Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Angel Eduardo

“The First Amendment was ratified in 1791, guaranteeing that Congress shall make no law abridging our freedom to speak, publish, assemble, worship, and petition the government. But as anyone with a passing knowledge of our history knows, the fight was far from over then. In fact, it was only just beginning — and Philadelphia was ground zero for much of it.” (07/01/26)

https://expression.fire.org/p/250-years-later-free-speech-is-still

Source: Town Hall
by Joe Abraham

“Pete Buttigieg and his family should never have endured a malicious false report that brought police and Child Protective Services to their home, temporarily separated him from his young children, and forced his family through a needless ordeal. Authorities quickly determined the allegations were baseless. The bipartisan condemnation that followed was appropriate. Political leaders from across the country spoke with one voice. Commentators expressed outrage. The message was unmistakable: there are lines that should never be crossed. They were right. But watching the response unfold left me asking a question I have carried since my daughter Katie was killed. Why does our political class know exactly how to respond when one of its own is harmed, yet struggle to summon the same moral urgency when ordinary Americans are actually buried?” (07/01/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/joe-abraham/2026/07/01/the-hierarchy-of-compassion-who-counts-n2678594

Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan

“If I were a socialist, I’d be desperate to deny that the Nazis were socialists. Why? Well, it’s bad enough that: * The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics turned out to be a nightmarish totalitarian despotism, a dystopia of mass slavery and mass murder. * The USSR, by conquest and imitation, spawned dozens of additional nightmarish totalitarian despotisms. * These despotisms included the jaw-dropping hellscape of Maoist China, the world’s most populous country at the time. Yet as long as Nazi Germany was not socialist or even anti-socialist, the socialist can find solace in the fact that the Soviet Union was the primary agent in the defeat of an even more nightmarish totalitarian despotism.” (07/01/26)

https://www.betonit.ai/p/nazism-socialism-and-the-philosophy

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“Among the slew of decisions being released in the days before the United States Supreme Court adjourns for the summer, two focus on the key issue of presidential or executive power. Each ruling relates specifically to a U.S. president’s ability to remove officeholders in agencies established under acts of Congress. In Trump v. Slaughter, the court ruled 6-3 that the president can fire at will the heads or staff of independent regulatory agencies (in this case, the Federal Trade Commission). In Trump v. Cook, however, the court determined 5-4 that the president could not fire a governor of the Federal Reserve Board without cause or due process. On the surface, the two rulings seem to be in opposition to each other. Yet both underscore a defining characteristic of American democracy – the delicate yet shifting equilibrium among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that underpins the business of governing.” (06/30/26)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0630/Defining-presidential-powers-in-a-robust-democracy

Source: Independent Institute
by Daniel Sánchez-Piñol

“The California Billionaire Tax Act has qualified for the November 2026 ballot, promising a massive cash windfall for the state. Proponents confidently declare that it will yield around $100 billion. On paper the calculation seems a no-brainer. If you take the net worth of California’s billionaires from the Forbes list at the beginning of the year, roughly $2 trillion, and apply the proposed one-time 5 percent wealth tax, you land right around $100 billion. However, while the arithmetic is straightforward, the economics are shaky. A foundational principle of economics is that individuals respond to incentives. Apply this principle to California’s wealth tax scheme and a different picture emerges.” (07/01/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/01/california-wealth-tax-accountants-dream-economists-nightmare/

Source: Common Dreams
by Miles Mogulescu

“President Donald Trump used red-scare rhetoric to denounce the progressive winners in New York’s Democratic primary last week as ‘godless communists’. Rather than explaining that the progressives are not communists in the vein of the Soviet Union or communist China but social democrats in the vein of Scandinavia, a group of so-called ‘moderate’ Democratic politicians piled on to Trump’s red-baiting. Two days after the primaries, this group of 15 corporate Democrats (let’s just call them what they are) attacked the winning Democrats in an open letter drafted by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York proclaiming, ‘we are capitalist, not socialist’. In an interview with the New York Times, Suozzi added ‘that message from Tuesday is not the message that I embrace’.” (07/01/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/democratic-party-moderates