Source: Independent Institute
by K Lloyd Billingsley
“Last week, the federal Department of Justice, led by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon, joined a lawsuit against UCLA medical school accusing it of admitting students on the basis of race, not academic qualifications. As students and parents should know, race-based admissions violate California law. … Californians should consider suing the UC system for reparations for a bloated DEI establishment that perpetuates injustice, defrauds taxpayers, and serves no educational purpose.” (02/06/26)
Source: The Erick Erickson Show
by Erick-Woods Erickson
“Republicans keep making excuses. The Texas State Senate special election was about local issues, a bad candidate, and infighting. The Georgia State House special election was about local issues, a bad candidate, infighting, and state party incompetence. That is eight state legislative elections the GOP lost in Republican seats. Republicans have lost Republican seats in Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and other reliably Republican states. To tell Republicans this is to be an apostate. They simply do not want to hear it. Like the Democrats before them, Republican dreams of a majority are built now on lies they tell themselves.” (02/06/26)
“Shrill but useful — useful because she is so shrill — Kristi Noem has elicited from a federal judge a valuable 83-page tutorial. The secretary of homeland security, her mind as closed as a clam, will not benefit from Judge Ana C. Reyes’s explanation of immigration law. Other Americans will. … The Trump administration of course argues (as it does regarding the president’s declaration of an ’emergency’ justifying tariffs) that Noem’s exercise of discretion is not subject to judicial review. Reyes, however, eviscerates what she calls Noem’s claim to ‘unbounded discretion to make whatever determination she wants, any way she wants.'” (02/06/26)
Source: Orange County Register
by Carolyn Cavecche
“[T]here are 50 states, over 3,100 counties and county-equivalents, and almost 20,000 cities, towns, and villages recognized by the Census Bureau. There are also numerous school boards, special districts, and state offices — the list goes on. Imagine one giant federal agency, one computer system with all our voter data, tasked with carrying out all elections: processing voter registration forms from hundreds of millions of voters, sending out ballot statements and sample ballots, handling voter centers and polling places, and securing, collecting, and tabulating every ballot cast in the United States of America. Any conservative who thinks that this is a good idea needs to turn in their conservative credentials.” (02/06/26)
“The main moral objection to prediction markets seems to be that it’s wrong to profit from someone’s misfortune. And intuitively there does seem to be something immoral about raking in thousands of dollars because you correctly predicted that a hurricane would hit a particular city or a particular war would break out, resulting in tremendous amounts of suffering. As Moscrop puts it, ‘Bettors will hold financial stakes in particular outcomes, including some of the most heinous events imaginable. It’s a fundamentally cynical and dehumanizing turn.’ But as natural as the gut-level unease with prediction markets is, we shouldn’t trust it. Prediction markets are both useful and morally benign. Prediction markets are useful precisely because they incentivize accurate forecasting.” (02/06/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen & Ryan Grim
“With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement. The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good. AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC.” (02/06/25)
“In the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the genetically engineered superhuman, Khan Noonien Singh, is discovered in his exile on Ceti Alpha V with a bookshelf populated by the Bible, Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Melville’s Moby Dick. His last words in the film are taken straight out of the latter, as the revenge-obsessed Khan murmurs to his nemesis, Captain James T. Kirk: ‘From hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.’ In the film Die Hard, the ruthless East German terrorist, Hans Gruber, also proclaims himself to be well read: ‘And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer,’ Gruber says, with the aside: ‘Benefits of a classical education.’ Reading great books does not necessarily make you a good person.” (02/06/26)
“One and a half million more young adults live with their parents today than a decade ago. They’re losers … economically. Since the pandemic, fair market rents have increased as much as 40% in Chicago, the cost of owning a car is up more than 40%, and car insurance and health care prices have spiked. Student loan debt has quadrupled since 2000, and entry-level wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. For young people without financial or family support, it’s an affordability crisis that feels insurmountable. Cost of living was Gen Z’s top political issue in 2024; they feel the ‘American Dream’ slipping farther away.” (02/06/26)
