Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s attacks against U.S. Senator Mark Kelly constitute a fascinating and very revealing insight into the national-security-state way of life. Hegseth is upset with Kelly, along with five other members of Congress, for participating in a video that reminded U.S. soldiers of their duty to refuse to obey illegal orders. … Kelly and the others did not say to U.S. soldiers: ‘You have the right to disobey orders.’ If he had said that, I could easily understand why Hegseth would be upset. But that’s not what they said. They said that U.S. soldiers have the right — and the duty — to refuse to obey illegal orders. The difference between those two admonitions is day and night. What Kelly and the others stated is the absolute truth.” (02/05/26)
Source: Orange County Register
by Veronique de Rugy
“When government grows to dominate ever-larger shares of the economy, and when politicians refuse to be responsible about what they spend, there’s a predictable next move: Insist that the problem is ‘the rich’ not paying enough. Never mind that high earners already shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Never mind that relying on a small and mobile group of people for the bulk of your revenue makes public finances more volatile, not more stable. No, once spending is treated as untouchable and restraint as politically impossible, it’s only a matter of time before politics demands more, more, more. More taxes and more distortion. This helps explain why wild new forms of wealth taxes are popping up.” (02/05/26)
“Yes, the party in power historically tends to lose congressional seats in midterm elections. Sometimes a few, sometimes more. Beyond that obvious likelihood, trying to predict the mood of the electorate nine months out is a fool’s errand. I can, however, confidently predict how much will change as a direct result of the elections’ outcomes, whatever those outcomes may be: Not much.” (02/05/26)
“The basic facts of the tragedy at Kent State University are well-known. Shortly after noon on May 4, 1970, twenty-eight soldiers kneeled on a grassy knoll and fired more than sixty rounds in thirteen seconds into a crowd of students, most of whom were there to protest the expansion of the Vietnam war. They killed four and wounded nine, including [Thomas] Grace, a sophomore history major who was shot through his left heel. The circumstances back then, of course, differed substantially from the deadly recent events in Minneapolis. Yet for those of us who came of age in that era, for whom the Ohio tragedy is seared into our memories as a critical turning point during a time of national crisis, the striking parallels are impossible to ignore …” (02/05/26)
Source: The Intercept
by Biplob Kumar Das
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“Some of the largest banks in the nation for years have eschewed the business of private prison giants like GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two firms that operate more than half the private carceral facilities in the country, including many U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. … Now, the private prison firms are fighting back, spending millions on lobbying Congress to pass a law to require that the banks can’t deny their business.” (02/05/26)
“Inflation is indeed a killer. It is only the incredible productivity of even our badly-perverted and severely-damaged free market economy that makes a Quarter-pounder meal cost ‘only’ somewhere between $9.00 and $12.00 (well, FRNs). Plus sales tax, as government rip us off for another 6-10% (between 54 cents and a dollar-twenty more). We can count our blessings that we are only paying TEN times what that same food cost a half-century ago.” (02/05/26)
“A recent rise in anti-corruption movements in Europe has upended politics from Serbia to Bulgaria to Romania. Now, one of the continent’s most entrenched leaders, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, faces a serious challenge this April in a parliamentary election that could be determined by what one commentator calls a public ‘yearning for integrity’. For the European Union, too, the stakes in the election are high. Mr. Orbán and his ruling populist conservative party, Fidesz, have often obstructed the 27-member bloc in helping Ukraine and countering Russia. The EU has also held back funds for Budapest over its shrinking rule of law. After nearly 16 years in power, Mr. Orbán has left Hungary with the lowest household living standards in the EU. The country of 9.6 million people has experienced three years of economic stagnation.” (02/03/25)
“State and local policymakers urgently need to know how well pro-housing policies are achieving their underlying goals. Have they resulted in higher quantities of new construction, especially in targeted locations and structure types? Have development timelines been shortened, yielding cost savings for new homes? Are there spillover effects on the rents and prices of existing homes, or other changes in key housing market outcomes, such as vacancy rates?” (02/05/26)
“The original vision for Bitcoin was simple: peer-to-peer digital cash, free from banks and government. However, the document argues that this vision was deliberately ‘hijacked,’ as Bitcoin is now pushed as ‘digital gold,’ a scarce asset for Wall Street, with slow and expensive transactions for everyday use. This shift began with the 2015-2017 Block Size Fight, where a group won the argument to keep transaction blocks small, making the main network costly. The promoted ‘fix,’ the Lightning Network, is a faster system but relies on middlemen (hubs), fundamentally changing it from true P2P cash. The funding for this change is linked to Jeffrey Epstein.” (02/05/26)
