“The Club refused to serve my friend liver cooked pink, even though that is what most chefs recommend. There are quite a few examples where official food-safety regulations or government advice have conflicted with culinary preference or tradition. For decades, UK government advice (after the 1988 salmonella scare) was to fully cook eggs until both white and yolk were solid. This meant no soft-boiled eggs, hollandaise, mayonnaise made with raw yolks, etc. No dipping bread soldiers into runny egg yolks. Only after the introduction of the British Lion mark scheme in the 1990s, and updated guidance in 2017, did the FSA relax the advice for most people. … Officialdom wastes a great deal of paper and huge sums of official salaries to prevent us having our food the way we like it. I know the risks, and I don’t need prodnoses to insist on spoiling it for me.” (10/23/25)
Source: Law & Liberty
by Clifford Angell Bates Jr.
“As America teeters on the brink of its 250th anniversary as a sovereign republic in 2026, a fog of uncertainty shrouds the true meaning of freedom, rights too often reduced to slogans amid partisan strife. Counterintuitively, the surest path to clarity lies not in our revolutionary origins but in peering back at our mother country’s ancient constitutional tapestry. There, the British constitutional historian David Starkey emerges as a Virgil-like sage, charting England’s republican-monarchical tradition. As we approach the anniversary of our independence, it is worth revisiting his analysis of how the English ‘crowned republic’ — a monarchy tempered by communal consent—seeded American ideals of limited government, sidestepping the Puritan radicals’ chaotic bid to dismantle the throne altogether.” (10/23/25)
“A standing rule among broadcast professionals is to never minimize or mock domestic violence. Over 10 million incidents of domestic abuse are believed to occur annually, with victims seeking help less than 40% of the time. It is also common knowledge among broadcasters that every program that calls serious attention to domestic violence elicits responses from many victims, some of whom seek help. To minimize or mock abuse is to add to the burden of the victims desperately trying to figure out an exit from their peril. … After former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared on the most recent episode of ‘I’ve Had It,’ — titled ‘The Devil Wears MAGA’ — backlash erupted, because there are still some unwritten rules, and Psaki violated the one that concerns domestic abuse by asserting she was worried that second lady Usha Vance was a victim of abuse.” (10/23/25)
“I attended the downtown local No Kings Day festivities in Northampton, Massachusetts, and estimate that some 1,500 people came out. I liked the crowds but the character and will of the people rather collided with the self-serving ambitions of Democratic Party speakers who hogged microphones that might have been given to ordinary people. The potential for a spontaneous, free flowing expression of public feeling remained unrealized. What does No Kings Day represent? How does a loosely affiliated collection of organizations achieve a viable identity, a sense of unity and a vision that goes beyond a mutual feeling that we ought to do something (anything!) as fascist momentum gathers in all its ugly certainty? If it were up to me I would not have any public speeches at No Kings Day delivered by Democratic Party office holders.” (10/23/25)
“There is a scene in Arrested Development in which a psychotherapist and his wife are experiencing a rough patch in their marriage and contemplate whether an open relationship would help. The therapist, Tobias Fünke, notes that the approach never works and couples merely delude themselves into thinking it will … before abruptly concluding that they might be the exception to the rule. In unrelated news, the Department of Energy has announced that it will take a 5 percent stake in Thacker Pass, a new lithium mine in Nevada, in exchange for government loan guarantees.” (10/23/25)
“It is hard to believe that U.S. and other Western officials actually are surprised at the consequences of their habitually tone-deaf policies toward Russia. Are they truly shocked that a major power, already humiliated by its defeat in the Cold War, resented having the most powerful military alliance in history steadily expand toward its borders? One need only look at a current map and compare it to a map of Eastern Europe in 1990 at the time of Germany’s reunification to see the geographic extent of NATO’s expanded military power. The encroachment on Russia’s core security zone is blatant. Yet, U.S. leaders in five administrations ignored repeated, escalating admonitions and warnings from Moscow as those provocations took place. The culmination – so far – of such policy arrogance and ineptitude is a dangerous proxy war between NATO and Russia, with NATO using Ukraine as its principal weapon.” (10/23/25)
“After decades in the diplomatic shadows, Cairo is leveraging its old alliances and new pragmatism to position itself between America, Israel, and Tehran.” (10/23/25)
“President Milei is not a career politician. He is a professor of economics who has thoroughly mastered his field and who, at a certain point, came into contact with the Austrian School of Economics. He has often explained how that encounter meant a radical change in his academic life. As he has also recounted on various occasions, that contact came through an article he devoured in a state of ‘febrile excitement’ written by Rothbard, which explains the Austrian theory of the market, monopoly and competition.” (10/23/25)
“‘The First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting free speech,’ explained Michael J. Reitz in The Detroit News. But what about individuals and non-government groups? ‘Free speech doesn’t compel you to listen. You can walk away,’ Mr. Reitz goes on to say. In the piece, reprinted by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Reitz wonders, however, whether this ‘agree to disagree’ attitude is enough to keep free speech alive.” (10/23/25)
