“The Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, will be officially leaving her post on June 19. She is resigning to care for her husband, who is battling a rare form of bone cancer. Gabbard has enjoyed a remarkably successful tenure as DNI and is using her final days in office to unleash several bombshell reports. On Friday, Gabbard rescinded two intelligence assessments from the administration of President Joe Biden regarding the mysterious set of ailments known as ‘Havana Syndrome,’ which has sickened our spies and diplomats on missions throughout the world. … the Biden administration downplayed the reports and dismissed the possibility that the ailments were caused by a foreign adversary. Gabbard blasted these findings for excluding key information, suppressing ‘alternative analysis,’ and using an ‘ethically flawed medical study.'” (06/15/26)
“Early Monday morning Islamabad time, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that ‘Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.’ Pakistan and Qatar had been the lead negotiators, though Qatar’s negotiating team appears to have sealed the deal Sunday with a marathon 14-hour session. The White House concurred. US President Donald Trump posted that the deal with Iran is ‘complete’ and that he would immediately lift the US blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and is announcing its ‘toll-free’ opening. ‘Let the oil flow’, he said.” (06/15/26)
“A decade ago, kratom advocates fought a surprisingly successful campaign against a proposed Drug Enforcement Administration ban that claimed the obscure Southeast Asian plant posed ‘an imminent hazard to public safety.’ They won bipartisan allies from Bernie Sanders to Rand Paul, and helped create a billion-dollar industry out of kratom, which has pain-relieving effects they said could help fight the opioid epidemic as a far safer, natural alternative to pills. Now, many of those same pro-kratom activists are calling for a ban on products containing concentrates of one of kratom’s active components: 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, an ultra-potent extract with opioid-like effects. And it’s causing major friction amongst consumers, sellers, and advocates of both substances.” (06/15/26)
“Smith observed that significant economic inequalities arise not from voluntary exchange but from distortions that restrict competition, channel resources toward favored interests, and limit economic mobility.” (06/15/26)
“Buying SpaceX shares was never something I was likely to do. I understand the perspectives of the enthusiastic, the skeptical and the outraged, but I recognize that my inclination toward the skeptical camp is substantially personality-driven. I’m just congenitally skeptical. But I think one thing all three camps may not be acknowledging as fully as they should is the degree to which pricing a company like SpaceX is genuinely extremely difficult because to such a considerable degree what drives its value is a portfolio of real business options, which are inherently difficult to value. That doesn’t usually matter because real business options are usually only marginal factors in valuing a large company like SpaceX. But we’ve entered a world where there are real business options of plausibly extraordinary value, and that world is just genuinely very weird.” (06/15/26)
“Years ago, when my oldest son was a Boy Scout, he was asked to write a report/make a presentation on a modern American ‘hero.’ He chose Elon Musk, and I, of course, rolled my eyes so hard they nearly popped out of my head. I knew Musk was a successful businessman, but I also knew that he was both an advocate for and a seasoned manipulator of Big Government. Tesla, for example, received a $465 million Department of Energy loan in 2010 under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, a Big Government scheme to encourage private companies to advance Big Government priorities (namely, fighting Climate Change by reducing carbon emissions). Likewise, Tesla was, at least at the time, commercially viable only because of the more than $1 billion ($7,500/vehicle) in federal EV tax credits claimed by its buyers.” (06/15/26)
“Democrats have a nasty habit of criticizing President Donald Trump for the wrong reasons. They latch onto the most visceral thing he has done lately and let it crowd out more legitimate criticisms. The latest example is the renovation of the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool. Crews painted the bottom a deep blue, which Trump claimed would improve reflectivity – and by most accounts, it has. His opponents say otherwise. California Gov. Gavin Newsom insisted the project was a mess, the Democratic Party maintained it was ineffective, and the media sought out historians who spoke against the project. Trump is often difficult to attack precisely because there is so much noise. Democrats reach for the most trivial targets, and in doing so, the more important points can get lost. They should spend less time on the nonsense and more on what actually matters.” (06/15/26)
“On June 12, 1776, Virginia’s Fifth Revolutionary Convention unanimously passed the Virginia Declaration of Rights. A trenchant, post-colonial statement affirming humankind’s inherent rights, limited government, and republican principles, the Declaration is arguably the nation’s most imitated founding document and a pillar of American founding principles. George Mason, the Declaration’s principal draftsman, boasted that it was the first of its kind on the American continent. It distilled the great principles of liberty and constitutionalism that revolutionary Americans believed were derived from England’s ancient constitution, common law, and natural rights theory.” (06/15/26)
