Source: Washington Post
by George F Will

“Philip K. Howard, a graduate of Taft prep school, Yale and the University of Virginia School of Law, says he never wore ‘white bucks.’ This 1950s campus fashion waned before he matriculated. Those buckskin shoes were popular among young blades destined to become ‘white-shoe lawyers’ at prestigious ‘white-shoe law firms,’ such as Covington & Burling, where Howard, 76, is senior counsel. He also is a genteel inveigher against the coagulation of American society, which is saturated with law. … When all choices by people in authority are, in Howard’s words, ‘strained through a legal sieve,’ we understand Alexis de Tocqueville’s warning from nearly 200 years ago: Minute regulations that stifle intuition, judgment and freedom perpetuate ‘a drowsy regularity,’ and the status quo.” (10/01/25)

https://archive.is/VicYl

Source: The Telegraph
by Dan McLaughlin

“Democrats are talking themselves into forcing a government shutdown. But they can’t seem to agree on why. House Republicans have passed a bill to keep the government funded, but they need seven votes from the Democratic minority in the Senate or else there will be a shutdown tonight. In the spring, Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer wasn’t willing to force a shutdown; he didn’t have a message and was trying to get out of Donald Trump’s way so long as the president looked to be making enough mistakes on his own. It would also have been nonsensical to shut down the government to protest against the Department of Government Efficiency’s refusal to fund and staff the government. That’s still a risk. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought is openly salivating at the prospect of a shutdown, precisely because he has plans to use one to justify more government lay-offs.” (09/30/25)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/democrats-turning-themselves-enemies-democracy-160104387.html

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Taiwo Hassan

“Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been the world’s leading arms-exporting nation accounting between 2019 and 2023 for 42 percent of all global arms exports. Several laws exist ostensibly to regulate and ensure that U.S. security assistance is provided to allies without undermining America’s core values. For example, Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act expressly forbids the United States from providing security assistance to any country whose government engages in a ‘consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.’ Investigations by human rights groups and the media, including Reuters and Premium Times, have uncovered a consistent pattern of abuse by security forces that suggests that Nigeria has met this threshold.” (10/01/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nigeria-arms-sale/

Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher

“Democrats have an available response to Republican attempts to shift all the blame onto them: Republicans don’t need us to open the government. They can change Senate rules and suspend or eliminate the filibuster on a party-line vote. And Republicans can’t argue that they think changing the rules on a party-line vote — the so-called ‘nuclear option’ — is a terrible violation of Senate norms because Republicans literally changed the rules on a party-line vote three weeks ago to speed confirmation of judicial nominees. If they don’t go nuclear and the filibuster to keep the government open, that shows how little they care about keeping it open, and how much they care about creating excuses for vilifying Democrats.” (10/01/25)

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/01/shutdown-republicans-can-end-filibuster/