“Democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost her bid on Tuesday to be the Democratic nominee in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, but it’s not progressives who will be most disappointed by her defeat. It’s conservatives who will feel the pain. They spent millions attacking Hong in ads, calling her ‘too liberal,’ but the messaging seemed clearly designed to generate support for her among Democratic voters, based on the GOP theory that she’d be much easier to beat in the general election than moderate David Crowley. It almost worked, even though Hong was, to put it mildly, not a good candidate. Democrats should feel an unpleasant, crawling sensation at the base of their collective spine when they contemplate how close they came to having her on the ticket — not just because she’s a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but because she has a hard-to-explain history of radical pronouncements.” (08/12/26)
“Not every coffee shop needs to be Starbucks to be successful. Not every place you hang out online needs to be Facebook or Instagram to be successful. Not even if it’s social media shaped. And not just because, as I’ve argued, your internet can actually be small, and be healthy being small. But because it’s actually kind of crazy to think that every digital space must be, or be on its way to being, the One Place Everyone Is.” (08/12/26)
“With Republicans controlling most state legislatures, legislative assaults against the citizen initiative petition process tend to come disproportionally from Republicans. Just last week, Missouri voters smashed a legislative initiative petition ‘reform’ on the primary ballot with greater than 80 percent voting NO. In Democratic controlled states, however, attempts to thwart democracy bear Democrats’ fingerprints.” (08/12/26)
“During an interview with MAGA personality Wayne Allyn Root, Donald Trump appeared to suggest that a national emergency related to voting could be a possibility ahead of the midterm election. As previously mentioned, conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell floated this idea in September 2025 during an interview with former Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA). It seems that the idea has gained some legitimate traction. … Of course, Root never explains what law would actually give Trump the power to impose nationwide voter identification requirements, require documentary proof of citizenship, or restrict mail voting. Simply calling something a ‘national security emergency’ doesn’t answer that question. The administration would still have to identify a statute that authorizes what Trump wants to do.” (08/12/26)
“Flock says its network is now used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and 6,000 communities, providing access to a massive and increasingly interconnected database of vehicle movements. Richard Hanania published a piece on Monday in which he rather boldly claims ‘Flock cameras likely explain the recent crime collapse.’ His theory is essentially a sort of Kalam cosmological argument for Flock. Crime fell rapidly at roughly the same time that Flock and other surveillance technologies proliferated, and Hanania treats that coincidence, combined with a plausible deterrent mechanism, as strong evidence of causation.” (08/12/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“The National Guard was just the beginning. One year after President Trump deployed military troops to the nation’s capital, we find ourselves navigating a posse comitatus presidency in which the visual trappings of martial law are the norm, not the exception. The Founders warned against standing armies on American soil, fearing that the military might someday be used not to defend the people but to control them. They understood something Americans are being encouraged to forget: soldiers and police serve fundamentally different purposes.” [editor’s note: Since the first US police force wasn’t founded until 1838, I doubt the founders thought in those precise terms – TLK] (08/12/26)
“If you count on government providing something, before long you may not have it at all. It’s the fox watching the henhouse. At the very least, government involvement doesn’t stop the inevitable. If something is not sustainable, putting government in charge won’t save the day.” (08/12/26)
“With the cost of living on every voter’s mind, an old idea is getting a new push on Capitol Hill: fixing a flaw in the tax code that makes everything more expensive. Anyone who has ever sold a home, stock, or even a collectible is familiar with it. When you sell an asset that has risen in price, the IRS taxes the gain. But that gain is measured against the price you paid, not your true cost. If you bought a stock, a bond, or a business many years ago, and its price merely kept pace with inflation, you are no richer in purchasing power than the day you bought it — yet the tax code treats the difference as income and taxes it anyway. This is especially noticeable in periods of high inflation, like the last five years. It is a tax on rising prices, dressed up as a tax on profit.” (08/12/26)
“The AI alignment problem asks whether the autonomous agents derived from Large Language Models and other AI technologies can reliably internalize the objectives for which they are optimized. The problem is magnified because human objectives are complex and hard to formalize, it is not possible to monitor the internals of the systems, and previous behavior is not necessarily a reliable predictor of how the AI will behave in novel situations. Worries that AIs might find goals that ‘score well’ but don’t match human intent have become a fashionable topic, driven in part by news stories about AI tools behaving in unexpected and disturbing ways, which can be difficult to monitor and reverse. … Human alignment, by comparison, has never been effectively enforced, although significant effort is spent on trying to determine our fellow humans’ motives.” (08/12/26)
“Taylor Swift is enemy No.1 to cash-grabbing Democrats in Rhode Island. They’ve named their new statewide vacation home property tax after her. But from the East Coast to the West Coast, ‘tax the rich’ is the battle cry of radical-left Democrats. They claim that by attacking the rich, including celebs like Swift, they’re saving democracy. Don’t be fooled. Their new forms of taxation — including wealth taxes, mansion taxes and pied-a-terre taxes — are fueled by jealousy and hatred for our free-market system, working people and everything American. You’re their next target.” [editor’s note: In fairness, McCaughey hates “free market systems” at least as much as Bernie Sanders or AOC. She just prefers different targets – TLK] (08/12/26)
