Source: Washington Post
by LP O’Brien
“The holidays haven’t arrived yet, but many bars and restaurants are already testing recipes, calculating costs and placing bottle orders for what you’ll drink in December. That peppermint martini or cranberry cocktail takes time to reach the menu. Complicating the process this year: tariffs on countries that supply some of America’s favorite spirits. The latest is a ban on imports of certain Canadian whiskies, put in place by President Donald Trump to bring Canada back to the tariff negotiating table. As a longtime bartender and hospitality consultant, I hope the president’s negotiating gambit works. But I’m also worried about my colleagues in the hospitality industry, who need predictability to plan for the critical season ahead and are already facing tight margins as inflation curbs what customers are willing to spend.” (11/09/26)
https://archive.is/qvRVq
Source: The Guardian
“Donald Trump has said that the war in Iran is ‘effectively over’ as he played down concerns that the US would escalate its military campaign against Tehran after the midterm elections. During a White House press conference, Trump said that Israel and Gulf allies in the region were well protected from Iran and that an escalation was not needed. … ‘We’re seeing momentum toward the end of this conflict. I think it’s going to be ending fairly soon,’ he added. Trump has frequently exaggerated claims about the status of negotiations with Iran, saying a final peace deal was imminent dozens of times during the nearly nine-month long war.” (11/09/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/09/trump-iran-war
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Samuel J Abrams
“We spend an enormous amount of time arguing about free speech in America, especially on our college and university campuses. And too often, institutional leaders either stay silent or issue carefully worded statements that manage to say very little about how speech works in this country. … I think that too many forget that defending free expression does not require us to abandon judgment or pretend that every idea is equally worthy of respect. There is a difference between telling Americans what to think and reminding them why they are free to think for themselves.” (11/09/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/when-america-knew-what-it-was-defending
Source: New York Times
“Russell Brand, the comedian, actor and conspiracy-minded YouTuber, was sentenced on Monday to 10 and a half years in prison for the rape and sexual assaults that he was convicted of last week. The presiding judge, Joel Bennathan, said in a sentencing hearing at Southwark Crown Court in London that Mr. Brand, 51, was ‘a sexual predator’ with a ‘casual, arrogant disregard’ for women’s wishes. … The decision came four days after a jury found Mr. Brand guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, in a trial in which six women testified about episodes that they said occurred between 2004 and 2009.” (11/09/26)
https://archive.is/POpI7
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“I’ve long been fascinated by the reluctance of conservatives to condemn wrongdoing by the U.S. government, especially since the time that the U.S. government was converted to a national-security state after World War II. The primary reason for this phenomenon, it seems to me, is that conservatives have come to view the federal government as a god, one that works in partnership with their religious God. In the conservative mind, it’s okay to carp about minor mistakes that their national-security god makes but it’s never okay to challenge or question it at a fundamental level. A good example of this conservative mindset is the decades-old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba and, more recently, the oil restrictions that the U.S. government has imposed against Cuba.” (11/09/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/11/09/conservative-obtuseness-on-cuba/
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis
“Democrat Party implosion isn’t an impossibility. The Democrats are not united, not by any stretch of the imagination, and their divisions are serious, for reasons I shall explain. And they are already having disagreements. A couple of headlines I saw Friday: From the ‘Beaufort Observer’: ‘Far Left Moving to Deny Hakeem Jeffries the Speaker Job, Put in Someone Farther Left’. And this one from Breitbart: ‘Mark Ruffalo Pushes Petition Urging House Democrats to Reject Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker: ‘Simply Not the Right Choice’’. In other words, the Menshevik Jeffries is not communist enough for the Bolshevik Ruffalo and his Leninist communist comrades. There are no ‘moderate’ Democrats anymore, folks; that animal went extinct with the dodo bird.” (11/09/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/11/09/will-the-democrats-implode-n2686112
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Hungarian police took nationalist ex-leader Viktor Orban’s brother into custody on Monday, according to a press report shared by Prime Minister Peter Magyar. Pro-EU conservative Magyar won a landslide election victory in April to end 16 years in power for Orban, promising to investigate alleged corruption and abuse of office during his rival’s rule. ‘According to press reports, Viktor Orban’s brother, Aron Orban, has been taken into custody on suspicion of human trafficking,’ Magyar wrote on social media. The original report comes from Kontroll, a news site owned by Magyar’s brother Marton Magyar.” (11/09/26)
https://archive.is/YvV5o
Source: EconTalk
“Hubris, Humility, and the AI Revolution (with Walter Isaacson).” (11/09/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/hubris-humility-and-the-ai-revolution-with-walter-isaacson/
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“There are lessons to take from last week’s blue tidal wave which swept Republicans from power in Congress and across much of the country, just as there were from the 2024 ejection of Democrats from office. Among other things, party turnover underlines the futility of relying on government to maintain predictable conditions and to protect cherished liberties. The midterm elections may have been primarily a rejection of corruption and ineptitude among GOP officials, but they also empowered Democrats to enact an agenda in many places wildly at odds with what prevailed before.” (11/09/26)
https://reason.com/2026/11/09/the-wild-turnover-of-the-midterms-shows-that-living-life-requires-ignoring-government/
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Jason Montgomery
“There is no such thing as ‘America/the US,’ ‘Israel,’ ‘Iran,’ ‘society,’ or ‘the public.’ There is no “general welfare,” and a nation does not, and cannot, have debt. Such claims indicate the linguistic/ideological/psychological disorder of collectivism: conceptualizing and interacting with human beings in terms of groups rather than as individuals.” (11/09/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/collectivism-infectious-lie-youre-probably-telling
