“The government may be getting completely out of the business of protecting human well-being (by shredding the social safety net, decimating public education, slashing health care access and research, transferring more wealth to the ultra-rich, and supercharging its apparatuses of police surveillance and repression), but let’s face it, the state was only tangentially interested in human well-being before this year. The primary functions of this government have long been to facilitate the ability of capitalist firms to accumulate profits and to protect the unequal property relations of the class of people who set it up (i.e. not you).” (09/05/25)
“In 1986, a moral philosophy professor and student of language at Princeton University named Harry Frankfurt published an erudite and witty article in the literary quarterly Raritan, circulation 1,100. Its title was ‘On Bullshit’. Frankfurt’s point was that bullshitting was fundamentally different from lying. Liars were aware of the truth that they were trying to contradict. Bullshitters simply made stuff up, and tended to believe their own bullshit. ‘It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth,’ Frankfurt wrote. ‘Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.’ About 20 years later, during the reign of George W. Bush, when the bullshit about Iraq was flying thick and fast, an editor at Princeton University Press named Ian Malcolm rediscovered Frankfurt’s essay, and repackaged it as a book.” (09/05/25)
“Medicaid wasn’t the only welfare program that received significant reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB). The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, will similarly be seeing major changes very soon. For Missouri, perhaps the biggest change will be the cost of SNAP going up. Unlike Medicaid, the federal government has historically paid for 100% of the SNAP benefit, with states only on the hook for 50% of its administrative costs. The OBBB increases the share of administrative costs borne by states to 75%, and has the potential to start charging states for some program benefit costs as well.” (09/05/25)
“When someone credibly confesses to murder, announces an intent to commit further murders, and clearly possesses the means to do so, it seems to me that whatever law applies should be brought to bear. … the US Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents enjoy immunity for all ‘official acts,’ even illegal ones like, say, ordering 11 murders. So Trump himself is as unlikely to be held accountable for this atrocity as for other crimes he’s ordered, such as the murder of eight-year-old American girl Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki in 2017. But what about Hegseth, Rubio, and the various military officers who must have been involved in planning and directing the operation?” (09/04/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“When it comes to civil liberties … conservatives in general have always been total disasters. Historically, conservatives have always felt that the constitutional protections in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments are nothing more than constitutional ‘technicalities’ designed to let guilty people go free. As far as conservatives are concerned, the nation would have been much better off in terms of ‘safety’ and ‘security’ if those amendments had never been enacted. … Conservatives, as everyone knows, have always been the premier supporters of the war on drugs. … Libertarians, on the other hand, are fiercely opposed to the war on drugs.” (09/04/25)
“Civil forfeiture laws allow officers of the law to commit theft. Sometimes they have to return the money they stole. But they don’t get punished. Under civil forfeiture, authorities can grab cash or other possessions without proving criminal wrongdoing and without making an arrest. Since 2000, though, a federal law has made the federal government liable for reasonable attorney fees when a victim ‘substantially prevails’ in court. This law enabled Brian Moore, a rap artist, to eventually obtain compensation for thousands in legal costs after he sued to recover the $8,500 taken from him by federal drug agents. … It was like Mount Everest. The officers took Moore’s stuff because it was there.” (09/04/25)
“No one knows what Russian President Vladimir Putin was hoping to achieve when he embarked on a nine-hour flight from Moscow to Alaska to meet U.S. President Donald Trump last month. But it’s a safe bet that he was looking to avoid the additional sanctions on the Russian economy that Trump had vaguely threatened a number of times — and perhaps get relief from existing sanctions or even some lucrative U.S. investment deals. Putin has every reason to seek a lifeline for the Russian economy. In recent weeks, a flurry of signs has shown Russia’s war-drained, sanctions-constrained economy to be at an inflection point. For the first time since the start of the war, nonmilitary economic activity has been contracting, bankers are making plans to weather a financial crisis, and energy firms are worrying about losing their largest customer for seaborne oil exports.” (09/04/25)
“The data are becoming impossible to ignore: American manufacturers desperately need relief from the very same tariffs that the Trump administration incoherently believes are helping American manufacturers. That conclusion is evident from both results of a new survey of manufacturing companies’ CEOs and new economic data showing that manufacturing activity has declined for six consecutive months — the sort of slide over two economic quarters that typically meets the definition of a sector-wide recession. In short, both words and actions point to something being very wrong with American manufacturing since February, which just so happens to be when Trump announced the first of what have become many rounds of new tariffs on imported goods and raw materials.” (09/04/25)
“Until last year, a country at the heart of the Middle East was known for enduring one of world’s largest population displacements. About half of Syria’s 23 million were forced to flee their homes during a 14-year civil war. Since the ouster of a dictator nine months ago, however, more than 2 million citizens have returned. Most go back to pick up old lives and recreate a democratic country. ‘When we were expelled, it felt as if our souls had been torn from our bodies,’ Mamdouh al-Sattouf, a former school principal, told Al Jazeera. ‘Now that we have returned, it feels as if we have regained our souls.’ The rising pace in the number of Syrian returnees is due in part to a new government’s efforts to hold elections this month, revive the economy with foreign help, and restore Syria’s former social harmony between diverse ethnic and religious groups.” (09/03/25)
“President Vladimir Putin of Russia was calm, confident, composed, and above all else, consistent when he spelled out Russia’s unchanging terms to end the Ukraine war when he spoke to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin on September 1st. Once again he made clear that Moscow rejected every ‘statesmanlike compromise’ that President Donald Trump and his spin doctors came up with in Washington, as well as those dreamt up by the leaders of NATO and the European Union who are eager to appease their real Master, Volodymyr Zelensky. … Most Western major media outlets, lying desperately as usual, described Putin’s speech and appearance at the SCO summit as an attempt to break the diplomatic isolation they imagine he has been in since the war started in February 2022. But, of course, Putin and Russia have never been isolated …” (09/04/25)
