Source: The Bulwark
by Mark Hertling
“The mass deportation policy is a legal mess — and reassigning military lawyers to support it would only create more problems.” (02/10/26)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/jags-shouldnt-be-civilian-prosecutors
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Jillian York
Interview: “Yazan Badran is an assistant professor in international media and communication studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a researcher at the Echo research group. His research focuses on the intersection between media, journalism and politics particularly in the MENA region and within its exilic and diasporic communities.” (02/10/26)
Source: Antiwar.com
by William J Astore
“Far too often, a chosen people, a ‘master race,’ decides to eliminate barbarians, inferiors, primitives, race enemies, whatever words are used to demonize other humans. Often, it’s said we must kill them before they kill us, so mass murder is defined and defended in terms of safety and security. The ‘bad’ people force us to kill them. We don’t want to do it – they make us! And we hate them all the more for making us kill. At the same time, mass murder is often quite profitable for the killers.” (02/10/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/william_astore/2026/02/09/what-is-genocide
Source: New York Post
by Ted Deutch
“More and more Americans feel our national unity is growing fragile. Conspiracy theories and misinformation are eroding trust, stoking hate and tearing at the very fabric of our society, often with tragic consequences. At American Jewish Committee, we’re seeing those consequences up close — and our new report on ‘The State of Antisemitism in America,’ out Tuesday, reveals how these divisions are affecting the Jewish community, and us all. Every day, Jews across this country must consider wrenching questions of personal safety: * Should I wear my kippah today, or will that make me a target? * Can I hang a mezuzah on my door, or am I affixing a bullseye? * Is today the day someone throws a brick through the kosher supermarket’s window? * Will taking my kids to synagogue put them in a shooter’s crosshairs?” (02/09/25)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/09/opinion/hate-is-destroying-americas-promise-and-half-of-us-are-blind/
Source: spiked
by Brendan O’Neill
“Has there ever existed a man whose arrogance is so out of proportion to his talents? I am of course talking about Wes Streeting – Britain’s secretary of state for health, cracker of the most terrible committee-written jokes, and the man hilariously gushed over by witless centrists as the saviour of Labour. No shade, but if the answer is ‘Wes Streeting,’ you are asking the wrong question. Unless the question is ‘Who’s the biggest tit on the frontbench?’ Streeting is back in the news, like that C-list celeb who just won’t leave us alone, after self-leaking the WhatsApp chats he had with ultimate wrong’un, Peter Mandelson.” (02/10/26)
Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher
“The biggest colorblind conclusion from the 2024 election is that most voters, regardless of race, care primarily about making ends meet. Such voters can conclude: If Democrats couldn’t keep inflation down, then maybe give a Republican a chance, even if that Republican says racist things. Voters could further rationalize that Trump couldn’t be that racist, and that his promised deportations wouldn’t affect neighbors, friends, and family. Now that Trump has failed to deliver the economy he promised, while letting immigration agents run wild, he is hemorrhaging support across racial lines. In turn, Democrats reasonably want to prioritize an ‘affordability’ agenda to win voters back. But that can be pursued while calling out Trump’s racism, which goes well beyond offensive comments to infect his policy choices.” (02/10/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/02/10/donald-trump-racist-policies-consequences/
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“Trump hasn’t made a rational argument for lower interest rates. Instead, he seems to believe that rate cuts should be his reward for overseeing a ‘hot’ economy – like a third-grader given a gold star for acing a quiz. Understanding that this makes no sense, Trump’s economy-policy minions have converged on a different, ostensibly more economically rational reason to cut interest rates: AI.” (02/10/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/no-ai-doesnt-justify-lower-interest
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Alice Johnson
“Public discussion of the Epstein files has largely centered on individual misconduct and reputational fallout. That emphasis risks overlooking the more consequential question raised by the Justice Department’s response to the disclosure mandate. The episode is less instructive as a scandal than as an example of how executive institutions behave when transparency carries political cost. What is at stake is not the identity of those named in the records, but how legal obligations are treated once compliance becomes inconvenient.” (02/10/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/epstein-and-the-structure-of-impunity
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Rev. John F Naugle
“t some point in our lives, we have our first experience with the ‘comfort cart.’ The comfort cart, for those who are lucky enough to not yet know, is the cart of snacks and drinks that gets delivered to the room of someone who is actively dying in a hospital or nursing home so that friends and family have less of a reason to step away while awaiting the death of their loved one. … True civilization respects the reality that we will all die and obliges us to accompany the dying with certain rituals, both religious and non-religious. The progressive loss of these rituals with the apparent motive of avoiding thinking about death both set the stage for the Covid hysteria and was accelerated by it.” (02/10/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-reason-for-death-rituals/
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin Carroll
“The DNI’s basic responsibility is to provide the president, department and agency heads, senior military commanders, and Congress with intelligence that is ‘objective’ and ‘independent of political considerations.’ Gabbard’s only authority related to voting is her supervision of the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), which houses the Election Threat Executive (ETE). The ETE, founded in 2019, is tasked with providing recommendations for potential responses to attempts to influence or interfere with U.S. elections by countries such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. It is unclear how the DNI helping the FBI seize a county’s voting records from 2020 fits into the mission of the FMIC or the Office of the DNI (ODNI) more broadly, especially as those records were already under seal, per a state court order.” (02/10/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/gabbard-raid-intelligence-community-threat/