Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid

“For nearly a century, mainstream American cinema has regurgitated, devoured, and re-regurgitated the same foaming popcorn mythology in which it is presented as basic common sense that America is always the good guy and that every foreigner with a funny accent who stands in his way is a totally otherized human bowling pin who exists for the sole purpose of being obliterated again and again and again in a voluptuous bacchanalia of endless machine gun barrages and bottomless stacks of bloodless corpses. Your average American is raised on a steady diet of this schlock with a side of paint-by-the-numbers public school history teachers who can turn any warzone into a beige labyrinth of names and dates to memorize for next week’s ludoviko scantron test.” (04/19/26)

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/04/america-is-bad-guy-in-this-movie.html

Source: New York Post
by Stephen Eide

“Last week, in Nebraska, Noemi Guzman tried to kidnap a 3-year-old from Walmart. Horrific bodycam footage from the police shows her holding a knife over the boy, slashing him, before cops shot her dead. Two years prior, a judge let Guzman off for a raft of felony charges, including arson and assault, by reason of insanity. One of the most horrific crimes this decade happened last August, when, on Charlotte North Carolina’s transit system, a mentally ill man named Decarlos Brown allegedly stabbed to death Iryna Zarutska, a complete stranger and Ukrainian refugee. Brown suffers from schizophrenia, yet was let go for previous crimes. His mother said she tried to get him involuntarily committed but was refused.” (04/19/26)

https://nypost.com/2026/04/19/opinion/if-we-dont-lock-up-and-treat-the-mentally-ill-well-continue-to-pay-a-deadly-price/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Bruno V Manno

“America faces a crisis of social capital. High schools can’t fix all our loneliness, but they help us rediscover what’s been lost.” (04/20/26)

https://lawliberty.org/the-social-wealth-of-nations/

Source: The Hill
by Fracois Melese

“New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is pushing for ‘$30 in ’30,’ to raise the city’s minimum from $17 today to $30/hour by the end of the decade. Supporters applaud lawmakers granting struggling workers a ‘living wage.’ The logic seems clear: Wage hikes boost incomes, making life more affordable. But although increases to the minimum wage help those lucky enough to keep their jobs, hours and benefits, they hurt many more.” (04/19/26)

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5836543-pro-growth-policies-affordability/

Source: TomDispatch
by Liz Theoharis

“In late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps. Now, I was seated with a clear view of the nine justices of the nation’s highest court. I was there as a guest of immigrant rights lawyers, as their team made oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the most significant case on the right to asylum in decades. In February, the Kairos Center (the organization I direct) authored an interfaith amicus brief on that very case, alongside 31 denominations and organizations representing faith traditions practiced by billions worldwide. Those groups… joined together to declare that our societal obligation to provide for persecuted outsiders is a universally shared moral principle.” (04/20/26)

https://tomdispatch.com/give-me-your-tired-your-poor/