“I’ve spent more than two-thirds of a century (since 1958) at American universities. Never in all those years has their earned and deserved reputation as the best in the world suffered bigger threats than today. U.S. colleges and universities not only have behaved abysmally, but they’re now paying a high price for showing contempt for the prevailing values of the public that sustains them. … Can and will universities be saved, overcoming this crisis? Not without some serious behavioral modification.” (01/29/26)
“The libertarian position on driver’s licenses, on drunk driving, on human-driven cars, on speed limits, and every other road rule is the same as it has always been: privatize the roads and let private road owners make their own rules. If one is asked ‘What shall the government do if privatization is off the table,’ the answer is ‘Libertarian principle does not mandate a particular second-best solution, only that the right thing to do is complete privatization.’ If road privatization is thought to be undesirable for whatever reason, then that is understandable — but then the person with this position is simply not a libertarian on this question.” (01/29/26)
“Since Donald Trump took office in 2025, ICE has murdered at least 34 people in the U.S. It has deported 623,900 people. Those are not negligible numbers. They are the beginning – mark that, the beginning – of the ethnic cleansing of America. They are the first shot across the bow of any contraption or conglomeration that might oppose shipping nonwhites out of country. There are 68 million Hispanics in the U.S., and it’s safe to say that Scharfuhrer Stephen Miller wants to deport them all. Will Trump’s henchmen limit their ambitions to Hispanics? I doubt it.” (01/29/26)
“MAGA is committed to the belief that the people ICE is pursuing are inherently bad and that therefore opposing ICE is standing with criminals and rapists against the American people.” (01/29/26)
“The world can be an ugly place, and Washington sometimes faces terrible choices. However, the U.S. president possesses neither the moral nor legal authority to wander the globe randomly imposing his will and killing anyone in the way. Someone claiming to be a peacemaker should stop irresponsibly visiting death and destruction upon other people. Even in Venezuela.” (01/29/26)
“Different families have different educational needs. Scholarship tax credits can help many struggling Kentucky students succeed. While the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act created the opportunity for these scholarships, each state must opt into the program each year. House Bill 88 could begin Kentucky’s process for adopting a more-robust form of educational freedom for low-to-middle income families. Here are some upsides for families of a scholarship tax credit program that Kentucky lawmakers might adopt this year.” (01/29/26)
“[E]scalating and using vile rhetoric is guaranteed to make things worse. It can also fire up one’s political base and raise money. On this latter point, I have two stories. One involved a pastor of a large Florida church who had decided to dabble in politics. He told me of the criticism he had received for sending out so many negative letters about how he saw the condition of the country. He decided to try a positive letter and described the response this way: ‘No one sent any money.’ … You might make money and shore up your base by denouncing others and using foul language, but the result is a deeper and wider divide and a hatred of fellow Americans.” (01/29/26)
“On Monday India and the European Union concluded negotiations on a breakthrough free trade agreement. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission — the EU’s executive branch — called it ‘the mother of all deals.’ That description is somewhat over the top. Yet the agreement is in fact historic and important in ways that go beyond economics. For it shows that the world is becoming ever more estranged from an erratic, abusive United States. In other words, other countries are moving, step by step, toward an economic divorce from America.” (01/29/26)
“In Bill Cotter’s beloved children’s book series, Don’t Push the Button! a mischievous monster named Larry presents young readers with a tantalizing big red button, sternly warning them not to press it. Of course, the allure proves too strong for toddlers, who gleefully ignore the advice, unleashing a cascade of silly chaos – turning Larry into a polka-dotted elephant or summoning a horde of dancing bananas. The books’ humor lies in the predictable disobedience, but the underlying lesson is clear: some temptations are simply too powerful to resist.” (01/29/26)
