“For several years now, reports Reclaim the Net, lawmakers have been trying to pass legislation to require Americans to provide ID to do many of things on the Internet we can now do anonymously. In 2024, the bill — with the cuddly name of Kids Online Safety Act, it prompts us to ask, what brute would want kids to be unsafe online? — passed in the Senate but failed in the House. The Hill reports that ‘concerns over censorship and freedom of speech prevented it from ever hitting the House floor.’ The Senate bill doesn’t mandate age verification directly. But it does require the FTC … to determine ‘whether a reasonable and prudent person under the circumstances would have known that the user is a minor.’ How could platforms avoid liability for sure without imposing some kind of ID verification on all users?” (10/06/26)
“Seaflo Marine executives were excited. They make component parts for boats, agricultural machinery, and recreational vehicles, and in 2019, they signed an exclusive five-year contract with one of the two biggest component distributors for RVs, Patrick Industries, for 500,000 units of a Seaflo plumbing part. It was a foot in the door with Patrick, a company with the scale and reach to put its products into many more RVs. Patrick even made an initial order of 30,000 units on day one. Five years later, by the end of the contract, however, Patrick had only made a partial order of 10,000 more units. It was a loss for Seaflo of about $2 million, and they went to court over the breach of contract. That’s when they learned through discovery that, even before Seaflo and Patrick had signed the agreement, a Patrick subsidiary named LaSalle Bristol was completing work on the exact same plumbing part.” (10/07/26)
“One of the most useful things to know about modern politics is that no reform ever happens until it becomes a threat to the re-election chances of politicians in power. The reason it works that way is because of the bad incentives politicians have. The system they’ve built for themselves rewards them for keeping the political gravy train going as smoothly as possible. It’s only when reality catches up to them that they encounter the ultimate rule that forces them to reform: Stein’s Law, which states, ‘If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.'” (10/06/260
“I agree that in-person debates are confrontational and bad for truth-seeking. But I didn’t propose a debate in order to seek truth. I proposed it because, under California Penal Code § 415(1), it’s illegal for me to challenge you to a duel. I think your public writing on this topic has been dishonorable. Out of obligation, I will respond to the meaty arguments that you have set out for me. But what would be viscerally satisfying would be to make you get up on a stage where I read your own words to you in real time and ask “Really? Really?” after each sentence. … I’ll start by addressing the meaty arguments, move on to directly impugning your honor, and then we’ll decide whether to debate, duel, or seek some kind of synthesis of our conflicting views.” (10/06/26)
“The administration is running a television advertisement in which President Trump says, ‘Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.’ Government-financed propaganda promoting an unpopular head of state is something one might associate with a communist country. The irony doesn’t end there. The ad’s target is the Democratic Party and its leftward shift, as evidenced by its ‘democratic socialism’ problem. Yet it is Trump himself who has unlocked the door the left has long sought to open: the normalization of government ownership of private companies.” (10/06/260
“The federal government built a system that records the lawful trading activity of tens of millions of Americans, invades their financial privacy, and makes investors pay for the surveillance. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) calls it the Consolidated Audit Trail, or CAT. Now the agency is considering ‘fundamental changes’ to the setup. It should eliminate the system instead. CAT, launched in 2020, records almost every order, modification, cancellation, and execution by tens of millions of investors. The SEC requires these records so regulators can search trading activity and reconstruct it long after a trade occurred. The records are collected before there is probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or even an allegation of wrongdoing.” (10/06/26)
“In June 1845, Cassius Marcellus Clay launched an anti-slavery newspaper in Lexington, Kentucky, one block from one of the largest slave markets in the United States. He called it The True American. Published by William L. Neale and edited by Clay, the paper openly challenged Kentucky’s slaveholding establishment. Its editor was a son of a Kentucky aristocrat; a cousin of the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay; and a man who understood that publishing against slavery in a slave state was not merely controversial. It was dangerous. … The office of The True American was not just a newspaper office. According to historian Herndon J. Evans, it was ‘armed with two brass cannons, iron barred windows, and an arsenal of Mexican lances and pikes.’ … Clay later said he had filled the four-pounder cannons with shot and nails.” (10/06/26)
Source: Cato Institute
by Matthew Cavedon & Laura Bondank-Harmon
“ALPRs (which, again, stands for ‘automated license plate readers’) are omnipresent and, at this point, misnamed. Over 6,000 cities nationwide have ALPRs, each of which can scan up to 2,000 vehicles per minute. Over 130,000 of these devices have been deployed across the U.S. ALPRs are misnamed because they do not simply read license plates anymore. The leading ALPR manufacturer, Flock Safety, used to insist that this was all its technology could do. Yet according to August reporting by Wired, Flock ‘has now built … an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone.’ … Law enforcement is using tools that can tell officers who you associate with, where you sleep, and what you believe. They call it safety. The law should call it a search and impose the safeguards and remedies that accompany one.” (10/06/26)
“Many years ago, Congress adopted a law that prohibits home whiskey distilling. That law is now under constitutional challenge. John Ream is a home whisky distiller. He points out that the Constitution grants Congress only certain enumerated (listed) powers and that regulating home distilling is not on the list. He lost in the lower courts but has filed a petition asking for Supreme Court review. … Mr. Ream’s case is not hopeless, but he is pushing uphill. In my Epoch Times series ‘How the Supreme Court Rewrote the Constitution,’ I described how, during the early 1940s, the justices converted the congressional Commerce Power (an amalgam of the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause) into general authority to regulate almost all human activity—at least all economic activity.” (10/06/26)
“They will say anything to get a vote. They will lie endlessly with absolutely no conscience at all. These people are totally amoral, but in one sense, they are very smart. They can make their lies sound so good. And the sad thing is, there are millions upon millions upon millions of Americans who simply do not have the intelligence and perception to see through what is happening. And the rest of us have to suffer because of it. Here is Zohran Mamdani’s latest whopper, his most recent attempt to create a totalitarian city, state, and nation. For this is indeed a pure recipe for totalitarianism. He said, ‘It’s the government’s job to give you everything you need to lead a dignified life’. I wonder if he really believes that. I doubt it. The only thing that man cares about is himself. Like most politicians.” (10/06/26)
