“‘By law, we have one job,’ Rep. Tim Burchett (R‑Tenn.) asserted the last time he opposed the ‘continuing resolution’ (CR) on the federal budget. What is that ‘one job?’ It is ‘to pass twelve appropriations bills and a budget. We aren’t doing that, which is why we are $33 trillion in debt.’ You noticed the typo. But it wasn’t. Sure, $33 trillion isn’t right. Yesterday, the official public debt of the federal government was $36.6 trillion, with just a smidge of rounding up. Those first two paragraphs are from 2023; one can almost cut and paste old copy about Washington’s CR fiascos and place them in new pieces and get away with it, clean. On Tuesday, the House passed a continuing resolution to keep the federal government chugging along, with its usual substitute authorization for spending rather than a real budget.” (03/13/25)
“Washington, DC, is riddled with parasites sucking the life out of our nation. Time for a thorough deworming. Jonathan Rauch, in a book by the same name, called it ‘demosclerosis.’ Mancur Olson, in his classic ‘The Rise and Decline of Nations,’ called it a ‘web of special interests.’ I call it ‘the parasite class.’ All refer to a collection of bureaucrats, lobbyists, contractors, nonprofits, non-governmental organizations and connected unions and corporations that have increasingly run our federal government for their own benefit, fattening themselves with the help of diverted taxpayer dollars. I confess that until recently, I assumed nothing could be done about these problems until an unmistakable financial collapse took place …. That has all changed now.” [editor’s note: Sad to see that Reynolds has descended into Trump Derangement Syndrome, positive variant – TLK] (03/12/25)
“Most of the studies and planning among public health researchers and officials in the decades before 2020 came to the conclusion that public masking and lockdowns were both ineffective and largely counter-productive (the 6-foot social distancing rule was so weak it had not even really been studied — it was a totally made up thing). The CDC’s own website had (still has) an infographic that the general run of masks were ineffective and stopping disease inhalation. Meta studies generally concluded lockdowns were counterproductive. But within weeks of the start of the pandemic in 2020, government agencies like the CDC threw out all this history and all their prior plans and decided to mandate masks and lockdowns. … why?” (03/13/25)
“President Donald Trump confronts the failing policy of his predecessor in Ukraine. Eight years ago he did the same in Afghanistan. There the United States was entangled in a shooting war, which made it difficult to leave without an agreement with the Taliban. In Ukraine Washington is waging a proxy war, ultimately more dangerous, given Russia’s involvement, but much easier to leave. Instead, the administration is attempting to impose its preferred solution on both Kiev and Moscow. So far, the path has proved anything but smooth.” (03/13/25)
“I held out some small hope that while it was depressing to consider that Trump was likely to further trash the notion of free trade (and he has certainly delivered on this bad promise), Republicans — after years in the wilderness rightly complaining about government censorship and growing opposition on the Left to free speech — might, just might, do something to make things a bit better. I thought JD Vance calling out Europe on its deteriorating free speech environment in his Munich speech was great. But its easy to call out other countries on this topic, much harder to remain disciplined in one’s own country. It takes a lot of backbone to respect speech from people you really dislike and disagree with. And apparently this administration lacks such a backbone …” (03/12/25)
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Andrew Napolitano
“The world is filled with self-evident truths — truisms — that philosophers, lawyers and judges know need not be proven. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Two plus two equals four. A cup of boiling hot coffee sitting on a table in a room, the temperature of which is 70 degrees Fahrenheit, will eventually cool down. These examples, of which there are legion, are not true because we believe they are true. They are true essentially and substantially. They are true whether we accept their truthfulness or not. Of course, recognizing a universal truth acknowledges the existence of an order of things higher than human laws, certainly higher than government.” (03/12/25)
“When I first arrived in the United States, less than two decades ago, the assumption that WASPs were the true rulers of America remained widespread, and there was still some real grounding for it. In politics, their ranks comprised the president, the vice president, the treasury secretary, the secretary of the Interior, both the Senate majority and minority leaders, and at least a good dozen senators. Three out of nine Supreme Court justices were WASPs, as were three out of five CEOs of the largest publicly traded companies. Since then, the influence of WASPs in American life has — largely unremarked by the general public — cratered.” (03/13/25)
