“Discussions about children’s online experiences and the dangers they might face are nothing new. But in recent months, officialdom seems to have become increasingly concerned about protecting children’s ‘wellbeing,’ rather than protecting them from ‘harm.’ So instead of concerns about children seeing extreme content or writing nasty things about each other, the current focus is on the amount of time kids spend on social media. … This focus on the duration of kids’ social-media use is revealing. It shows the extent to which calls for a ban are rooted in a lack of confidence in parental authority – a lack of confidence, that is, in parents’ capacity to control their kids’ behaviour and limit the amount of time they spend on social media.” (01/21/26)
“I get why Congress could be a good gig for a social climber or a rich dude looking for flattery and prestige and stock tips. As an entity for managing the country and meeting its challenges, today’s Congress is rather inert, especially when the biggest challenges come from within. Since the beginning of Trump’s term one year ago, I have been studying the tools available to Congress to assert itself as the primary institution of American government, expressed in Article I of the Constitution. Sadly, most of those tools have not found their way out of committee. Democrats shut down the government last October, for instance, but did not demand that they would only agree to pass appropriations if they were guaranteed to be spent.” (01/21/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“C. Hartley Grattan (1902–1980) was a journalist, author, and polymath who many view as the foremost American scholar on Australia and the Pacific Southwest. To libertarians, however, Grattan should be important as a revisionist historian who was respected by decades of antiwar activists from H.L. Mencken to Murray N. Rothbard. Although Grattan is still occasionally discussed by anti-interventionists, such as the historian Justus D. Doenecke, Grattan has become largely a footnote. Indeed, I learned of him through three intriguing footnotes in Rothbard’s book The Betrayal of the American Right.” (01/21/26)
“Many debates on economic topics hinge on a set of familiar words: production, prices, costs, value. These terms appear constantly in political speeches, news articles, and policy discussions. Yet they are rarely used with much precision (at least where academic economists are concerned). As a result, people often talk past one another while believing they are in agreement — or disagreement — about the same thing. Confusing colloquial meanings with technical definitions can lead to deeply flawed conclusions about how markets work and what governments can realistically accomplish.” (01/21/26)
“California is the engine of global AI. It’s the ecosystem where the companies and technologies driving today’s AI revolution were born. But an environmental law passed in the 1970s for a radically different industrial economy, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is now threatening to stall that engine.” (01/20/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Joanna Rozpedowski
“The US appears intent on using discrete military action while restricting rivals’ access to key regions, resources, technologies, and governance mechanisms.” (01/21/26)
“Since Sunday, Twitter/X generated 3.4 million posts about ICE protesters bursting into the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Meanwhile, a story about a 57 year-old Hmong-American named ChongLy Thao who was led by ICE agents onto a snowy street in boxers and Crocs generated about 2,600 posts in the same time period. On the smaller Bluesky platform the situation reversed: the #Hmong story generated enormous heat, while traffic about the Cities Church affair was minimal, only what was there was nearly all negative. … Both of the viral St. Paul stories centered on video from Sunday morning. Both inspired heavy commercial news coverage. As an insight into who sees what and how gulfs in perception form about politics, it’s instructive.” (01/20/26)
“Last Friday, Canada and China struck a preliminary trade deal that would open the Canadian market to Chinese electric vehicles and lower Chinese retaliatory tariffs on key Canadian agricultural exports. … The deal will undoubtedly revive accusations of malign Chinese influence and Canadian perfidy from U.S. right-wingers and China hawks. But a year into Trump’s second term, moving closer to Beijing makes perfect sense for Ottawa, as well as the European Union. … Put bluntly, a relatively rational autocracy with limited, stable foreign-policy goals located an ocean away may seem preferable to a country run by an erratic autocrat next door. In this respect, the ongoing Greenland crisis has given Canada’s leaders brutal clarity about the United States as it is, not as it was or as they want it to be.” (01/20/26)
“Socialism pretends to be all warm and cuddly, but Sen. Bernie Sanders is showing how heartless it can be. He’s been the sole lawmaker blocking legislation to speed up cures for kids with cancer and nudge drug makers to develop new pediatric therapies. And on Tuesday, he joined nurses who’ve abandoned their hospitalized patients to strike for fat pay hikes. For cold-blooded socialists like Bernie, ideology clearly trumps compassion. Start with the bill he’s blocking: the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act, recently renamed for a 16-year-old who died of cancer last year while lobbying for the measure. Sanders (I-VT) says he himself backs the bill, except it doesn’t push other health care measures he wants, such as funding for community health centers — so he’s holding the cancer kids hostage.” (01/20/25)
