“Brace for another government shutdown early in the new year …. The short-term funding bill that Democrats finally allowed to pass last month, ending the record-long shutdown, only runs through Jan. 30. The federal Fiscal Year 2026 started Oct. 1 this year, yet the House and Senate have so far passed only three of the 12 appropriations bills to fund various parts of the government. And they’re not even close on the other nine; they’d need a Christmas miracle to get it done in time. And it’ll be brutally hard to pass yet another stopgap bill, or alternately another ‘omnibus’ to cover everything through next Oct. 1: Too many Republicans are sick of these contraptions, while too few Democrats are willing to give the GOP any help at all.” [editor’s note: The Democrats didn’t have to “allow” the funding bill to pass; the Republicans could have passed it without their help at any time – TLK] (12/20/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Corynne McSherry & Kit Walsh
“Since earliest days of computer games, people have tinkered with the software to customize their own experiences or share their vision with others. From the dad who changed the game’s male protagonist to a girl so his daughter could see herself in it, to the developers who got their start in modding, games have been a medium where you don’t just consume a product, you participate and interact with culture. For decades, that participatory experience was a key part of one of the longest-running video games still in operation: Everquest. Players had the official client, acquired lawfully from EverQuest’s developers, and modders figured out how to enable those clients to communicate with their own servers and then modify their play experience – creating new communities along the way. Everquest’s copyright owners implicitly blessed all this. But the current owners, a private equity firm called Daybreak, want to end that independent creativity.” (12/19/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“You are allowed to subvert and undermine Israel’s interests, because Israel is trying to subvert and undermine your rights. You are allowed to interfere in Israel’s affairs, because Israel is interfering in your country’s affairs. As Israel tries to exert more and more influence over western society and pushes western governments to crush our freedom of speech and assembly, we should be doing everything we can to make sure that western society turns against Israel, and that western governments alienate this freakish apartheid state on the world stage. And we should feel perfectly entitled in doing so, because Israel certainly feels comfortable coming after us and our rights. If Israel is going after us, then we get to go after Israel. It’s just basic self-defense at this point.” (12/21/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Patrick Barron
“There is a deadly cancer that is eating away at Western society — welfare. It is supported by a web of lies that are so pervasive that no one dare question them. Two of the most ingrained are: * There is no substitute for helping the unfortunate than government-provided welfare on demand; *The monetary stimulus from welfare spending adds to aggregate demand and helps to stimulate the economy.” (12/19/25)
“I’m pretty sure I won’t be around long enough to see anarcho-capitalism — or what I call market-ordered anarchism — prevail in the United States. I’m just as sure that I won’t see government strictly limited to protecting individual rights and never violating them (if that’s coherent). So that’s a wash. But it doesn’t follow that discussing individualist, pro-property, free-market alternatives to the current, virtually out-of-control political system in America is time wasted. Far from it! If we want to progress toward liberty, we’d better get a move on.” (12/19/25)
“One interesting source of efficiency is removing unnecessary steps in the production process. For example, in an assembly line, if you raise the conveyor belt, the workers will not have to bend and lift objects. Modern writers often use scare quotes to describe ‘scientific management’ or ‘Taylorism,’ creating the impression that time-and-motion studies were instruments of oppression aimed at individual workers. But from Potter I learned that time-and-motion studies were used to discover ways to improve manufacturing processes. Raising the height of the conveyor belt is an example of scientific management that is a win-win for workers and for the manufacturer.” (12/19/25)
“Trump did not oppose the Iraq War at the time, but he did present himself as a critic after it went south. His most consistent reason for his opposition was that America had failed to seize Iraq’s oil, despite the fact that doing so would have been a war crime. … Trump has long benefited from his contrast with the second Bush administration’s failed experiments with nation building. He has dismissed his Republican critics as neoconservatives, and some left-wing populists credit him for moving his party away from Bush-style interventionism. Yet Trump’s saber-rattling against Venezuela confirms that his argument with neoconservatism was never about the hubris of exporting democracy or a faith in pacifistic leadership. Trump’s main complaint about Bush was that he squandered an opportunity to enrich the U.S. by caring too much about international law and the dignity of the Iraqi people.” (12/19/25)
“President Trump is rightfully angry that some of his top choices for U.S. attorneys in Democrat-controlled states are being blocked by Democrats and their leftist allies in the judicial branch. But the recent attacks from some supporters of the president against Sen. Chuck Grassley, Trump’s most effective ally in the Senate, are misplaced. To start, remember who Grassley is. He’s a dignified statesman but also a shrewd legislator, fearless investigator and Senate workhorse. He doesn’t chase the limelight but quietly puts one win after the other on the scoreboard for Trump and his MAGA agenda. This isn’t bluster. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, and two were carried squarely on the shoulders of Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.” (12/19/25)
“Funerals were held Saturday in northern Gaza for six people, including children, massacred the previous day by Israeli tank fire during a wedding celebration at a school sheltering displaced people, as the number of Palestinians killed during the tenuous 10-week ceasefire rose to over 400. On Friday, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank blasted the second floor of the Gaza Martyrs School, which was housing Palestinians displaced by the two-year war on Gaza in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. Al Jazeera and other news outlets reported that the attack occurred while people were celebrating a wedding. Al-Shifa Hospital director Mohammed Abou Salmiya said those slain included a 4-month-old infant, a 14-year-old girl, and two women. At least five others were injured in the attack.” (12/20/25)
SourceS: Responsible Statecraft
by Stavroula Pabst
“By leveraging the dual-use nature of many of their products, where defense technologies can be integrated into the commercial sector and vice versa, Pentagon contractors like Palantir, Skydio, and General Atomics have gained ground at home for surveillance technologies — especially drones — proliferating war-tested military tech within the domestic sphere.” (12/19/25)
