Source: Fox News
“Protesters gathered Thursday outside The New York Times building in New York City expressing outrage over an opinion piece by liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof that contained allegations of serial sexual abuse by Israelis against Palestinian detainees. The article featured the testimony of men and women who alleged ‘brutal sexual abuse at the hands of Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators.’ The article mentioned several claims, including that Palestinians ‘had their genitals yanked or were beaten on the testicles,’ ‘some men had to have their testicles amputated by doctors,’ and metal batons were used to rape men. Kristof also said a Gaza journalist claimed he was ‘mounted’ by a dog before adding that ‘[o]ther Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors have also cited reports of police dogs being coached to rape prisoners.'” (05/16/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/media/protesters-demand-new-york-times-retract-controversial-dog-rape-article-fire-nicholas-kristof
Source: Serious Trouble
“‘Advice of Counsel’ Does Not Apply to Advice from Licensed Airboat Captains.” (05/15/26)
https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/advice-of-counsel-does-not-apply
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“‘Could this be the Antichrist?’ So wondered out loud today’s most popular conservative voice … about President Donald J. Trump. That commentator, Tucker Carlson, then answered himself: ‘Well, who knows?’ Later, speaking to Lulu Garcia-Navarro with The New York Times, Mr. Carlson denied (thrice) ever verbalizing that eschatological question. Of course, as Scott Jennings points out, Tucker contextualized the matter by asserting that the president was ‘more of a hostage’ to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in deciding to go to war against Iran. ‘Seems to me it has to be one or the other,’ offered Jennings. ‘Are you a supernatural evil being or are you some weak hostage or slave to other people?'” (05/15/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/05/15/trying-souls/
Source: Associated Press
“Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday commuted the sentence of election conspiracy theorist Tina Peters following pressure from President Donald Trump, the latest instance of the president using his powers to reward those who echoed his baseless claims of mass fraud as the cause of his 2020 loss. Trump has championed the case of Peters, a 70-year-old former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system. She gets released June 1. In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld her conviction but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud, a decision that Polis praised.” (05/15/26)
https://apnews.com/article/tina-peters-polis-colorado-clemency-trump-eca56e2167a72e306a54b99b847d918c
Source: Washington Post
“The problem with celebrity politicians.” (05/15/26)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/impromptu/the-problem-with-celebrity-politicians
Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko
“Garry Tan, the CEO of venture capital firm Y Combinator, accused me of unethical reporting. This is my response.” (05/15/26)
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/truth-power-and-honest-journalism
Source: Reason
by Luke Wake
“The ruling is a victory not just for one Texas title company, but for the principle that agencies like FinCEN can only do what Congress actually authorized.” (05/15/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/15/the-federal-government-tried-to-spy-on-your-financial-transactions-a-texas-court-just-said-no/
Source: SFGate
“A proposal to fund $1 billion in security additions for the White House campus and the president’s new ballroom fails to meet procedural rules, according to the Senate parliamentarian, dealing a blow to Republican plans to include it as part of a bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies for the next three years. The parliamentarian’s ruling, described late Saturday by Senate Democrats, said that funding for a project as large and complex as President Donald Trump’s massive East Wing renovation is too broad to be included in the narrow GOP budget bill, which cannot be filibustered and only needs a simple majority to pass. It’s unclear if Republicans will be able to immediately salvage any part of the billion-dollar Secret Service proposal, which would fund security for Trump’s ballroom along with other parts of the White House, including a new visitor screening center, additional training for agents and extra reinforcements for large events.” (05/16/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/senate-parliamentarian-deals-blow-to-1-billion-22262876.php
Source: The Tom Woods Show
“How Bad Numbers Become ‘Science.'” (05/15/26)
https://tomwoods.com/ep-2761-how-bad-numbers-become-science/
Source: EconLog
by Valentin Boboc
“Much of the panic around AI rests on pointing out absolute advantages. LLMs can write clearly and convincingly. They summarise large documents quickly. They generate passable Python scripts in seconds. In these discrete tasks, AI is a direct competitor. If a job is merely a collection of such tasks, the human worker is in trouble. The Ricardian challenge, however, is to identify where AI has a comparative advantage and whether this manifests itself at the job level. Comparative advantage is determined by opportunity costs. For humans, the binding constraint is time. For AI, the constraint is compute. These are very different constraints, and they are different enough to keep humans in the picture.” (05/15/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/ai-and-comparative-advantage
