“Orwell’s novel ends with a development that, at the time, had no parallels in Soviet reality: The pigs adopt human ways, from sleeping in beds to drinking alcohol and finally wearing clothes and walking upright. … Orwell, a democratic socialist, thus seems to be envisioning a scenario in which the Soviet regime evolves into a state capitalist oligarchy and drops its Communist trappings. That never came true — or did it? Not quite in the way it happens in Animal Farm; but, after the fall of the Soviet Union and a brief democratic interlude, that’s pretty much where things have ended up.” (09/26/25)
“President Donald Trump recently ordered his attorney general to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, and tonight, the Department of Justice delivered an indictment of Comey for lying to Congress. Comey, for his part, insists on his innocence. But the charges against Comey are not just about the president’s abuse of his power for personal retribution. They represent a test of the president’s plans for the future.” (09/26/25)
“In June of 2017 I wrote, ‘I’m old enough to remember when ‘violent rhetoric’ was the root of all our problems, and crosshairs on a website no one ever saw was the reason for mass murder.’ It was in a piece entitled, ‘The Left Won’t Rest Until Someone Gets Killed.’ I wrote about how Democrats ‘are stoking fears to the point that even the casual observer is left with the impression they’re hoping someone ‘corrects’ that accident. How else can one interpret the left’s continual equating of the president to Adolf Hitler?’ … I’m no soothsayer – if I had the ability to see into the future I would have won the lottery multiple times by now – but it doesn’t take someone clairvoyant to see that the road Democrats have been marching down for years was going to end in death and destruction. Well, here we are, and it has only just begun.” (09/28/25)
“Trump fibbed when he signed his first executive order in January, the one that promised never to repeat the Biden-era barriers to free speech. Everyone knows this by now. FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) summed it up well, yet only scratched the surface: ‘We cannot be a country where late night talk show hosts serve at the pleasure of the president.’ The Maestro dislikes being criticized, and he regularly displays his willingness to use government power to get revenge.” (09/26/25)
“In February, Tina Allgeo was indicted on charges of murdering Mihail Tsvetkov in what the Orlando Sentinel called ‘a road-rage incident that escalated and turned deadly.’ ‘Gun violence stemming from senseless disputes will not be tolerated,’ the paper quoted State Attorney Monique Worrell. The Sentinel provides more details in a September 8 report about how Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, is demanding that Worrell drop the case since Allgeo was clearly defending her own life when she shot Tsvetkov.” (09/26/25)
“After the tear gas dispersed just enough to breathe, and street medics had flushed several people’s eyes with water, the hundreds protesting in Broadview on Friday morning — like they have regularly for weeks — did not go home and came back together in the street that runs perpendicular to the ICE detention center. They held signs high above their heads reading ’Migration Is Sacred’ and ‘Protect Our Neighbors.’ Some had red, puffy eyes. Others were coughing. But the crowd was determined, even defiant, and dozens started chanting and repeating: ‘I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win!’ It was a remarkable sentiment for the group who gathered early in the morning September 26 to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the agents who have detained hundreds of people in Chicagoland since the September 8 rollout of ’Operation Midway Blitz.'” (09/26/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Anatol Lieven
“The Russian fighters that briefly entered Estonian airspace last Friday and the drones that flew into Polish and Romanian airspace earlier are very unlikely to have been an accident, but they were not an ‘attack.’ The drones were unarmed decoys, nobody was hurt, and the only damage was done when one was shot down by Polish air defenses. They may have been intended as a test of those defenses; they were almost certainly intended as a warning — a warning above all against British and European plans to deploy a ‘reassurance force’ to Ukraine after a peace settlement. This has been repeatedly and categorically rejected by the Russian government, but continues to be urged by some European governments with a blind determination that suggests that, rather than making a contribution to peace, they are actually interested in blocking any viable peace settlement.” (09/26/25)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“September is Constitution Month, a celebration of the document produced by the 1787 Convention to replace the Articles of Confederation. Predictably, whether Republican or Democrat, there was no shortage of public effusions in its praise. Even libertarians, inheritors of the tradition of classical liberalism, are inclined to celebrate. This is, however, a mistake. For it was precisely their faith in constitutionalism that proved its great undoing. Indeed, the tragedy of classical liberalism is not simply that it was betrayed by later generations, or that its ideals were corrupted by progressives. Its failure was more profound: it trusted the state to limit itself.” (09/25/25)
“‘The White House budget office,’ CNN reports, ‘is telling federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings in the event of a government shutdown’ …. The headline characterizes Trump’s latest move as a ‘threat’ intended to encourage Democrats to capitulate, and dissident Republicans to get back on side, in the latest fight over government spending. Threat? Maybe to Democrats who can’t bear the thought of any reduction, in any government function, ever. Maybe to Republicans who have pet programs they know would be affected by ‘reductions in force.’ The rest of us should reply as Br’er Rabbit did to Br’er Fox’s threat to cook him and eat him: ‘Oh, Br’er Fox, I don’t care what you do with me, so long as you just don’t throw me in that briar patch over there.'” (09/25/25)
