Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher
“Democratic voters, long partial to candidates who show a capacity for bipartisan compromise over ideological purity, may be changing.” (07/31/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/07/31/democratic-primary-2028-2026/
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“The long-run trend has been this: necessities and an array of luxuries (which have become necessities) are spectacularly cheap by historical standards. This is seen clearly in terms of the time price of goods. Governments, of course, have kept the trendline from being smooth. In a thousand ways, politicians and bureaucrats impede the general fall in prices.” (07/31/26)
Source: American Greatness
by Thaddeus G McCotter
“It seems like a lifetime ago, and in many ways it was. Now called to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci’s craven charade of invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent lest he incriminate himself (even after he had been preemptively pardoned by President Biden) the baleful memories of the COVID-19 pandemic flooded back: the insanity, misery, hubris, and hypocrisy of the ‘trust the science’ mob; and the crushing of dissenting voices and the canceling of the unvaccinated by the lockdown Left. I vividly recollected my disgust when the ‘medical community’s experts’ told us it was acceptable, if not imperative, in the midst of a readily communicable and lethal pandemic to pause the lockdowns and go protest against systemic racism, which, while an abstraction was supposedly more dangerous than COVID-19.” (08/01/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/01/the-fifth-for-fauci-and-the-administrative-state/
Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer
“The first time I realized how disruptive artificial intelligence could become wasn’t from reading an academic paper or watching a keynote speech. It was while working on a home design for our family construction business. In the past, we’ve paid architects thousands and waited weeks for them to produce CAD renderings. But I found while experimenting with AI that renderings of near-equal quality could be generated in minutes for free. … it’s easy to conclude that AI will put numerous architects out of work. Might it bring the same widespread unemployment to other white-collar professions? I don’t think so. AI will likely follow the same historical pattern as every revolutionary technology. Rather than destroying labor, it will reallocate it through “creative destruction.'” (07/31/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/31/ai-wont-destroy-work-it-will-just-change-it/
Source: The Bulwark
by Paul Rosenzweig
“The prosecution of James Comey is dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. It is as dead as a doornail. The manner of its death has yet to be determined, to be sure. But there is no doubt that it is dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing terrifying can come of the story I am going to relate. To be sure, its death is, in some ways, disappointing. Who does not yearn for a full-blown public trial where the government’s proof is exposed for the bag of vacuous nonsense that it is? The spectacle would sell popcorn by the bucketful—and with good reason.” (07/31/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter
“It has often been observed that it is good for pilots to sit at the front of the plane, because if they make a catastrophic mistake, they will be the first to hit the mountain. While this certainly does not prevent all plane crashes, it simply illustrates a true point: when people personally, immediately, and directly bear the costs of their actions and decisions, it heavily incentivizes them to be circumspect regarding whether their beliefs are true or false.” (07/31/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/democracy-bureaucracy-idiocracy
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Is there no good idea a politician cannot spoil? Take what’s on next Tuesday’s Missouri ballot. ‘Amendment 4 was my idea, but I am voting against it,’ Ron Calzone wrote on Monday in The Missouri Times. Mr. Calzone had advanced what is called a Concurrent Majority Ratification process. It was introduced into the legislature by Representative Bill Kidd as HJR 132 in 2022. And then politicians started revising. Everyone agreed, says Calzone, that Missouri’s constitution “was too easy to amend,” considering ‘the fact that 50% + 1 of the vote can come from just the urban areas’ and thereby inflict upon less-populated rural regions a ‘Tyranny of the Majority.’ … The current Amendment 4, however, though promoted as a solution, really adds three humongous problems …” (07/31/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/07/31/put-it-out-of-their-missouri/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Logan Tantibanchachai
“Prohibition won’t stop gambling’s social harms. But regulations aimed at transparency could protect individual rights to informed contract, while limiting predatory platforms.” (07/31/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/a-libertarian-case-for-regulating-sports-betting/
Source: In These Times
by Danny Postel
“Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan is a national story, and not only because Michigan and Maine are likely to determine which party controls the upper chamber of Congress come January. The race between public health official Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and four-term U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens is also a microcosm of the struggle for the future of the Democratic Party — the war of position between progressives and centrists that is playing out all over the country. Last week I went to Metro Detroit and spent a few days talking with a range of people about this pivotal race. I was especially curious to explore the political dynamics in Michigan’s Jewish and Black communities, two voting blocks that could prove crucial in this contest.” (07/31/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Eldar Mamedov
“With Trump running out of options, Zelensky saw an opening. He could demonstrate that Ukraine—unlike Western Europe, which Trump has publicly excoriated for its ‘weakness’—was a useful partner in confronting America’s enemies in the Middle East. It was a neoconservative dream come true. But there is critical context to the Caspian and Iraqi gambits that Kiev may have overlooked. The United States has been pressing Iraqi authorities to take on the numerous Iranian-oriented Shiite militias. If Ukrainian intelligence was indeed operating in Iraq, it appears Kiev was attempting to help implement Washington’s plan. However, judging by the statements and actions of Iraqi authorities, not everyone in Baghdad supports these intentions. By exposing Ukrainian involvement, Iraq has effectively told both Washington and Kiev: This is our country, not your battlefield.” (07/31/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/zelenskys-caspian-gambit-failed-for-now/