Source: AOL
“The federal government has filed a civil action against the Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces and the treasurer of Doña Ana County, seeking possession of Mount Cristo Rey for border enforcement activities. The suit, an eminent domain action, seeks [to steal] roughly 14.2 acres of land that consists of Mount Cristo Rey and the surrounding area. … The Diocese says it intends to fight this attempt to condemn Mount Cristo Rey and take it over under the ‘First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.’ The Diocese says this property is part of a holy site. Atop the mountain sits a 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Jesus Christ ‘that serves as a shrine to thousands of faithful in the El Paso and Southern New Mexico area.’ The shrine is also the site of annual pilgrimages, the Diocese said.” (05/12/26)
https://www.aol.com/news/federal-government-seeks-condemn-mount-203950164.html
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“Senate Republicans, the Associated Press reports, plan to give the Secret Service $1 billion for ‘security upgrades’ to president Donald Trump’s (supposedly $400 million, supposedly donation-funded) White House ballroom project. After an assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton ballroom hosting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Republicans began boosting the ballroom itself as a presidential safety solution. Every time the president ventures forth to environments inhabited or surrounded by the hoi polloi, they point out, the Secret Service has to create bespoke environments within otherwise open facilities to ensure that he’s not shot at, yelled at, glared at, or annoyed. Better to keep him in a facility that’s controlled 24/7 for his safety and convenience. That’s fair, and it occurs to me that, done rightly, adding a secure ballroom to the White House could benefit not just presidential security but public convenience.” (05/11/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20612
Source: NBC News
“Inflation surged to 3.8% in April, its highest level in nearly three years, according to data released Tuesday, as the war in Iran causes a ripple effect across the economy and energy prices surge. As inflation continues to accelerate, it’s eating into Americans’ wages at a rapid clip. April’s inflation rate means that prices are now rising faster than wages for the first time since 2023, which could exacerbate the affordability crisis that has already been gripping consumers. … The overall rise in inflation was in line with what was expected by economists. On a month-over-month basis, inflation rose 0.6%. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy costs also rose 0.4% from the month prior, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. That rise was higher than what had been expected by economists.” (05/11/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/april-inflation-data-iran-war-rcna344586
Source: Politics, Philosophy & Economics
by Matt Zwolinski
“Are markets coercive? Contemporary debate is dominated by two answers. The first, longstanding among defenders of free markets, holds that voluntary exchange is non-coercive by definition: coercion enters the picture only when rights are violated. The second, revived from Robert Hale’s 1923 essay and embraced today by progressive legal scholars and post-liberal conservatives alike, holds that markets are pervasively coercive because property rights backed by state power constitute a system of mutual coercion. Both answers fail, but the Halean answer fails in the more interesting way.” (05/11/26)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X261450600
Source: New York Times
“The Pentagon on Tuesday put the cost of the war on Iran at ‘closer’ to $29 billion, roughly $4 billion more than two weeks ago, during testimony by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at a pair of hearings on the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request. But the new $29 billion figure, offered by the department’s comptroller, does not include the cost of repairs to U.S. facilities damaged by Iranian attacks. Pressed on the administration’s failure to seek authorization from Congress to continue fighting Iran, Mr. Hegseth told senators that President Trump had ‘all the authorities necessary’ to resume attacks if he so chooses.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/oxq69
Source: The Realist Review
by James W Carden
“In the nearly two-and-a-half months since Donald Trump launched a war against Iran at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the iron grip that Christian Zionism has on Washington has become too obvious to ignore. Briefly, Christian Zionism is a theo-political ideological construct that posits a Christian duty to support the state of Israel, come what may, owing to a divine mandate for its existence that is said to derive from the Old Testament. … Anyone tempted to blame American Jews (2.4 percent of the US population) for Washington’s long and puzzling romance with Israel should look elsewhere. … The perhaps overused term ‘Israel Lobby’ might more accurately be referred to as the Christian Zionist Lobby, given the sheer size of its leading organizations. Christians United for Israel has over 10 million members.” (05/11/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/on-the-tyranny-of-christian-zionism
Source: Reuters
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he had met the CEO of Palantir Technologies, Alex Karp, as Kyiv doubles down on the use of artificial intelligence to gain an edge in the war with Russia. Kyiv has launched a project with Palantir called ‘Brave1 Dataroom’ to develop artificial intelligence based on its valuable combat data, collected throughout the conflict since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, to help intercept Russian drones. ‘Today, technology, AI, data analysis and the mathematics of warfare have a direct impact on the outcome on the battlefield,’ Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Telegram after meeting with Karp. Fedorov, who promised a sweeping, data-driven overhaul of Kyiv’s military when appointed in January, said that more than 100 companies were training over 80 models to detect and intercept aerial targets.” (05/11/26)
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/zelenskiy-meets-palantir-ceo-ukraine-expands-use-ai-war-2026-05-12/
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“The Washington Post recently pointed out that ‘starting this year, the Social Security benefits formula gives the very-highest-income couples who retire at age 67 over $100,000’ per year. And the Post is very upset about it: ‘With the federal government $39 trillion in debt and running deficits larger than during the Great Depression, there’s no reason that the largest federal spending program should be sending six figures in annual benefits to rich people.’ But I thought that Social Security recipients were entitled to collect benefits because they paid into the system their whole working lives? Isn’t that what we are continually told?” (05/11/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/should-there-be-a-cap-on-social-security-benefits/
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“One gauge of a society’s level of interpersonal trust lies in how much the central government shares power – with local authorities, courts, private citizen groups, and others. For the last 16 years in Hungary, such trust has been evaporating. An increasingly authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, had been centralizing power and creating ‘us versus them’ polarization around often-fabricated issues. On Saturday, all that changed with the swearing-in of a new prime minister, Péter Magyar. His broad-tent Tisza party won big in elections a month ago. In his inaugural speech, Mr. Magyar pledged not to rule over Hungary but to ‘serve’ it – through reconciliation, inclusiveness, and democratic renewal. ‘We are going to remake the constitutional system so that such a concentration of power can never happen again,’ he declared.” (05/11/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0511/Power-sharing-as-trust-building-in-Hungary
Source: CNN
“A Russian cargo ship likely carrying two nuclear reactors for submarines, possibly destined for North Korea, suffered a series of explosions and sank in unexplained circumstances, about 60 miles off the coast of Spain, a CNN investigation has found. The extraordinary fate of the Ursa Major has been shrouded in secrecy since it sank on December 23, 2024. … US nuclear ‘sniffer’ aircraft have flown over the sunken ship twice in the past year, according to public flight data. And its wreckage was also visited a week after it sank by a suspected Russian spy ship which set off four further explosions …. The Spanish government has said little, only releasing a statement on February 23 after pressure from opposition lawmakers. It confirmed that the ship’s Russian captain had told Spanish investigators the Ursa Major was carrying ‘components for two nuclear reactors similar to those used in submarines,’ and that he was unsure if they were loaded with nuclear fuel.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/pEgF6
