Source: USA Today
by Rex Huppke
“You can draw a direct line from the price at the pumps to President Donald Trump, who started a wholly unnecessary war with Iran, and the congressional Republicans who have done nothing to stop it.” (10/08/26)
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Thames Valley Police has accepted that the search warrants it used to search Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s homes earlier this year were unlawful, the High Court has heard. The force accepted that the information given to the Old Bailey about warrants relating to their decision to search the former Prince Andrew’s Sandringham home and the Royal Lodge in Windsor was incorrect. Andrew was arrested by Thames Valley Police in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He denies any wrongdoing. The warrants were issued before his arrest and his lawyers are challenging their lawfulness. … His arrest in February arose after the US Department of Justice published documents which suggested he had forwarded confidential information to the convicted sex offender when Mountbatten-Windsor was a UK trade envoy in 2010.” (10/08/26)
Source: Politico
“Knives out on MAGA Inc.” (10/08/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“As any follower of Austrian economics knows, lawmakers—in any form—are usually the enemies of free markets and the prosperity that they bring. However, there are times when legislators manage to outdo themselves and pass laws that are absolutely destructive, and the Jones Act is one of them. A number of people have explained that, with most government programs, ‘the benefits are concentrated and the costs are diffused,’ and probably no legislation better reflects that truism than the Jones Act, which benefits a small number of people but lays costs upon the vast number of Americans that must pay for this legislation.” (10/08/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Jeffery L Degner
‘Congress rejected constitutional alternatives in favor of remaking a nation. Abroad, as at home, lawmakers cannot manufacture preferred social outcomes simply by spending more money.” (10/08/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/afghanistan-again-unlearned-lessons-of-americas-longest-war/
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Legal rules affect behavior on many margins. They affect incentives to commit offenses, incentives to prosecute them, incentives to prevent them. For some offenses tort law may provide better incentives than criminal law on one of those margins and worse on another. If so, the question of what ought to be a tort and what ought to be a crime will be ambiguous, at least until we develop a theory good enough to predict not only the sign but also the size of such effects. In this post I will argue that, judged by the incentive for potential victims to prevent offenses, our rules are backwards. Things we treat as crimes, such as burglary, ought to be torts; things we treat as torts, such as auto accidents, ought to be crimes.” (10/08/26)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/why-burglary-should-be-a-tort-and
Source: United Press International
“A judge ruled that the state must preserve all evidence in the botched [killing] of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike. Pike’s attorneys argued for the order saying the evidence would be relevant in case the state tries to [kill] her again. … Judge I’Ashea Myles ordered the evidence be preserved, and gave a long list of specific items to be saved.” (10/07/26)
Source: Free the People
“Socialist Affordability Is a Lie | Guest: Maggie Anders.” (10/07/26)
Source: Jonathan Turley
by Jonathan Turley
“This week, Judge Mark Cohen’s long, checkered judicial career came to an ignoble end. The Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari to challenge the 2024 ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that he was properly suspended over a litany of partisan social media posts while a sitting judge. Cohen is a former Democratic politician who ran unsuccessfully for Congress, but served for many years in the state House until defeated in 2016. In 2018, Cohen successfully ran for the Court of Common Pleas. After receiving a ‘Not Recommended’ rating from the Philadelphia Bar Association, he barely won the seat with the second-lowest vote total among the victors. During this time on the bench, Cohen continued to maintain his political public persona with social media posts that many found injudicious and unethical. In October 2024, the Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline took the rare step of ejecting him from the bench and suspending him without pay over his Facebook posts.” (10/08/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Maxime Valbrune
“Over the summer, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration free rein to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, along with hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from other countries, limiting the accountability any administration will have for making determinations about TPS for the foreseeable future. Last month, a young pre-med college student named Pierre Damas Bel from Springfield, Ohio was found dead, by an apparent suicide. He was suffering depression brought on by the termination of TPS and being forced to wear an Immigration and Custom Enforcement-issued ankle bracelet. What happened to Damas Bel represents the real human cost of these inhumane policies. But sadly, I don’t believe we have reached the nadir of this administration’s cruelty.” (10/08/26)