“When it became clear in late 2023 that Javier Milei would become the next president of Argentina, the response from many economists and analysts was borderline apoplectic. They warned that the profane self-described libertarian … would inflict on Argentina’s already-beleaguered economy ‘deep recession,’ ‘devastation,’ ‘economic collapse,’ and all sorts of other economic horribles. … Then, a funny thing happened as Milei worked to enact his slash-and-burn agenda: Things in Argentina got better, and the doomsayers went quiet. A few brave souls, to their credit, have since issued mea culpas, but most of them haven’t. That’s probably because doing so would acknowledge the success of not only Milei, but also the libertarian ideas they so disdain.” (03/27/25)
“Hundreds of Palestinians have taken to the streets in Gaza this week to protest against Hamas’s tyranny. In the largest anti-Hamas demonstrations since the war with Israel began, Gazans have been demanding that Hamas step down from power and end the conflict. This won’t come as a surprise to those actually listening to Palestinians. Polling this month shows that just six per cent of Gazans want Hamas to stay in power. … how did the Western pro-Palestine movement get it so wrong? Why have leftist activists grown so sympathetic towards this Islamist terror group? The honest answer is that such people are motivated less by support for Palestine, and more by a hatred of Israel.” (03/27/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“A jury in San Antonio, Texas, recently returned a guilty verdict against two men — Armando Gonzales-Ortega and Felipe Orduna-Torres — for the role they played in the deaths of 53 illegal immigrants — 47 adults and 6 children. The victims died while being transported in the back of a tractor trailer where temperatures reached 150 degrees. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on June 27 and will most likely receive a very high prison sentence. … it wasn’t only Gonzales-Ortega and Orduna-Torres and other smugglers who bear moral responsibility for the deaths of those 53 people. So do U.S. officials who continue to support and enforce America’s decades-old immigration-control system — a system by which the federal government centrally plans the movements of people across international borders and criminalizes the unauthorized entry into the United States by foreigners.” (03/27/25)
“In the two months since Donald Trump became president, the Democrats have engaged in a one-note mantra in which they insist the administration ‘is not normal.’ But do the Democrats own a mirror? Because if there is any normalcy on their side of the aisle, it seems to be in deep hiding. It is not normal, for example, that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] refuse to condemn the violence and destruction directed at Teslas and their owners across the nation. How hard is it – as some lower-level Democrats such as Rep. Ro Khanna [D-CA] have done, to just say, ‘Hey, it’s never OK to destroy personal property over politics?'” (03/27/25)
“‘Signalgate’ is how some are christening Trump officials’ unintended disclosure of plans for bombing Yemen via a Signal group chat on March 15. Since Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg broke the story, outraged critics have demanded a return to ‘the ethic of accountability that our nation holds sacred.’ The analogy to Watergate is fitting, but not in the way they intend. Congressional furor over Nixon’s misbehavior fixated on the pettiest of his crimes. The articles of impeachment in 1974 failed to mention his role in a war of aggression that killed between two and four million people.” (03/27/25)
“‘How could I have been so stupid as to let them proceed?’ President John Kennedy asked his advisers following the CIA’s infamous fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Beyond the fact that the U.S. invasion of Cuba was an egregious act of aggression — violating international law and Cuba’s sovereignty — its failure was a catastrophic embarrassment for JFK, only weeks into his White House tenure. … Kennedy vented his desire to ‘splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.’ That concept was more than angry rhetoric; the president actually set in motion a secret set of deliberations on breaking up the intelligence, espionage and covert action functions of the CIA and subordinating its operations to the State Department.” (03/27/25)
“Punishing speech and association is the most dangerous business because it is subjective and value-free and there will be no end to it. The remedy for hateful or threatening speech is more speech – speech that challenges the speaker. Why do folks in government want to silence their opponents? They must fear an undermining of their power. The dissenters might make more appealing arguments than they do.” (03/27/25)
“One week after the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, an intelligence report compiled by a regional intelligence center made an admission that’s shocking in its simplicity: Rising health care costs are correlated to threats against executives and civil unrest. The two-page document obtained by the Prospect and compiled by the Connecticut regional intelligence center (one of dozens of fusion centers across the country that communicate intelligence between federal agencies and state law enforcement) is uncharacteristically forthright in its language and assessment that health care costs lead to instability, and that the reaction to suspect Luigi Mangione’s alleged action was largely positive. According to the dossier, ‘Healthcare expenditure in the United States increased from $2.75Trillion (T) in 2004, to $4.09T in 2018, in inflation adjusted dollars. 2019 and 2020, saw expenditures of $4.2T and $4.6T respectfully, which represents a 10.6% increase year over year and was largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.'” (03/27/25)
“The new European commitment to defence and Russia’s unshakeable wish to control Ukraine have revived an awareness that war is something with which comfortable and relatively wealthy states may still have to live.” (03/27/25)
“Donald Trump has a simple word that sums up his foreign policy. The word is ‘cards.’ Trump believes that might makes right. He admires aggressors and dictators. He despises victims like Ukraine, ‘shithole’ countries like Haiti, and peaceful neighbors like Canada. But ‘cards’ captures the larger dynamics of Trump’s worldview. In a card game, you can help or hurt other players by choosing which cards to play. In previous European conflicts, American presidents played our nation’s cards to defeat or contain aggressors. Trump plays America’s cards for the opposite purpose: to exploit the weak.” (03/27/25)
