Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Mike Maharrey
“A federal asset forfeiture program known as equitable sharing provides law enforcement agencies with a major loophole, allowing them to continue seizing property almost unabated – even when state laws seek to limit such practices.” (12/30/24)
Source: The Dispatch
by Ryan Bourne & Alex Nowrasteh
“President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) caught many conservatives off guard. On paper, a parastatal entity determined to ‘dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies’ should be catnip to small-government types. And yet, many Reaganites rolled their eyes. Oddly enough, a scattering of leftist lawmakers, including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, have shown more enthusiasm — or at least an openness to hijacking DOGE’s brief — to streamline defense spending. Several budget hawks on the right, by contrast, have largely dismissed DOGE as a sideshow to Congress. We understand the skepticism. … Yet this reflexive cynicism seems self-defeating and might even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” (12/30/24)
https://thedispatch.com/article/small-government-conservatives-should-give-doge-a-chance/
Source: Persuasion
by Andrew Xu
“There is an old quip about mainstream journalism: ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ Negative news gets more traction than positive news, for the same reasons that airplane passengers would prefer potato chips to baby carrots: human beings are attracted to the things that are bad for us because they are enticing in the heat of the moment.” (12/30/24)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/negativity-bias-isnt-going-away
Source: Antiwar.com
by Joseph D Terwilliger
“Recent reports suggest that North Korean (DPRK) troops may be assisting Russia in its war with Ukraine – a development that underscores their growing strategic partnership, formalized by a treaty pledging mutual military, economic, and cultural cooperation. This alliance, formalized through a recently enacted treaty, could bolster Vladimir Putin’s position ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, as Trump has pledged to end the war in the early days of his second administration. Any involvement of DPRK troops – whether logistical or kinetic – could help to expedite Russian operations. These developments, set against the backdrop of Russia and North Korea’s recently enacted comprehensive strategic partnership, highlight the deepening ties between the two nations, raising critical questions about the Ukraine war, DPRK-Russia relations, and US diplomacy in the region.” (12/30/24)
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“Jimmy Carter’s melancholy fate was to be a largely derivative figure: He was a reaction against his elected predecessor and the precursor of his successor. Richard Nixon made Carter tempting; Carter made Ronald Reagan necessary.” (12/29/24)
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“The latest fad in American totalitarianism is a sick little parochial fetish known as Christian nationalism. With the more secular schools of rampant rape politics like neoconservatism irredeemably tarnished even in the eyes of the faithful, right-wing imperialists have decided to double down on their violent Jesus-speak and use the facade of Evangelical populism to cloak their globalist agenda in something that feels a little more homespun than the responsibility to protect the new world order with constant warfare. The new agenda involves openly embracing the massive machinery of the federal government as a means to transform Washington into a kind of Christian Riyadh so it can cleanse the empire of the elitist scourge of all things deemed woke. In reality though, this new jihad still serves the same old masters, it just does so in ways that seem tailor made to piss me off.” (12/29/24)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-imperialism-stole-christianity-and.html
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L. Knapp
“DOGE won’t really be a government department, just an ‘advisory’ commission that can make ‘recommendations’ to cut costs, improve operations, etc. But I expect it will at least achieve ‘bully pulpit’ status to move public opinion, MAYBE resulting in a few actions. So let’s try this recommendation on for bully pulpit size: Two thirds of both houses of Congress should propose, and three quarters of the state legislatures should ratify, a constitutional amendment permanently setting PRE-federal-income-tax congressional salary at the previous year’s POST-federal-income-tax personal per capita income.” (12/28/24)
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal
“What would your ideal future look like? More liberty, more slavery, or no change at all? Can you make an argument for your preference? Could you join me in smashing the shackles of a superstitious devotion to government and the slavery it inevitably brings?” (12/29/24)
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“Herschel Walker, the failed Senate candidate, says he has been treated for an unusual mental-health problem: multiple personalities. I wonder how many personalities he has. I wonder if any of them knows how many children he has. I wonder if he has a personality that doesn’t give every impression of being functionally illiterate. But, then, I’m no diplomat. Walker, however, apparently is. Yes, a wife-abusing dolt and famous football player who at one point played for Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals in the United States Football League — another of the many business ventures Trump’s incompetence has helped to wreck over the years — will be nominated by the president-elect to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas. … There have always been a lot of grifters and social climbers in the ambassadorial ranks — leave it to Donald Trump to plumb an even lower class of them.” (12/27/24)
https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-ambassador-gingrich-walker-whitaker-kushner/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Jason Sorens
“High school seniors are in the thick of college application and visitation season. It’s not quite what it used to be; there are fewer and fewer college-bound Americans every year. But there’s one nice surprise that next year’s college students might enjoy: lower tuition. Americans had gotten used to near-double-digit increases in tuition at four-year colleges and universities. But in the 2020-21 academic year, for the first time since 1980, tuition and mandatory fees at four-year colleges and universities in the US shrank in inflation-adjusted terms.” (12/27/24)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/why-college-tuition-prices-are-suddenly-in-decline/