“Tench Coxe may be the most influential founding father that people have never heard of. For most people, discussions about the meaning of the Constitution begin and end with the Federalist Papers. These essays enjoy immense popularity today mostly due to the fame of their authors – Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. But in their day, they didn’t have widespread influence on the ratification itself. On the other hand, Coxe’s numerous essays did.” (11/18/24)
Source: Fox News
by Andrew Cherkasky & Katie Cherkasky
“Powerful forces are out to derail Pete Hegseth’s bid to become secretary of defense and carry out President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to reform the Pentagon. The Army veteran and former Fox News host has been hammered by a stream of inflammatory accusations in recent days, from past allegations of sexual assault to absurd and baseless claims that his faith-based tattoos reveal him as a white supremacist. Hegseth, of course, has never faced criminal charges, has never been connected to any white supremacy groups or activities and has never deviated from his loyalty to country — so these preposterous attacks merely reveal the desperation of those seeking to subvert his confirmation. Why? Because, after a groundless 10-year war in Iraq and a 20-year stalemate in Afghanistan, the US military is embroiled in a culture war — another war it seems to be losing.” (11/18/24)
“‘For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction,’ said President Vladimir Putin on the stage of his yearly economic Forum in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 2017. I sat among the vast, mostly Russian, audience, and dwelled on Newton’s third law. During four and a half years at the British Embassy in Moscow, I’d learned one important lesson: Russia always responds in kind, both to aggression and to engagement. President-elect Trump should think how he might trade with Putin on this basis. Reciprocity is the most predictable tenet of Russian statecraft and Russia’s policy towards Ukraine offers the perfect illustration.” (11/18/24)
“It is unclear exactly what’s behind President-elect Trump’s announcement that he will nominate Matt Gaetz to be the 87th attorney general of the United States. The simplest explanation is that Trump actually intends to install in the nation’s top law enforcement position somebody who will blindly protect him and his allies from legal jeopardy and use the instruments of the U.S. government to exact retribution on his political enemies. Gaetz certainly fills that bill. It is possible, however, to see more complex strategies at play. Maybe Trump’s announcement that he will nominate Gaetz isn’t a serious attempt to install him as attorney general, but a political favor to Gaetz, giving him cover and a pretext to resign from Congress just days before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to vote on releasing a report on allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.” (11/18/24)
“The incoming president of the richest country on Earth believes climate change — the deepest challenge that our species has faced — is a hoax. This obviously has endless policy implications, which we’ll spend the next four years working through — but the simple fact is what’s so amazing. Every single one of the structures we’ve built over the centuries to help us understand the world, from the National Academy of Science to the land-grant universities with their huge labs, to NASA with its satellites keeping an eye on planet Earth, have told us the same thing: Fairly simple physics means that burning fossil fuel is warming the Earth, a warming now painfully confirmed in rainfall totals, melting ice, rising sea level, and deadly heatwaves.” (11/18/24)
“I used to spend a lot of time complaining that liberal media bias hurt Republican politicians and conservative causes. I no longer make that argument. Oh, I still agree with conservatives that the mainstream media is biased toward the left. … But along the way, something ironic happened: I started to believe that media bias had stopped helping Democrats. Instead, it started to hurt them, along with the institutions themselves.” (11/18/24)
“For nearly a century, zoning laws have enjoyed the Supreme Court’s imprimatur as a lawful exercise of the police power — a status not likely to change any time soon. Why, then, would a successful and respected property rights litigator write a philippic against zoning, especially after acknowledging that the topic is ‘the proverbial third rail of suburban politics’ and that ‘zoning is hugely popular’ in suburban enclaves?” (11/18/24)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Whenever the white, right-wing, and Evangelical demographic talks about its ‘freedoms,’ you can get a good sense of what they mean by ‘freedoms’ by translating it into ‘white folkways.’ Whatever substantive content ‘freedom’ has for them is wrapped up in a haze of 90s CMT video imagery about little white frame churches, porch swings, pickups, checkered picnic table cloths, gingham, flags, guns, and Murca HOO-raw! And the ‘threats’ to these ‘freedoms’ — i.e. white folkways — all boil down in one way or another to anything that undermines their status as the American cultural default by allowing people who are unlike them to exist in public …” (11/18/24)
“It’s high time to shatter the myth of Nancy Pelosi as a master strategist. Nobody deserves more blame than the ridiculously self-titled ‘speaker emerita’ for the Democrats’ $1 billion electoral collapse. Under her ruthless leadership, her party lost the White House, the House, the Senate and the popular vote. You can’t say that enough. Voters rejected the Dems from coast to coast, even in Pelosi’s deepest-blue home city of San Francisco, which saw a 7-point swing to Donald Trump. She’s the only speaker in history to have lost control of the House twice. She’s finished. The empress emeritus has no clothes (perish the thought). Yet she still has the nerve to reward herself with another term, filing the papers last week to run for re-election in 2026, at the tender age of 86!” (11/17/24)
