“Digital ID is even more dangerous than photo ID, precisely because it further diminishes the cost of tyranny for the government. What about, as in China, attaching social-credit points to digital IDs to reward obedient citizens? There is always another good reason for Leviathan to increase its power and to make citizens believe that granting it is in their own individual interests. Some readers may question my mention of Leviathan. But I ask them to reflect on how the general power of the state has, despite the correction of injustices against some minorities, grown to the point where it seems nobody can stop it. The fact that more and more people support it for different reasons makes its growth more dangerous, not less.” (10/07/25)
“In 1999, the Supreme Court recognized in that the ”constitutional right to travel from one State to another’ is firmly embedded in our jurisprudence.’ Unless federal agents secretly disapprove of you, your beliefs, or your suspected connections. Or unless those agents are feeling ornery and simply want to harass or taunt hapless people passing through TSA Whole Body Scanners. The Transportation Security Administration has vexed Americans ever since it was created in 2002. Last week, three separate idiotic TSA surveillance programs were exposed by Congress and the Trump administration.” (10/07/25)
“NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is attracting growing attention as it threatens to spiral out of control. There is ample reason for concern. What began as a limited military assistance program to Kyiv from the United States and its European allies following Moscow’s expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has morphed into something much larger and more dangerous. NATO members are no longer just supplying Ukraine with weaponry that could arguably be described as purely defensive; they are equipping their Ukrainian proxy with far more destructive, long-range weapons capable of reaching targets deep inside Russia. In addition, the United States and other NATO governments are assisting Ukrainian attacks by providing crucial military intelligence, including targeting data. By engaging in that conduct, the United States is violating some informal but very real rules governing previous proxy wars that Washington has waged against adversaries.” (10/07/25)
“he reported death of US dollar dominance has been greatly exaggerated. The dollar’s demise has been repeatedly prophesied, supposedly threatened by any number of currencies including the euro, the yuan, and recent hints of a gold-backed currency from the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Will the US dollar maintain its global dominance? Is there a role for bitcoin in US policy?” (10/07/25)
“I know many people find discourse about ‘the groups’ — a conversation that I’m probably largely responsible for elevating — to be annoyingly vague and non-specific. But I worry that digging in too much on individual cases will create a misleading impression that some specific group is unusually influential or pernicious, when the relevant dynamic is quite general. The non-specific phrase ‘the groups’ is itself something that I picked up from talking to people who work on Capitol Hill. They often invoke the concept to explain Democratic Party decision-making, and they normally do it in precisely those terms — what matters is not one group (that’s easy to blow off) but a collective of groups who form a pseudo-consensus. Still, specifics can be illustrative.” (10/06/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Dave Maass & Rindala Alajaji
“New documents and court records obtained by EFF show that Texas deputies queried Flock Safety’s surveillance data in an abortion investigation, contradicting the narrative promoted by the company and the Johnson County Sheriff that she was ‘being searched for as a missing person,’ and that ‘it was about her safety.’ The new information shows that deputies had initiated a ‘death investigation’ of a ‘non-viable fetus’ …. Johnson County Sheriff Adam King repeatedly denied the automated license plate reader (ALPR) search was related to enforcing Texas’s abortion ban, and Flock Safety called media accounts ‘false,’ ‘misleading’ and ‘clickbait.’ However, according to a sworn affidavit by the lead detective, the case was in fact a death investigation in response to a report of an abortion, and deputies collected documentation of the abortion from the ‘reporting person,’ her alleged romantic partner.” (10/07/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“By now, it should be obvious to everyone that a nation cannot have drug laws and an immigration-control system and, at the same time, be considered to be a genuinely free society. Oh sure, people who are living under these two systems can convince themselves that they are living in a free society, but that’s totally different from actually living in a free society. The former, entailing a denial of reality, inevitably leads to psychosis, which can then lead to drug addiction, alcoholism, off-kilter killings, and even suicide, which are all major characteristics of modern-day American society.” (10/07/25)
“One strangely hot November afternoon, I waited for my elementary-school-aged kids to arrive at their bus stop. The quiet in our rural area was eerie. It captured the mood in the days after a national election that no one in my little community yet knew exactly how to respond to. In my rush out the door, I’d grabbed my baseball cap, with the logo for my preferred presidential candidate on it, to shield my eyes from the sun’s glare. The bus arrived and left. I collected my charges and, just as we were preparing to walk home, a tall young man leapt from the passenger seat of a battered Chevy pickup truck parked at the side of the road. He shook one sunburned finger at my hat and yelled, ‘Traitor! Traitor!’ his face red with rage, or possibly alcohol — who knew?” (10/07/25)
“Trump’s interest in the Insurrection Act is hardly new. He toyed with invoking the law in his first term. He was itching to use it to send in the military to crush the 2020 George Floyd uprisings but faced opposition at the time from then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. No such problem for the president with loyalist goon Pete Hegseth in the so-called secretary of war position. And Trump allies called on the president to invoke the law to illegally hold onto power after the 2020 election. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to use the Insurrection Act to suppress unrest and dissent. … In the Trumpist imagination — committed to the lie and/or delusion of a well-funded network of criminal leftists — no real pretext is required for a further collapsing of the police and military state.” (10/07/25)
“A great but unheralded feature of the One Big Beautiful Bill passed in July was an authorization for the Federal Communications Commission to raise $88 billion to $100 billion through electronic spectrum auctions. Selling this additional 600 to 800 megahertz of bandwidth to the private sector will enable the U.S. to expand 5G and even 6G technology, ensuring American dominance in internet, artificial intelligence and satellite technologies. President Donald Trump gets this …. Sen. Ted Cruz had proposed a spectrum deal twice as large: raising as much as $200 billion and creating a wireless ‘pipeline’ that would provide 5G reception and services to nearly all households and businesses.” (10/07/25)
