Category: Opinion

Source: hypertext
by Ryan Avent

“Rebuilding the liberal consensus requires us to go beyond the minimalist version of it.” (09/30/26)

https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/meaning-and-the-crisis-of-liberalism

Source: The Bulwark
by Mona Charen

“Trump had the most zealous followers of anyone this side of Osama bin Laden, and in his first term, he did a certain amount of fan service. He cracked down on illegal (and legal) immigration, made gestures toward building a wall on the southern border, cut taxes, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Accords, and insulted and belittled everyone from Hillary Clinton to John Lewis. Was there profiteering as well? Sure. … But it was all pretty low-key compared with the sequel. In his second term, Trump has been a caricature of a plutocrat, gilding the Oval Office, grinding the White House East Wing into dust to build his garish ballroom, plastering his name on everything in his line of sight, issuing commemorative coins with his face on them, and vacuuming up wealth for himself and his family on a scale that has never been seen in American history.” (09/30/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-populist-image-is-dead-corrupt-greed-abuse-midterms

Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman

“Looking into the controversy over Ritalin and related drugs for controlling ADHD I was struck by a puzzle. Currently, about twelve percent of children are diagnosed with ADHD; those so diagnosed are widely claimed to be unable to function in a classroom without medication. The number is twice what it was thirty years ago.” (09/30/26)

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-ritalin-puzzle

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie

“Britain has a million young people doing nothing. Not studying, not training, not working. The ONS counted 981,000 NEETs in April to June 2026, and 393,000 of them were unemployed and looking for work. The number has been climbing for four years. Only one EU country, Romania, now has a higher NEET rate than ours. This is not just a statistic. It is a slow waste of talent, energy and ambition. … We might limit job-seeking benefits for under-25s to six months. After that, the benefit stops and a job starts. Every young claimant still out of work at six months would be offered a fixed-term public service job. … Those who refuse the place would not receive benefit. The deal is simple. Society will not leave you idle, and you will not be paid to stay idle.” (09/30/26)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/putting-a-million-neets-into-work

Source: Town Hall
by John R Lott, Jr.

“Gun control advocates have condemned the Justice Department’s decision to stop criminally enforcing the nearly 60-year-old 1968 federal ban on licensed dealers selling handguns to law-abiding 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. They say it will cause the loss of life. ‘That’s because young Americans are disproportionately likely to commit gun violence,’ claims the GIFFORDS Center’s Executive Director Emma Brown. It is true that young people commit crime at relatively high rates, but they are also more likely to be victims of crime. A 20-year-old woman facing a stalker needs protection as much as a 21-year-old woman does. Young adults also face substantial risks of becoming victims: Reported rapes are 32 percent more likely for ages 18 to 20 than for people ages 21 to 23, and the younger group’s homicide rate is 7 percent higher.” (09/30/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnrlottjr/2026/09/30/gun-control-advocates-really-dont-think-there-is-any-age-at-which-people-should-own-guns-n2683821

Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille

“The process of paying taxes manages to add insult to injury by making it burdensome to comply as you cough up the money the government steals from you. The time lost keeping up on tax rules, filing paperwork, and calculating our own mugging is stolen from the rewarding areas of life, and the costs are diverted from productive activities. How much do we lose in satisfying government’s demands? A new report answers that question in painful detail, just in time for the October 15 extended filing deadline.” (09/30/26)

https://reason.com/2026/09/30/filing-taxes-will-cost-americans-544-billion-this-year/

Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson

“A Democratic majority in the House will have to do the bulk of the political work on a third Trump impeachment irrespective of the outcome in the Senate: In case of a small Democratic majority in the Senate or continued Republican control, Democrats will have reasons—substantive reasons and reasons having to do with political calculation—to give the case against Trump and his allies a full, extensive airing in the House rather than hastily sending articles of impeachment over to the Senate, because, absent some currently implausible scenario, a small Democratic majority in the upper chamber would produce the same result as a small Republican majority: The articles would fail to produce a conviction, which requires a two-thirds majority. That is, unless some Republican senators can be shamed into acting like the thing they always boast about being: patriots.” (09/30/26)

https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-impeachment-rubio-hegseth-bessent-democrats-midterms/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Dan Grazier

“The Iraq War was already four-years-old when I walked down the ramp of a C-17 at Al Taqaddum Air Base in April 2007. The fact that I am writing these words is proof that I survived that deployment and a subsequent one to Afghanistan in 2013. In the years since, I transitioned back into civilian life, established a new career, and saw my kids grow up and escape the nest. … Had anyone told me while I was dodging IEDs in the summer of 2007 that I would be asked to write a column at the age of 48 about the last American troops leaving Iraq today, I would have rightly questioned what the United States was doing there. I believed at the time that we were fighting terrorists and helping to create a free Iraq. Two decades later, I have no idea why we were really fighting there.” (09/30/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-withdrawal-iraq/

Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish

“Carlos Josué Marchena Marchena was just 36 years old when he died in the Winn Correctional Center immigration prison in Winnfield, Louisiana, earlier this month. He had repeatedly told his family and another detainee that he wasn’t receiving the insulin shots he needed to manage his Type 1 diabetes; he was missing meals and lacked enough water, too. Another immigrant inside the camp reportedly said that the day before Marchena died, he had been in pain, vomiting, and ‘pale purple and wet with sweat’. Marchena is the third person to die in Winn Correctional Center this year and among the at least 65 people who have died in immigration detention since Donald Trump retook the White House, according to a nonscientific tally the Prospect maintains based on death notices, news coverage, and federal databases for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, among other sources.” (09/30/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/09/30/ice-neglect-immigration-deportation-mortality-reviews/

Soure: The Daily Economy
by Jason Sorens

“Research on schools, policing, and government spending is clear: public sector bargaining forces taxpayers to finance the erosion of their rights.” [editor’s note: The problem is the “public sector” part, not the “unions” part. Stop financing stuff through taxes and let the market handle bargaining, “collective” or otherwise – TLK] (09/30/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/public-sector-unions-undermine-accountability/