“The reverberations from the new National Security Strategy (NSS)—published only a week ago—continue to echo throughout the trans-Atlantic national security establishment, not least due to the President’s explosive (is he capable of any other kind?) Politico interview, during which he took European leaders to task for not living up to the lofty example he, our Janus-faced Warlord and Prince of Peace, has set before them. A quick and easy measure of just how threatening the foreign policy establishment takes one or another policy can be taken by merely observing how strenuously the media attempts to link said policy to the Kremlin. And, as night follows day, attempts to portray the NSS as a Kremlin-friendly strategy commenced immediately.” (12/11/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Katharine Trendacosta
“The state of streaming is… bad. It’s very bad. The first step in wanting to watch anything is a web search: ‘Where can I stream X?’ Then you have to scroll past an AI summary with no answers, and then scroll past the sponsored links. After that, you find out that the thing you want to watch was made by a studio that doesn’t exist anymore or doesn’t have a streaming service. So, even though you subscribe to more streaming services than you could actually name, you will have to buy a digital copy to watch. A copy that, despite paying for it specifically, you do not actually own and might vanish in a few years. … It’s important to recognize this as we see more and more media mergers. These mergers are not about quality, they’re about control.” (12/10/25)
“As antisemitism on college campuses remains rampant, too many administrators refuse to stamp it out — and parents of prospective students are increasingly alarmed. This week the civil-rights group StopAntisemitism released its 2025 ‘report card’ on 90 major American colleges and universities, and the results were frightening. Two years after on-campus Jew hatred exploded in the wake of Oct. 7, the review found that leadership at many American colleges still tolerate vandalism, bullying and outright violence. An appalling 16% of rated schools, including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, got F grades. For Jewish families, the concern centers on the physical safety of their children. Fully 39% of Jewish college students say they’ve had to hide their faith on campus, StopAntisemitism found. But parents of all faiths, and of no faith, must take these findings into account. … But not all schools are flailing — and those that are fighting this tide deserve applause.” (12/10/25)
“Every era has its witch. Every empire, its scapegoat. The person painted green so the rest of us can pretend we’re clean. That’s the real story of Wicked, the celebrated Broadway musical adapted into two feature films in 2024 and 2025 that are part origin narrative and part reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. … We are living through our own Emerald City moment. Propaganda repeats on loop; scapegoats fill the headlines; teachers are called indoctrinators; artists are called subversives; journalists are labeled enemies; officeholders from the opposition party are deemed America-haters. Entire communities are remixed into villains so authoritarians can stay in charge. Same playbook, new costumes.” (12/10/25)
“Forty-four million views later, the University of Oklahoma has advised student Samantha Fulnecky that the zero her paper received won’t be factored into her final course grade. While it’s good that the school won’t hold that zero against her, she deserves a grade — an honest, objective grade — for her work. Fulnecky did submit a paper, contrary to what is implied by the zero. She did indeed turn in an essay on the topic of ‘gender, peer relations and mental health’ that her class was assigned. Perhaps the word ‘gender’ has given you the clue. You guessed it: she took the wrong view.” (12/10/25)
“President Trump recently posted a declaration that confused me a bit. He wrote that he has approved ‘TINY CARS to be built in America,’ proclaiming that they will be inexpensive, safe, fuel-efficient, and amazing. He thanked the Department of Justice and the Departments of Transportation and Environment and demanded that manufacturers start building them now. It sounded like the leader of a centrally planned economy who personally decides which products are permitted. The tone was almost [sic] authoritarian, as if the market had been waiting for permission from the state to innovate. There is a saying: perception is reality. Trump wants us to believe that he is in charge of everything in the country and the world, from diverting hurricanes to stopping wars, regulating trade, and producing automobiles.” (12/10/25)
“There is a long list of really dumb taxes in Missouri. The St. Louis and Kansas City earnings taxes are actively harmful to growth and opportunity. The personal property taxes on livestock are absurd. The pool table tax has long been an anachronism. But I have always thought that the single worst tax is Missouri is the local economic development sales tax. Why is it the worst? Because while the other taxes are harmful, they at least fund, in part, necessary functions of government. The economic development sales tax is a tax that entirely funds actions that cities should not be engaged in. It’s a tax that collects more money from people to make our communities worse off.” (12/10/25)
“United States Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a firm believer in ‘the good sense of the people’ when it came to exercising citizenship in a democracy. To promote constructive public engagement, he urged, ‘give them full information … thro’ the channel of the public papers’. ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,’ Mr. Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1787. The third U.S. president could likely not have imagined the huge volume and varied forms of today’s ‘newspapers’ – accessed 24/7, in print, over the airwaves, and online. However, even as media access has increased exponentially, press freedoms in 2025 are shrinking globally. News outlets are facing unprecedented political and financial pressures, and journalists are increasingly being silenced or targeted.” (12/10/25)
“Mike Johnson has lost control of the House of Representatives. Since reopening the chamber in November after a 53-day sojourn, he has seen continued Republican retirements and resignations in advance of an expected loss of power in next year’s midterms. Voting days have often devolved into recriminations involving individual members. Consensus to avoid a major legislative embarrassment by allowing Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums to skyrocket has been lacking. And Johnson has on several occasions lost control of the agenda-setting power to schedule floor votes, the most basic authority of a House Speaker. Discharge petitions, which if signed by a majority of House members can go around the Speaker and obtain an automatic floor vote, have succeeded on two occasions in recent weeks.” (12/11/25)
“The Donald is not (in our opinion) a particularly likeable person. He has significant personal faults, can be very irritating, and does not appear (to us) to be a strong advocate for liberty and freedom. He has compromised on many things. So we here at The Price of Liberty are no great fans of The Donald. He is boastful and arrogant, has many other character faults, and (like others who have held his office) he fails to understand the nature of human liberty and the proper role of human government. He has made a lot of mistakes, not just in his first term. But we recognize that while he is bad, relative to those people who were the alternatives? He is definitely the least of two evils. (We are talking Obama, Clinton, Biden, and especially Harris.)” [editor’s note: Sure, if by “definitely the least of,” one means “exactly like the others” – TLK] (12/10/25)
