Trump’s Responses to Kimmel and Comey Highlight His Contempt for Freedom of Speech
Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum
“The president is not shy about using government power to punish people for saying things that offend him.” (05/06/26)
Evaluating Kentucky’s Assessment Results: Part 2, The SAT Switch
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Richard G Innes
“Legislators and the Kentucky Board of Education should act to restore proper oversight, ensure compliance with state law, and preserve the ability to accurately measure student performance over time.” (05/06/26)
https://www.bluegrassinstitute.org/assessment-results-part-2/
Venezuelan regime tells UN court that mineral-rich part of Guyana was “fraudulently” taken in colonial era
Source: Seattle Times
“Venezuela insisted Wednesday that a disputed mineral-rich region of Guyana was ‘fraudulently’ taken in a 19th-century example of colonialism, arguing that a 1966 agreement and not the United Nations’ highest court should finalize ownership of the territory. The International Court of Justice is holding a week of hearings between the South American neighbors who both lay claim to the Essequibo region, which is rich in gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources and is located close to massive offshore oil deposits. An 1899 decision by arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States drew the border along the Essequibo River largely in favor of Guyana. The U.S. represented Venezuela in part because the Venezuelan government had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain. Venezuela contends the Americans and Europeans conspired to cheat the country out of its rightfully owned land.” [editor’s note: States, as criminal gangs, don’t and can’t own anything. Everything they control is stolen – TLK] (05/06/26)
Fountainhead Forum, episode 443
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Vin Armani on new federal policies for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.” (05/06/26)
Trump right to take troops out of Germany. Now see where they go.
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jennifer Kavanagh
“US force posture in Europe needed a strategic trim, but some lawmakers want these soldiers to go closer to Russia. They should come home.” (05/06/26)
Accounting burden in carbon tax, cap and trade, CBAM
Source: Niskanen Center
by Jia-Shen Tsai
“Tax season is a useful reminder that how we organize financial information matters just as much as the numbers themselves. Taxpayers file returns, but the underlying numbers come from employers, who report wages directly to the government. Without that upstream reporting, the total simply would be error-prone. That’s true, too, of carbon accounting: There are several ways to measure emissions, each targeting a different node in the supply chain.” (05/06/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/accounting-burden-in-carbon-tax-cap-and-trade-cbam
French professor investigated for awarding himself fake prize
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A French academic is under investigation for inventing a Nobel-style prize for philology in order that he could then go on to win it. Florent Montaclair, from Besançon in eastern France, was decorated with the Gold Medal of Philology in 2016 at a ceremony held at the National Assembly in Paris, attended by ministers and Nobel laureates. But the prize was a fiction, as was the body that supposedly awarded it, the International Society of Philology – both apparently dreamed up by Montaclair to burnish his academic credentials. Philology is the study of language through texts. Investigators in Besançon are now looking into the affair to see if any laws were broken, while the university where Montaclair taught for 20 years has suspended him indefinitely.” (05/06/26)
Politics Politics Politics, 05/06/26
Source: Politics Politics Politics
“Graham Platner’s Reddit Problems Return! AI, Iran, and the Economy (with J.D. Durkin).” (05/06/26)
https://www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/p/graham-platners-reddit-problems-return
No, AI Won’t Make Money Obsolete
Source: The Daily Economy
by Peter C Earle
“The notion that artificial intelligence at full bloom might eliminate the need for money reflects a deep confusion about what money is and does. Money is not merely a barter-avoiding convenience layered onto an otherwise frictionless world. It is a solution to fundamental problems of exchange, profound difficulties in coordination, and comparison of alternatives under scarcity. Even in a hypothetical future defined by extraordinary productivity gains and broadly collapsing prices, those underlying problems do not disappear. Instead they change form, and for as long as scarcity, tradeoffs, and uncertainty persist in any domain, so too will the need for money.” (05/06/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/no-ai-wont-make-money-obsolete/
Will John Fetterman Go Full Benedict Arnold?
Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper
“Is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) going to switch parties? That’s the scuttlebutt in Washington, D.C., according to Politico. He has been one of Trump’s loudest supporters among congressional Democrats, and with the GOP looking down the barrel of a catastrophic loss in the upcoming midterms, they are hoping to buy themselves a Senate seat—literally. It seems Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Katie Britt (R-AL) have been assiduously working on Fetterman. Donald Trump as usual cut to the chase and offered a huge sack of cash by way of a message delivered through Fox News contributor Sean Hannity: ‘Your job is to tell him,’ as Hannity recalled the conversation, ‘‘He’s gonna run as a Republican, he’s gonna have our full support, more money than he ever dreamed of, and he’s gonna win big.’'” (05/06/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/05/06/will-john-fetterman-go-full-benedict-arnold/