“TLast week, the flesh-eating parasite known as the New World screwworm was found in a calf in Texas; a second case was identified about five miles away shortly thereafter. (A third case was found in a dog.) Screwworm flies lay their eggs in the live tissue of warm-blooded animals, from livestock to pets to humans. These larvae ‘screw’ into the animal’s flesh, and while they are not very harmful to humans, in that the horrifying effects of maggots chewing into your skin are relatively easy to notice and address, they can kill a livestock host if not treated. In a widespread infestation, one of the last resorts would be mass culling, which would obviously have huge impacts on a diminished U.S. cattle herd.” (06/09/26)
“Life comes at you in waves. You graduate high school, watch friends start careers, get married, and have kids. Then social media shows you their children repeating the cycle. As a member of the Pacific High School Class of 1999, I didn’t expect to reach the retirement wave so soon. Yet a recent post stopped me: a high school classmate, still in his mid-40s, announced his retirement after 25 years in Missouri public schools. … He is retiring at exactly the age when most professionals hit their career peak—when experience, leadership, and judgment are most valuable. And that’s the problem. Missouri’s Public School Retirement System (PSRS) is pushing talented educators out of the classroom at the very moment students and schools need them most.” (06/08/26)
Interview with Shikha Dalmia. Dalmia: “My break with libertarianism happened when Trump arrived on the scene. I was working at Reason magazine at that time and, the minute Trump came down the golden escalator, it was clear to me that he was a different kind of politician: he was a demagogue and an authoritarian, he didn’t really understand liberalism, and he didn’t understand America’s core commitments. … It is not that libertarians were completely unconcerned about Trump; it’s that they were just not taking the threat seriously. They were treating him as a normal politician, just bad in a different kind of way and, at best, maybe a corrective to the excesses of the left. This chasm between me and libertarian circles just kept growing, and it was getting hard to get my point of view taken seriously.” (06/08/26)
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Professor Paul Finkelman
“The Trump administration recently announced that it is removing about 180 religions from those recognized by the Pentagon. This is an obvious violation of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty. In essence, the Administration has ‘established’ 31 religions as acceptable to the U.S. government and denied religious freedom to members of many other faiths. … The message of the administration is that some faiths matter, and many do not. There seems to be some politics involved here. The ‘liberal’ Unitarian/Universalist Church, which is as old as the nation itself, is no longer officially a church. Nor are churches tied to minorities, such as the Native American Church or the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).” (06/08/26)
“With all the bravado that tends to accompany Donald Trump, something else has been striking me recently—when faced with major decisions, there’s a way in which he carries himself like a wise fool in a Shakespeare play, bemused by all the tumult that’s going on around him. In a revealing moment, on March 17, when asked to explain why the United States was at war with Iran, Trump said, ‘You could say we did it out of habit’ — as if the war was just a bit of noise going on in the background and had nothing really to do with him. … what is this storm that sweeps Trump along, this force that he can only bemusedly watch? I would argue that it’s political realism — the doctrine that’s taken over the second Trump administration, maybe not entirely with Trump willing it, but which marks a fundamentally different era in international relations.” (06/08/26)
“Amid a rapid escalation between Israel and Iran, Yemen’s Houthis have rejoined the Iran war, launching a volley of missiles at Israel and pledging to implement ‘a complete and total ban’ of Israeli shipping in the Red Sea. It’s safe to say that the tenuous ceasefire in the Middle East is now unraveling. President Donald Trump demanded that all parties deescalate, writing on Truth Social Monday morning that ‘Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding’ so long as ‘ignorance or stupidity’ don’t get in their way. But the latest developments suggest that the United States has limited control over the path of the conflict, which is now entering its fourth month.” (06/08/26)
“I don’t think of America as a ‘white’ country. To me the best part of our system is that anyone can be an American overnight, provided he or she accepts a few minor guidelines, like agreeing to tolerate other religions and embrace free speech. As for the early academic weasel word ‘ethnocentrism,’ it’s so close in meaning to ‘chauvinism’ that it probably never needed to exist, but in the name of making work for Yale social scientists, we apparently must live with it. How chauvinistic should Americans be? I don’t know. Just enough? As much as any other citizen of any other place?” (06/08/26)
“The list of biblical absurdities from James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, continues to grow. In addition to his claims that God is ‘nonbinary,’ that ‘the Bible is silent about abortion’ and that there are ‘six different genders,’ we now have his contention that Mary’s consent to the virgin birth is a story about her being ‘pro-choice.’ How should we respond? Well, sometimes someone else has already said it better than you ever could. The following is an abbreviated version of an open letter written by Jeff Mullen, a pastor from Nevada, and posted to his social media on May 29.” [editor’s note: Except for the six-genders nonsense, and the concept of “informed consent” for a minor, a case can be made for each of the other statements, if you view the Bible as an “inspired” metaphysical history book written by human beings – SAT] [additional editor’s note: Judaism, in the Midrash and Talmud, does in fact recognize six genders — Zachar, Nekevah, Androgynos, Tumtum, Ay’Ionit, and Saris – TLK] (06/07/26)
“Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others argue that tariffs and industrial policy can restore America’s strength. In reality, diversified supply chains and open markets provide greater resilience than economic nationalism.” (06/08/26)
