“Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman has lost his re-election bid in New York. In the olden days (20 years ago), such an outcome was inconceivable. In the modern Democrat Party, however, the rush to socialism knows no loyalty. No matter what yesterday’s socialist or big government proponent did for the cause, that is not good enough for the current socialists, let alone tomorrow’s. In history, the run-up to class warfare/high tax/redistributionist policies we associate with socialism becomes a spiraling rush. Examples include the end of the Roman Republic and the end of the ancient Greek Athenian democracy. The same is true within the Democrat Party today. James Carville recently said the Democrat Party is ‘not a left-wing party.’ Contrary to his spin, however, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have the momentum within the Democrat Party.” (06/27/26)
Source: Washington Monthly
by Orville Vernon Burton & Armand Derfner
“The president’s challenge to birthright citizenship is more than unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court will probably hold—it’s crazy. Why? Because it would affect not just children born in the future—as it claims—but would threaten the citizenship of every living, native-born American, whether aged 25, 50, or 75. It would also mean that a U.S. birth certificate would be inadequate to prove American citizenship, thereby becoming almost useless. How can this be? It is all about two words: ‘prospective’ and ‘retrospective.’ The executive order may be ‘prospective,’ but the Constitution of the United States is not.” (06/26/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They’re designing park benches / so that homeless people can’t sleep on them / and placing metal spikes beneath overpasses / so they can’t be used as shelter. / Jerry Seinfeld says Palestine doesn’t exist / and that sometimes socks go missing in the dryer, / wocka wocka ha ha ha / it’s funny because it’s a witty observation / about life’s everyday little goofy goofs. / Fast food wrappers blow in the wind / like the leaves used to do. / Duct-taped gargoyles with garbage bag wings / peer down at the din of civilization / as we march over the sidewalk sleepers / to our Jobs, / stepping over dead bodies / while staring at our phones / and counting the minutes / til we can go home to our sofas / and watch wocka wocka …” (06/27/26)
“So much about the technology has been draped in doomsday scenarios and Terminator movies. It’s hard sometimes to separate the impossible from the improbable. Even more difficult if you can’t tell if the technology is meant for the good of all or just aiming to be good for someone’s bottom line. Maybe, unlike in the ‘marihuana’ prohibition era, the scary warnings are valid. But now just as then, we need to separate fact from myth before setting policy.” (06/26/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Nasiyah Isra-Ul
“People often ask me how I got so involved in writing and public speaking. I’ve been a passionate writer for most of my life, starting to journal, write short stories, and willingly craft essays in my homeschool program outside of what was required in the curriculum by age 11. By the time I was a teenager, I was writing curriculum, developing language arts training for students, and starting a blog. I was also eventually writing for college, as one of the youngest in my classes, and my professors always said they loved reading my papers first because they were ‘always so engaging and well-written.’ Now, in my early twenties, I’ve written graduate-level papers, gotten published in a variety of news outlets, blog frequently, authored multiple books, and often write for the Lab. This didn’t happen overnight. It took years of encouragement, learning, and lots of peer mentorship to get to this point.” (06/26/26)
“Like opponents of various other AI restrictions, [Alex] Stamos worries about handing an advantage to China — where, he noted, an impressive new model called GLM-5.2 had been unveiled that very week. ‘It is a great, great week for the Chinese AI industry, a fantastic week,’ he said, ‘and a huge own goal for the United States in the race to dominate the 21st century via domination of AI.’ I’m not sure what exactly it would mean for America to ‘dominate the 21st century’ — and I’m far from sure that living in a century without such domination would be as unpleasant as Stamos seems to think. But I do feel sure that the ‘race with China’ theme so often deployed in discussions of AI regulation has some downsides, and that this particular deployment is a good example.” (06/26/26)
“Last week, Democrats came to Chicago to erect a cenotaph to their past. In the words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, they did not come to praise Obama as much as to bury him. They did so because they had already buried the party that nominated him twice. In Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection victory, he received the votes of 17 percent of conservatives. Just twelve years later, in 2024, Kamala Harris received nine percent of conservative voters. And of that nine percent, a good many were undoubtedly not voting for Harris but were ‘never Trumpers’ voting against Donald Trump. The point is: Obama once had a significant appeal to conservatives. That no longer holds for Democrats. The reason is that Democrats are not what they once were, or at least the moderates they were able to successfully pose as being..” (06/27/26)
“The first space is home. It is where our domestic identity lives. Family, rest, intimacy, and routine. The second space is work. It is where we contribute, produce, and create value. The third space exists in between. It is the neutral, shared place where people gather informally, without obligation or performance. Historically, these were cafés, churches, town squares, barber shops, libraries, local diners, pubs, and markets. Places where you could show up, be recognized, and belong without needing to achieve or prove anything.” (06/26/26)
“Historical illiteracy has become a real problem in our time. The downsides of this have become rather glaring lately, as for instance in Tucker Carlson’s 2024 interview with Daryl Cooper, whom Carlson called ‘the most honest popular historian in the United States.’ Cooper claimed that Americans’ understanding of WWII was deeply flawed and that the true villain was Winston Churchill. The fact that some young Americans found this message sympathetic is very troubling and speaks volumes about our failure to educate the young about history. I regularly tell my students that reading history is their best defense against disinformation.” (06/26/26)
