Source: Reason
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
“Can a building be a sex trafficker? Some lawyers seem to be hoping so. Apartment buildings, nightclubs, and hotels have been coming under fire for facilitating interactions that some say should have been tip-offs to sex trafficking or sexual violence taking place. Victims in these lawsuits describe some heinous actions by their alleged abusers. I’m not trying to minimize any such harm or suggest actual perpetrators of violence shouldn’t be punished. But in the push to hold more entities legally accountable for alleged sex crimes against women, these suits are setting up a system in which women are increasingly watched and their sex lives increasingly subject to questioning. The end result here isn’t likely to be a world in which women are safer but one in which they’re more surveilled.” (02/18/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/18/blaming-buildings-for-sex-trafficking/
Source: Reason
“Can Iran’s Protest Movement Topple the Regime?” (02/18/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/02/18/can-irans-protest-movement-topple-the-regime/
Source: Benzinga
“Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) are set to compel a vote on their War Powers Resolution, requiring congressional approval for military action against Iran. This move comes in response to reports of a potential U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, with a 90% likelihood, according to Trump officials cited by Khanna in his X post. On Wednesday, Khanna and Massie announced their plans to force a vote on the bipartisan resolution, which would necessitate congressional authorization for any U.S. military action against Iran.” (02/19/26)
https://www.benzinga.com/news/politics/26/02/50712115/ro-khanna-thomas-massie-move-to-force-war-powers-vote-as-trump-signals-possible-iran-strike
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal
“As Voltairine de Cleyre wrote in 1908, ‘[T]he sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly.’ They thought America could have liberty along with a central government — a state. It didn’t work. Now we are stuck with a growing police state, and the tatters of our remaining liberty are being criminalized at an astonishing rate. This won’t end well. Liberty is indivisible — it can’t be broken into pieces and remain liberty. You can’t respect it selectively (for some people, in some areas, some of the time) and call it ‘liberty.’ True liberty requires consistent respect for everyone’s rights, everywhere, all the time.” (02/18/26)
https://www.easternnewmexiconews.com/story/2026/02/18/voices/opinion-we-have-to-trust-liberty-completely/232793.html
Source: Barron’s
“Japan’s Sanae Takaichi was formally reappointed as prime minister on Wednesday, 10 days after her historic landslide election victory. Takaichi, 64, became Japan’s first woman premier in October and won a two-thirds majority for her party in the snap lower house elections on February 8. She has pledged to bolster Japan’s defences to protect its territory and waters, likely further straining relations with Beijing, and to boost the flagging economy. Takaichi suggested in November that Japan could intervene militarily if Beijing sought to take Taiwan by force. China, which regards the democratic island as part of its territory and has not ruled out force to annex it, was furious. Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that forces in Japan were seeking to ‘revive militarism.'” (02/18/26)
https://archive.is/wkBTe
Source: The Findings Substack
by Paul Rosenberg
“I’m a bitcoin advocate, but I also love gold and silver; they’re honest money with no necessity of a counter-party. That is, they’re wonderful for decentralized commerce, which we and the world very much need. My plea to Team Gold is to begin using their wonderful money, rather than leaving it forever on shelves. (Whether their own or in a vault.) By no means am I opposed to keeping gold as an insurance policy; it’s great for that use. But the monetary metals have just enjoyed a great and long overdue run-up, at this point I think we need to take the next logical step: To start using our better money. … we’ll simultaneously build a new infrastructure. And I know this is true because I’ve watched it happen twice in a row over the past twenty-five years: first for e-gold and then for bitcoin.” (02/18/26)
https://thefindings.substack.com/p/my-plea-to-team-gold
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Nevada gaming regulators filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to block the prediction market operator Kalshi from offering events contracts that would allow its residents to bet on sports including football and basketball games. The Nevada gaming control board filed the lawsuit as part of an escalating battle over the ability of state gaming regulators nationally to police companies like Kalshi that allow users to place financial bets through their prediction markets. It sued on the same day that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in a brief in related litigation threw its support behind companies like Kalshi by arguing it had exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets. … a federal appeals court on Tuesday declined to put on hold a judge’s November order dissolving an injunction that had previously prevented Nevada authorities from pursuing an enforcement action.” (02/18/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/18/nevada-kalshi-lawsuit-prediction-market
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“Hawkish Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has never been a big fan of arms control agreements. His new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal confirms that his attitude has not softened in the slightest. … His goal is to justify an extensive increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal under the label of ‘modernization.’ Cotton’s op-ed presents a six-part plan for doing so.” (02/18/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2026/02/17/senator-tom-cottons-ode-to-us-nuclear-weapons/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte has said she intends to run for president in the upcoming 2028 election, following in the footsteps of her notorious father, ex-President Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. … Duterte also asked her followers for their ‘forgiveness’ over her previous support for incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos Jr during the last presidential election. … Despite throwing her support behind Marcos’s election bid five years ago, Duterte and the president have since become bitter rivals, particularly following the launch of a corruption inquiry in 2024 into Duterte’s misuse of government funds.” (02/18/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/18/philippine-vp-sara-duterte-announces-run-for-president-in-2028
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“Asked what she thought of an attack on the poet Lord Byron’s morals, a wit replied, ‘It is the first time I ever heard of them.’ You might say the same if asked what you think about proofs that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything. His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence. … It would be reassuring to think that Trump believes nothing he says about 2020: Cynicism in the presidency is less disturbing than delusion. But reassurance is not plausible.” (02/18/26)
https://archive.ph/60gSC
