in a while, though, an issue so upsets the public that it transcends partisanship. Then all bets are off, as lawmakers try desperately to placate those proverbial ‘peasants with pitchforks.’ The latest example involves the construction of data centers. Voters, and hence politicians on the political left and right, are incensed about the construction of large facilities that house computers, networking equipment, servers, and storage systems that support the tech economy and the growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s hard to understand the level of upset given that these facilities are necessary to power industries that power our economy and fund state budgets.” (09/11/26)
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
by the editorial board
“During a recent cable news appearance, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed no American lives had been lost in the Iran war, an error he blamed on confusion with President Donald Trump’s earlier invasion of Venezuela. And perhaps it is difficult to keep one’s wars straight in an administration that has attacked seven countries in less than two years. But while Lutnick’s claim was horribly wrong in fact, it was an accurate reflection of the administration’s consistently reprehensible diminishment of the costly war it started more than six months ago without congressional authorization or public support. The day after the secretary’s gaffe, Vice President JD Vance denied the very existence of the conflict, telling reporters, ‘I wouldn’t call it a war’ …. The day after that, Trump himself dismissed the war as ‘small potatoes’…” (09/13/26)
