Source: Expression
by Jacob Gaba
“At the height of World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t want the military’s independent newspaper to become a propaganda tool. He expected his subordinates to keep their ‘hands off’ Stars and Stripes. More than 80 years later, the Pentagon has fired the newspaper’s leaders after they publicly defended that very principle. Last week, the Pentagon fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, for ‘insubordination.’ Slavin says he was fired for telling CBS in a recent interview that it would be a ‘red line’ if the government told him, ‘Don’t run a perfectly accurate story. Run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon.'” (08/26/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/the-us-military-is-at-war-with-its
Source: Common Dreams
by Tom Gallagher
“Amidst the tragifarce of President Donald Trump’s apparently off-the-top-of-his-head war on Iran may lie a silver lining for the 2028 presidential election—a silver lining that comes with two big ifs. One, of course, is the if that goes with everything involved with the race: If there is a fair election. The if specific to the hoped-for silver lining is if there is a candidate willing and able to make use of it. Ever since Gallup started public opinion polls, when it has come to questions of war, they’ve shown the American public favoring every one at the start, until now, with Donald Trump launching the first war to encounter immediate objection from a majority of the American public.” (08/26/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/can-democrats-ever-be-the-anti-war-party
Source: US News & World Report
“Swiss voters will decide in a referendum next month whether to approve a more restrictive form of neutrality that would block their country from imposing economic sanctions or cooperating with NATO. Posters featuring doves of peace and asking voters to reject war have appeared across the Alpine nation in a campaign that has won the backing of the Kremlin but has raised fears that it could isolate Switzerland from its European neighbours. Opinion surveys suggest voters will reject the proposal …. Swiss neutrality, internationally recognised since 1815 and part of the country’s constitution since 1848, kept Switzerland out of both world wars. But this status is under threat after Switzerland imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, said Christoph Blocher, a veteran politician and backer of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) which supports the campaign.” (08/26/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-08-26/swiss-to-vote-on-whether-to-tighten-neutrality-end-peacetime-cooperation-with-nato
Source: Reason
“Vinay Prasad discusses his departure from the FDA, Fauci’s diaries, and how working for the government made him more libertarian.” (08/26/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/08/26/vinay-prasad-public-health-in-this-country-is-so-broken/
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider
“Henry Kissinger famously (if apocryphally) said, ‘It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.’ This may be the year the world finally got the message. President Donald Trump said he wanted his legacy to be ‘the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.’ It won’t be. Instead, he will be remembered by history as the president who squandered trust in and respect for Washington and brought the post–Cold War era of American hegemony to an end.” (08/26/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/friendship-with-trumps-america-can-be-fatal/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Aaron Alexander Zubia
“David Hume thought philosophically about politics. If he had not, John Witherspoon, the Princeton educator who taught a future president, a future vice president, as well as future judges, senators, and representatives, would not have recommended his writings to his students. Thomas Reid, the Scottish philosopher, would not have developed an entire system of thought—taught in Scotland and the United States for the next century—as a direct response to Hume. Theologians, such as Jonathan Edwards, and college presidents, such as Timothy Dwight, Edwards’ grandson, would not have wrestled with and publicly commented on Hume’s philosophy. Had Hume not thought philosophically about politics, we would not be reading about him today.” (08/26/26)
https://lawliberty.org/forum/humes-political-mechanisms/
Source: SFGate
“James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, wants to reveal depositions involving Ken Paxton, his Republican opponent, as part of an ongoing effort to keep the focus on Paxton’s history of scandals. The depositions involve a civil case where Unity Resources, a mineral assets company, was accused of fraud. Paxton was connected to Unity but not a defendant, and the case was settled. Talarico’s campaign confirmed it asked a court on Wednesday to release the documents. The Democratic state representative is counting on voters recoiling from past accusations against Paxton, the Texas attorney general, even though similar tactics have failed in previous campaigns. … Talarico also has talked about how Paxton was impeached, although Paxton was later acquitted, and how he faced criminal charges for securities fraud, which ended with an agreement with prosecutors involving restitution payments but no admission of guilt.” (08/26/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/talarico-wants-to-unearth-paxton-s-depositions-to-22404059.php
Source: New York Times
“Hegseth’s Army Purge, and Polling Chaos in the Midterms.” (08/26/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIYHzDrbmq4
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Thomas Karat
“In 2014 the French bank BNP Paribas pleaded guilty to processing transactions for Iran, Cuba, and Sudan and paid an $8.9 billion settlement, its dollar-clearing business barred for a year. No French court convicted it. No French statute was broken. A European institution was fined nearly nine billion dollars by a foreign government for conduct that was legal where it occurred. Every treasurer in every bank outside the United States understood the message, and has behaved accordingly ever since. It was not meant to be this. When the dollar emerged from the last world war as the axis of global settlement, its dominance was a matter of commercial convenience—the currency everyone happened to hold because everyone else held it too. Convenience hardened into infrastructure, and infrastructure, in the hands of a state that noticed what it possessed, hardened into leverage.” (08/26/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-dollar-was-always-the-leash
Source: Axios
“A Massachusetts judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration violated a nationwide injunction by finalizing a rule that would significantly overhaul mail voting if allowed to take effect. The order allows the Trump administration to publish the rule Wednesday, but the U.S. Postal Service remains barred from making the dramatic changes to mail-in ballots. … Tuesday’s ruling came in response to a motion from the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts asking Talwani to enforce her nationwide injunction blocking the new mail-ballot rules. The injunction bars the administration from directing USPS to reject ballot mail that doesn’t comply with the administration’s new design requirements until after the 2026 midterms.” (08/25/26)
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/25/usps-mail-voting-rule-injunction
