“Two weeks ago, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a pit stop at the Tennessee State Capitol to kick off his ‘Take Back Your Health’ tour. On Tuesday, the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Institute continued the momentum and sponsored a Day on the Hill at the Tennessee General Assembly. Yesterday, Tennessee lawmakers made a few more MAHA moves by forwarding two bills related to health and nutrition. The Senate Health and Welfare Committee approved a bill supported by Governor Bill Lee that would require physicians to complete sufficient continuing education hours in nutrition each year. A bill that would set up a timeline to remove petroleum-based artificial food dyes from meals provided by schools passed despite pushback from food providers. MAHA and MAGA are largely simpatico when it comes to advocating for clean food ingredients and better nutrition, especially for children.” (02/19/26)
“As someone who loves comedy, what ass-clowns like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have done to the concept is like what Harvey Weinstein did to movie production or what Democrats have done to journalism, if journalism were their cellmate in Super-Max. Colbert is the Jeffrey Epstein of truth and Kimmel is the Luigi Mangione of honesty. That’s why it was not shocking to anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size that Colbert would go on his show and lie, doing his best to help a white guy, James Talarico, beat a black woman, Jasmine Crockett, in the Democratic primary in the Texas Senate race. First, I have to tell you about the concept of equal time.” (02/19/26)
“The Trump administration is struggling in court, failing to secure indictments and convictions against a growing list of the president’s enemies. Most recently, against six members of Congress for making a video telling members of the military they do not have to follow illegal orders. It is embarrassing for our Department of Justice to sink resources into such obviously frivolous cases, and this only further contributes to the general sense that President Donald Trump’s administration has the wrong priorities. But that’s not the worst of it. Trump’s DOJ’s lackluster record when it comes to securing indictments and convictions is eroding the prestige of the Justice Department as a core American institution and only deepening the toxic cycle of lawfare in this country.” (02/18/26)
“For years the Food and Drug Administration has handed down shocking decision after shocking decision, always in the same direction: The approval of Alzheimer’s drugs that are balanced precariously on a mountain of fraudulent papers and that sometimes make your brain explode; the approval of OxyContin for 11-year-olds; the approval of COVID-19 booster shots in healthy young people in order to please the political science majors in the White House. But there’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s made a lot of powerful enemies already reining in a lawless pharmaceutical industry.” (02/18/26)
“You’d never know it from the cavalcade of federally focused headlines this past year, but most public servants in the United States don’t work for the federal government. They work for states and localities, the ‘laboratories of democracy’ that staff our schools, maintain our roads, manage our prisons, and administer our social safety net. And yet when it comes to understanding how these governments work — how they hire, pay, evaluate, and retain the people who do this work — we all operate largely in the dark. The Niskanen Center partnered with the National Academy of Public Administration to change that and bring Americans closer to understanding their government.” (02/19/26)
“When Britain’s most notorious far-right agitator, Tommy Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), endorsed a Reform UK candidate late last month, it was yet another indicator of the growing ideological overlap between the nation’s most extreme anti-immigration elements and the right’s institutional organs. Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s insurgent right-wing populist party that has led the polls for over a year, disavowed Robinson—a predictable maneuver aimed at damage control. But it couldn’t obscure the real story: the collapse of any meaningful ideological daylight between Robinson’s street-level radicalism and right-wing electoral politics in Britain today.” (02/18/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“A lot of current writing is self-published, either online or in print or kindle. Much of it is fan fiction, stories set in a fictional world created by another author, often using his characters. Being a fan is seen as lower status than being an author, fan fiction as a low status literary activity. Quite a lot of what I read and enjoy is fan fiction, hence this essay. I will list what I believe are the main charges against it and try to show that they are for the most part mistaken.” (02/18/26)
‘It would be a mistake to view the protests across Iran that peaked on Jan. 7 and 8, and the subsequent brutal crackdown that killed at least 6,506 protesters, solely as a confrontation between state and society. Against a backdrop of economic hardship and political discontent, rival factions within the Islamic Republic have sought to steer, contain, or exploit unrest to advance their own agendas. The latest upheaval unfolded amid intense maneuvering inside the system, as competing power centers jockeyed over economic reform, foreign-policy direction, and control of the political field.” (02/19/26)
Source: Orange County Register
by Alexander Langlois
“One can be excused for wondering why the Islamic Republic of Iran has consistently beaten accusations of near-death since its inception in 1979. The regime in Tehran has held onto power through successive internal and external crises regardless of doomsday prophesizing in Washington or Tel Aviv. As the Iranian government faces one of the most difficult moments in its brief existence – both internally and externally — the question now, as the US sends a second aircraft carrier to the region is will this time be different?” (02/18/26)
