“Late last week, Congress passed and President Trump signed the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill marks the first time the US military budget officially passed the one trillion dollar mark. Of course, when you add in other military-related spending such as interest on the debt, veterans’ affairs, and military components of other government agencies, the true number is at least one and a half times that amount. To paraphrase the famous 1953 President Eisenhower speech, ‘The Chance for Peace,’ each of these dollars spent on military offense and the maintenance of the US global empire rather than on defense of our own nation is taken from the mouths of the hungry and off the backs of hardworking American families.” (12/22/25)
“There is a contradiction at the heart of the revised justice system that is about to come into being. If trial by jury remains our method of trying the most serious crimes, this implies that it is the best way of litigating criminal cases. If so, then we are accepting that ‘non-serious’ cases are going to be tried using an inferior form of litigation. That will create a two-tier legal system. The irony is that, over the past year, public discourse has been obsessed with what some are calling a crisis of national identity. Does ‘Englishness’ exist? If so, is it good? What are its ethnic boundaries? Yet, jury trial, something that is very important to English history, identity, and our understanding of ourselves — something that has been an ancient, even ancestral, English right, is facing a wrecking ball.” (12/23/25)
“Federal subsidies drive food production, consumption, and — unintentionally — chronic disease. Now we’re being asked to subsidize weight loss drugs to fight what farm policy broke.” (12/23/25)
“While Trump muscles the media and renames the Kennedy Center, history will get the last laugh. Just ask the good people of Appleton, Wisconsin.” (12/23/25)
“When President Donald Trump celebrated Kazakhstan’s decision to join the Abraham Accords, he spoke of peace and partnership in the familiar language of statesmen. The announcement sounded like a diplomatic victory in a region marked by instability. In reality, it looked more like one more step in a slow and deliberate effort to turn Central Asia into a forward operating base against Russia, China, and Iran. Kazakhstan sits at the heart of that emerging contest. American strategists began to speak of a unified space that they call ‘Greater Central Asia’ years before Trump returned to the White House.” (12/23/25)
“For writers, the future has long been a tricky terrain. While the past can prove unsettling and the present uncomfortable, the future seems to free the mind from reality’s restraints and let the imagination soar. Yet it has also proven full of political pitfalls. Sometimes writers can tweak a trend of their moment to produce a darkly dystopian future, as with George Orwell’s omniscient tyranny in 1984, Margaret Atwood’s institutionalized misogyny in The Handmaid’s Tale, or Ray Bradbury’s book-burning autocracy in Fahrenheit 451. And ever since H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds (about technologically advanced Martians invading this planet) was published in 1898, space has been a particularly fertile frontier for the literary imagination. It has given us Isaac Asimov’s seven-part galactic Foundation fable, Frank Herbert’s ecological drama Dune, and Philip K. Dick’s post-nuclear wasteland in Blade Runner, opening us to possible techno-futures beyond our mud-bound presence on this small planet.” (12/23/25)
“The Trump administration’s approach to the military balance in the Middle East is not determined solely by politics, but also by the requirement in US law to maintain Israel’s ‘qualitative military edge’ (QME). The policy was originally conceived almost 45 years ago as a way to ensure Middle East stability by guaranteeing Israel’s military superiority over regional rivals. But the QME requirement has created perverse incentives that have the potential to sustain destabilizing military action by Israel, to fuel arms races, and ultimately to undermine US strategic interests in the Middle East.” (12/23/25)
“Kentucky appears to be breaking its own education law. The Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 is meant to guarantee a stable, trustworthy assessment system for parents and lawmakers. Yet the state is now moving to dismantle the only reliable measure of high‑school performance it has ever had: the ACT. The alternative the education establishment has chosen does not meet Kentucky’s legal requirements. For nearly two decades, every Kentucky junior has taken the ACT. It is the sole long‑term trend line the state possesses, the one measure that has remained consistent through four different state‑assessment regimes. It has revealed something uncomfortable but important: since 2016‑17, Kentucky’s ACT scores in reading, math and science have declined.” (12/23/25)
“Sometimes I hear a soon-to-become-former patient of mine – occasionally an already-former patient of mine – tell me how they hate it, but they can’t come to see me any more since I don’t take their insurance. No, that’s incorrect. I assure you, you can come see me. But, because your insurance is a big pain in the neck for a single-doctor office like mine, I will not do the paperwork and take the discounts that they require to get any pay for my work. In fact, I will be happy to see you in my office. But, you will need to tell us how you will be paying for the visit.” (12/23/25)
