“President Donald Trump is trying to force states to severely curtail mail voting for the fall election by requiring the US Postal Service to refuse to deliver mail ballots unless states meet various onerous requirements. This plan is an affront to both federalism and the separation of powers. The Constitution grants state governments default authority over election administration, subject to override by Congress, when it comes to procedural rules for federal elections. Trump is seeking to usurp these powers.” (09/08/26)
“Log Cabin Republicans, the GOP’s natural home for gay conservatives, recently filed for divorce from the transgender movement. High time and Hallelujah! As LCR’s president, Ross Hemminger, explained August 20 in Townhall: ‘In 2015, the Log Cabin Republicans Board of Directors voted to add the ‘T’ under the umbrella of our mission — out of a belief that all adults should be allowed to pursue their own happiness, free of government interference, as long as it did not impede on the inalienable rights of others.’ Hemminger’s thoughts parallel America’s innate libertarianism. When, for instance, fully grown decathlete Bruce Jenner became Caitlin, it was not everyone’s Olympic Gold Medal moment. However, it also was nobody’s javelin to discard but Jenner’s. Since then, Hemminger continued, ‘The transgender movement has ceased focusing on adults at all; nearly all of their efforts and those of their aligned special interest groups focus on minors.'” (09/09/26)
“While Republicans express ‘offense’ at plans for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to attend September 11 remembrances this week due to his Muslim faith, US President Donald Trump provoked outrage on Tuesday when he told what seems to be a fabricated story about his heroism following the terrorist attack. … Trump has claimed on multiple occasions to have been present in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and has told a version of the same story before, including on the 2016 campaign trail. But many aspects of the tale are in doubt or contradicted by both the public record and others known to be involved in the recovery.” (09/09/26)
“The ‘co-location’ of power plants and large energy users on the same site is gaining traction as a way to provide electricity to data centers without raising household bills. It seems like a quick fix but is really a symptom of a grid that has struggled to anticipate and meet rising demand. While co-location may provide near-term relief for select industries willing to pay for it, it won’t scale to keep power reliable and affordable for everyone. To do that, we need interregional, high-voltage transmission to arbitrage power over long distances to serve load wherever it is.” [editor’s note: No, we need decentralized and localized generation. “The grid” is obsolete technology – TLK] 09/08/26)
“Kansas City just spent over $100 million per mile for its Main Street streetcar extension, making it the most expensive system per mile in the United States. Last year, Randall O’Toole estimated that the average streetcar cost per mile is around $91 million. It’s worth looking at some recent examples to see if that number is accurate. Looking at recently opened systems (see table below), the cost per mile seems to be lower, at about $61.6 million.” (09/08/26)
“Nearly 10 years before the train derailment and subsequent chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec experienced one of the deadliest rail disasters in North America. On July 6, 2013, a runaway train derailed in the center of town, leveling buildings and dumping millions of tons of crude oil onto the surrounding area. 47 people were killed in the explosion. In July, Maximillian Alvarez and Dr. Nicole Fabricant sat down with a panel of guests from East Palestine and Lac-Mégantic to discuss what happens when your town becomes a sacrifice zone and how residents can join together to fight back against the corporations responsible.” (09/08/26)
“As of September 8, Forbes reports, more than 100,000 people have signed a petition asking organizers of New York City’s 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony to ‘carefully consider whether [New York City mayor Zohran] Mamdani’s participation would align with the intention of the ceremony and the expectations of the families most directly affected by the tragedy.’ Coming from family members of people who died in the 9/11 attacks, the petition deserves a respectful hearing, whether the claims about Mamdani’s sentiments, sympathies and past actions ring true or not. They’re the people who lost loved ones. The ceremony is, or should be, for them. Unfortunately, some less deserving people compulsively run to the front of parades that aren’t about them. One such person is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.” (09/08/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“Twenty-five years after 9/11, one has to ask: has the nightmare ever really ended? For a quarter-century, Americans have been governed by fear: fear of terrorists and foreign enemies, fear of domestic extremists and political opponents, fear of the next attack, the next crisis, the next emergency.That fear has given us endless war, mass surveillance, militarized police, secret courts, indefinite detention, government watchlists, domestic military deployments and an imperial presidency armed with powers that would have been unthinkable before 9/11. Now the man entrusted with the imperial powers of the modern-day presidency is publicly imagining himself enthroned over robotic armies, raining destruction on his enemies and promising nightmares. The imagery may be unhinged from reality, but the powers of the presidency are not.” (09/08/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by William J Watkins, Jr.
“An appreciation of the Constitution’s role in fashioning the American republic must begin with the American Revolution. More precisely, the impetus for the Revolution. The literature of the period yields one overarching theme: self-government.” (09/08/26)
