“Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion in the tariff case of Learning Resources v. Trump rightfully has garnered favorable attention. This is largely due to its clear explanation of the Supreme Court’s ‘major questions doctrine.’ As recited by Justice Gorsuch, the major questions doctrine is that, ‘to sustain a claim that Congress has granted them an extraordinary power, executive officials must identify clear authority for that power.’ Not all the members of the court agree with that formulation, but it does seem to command a majority of the justices. Justice Gorsuch’s statement of the doctrine, however, leaves a circle open that I would like to close. My thesis is that the major questions doctrine is simply the logical obverse of the doctrine of incidental (or implied) authority.” (03/11/26)
“This war is notable not for its use of Artificial Intelligence, but for the fact that it is the first war that feels like it’s been launched by A.I: It’s all been done on a level less than thought. Trump’s remarks, Hegseth’s speeches; they all sound like autocompletes or snippets of half-remembered things. When Trump bellows, ‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,’ he knows not what it means; he just heard it somewhere, probably on TV. … In the past, propaganda served the purposes of war; now war serves the purposes of propaganda. But the blood remains real. A.I. will supposedly give us fully automated wars in the future, but it’s here, right now. There’s a blind automatism to this war; It’s a war without thought or deliberation, public or private. It’s war as autocomplete.” (03/11/26)
“You remember how the American filibuster works, right? Quick version: The Senate’s rules require not a simple majority of 51 votes but a supermajority of 60 votes to approve most legislation. However, it only takes a simple majority of 51 votes to change this rule — the so-called ‘nuclear option.’ Why, you may ask, does the filibuster endure? The usual story is “What comes around, goes around.” The other party will eventually get control of House, Senate, and presidency. Ending the filibuster helps your party fulfill its fondest dreams in the short run, but realizes your worst nightmare in the long run. Since both parties know this, the filibuster survives.” (03/11/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Nobody wants to believe they’re the villain in the story. Nobody wants to believe their government is run by psychopaths who are inflicting unfathomable evils upon populations around the globe in order to rule the world. It’s much nicer to believe you’re the Good Guys. Much easier to sit with the idea that your government might make an innocent mistake here and there, but overall is a driving force for the good of humankind, and is certainly superior to the villains it makes war with. That’s a fiction, though. It’s a comfortable lie. A fairy tale that westerners tell themselves to avoid a profoundly uncomfortable truth: We are the villains. We are the terrorists. We are the tyrants. We are the evil regime. Our soldiers aren’t out there defending our country, they’re out there murdering people for defending their country.” (03/11/26)
“There’s no mystery about the motivation for banning Claude. Anthropic has said that it wants assurances that its products won’t be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. This has enraged Trump officials: David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, has accused the company of supporting ‘woke AI.’ So an administration for which seeking vengeance against perceived enemies is a central motivation is naturally trying to punish Anthropic and damage its business. But the fact that the Trumpist-Anthropic feud is understandable doesn’t make it normal or acceptable. In fact, the designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk is a terrible omen for America’s future, in at least three ways.” (03/11/26)
Source: The Eternally Radical Idea
by Greg Lukianoff
“You can have friends whose opinions you don’t take seriously, and you can have opponents whose point of view you very much do. So, pick your ten. Figure out who the small number of people are whose judgment you genuinely trust, the people who know you well enough and love you enough to tell you the truth when you’re wrong, when you’re being unfair, when you’re getting carried away, or when — to use the technical term — you are full of shit. Then, when the crowd is screaming, when the internet is losing its mind, when strangers are confidently informing you who you are and why you did what you did, bring it back to those ten. Ask yourself what they would think. … even better, go and ask them yourself.” (03/11/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2026, the facade of the Bulgarian National Bank in Sofia was lit up with the display of a golden Euro coin. Crowds gathered in sub-zero temperatures to watch the Bulgarian lev — meaning ‘lion,’ the state currency since 1880 — relegated to history. By morning, Bulgaria had become the Eurozone’s 21st member state: a decision which, at first glance, appears nothing more than a technical monetary change. But any change as momentous as this is loaded with deep historical symbolism, economic consequences, and political tensions within the European Union (EU). As a result, whether this change is also a wise one is a live debate.” (03/11/26)
“President Donald Trump’s executive order of Feb. 18 invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 to ensure US glyphosate production and availability is neither necessary nor helpful. HHS Secretary and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) founder Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s endorsement of the order has created a firestorm in that health-interested base. On Feb. 22, Kennedy conducted triage explanations to his base with this statement: ‘Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.’ He went on to post that ‘if these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms ….’ Kennedy then described the many weed control alternatives that are being developed. All of us farmers in the nonchemical community already use many of these innovative alternatives …. We pay a slight premium, but these farmers have great yields and are certainly not going out of business like many more conventional operations.” (03/11/26)
“Trump is more than happy to inflict a host of harms on Americans: Seven servicemen killed, a billion per day in war costs, trillions in stock market capitalization wiped out, inflation risks heightened, and oil prices on the rise. To justify his foray into regional war, Trump tells Americans they should docilely accept their fate as hostages of his endless war fantasy. He declares that $100+ per barrel is a ‘very small price to pay’ (for us to pay) for his war.” (03/11/26)
“[Adam] Smith is convinced that the commercial society which he describes and analyzes in The Wealth of Nations cannot do without the morally sensitive being of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, if markets and liberty more generally are to be sustained over the long-term. There is, however, something else that unites the two books. Both flow from Smith’s commitment to the Scottish Enlightenment project of improvement, at the heart of which is what David Hume called the ‘science of man.’ That is the light in which we should place these two volumes. It reveals to us Smith’s essential humanism as someone who believed that the economy of natural liberty was part-and-parcel of what Smith called a ‘decent’ society.” (03/11/26)
