Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher

“The vice president’s humiliations in Budapest and Islamabad raise the question: Why did Trump set him up to fail?” (04/14/26)

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/04/14/jd-vance-is-the-most-mistreated-vice-president/

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Meryl Nass

“Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion — a few months before Monsanto lost its first liability case for causing non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on documents obtained during discovery that revealed Monsanto knew a great deal about the injuries its product caused but deliberately hid those findings. Once there was a win — and the jury awarded the plaintiff with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma hundreds of millions, later reduced — the bandwagon effect began, with other lawyers seeking plaintiffs to sue Monsanto. … Bayer, a German company, hired a Texan, Bill Anderson, as CEO to come to its aid. CEO Anderson’s career hinged on stanching Bayer’s bleed. He initiated a very expensive series of legal and political strategies in the hopes that one would be successful. He also formed a new agricultural industry lobby group with a huge advertising budget.” (04/14/26)

https://brownstone.org/articles/to-win-at-all-costs/

Source: Libertarian Institute
by Jeb Smith

“I no longer trust ‘we the people,’ because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires. In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.” (04/14/26)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/on-herd-mentality

Source: RealClearPolitics
by Mark Mayfield & Megan Cannedy

“Headlines for the past few weeks have capitalized on the cruel connotations surrounding conversion therapy, proclaiming that the United States Supreme Court struck down ‘a conversion therapy ban.’ The problem is that the Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision that included Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, told Colorado something that needed to be said: Your law was never actually about that. Chiles v. Salazar is being reported as a ‘conversion therapy’ ruling. That framing is a political bait-and-switch. What the court struck down was a government mandate on what therapists may say to a consenting minor, forbidden words depending entirely on which direction they pointed. That is not a ban on conversion therapy. That is ideological discrimination dressed in therapeutic clothing.” (04/14/26)

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/04/14/this_wasnt_about_conversion_therapy__it_was_about_free_speech_154030.html

Source: Quillette
by Stephen Fleming

“Like the old Wild West, the Moon offers the prospect of resources to exploit and land to settle. Artemis II’s successful mission is just the beginning.” (04/14/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/04/14/destination-moon-artemis-nasa/