“Treason. Invasion. Conquest. That’s how the Founders and old revolutionaries described usurpation – power stolen, not delegated. And it wasn’t just rhetoric. It was a foundational, and now-forgotten principle at the very heart of the American Revolution. When government repeatedly goes beyond the limits of the Constitution, it’s not just an innocent mistake – it’s a kind of war waged against the sovereignty, or final authority, of the people.” (04/02/25)
“There are both economic and moral reasons for an individual not to lie. One major moral justification to avoid lying and acquiring the habit of lying is that a free society requires an ethics of reciprocity, which means treating as a moral equal any individual who is likely to reciprocate. You don’t lie to those who don’t lie to you. … This moral reason intersects with economics because it calls for the analysis of the institutions necessary to maintain a spontaneous social order offering maximum opportunities to individuals. The freer a society is, the less one feels that others are always trying to swindle him.” (04/02/25)
“The current Democratic paradox is that their voters are deeply frustrated with the party, and happy to vote for them in every election. Before the Wisconsin vote, Wikler told me that Republicans would struggle to match their enthusiasm, because Democrats were ‘on fire’ about DOGE layoffs and the threat of cuts to Medicaid. This was borne out on Tuesday …. The MAGA voter is both more content with the state of the country and less interested in blow-by-blows of DOGE work. The lower-propensity voters who only turn out for Trump are not matching the higher-propensity news junkies who fill out their ballots with MSNBC or Meidas Touch playing in the background.” (04/02/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Joe Mullin
“More than a decade ago, Congress tried to pass SOPA and PIPA — two sweeping bills that would have allowed the government and copyright holders to quickly shut down entire websites based on allegations of piracy. The backlash was immediate and massive. Internet users, free speech advocates, and tech companies flooded lawmakers with protests, culminating in an ‘Internet Blackout’ on January 18, 2012. Turns out, Americans don’t like government-run internet blacklists. The bills were ultimately shelved. Thirteen years later, as institutional memory fades and appetite for opposition wanes, members of Congress in both parties are ready to try this again.” (04/02/25)
“In 2021, a researcher named Daniel Kokotajlo published a blog post called ‘What 2026 Looks Like,’ where he laid out what he thought would happen in AI over the next five years. The world delights in thwarting would-be prophets. The sea of possibilities is too vast for anyone to ever really chart a course. At best, we vaguely gesture at broad categories of outcome, then beg our listeners to forgive us the inevitable surprises. Daniel knew all this and resigned himself to it. But even he didn’t expect what happened next. He got it all right. … A year later, OpenAI hired Daniel to their policy team. While he worked for them, he was limited in his ability to speculate publicly. … Unluckily for Sam Altman but luckily for the rest of us, Daniel broke with OpenAI mid-2024 in a dramatic split covered by the New York Times and others. He founded the AI Futures Project to produce the promised sequel …” (04/03/25)
“‘No free trade without free speech,’ says one US source. In short, if the British state doesn’t stop muzzling the unwoke, our nation will suffer. Mighty America will rap our knuckles. … it is an intolerable intrusion into our sovereign affairs for America to tie free trade to free speech. It’s a clear stab at interference in the internal matters of an independent state: ours. I detest our culture of censorship, but I also detest the idea that it is the duty of a distant power to compel us to dispense with it. The former is an assault on our right of self-government, on the liberty of every Briton to speak as he or she sees fit. But the latter is an assault on our right to democratic government, on the freedom of Britons to determine the fate of their nation free from external pressure.” (04/02/25)
“‘Who has the right to have rights?’ This is the urgent question asked by Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate seized from his home on March 8, in the stirring open letter he dictated 10 days later from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement lock-up in Louisiana. In the letter, Khalil affirmed his identity as a Palestinian ’political prisoner’ as well as his solidarity with everyone who has been thrown into the punitive limbo of the Trump administration’s detention and deportation machine. Since the college encampments began, it’s been clear that people like Khalil — international students engaged in campus activism for Palestine — were to have no right to freedom of speech, assembly or movement that the U.S. government must respect and that they would become the target of increased state repression.” (04/03/25)
“There is a temptation to overhype or read too much into the results of off-year elections. In this case, I suggest we succumb. Yesterday, Wisconsin voters exposed, humiliated, and decisively rejected the world’s richest man. And they sent a stark message to Republicans in Washington. … By inserting himself into the Wisconsin race, Musk, the billionaire who has become a top adviser to President Donald Trump, had hoped to cement his status as MAGA enforcer and kingmaker. Instead, he provided Republicans with graphic evidence that he has become a political boat anchor.” (04/02/25)
“‘This isn’t what Americans voted for.’ Everybody says this when Donald Trump does something stupid or awful. … With all due respect to my friends and colleagues and for their desire to take a charitable view of their fellow citizens, and with equally due contempt for Rolling Stone et al.: Baloney. Americans are not stupid: Americans know damned good and well that whom we’re voting for is what we’re voting for. … Trump did not trick Americans into electing him — there never has been, and never could be, any question about what sort of man he is: What else could you make of a thrice-married serial bankrupt borderline illiterate fantasist who before the presidency was best known for having appeared in a reality show franchise, a short string of pornographic films, and however many pro-wrestling programs?” (04/02/25)
