Source: Mindset Shifts
by Barry Brownstein

“What [Dr. Edith] Eger understood, and what makes her work so urgent now, is that Jew-hatred is never only about Jews. It is a symptom of a deeper moral disorder; the same disorder she spent her career treating in her patients and herself. When we dehumanize any group, we do not harm only them. We do something to ourselves. We coarsen the inner voice that Adam Smith called the impartial spectator. We silence the conscience that might otherwise call us back. The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; it began in the minds of people who decided that some human beings do not belong to humanity. That decision is always available to us. So is the opposite one.” (05/06/26)

https://mindsetshifts.substack.com/p/what-never-again-demands-of-each

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall

“It’s possible that modern slavery is indeed increasing. We tend to think that’s a result of the expansion of what slavery is meant to mean but perhaps that’s just us. There is though this problem of using independent bureaucracies to run all of these different things. Commissioners for this and that, commissions for the other and so on. … Say that you had a touch of the cynic in you. What would you expect a report from a bureaucracy to say about the issue that bureaucracy is meant to be dealing with? … The aim of a bureaucracy, as an organisation, is to continue to exist and to grow – to increase its budget. That’s it, that’s just what happens with this life form. Therefore every report from a bureaucracy is going to be well … yes … very difficult problem … growing all the time … give us more money.” ()5/06/26)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-problem-with-independent-bureaucracies-running-things

Source: New York Post
by Rich Lowry

“Regulators no longer have to worry that Spirit Airlines might upset the air-travel market by merging with the wrong competitor. The now-defunct airline made poor business decisions and had to cope with tough circumstances. But if its demise were an Agatha Christie mystery, the fingerprints of Joe Biden’s antitrust officials would be all over the crime scene. These zealots fought a proposed deal between JetBlue and Spirit, and congratulated themselves on a 2024 court victory that doomed Spirit to likely oblivion. This was wanton economic destruction masquerading as antitrust enforcement. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who never met an antitrust action she didn’t like, exemplifies the perversity.” (05/05/26)

https://nypost.com/2026/05/05/opinion/democrat-fingerprints-are-all-over-the-spirit-airlines-crime-scene/

Source: Popular Information
by Stephen Semler

“Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Acting Comptroller Jules Hurst told Congress last week that the Iran War had cost $25 billion through the first 60 days. The next day, CBS reported that officials familiar with the Pentagon’s internal assessments estimated the cost was actually closer to $50 billion — double the amount department leadership had just stated publicly. However, even the figure reported as the war’s ‘true cost’ is at least $22 billion too low. Popular Information conducted a cost estimate of the Iran War based on officials’ statements, military procurement and operations data, and reporting on deployments and armament use. Through 60 days, the US spent an estimated $71.8 billion on the Iran War, or $1.2 billion per day on average.” (05/06/26)

https://popular.info/p/the-real-cost-of-the-iran-war-72

Source: The Bulwark
by Sarah Longwell

“While debates rage online about the Democratic party needing to be more moderate or more progressive, Democratic primary voters are focused on a different set of priorities entirely. They want fighters who can win and seem like they care about average people struggling in this economy. It makes sense that Democratic voters are in the mood for a candidate like Platner, with his oyster-farmer aesthetic and ‘not a regular politician’ energy. But we were still left wondering how voters were processing Platner’s laundry list of personal baggage, from the much-discussed Totenkopf tattoo to the slew of bad Reddit posts. Here’s what they said …” (05/06/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-man-behind-the-tattoo-graham-platner-maine-democrat-focus-group