“In the 1630s, King Charles I tried to tax English people without the consent of their legislature. He lost his head. In the 2020s, Donald Trump tried to tax Americans without the consent of Congress. He just lost his case. A tariff is a tax. The Trump tariffs imposed in and after April 2025 were projected to raise as much as $2.3 trillion over 10 years. The Constitution assigns authority over taxes, including tariffs, to Congress. It does so for reasons that date back to English constitutional history: An executive who can tax without permission from elected representatives is on his way to becoming a tyrant.” (02/20/26)
“The Japanese rampage across Southeast Asia from 1941–42 was a remarkable military feat by any metric, comparable to the early German blitzkrieg campaigns across Western Europe. In four months from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December, the Japanese had occupied Malaya, Singapore, Borneo, and the Dutch East Indies. The Western colonial powers had been decisively defeated, the humiliation of surrender made all the worse by the ignoble way many of the colonists had fled the advancing Japanese, leaving their Asian subjects to face the invaders’ wrath.” (02/21/26)
“In last week’s column, I argued that while neither major party consistently fights to shrink government and protect civil liberties, the Republican Party is closer than the Democratic Party to practicing such ideals. Meanwhile the actual Libertarian Party, despite existing for over a half-century, has failed to break into the mainstream, rarely making a dent in federal and state elections. These two realities raise a question: should libertarians stop propping up an uninfluential third party and try instead to overtake the GOP?” (02/20/26)
“If Eileen Gu’s mother came to America for a better life, she got it. Yan Gu, the daughter of two Chinese government officials, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, just a few decades after the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which overhauled immigration policies and prompted a massive increase in arrivals from Asia and Latin America. Educated at Auburn University, Rockefeller University, and eventually Stanford Graduate School of Business, she dabbled as a ski instructor and, apparently, in venture capital. In 2003, she gave birth to a daughter in San Francisco, raising her in an affluent Bay Area neighborhood. What’s known of Eileen Gu’s childhood reads like a caricature of coastal elitism …. Her story would be elevated as a saccharine picture of the neoliberal American dream, if Gu hadn’t decided to ski for China.” (02/20/26)
“As a constitutional matter, the issue before the Supreme Court in the case of President Trump’s tariffs was a relatively easy one. If the Constitution was designed to prevent anything, it was economic rule by one-man decree. Declaring a national emergency due to foreign disputes and making the American people pay stiff import taxes as a consequence, without clear legislative authority — as Trump did last year — was never part of the Founders’ plan. But actually acting on this truth was not so simple, especially for a conservative court majority that faced overt pressure from a president who had appointed three of them.” (02/21/26)
“Since the Jan. 30 release of 3.5 million pages of Department of Justice investigation files, many concerned citizens around the globe have been trying, in earnest, to wade through the muck. … boldface names have grabbed the spotlight — Epstein helped director Woody Allen’s daughter get into college, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent time with his family (and nanny) on Epstein’s island, supermodel Naomi Campbell asked to fly on Epstein’s plane. But, despite the valiant efforts of so many outspoken survivors, the heart of this vile conspiracy has been oddly pushed into the background: the brutal reality of what it felt like to be a girl caught in Epstein’s web.” (02/20/26)
“The U.S. under both parties has been insisting for two decades that it must abandon its heavy military involvement in the Middle East and instead “pivot to Asia” in light of a rapidly rising China. Yet in the midst of those vows, Trump has now assembled the largest military presence in the Middle East since 2003, when the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq with overwhelming military force. One of the most striking and alarming aspects of all of this is that Trump — outside of a few off-the-cuff banalities — has barely attempted to offer a case to the American public as to why such a major new war is necessary.” (02/20/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Roger D Harris & John Perry
“The kidnapping of a sitting head of state marks a grave escalation in US-Venezuela relations. By seizing Venezuela’s constitutional president, Washington signaled both its disregard for international law and its confidence that it would face little immediate consequence. The response within the US political establishment to the attack on Venezuela has been striking. Without the slightest cognitive dissonance over President Nicolás Maduro’s violent abduction, Democrats call for ‘restoring democracy’ — but not for returning Venezuela’s lawful [sic] president. So why didn’t the imperialists simply assassinate him? From their perspective, it would have been cleaner and more cost-efficient. It would have been the DOGE thing to do …” (02/22/26)
“A viral housing statistic has captured headlines and fueled frustration. But the emotionally satisfying data rests on shaky methodology, identifying the wrong problem.” (02/20/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Sarah McLaughlin
“We’ve said it before. We’ll say it again. Ending online anonymity is not some magical cure to “fix” whatever problems you believe plague the internet and its culture. And for whatever ills may exist on social media, this kind of cure would be worse than the disease. But German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at an event this week that online anonymity is a problem — and he wants it to end. ‘I want to see real names on the internet. I want to know who is speaking,’ Merz said on Wednesday in Trier, Germany. ‘In politics, we engage in debates in our society using our real names and without visors. I expect the same from everyone else who critically examines our country and our society.’ … It’s one thing to praise the value and benefits of speaking out under your true identity, but German citizens have reason to be troubled by Merz’s comments.” (02/20/26)
