Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid

“We start with a tragedy, some pissed-off lonely kid puts down his smartphone and picks up a gun, somebody gets shot, sometimes a politician, sometimes some other species of media personality, but usually it ends up just being a room full of other lonely kids with smartphones. After a lot of frantic finger pointing by the media personalities left standing, it usually becomes clear that the shooter wasn’t actually directly concerned with any of their silly partisan squabbles …. While it is painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain still attached to a functioning conscience that both sides of this country’s manufactured tribal divide are exploiting these tragedies just to score points and rile up their captive constituencies, the notion that the solution to American nihilism is bringing all these jackals together for another war-on-something is even worse.” (10/04/25)

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2025/10/washington-is-to-blame-for-its-own.html

Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux

“Protectionism assumes Americans are foolish, squandering opportunities and mismanaging their finances. Free trade reflects confidence in our ability to adapt, compete, and prosper.” (10/03/25)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariffs-rest-on-distrust-of-citizens/

Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko

“When the Trump administration was snatching people off the street and sending them to CECOT — and as it’s now trying to send people to third-party countries where they’re likely to be tortured — the MAGA faithful argued that violent gang members who enter the U.S. illegally don’t deserve due process. They’re now making a similar argument about Trump’s summary executions of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean …. Let’s say you believe that people who came here illegally or are members of a gang deserve to be sent to an overseas torture prison. (And let’s set aside what that belief says about your humanity.) Without due process, there’s no way to know that the people they sent to CECOT really were violent gang members who entered the country illegally. We had only the administration’s word. And that isn’t much.” (10/03/25)

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/yes-the-trump-administration-is-eviscerating

Source: Orange County Register
by Steven Greenhut

“Overall, the founders wanted to limit the ability of the feds to use military forces against civilians at home. If the Constitution wasn’t clear enough, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 directly bans the authorities from using federal troops for civilian law enforcement unless authorized by Congress. Trump’s efforts to use federal troops on U.S. soil is an affront to our nation’s Constitution and subsequent legal system. Legalities aside, every freedom-loving American should be appalled by the images of masked federal agents grabbing people at courthouses, tackling elderly citizens, roughing up reporters and marching down city streets.” (10/04/25)

https://archive.is/6VOFT

Source: The Findings
by Paul Rosenberg

“This is one of those things that needs to be said, even though it’s jarring and unlikely to change public discourse any time soon. Apologies where due. What theologians call ‘man’s sinful nature’ is just about the same thing as the primate chemistry we humans have inherited, however it was that it came to us. (I’ll leave the fights over ultimate origins to others.) Bear in mind, please, that what I’m calling ‘primate nature’ is, in us, more like primate inclinations, and that we also have post-primate inclinations, or in theological terms godly inclinations.” (10/03/25)

https://thefindings.substack.com/p/the-sin-nature-of-theologians-and