“Yesterday the president of the United States made an announcement that changed the face of the world order. He declared that, starting immediately, the United States would charge a 20 percent toll on the shipping of all goods through the Strait of Hormuz. We should be clear: This was never going to happen. The U.S. Navy will not keep a fleet of ships in the region permanently. Neither China, India, Japan, Australia, nor any other country will pay 20 percent tariffs to the United States on cargo moving through the strait. This was make-believe. The president of the United States was issuing proclamations utterly detached from reality, like a late-stage Saddam Hussein. You can tell that Trump’s plan is make-believe because of the non-reaction from the rest of the world.” (07/15/26)
“The network of ALPRs that is expanding across the country is rife with abuse and raises serious concerns about grand promises of greater security at the expense of serious encroachments on Americans’ civil liberties. The explosion of ALPRs along American roadways has given law enforcement considerable access to data on American motorists and their behavior. That these tools are marketed to agencies in heavily populated areas and constructed along our busiest roads is no coincidence.” (07/14/26)
“There’s a long history of federal government intervention in the internal affairs of unions. The grounds for such interventions have usually run the gamut from ideology and politics (e.g., the Taft-Hartley Act’s purge of Communists from the ranks of union leaders) to corruption (the control of various unions by organized crime, e.g., much of the Teamsters until roughly 1990). But the personal pique of a government official was never really the reason behind any such intervention—until today. In the past three weeks, the federal monitor charged with overseeing the United Auto Workers has become, in effect, the most significant supporter of UAW Vice President Rich Boyer’s campaign to unseat UAW President Shawn Fain in the union’s upcoming quadrennial election, to be decided by a vote of the rank and file in the next few months.” (07/14/26)
“[Lindsey] Graham’s supposed transformation into the Apostle of Trump on his personal road to Damascus should have come as no surprise, for it was completely consistent with his entire career of living out one lie after another. As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, every word Graham ever uttered was a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ Indeed, everything about Graham was a lie – just as are all the sickly sweet, sentimentalized tears now pouring forth at his passing.” (07/14/26)
“How can one sign a contract before birth? That question can’t be answered by President Bill Clinton, who said ‘we mustn’t break the solemn compact between generations,’ in a 1998 address on Social Security. Such a speech constructs Social Security as a contractual mandate in need of protection rather than an insurance and redistribution program. Grand national ‘contracts’ should face significant scrutiny, as they borrow the moral force of a contract without the requirements that define one. … Legally, the four requirements of a contract are offer, consideration, acceptance, and an intention to create legal relations. A person not yet born cannot be offered a contract, consider it in any manner or ask for compensation, accept it in any way, or intend legal relations. By any measure, Social Security cannot be a legal contract.” (07/14/26)
“Rubio’s problem with the ICC isn’t that it can ‘override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states.’ It’s that when an American allegedly commits a relevant crime on the soil of an ICC member state, the ICC, rather than US courts, adjudicates the matter. To put it a different way, Rubio’s demand of ICC member states is ‘global sovereignty for the US, no sovereignty for anyone else.'” (07/14/26)
Source: EconLog
by Christopher Coyne & Abigail R Hall
“One of the defining features of war is the centralization of state power. War and foreign intervention require the use of resources and the ability to make choices about how to use them. As national governments are responsible for planning, implementing, and overseeing war and other foreign intervention, war necessarily draws peripheral political units (e.g., state and local authorities) toward the political center. … This bureaucratization of life, the drawing of peripheral units of government toward the political center, effectively erodes the pluralism of democratic governments. Instead of working to provide a check or counterbalance to the central government, peripheral political units become aligned with the goals of the central government.” (07/14/26)
“Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter recently offered what he apparently believed was a devastating answer to those decrying the genocide in Gaza. ‘Jews do not use children’s blood for rituals,’ Leiter said. ‘Jews do not poison wells. And Jews do not starve populations or commit genocide.’ The smear in this common Zionist talking point is obvious: Those who accuse the Israeli government belong in the same moral category as those who spread medieval blood libels against innocent Jews. To say the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has committed genocide is not merely to criticize a government, an army, or a political ideology. It is to accuse ‘the Jews.’ But there is a growing problem for Zionism and its favorite smear: the moral indignation of Jews.” (07/14/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Let’s give credit where credit is due: The Trump administration, including ICE and the Border Patrol, is showing what needs to be done to ‘secure the border.’ For decades, advocates of America’s socialist system of immigration controls have assumed that it’s possible to have a gentle and benign immigration-control system, one that not only works to keep out illegal immigrants but also treats people with kindness and respect. Among my favorite statist mantras is, ‘We just need comprehensive immigration reform to fix America’s broken immigration system.’ That has always been a pipe dream.” (07/14/26)
