Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“It’s important to remind ourselves that the Pentagon’s new socialist and imperialist deal to extract oil from Venezuela isn’t the only unconstitutional overseas endeavor of the U.S. national-security state. Nor are the Pentagon’s assassinations of drug-war suspects on the high seas. Nor are the Pentagon’s undeclared wars of aggression in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and other countries. There is also Guantanamo Bay, the imperialist U.S. military base that was acquired in a strikingly in much the same way that the Pentagon is acquiring its socialist interest in Venezuelan oil — by using a puppet foreign regime to extract whatever U.S. officials want. But then there is also the blatantly unconstitutional ‘judicial’ system that the Pentagon established at Gitmo nearly 25 years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.” (09/01/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by Caitlin Rowley Gallamore & Lawson Mansell
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking the next step to reduce Medicare’s unnecessary spending in high-cost hospital settings. Medicare’s payment policies have profound impacts on the supply of healthcare — where, when, and how services are provided to patients across the country. Existing payment policies disconnect the value of healthcare services from their costs. And because much of the healthcare system uses Medicare prices as a baseline for payment, the ripple effects of these distortions spread far beyond into the private market as well.” (09/01/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Ninos P Malek
“On August 17, the California Energy Commission (CEC) approved the nation’s first energy-efficiency standards for replacement tires. Beginning in 2029, replacement tires sold for passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks in California will have to meet minimum standards for ‘rolling resistance’—the force that resists a tire as it rolls along the road. … The CEC estimates that under the first phase of the regulation, a set of four tires will cost consumers about $6 more while saving the average driver approximately $85 in fuel costs over the life of the tires. … Assuming those estimates are accurate, most people would probably say, ‘Sounds like a pretty good deal.’ But that raises an obvious economic question: If these tires are such a good deal for consumers, why does the government need to force people to buy them?” (09/01/26)
“The Administration won a major victory before the Supreme Court this week, securing a 5-4 decision allowing the resumption of construction of the new White House ballroom. Notably, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissent with his three liberal colleagues to oppose the move. The case turns on the standing of challengers to bring the case. However, as a torts professor, what intrigued me was what the case says about aesthetic injuries. In torts, I teach aesthetic nuisance cases where courts tend to reject claims of injury due to eyesores and blight. Such claims are disfavored in both codes and cases: ‘Things merely disagreeable, however, which simply displease the eye or offend the taste, or shock an oversensitive or fastidious nature, no matter how irritating or unpleasant, are not nuisances’. [81 N.Y. Jur. 2d Nuisances § 17 (2014)].” (09/01/26)
“In 2020, governments around the world panicked in response to the declaration of a pandemic and imposed drastic interventions to impede the spread of Covid-19, interventions which crushed human rights on an unprecedented scale and without sufficient justification. Yet this was widely accepted, even by human rights organisations. How could this happen? And how could we amend human rights protections to ensure that it does not happen again?” (09/01/260
“The new book ‘Unconventional Education and America’s Founding’ traces the pluralistic, self-led educations that prepared colonial learners to remake the world.” (09/01/26)
“September 1 is the anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe. On that date in 1939, Nazi Germany launched an invasion of Poland from the west and a few weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin signed a non-aggression pact shortly before they carved up Poland but that ceasefire didn’t last beyond June 1941. World War II has been heralded for more than fifty years as the ‘Good War’—in contrast to subsequent U.S. military debacles in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. But World War II cannot be glorified without hiding a heap of lies and millions of corpses.” (09/01/26)
“Twentieth-century liberal intellectuals stood firm against the totalizing ideologies of left and right. Their insights remain valuable today.” (08/31/26)
“As Donald Trump engages in the bold midterm election strategy of telling 75 percent of the country that they will be ‘backwards and poor’ if they refuse to allow substantial portions of land to be handed over to data centers, he’s one expression of transpartisan outrage behind. Anger is building just as persistently about Flock cameras, the automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) powered by artificial intelligence and the data centers that make AI run, which are used increasingly by law enforcement to surveil and track citizens, often improperly. ‘This is a deeply un-American thing that is being done,’ said Will Lawrence, the congressional candidate in Michigan who has been well ahead of the political class on identifying and acting on technology products that inflame local communities, from data centers to Flock. ” (09/01/26)
