Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Ronald Den Otter
“Unlike concerns about censorship on college campuses, which have received a lot of media attention, when guest speakers are disinvited or shouted down, few people care much about the extent to which school authorities may suppress student speech in a public junior high or high school. The assumption is that due to their age and relative immaturity, most of what they contribute to the marketplace of ideas at their school will have little, if any, value. Furthermore, the primary mission of a school is to educate its students, and student speech can be disruptive or distracting. As such, it may appear to be obvious that teenagers should not be able to exercise the same free speech rights that college students may exercise. However, position strikes me as harder to defend than most people acknowledge.” (05/26/26)
https://reason.com/volokh/2026/05/26/the-importance-of-free-speech-in-american-public-junior-high-and-high-schools/
Source: American Greatness
by Edward Ring
“In the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just off Highway 9, there is a restaurant that has become a community icon. It has a redwood-paneled dining room with exposed roof timbers that was built in 1912 and a historic bar with a wood-burning fireplace. For over a century, the people in this isolated town have treasured this gathering place. Near downtown Los Angeles, along a busy commercial boulevard, a family-owned Mexican restaurant has thrived since 1925 …. Countless independent businesses in California remain prosperous despite a regulatory environment that throws at them rules that are often unreasonable, even in conflict with each other, from agencies at the local, county, regional, and state levels. These agencies are staffed with bureaucrats who are not merely indifferent to the challenges small businesses face while attempting to comply with their edicts; many of them are actively hostile.” (05/27/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/27/tom-steyer-will-destroy-californias-historic-small-businesses/
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Italy’s highest court has ruled a five-star Dolomites hotel was acting lawfully when it refused to provide tap water to a tourist. The woman from Rome unsuccessfully argued that ‘water is a natural resource and a universal human right’ after a waiter only offered her €7 (£6) bottled mineral water at the restaurant of the five-star Hotel Sassongher in Corvara during the 2019 ski season. The Italian Supreme Court denied her request for €2,700 to compensate her for emotional distress and economic damage, Italian media reports. Silvio Belardi, the lawyer representing the hotel, told the Corriere Alto Adige newspaper that the court held that ‘there is no obligation to supply tap water.’ The lawyer later told the BBC the case had been rejected first by a court in Rome, then by an appeals court and now the Court of Cassation, where the judges ruled in the hotel’s favour.” (05/27/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4yd8q0j7o
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They are building a UFC arena on the White House lawn, / because the world has gone insane, / and there are chatbots in our skulls, / and our eyes have been crossed out with black ink. / They are building a UFC arena on the White House lawn / so the president can watch men fight in a cage / while the Paramount Plus audience watches military recruitment ads that are marketed to teenagers / and a podcast plutocrat interviews men with bloody hands / as shame-soaked survivors sleep on the sidewalk in Washington DC, / as Cuban parents light a candle and skip another meal, / as Lebanese medics die in double-tap airstrikes, / as billionaires cackle about stripping all human knowledge / and selling it back to us as a subscription service, / as we shovel fistfuls of mood stabilizers down our gullets / to keep us functional enough to turn the gears of industry …” (05/27/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/05/27/they-are-building-a-ufc-arena-on-the-white-house-lawn/
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“I’m not saying AI is superintelligent or can decide better than you can. I’m saying that if you — like me — spend an hour or so doing research before voting on local seats, AI can aid that research very effectively. And if you don’t do that research — because you weren’t willing to waste an hour on it before — AI makes it so much faster that you might want to start.” (05/26/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/use-ai-this-election
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Israel says it has killed Mohammed Odeh, the leader of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, in an air strike in the northern part of the strip, as a fragile ‘ceasefire’ comes under growing strain. Israeli authorities said on Wednesday that Odeh was killed in an attack the previous day in Gaza City. There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian group. Odeh, a former Hamas intelligence chief, reportedly succeeded Izz al-Din al-Haddad as the head of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian group, after the latter was killed in an Israeli strike earlier this month, although Hamas did not officially confirm the appointment.” (05/27/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/27/israel-claims-head-of-hamas-military-wing-killed-in-gaza-strike?traffic_source=rss
Source: bloggingheads.tv
“The Pope Takes On AI | Robert Wright & Nikita Petrov.” (05/26/26)
https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/69507
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton
“Yesterday, we commemorated those men and women of the United States who lost their lives prematurely in the various wars fought by and in the United States of America. But it is important to remember, and commemorate (mourn) those other than the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – and their civilian support forces – who died. There is no war, whether declared or not, whether internal or external, that does not have many more casualties. And almost always, in external wars, it is the enemy who suffers the greater number of dead. And the civilians, not the support forces, but the ordinary civilians. Let us also pause to remember those, of whatever nation, with whatever stake in the outcome of the war or whatever the conflict is called.” (05/26/26)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/05/26/casualties-of-war/
Source: SFGate
“Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency Wednesday to fight a surge in coastal erosion along the U.S. territory ’s north coast. Gov. Jenniffer González said the executive order would allow her administration to accelerate projects to protect natural resources and vulnerable coastal communities. The government said in a statement that rising sea levels, storm surges and other factors have intensified coastal erosion in Puerto Rico. González pledged to help northern towns including Loiza, where people have been evacuated and chunks of asphalt from coastal roads have tumbled into the ocean following heavy swells. The order was signed just days before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. The cost of the projects has not yet been determined.” (05/27/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/puerto-rico-governor-announces-emergency-to-fight-22278723.php
Source: Independent Institute
by Raymond J March
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came into office with three ambitious goals: radical transparency, improved national health, and rebuilding trust in America’s public health agencies. More than a year in, it seems he has only one tool for the job — firing people. Lots of them.” (05/26/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/05/26/firing-make-america-healthy-again/
