Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The drug war, as most everyone knows has been going on a long time — decades! It’s just your standard government program. It keeps going and going no matter how much failure, death, and destruction it produces. … there have been drug warriors who have exclaimed, ‘If we would just really crack down in the war on drugs, we could win it.’ (They say the same thing in the war on immigrants, which has been going on at least as long as the war on drugs.) But the fact is that the drug warriors have been cracking down in the drug war the entire time. … there is only one solution to the drug war — end it.” (04/17/24)
https://www.fff.org/2024/04/17/how-about-just-cracking-down-to-win-the-drug-war/
Source: Reuters
“The U.S. House of Representatives will have its long-awaited vote on aid for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific as soon as Saturday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday, more than two months after a similar package passed the Senate. The House Appropriations Committee unveiled legislation providing more than $95 billion in security assistance, including $60.84 billion to address the conflict in Ukraine and assist regional partners as they handle Russia’s invasion, of which $23.2 billion would be used to replenish U.S. weapons, stocks and facilities. The Israel bill totals $26.38 billion, for Israel and funds to cover the cost of U.S. military operations in response to recent attacks. The Indo-Pacific measure totals $8.12 billion.” (04/17/24)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-ukraine-israel-aid-bills-be-filed-wednesday-speaker-says-2024-04-17/
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker
“To notice and comply with the Overton window is not the same as merely favoring incremental change over dramatic reform. There is not and should never be an issue with marginal change. That’s not what is at stake. To be aware of the Overton window, and fit within it, means to curate your own advocacy. You should do so in a way that is designed to comply with a structure of opinion that is pre-existing as a kind of template we are all given. It means to craft a strategy specifically designed to game the system, which is said to operate according to acceptable and unacceptable opinionizing.” (04/17/24)
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-the-overton-window-real-imagined-or-constructed/
Source: The Federalist
by David Harsanyi
“If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States, would Joe Biden call it a ‘win?’ Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show ‘restraint?’ What if that same terror state’s proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children? What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences? This is what Joe Biden and the Barack Obama acolytes, Iranian dupes, and Israel antagonists he’s surrounded himself with demand of Jewish State.” (04/17/24)
https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/16/the-world-is-paying-a-deadly-price-for-barack-obamas-foreign-policy-legacy/
Source: CNN
“Uri Berliner, a National Public Radio senior editor who wrote a scathing online essay accusing the public radio network of harboring a liberal bias, said Wednesday he had resigned from the outlet. ‘I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years,’ Berliner wrote in a resignation letter to NPR chief executive Katherine Maher, which he posted to his X account. An NPR spokesperson declined to comment. Berliner’s resignation came after he was suspended for five days without pay over his 3,500-word piece in the anti-establishment publication The Free Press. In the essay, Berliner claimed NPR had failed to properly cover allegations Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the runup to the 2016 election, the controversial Covid-19 lab-leak theory and New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.” (04/17/24)
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/17/media/npr-editor-resigns/index.html
Source: Niskanen Center
“The politics of our jobs.” (04/17/24)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-politics-of-our-jobs
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy
“In an earlier post, I listed some questions for interventionists to consider before advocating their interventions. This is part of my ongoing crusade to get interventionists to think about things as they actually are as opposed to a blank slate. These two modes of thinking I call ‘status quo reasoning’ (seeing the world as it is) versus ‘state of nature reasoning’ (seeing the world as a blank slate). Some recent research demonstrates the importance of status quo reasoning.” (04/17/24)
https://www.econlib.org/why-the-status-quo-matters/
Source: Times of India [India]
“Recent drone attacks by Ukraine on a Russian radar installation may have breached one of Russia’s declared red lines for deploying nuclear weapons, raising fears of an escalation in the ongoing conflict. The attacks targeted the 590th separate radio engineering center in Kovilkino, Mordovia, which houses the 29B6 ‘Container’ radar. This radar is a crucial component of Russia’s early-warning network against aerospace attacks, including ballistic missiles. The Kremlin’s 2020 decree, signed by President Vladimir Putin, explicitly outlines conditions under which Russia could use nuclear weapons. One of these conditions includes attacks that disrupt the ‘response actions of nuclear forces.’ Given the strategic importance of the “Container” radar in detecting missile threats, the attacks could be seen as meeting this criterion, a Newsweek report said. The first attack occurred on April 11, reportedly damaging the site’s command post, while the second followed on Wednesday morning.” (04/18/24)
https://archive.is/xdqv1
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Police in Ohio have arrested a man accused of shooting dead an Uber driver he mistakenly believed was part of a scam. According to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, driver Loletha Hall, 61, was shot multiple times by William Brock, 81, outside his South Charleston home last month. A scammer had contacted Mr Brock, threatened him and demanded money. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge. Ms Hall, according to officials, was also sent to Mr Brock’s house by a scammer and instructed to pick up a package. Police released dashcam footage of the 25 March incident showing Mr Brock brandishing a pistol and pointing it at Ms Hall to prevent her from leaving. During their investigation, officials discovered that an unknown man had called Mr Brock and told him he needed to pay $12,000 (£9,600) to get his nephew out of jail. Police say the caller threatened to kill his nephew if he did not pay.” (04/17/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68838017
Source: Law & Liberty
by David P Goldman
“Ajoke told often in Budapest says that World War III will be lost by whichever side Hungary is on. Balazs Orban, the political director for Prime Minister Viktor Orban (the two are not related), notes in his new book, Hussar Cut, that the political compromise of 1867 that incorporated Hungary into the Austrian Empire ‘involved the voluntary surrender of our independent foreign policy, so we had no say on whether or not to participate in the first great global military conflagration of the twentieth century.’ Hungary had little choice in the Second World War, either: in 1944 it fell under German occupation, followed by Soviet occupation. Hungary’s national revival is one of the most noteworthy events in the West since the fall of Communism.” (04/17/24)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/hungarys-surprise-attack/
