Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Karthik Sankaran
“Damage to a crucial Saudi pipeline has forced Riyadh to delay shipments to Europe, possibly into November.” (09/17/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/oil-pipeline-saudi-arabia/
Source: Washington Monthly
by Garrett Epps
“Our constitutional system is being torn asunder. Enter an intriguing idea from a great legal mind.” (09/17/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/09/17/the-case-for-a-shadow-court/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Paul McDonnold
“Rainer Zitelmann’s ‘Space Capitalism’ argues that property rights and free markets — not government control — will determine whether humanity’s next great frontier becomes a thriving commercial enterprise.” (09/17/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-battle-for-the-future-of-space/
Source: Independent Institute
by Craig Eyermann
“Trillions in deficits have pushed US national debt interest payments to record highs.” (09/16/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/09/16/living-fiscal-fantasyland/
Source: Common Dreams
by Stephen R Weissman
“In May 2024, a New York City jury convicted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of 34 felonies of falsifying business records with an intent to defraud, including an intent to ‘commit, aid, or conceal another crime’. Days earlier, Justice Juan Merchan had convened counsel for a pre-charge conference to discuss their recommendations for jury instructions. There, Trump’s defense team, led by Todd Blanche, failed to propose a key legal requirement for what the prosecution called the ‘most obvious’ other crime: conspiracy to promote an election through the ‘unlawful means’ of violating Federal Election Campaign Act contribution limits. Under reigning federal precedents, there could be no criminal violation of FECA unless the conduct was ‘willful’ (defined as ‘knowing it was unlawful’). Yet the defense put forth the term ‘willfully’ without saying what it meant!” (09/17/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/todd-blanche-incompetent
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“As is usual when someone details the vileness of slavery we get the claim that, well, it financed the current richness of the world: ‘That complicity helped shape modern Britain, Lester said. Plantation profits helped fuel the Industrial Revolution, railways, public health, welfare, universities, schools, church building and the public finances.’ Therefore everyone who benefits from the current richness of the world must cough up trillions to compensate. We do not agree with the base claim, obviously. Everywhere had slavery and only the one place had that first Industrial Revolution. It’s therefore not slavery that was the special spark that triggered the IR: QED. But, OK, let us accept the point in order to be able to explore it. Slavery did lead to the richness of the modern world. That means that anyone in this modern world benefitted from slavery.” (09/17/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/a-logical-point-about-the-slavery-reparations-movement
Source: Show-Me Institute
by Avery Frank
“Missouri has a teacher shortage. Just ask anyone. Except the actual teacher shortage problem is different from what many people assume. In our new paper on Missouri’s teacher pipeline, James Shuls and I show that the state’s teacher labor market does not indicate a broad shortage of teachers. Since 2013, Missouri has hired 4,000 teachers while public school enrollment has fallen by almost 30,000 students. The shortage pressure appears to be coming from specific high-need subject areas and schools.” (09/16/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Kyle Anzalone
“The war in the Middle East keeps getting worse for President Donald Trump. The campaign to defeat Iran and establish a new order in the Middle East that left Tehran’s allies marginalized has imploded spectacularly. … ‘Don’t worry,’ politicians and war hawks told Americans, ‘Trump has a winning strategy.’ They argued that the Iranian economy and the Strait of Hormuz really weren’t all that important to the global oil market. They claimed that the ‘panicans’ were alarming their fellow Americans over nothing. ‘Sure, oil can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz, but Saudi Arabia can pump the oil to the Red Sea via its East-West pipeline.’ However, that plan literally went up in smoke last week.” (09/27/26)
Source: Persuasion
by Matt Lutz
“It’s reasonable to ask how AI might kill us all. We can answer that question on several levels. At the first level, AI can kill humans in the same way that humans kill humans. AI is already being used in lethal ways …. At a second level, we should remember that AI is native to computer systems; that’s where it lives. And these computer systems are increasingly in charge of everything that we do. … But at the highest level, none of these details about how AI might kill us matter. The thing that is dangerous about AI is that it could become massively more intelligent than us, and so massively more capable of controlling the environment in any number of ways.” (09/16/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-everyone-is-saying-ai-could-kill
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Josh Morrison
“Pharmaceutical forecasting is untested, and the FDA is a conservative organization. Decision makers would not and should not uproot their usual process in favor of a forecasting-based one. We envision applying forecasting to the FDA gradually, increasing its prominence only after low-commitment applications have visibly succeeded. … This summer, as part of its Operation Trialblazer clinical trial reform initiative, the Trump administration announced a pilot program to speed up phase 1 trials. Incorporating forecasting into that pilot would be a concrete way of implementing this initial stage. The FDA could either employ human forecasters, partner with an AI superforecasting company, or create their own in-house software; results from this first stage would be used to calibrate its effectiveness.” (09/16/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ai-superforecasting-should-transform