“‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.’ Thomas Jefferson nailed it. And here’s the deal – mass, widespread ignorance about our Constitution is no accident. It’s by design. Why? Because educated people are harder to dominate and control. They ask inconvenient questions. They know the difference between a servant and a master. And when government violates the rules given to it? An educated and free people slap it right back to where it belongs. Fast. Let’s examine five constitutional truths that government-run schools almost never teach – because if they did, we wouldn’t be living under the largest government in history.” (06/25/25)
“I could easily make reported crime in this country skyrocket tomorrow with one simple change: Imagine Congress passed a law, roughly equivalent to how things like school lunches are funded, that federal law enforcement dollars would flow to cities in proportion to the number of crimes they experience. Suddenly, at the next reporting period, it would appear that crime has skyrocketed — without any real change on the ground — as cities scramble to harvest as much money as possible to report as much crime as possible. The cities that choose not to submit data into the various FBI data bases today would suddenly be sending in full disclosures. With time, cities might even get creative by tweaking the definition of crime …. An observer in 2045 without much detailed knowledge of this dataset would write that there was an explosion in crime in 2025.” (06/25/25)
“One of Capitolism’s frequent themes/laments is how President Donald Trump’s policies, especially but not only tariffs, have caused many Republicans to drift from their free market roots toward a more populist, interventionist (borderline Peronist) view of federal economic policy. Yet Trump’s rapid, unilateral imposition of new taxes on a wide range of imported goods also appears to have caused another metamorphosis: Many Democrats are suddenly sounding like libertarians.” (06/25/25)
“On monetary policy and interest rates, the administration has displayed both a bizarre propensity to browbeat its own government officials and a complete lack of economic understanding.” (06/26/25)
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the dominant companies in U.S. housing finance, which is the biggest credit market after government debt. They are huge, with combined assets totaling $7.8 trillion. Fannie and Freddie used to be government-sponsored enterprises. This privileged status led both of them to great financial success, combined with formidable political clout. Fannie, in particular, was a notable Washington bully. But having taken on excessive credit risk in the great housing bubble, they both failed in 2008, were put into and remain in government conservatorship, meaning total government control, and were bailed out by $190 billion in stock purchases by the U.S. Treasury, which means the government became and remains their dominant equity investor. So, Fannie and Freddie are no longer government-sponsored enterprises and have not been since 2008. Now, they are instead government-owned and government-controlled entities. ” (06/25/25)
“Iranian President Mahmoud ‘the-Holocaust-is-a-myth’ Ahmadinejad does not deny his intentions. He stated that Israel should be ‘wiped off the map.’ And ‘G-d willing, with the force of G-d behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.’ The part about wiping Israel off the map received widespread attention. But our mainstream news media seemed less interested in the other part of Ahmadinejad’s speech, in which he looked forward to ‘a world without the United States.’ Bellicose statements from Iran are certainly nothing new.” [editor’s note: But those statements are old. Ahmadinejad left office 12 years ago – TLK] (06/26/25)
“In the annals of national suicide, the present dismantling of the American state will surely rank high. It may not reach the apogee attained by Russia in its final Tsarist days or by Louis XVI in the run-up to the French Revolution, but Great Britain’s Brexit hardly smolders compared to the anti-democratic dumpster fire of the Trump regime. Countless governmental, scientific, educational, medical, and cultural institutions have been targeted for demolition. The problem for the rest of the world is that the behavior of Trumpian America is more than suicidal — it’s murderous. The deaths are mounting. By one accounting, the disruption of overseas food and drug shipments from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), including life-saving HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria treatments, has already caused nearly 350,000 deaths (and they continue at an estimated rate of 103 per hour).” (06/26/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“There was never a serious expectation that Trump would effectively dismantle the warfare state by the time he left office. After all, his rhetoric in the lead-up to the election was often more hawkish against Iran and China than the political establishment. However, Trump’s occasional moment of sanity about foreign policy, his unusually genuine concern about causing needless deaths or risking nuclear war, and the utter panic his rise seemed to garner from establishment hawks had generated some hope that Trump represented some degree of change. But then Trump succumbed to neoconservative pressure and gave in when Israel ignored his opposition to attacking Iran, publicly bragged that negotiations had been a ruse, ordered a direct military strike deep in Iran, and put out a post in support of regime change.” (06/25/25)
“The aggressive protectionism of Trump 2.0 will make the country poorer, more corrupt, and globally isolated, warns trade policy expert Scott Lincicome.” (06/25/25)
“The Supreme Court’s ruling striking down laws banning same-sex marriage was a great victory for liberty and equality. But it should have been based on better legal reasoning.” (06/26/25)
