“‘Something wicked this way comes.’ Those words from William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ capture the approach of Halloween. For tort litigators, it is welcome news for a holiday that is a mix of slip-and-falls, food liability, and costume defects. Each year, we add to the list of Halloween torts. So let us begin. Last year, a group of people walked past the Fear Factor haunted house run by Murder Beach Productions. Their employee approached the group and asked a girl kid ‘Who is that’ She replied, ‘My Dad, but he’s scared.’ The performer then stated, ‘Watch what I do to him!’ and chased Harrison Wright down the sidewalk until he fell face first on the concrete, resulting in a 2-inch laceration to the head, permanent injuries, post-traumatic headaches, loss of wages and medical bills.” (10/31/26)
“Gift card and app balances aren’t just waiting to buy your coffee; they’re helping Starbucks grow. Customer loyalty is a surprising source of corporate financing.” (10/30/26)
“William F. Buckley would have smiled at Hankins’[s] description of him as ‘the liberal gentleman.’ Buckley was, of course, the founding father of the modern American conservative movement—a movement whose mission, as he and his co-founders conceived it, was to oppose what had come to be known as “liberalism” in American politics. In the context of the intellectual boxing matches in which Buckley was a star pugilist, ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ were antonyms. How, then, does Buckley count, in Hankins’[s] reckoning, as a ‘liberal?’ The answer is that Buckley believed in what has come to be known as ‘liberal education.'” (10/30/26)
“More than 3 million pages of the Epstein files have been released, yet millions more remain under DOJ lock and key, subject to lawsuits, redactions and accusations of coverup. With the midterm elections dominating the news, the Iran war far from resolved and Americans suffering from sky-high fuel prices, the Epstein mess has retreated from the public imagination. Yet, this thing is far from over. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember that. Last week, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee breathed new life into the scandal, releasing a 52-page report examining the relationship between President Trump and his onetime pal.” (11/01/26)
“The mass-mobility of the modern age was thrust upon the popular masses of people by war and violent dispossession. Within this context, the immigration system has always been used to attack and undermine the truly bottom-up movements of ordinary people. It is used to weaken political radicalism just as it is used to structure the labor market, to determine the bargaining position of workers, to allocate social and economic vulnerability, and to distribute economic power and privilege. So borders are several coercive social systems, not one.” (10/30/26)
“The Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate coming from the highest levels of our government are absolutely outrageous. From President Donald Trump to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to members of Congress, including Sen.Ted Cruz and Rep. Nancy Mace, we are hearing vile, ignorant and dangerous attacks that must be denounced not just by the communities and individuals under attack, but by all of us. When RFK Jr. was campaigning in Michigan for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, he insulted the entire Arab community worldwide (all 500 million of them), saying that Arabs ‘don’t produce science, they don’t produce literature, and they don’t win Nobel Prizes or other prestigious international awards’. His remarks were not only incredibly racist, but absolutely false.” (10/31/26)
“Harvard’s student body is becoming more and more Asian in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision making race-based affirmative action illegal. The most recent class to graduate this past spring was 27.6% Asian. The newly admitted class of 2030 has reached a record high of 43.2% Asian students. The shift represents justice for Asian students and families who, until the Supreme Court overturned race-based affirmative action in 2023, had been unfairly shut out of elite institutions because they didn’t represent the ‘right’ kind of diversity. For years, in the name of ‘racial justice’, America’s premier colleges and universities discriminated against certain teenagers racially. But now meritocracy is on the rebound in academia. In June 2023, the Supreme Court voted 6 to 2 to overturn race based affirmative action after legal strategist Edward Blum and his organization, Students for Fair Admissions, sued Harvard University for allegedly discriminatory admissions practices.” (10/30/26)
“‘Pretend I’m on the ballot!’ the president insists, as if there is any other Republican on the ballot. It’s been two years of governance without a Congress — the lifeless body effectively passes one bill a year while deferring in every other single respect to the cult leader — so voting for a Republican congressman or senator is, quite simply, a vote for Trump. And an endorsement of his de facto suspension of constitutional balance. So vote for anyone other than a Republican next Tuesday. Or if that’s too compromising for you, don’t vote at all.” (10/30/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling
“There are two ways someone can look at the social world in which we all live: with humility or with hubris. The person with humility looks with a degree of wonder and even amazement at how a complex world with over eight billion people can successfully do so much through decentralized decision-making in a web of interconnected global markets and achieve such an astonishing level of economic wellbeing and prosperity for the vast majority of the world’s population. People possessing a high degree of hubris look at that world and are frustrated and upset that so much goes on that they consider unfair, unjust, and irrational in the decisions and choices of so many people in their roles as consumers and producers.” (10/30/26)
“Hopefully, thoughtful Kentuckians will take some time to look at what the state’s kids will, and will not, be learning and chime in. Our students deserve no less.” (10/30/26)
