“One event I’ve participated in a few times is a 10k race called the Cooper River Bridge Run, in Charleston, South Carolina. When going, I’ve made an effort to try to prep for the run, to try to beat my time from the previous run. (Most recent result, for the 2021 race, was 41:25, better than any of my previous attempts. Hurray!) If someone showed me a massive and time-consuming training program that would improve my run time by 10%, it wouldn’t be worth it to me to take up. My goals about beating my previous times were about little more than flattering my personal vanity – and while I’m willing to pay some price to do that, the margin closes pretty quickly. But the person who comes first place in the run also wins a cash prize of $10,000.” (03/18/25)
“Last week, Georgia’s state legislature declined once more to take up the legalization of sports betting as a ballot referendum in 2025. Georgians will now have to wait until 2026 for the measure to be reconsidered, despite polling from the University of Georgia showing that 63% of voters would have backed legalization. Across the country, 39 states have legalized the practice and nine holdouts remain …. And yet, sports betting is still practiced in staggering numbers in every state. A new report from NEXT/Blask shows that Bovada, a betting site based in Costa Rica, dwarfs the brand strength and earnings of regulated U.S.-based brands such as FanDuel and DraftKings. The rise in offshore sports betting, far from any U.S. jurisdiction, should be concerning for both advocates and opponents of this particular type of gambling.” (03/18/25)
“Alex Karp, the CEO of the controversial military tech firm Palantir, is the coauthor of a new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. In it, he calls for a renewed sense of national purpose and even greater cooperation between government and the tech sector. His book is, in fact, not just an account of how to spur technological innovation, but a distinctly ideological tract. As a start, Karp roundly criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on consumer-oriented products and events like video-sharing apps, online shopping, and social media platforms, which he dismisses as ‘the narrow and the trivial.’ His focus instead is on what he likes to think of as innovative big-tech projects of greater social and political consequence.” (03/18/25)
“Last September, under pressure from the Turkish government, Netflix agreed to release one of its new series only in Greece and Cyprus. Famagusta depicts the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The protagonists of the series — a co-production between Greek and Cypriot companies — are Greek Cypriots, and the show is broadly sympathetic to them. Turkish officials insisted that Famagusta was nothing more than pro-Greek propaganda and began a campaign to prevent global audiences from watching it. … Netflix’s decision was met with little furor outside of the Greek press, and the company did not respond to Foreign Policy’s request for comment about the move. It was part of a long-standing pattern of successful Turkish censorship of content that depicts either Turkish or Ottoman history in a negative light. Turkey not only blocks the release of such content domestically — but has maneuvered to do so abroad, as well.” (03/18/25)
“Think the American Revolution was just about taxes, tea parties, and representation? Think again. The real conflict wasn’t about a few policies. It was about power – a British claim to unlimited, centralized power ‘in all cases whatsoever.’ James Madison later called this the ‘fundamental principle’ on which independence itself was declared. And he was far from alone. John Hancock, Thomas Paine, John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and many others all agreed. Yet, you won’t hear about this in government-run schools. Because teaching the truth means exposing the real problem: unlimited, centralized power.” (03/18/25)
“In January, Gaza took its first tenuous breath of stillness in more than a year. It is a moment of clarity, a reminder that our work is far from done. For the student movement, this is a call to recalibrate and push forward. We cannot mistake temporary stillness for resolution, nor recognition for accomplishment. Nothing short of full liberation can be our goal. By now, you know that universities have nothing to offer us but spectacle and scorn. The U.S. ruling class has spent decades perfecting its support of Zionism, with universities as central pipelines for research, propaganda and profit. For 467 days, while every university in Gaza was reduced to rubble and its hospitals were running out of room for the dead, U.S. higher education upheld these partnerships with military contractors, surveillance tech firms and Zionist think tanks disguised as cultural exchange programs.” (03/17/25)
“The ability of a single federal judge to block government action nationwide — let alone a president’s exercise of foreign policy — is not well established. It was a rare occurrence before Trump’s first term. Chief Justice John Roberts has frequently expressed concern with the ‘institutional legitimacy’ of the federal judiciary. At times that’s seemed limited to gaining the approval of the editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. But he may need to consider what the rest of America thinks, lest he wind up on the 20% side of an 80/20 issue — an awkward place to be when you’re concerned about legitimacy.” (03/17/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“President Trump’s vicious and malicious rendition of immigrants to El Salvador is just one more reminder of what America’s immigration-control system is doing to our nation and to the values on which our nation was founded. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be deprived of his liberty without due process of law. Due process of law is a term that stretches all the way back to Magna Carta, when the great barons of England forced their king, at the point of a sword, to acknowledge that his powers over people were limited, not omnipotent.” (03/18/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Israel resumed its genocidal campaign of annihilation in Gaza early Tuesday morning, killing hundreds in a matter of hours, including many children. As of this writing, the death toll from this assault is reportedly at least 413. Israel is not even pretending that Hamas violated the ceasefire agreement it signed on to in January, saying instead that the decision to resume the onslaught was made because Hamas had been rejecting a significantly altered new agreement put forward by the Trump administration which would have allowed Israel to postpone moving toward a lasting peace. ‘This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators,’ reads a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” (03/18/25)
