“One of the most difficult areas in church–state law involves the conflict between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In the United States, at least at the level of basic principle, that conflict has been largely resolved for decades. Ever since Cantwell v. Connecticut, we have accepted that people don’t have a right to be free from criticism — or even offense — directed at their religious beliefs. Speakers may criticize religion, ridicule religious doctrines, and even confront believers directly, so long as they respect ordinary time, place, and manner restrictions and do not incite imminent violence. In other words, in American constitutional law, freedom of speech generally trumps claims that religious sensibilities have been wounded. The First Amendment does not contain a right not to be insulted. The situation in Europe is more complicated.” (01/20/26)
“The past year has completely discredited any claim that choosing between the Democratic and Republican parties would be merely a matter of ‘pick your poison’ with the same end result. In countless terrible ways, the last 12 months have shown that Donald Trump’s party is bent on methodically inflicting vast cruelty and injustice while aiming to crush what’s left of democracy and the rule of law. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s leadership persists with the kind of elitist political approach that helped Trump win in 2024. Hidebound and unimaginative, Senate leader Chuck Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries have been incapable of inspiring the people whose high-turnout votes will be essential to ending Republican control of Congress and the White House.” (01/20/25)
“The United States and China are the world’s two great powers. The US boasts the largest economy, the global reserve currency, the leading AI firms, and a military with unmatched worldwide reach. China has the globe’s second-largest economy (far ahead of third-place Germany); commanding positions in key fields such as drones, batteries, and rare earths; an increasingly formidable navy; and, by virtue of its export dominance, substantial leverage over global trade. Cold War II is taking shape. Or is it? Dig deeper, and both nations start to look like surprisingly fragile societies drifting slowly but steadily toward disaster.” (01/20/26)
“Food, which generally originates with a farmer, gardener, or orchardist, is fast losing its hands-on persona and increasingly gaining a mechanical, chemical platform. Over the last decade, the United States has lost about 28,000 farms annually. While some of the loss is due to urbanization, most of the land remains farmland, either managed by other farmers or simply abandoned. While there are 1.3 million farmers over age 65, only 300,000 are 35 or younger. In 2022, the average American farmer was 58—years older than the average age in other vibrant economic sectors. The American business landscape is largely anti-people. The current rush to artificial intelligence reflects how eagerly most businesses seek to eliminate people. The farming sector illustrates this trend better than most.” (01/20/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Will Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado return to her country, as she has vowed? If so, how exactly would she do that? Does she sneak into the country and remain hidden, as she has done ever since the Chavista regime began arresting and brutalizing protestors after the country’s 2024 presidential election? Or does she get on a plane and fly publicly into the country and live openly without fear of being arrested by the Chavista regime to face pending criminal charges against her? It seems to me that given the position of servile subserviency into which she has placed herself with respect to her relationship with President Trump, she would almost certainly feel compelled to ask his permission to return to her home country.” (01/20/26)
“Donald J. Trump was inaugurated for a second term as president exactly one year ago. It is safe to say the country, and the world, will never be the same. President Trump has engaged in energetic and bold governing and diplomacy, fulfilling campaign promises like boosting domestic energy production, while also seeking peace in turbulent parts of the world and attempting to follow through on long-term ambitions, like acquiring Greenland. He has engaged with the press on a near-daily basis, boosted recruitment for our military, dismantled harmful left-wing shibboleths like DEI, convinced our NATO allies to spend more on their own defense, junked burdensome regulations that interfered with our country’s progress …. It is an incredible boatload of accomplishments.” [editor’s note: Well, until you delete the parts that are made-up bullshit. Then it’s not quite so incredible – TLK] (01/20/25)
“A year into Trump’s second term, the emboldened president’s maximalist strategy — pushing every norm to its most elastic, and then a bit beyond, and from that new breaking point pushing yet again — conjures the boiling-frog theory, in which a frog placed in boiling water will immediately hop out, but a frog placed in cool water that is slowly heated will complacently boil to death. (And yes, I know that this amphibious metaphor for failing to notice incremental negative changes is apocryphal, but the lesson is still apt.) Or, as the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon put it to me, the Overton window is moving so far, so quickly, that the more apt way to understand Trump’s strategy is: ‘Fuck the Overton window.'” (01/20/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jennifer Kavanagh
“The integrity of the 76-year-old alliance appears in the balance here, but the row over Greenland is a symptom, not the cause. Today, NATO faces a deep and existential challenge: a fundamental divide between the United States and the alliance’s European members over the type and extent of the threat posed by Russia. Ultimately, it is this fracture — and not the outcome of the current territorial dispute — that will be the alliance’s undoing.” (01/20/26)
“Liberalism never was hegemonic, neither as an ideology or a set of political structures. There never was uniform belief in core liberal values. Rather, liberalism sometimes served as something of an ideological lingua franca: A conservative in the ‘90s, arguing for creationism in schools for instance, might say children should be ‘taught the debate’ and ‘free to make up their own minds.’ It’s not that they believed in reasoned debate and intellectual freedom, this was simply a useful rhetoric for them at the time. Now, they increasingly prefer to make their case solely in their own language. Liberalism has lost the illusion of controlling the heavens, while actually gaining followers here on Earth. The world is going through a great ideological realignment, but it is better visualized as ‘consolidation’ rather than a ‘sudden shift.’” (01/20/26)
“It has been obvious to informed observers for at least a decade that EVs are where car production as an industry is going to land, sooner or later. They are faster, simpler, cheaper to run and maintain, dramatically more efficient, and most importantly, produce no direct carbon emissions, when stacked up against cars running on fossil fuels. So, the Inflation Reduction Act contained a large subsidy package for the manufacture and sale of EVs. Automakers got a variety of subsidies for building batteries and EVs, while car buyers got a $7,500 tax credit for purchasing them. That way, the Big Three (General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis) could start to catch up with Chinese companies, which stole a march on America the first time Trump threw a wrench into the EV transition.” (01/20/25)
