Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard

“Thus far, [Kristi] Noem’s biggest reform is that travelers no longer need remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints. This is progress, but not quite the equivalent of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. What about other TSA vexations such as the pointless prying patdowns that do nothing for security? It takes less than a minute to find busloads of women bitterly complaining on X/Twitter about heavy-handed TSA screeners grabbing their vaginas (‘I swear it’s not a bomb!’) or breasts. But screeners have legal immunity almost no matter how brazenly they abuse travelers. If a woman pushes a TSA screener’s hands away from her breasts, she can placed on the TSA ’95 list’ of potentially troublesome travelers. The agency’s official watchlist defines troublemaker to include someone who merely ‘loiters’ near a TSA checkpoint or demonstrates any ‘concerning behavior.'” (10/05/25)

https://jimbovard.com/blog/2025/10/05/n-y-post-tame-the-tsa/

Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon

“The nature of [Ezra] Klein’s quote (above) is an admonishment …. to people who are opposed to this authoritarian supremacist movement, for not being willing enough in his view to live with authoritarian supremacists. This is the grain of sand at the center of the pearl of my ire, because ‘we are going to have to live here with each other’ is the exact premise that Republicans do not agree with any of us about, and while Klein in his remarks pays lip service to some of the recent proofs of this clear fact, his analysis of what to do about it he excises this reality entirely. … In the Klein world, moral clarity about abuse is polarizing, and polarization, not abuse, is the problem to solve.” (10/05/25)

https://www.the-reframe.com/eventually-youre-going-to-have-to-stand-for-something-2

Source: In These Times
by Sarah Lazare & Lindsay Koshgarian

“If the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey and Spain — and just below Israel. That bloated force is due to a massive funding increase in President Donald Trump’s budget bill that went into effect October 1, and it comes as Chicagoland faces an escalation of violence from ICE and other federal agencies. Agents are tear gassing and beating protesters, raiding and ransacking communities across the area, and detaining people at homeless shelters and hospitals. They are roaming the city and surrounding suburbs in masks, sometimes in plain clothes and unmarked cars, and other times — especially near protests — in armored vehicles, wearing the militarized, camouflage uniforms that are the hallmark of soldiers.” (10/05/25)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-immigration-chicago-trump-broadview

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joseph Varon

“The decline of vocation did not happen overnight. It was gradual, almost imperceptible at first, like a slow leak in the hull of a ship. Administrators multiplied until they outnumbered physicians. Insurance companies dictated what treatments were permissible, not based on medical judgment but on actuarial tables. Pharmaceutical firms turned research into marketing, blurring the line between scientific discovery and sales strategy. Hospitals transformed into corporations with CEOs, branding departments, and profit margins to defend. The physician’s desk became a computer terminal, and the patient was no longer a soul in need of healing but a data point to be coded and billed. Even the language betrayed the transformation: patients became ‘units of care,’ outcomes became ‘deliverables,’ and clinical judgment was rebranded as ‘adherence to protocol.’ This hollowing out of medicine’s soul reached its most devastating climax during Covid.” (10/05/25)

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-lost-vocation-of-medicine-from-calling-to-commodity/