Source: SFGate
“The University of Southern California decided to cancel its Tuesday night gubernatorial debate after accusations that it excluded four of the only candidates of color, the Los Angeles Times reported. The private university came under fire when Xavier Becerra, a Mexican American candidate for governor, sent a scathing letter to the university’s president last week accusing it of the blatant exclusion of four candidates from the debate. He called it ‘a chilling and dangerous move.’ The university decided to cancel the event on Monday, less than a day before it was scheduled to take place. Becerra celebrated the news, which was first reported by the Times. ‘We fought. We won! We stood up against an unfair candidate debate set-up that prematurely chose winners and losers,’ he wrote on X on Monday night.” [editor’s note: This should be no surprise to Libertarians, who have seen Ed Clark, Harry Browne, Gary Johnson and others similarly excluded from Presidential debates for low polling and fundraising numbers – SAT] (03/24/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/usc-cancels-gubernatorial-debate-22093688.php
Source: The New Republic
“Trump Accidentally Admits to Epic Iran Blunder as War Takes Worse Turn.” (03/24/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/208082/trump-accidentally-admits-epic-iran-blunder-war-takes-worse-turn
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“Over the weekend Donald Trump threatened dire vengeance on Iran unless its government opened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours …. But at 7:05 AM Monday Trump called the whole thing off — for five days, he said, but many people are assuming that the threatened action, which would have been a massive war crime, is now off the table. … Trump’s sudden climb-down was startling. Who could have seen this coming? The answer is, the person or people who bought large quantities of stock market futures and sold large quantities of oil futures around 15 minutes before Trump’s announcement.” [editor’s note: Treason is constitutionally defined, and insider trading isn’t it – TLK] (03/24/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/treason-in-the-futures-markets
Source: The Dispatch
by Patrick G Eddington
“Section 702 authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad without a warrant. However, because of the structure of the global telecommunications system, the text messages, phone calls, and other digital data of people in the United States are invariably captured during FISA Section 702 collection activities. That information is stored in databases that are queried by the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even some Central Intelligence Agency personnel — all without having to obtain a warrant from a federal judge before conducting such searches. The prior abuses of such Section 702 collection and warrantless database querying are well documented. This month, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a 116-page bill—the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act — ostensibly designed to bring an end to nearly 20 years of constitutional rights violations under Section 702.” (03/24/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/fisa-section-702-surveillance-intelligence/
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Claus Wiemann Frølund
“Critics of markets often argue that capitalism systematically fails consumers. Firms collude, corporations exploit their power, and powerful companies crush competitors. But there is a curious pattern in these critiques: regardless of what actually happens in the marketplace, the outcome is treated as proof that markets are broken.” (03/24/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/heads-i-win-tails-you-lose-when-every-market-outcome-called-failure
Source: United Press International
“A coalition of leading cultural and architectural preservation organizations has asked the court to stop the Trump administration from carrying through with its quarter-billion-dollar Kennedy Center reconstruction project. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, along with seven other organizations, filed a lawsuit Monday in a Washington, D.C., federal court seeking injunctive relief prohibiting the Trump administration from starting any construction work at the iconic Potomac River center without completing the required public review and consultation process.” (03/24/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/03/24/Trump-sued-Kennedy-Center/7701774337904/
Source: The Hill
“Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has appointed energy executive Alan Armstrong to represent the state in the Senate, replacing outgoing Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R), who was confirmed Monday to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). … Armstrong will be asked to pledge not to run for a full term after temporarily filling the vacancy — a unique element of Oklahoma law that quickly sparked chatter around potential candidates for this fall, when Mullin was set to seek reelection.” (03/24/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5797973-oklahoma-senate-alan-armstrong/
Source: Yascha Mounk
“David Goodhart on Why the Educated Elite Lost Touch with Democracy.” (03/24/26)
https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/david-goodhart
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Karthik Sankaran & Sarang Shidore
“The ‘Yuxi Circle,’ named for the Chinese city at its center, has a radius of roughly 2500 miles and contains about 55% of the world’s population within it – the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, the Koreas, and all the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. For the last four decades, this region has benefited from GDP growth of about 5% each year, driven by the expansion of industrialization, trade, agricultural productivity, and urbanization. This has led to extraordinary increases in human welfare and a shift in the economic geography of the world away from the North Atlantic basin. But these achievements could all be seriously jeopardized by ongoing events in the Persian Gulf.” (03/24/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-asia/
Source: Law & LIberty
by Anna Smith Lacey
“Sándor Bölöni Farkas gave Hungarians a glimpse of the American experiment, stoking their own hunger for freedom.” (03/24/26)
https://lawliberty.org/the-hungarian-tocqueville/
