Source: ABC News
“Ten months after taking office, Pope Leo XIV on Saturday finally moved into his apartments in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, a historic papal residence that his predecessor had eschewed. … Leo, the first U..S pope, decided to move into the apartments in the wake of his May 8, 2025, election as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. But after being abandoned under the late Pope Francis, who chose a more modest dwelling elsewhere in the Vatican, they required extensive renovation. During the interim, the 70-year-old Leo continued staying at the Palace of the Holy Office, near the Vatican, where he had lived as a cardinal.” (03/14/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-leo-moves-into-historic-papal-apartments/
Source: The Dispatch
“Government Didn’t Build This | Ruminant.” (03/14/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/government-didnt-build-this-ruminant/
Source: EconLog
by Brianne Wolf
“The division of labor increases production and makes it more efficient by dividing the separate tasks of making an object among different individuals and thereby simplifying the job each person must perform. On the economic side of things, this innovation that Smith recognized helped spark the Industrial Revolution, and was a precursor to comparative advantage …. As part of Gen Z, the generation of side hustles and multitasking, my students should appreciate the division of labor more than most, and yet when I think about most of them, the marvel that is the division of labor — that we don’t have to make each and every thing we use in our daily lives from start to finish ourselves or pay the price for someone else to do this — is lost on them.” (03/13/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/why-does-the-division-of-labor-matter
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Turley
“The poet Robert Frost once said that ‘good fences make good neighbors.’ He apparently never met Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is being sued by his neighbors for effectively squatting on their land and then seizing it to install a fence along his $830,500 private residence in suburban Philadelphia. The litigation is likely to put Shapiro in a much different light for many who think of him as a 2028 contender. The irony of the case is crushing. Shapiro opposed Trump’s plan to build a wall along the southern border, declaring that he would sue before a dime of Pennsylvania money would go to pay for it. He apparently adopted a similar approach to his neighbors in Pennsylvania. The difference is that he built the wall, but without giving his neighbors a dime.” (03/14/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-how-gov-shapiro-became-squatter-got-sued-his-neighbors
Source: SFGate
“A slow-moving storm is battering Hawaii with heavy rain, flash flooding and damaging winds, knocking out power for more than 100,000 Hawaiian Electric customers, including parts of Waikiki. Some streets are also underwater.” (03/14/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-storm-flooding-dam-22076847.php
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“Democrats had record turnout in Texas’[s] Senate primary. Can they flip the seat?” (03/13/26)
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/13/nx-s1-5746671/democrats-had-record-turnout-in-texas-senate-primary-can-they-flip-the-seat
Source: Heartland Institute
“Space Mirrors to Save Solar Power?” (03/13/26)
https://heartland.org/podcasts/space-mirrors-to-save-solar-power-the-climate-realism-show-194/
Source: Independent Institute
by Kristian Fors
“2026 has reignited debates about Proposition 13, with a new measure designed to ‘save’ the 1978 proposition. While Prop. 13 has been an immense benefit to incumbent longtime property owners, it is fundamentally unfair to new property buyers, especially with California’s sky-high property values. The solution to this problem is not to reward property owners based on how long they have been here, but instead to abolish property taxes for everyone.” (03/13/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/03/13/abolish-property-taxes-in-california/
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Emad Khatami
“Given the Islamic Republic’s internal dynamics, war could produce the opposite of what many expect. Rather than weakening the regime, the war may strengthen its most committed supporters — the ideological networks often labeled ‘hardliners’ in Western media — while marginalizing the broader political middle, inside and outside the system, that favors non-violent and gradual change. The Islamic Republic has long relied on a relatively small but highly committed constituency that sees the survival of the system as a political and even moral duty.” (03/13/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-hardliners/
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Paula Yockel
“[E]ach year, as our primary means of sewage disposal, millions of tons of toxic sewage sludge, labeled as ‘biosolids,’ are spread as agricultural fertilizer across our nation’s farmland, where rural Americans call home. I know this because my family lived it, and it made us very sick. We had to leave our home to save our health. The unthinkable illnesses my family suffered motivated me to seek independent facts. After all, we had authorities at every level telling us that this practice was safe, but our experience told us otherwise. What we uncovered in our testing and research — including the statistically significant increased relative risk of disease in a community where sludge is used on farmland — left us no option but to take action.” (03/13/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-sludging-of-rural-america/