“DOGE fell victim to the absurdly unrealistic standards set by its leaders. Elon Musk originally pledged that his administrative actions to slash government waste could immediately save $2 trillion out of a $7 trillion federal budget. As Musk familiarized himself with basic federal budgeting, he quickly reduced his target to $1 trillion and then $150 billion. These ambitious goals reflected the long-held conservative fantasy that budget deficits are driven primarily by obvious waste, fraud, and abuse that any competent business leader could simply zero out, saving trillions of dollars. … DOGE’s failure was entirely predictable to anyone with a baseline understanding of the federal budget, public administration, or basic politics.” (12/15/25)
“I write this from the front of a Columbia classroom in which about 60 first-year college students are taking the final exam for Frontiers of Science. Yes, it’s a Sunday, but the class is required of all Columbia College students and so having the exam on the weekend ensures that there won’t be conflicts with the exams for other courses they are taking. The 60 students in my classroom are a fraction of the nearly 740 taking the course this semester. The exam began at 2 pm, less than 24 hours after the shooting at Brown University, and just hours after many of us learned about the shooting in Sydney, Australia. Given these devastating events, I offered this morning that anyone who was adversely affected could take the exam later in the week …” (12/15/25)
“In 2009, I got a call from Eric Garris, founder and editor of Antiwar.com. Would I consider writing a column for the website? As a reporter who covered politics for Fox News, hardly a bastion of skepticism during the second Bush administration, I gratefully agreed. … In those days, the mainstream press operated in the shadow of a furious establishment Borg. With few exceptions, they deferred and sucked up to, genuflected, and jock-sniffed their way into the good graces of the military and the imperial court. … Not surprisingly, when freelance reporter Michael Hastings transgressed this code of the courtier, the peacocks of the Washington news establishment unleashed a professional righteous anger on him that should have been reserved, but wasn’t, for the crimes of the U.S. government, like say, Abu Ghraib.” (12/15/25)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“Together, Hinman vs. Pacific Air Transport (1936) and United States v. Causby (1945), ended ad coelum rights in the US. In ancient times and basically until Hinman, landowners were thought to have ad coelum rights of their land — rights to everything below it and everything above it ‘to the heavens.’ In the Hinman case, a landowner wanted the space above his land to be closed to airplanes. The court ruled that he had no such right. The essential concern was to allow for air travel, which was thought necessary for the future of the country. … Though I agree that air travel was good for economic prosperity and that such prosperity should be protected, I’ve never thought the court’s decision followed. Ending ad coelum rights was not necessary to attain the goal.” (12/15/25)
“Once again, the U.S. global military empire is the father of the fear that it propagates. And this time it’s right here in our own backyard. Just as freezing Russia’s dollar assets has encouraged foreign central banks’ gold accumulation and driven global de-dollarization, leading to President Donald Trump’s veiled threats against those that turn their back on the weaponized dollar, sanctions on Venezuela’s oil production and markets made certain the growing presence of Iran, Russia, and China in our hemisphere.” (12/15/25)
“Gavin Newsom won headlines Friday after he trolled Elon Musk — by attacking his relationship with his children. ‘We’re sorry your daughter hates you, Elon’, the California governor’s press office posted on X. Yes, this is the same Gavin Newsom who recently said Democrats’ next presidential nominee needs to be ‘someone who is a repairer of the breach’. By that standard, he has disqualified himself. Newsom has spent much of the year trolling President Donald Trump, trying to match — or exceed — Trump’s provocative rhetoric. Last week, responding to a White House post of footage of criminal illegal aliens being arrested, Newsom posted an AI-generated video showing Trump handcuffed and crying on a street curb. Ironically, Newsom once boasted that he had banned such AI ‘deepfake’ videos. But a federal judge said Newsom’s ban violated the First Amendment. Now such videos are part of Newsom’s daily output.” (12/15/25)
“All Chad Tausch wanted to do was add a few rooms to his Miami home. In many cities, homeowners need a permit to make such additions. But although the city had no problem with his proposed construction, it required something more than a permit fee: half of Tausch’s front yard — without even offering to pay for it. No land surrender, no permit. The city has been making the same demand of other homeowners who need alteration permits. The city has a plan, a goal: Pile up land that the city might one day use to widen roads.” (12/15/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Joseph Addington
“The U.S. seizure of the tanker Skipper earlier this week has been widely interpreted as a significant escalation by the Trump administration against the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Losing the tanker, which was carrying Venezuelan crude to Cuba, is a significant blow to Maduro and will make it more difficult for the Venezuelan government to fund itself, as it is overwhelmingly reliant on oil exports for government revenue. However, the seizure is also an escalation of American economic warfare generally, including against Iran and Russia, which have also taken advantage of the world’s ‘shadow tanker’ fleet to evade U.S. sanctions and sell energy abroad.” (12/15/25)
“Pardons go back to ancient Mesopotamia, 4,000 years ago, and they haven’t improved with age. I’m currently writing a book about Julius Caesar, who employed ‘clementia’ — clemency — extensively in the closing days of the Roman Republic. After Caesar’s civil war, he pardoned two guys named Brutus and Cassius, and we know how that worked out. Caesar pardoned enemies to get them to his side. I’d be shocked if Trump has ever read anything about Caesar, but he’s taking a leaf from him. Witness Trump’s anger at Representative Henry Cuellar, indicted on federal bribery charges, when Cuellar wouldn’t switch parties. … In the (good) old days, that kind of quid pro quo would have landed Trump in hot water, but it is almost quaint in the context of the 1600 pardons Trump has granted since 2017, including his appalling decision to free the convicted January 6 insurrectionists.” (12/15/25)
“In a rare display of North American harmony, President Trump, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney managed to rise above the FIFA 2026 World Cup draw’s cringeworthy game-show theatrics. There were no juvenile recriminations, new tariff threats, or provocations. Though the president showcased dance moves better left behind in 1978, the prime minister restrained himself. ‘It’s the first time I haven’t danced to the Y.M.C.A. when it came on, but there you go’, Carney confessed when he returned to Ottawa. Sheinbaum, sometimes called the ‘Trump whisperer’, emerged unscathed from her first in-person meeting with the president. As for Carney, Trump has described him as ‘a good man; and ‘a tough negotiator’. Even the leaders’ short tête-à-tête minus advisers avoided drama and left the world to decode whether the short meeting offered any bankable assurances that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will survive the Trump presidency.” (12/15/25)
