“The prospect of President Donald Trump pursuing regime change in Iran has animated the most hawkish voices in the establishment. But American war-weariness has forced the usual suspects to refine the art of apologetics. Rather than calling for ‘boots on the ground’ to liberate the Iranian people, many now argue the same result can be achieved through covert methods. Some assert, without a shred of evidence, that a large-scale strike can topple Tehran’s rulers without American troops ever setting foot in the country. Others avoid the question of what regime change would look like altogether, fearful that Americans will not be pleased with the answer.” (02/11/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment had no business invading Venezuela, kidnapping the country’s president, and forcibly carrying him back to the United States to stand trial for supposedly violating U.S. drug laws and U.S. gun-control laws. They also had no business killing Venezuelan citizens and others on the high seas near Venezuela. But what’s done is done. The question is what should Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA do now? They should leave Venezuela alone.” (02/10/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Stephen P Halbrook
“History teaches that government must provide security if serious about a mandatory ‘gun-free zone.'” [editor’s note: As if government “security” should ever be trusted – TLK] (02/11/26)
“President Trump is on the brink of ordering a massive policy shakeup — ‘the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,’ says Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin. When Trump’s EPA orders the end of a 2009 finding that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are a threat to public health, it will halt 16 years of federal efforts to mandate vast changes in American life without legal justification. The so-called Endangerment Finding led to a host of regulations whose estimated costs exceeded a trillion dollars. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in Washington. Early in his administration, President Barack Obama tried to get Congress to pass an expansive climate change law. When the bill stalled, Obama charged ahead with executive action. The EPA’s December 2009 Endangerment Finding said greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.” (02/10/25)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Stephanie Jablonsky
“We have a jawboning problem in New York City. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the president of Manhattan borough, just wrote a letter demanding that Mayor Zohran Mamdani ‘summarily suspend’ the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission’s partnership with the company Curb, which makes interactive TV screens for taxi cabs. Curb’s sin? Last year, it signed a contract with Newsmax to provide one-minute news updates for its taxi screens. … As we explain in our letter to the TLC, any attempt to condition TLC’s contract with the city on dropping a news vendor because the news they play is too conservative is classic jawboning.” (02/10/26)
“The upcoming negotiations between the United States and Iran may be the only way to avoid military conflict between the two countries. President Donald Trump, assuming that recent large public anti-regime protests have weakened the Iranian government, has taken what he sees as an opportunity to pressure the Iranians over their nuclear and ballistic missile programs and assistance to foreign groups in the Middle East. … The Iranians already seem willing to negotiate a deal similar to the one negotiated by Barack Obama in 2015 but loudly scrapped by the incoming Trump administration: Iran severely limits its enrichment of nuclear material and sends its stockpile of such material to a third country. It would not be the first time that Trump has made threats and then settled for a ‘for-show’ agreement similar to the one he could have gotten without the blustering.” (02/10/26)
“According to popular perception, universities have become cesspools of radical left-wing indoctrination, dominated by cultural Marxism, critical race theory, and post-modernism. As someone who has been working on the inside through the past three decades of intellectual fads and enthusiasms, I am sorry to report that, not only is this false, it is the opposite of true. The hegemonic ideology in the fields of political philosophy, legal theory, and political science, throughout my entire career, has been American liberalism. And not just any old American liberalism, but rather the very specific manifestation of this tradition articulated in the work of John Rawls.” (02/10/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“In spite of the religious claims made by some Zionists, no state on earth was created by God, and there is no moral principle or natural law that mandates support for any state. Nor is there any moral principle or natural law that prohibits delegitimizing any state. States are simply organizations, created by human beings, that carry out the agenda of the governing elite in each state. There is no mandate from heaven. There isn’t even any such thing as ‘the will of the people.’ In this, the State of Israel is no different from any other state.” (02/10/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Beryl Lipton
“Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad offered a vision of our streets that should leave every person unsettled about the company’s goals for disintegrating our privacy in public. In the ad, disguised as a heartfelt effort to reunite the lost dogs of the country with their innocent owners, the company previewed future surveillance of our streets: a world where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track, and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise.” (02/10/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Mario Trujillo
“In the past year, DHS has consistently targeted people engaged in First Amendment activity. Among other things, the agency has issued subpoenas to technology companies to unmask or locate people who have documented ICE’s activities in their community, criticized the government, or attended protests. These subpoenas are unlawful, and the government knows it. When a handful of users challenged a few of them in court with the help of ACLU affiliates in Northern California and Pennsylvania, DHS withdrew them rather than waiting for a decision. But it is difficult for the average user to fight back on their own. … That is why we, joined by the ACLU of Northern California, have asked several large tech platforms to do more to protect their users …” (02/10/26)
