“Over the weekend, it looked as if President Trump had backed himself into a corner in his efforts to get Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who was recently primaried by Trump ally Ken Paxton yet remains a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the rest of the year, wasn’t budging in his insistence that Blanche commit in writing to killing the corrupt deal in which the government set up a $1.776 billion slush fund to compensate supposed victims of government violence and Trump personally got immunity from IRS audits. Trump himself poured oil on the flames in a series of comments and social media posts in which he walked back his previous commitment to end the slush fund and further insulted Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was following Cornyn’s lead.” (08/04/26)
“The war which was supposed to last a couple of weeks and ‘pay for itself’ is entering into its sixth month and the price tag so far is above $100 billion. A war that was started to thwart an Iranian nuclear threat that according to US Intelligence didn’t exist has become a war to open a waterway – the Hormuz Strait – that was open before the war started. … There is no path to victory in the war. It is now only about how to manage defeat.” (08/03/26)
“Surveying the devastation wrought by the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the Nigerian writer and former secretary general of African workers, Owei Lakemfa, concludes that ‘humanity is moving back to the pre-World War era when there were no agreed universal rules, might was right.’ Today, writes Lakemfa, ‘strongmen, and nations roam around as terrorists and bandits playing God. The strongest is the Zelensky, Netanyahu, and Trump triumvirate.’ This is how the world outside of NATO and Tel Aviv sees things. This might spur a normal country run by normal people to question the wisdom of its current course. Needless to say, in 2026, the US is no such country.” (08/03/26)
“Liberalism, which fundamentally defends a baseline commitment to pluralism, is at its core dedicated to the idea that we can agree to disagree. Toleration is represented not only through the political debates we engage in—it means that we, as individuals, are tolerant of one another. In a public sphere that is filled with polarized discourse, where the stakes of the present moment seem so exhaustingly high, and one’s own views are in need of a firm defense, an appeal to toleration becomes even more difficult. This makes it worth revisiting one of the age-old subjects of debates within the liberal tradition: what ought we, as liberals, to tolerate?” (08/03/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“When [Samuel] Tunick arrived at the airport, he was taken aside for special interrogation, where his luggage and his diary were subjected to careful search. They then asked for his cell phone, claiming that Tunick was suspected of possessing child pornography. It was a lie. According to an article at CNN.com, during a court hearing last week, officials admitted that they had no reason to suspect that Tunick possessed child-abuse material. They just made it up, knowing that nothing would happen to them if they were caught lying to an American citizen. Here comes the funny part. Tunick turned over his cell phone to them and gave them the password — well, not his regular password but instead a special password. When they punched in the special password, it activated software that automatically wiped the entire cellphone clean. All data gone. Poof! That is absolutely awesome.” (08/03/26)
“Israel and Laura Loomer’s opposition to Nazism is not consistent. While she frequently labels critics of Israel’s influence in America as Nazis or the ‘Woke Reich,’ she downplays the genuine ideological Neo-Nazism of the Azov Battalion. Likewise, the Israeli government has formed strong ties with the Azov Brigade. Regardless of whether the Brigade has stopped using Neo-Nazi symbols and rhetoric publicly, the idea that the entire organization has simply abandoned their deeply held political beliefs is absurd. Ultimately, Zionists seem to view the Azov Brigade, and the Ukrainian government in general, as ‘our Nazis.'” (08/03/26)
“The year 1776 is notable for new beginnings. But it also saw the death of one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. David Hume (1711–76) is often described by ideological labels such as liberal or conservative, as well as eighteenth-century party names (Whig and Tory). But these labels obfuscate Hume’s intentions. Neither an ideologue nor a party man, Hume thought about politics primarily as a philosopher searching for true answers. When we approach him first and foremost as a political philosopher, we are in a better position to revive and understand his substantial contributions to political thought.” (08/03/26)
“It’s hard to find a better example of a failed trade law than the Jones Act — which has now slashed US cargo-ship production to just a few vessels a year, while China’s building more than 4,000. President Donald Trump and Congress need to prioritize a repeal of this 100-year-old protectionist legislation ASAP. The law was supposed to boost the US merchant-marine industry by requiring that all shipping between US points use American-made, -owned, -crewed and -flagged vessels. But sky-high US manufacturing costs, which are passed on to shippers and ultimately consumers, made other alternatives — e.g., imports, land-based transportation — far more economical. The perverse result: Demand for US ships has plummeted, even as building costs soared.” (08/03/26)
“‘I don’t feel safe going,’ Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently shared about her decision to skip the Michigan Democratic Party state convention later this month. ‘I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at.’ It’s a gathering of her own political party!” (08/03/26)
