“The growing international momentum toward recognizing Palestine as an independent state represents a long-overdue acknowledgment of geopolitical realities that Washington has stubbornly refused to accept. As more nations move beyond the tired mantras of ‘peace process’ diplomacy, it’s time for U.S. policymakers to abandon their counterproductive approach and embrace pragmatic statecraft.” (10/01/25)
“The American Prospect has obtained thousands of pages of documents related to the New Mexico attorney general’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, which began in 2019 under then-Attorney General Hector Balderas. The investigation involved Epstein’s sprawling New Mexico ranch, and the documents include hundreds of pages of media reports, land records, flight logs, court documents, and interviews with witnesses to Epstein’s crimes. While the documents fail to answer many of the questions that lawmakers and the public hope will be revealed by the disclosure of files held by the Department of Justice, they also raise several new ones. The documents describe interviews with multiple attendees of Epstein’s 8,000-acre Zorro Ranch, and accusers who say they were assaulted there.” (10/01/25)
“Frédéric Bastiat’s mid-nineteenth century satire exposed the folly of shielding inefficient industries, yet today’s politicians repeat the same error with tariffs that tax global trade to prop up costly domestic production. Like candlemakers demanding shuttered windows, these policies burden families, farmers, and small businesses with higher prices, stifle growth, and betray the sound economics of fiscal prudence while testing constitutional limits. If we pay attention, Bastiat’s wisdom exposed how today’s tariffs undermine American prosperity. Common sense calls for a return to free enterprise where markets, not erratic mandates, light the way.” (10/01/25)
“Two recent Australian Federal Court judgments illustrate the good things that the rule of law may confer on a society, even when it conflicts with ideals like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” (10/01/25)
“A mystery confounds the minds of North Dakota’s legislators. It has a fake part and a real part. The fake part itself has two parts: 1) how to learn whether voters support term limits, and 2) how to learn how a legislative body can function unless incumbents, whose advantages over challengers enable them to return to office sporting reelection rates exceeding 90 percent, may remain in place until ousted by death or scandal? The answer to the first everyone knows. The answer to the second is to write down procedures and give tutorials and guidebooks on how the legislature works to newcomers in legislative halls. The real mystery, though, is how to overthrow term limits given voters’ massive continuing support?” (10/01/25)
“A government shutdown would unfold just weeks before statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia, with furloughs and layoffs hitting while more voters are tuning in. But neither party expects to get an advantage from the resulting chaos, in either state. It’s a surprising reality that points to how little the risk of a shutdown has broken through with voters or outside-the-Beltway media. Democrats are confident that voters would associate a shutdown with the Trump administration and see any layoffs as an extension of Elon Musk’s unpopular DOGE, but they’re not planning to hammer it home. And Republicans sense they have other, stronger issues to close out their off-year races, viewing the shutdown as more of a distraction.” (09/30/25)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“A reader commenting on my post describing different kinds of left libertarians proposed that I do the same thing for libertarians more generally. I have already covered left libertarians so this is on the rest of us, multiple lines along which we differ.” (09/30/25)
“A miracle defies the laws of nature. This is why ‘the Mississippi Miracle,’ the sobriquet for the extraordinary gains that students in the Magnolia State have made in reading in recent years, is a misnomer. There’s nothing miraculous about a state that adopts phonics and that sets high standards for its kids getting better results in reading instruction. This, to the contrary, is a predictable outcome, and a replicable one, as other Southern states that have taken up similar polices have shown. Mississippi went from 49th in fourth-grade reading results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress about a decade ago to ninth in 2024. Its low-income children are ranked first in the nation. Its black kids are No. 3 in the nation, and its Hispanic kids No. 1.” (09/30/25)
“On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published an editorial titled ‘The Face of Muhammad,’ accompanied by 12 cartoons, some of which depicted the Prophet Muhammad. The publication set off a global firestorm and turned criticism of Islam into a minefield that remains deadly to traverse even in open societies. And rather than defending the principle at stake, European democracies are increasingly choosing appeasement — trading away free speech for the promise of a precarious peace.” (09/30/25)
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the former ‘Fox and Friends’ cohost, claims to be obsessed with making the Pentagon and the military services about ‘the warfighter.’ His main approach to doing so is a deeply misguided [sic] campaign to reduce ‘distractions’ like commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (the dreaded DEI). No matter that the purpose of DEI is to combat White supremacist attitudes, misogyny, and anti-gay and anti-trans violence in the ranks. All such forms of discrimination are, in fact, already present in the U.S. military, and the way to build a cohesive defense force is certainly not by allowing them to run wild and be seen as acceptable or ‘normal’ behavior.” [editor’s note: These dumbasses keep harping on the peripheral issues, to deflect from their idiocy about the true purpose of a free country’s military – SAT] [editor’s note: What do “free countries” have to do with the US? – TLK] (10/01/25)
