“In his famous draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Thomas Jefferson advised that ‘in questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.’ Jefferson’s rhetorically powerful phrase rested on a simple assumption: that the Constitution constrained federal power. That assumption is understandable. After all, the Constitution is written, and it contains a list of powers. For generations, most Americans have followed Jefferson down this well-worn interpretive path and assumed that enumeration equals limitation. It now appears, however, that we have all been profoundly mistaken.” (03/04/26)
“One of the favors that chatbots have done for humanities professors is to reveal to us that chatbots are so good at doing the thesis-essay assignment because it has always been an exceptionally formulaic thing. If we engage in a little self-examination, we’ll realize that we like it formulaic, because that reduces the time and mental energy we have to invest in grading. It’s easy to compare any given student’s essay to the template in your mind and quickly see the extent to which it matches or deviates from it. The rise of the chatbots — with their algorithmic pattern-matching, their stochastic parrot behavior — has revealed that students and faculty alike have been, for many decades, functioning in exactly the same way. If we could confront our chatbots the way parents confront their kids about drug use, the bots would surely reply ‘I learned it by watching you!'” (03/04/26)
“In the founding principles of liberalism, freedom is not merely the absence of chains; it is the presence of an unguarded space — a space where the individual can think, speak and organise without the omniscient state and its interference. That space has historically been protected by anonymity, especially in the online sphere of discourse. Today, that foundational protection is under substantial threat, more so than before. The new tool for the state to control its subjects is not only a physical prison, but also a digital cage. In this system, mandatory identification is designed to weave into every interaction.” (03/04/26)
“In proclaiming ‘a golden age of America’ in his State of the Union address, President Trump correctly focused on his initiatives to fix the problems perpetrated by the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations that undermine the physical and economic security of the United States. One of those initiatives is Trump’s war on fraud, which, according to the president, is intended to root out and remedy the ‘corruption that shreds the fabric’ of our nation. … Trump’s war will be waged aggressively. As the president put it, ‘We are not playing games.’ But to win the war against fraud, the Trump administration must force the uniparty institutionalists at the Justice Department to change course and protect a key ally in the war on fraud: whistleblowers.” (03/04/26)
“The threat to civil liberties posed by Lammy’s jury-trial plans is not to be underestimated. Especially at a time when Brits can be charged with ‘inciting racial hatred’ for expressing concern about illegal immigration on social media, as was the position of former Royal Marine Jamie Michael last year. Michael, as it happened, was cleared by a jury of his peers after only 17 minutes. It is understandable to wonder what might have happened had a judge from our current legal elite decided the verdict. But if we are to understand the full extent of the trouble Lammy’s reforms would cause, we need to also start talking about how anti-democratic they are.” (03/04/26)
“The lack of shame exhibited by the US government as it lies about Iraqi improvised explosive device (IED) attacks that killed thousands of American service members to justify its new war on Iran is breathtaking. President Trump led off his press conference today, the first since the attacks began Saturday morning, with this lie. Trump’s proxies on cable news, in the newspapers and online have been repeating it non-stop. The lie is essentially that American soldiers were killed and wounded in Iraq at the orders of the Iranians. That the people responsible for blowing up American vehicles and sending home US soldiers in caskets or without body parts were Iranians, not Iraqis. The reality, of course, is that responsibility for those deaths and mutilations belongs to George W. Bush and every politician, general, government official, journalist, pundit and citizen who supported that war.” (03/04/26)
“This will be a brief post, with some bad news and some good news. The bad news comes in two parts. First, any hopes that this war might be extremely brief are fading. … Second, war in the middle of the world’s most important oil-producing region — which is also a key source of liquefied natural gas — inevitably has major consequences for energy prices.” (03/04/26)
“Mega-MAGA might be trying to purge them, but Tucker Carlson and other conservatives have their fingers on the real pulse after this week’s Iran strikes.” (03/04/26)
“A Supreme Court case illustrates the potential for trans-partisan alliances between critics of gun control and critics of the war on drugs.” (03/04/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Cláudia Ascensão Nunes
“The law classifies user identities at the operating system level. Once embedded, that regulatory architecture of control is easy to expand and difficult to roll back.” (03/04/26)
