Source: Law & Liberty
by Tal Fortgang
“Overturning democratically enacted laws based on vague notions of liberty does not promote democracy.” (06/22/26)
https://lawliberty.org/substantive-due-process-is-still-antidemocratic/
Source: American Greatness
by Stephen Soukup
“If news reports are accurate, by the time you read this, Keir Starmer may no longer be the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Depending on the source, he has either decided to resign or is seriously considering it. In any case, the events in Britain over the last few weeks—the murder, enabled by the police, of Henry Nowak by the Sikh Vickrum Digwa; the attempted beheading of a man in Belfast by a Muslim immigrant; the release of a report on the systematic and protracted rape of young women and girls by Muslim ‘grooming gangs;’ the subsequent (and understandable) renewal of unrest over largely unchecked immigration; and the government’s increased efforts to limit and control speech—have likely doomed Starmer and the Labour Party, making it impossible for them to maintain or regain the trust of the people. None of this should really surprise anyone.” (06/22/26)
Source: NDTV [India]
“A UK lawyer who led volunteers to clean up a heavily polluted river in East London is now being probed and could face a prison sentence for doing the cleanup without official permission, The Guardian reported. Paul Powlesland, who is an environmental campaigner, spent 10 days in late February organising a community effort on Alders Brook, a tributary of the River Roding in Barking. Alongside the River Roding Trust, volunteers removed around 200 bags of litter, silt, weeds, and branches from a 250-metre stretch that had reportedly become choked and stagnant. The media outlet suggested that the cleanup worked, as within days, locals reported fish, dragonflies, herons, and reed beds returning to the revived section. … Within a week of the cleanup, Environment Agency investigators visited the site and sent Powlesland a letter saying the group was under investigation for ‘unpermitted works’ in breach of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016.” (06/22/26)
Source: AI Summer
“Robert Wright on the global implications of powerful AI.” (06/22/26)
https://www.aisummer.org/p/robert-wright-on-the-global-implications
Source: Cato Institute
by Jeremy Lott
“Andy George, star of the YouTube channel How to Make Everything, spent $1,500 over six months to make a chicken sandwich from scratch. And by ‘from scratch’ I mean growing vegetables, milling wheat, milking a cow, and slaughtering a chicken. The result was … not great. ‘It’s not bad. That’s about it: It’s not bad,’ he judged after taking a few bites of the sandwich. … George thought of his chicken sandwich as an experiment in self-reliant living. It was that, but he was also getting a crash course in global supply chains, price signals, and spontaneous order.” (for publication summer 2026)
https://www.cato.org/regulation/summer-2026/i-chicken-sandwich
Source: Engadget
“Getty Images has announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI that will bring its licensed content libraries to the AI company. The agreement means Getty’s content will appear in OpenAI search and ChatGPT. … Getty, until recently, had taken a strong stance against working with AI companies. In September 2022, Getty banned all AI-generated art from its library. A few months later, it sued Stability AI, alleging copyright violations — a notion that was rejected late last year. A year after its AI-generated art ban, Getty announced its own generative AI tool, trained on its library and powered by NVIDIA’s Edigy AI model. Each of the resulting images came with a royalty-free license. But in October 2025, Getty signed a deal with Perplexity AI, allowing the latter’s AI search and discovery tools to access Getty’s library.” (06/22/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2198633/openai-signs-deal-with-getty-to-show-images-in-chatgpt-results/
Source: Town Hall
by Jay Rogers
“Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire and meant it. He didn’t hedge, qualify, or wait for a focus group. He built the military, stationed Pershing missiles in Europe over fierce opposition, and helped accelerate the collapse of a system that had enslaved hundreds of millions. On American movie screens, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone played men who took responsibility, absorbed punishment, and didn’t apologize for their convictions. That wasn’t mere entertainment. It was a cultural argument, and it was winning. I arrived in California in 1990. The economy was thriving, the Republican Party was still competitive, and the state had a future worth arguing about. Thirty-five years of one-party rule later, California’s own Department of Finance confirms a net domestic loss of 216,000 residents in the year ending July 2025 alone — dead last in U-Haul’s outbound migration index for the sixth consecutive year.” (06/22/26)
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“At least 13 people have been killed and 66 injured after an explosion at Qatar’s largest gas facility. The city’s main liquified natural gas (LNG) processing site suffered ‘a technical accident’ in Ras Laffan industrial zone on Sunday night, the interior ministry said, with the city’s skyline turning orange because of the explosion. Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said the explosion would not affect the country’s exports, adding ‘this was an accident and not sabotage or hostile in nature’. The Ras Laffan Port is the largest artificial harbour in the world and has the world’s largest LNG export facility. It was targeted by Iranian strikes earlier this year. The blast on Sunday rattled windows and was felt across central Doha, panicking residents more than 70km (43 miles) from Ras Laffan.” (06/22/26)
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“Like his progressive comrades, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has an ambitious big-government agenda he proposes to fund by forcing ‘rich’ people to pay their ‘fair share.’ While the word billionaires is often thrown around, smart people understand that wealth will have to be defined generously to pay for everything proposed, and that ‘fair share’ always means more. Even so, lots of Americans are on board with the idea of forcing people they consider rich to pay higher taxes. What they don’t understand, and what progressives won’t acknowledge, is that the U.S. already puts a heavier burden on high-income people than do most countries.” (06/22/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“A spirituality that is uninterested in ending war, genocide, poverty and injustice is a dead spirituality. If you hold your time on the meditation cushion as something separate from the weeping mother clutching a small body in Lebanon, you’re wasting your time. Sometimes I get asked why I only occasionally write about ‘spiritual’ matters like awakening, egoic delusion, inner work etc, but from my point of view everything I write is about that stuff. To oppose the injustices and abuses of our world is to directly interface with the mechanisms of humanity’s struggle to become a conscious species. The overwhelming majority of what people call ‘spirituality’ in our society is really just glorified escapism. It’s about avoiding reality by focusing on good vibes, nice feelings, and comforting stories about the nature of the cosmos.” (06/22/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/06/22/true-spirituality-confronts-the-abuses-of-the-empire/