“One’s personal opinion of Omar’s character or her politics is immaterial. This is a serious assault on the constitutional order being carried out through the executive branch’s legal and bureaucratic machinery. Perhaps the reason that the public response is so tepid is that we have so long taken for granted—or simply no longer understand—just how fundamental the questions involved really are. This move strikes at some of the most elementary assumptions of a free and republican government, principles so basic that we scarcely imagined they would need defending: that political opposition is legitimate, that the executive cannot determine the composition of the legislature, and that citizenship is not a privilege held at the pleasure of those in power.” (10/15/26)
“A year and a half ago, the AI boom was still significantly smaller than the railroad boom of the late 1800s, as a percent of GDP. Now, there’s an active argument as to which one is bigger. This debate doesn’t really matter, because the basic message is just ‘Wow, it’s a lot of money.’ But it’s fun to look at the numbers people are throwing around.” (10/15/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“To get a government-issued license to practice law, one generally has to pass a state bar examination. The California bar exam is one of the hardest in the country to pass. That ensures that fewer people are able to secure law licenses. The notion is that a state-issued law license protects the public from incompetent and unethical lawyers. How’s that working out? It seems to me that there are lots of incompetent and unethical lawyers in every state of the United States. Why did the state issued licenses to them to practice law? In actuality, difficult bar exams and licensure requirements are nothing more than a protection racket.” (10/15/26)
“‘What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the Second Amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have healthcare?’ That is not a college activist. That is Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Michigan, talking into his own camera, on his own channel. And it is one of many videos that he quietly made private from his channel once he decided he wanted a seat in the world’s most powerful legislative body. A U.S. Senate nominee from one of the two major national parties, who has a legitimate chance to win, actively floated the idea of replacing the Second Amendment — not merely regulating it, which would be bad enough. This is not your typical anti-gun Democrat rhetoric. This is a dangerous and new precedent coming from far-left Democrats.” (10/15/26)
“The bad news for Republicans is that the last inflation report before the midterm elections showed that overall prices in September were nearly 4% higher than the same time last year, and gas prices specifically surged 34%. The good news is that Republican candidates, whose operating philosophy seems to be ‘eating is overrated,’ have President Donald Trump on the midterms campaign trail offering voters all kinds of free things. … With just under three weeks to go until the Nov. 3 midterms, and with polling looking horrendous for Republicans, possibly because everything is terrible, I have a suggestion for my fellow opportunistic voters: Hold out! Better bribes are coming. I don’t need a pardon (that I know of), I don’t for a second believe Trump will give me $5,000 after the election (I wasn’t born yesterday), and $90 or $500 bribes are for rubes and desperate ne’er-do-wells.” (10/15/26)
“In the Old South, what had mattered was blood and land. It was a quasi-feudal society where it was difficult to rise above the station you inherited, nearly impossible if you were black. And when the tension created by slavery in a nation founded on freedom became untenable, the Civil War broke out, and the South was crushed. The Union’s victory owed at least as much to economic superiority as military proficiency. Though it took roughly a century, transforming the Southern economy required replacing its agrarian, slave-based order with a more modern, freer, more diversified system. In Houston, the transformation was spurred by the oil industry. In Charlotte, it was banking. And in northwest Arkansas, it was retail, with Walmart founder Sam Walton becoming the richest person in the United States in 1982.” (10/15/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“When Xi Jinping departed Washington at the end of September, the verdict was already plain. Another carefully choreographed encounter produced a short extension of the trade truce, a modest $30 billion reciprocal tariff arrangement on non-sensitive goods, some coal purchases, an AI dialogue, and the familiar language of ‘constructive strategic stability.’ Ceremonial pomp, pandas, and mutual professions of personal friendship filled the space where real structural progress was absent. The outcome matched what I had advised readers to expect in the runup—namely, that the deeper frictions, technology controls, Taiwan, and Washington’s persistent urge to police Beijing’s commercial relationships, would remain unresolved. Having given things a chance to breathe, now is a good time to look at what has transpired since Xi and Trump’s meeting and to look to the road ahead.” (10/15/26)
“One of the great ironies of American politics is that Donald Trump won the 2024 election basically because a significant number of credulous voters believed his promises to bring prices down beginning on ‘day one.’ What actually happened was that America, along with the rest of the world, experienced a temporary surge in inflation in 2021-22, mainly because of the lingering effects of Covid disruptions. And voters still blamed Joe Biden for that surge. But by 2024 the war against inflation had been largely won, at startlingly low cost — the recession many analysts claimed would be necessary to get inflation down never happened, but inflation came way down anyway. And then Trump snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.” (10/15/26)
“The framework of combating drug trafficking serves as the United States’[s] primary mechanism for geopolitical control in the region. The recently announced ‘Plan Patriota Siglo XXI’–in which De la Espriella asks the United States to fund technology, radar systems, and cyberdefense and announces the resumption of aerial spraying, with Rubio leaving open the possibility of establishing a joint military base in Colombia—or the delivery of coast guard vessels to Ecuador, are not acts of philanthropy, but rather part of a circular business model designed by and for the U.S. military-industrial complex. The U.S. industrial complex reaps economic profits at the very moment its commercial establishments—authorized to sell weapons to the public—supply the cartels.” (10/15/26)
