Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Brian Yablonski
“Theodore Roosevelt coined the term ‘crowded hour’ about his moments of battle in the Spanish-American War. When I think of Ted Turner’s life, the bigger term ‘crowded life’ comes to mind. His impact on how we communicate and take our news today all starts with his founding of CNN. And who hasn’t pulled up an old film on Turner Classic Movies as late-night comfort food? Speaking of comfort food, he almost single handedly reintroduced the bison at scale to the West and bison meat to the world through his Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants. But these episodes in a crowded life are not Ted’s most consequential impact. His true lasting impact will have been on the larger natural world.” (05/06/26)
“As Missouri’s legislative session winds down, lawmakers took a major step toward eliminating the state’s individual income tax. Both chambers of the general assembly approved HJRs 173 and 174, a proposed constitutional amendment. Voters will now decide whether to authorize the legislature to begin the process of phasing out the income tax. Here’s a short summary of what voter approval of the amendment would set in motion …” (05/06/26)
“In exercising their liberty, some people will do things that offend you. Many people want you to believe if they’ve been offended, they’ve been violated somehow. They haven’t. Being offended isn’t the same as having your life, liberty, or property violated, even though weak people who want to control others often use this ploy. Don’t play along.” (05/06/26)
“In 1919 Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary, was murdered in Berlin. Her killers bludgeoned her with rifle blows and tossed her into the waters of a canal. Along the way, she lost a shoe. Some hand picked it up, that shoe dropped in the mud. Rosa longed for a world where justice would not be sacrificed in the name of freedom, nor freedom sacrificed in the name of justice. Every day, some hand picks up that banner. Dropped in the mud, like the shoe. The peons on the farms of Argentina’s Patagonia went out on strike against stunted wages and overgrown workdays, and the army took charge of restoring order. Executions are grueling. On this night in 1922, soldiers exhausted from so much killing went to the bordello at the port of San Julián for their well-deserved reward. But the five women who worked there closed the door in their faces and chased them away, screaming, ‘You murderers! Murderers, get out of here!'” (05/07/26)
“Recently, there has been a lot of excitement about AI agents like Claude Code and OpenClaw. Much of the hype is justified. Claude Code really is revolutionizing computer programming, and agents like OpenClaw very well might transform other parts of the economy and our daily lives. Industry leaders expect even bigger changes in the near future. In an interview last month, Sam Altman said that OpenAI is aiming to build an ‘automated AI researcher’ by March 2028. Some people expect this (or similar breakthroughs by rivals) to set off a recursive self-improvement loop that radically accelerates scientific and technological progress. That might happen eventually, but I think it will take a while.” (05/06/26)
“America boasts the world’s largest media market, and even in this age of shrinking attention spans, strained ad budgets, and declining circulation, it offers something for everyone. But does this diversity extend to the nation’s prestige outlets? On the surface, the answer would seem to be yes. The New York Times plays to the post-woke-but-still-kinda-woke establishment Left, while The Washington Post editorial page, under Jeff Bezos’s increasingly heavy-handed leadership, is going for Trump-friendly free-market conservatism. The contrast is exemplified by two of the papers’ most prominent writers: the Times’[s] Russian-born columnist Masha Gessen … couldn’t be more different from the Post’s Marc Thiessen, who’s gaining a lot of attention these days as President Trump’s favorite print columnist. … The two should be at odds, and in some ways, they are. But when it comes to foreign policy, they sing almost exactly the same hawkish, pro-empire song, albeit in slightly different keys.” (05/06/26)
“The Rev. Jesse Jackson died February 17 at age 84. In 1984 and 1988, the civil rights activist ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first Black man to wage a major national campaign for the White House. In his 1988 speech at the Democratic National Convention, Jackson emphasized, ’Politics can be a moral arena where people come together to find a common ground.’ Salim Muwakkil, in coverage for In These Times, made a similar assessment, writing that while many of Jackson’s followers ’are more comfortable agitating or deriding conventional political wisdom’, Jackson ’managed to harmonize most of those discordant notes.’ Almost 40 years later, as once-outsider politicians like Zohran Mamdani — now the first Muslim mayor of New York City — attempt to carve out space within the political mainstream, we return to Muwakkil’s words on the costs and opportunities of movement institutionalization and ‘“political maturity.'” (05/07/26)
“Meta Inc., previously known as Facebook Inc., intends to implement facial recognition technology in its smart glasses, which are produced in collaboration with Ray-Ban and currently sold without this capability. The proposed feature would facilitate real-time translation and allow users to ask on-demand questions. However, the integration of facial recognition technology introduces significant privacy and legal concerns for individuals in public spaces.” (05/06/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“Contrary to its misunderstanding and misrepresentation by Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives, libertarianism has nothing to do with greed, selfishness, one’s lifestyle, morality, vices, or religion. It is a political philosophy that deals with the proper role of violence in society. … The creed of libertarianism is nonaggression: freedom from aggression and violence against person and property as long as one respects the person and property of others. … Most Americans would claim to hold to the nonaggression principle on a personal level. … Yet most of these same people have no problem supporting government aggression against those who are not aggressing against the person or property of others, are participating in certain activities, or are engaging in prohibited commerce in order to effect changes in behavior, compel virtue, punish vice, or achieve some desired social end.” (05/06/26)
“What [Dr. Edith] Eger understood, and what makes her work so urgent now, is that Jew-hatred is never only about Jews. It is a symptom of a deeper moral disorder; the same disorder she spent her career treating in her patients and herself. When we dehumanize any group, we do not harm only them. We do something to ourselves. We coarsen the inner voice that Adam Smith called the impartial spectator. We silence the conscience that might otherwise call us back. The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; it began in the minds of people who decided that some human beings do not belong to humanity. That decision is always available to us. So is the opposite one.” (05/06/26)
