Source: Common Dreams
by Abby Zimet

“Rand [Paul] and other Republicans tried to claim Fauci had no right to take the Fifth because Biden issued him a preemptive pardon that eliminated that privilege, an ongoing debate in some legal circles. What is not debated though Repubs tried to argue otherwise: Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not a confession of guilt, but a foundational right against self-incrimination as long as there exists a valid threat of prosecution. Most pointedly, the Fifth does not represent guilt but ‘the ordinary caution’ of any citizen who is dragged before a hostile panel by a vindictive chairman vowing for years to put him behind bars, and who ‘understands this hearing was never a search for information but a search for a crime – of having stood in public and told a frightened country the truth, while a president lied to it.'” (07/30/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/further/desperately-seeking-scapegoats-2677287389

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson

“As I observe (and participate in) a few discussions on Facebook and elsewhere about socialism, I have come to a few conclusions about the nature of the arguments and the reasons why socialists remain socialists even as we see the utter failure of socialist economies throughout history. Maybe the meme that appears once in a while — ‘If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists’ — might be true, but I doubt it. As I see it, the purpose of establishing socialism is to further promote socialism, not improve the lot of a society and certainly not to promote prosperity.” (07/30/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/goal-socialists-socialism-not-prosperity

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Courtney Rawlings

“Israel is spending wads of cash on public diplomacy in a desperate attempt to reverse waning American support for the country after it stands accused of genocide in Gaza and pushing the U.S. into the Iran war. Since Oct. 7, Israel has spent over a billion dollars on global ‘hasbara’ — television appearances, social media campaigns, chat-bot training, and other efforts to influence how people think about Israel. And this ‘public diplomacy’ budget more than quadrupled in the last year alone.” (07/30/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-influence-campaign/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Julia R Cartwright

“Leonidas Montes has spent a whole career thinking about what the eighteenth century Scotsman was trying to say.” (07/30/26)

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-pocket-adam-smith/

Source: Liberal Currents
by Samantha Hancox-Li

“The events at Prairieland on July 4, 2025, resulted in a large number of activists arrested, no national upsurge in anti-ICE sentiment, and legal and propaganda victories for the government. A tactical analysis of Prairieland is a case study in mistakes. But negative examples are nevertheless useful for future organizing.” (07/30/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/prairieland-a-tactical-and-strategic-analysis/

Source: The American Conservative
by Dr. Ionut Popescu

“The conflict between the United States and Iran has laid bare a profound failure of political judgment and strategic adaptation in Washington and Tehran alike. Both sides locked themselves into rigid adversarial paradigms and prioritized short-term tactical military successes at the expense of long-term strategy. For the United States in particular, this failure is a symptom of a much larger, more dangerous disease—a stubborn adherence to a militaristic, interventionist grand strategy that refuses to accept the realities of a multipolar world in which its relative financial and military resources are much more limited. The on-again, off-again conflict, characterized by tit-for-tat retaliatory strikes, is a lose-lose situation for both parties and for the region as a whole, yet we are unlikely to escape this tragic dynamic unless more realist strategic thinking prevails in both Washington and Tehran.” (07/30/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-iran-war-is-lose-lose/