Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jon Duffy

“In describing the U.S. war in Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth often sounds less like a leader burdened by the grave public trust of killing in the nation’s name than like a man performing for an audience. On ’60 Minutes,’ he said ‘the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna live.’ Days earlier, Hegseth described the torpedoing of an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka — an attack that killed more than 80 sailors — as ‘quiet death,’ with a relish that has no place in the public voice of American war. Some will hear lines like that and dismiss them as swagger from a man temperamentally unsuited to his office. The deeper problem is the view of war those lines reveal. … Hegseth does not speak of war as responsibility, burden or tragedy. He speaks of it as a stage for display.” (03/17/26)

https://archive.is/sipGU

Source: The Daily Economy
by Jeffery L Degner

“COVID lockdowns transformed education and exposed the limits of centralized policymaking. Six years later, students are still paying the price.” (03/17/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-long-shadow-of-covid-school-closures/

Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter

“It is supremely ironic that President Donald Trump, who in 2016 gained a reputation as a staunch opponent of regime-change wars, is 10 years later placing a huge political bet on achieving success with multiple U.S. crusades of that nature. He has already launched regime-change military campaigns against Venezuela and Iran. Some comments by Trump indicate that he is contemplating a campaign to oust the entrenched communist regime in Cuba. It’s a massive gamble for the president and the Republican Party. If Trump can carry off the strategy, and pro-U.S. successor governments replace repressive and hostile systems in all three countries, his historical legacy would be impressive in the eyes of many. … A failure to achieve such transformational outcomes at low cost in American blood and treasure, though, would likely prove politically disastrous for Trump and his supporters. The early indicators are not especially encouraging for the administration’s strategy.” (03/17/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-risks-it-all-on-regime-change-abroad/

Source: Common Dreams
by Leonardo Flores

“I’m traveling to Cuba for the first time on March 21 to be in Havana with the Nuestra América Convoy, in which people from dozens of countries representing a variety of organizations will break the blockade, bringing much-needed supplies to the island. CODEPINK is bringing 6,300 pounds of medical equipment and medicine with help from Global Health Partners and others. These supplies will be given to clinics, hospitals, and maternity centers as Cuba deals with the latest horrifying crime against humanity perpetrated by the United States. The US is blockading oil, seizing and chasing away Cuba-bound tankers in the Caribbean. No oil whatsoever has entered the island since early December. Trump characterized Cuba as an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ paving the way for more unilateral coercive measures (so-called sanctions).” (03/17/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cuban-blockade

Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher

“Whatever happens in Illinois and elsewhere this primary season, the risks to democracy are clear. In multi-candidate primaries that can be won by small pluralities, special interest groups can misrepresent themselves, spend lavishly, and watch their preferred candidates, who are not representative of their party’s voters, eke out narrow wins. That could not only damage a party’s short-term prospects but also threaten its integrity in the long term.” (03/17/26)

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/03/17/crypto-aipac-corrupting-democratic-primaries/

Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson

“At what point must we be frank about the fact that Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb author who died last week at the age of 93, was not simply wrong about almost everything he ever wrote or said or thought, but positively and culpably dishonest? If ever there were an intellectual grave that deserves pissing on posthaste, it is Paul Ehrlich’s. So let us commence. Ehrlich was an intellectual fraud, something he had in common with many of the celebrated pseudoscientists, quacks, and cranks who became intellectual heroes to our era’s progressives, from Sigmund Freud to Noam Chomsky, Rachel Carson, Margaret Sanger, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until about five minutes ago. (Right-wingers don’t go around reading books by crackpots — they put them into the Cabinet.)” (03/17/26)

https://archive.is/gLhO3

Source: Liberal Currents
by Dennis Lytton

“Trump’s use of the constitution’s plenary grant of pardon authority to him — from all the J6’ers, to his cronies and friends, to implicit promises to administration thugs high and low — has been without precedent in scale to be sure. But the history of the pardon clause has always been fraught. Increasingly in the last few generations its abuses — from Clinton’s Marc Rich to Bush’s Iran Contra plotters — have become prominent. Amendments may require Republican members of Congress to get on board, but they do not require the president. Pardon reform, especially if it does not have a particular partisan valence, could be a low hanging fruit for the 120th Congress to address through that mechanism.” (03/17/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/amend-and-reform-the-pardon-clause-of-the-constitution-in-2027/