Source: Orange County Register
by John Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“‘Nothing is real,’ observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics. Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population. Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided. This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.” (04/24/24)

https://www.ocregister.com/2024/04/24/divide-and-conquer-the-governments-propaganda-of-fear-and-fake-news/

Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by staff

“President Biden today signed legislation that kickstarts a process to ban TikTok and empowers the president to block other communications platforms used by millions of Americans. By passing this bill into law, Congress has set a grave precedent for free speech by starting the clock on banning TikTok. FIRE opposed nearly identical legislation when it passed the House last month. The law effectively grants the president permanent authority to ban widely used speech platforms with only weak connections to foreign entities. This is a dangerous power for the president to hold over websites and apps that Americans use to exercise their First Amendment rights.” (04/25/24)

https://www.thefire.org/news/tiktok-legislation-sets-grave-precedent-free-speech

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker

“A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that ‘As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.’ These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected and unaccountable in every way, impervious to elections and the will of the people. Now we have the NYT celebrating this. And the latest bears notice too: ‘Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.’ The authors are classic Deep Staters associated with Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush. They assure us that having an Orwellian state is good for us. You can trust them, promise. … These are the people who have rightly warned about government infringements on privacy and free speech for many decades dating way back.” (04/24/24)

https://brownstone.org/articles/now-we-are-supposed-to-cheer-government-surveillance/

Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Michael Boldin

“One of the primary reasons the founders wanted a strong militia system with a well-armed general public was to minimize or even eliminate the need for a large, permanent standing army, even in times of peace. Most people in the founding generation were extremely wary of standing armies. They were often referred to as ‘the bane of liberty.’ They knew this from experience. From the standing armies that led to the massacre in Boston, to the gun control scheme that kicked off the war for independence – they lived it firsthand. As colonial resistance to taxes and other policies grew in 1774, the British responded by attempting to disarm the colonists.” (04/25/24)

https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2024/04/24/the-founders-case-for-a-strong-militia-over-standing-armies/