Trump Has Revealed MAGA’s Anti-Christian Nature
Source: The Bulwark
by Mona Charen
“It’s time for sincere believers to pull the wool from their eyes and see the truth about the president and his followers.” (04/22/26)
Category: Opinion
On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again?
Source: The American Conservative
by Harrison Berger
“When the NSA responded to [Tucker] Carlson’s 2021 allegation that the agency had been monitoring his communications, it said only that he had never been an intelligence ‘target,’ a carefully lawyered denial that conspicuously avoided saying his communications had never been queried under programs like FISA Section 702. The NSA’s response was also unusual since three-letter agencies typically neither confirm nor deny whether any specific individual’s communications have been collected. On how Trump, another documented victim of FISA abuse, and Johnson, who built his political identity around opposition to FBI overreach, both ended up as the leading advocates for a clean renewal of those spying powers, Carlson pointed to institutional capture and coercion.” (04/22/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/on-mass-surveillance-will-the-deep-state-win-again/
The critics are wrong about Tennessee’s Charlie Kirk Act. Here’s why.
Source: Expression
by Michael Hurley
“Imagine you’re a professor who disagrees with your university’s indigenous land acknowledgement, so you write your own as a joke — and then your school investigates you for ‘unacceptable’ and ‘inappropriate’ speech. Or imagine you invite a controversial former Black Panther to speak on campus, so your university forces the event online. These are real stories, and FIRE’s archives are full of plenty more just like them. But thanks to a new measure passed in Tennessee, the university’s actions in cases like these wouldn’t just violate the First Amendment, but state law, too.” (04/21/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/the-critics-are-wrong-about-tennessees
Democrats’ Virginia Gerrymander is GOP’s Sign to Play Hardball
Source: Association of Mature American Citizens
by Shane Harris
“On Tuesday, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that will allow Democrats to draw new maps, handing them control of 10 of 11 U.S. House seats in a state that Kamala Harris won by just five points in 2024. The result should be a shock to the senses for Republicans nationwide that it’s time to get serious about redistricting – starting with a push in Florida next week. What Americans witnessed over the past three months in Virginia was one of the most corrupt, dishonest – and well-funded – campaigns in American history.” [editor’s note: “Playing hardball” with gerrymandering was what got the GOP into this mess in the first placce – TLK] (04/22/26)
https://amac.us/newsline/politics/democrats-virginia-gerrymander-is-gops-sign-to-play-hardball/
The Paris Agreement was a fantasy
Source: UnHerd
by Thomas Fazi
“Remember the Paris Agreement? Signed a decade ago today, it was hailed as a historic milestone in the fight against climate change, with practically every country promising drastic action to keep global warming below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. And, at the time, the stakes couldn’t have felt higher. As Western politicians and activists endlessly warned, unless carbon emissions were urgently and drastically reduced by 2030, climate change would have apocalyptic consequences, potentially extinguishing humanity — if not all life on Earth. … Ten years on, then, one cannot help but ask: did the Paris Agreement, and the broader UN Conference of the Parties (COP) process, actually achieve anything?” (04/21/26)
Hegseth knows REAL warfighters don’t get the flu anyway
Source: USA Today
by Rex Huppke
“It’s a proud day for American toughness! Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has officially done away with the U.S. military’s WOKE flu vaccine mandate, and I applaud that decision from the bed I currently can’t get out of due to a high fever. TRUE warfighters know their lethality is only enhanced by bacterial pneumonia, and soft and so-called proven public health tools like vaccines are for weenies. Simply put, the libs will never understand that a fever is just God warming your body for the battle ahead.” (04/21/26)
It Can’t Happen Here! Or Can It?
Source: The Jolly Libertarian
by Marco den Ouden
“[Douglas] Kelley was brought in to assess the 22 Nazis charged with various war crimes and crimes against humanity to assess their mental health to see if they were fit to stand trial. It’s an engrossing story And even though we know the substance of the story, the horrors of the holocaust and the death sentences accorded eleven of the defendants, the reality of this horrific time in history is brought home with the documentary footage of the liberation of the extermination camps. They were shown at the original trial in 1946 and are shown in the film [Nuremberg]. But the bulk of the movie and the focus of the story is the relationship between Kelley and the prisoners. Kelley, a well-credentialed very knowledgeable psychiatrist, set out to find out what made these Nazis tick.” (04/21/26)
https://jollylibertarian.blogspot.com/2026/04/it-cant-happen-here-or-can-it.html
Keep artificial intelligence out of American classrooms
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jonah Goldberg
“I am not a catastrophist when it comes to artificial intelligence. But, given Norway’s experience with iPads — or our own with smartphones — I worry that the mass introduction of AI, particularly in schools, will be very bad for children. As a curmudgeon and as a writer, I hate nearly all of the cliches about children, even the ones that are accurate. With that caveat, it’s simply true that children are the future. They will be the next generation of parents, voters and citizens. And all of the cliches about how kids learn by doing are true. AI removes the doing. Just as you can’t learn how to ride a bike from reading a book, you can’t get the benefits of reading by asking AI to read a book for you. The same holds for math, science, computer programming and nearly every other aspect of education.” (04/21/26)
Let us hang on to our turbulent priests
Source: spiked
by Bijan Omrani
“Of course, no one wants an overbearing church, like the 12th-century papacy, locked in a bloody struggle with secular authorities. We are not calling for heavies to chase after archbishops, or Keir Starmer, like Henry II, to be whipped by monks through the streets of Canterbury in his underclothes for his manifold offences (the prime minister would surely find such a prospect displeasing). But spats like that between Trump and Leo show that the church is contributing to political debate in a way that other actors are not able to manage. The frequent fury directed towards the church and Christian advocates demonstrates that their messages – even in this apparently post-Christian age – are still able to pique the conscience.” (04/21/26)
A Black Man’s Death at the Hands of Police Is Going Unacknowledged
Source: The American Prospect
by Naomi Bethune
“In 2020, news of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin swept the nation. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which had been formed seven years earlier in response to the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, saw a massive re-emergence. Protests were held across the country, including in conservative and rural areas. Governments were faced with calls to “defund the police,” re-evaluate policing strategies, and hold police officers and departments accountable. That year, the Boston Police Department (BPD) saw $12 million of its funding reallocated to community programs and police reforms. This of course was a drop in the bucket of the department’s $404 million (now over $430 million) in overall funding at the time. In addition, Boston officials created the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, which was supposed to receive and investigate reports of police misconduct. But this project has seen little success.” (04/22/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/04/22/boston-police-killing-black-man-stephenson-king/