Source: Antiwar.com
by Jonathan Cook

“Israel’s supporters have gone apoplectic over a short post on X from the journalist Mehdi Hasan, highlighting Israel’s peculiar marriage laws. Hasan asks: ‘Did you know that you can’t have a civil or secular marriage in Israel?’ He’s not wrong. Israel has banned civil marriage. You can wed only in a ceremony strictly controlled by religious authorities. If you want a civil marriage, you have to travel to another country. Why, you might reasonably wonder. Isn’t Israel a modern, secular, western-style liberal democracy? After all, that’s what our politicians and media keep telling us. The most popular rejoinder to Hasan from Israel’s apologists – that the situation is no better in Saudi Arabia – is not quite the flex they seem to imagine. So Israel offers the same human rights protections as Saudi Arabia? Impressive.” (07/03/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/cook/2026/07/02/israel-is-an-apartheid-state-and-its-weird-marriage-laws-show-us-how/

Source: Fox News
by Newt Gingrich

“This Fourth of July matters more than most for three reasons. First, it is the historic 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is the most radical political document ever written. It challenged millennia of thought about monarchs having rights and commoners being mere subjects, peasants or even slaves. Suddenly, people on the edge of a continent decided that they would challenge the entire system that dominated their world. Kings, czars and emperors were put on notice that power did not come from them; it came from God. The single phrase, ‘We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’, enunciated a transfer of authority and power from the head of government to the citizen.” (07/04/26)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-declaration-still-terrifies-socialists-tyrants-here-abroad

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling

“As friends of freedom, our duty is to remind our fellow Americans what that Declaration of Independence really means — the ideals that it represents about free man, voluntary society, and limited government. The spirit of liberty still glows in America like dying embers in what was once a bright flame of freedom.” (07/03/26)

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-spirit-of-liberty-in-1776-versus-todays-political-paternalism/

Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey

“I think we can all agree that talk about artificial intelligence (AI) is near-constant. And now we hear that OPENAI (the parent of ChatGPT) is offering 5% of its equity to the U.S. Government, valued at an estimated $40 billion. This is perhaps the most expensive bribe I’ve seen in U.S. history, as such a stake would help OPENAI ease up on political pressure and regulatory scrutiny. Talk about greasing the wheels, is Sam Altman that desperate?” (07/03/26)

https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/why-the-us-government-acquiring-openai

Source: Reason
by Peter Suderman

“America was founded by drinkers, distillers, and maltmen whose consumption would be labeled problematic by today’s public health authorities.” (07/26)

https://reason.com/2026/07/03/americas-founding-drinkers/