“It’s pretty clear what the TV screen caption should have read as the Donald expectorated a veritable shower of bully boy phlegm and sputum at the White House cameras last night: ‘Attention JD Vance – activate the 25th Amendment now, POTUS has gone full retard into veritable delusionary madness.’ That’s right. There was hardly a sentence in the speech that accords with reality in any way shape or form. Not even remotely. … The yawning disconnect with reality, however, was probably best revealed by Trump’s utterly ludicrous contention that that if he had not cancelled Obama’s JCPOA in May 2018 Iran would have nuked the entire middle east and Israel into oblivion by now.” (04/06/26)
“Iran is not some fragile backwater that will crumble under the weight of American bombs. It is a civilization state with thousands of years of continuous existence, a population of ninety million people, and a geography of mountains, deserts, and underground fortifications specifically designed to resist foreign subjugation. The notion that air power alone can decapitate its leadership, destroy its infrastructure, and produce regime change represents a fantasy that scholars have debunked repeatedly over the past century. Yet here we are, over a month into Operation Epic Fury, watching Washington learn these lessons the hard way.” (04/06/26)
“We must all confront Israel, but we must also confront this toxic runoff along with it and we must confront them both simultaneously with the weapon of history. The Jews are not the problem here, Zionism is, and Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with Judaism or the Semitic people. In fact, Zionism is really just another malignant cell of white supremacy, and it has long disdained both Judaism and most people of Semitic de[s]cent. Zionism emerged from central and eastern Europe during the mid-19th century as a distinctly secular strain of the same European national swamp that would fester into fascism and national socialism, and it caried many of the same characteristics too; devotion to such toxically contrived notions as ‘blood and soil’ and scientific racism, not to mention a pronounced disdain for the east, including the Jews who once closely identified with it.” (04/05/26)
“‘Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.’ Those words from Chief Justice John Roberts during this week’s oral arguments signaled that the conservative justices are unlikely to reject birthright citizenship. Of course, nothing is certain until this summer when the Court issues its opinion in Trump v. Barbara. However, we need to consider the need for a 28th Amendment to reaffirm [sic] the meaning of citizenship. As some of us stressed before the oral argument, the odds were against the administration prevailing in the case, given more than a century of countervailing precedent. There are good-faith arguments against reading the 14th Amendment as supporting citizenship for any child born in this country.” [editor’s note: Yes, it is POSSIBLE to be constitutionally and historically illiterate and therefore believe nonsense “in good faith.” But it’s an odd admission for Turley to make – TLK] (04/06/26)
“On Thursday morning, I sat down with one of my chatbots and asked it to round up the best takes on a recent social media controversy. The results were unsatisfying — hallucinations, apologies and search results that weren’t what I’d asked for. After several prompts and corrections, the chatbot seemed to give up. Shortly thereafter, so did I. Fortunately, I was intimately familiar with this controversy, since I touched it off. In social media parlance, I was ‘the main character,’ so I already had plenty of raw material and could see how badly ChatGPT had failed. But if you’re hoping for a column on why artificial intelligence is useless, I regret to disappoint.” (04/05/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“‘Strong, if not perfect’ was European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s verdict on the trade deal hammered out between the United States and the European Union (EU) and signed at Turnberry, Scotland, in July 2025. Nothing is perfect, of course — but the carefully hedged endorsement has appeared increasingly prophetic as the deal overcame hurdles and was finally voted through by the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee on March 19, 2026, by 29 votes to 9, and by the wider Parliament on March 26, by 417 votes to 154. The road to passing was not a smooth one.” (04/05/26)
“The taxi judders uphill into a forest brimming with life. Palm fronds droop over the road like huge, oily hands, and green birds flap between trees. And then, abruptly, the forest ends, and we emerge onto a denuded plain where the sun beats down on road and car and red dust. I am here to see firsthand how the ultra-rich are remapping the Earth’s remaining wild places, deciding what is sacrificed and what is conserved and for whom. For me, this road into the Brazilian Amazon began a few weeks prior and nearly 5,000 miles away, on a different dirt road through a sprawling Montana ranch. I had followed that county road up through creek bottoms onto a rolling plateau of rangeland, where the southern front of the Crazy Mountains filled the windshield. I stopped the truck and stepped out into the quiet.” (04/06/26)
“The ‘just war’ theologian understood that force must be governed by prudence, reckoning with second and third order effects. We didn’t do that in Iraq, or now.” (04/05/26)
