“The Business Council of New York State is seeking to repeal ‘Prohibition-era’ alcohol laws. The New York Post reported that the organization launched its ‘New Yorkers Cheers for Change’ campaign on Sunday, pushing a proposal that would counter the state’s restrictions on alcohol sales. ‘New York has some of the most restrictive Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) laws the entire nation because they were created during the Prohibition-era. Current ABC laws impede economic growth, job opportunities, consumer choice, and New York’s own wine and distilled spirits industry,’ the organization’s website read. The ‘Cheers for Change’ campaign followed the 2023 Commission to Study Reform of the Alcohol Beverage Control Law, launched under New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, to recommend ways to update state laws, such as relaxing its 200 Foot Law and 500 Foot Law.” (07/13/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Cláudia Ascensão Nunes
“In the end, the digital euro does not liberate Europe, modernize it, or make payments more convenient. It merely changes who holds control, shifting it from American private companies to European public authorities, and strengthens that control in the process. At its core, this project reveals a profound civilizational choice: money ceases to belong primarily to individuals, as the state assumes the power to define the limits of financial freedom.” (07/13/26)
“The cure for a regime of establishment-approved ideology does not come from government censorship of conversations. That should be clear to anybody who believes in freedom, and it’s a point strongly made by a federal appeals court in overruling Florida’s Stop WOKE Act. Saying the First Amendment is incompatible with ‘an official government line—in a college classroom of all places,’ the court overruled the state’s effort to battle ideological orthodoxy by imposing its own orthodoxy.” (07/13/26)
“With sweltering temperatures once again gripping much of the world, it is worth appreciating air conditioning — the quiet invention that transforms dangerous heat into manageable discomfort, shields millions from heat-related suffering and death, boosts productivity, and makes once-hostile climates livable. It is a powerful reminder that wealth, innovation, and human ingenuity enable societies to adapt to nature’s extremes and protect human life. To understand why the US heat death rate is 59 times lower than that of Europe, it helps to begin with a young engineer named Willis Carrier.” (07/13/26)
“Despite its well-advertised tensions and tectonic geopolitical changes, this week’s NATO summit demonstrated that NATO has survived and is resilient. It remains committed to reinforcing US hegemony across Europe and globally. Not a lot has changed since former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that US global dominance relies on controlling the periphery of Eurasia: NATO in the West, in Southwest Asia to the South, as well as its Asia-Pacific allies from South Korea and Japan through the Philippines and Australia. In the 21st century, military planning as well as trade is deeply integrated across these three regions. The Summit served to reinforce what is emerging as a new bloc system for our yet to be named era. Threatened by the US and NATO, as John Mearsheimer remarked, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea each see the US as a mortal enemy.” (07/13/26)
“For all practical purposes, the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of (Mis)Understanding is over. The dispute over how to manage the Strait of Hormuz in the interim has pushed the two sides back into open war. But to what end? There is little reason to believe another round of fighting can alter the fundamentals enough to change the reality from which the two sides must ultimately negotiate. If they are fortunate, the MOU’s collapse may yield another round of talks in which the allure of reshaping facts on the ground through force has finally faded.” (07/13/26)
“Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (MH), seeks to inject wisdom into a discussion often dominated by two extremes. The first is a wild-eyed techno-utopianism that would drag us into what the Cambridge literary critic F. R. Leavis called a ‘technologico-Benthamite civilization.’ The second is a techno-catastrophism inclined to see every technological development as an existential threat to humanity. In many ways, MH is an impressive document. … There is, however, one matter that has been passed over too lightly. This concerns MH’s commentary on economic questions.” (07/13/26)
“Ultimately, Lindsey Graham will go down as an inconsequential figure in American history, a bloodthirsty cheerleader for some of the nation’s most disastrous wars who lacked the courage to stand up for the few convictions he once held. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger on Bill Clinton being called a war criminal, ‘Lindsey Graham doesn’t have the moral fortitude to be consigned to the 9th Circle of Hell with the A-listers.’ He’ll have to settle for some more obscure region of eternal torment, where nobody will even recall his name.” (07/13/26)
“Beware: The Chinese Communist Party is plainly exploiting the opaque ownership structure of multinational tech companies to fund far-left political subversion across America. Shanghai-based Maoist tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham is a notorious funder of outfits like the crypto-communist People’s Forum, which organizes radical protest-riots in support of Hamas terrorism and protecting the butchers who control Iran; his wife co-leads extremist Code Pink while his niece is a big player in the Democratic Socialists of America and a prominent adviser to Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Singhams got crazy-rich in the tech industry, but you have to wonder if Beijing staged their success to ‘wash’ a vast fortune that could then undermine the United States, the chief barrier to CCP world domination.” (07/13/26)
“The easiest mistake in war is to confuse the ability to strike again with proof that the previous strike worked. Donald Trump is making that mistake in Iran. The latest U.S. attacks may destroy more military assets and infrastructure, but they do not answer the political question that has haunted this war from the beginning: what outcome is all this destruction supposed to produce?” (07/13/26)
