Source: Antiwar.com
by Jon Reynolds
“American bombs are now falling on Tehran, and while Donald Trump ultimately pulled the trigger, administrations before him – Republican and Democrat alike – constructed the gun, and even loaded it.” (03/06/26)
Source: In These Times
by Alberto Toscano
“The war Israel and the United States launched against Iran on February 28, with the ‘decapitation’ of the country’s leadership and the bombardment of hundreds of military and civilian sites (including a girls’ school in Minab where at least 165 children and staff were massacred), has quickly transformed into a regional conflagration with incalculable consequences. While already weakened by the Israeli-U.S. ’12-Day War’ in June 2025 (which President Donald Trump declared had ’obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear capabilities) and despised by many Iranians for its murderous repression of civilian protest, the Iranian regime has not yet been undermined by the loss of key government figures, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the minister of defense and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).” (03/06/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/axis-of-chaos-us-israel-war-on-iran-middle-east
Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher
“The dubious claim that Trump mastered ‘The Art of the Deal’ has long been central to his hyper-successful billionaire persona. … However, as president, on May 8, 2018, Trump abandoned his mend-it-don’t-end-it position and withdrew from the Iran deal, despite Tehran’s compliance, according to international inspectors. To salvage his dealmaker reputation, two days later on Twitter, he glibly announced plans for a summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. A bromance between the two blossomed, producing a slapdash agreement that did nothing to contain North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal. Later that year, Trump reopened trade talks with Canada and Mexico and supplanted the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement. The new trade deal was only marginally different, but it was Trump’s.” (03/06/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/03/06/with-iran-obama-displayed-the-art-of-the-deal-trump-didnt/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Christopher J Scalia
“In The Coast of Utopia, the late English playwright Tom Stoppard tackled revolutionary determinism through the tragic figure of Alexander Herzen.” (03/06/26)
Source: The Dispatch
by Ilya Somin
“The large-scale U.S. military attack on Iran (undertaken in collaboration with Israel) is blatantly unconstitutional, even if its wisdom and morality are more debatable. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to declare war. One can debate the extent to which presidents can initiate relatively small-scale military actions, and such debates have raged for decades. But this attack is obviously large enough to qualify as a war. Thus, it just as obviously requires congressional authorization. President Donald Trump got no such authorization, nor did he even try. You need not take my word for the proposition that this is a war. Take Trump’s own. He himself has called it a war, and proclaimed that the objective is regime change.” (03/05/26)
https://thedispatch.com/debates/donald-trump-iran-war-constitution-congress/
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L. Knapp
“In The Joy of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defines chutzpah as ‘that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.’ Ladies and gentlemen, meet US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).” (03/05/26)
Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz
“There’s no AI doomer who wants China to get the jump on the US when it comes to AI supremacy. At least that I’m aware of. So why did they all either support or remain silent about a guy who is leading a movement that seems Hell-bent on giving China that lead? Explain it to me like I’m five, guys who get paid half a million dollars a year to write about AI for a general audience? Surely I am not the dumbest of the people you need to convince. What does a country need for AI supremacy? 1. A thriving economy 2. World-class talent 3. State-of-the-art technology … The Trump admin is actively taking a giant dookie on all three of America’s advantages in the AI arms race.” (03/05/26)
https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/maga-is-shitting-on-our-ai-lead
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andrew P Napolitano
“Over the past weekend, some apologists for President Donald Trump’s recently ordered attacks on Iran argued that because Trump’s plans call for a quick strike, the attacks do not constitute a war. George Orwell is vindicated yet again. These apologists believe that calling a war something else means it is not a war, and so moral and constitutional justifications are unnecessary. No rational observer looking at 2,000-pound bombs being dropped on military targets and thousands of missiles being fired indiscriminately at both civilians and military personnel in Iran can conclude that these events constitute anything but a war. That recognition triggers a series of analyses — moral, constitutional and legal.” (03/05/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2026/03/04/trumps-unjust-and-unconstitutional-war
Source: The UnPopulist
by Berny Belvedere
“JD Vance embodies MAGA’s corrosiveness. His wife, Usha, is the daughter of immigrants and a practicing Hindu. They have mixed-race children and a mixed-religion family. As Dalmia noted, Vance’s trajectory should have led him to embrace a Reaganesque vision of a shining city on a hill — his biographical background and intellectual formation should have made him a natural fit for a responsible conservatism that treats pluralism as a feature rather than a threat. Instead, Vance has gone in the complete opposite direction. He is positioning himself as the leading figure in an administration mercilessly kicking out of the country people like his wife and children by trying to build a coalition represented by every faction of the neo-right, no matter how reactionary.” (03/05/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/vance-puts-maga-ideology-above-all
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave one of his signature ‘I don’t have a small penis’ tirades at the Pentagon on Wednesday, ranting and raving about the big, powerful, masculine war machinery that’s currently raining death and destruction upon the people of Iran. ‘We will fly all day, all night, day and night finding, fixing and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military, finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC, Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over,’ Hegseth bloviated, saying there will be ‘B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long.'” (03/06/26)