“Would it be possible, given the growing divide between the Red and Blue States from coast to coast, to go back more than 200 years, and come up with a new version of the Articles of Confederation? That was, after all, what the men in Philadelphia were supposed to do. Not replace the Articles with a ‘Constitution’ but improve them. Address the issues that were keeping things in an uproar? Today, we find that in the last 237 years, we’ve come up with a lot of ideas, techniques, that would let us address those issues while still restoring the full sovereignty that the 12 States had.” (10/15/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Jennifer Hernandez & Kristian Fors
“This report analyzes 498 appellate court decisions involving the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) from 2013 to 2023, finding that housing remains the leading target of CEQA litigation. It explores how CEQA has become a major obstacle to development in California and how various interest groups exploit the law to obstruct projects. It also offers recommendations for reform aimed at removing barriers to development, encouraging economic growth, and promoting greater prosperity in the Golden State.” (10/15/26)
“Executions open to the public, once a popular spectacle in early America, began to lose whatever moral purpose they once had nearly two centuries ago. The last legally sanctioned public execution in the United States was in 1936. And, as a sign of how sentiments have shifted, a monument was erected in Massachusetts just nine years ago to mark the site of the most famous public hangings: 19 people accused of witchcraft in 1692 Salem. This week, three TV news networks reported that the Trump White House is leaning against a plan by the Pentagon to livestream an execution – by firing squad on Dec. 3 – of an ex-Army major convicted of killing 13 people at a Texas military facility in 2009. Not only has airing such an official and gruesome act ignited bipartisan backlash in Congress, but House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance also say they would not watch the broadcast.” (10/14/26)
“China is not run as a centrally planned economy. It’s run like a fascist state, with party members working within businesses, only occasionally taking full control and ousting (even executing) owners and entrepreneurs and ‘uncooperative’ managers … when the State requires. Just as did the National Socialist Party during Germany’s ‘Third Reich’ period. As Peter Drucker sagely noticed, ‘Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.'” (10/15/26)
“Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump claimed to have discovered a previously unnoticed delegation of extensive tariff authority in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention import taxes and had never been used to impose them. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it. Last February, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all. But Trump had a backup plan: Hours after that decision, he announced another sweeping set of tariffs, this time relying on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that the new tariffs were illegal …. Trump then switched to Plan C, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act …” (10/15/26)
“Across the country, a curious trend is taking hold in the Democratic Party: The left has found God in politics. As Politico noted most recently, Democrats are running for Congress by leaning on their Christian bona fides. Democrats hope they have found the key to political salvation in states like Texas. However, as Democratic candidates like Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico campaign on their religious credentials, the result has been to insert faith into the broader political debate, which now includes questions ranging from the gender of God to whether Christians have to believe that Jesus actually existed. The rival views on Christianity by Talarico and his Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, are now being debated by voters. Republicans have long emphasized faith-based politics, and the new Democratic shift has created arguably the most religious-themed election season in modern history.” (10/15/26)
“Civics centers, teaching civic and classical education through ‘Western civ’ and great books, are often described as conservative enterprises. In a strong sense, this is manifestly false, because they are, at least in my personal experience, entirely free from political litmus tests. Yet there is a sense in which there is an essential ‘small-c’ conservative element to civic and classical education, as there must be in all liberal learning (the appropriate term for such education). As Michael Oakeshott once put it, ‘Every human being is born as an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.'” (10/15/26)
“While the proposed Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies dated August 2026 (hereafter the ‘proposed standards’) contain some improvements over the December 2022 standards currently in use, many major problems remain.” (10/15/26)
“Fossil fuels are an economic liability, and not just because of the war in Iran. Rising energy costs were a major driver of the hotter-than-expected US inflation figures reported yesterday. This fact won’t surprise anyone reading this newsletter. Still, the numbers are pretty astonishing: Behind an overall gain of 3.7% across all goods and services in the past 12 months, gasoline prices are up 34.2%, and fuel oil prices (relevant mostly for home heating) are up 74.2%. The proximal cause is the war, of course, and the figures cement that US President Donald Trump has by now run out of time to change the picture ahead of the midterm election. But the broader takeaway here is that the inherent volatility of oil and gas prices is a persistent vulnerability in the US economy that can only be solved by limiting exposure to these energy sources.” (10/15/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It says so much about how diseased our society has become that the most revered and respected among us are emotionally stunted man-babies who have used monopolistic thuggishness and trickery to become billionaires. Bezos. Musk. Thiel. Altman. Ellison. These neurotic freaks have no redeeming characteristics and nothing going for them as people beyond a knack for extracting wealth from the working class, and yet they’re the ones calling the shots for the trajectory our species is going to follow into the future. They’re the ones making headlines and receiving groveling softball interviews from sycophantic reporters and podcasters. They’re the ones our warped civilization points to as role models we should all strive to be like. These men are not wise. They don’t know how to live happy lives. They are ideologically opposed to providing for the common good of everyone.” (10/15/26)
