“The U.S. and Israel started a senseless, criminal war of aggression against Iran two months ago, and that war set much of the rest of the region on fire. The aggressors failed to achieve anything beyond inflicting death and destruction while causing massive damage to the region and the global economy. The smart thing to do now would be for the U.S. and Israel to cut their losses and accept Iran’s latest proposal, but that seems unlikely to happen.” (04/28/26)
“Becoming infected by a pathogen is normally accidental and very different from engaging in self-destructive behavior. In fact, one could argue that public health authorities should treat chronic self-destructive behavior in adults differently from genetic disorders in young children, given that most people would likely agree that the costs associated with such behavior are not as easily justified as those associated with the latter. Yet, this actually shows that the discriminatory possibilities are endless and highlights the arbitrariness of the public health system. For a start, this system redistributes its overall costs as a burden for those most responsible for their own health and as a benefit for the most careless. That is, it socializes the costs of irresponsible health behavior. The only solution to this inherent flaw is the total abolition of the public health system.” (04/28/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Joe Mullin
“Lawmakers in Congress are moving quickly on the GUARD Act, an age-gating bill restricting minors’ access to a wide range of online tools, with a key vote expected this week. The proposal is framed as a response to alarming cases involving ‘AI companions’ and vulnerable young users. But the text of the bill goes much further, and could require age gates even for search engines that use AI.” (04/28/26)
“Newspaper columnists instructed generations of citizens about the Fourteenth Amendment. Today, the country seems to have forgotten how clear the law is.” (04/28/26)
“‘Incredible, unstoppable titan of terror!’ Those words advertising the 1954 movie Godzilla could be the billing of a new freakish giant stretching across the sleeping farm fields of Virginia. Now in a court near you is The Lobster, a monster over 100 miles long. The only saving grace is that this creature only devours Republicans, leaving roughly half the state with virtually no representation in Congress. Virginia was a quiet, pastoral state before the creature’s appearance. It was considered the gold standard among states rejecting gerrymandering, with fairly divided districts in a state divided right down the middle. It then elected a governor, Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who assured voters that she was adamantly against gerrymandering and then immediately called for the most radical gerrymandered map in the nation after she was elected.” (04/28/26)
“Both Russia and Iran illustrate that wars with oil-rich countries cause oil prices to surge. By using actual warfare alongside economic warfare, the Trump Administration has increased Iran’s economic advantages at America’s expense. With Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner no-showing in Islamabad for peace talks, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi continued his shuttle diplomacy to Oman and Moscow on Monday. It is without question that Iran and Russia are two countries who have in many ways shocked the world community with their resilience in the face of sanctions and embargoes.” (04/28/26)
Source: Popular Information
by Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims
“On Monday, Cole Tomas Allen, an educator from California, was charged by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump. … Trump was asked about the suspect and his motivations during an interview with CBS News’ ‘60 Minutes’ on Sunday. In response, Trump said the ‘No Kings’ protests were to blame. … The truth is that the No Kings rallies have been some of the largest and most peaceful protests in history. … Trump has described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as a ‘day of love’ and said that his supporters acted ‘patriotically and peacefully.’ Yet the January 6 riot caused far more harm than the No Kings protests, despite having just a fraction of the attendance.” (04/28/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by JT Morris
“If democracy is our nation’s engine, then political protest is its gas pedal — and it has been since our founding. Early Americans rose up to protest the tyranny of the Stamp Act and the Tea Act, fighting taxation without representation and planting the seeds of independence. Two decades later, they enshrined the freedom to protest in the First Amendment. All throughout America’s 250 years, that freedom has given millions the voice to demand change. It spearheaded the fight against segregation. It secured voting rights for women. And today, Americans gather in public parks and city streets for No Kings rallies, the March for Life and countless other political and social causes. But a lawsuit that has snaked through the courts for eight years threatens our prized freedom to protest, exposing protesters to vast damages for acts they didn’t commit and chilling Americans from making their voices heard.” (04/28/26)
Source: Chris’s Substack
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
“My life with disability has been the subject of several interviews through the years, including one that appeared in Folks magazine in January 2018, and an interview conducted in February 2023 by Léa Hirschfeld that is finally being released today as part of an Out of Sync Podcast series, which explores ‘life through disability, one story at a time.’ Listening back to the interview, recorded less than three months after my sister’s death, I was struck not by how much had changed, but by how much had endured. The interview is broader in its subject matter than I’d remembered. It deals not only with my medical challenges, but also with my work on Ayn Rand, libertarianism, and dialectics. It explores the dangers of ideological rigidity in the face of real-world constraints, the need to live in a known reality, rather than an unknown ideal.” (04/28/26)
