Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“The existence of AI, like the earlier problem of students buying papers online, reduces the ability of teachers to test their students but does not eliminate it, is inconvenient but not catastrophic. It makes some kinds of testing more difficult but not impossible; Serrano could have asked students whose midterms were suspiciously good to explain some of their answers and failed any obviously unable to do so. That would have been additional work for him and, judging by the article, not a policy Brown would have endorsed. Unwilling or unable to do that that he can base his future grading on work done in-person and adequately monitored.” (07/03/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Rachel Chiu
“Last week, the Supreme Court held in Pung v. Isabella County that when a home is taken by the government and sold at a tax foreclosure auction, the sale proceeds satisfy the constitutional requirement for ‘just compensation’ to the owner. This unanimous decision appears to be a loss for homeowners and property rights. But the justices stopped short of sanctioning the County’s actions, leaving some of the most important questions for another day.” (07/03/26)
“Israel’s supporters have gone apoplectic over a short post on X from the journalist Mehdi Hasan, highlighting Israel’s peculiar marriage laws. Hasan asks: ‘Did you know that you can’t have a civil or secular marriage in Israel?’ He’s not wrong. Israel has banned civil marriage. You can wed only in a ceremony strictly controlled by religious authorities. If you want a civil marriage, you have to travel to another country. Why, you might reasonably wonder. Isn’t Israel a modern, secular, western-style liberal democracy? After all, that’s what our politicians and media keep telling us. The most popular rejoinder to Hasan from Israel’s apologists – that the situation is no better in Saudi Arabia – is not quite the flex they seem to imagine. So Israel offers the same human rights protections as Saudi Arabia? Impressive.” (07/03/26)
“This Fourth of July matters more than most for three reasons. First, it is the historic 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is the most radical political document ever written. It challenged millennia of thought about monarchs having rights and commoners being mere subjects, peasants or even slaves. Suddenly, people on the edge of a continent decided that they would challenge the entire system that dominated their world. Kings, czars and emperors were put on notice that power did not come from them; it came from God. The single phrase, ‘We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’, enunciated a transfer of authority and power from the head of government to the citizen.” (07/04/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling
“As friends of freedom, our duty is to remind our fellow Americans what that Declaration of Independence really means — the ideals that it represents about free man, voluntary society, and limited government. The spirit of liberty still glows in America like dying embers in what was once a bright flame of freedom.” (07/03/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“I think we can all agree that talk about artificial intelligence (AI) is near-constant. And now we hear that OPENAI (the parent of ChatGPT) is offering 5% of its equity to the U.S. Government, valued at an estimated $40 billion. This is perhaps the most expensive bribe I’ve seen in U.S. history, as such a stake would help OPENAI ease up on political pressure and regulatory scrutiny. Talk about greasing the wheels, is Sam Altman that desperate?” (07/03/26)
“America was founded by drinkers, distillers, and maltmen whose consumption would be labeled problematic by today’s public health authorities.” (07/26)
“Hours before Iran’s national soccer team took the pitch in Seattle for its group-stage match against Egypt, the U.S. Central Command announced further strikes against the Islamic Republic. This sequence was without obvious precedent. A World Cup host nation had never bombed a participating country during the tournament. Fortunately, FIFA had already provided the punchline by awarding President Donald Trump the FIFA Peace Prize just over six months before the tournament’s opening kickoff. The scene is absurd, but the paradox is typically American. As we reflect on the anniversary of our independence, we may confront the fact that America has always struggled to reconcile words and deeds. We are an ambitious country littered with contradictions between the tales we tell ourselves and the actions that we take.” (07/03/26)
“The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. On repeated occasions, the current government has manipulated elections from which officials have assumed their offices. A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people. Its current president has allowed his subordinates to suggest a postponement of the constitutionally required date of a presidential election, a step unprecedented in United States history, even in times of war and civil rebellion. While doing so, he has suggested that no further national elections will be necessary.” [editor’s note: This began with a paraphrase of the actual D of I, and went downhill into this partisan from there – SAT](07/04/26)
