“A top Pentagon official attempted to argue during a US Senate hearing on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran, which has included a massive bombing campaign and explicit calls from the president to topple and reshape the country’s government, does not constitute ‘interventionism’, ‘regime change’, ‘nation-building’, or ‘endless war’. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) started her questioning of Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s under secretary of defense for policy, by quoting from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s summary of his department’s 2026 National Defense Strategy, under which he said the Pentagon would no longer ‘be distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation-building.'” (03/03/26)
“The capture of Nicolas Maduro in January 2025 and elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran in theory might have sounded like relatively low-cost endeavors to eliminate pesky U.S. adversaries and Chinese/Russian partners from the Western hemisphere and from the Middle East. By eliminating the person at the top, the theory probably went, the U.S. could deal a decisive blow without having to commit to nation building afterward. Fans of The Sopranos might call it the Phil Leotardo Doctrine, after Tony Soprano’s final antagonist during the show’s run — the boss of the New York crime family who ordered the death of not only Tony, as boss of the New Jersey family, but also his underboss and consigliere. ‘We decapitate, and we do business with whatever’s left,’ Leotardo notoriously declared in the penultimate episode.” (03/03/26)
“On Friday, the Pentagon declared AI company Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk,’ a designation never before given to an American company. This unprecedented move was seen as an attempt to punish, maybe destroy the company. How effective was it? Anthropic isn’t publicly traded, so we turn to the prediction markets. … Why have the markets shrugged off this seemingly important event? Partly it’s because Anthropic seems likely to win on appeal. Hegseth has said the government will keep using Anthropic for the next six months (undermining his case that they’re a national security risk) and has signed a substantially similar contract with OpenAI (undermining his case that their contract terms were unworkable). The prediction markets think the courts will be sympathetic …” (03/02/26)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Cory Massimino
“Many things have been written about Rothbard’s legacy for libertarians more generally, but what about left-libertarians in particular? Rothbard’s legacy? For left-libertarians? Most left-libertarians and most Rothbardians would recoil. Rothbard is usually viewed as either a right-wing villain or right-wing hero. Often, the right-wing classification has merit. But it’s more complicated than that. People mostly overlook Rothbard’s left-wing tendencies. These are most obvious during his brief time on the New Left, but they are not isolated to that period. In the spirit of other ideological audits of canonical libertarian thinkers from a left-libertarian perspective, I offer the following audit of Murray Rothbard.” (03/02/26)
“Should the revenues made by big-time college athletics be ‘shared’ by all the schools? Do we want ‘revenue-sharing’ socialism to come to college football and basketball? Many in Congress are answering yes to that question. The NCAA isn’t the massive moneymaker the NFL and NBA are, but in many ways, the product is more exciting than the boring professional leagues. That’s especially true in this month of March, when the hoops madness begins. Even with the new ‘pay-to-play’ rules that have turned college football and basketball into semi-pro leagues, with some of the star athletes earning more to stay in college than ‘going pro’, the fan interest is higher than ever before. So is the money the big schools are making. There are a lot of legitimate complaints about these billions of dollars in TV contracts collected by the supposed ‘nonprofit’ colleges.” (03/03/26)
“Despite his presidential campaign promises to put America first, Donald Trump didn’t seem to upset his media allies too much when he bombed Iran last June, or when he sent Delta Force to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. But those engagements were limited, free of American fatalities, and didn’t appear to produce much in the way of immediate consequences for Trump or the country. Even white nationalist Nick Fuentes became an old-school Monroe Doctrine imperialist. Trump’s latest attacks on Iran this weekend, however, have given rise to a much more negative reaction in right-wing media.” (03/02/26)
“Trump not only needs to inform the American people about why he is taking the nation into a potentially escalatory war in their name but also to get their representatives in Congress to approve it, even now that it has illegally commenced. (Before the war started, American public support for an attack on Iran was only about 20 percent.) Trump will point to past bad presidential precedents to claim that he doesn’t need to do this — a ready opening for an authoritarian-leaning president that has been widening for some time. Congress needs to protest loudly and, finally, at long last, begin to rein in a rogue executive, but it probably won’t.” (03/02/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Obviously there are amounts of warming that could make Earth uninhabitable. That raises two questions: How much warming could be produced by burning fossil fuel? How much is consistent with human life continuing?” (03/02/26)
