“The purpose of political events these days isn’t so much retail public engagement as it is the production of sound bites for campaign use that’s more controlled and enjoys more reach than a huddle with a few citizens at a high school auditorium. But the main reason for real, physical, local ‘town hall aversion’ is the possibility of embarrassing confrontations with the angry sector of the public in question. And there’s ALWAYS an angry sector of the public, no matter which party the politician in question affiliates with or what policy positions that politician takes. We’ve all seen it on TV. In fact, it’s generally the only part of a ‘town hall’ event we ever DO see on TV outside of actual campaign ads.” (08/11/26)
“Washington has long debated individual interventions while paying less attention to the expanding presidential authority that made them possible. Trump did not create this system; he inherited it. His presidency, however, exposed how much war-making power has accumulated in the executive branch and how far the country has moved from the constitutional balance the founders envisioned. The Constitution’s principle is clear: decisions about war should not rest with one person. The president is commander in chief, but Congress received the authority to declare war because the framers feared concentrated power.” (08/11/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Alex Tokarev, Gabriel F. Benzecry, & Kristin Tokarev
“ou’ve no doubt heard the horrifying stories of dictators who abused their people for personal gain or sheer cruelty. Stalin’s Great Purge, Mao’s engineered famine, and Pinochet’s brutal torture of dissidents are just a few notorious examples. If all dictatorships are hell, a difficult question remains: which offers the better odds of survival, or even prosperity? Is it a dictatorship that tolerates some free-market capitalism, or one built on socialism?” (08/11/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Sarah McLaughlin
“Late last year, the United Kingdom, France, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and dozens more nations signed the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, a treaty ostensibly intended to improve global cooperation to fight crimes taking place over computer systems. Canada joined them this summer. The United States remains a notable exception and says it is still reviewing the treaty. Three nations have since ratified it, and the treaty will enter into force 90 days after 40 states do so. As FIRE has long warned, the treaty opens the door to greater violations of free expression online — and new cybercrime bills popping up around the world show why.” (08/11/26)
“For the 333 million Americans who don’t live in New York City, there are plenty of reasons not to care what goes on there. It doesn’t affect our day-to-day lives. New Yorkers democratically elected their socialist leader. It’s their bed, let them lie in it. Or as the mainstream media likes to put it, it’s probably just hyped-up right-wing hysteria. And of course, that’s exactly how the communists in our country want us to think. But right now may be the most important moment to push back. It’s incumbent on all of us to resist the normalization of socialism in America. Speak up now, so that what’s radical in New York today doesn’t become the norm in your neighborhood tomorrow. And to be clear, there are plenty of radical things going on in New York right now.” (08/11/26)
“The Federal Bureau of Investigations launched Sentinel in 2005 with an expanded budget and intensified project management discipline. With the active involvement of at least 18 concurrent oversight and governance bodies — the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, and numerous congressional committees among them — what could go wrong? Turns out, quite a lot. Sentinel rapidly degraded into an unusable product that threatened to waste hundreds of millions of dollars.” (08/11/26)
“On June 16, 1989, a bearded 26-year-old stood before a quarter million Hungarians in Budapest and demanded that Soviet troops leave his country. His fearless call for free elections helped bring down communism in Hungary. The young firebrand was Viktor Orban. Twenty-five years later, he proudly announced he was building an ‘illiberal state.’ What happened in between is a microcosm of what has happened to liberal democracy itself. That story gives Daron Acemoglu’s new book ‘What Happened to Liberal Democracy?’ its urgency.” (08/11/26)
“Remember the early 2020s when cancel culture ran rampant, defunding police was a standard position on the left and we were all supposed to fall in line with their bad ideas, or else? Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants us to pretend it all went away. AOC took to ‘This Week with Jonathan Karl’ on ABC to defend Francesca Hong, the latest Democratic Socialist star, running for governor of Wisconsin. In 2020, Hong said Thanksgiving should be canceled, claiming it’s ‘a time that’s incredibly painful for people’ in her community. Now that she wants to get elected, Hong suddenly called Thanksgiving her ‘favorite holiday’. AOC argued that Hong has ‘moved away’ from some of her more controversial positions then giggled that she agreed with NYC Councilman Chi Ossé, who had said, ‘Woke 1 was crazyyyy’. Tee-hee, woke 1, you guys!” (08/10/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Cláudia Ascensão Nunes
“If a regulator struggles to decide whether a live transmission on YouTube should be considered ‘television,’ the real problem may not be the platform, but the rules and the state’s insistence on continuing to apply them.” (08/11/26)
“We have previously discussed how many professors seem to compete in finding new forms of racism in every facet of society and education. Astrophysics, math, runoffs, science, statistics, and meritocracy have all been denounced as racist. In this academic cottage industry, professors secure publications and speaking opportunities by identifying racism in expressions, images, or entire fields. Even time itself has been declared racist. Now, however, academics have found another undiscovered continent of white privilege: niceness. When I saw a story in The College Fix on a study of ‘niceness as Whiteness,’ I was skeptical and decided to take a look.” (08/11/26)
