Source: The American Conservative
by James R Lawrence, III
“A salacious case out of California raises important questions about the state’s ability to regulate a wide variety of interpersonal relationships.” (07/29/25)
“What if, lacking an organized resistance to fascism like we have had in previous eras (the civil rights movement, SDS, BLM, the Wobblies), the Democratic Party itself could play the role of producing radical, positive transformation across America Sound crazy? It’s actually happened twice. The first time was in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt’ New Deal literally flipped our politics and the American economy upside down, turning us from a raw, harsh capitalist system to a democratic socialist system with Social Security, legalized unions, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, workplace safety rules, massive infrastructure construction, and millions of Americans being employed directly by the government to end poverty. It happened again in the 1960s, with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society …” (07/28/25)
“The American government — after years of nurturing a censorship agenda in the South American country — is now penalizing Brazil’s super-censor Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, along with various colleagues, for imposing censorship demands on U.S. companies. The U.S. State Department revoked their visa privileges, preventing them from entering the United States.” (07/29/25)
“The war with Russia is now going very badly for Ukraine. But Ukrainians must feel like the world, and not just Russia, is treating them badly.” (07/29/25)
“Trump had a reputation as a different Republican president: less libertarian, more authoritarian, less interested in shrinking government or cutting entitlements, more interested in using the levers of government to reward friends and punish enemies. But Trump’s approach to FEMA in his second term belies that reputation. The agency, created in 1979, is explicitly retreating from the disaster relief business and shifting the burden to already overburdened states and localities.” [editor’s note: Scher always says “libertarian” like it’s a bad thing – TLK] (07/28/25)
“The Donald Trump-Russia collusion scandal that first broke in December 2016 and roared on until April 2019 has no parallel in our history — it’s not even close. As president-elect and later as sitting president, Trump was accused by the country’s intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of conspiring with a hostile power to subvert the 2016 election and sneak down a crooked path to the White House. Along the way, a damning Intelligence Community Assessment was issued, a major FBI investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, targeted the president, and a special counsel, Robert Mueller, was granted a team of prosecutors and a budget of millions to bring the guilty to justice. It was the most sensational news story in history. By one estimate, more than half a million articles were written about the collusion issue, the vast majority asserting or assuming criminality on Trump’s part. A manic media competed fiercely to deliver the latest ‘bombshell.'” (07/28/25)
“The Founding Fathers recognized unalienable rights – not rights that couldn’t be taken away. Rather, rights which it was wrong (sinful! evil!) to take away. They are God’s gift to His creations: every human being. Our headlines are filled with both examples of those rights, those liberties, being stolen away. And of people who use their liberties to do evil things. Not just to others, but even to themselves.” (07/28/25)
“Modern far right thinkers style themselves as an insurgent movement against power, combining a self-pitying victimhood with exaggerated fantasies of rediscovered manliness.” (07/28/25)
Source: Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom
by Stephan Kinsella
“Industries dependent on the patent and copyright monopoly grants scream bloody murder any time someone suggests any slight improvement. … Now Trump has proposed changing the USPTO system to charge ‘patent holders 1% to 5% of their [patents’] overall patent value, a shift that could dramatically increase fees. … The new fee would be a much more exorbitant cost for some patent holders that would function like a property tax.’ And of course the entrenched IP interests and patent whores are already screaming about this …” (07/28/25)