Category: Opinion

Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko

“Louisiana continues to persecute a wrongly convicted man.” (09/17/26)

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/breaking-da-demands-dna-from-chris

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“Canada clearly has no intention of allowing itself to become the United States’ 51st state. But it might be willing to consider becoming the 28th state to join the European Union. Sort of. On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, invited the U.S.’s northern neighbor to join the 27-nation bloc – the world’s third-largest economy – as an ‘associate member’. Her reasoning? ‘We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world’, Ms. von der Leyen declared. ‘We believe that power does not belong to the strongest, the richest or the loudest – but to all of us. That democracies have the freedom to choose with whom to work.’ Such a partnership, she was careful to note, is ‘not against anyone else, but for our common strength’.” (09/16/26)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0916/EU-and-Canada-pursue-a-values-based-alliance

Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jackie Calmes

“Trump has turned much of historical Republican orthodoxy on its head, including on immigration, trade and policy toward Russia. But his utter disregard for annual deficits — a record $2 trillion for this fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 — and his shameful profligacy with taxpayers’ money is something Americans haven’t seen in their lifetimes, in either party. Worse, Trump implies otherwise, that he is fiscally responsible, and he does it with lies that are so easily refuted, so often contradicted by his own words, that it’s a marvel that even such a chronic prevaricator as himself can utter them.” (09/17/26)

https://archive.is/S1O8K

Source: Jonathan Turley
by Jonathan Turley

“Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has long been to the law what Philly fans are to football: they are simply willing to do things that others will not do. While Philly fans are known for taking their demonstrations to shocking levels, Krasner has long denounced adversaries as Nazis and pledged to arrest federal immigration officials. However, a federal judge has finally had enough of the anger and antics that have long been the special brand of Philadelphia’s top prosecutor. For full disclosure, Krasner and I went to college together at the University of Chicago in the same class in the 1980s. Since then, we have debated and disagreed on fundamental legal and ethical principles.” (09/17/26)

https://jonathanturley.org/2026/09/17/f-around-and-find-out-krasner-referred-to-u-s-attorney-for-criminal-investigation/

Source: Foreign Policy
by John Haltiwanger

“The United States has had military successes in the war, but, overall, the conflict has been a strategic disaster for Washington. The fighting has exposed serious vulnerabilities for the U.S. military and left its forces spread thin, cost the United States an estimated $38.1 billion so far, and caused a global energy crisis. The war is extremely unpopular with American voters, and a growing number of Republicans in Congress are voting in favor of ending the conflict; one GOP congressman has even moved to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war. But for all of those costs, the United States has achieved very little in Iran—and in some cases, things have gotten worse.” (09/17/260

https://archive.is/6sN0M

Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Sophie Gilbert, Danielle Bissett, & Tim Male

“Rome was not built in a day, but a beaver dam can be. Nature’s engineers can build durable dams very quickly, and maintain them over time too, slowing down (not blocking) and storing water, allowing sediment to settle, and even mitigating wildfire risk. … It can take years for people to build a so-called beaver dam analogue, not because it’s complicated—it’s not; some practitioners call it ‘putting sticks in a creek,’ which is pretty accurate—but because it requires a slew of permits from different agencies that can take years.” (09/17/26)

https://www.perc.org/2026/09/17/fast-conservation/

Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman

“Voters had a big win at the Supreme Court this week. What does it all mean? On Monday, the court refused to allow the Postal Service to implement a new rule that would have curbed mail voting. But the one-paragraph ruling seemed to say more than ‘not yet’. The Trump administration, the justices ruled, was ‘unlikely to succeed on the merits’. This was great news for the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting, the method now used by 1 in 3 voters. It was utterly bonkers that the White House tried to exert control over the election system. That’s illegal, a fact now confirmed over and over.” [editor’s note: So this Dramacrat advocacy group sees nothing wrong with mailing ballots to everyone who WAS once registered, regardless of current status, so ballot harvesting becomes the norm? – SAT] [additional editor’s note: So SAT is now a practitioner of the tactic of putting a question mark after a false claim so as to pretend that it’s a question instead of just a false claim. Sad! – TLK] (09/17/26)

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/toward-more-representative-government

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“We are familiar with many of the consequences of the drug-war racket: drug cartels, drug-war violence, overcrowded prisons, no-knock raids, racist enforcement, civil-asset forfeiture, mandatory minimum sentences, and massive destruction of civil liberties and privacy. But there is another consequence that comes with this racket: Many federal judges have ended up wasting a large part of their lives presiding over meaningless legal cases. One of the best examples of this phenomenon involved a brilliant lawyer named George Kazen who practiced law in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, where I practiced law for some eight years in partnership with my father.” (09/17/26)

https://www.fff.org/2026/09/17/a-wasted-legal-mind-in-laredo-texas/

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Renaud Beauchard

“Wendell Berry died on August 31 at his farm in Port Royal, Kentucky. He was 92. For more than half a century he farmed with horses, wrote in pencil, adamantly refused to purchase a computer, and insisted that the health of a person cannot be separated from the health of a place. That faithfulness to a place is the part of his thought that the health freedom movement most needs now.” (09/17/26)

https://brownstone.org/articles/what-lessons-can-we-learn-from-wendell-berry/

Source: Foundation for Econommic Education
by Alex Tokarev & Kristin Tokarev

“On October 12, 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the podium during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, yelling at the capitalist countries: ‘We [the socialists] will bury you!’ Within 30 years, socialism, not capitalism, was dead and buried in Eastern Europe. The USSR disappeared from the maps. Why was the Russian leader so confident in the victory of Marxism? Why was his prediction so wrong? The answer lies in the nature of socialism as a way to organize production and exchange. Capitalism relies on entrepreneurial profit-seeking and market price signals. Socialism relies on benevolent controls and the wisdom of experts.” (09/17/26)

https://fee.org/articles/the-graveyard-of-eastern-european-socialism/