“President Donald Trump’s renewed trade-war threats to China can only be the beginning of America’s answer [sic] to Beijing’s rare-earths power-play: Washington needs to reverse the Clinton-era clampdown on US mining, which leaves our country needlessly dependent on the goodwill of the Chinese Communist Party for crucial raw materials. Beijing is moving to restrict export of rare earths and hi-tech products made from them, including batteries, semiconductors and advanced magnet-based technologies. Trump rightly calls that a threat to throttle the entire global economy. Yet China only has this power because we allow [sic] it. The United States and its allies have ample supplies of everything China seems to monopolize; it’s simply a matter of restoring a US mining industry that actually led the world as recently as the early 1990s.” (10/12/25)
“Sometimes it really is as simple as good vs. evil. This is one of those times. Human virtue is our great crime against the fascist project; it’s also our great weapon against it.” (10/12/25)
“One of the funniest types of people I meet in political circles is the person who takes all sorts of cheap partisan positions, then suddenly invokes some Deep Principle on a matter – as if any of us believe that person to be motivated by a consistent political philosophy. As confirmation of their cynicism, you’ll find the ‘principle’ always aligns with their partisan interest. You’ll see many office-holding Republicans take that transparent tack these days, as they declare the evils of Proposition 50, the temporary mid-decade redistricting proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot. Pick almost any state GOP official and you’ll find some overheated statement about why the Democrats’ hastily drawn proposed new maps rig congressional races and undermine the initiative that created an independent redistricting commission for Congress. And they won’t be wrong. But [there] are some points you won’t hear from them …” (10/12/25)
“The GOP has declared war against trans people in this country in nearly every manner conceivable. For five straight years these police state bulls have broken the last year’s record for the sheer volume of bloated, big government, anti-trans legislation they’ve pushed forward. Sadly, 2025 is looking likely to break the record again …. The first, passed just days after that orange child molester crept back into the Oval Office, set the tone by proclaiming that transgender people simply do not exist and that the federal government officially rejects our existence by declaring there to be only two immutable gender identities defined exclusively by government documents taken at birth, a position flatly rejected by every major medical and scientific body on the planet.” (10/12/25)
Source: The American Prospect
by David Sirota & Jared Jacang Maher
“In 1971, future United States Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell was alarmed. The forces he believed were threatening corporate America (consumer advocates, labor unions, environmentalists, and left-wing radicals) appeared to be gaining momentum. At the center of this movement was a 37-year-old legal crusader named Ralph Nader, whose name had become synonymous with holding corporations accountable. Nader wasn’t just a thorn in the side of big business; he was a bona fide celebrity. Whether he was suing General Motors for concealing auto defects or exposing deceptive advertising practices, Nader dominated headlines, shining a spotlight on corporate misconduct and government corruption. Nader’s crusade for corporate accountability was capturing the public imagination.” [editor’s note: While shorting the stocks of companies he was about to attack – TLK] (10/13/25)
“The American Revolution kicked off in 1761 with a single principle from James Otis Jr.: an unconstitutional law is NO LAW AT ALL. Any government act exceeding its legitimate authority is void the moment it is passed. It has no more legal power than a law passed by a foreign government. Call it what it is: usurpation, a theft of power. And stolen power is not to be obeyed, it is to be resisted.” (10/12/25)
“[T]here’s zero doubt whose shutdown this is. The Republicans control the White House. The Republicans control the US House of Representatives. The Republicans control the Senate, and as recently as last month, they’ve shown they’re willing to use the ‘nuclear option’ to get things done by majority, instead of super-majority, vote. The US government is (partially and cosmetically) shut down because the Republicans want it that way. The shutdown will end when the Republicans want it to end. It’s theirs. They own it. They (especially Trump) would look a lot better leaning into that ownership than they sound with their 24/7 whining about the Democrats.” (10/11/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“On June 14, the House of Representatives passed a bill to automate the already mandatory registration of every male required to do so. The Senate is currently (July 10) working on a different version of the bill that requires women to register as well. Registration is not conscription itself, of course, but it is a prerequisite and often a harbinger of one. … Unfortunately, most debates about conscription today revolve around circumstantial matters, such as reaching recruitment goals, or around peripheral social controversies, such as drafting women. It didn’t used to be this way. In the mid-20th century, a remarkable decade of philosophical and moral debate about conscription occurred inside and outside of Congress. Within the House, no voice rang clearer on this issue than the four-term Representative Howard Buffett (1903–1964), to whom the iconic libertarian Murray Rothbard looked up in admiration.” (10/10/25)
“[Khalilah] Few graduated from beauty school in 2012 and in 2023 opened her own salon. Seeking to relocate, she invested more than $30,000 in renovating and renting a space that had previously been a barbershop. When in May this year she applied for a permit, she assumed approval would be perfunctory. In July, however, she was denied a permit for two reasons, one unintelligible, the other unconstitutional.” (10/10/25)
“Since the government partial shutdown began, we’ve been seeing panicked headlines about states being denied federal money for promised or already-started energy and infrastructure projects. Other sorts of subsidies are also in jeopardy. You’d think that not getting money from Washington was the worst thing that could happen. Oh my goodness, federalism might be breaking out! … It’s a good time to remember, or realize for the first time, that throughout the 20th century, American classical liberals, or libertarians, warned of the dangers of national funding for every sort of thing. ” (10/10/250
