How to Get Away With Anything
Source: Mother Jones
by Melissa Lewis & Daniel Moattar
“Donald Trump’s unbelievable year of pardons, visualized.” (02/04/26)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/trump-pardons-2025-january-6-fraud/
Category: Opinion
Choose your crisis, Congress: Six paths to fiscal disaster
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“As the national debt is a few months from reaching $39 trillion, and perhaps $40 trillion by the end of this year, it is puzzling how unperturbed the political class is. Or perhaps not. Writer and political agitator Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) said: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’ Or pretending not to. A bipartisan congressional consensus, more alarming than partisan rancor, is: There are no long-term fiscal gains without intense short-term political pains. So, because today’s congressional careers do not yet seem likely to coincide with coming dire consequences, let them come. In 2016, a budget expert was allotted 20 minutes to brief Donald Trump on those possible consequences. After five minutes, Trump said, ‘Yeah, but I’ll be gone.’ He was perfectly in sync with the political mainstream he professes to supplant.” (02/04/26)
Sensible Immigration Policy Begins With Understanding, Not Gaslighting
Source: Common Dreams
by Anthony Pahnke
“By now, we have heard the mantra that President Donald Trump was right to close the border, but wrong in his heavy-handed approach to immigration enforcement. We are also told that if he would have simply done what most Americans wanted, that is, arrest and deport violent criminals, then his poll numbers would be higher, and his administration wouldn’t find itself embroiled by crisis in the aftermath of two killings at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis. But this claim (that the problem with Trump’s immigration agenda is mainly about enforcement tactics) is flawed. Seriously addressing this country’s ongoing immigration crisis will require policy change, and to get to that point, there needs to be a narrative shift in this country away from indiscriminately criminalizing all undocumented people to humanizing them.” (02/04/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/sensible-immigration-policy
Military undergrads are 25% less biased
Source: Expression
by Chapin Lenthall-Cleary
In our surveys assessing university student tolerance for hypothetical controversial speakers, most students have not wanted to allow most speakers on campus. You can almost hear someone saying, ‘These kids today are too soft. Send ‘em to boot camp!’ The funny thing is, that might actually help.” (02/04/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/military-undergrads-are-25-less-biased
TR in the Arena
Source: Law & Liberty
by Ralph L DeFalco III
“Theodore Roosevelt came of age and rose to prominence in the late 1800s and, arguably, launched what Time magazine publisher H. R. Luce would later call the ‘American Century.’ As the Gilded Age faded, Roosevelt shaped America’s entry into world affairs and created the impetus for a robust America First foreign policy and hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. By sheer force of personality, he enlarged the stature of the presidency and the executive’s role in shaping public policy. No stranger to controversy and conflict, Roosevelt spoiled for a fight and delighted in lacerating his enemies with calculated comments and ridicule. In short, Roosevelt would be equally at home in both the early twentieth and twenty-first century American politics.” (02/04/26)
GOP suffers Trump-induced identity crisis on guns, Epstein
Source: USA Today
by Rex Huppke
“The Republican Party’s early messaging in advance of this year’s midterm elections seems to boil down roughly to: Work longer, don’t carry guns and, as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche recently said of the many powerful men who appear in the Jeffrey Epstein files, ‘It is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.’ Way to go, guys! As a licensed political pundit, I’m here to tell you this is exactly what GOP voters want to hear, and you should run hard on those ideas.” (02/04/26)
The Third Period: My Covid Speech in the Czech Parliament
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Tomas Fürst
“Today — or rather already with Wednesday’s comment by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš that we should have taken the Swedish path — the third period of our Covid match begins. The first period consisted of a global loss of sanity itself. I called the second period the Great Covid Silence, when many players fervently hoped that how they played in the first period would be forgotten. The last period will — so I firmly hope — consist of catharsis and lessons learned. Let us hope no overtime will be needed.” (02/04/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-third-period-my-covid-speech-in-the-czech-parliament/
Frenemies Behind the Veil of Ignorance
Source: Law & Liberty
by James R Rogers
“Despite being popularly positioned as leading advocates of opposing political philosophies, the signature works of public choice founder James Buchanan (with co-founder Gordon Tullock) and philosopher John Rawls share the same foundational approach. While Buchanan became more critical of Rawls’s work when A Theory of Justice finally appeared in 1971, his criticisms are more tempered than many readers would expect. Buchanan also admitted that his criticism of Rawls likewise indicted the approach that he and Tullock developed a decade earlier in The Calculus of Consent. …they are commonly conceived as occupying opposite and rival positions on the political spectrum. Yet throughout the 1960s, after publication of The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Rawls communicated frequently and warmly with each other, drawn together intellectually by commonalities in their work.” (02/04/26)
https://lawliberty.org/frenemies-behind-the-veil-of-ignorance/
Why Russia survived — and may thrive — after Syria regime change
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Anna Matveeva
“Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was a blow for the Kremlin, but it did take it on the chin. Now, the relationship needs to be rebuilt on a new basis — not between patron and client, but on an equal footing. Russia is a part of the new Syrian government’s diversification agenda: Syria needs all the friends it can get, but without becoming a pawn in somebody else’s geopolitical game. Moscow, for now, seems happy to offer that.” (02/04/26)
Billie Eilish cries “stolen land,” then goes home to her $2.3 million California mansion
Source: Fox News Forum
by Jimmy Failla
“Billie Eilish won the Grammy Award for ‘Best Anti-ICE Tantrum’ on Sunday night by declaring that ‘No human being is illegal on stolen land.’ Unfortunately, the blowback against her is serving as the latest in a long line of reminders that Hollywood celebrities should lay off the politics and stick to doing what they do best, which is cocaine. Now, obviously, I have no idea if Billie is taking any drugs whatsoever, but you’d have to be on SOMETHING to think all of this Trump bashing is helping awards shows. Ratings were down 9% year over year for the Grammys, and of course, we all know that viewership has fallen by 50% in the last two decades for that Well-Dressed-Group-Therapy- Session we call the Oscars.” (02/04/25)