02/16 -- Indian Ocean: US-based pirates steal second oil tanker; The "Board of Peace" Already Has a Corruption Problem
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Thomas L. Knapp
Feb 16, 2026, 6:25:52 AMFeb 16
to Freedom News Daily
Freedom News Daily, 02/16/26
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Indian Ocean: US-based pirates steal second oil tanker
2) Bitcoin Takes Step Towards Quantum Fix as Experts Diverge on Urgency of Threat
3) Russia: Ukrainian drone strike sparks fires at Black Sea port ahead of US-brokered peace talks
4) Palestine: Israeli forces murder nine in Gaza
5) Shutdown Theater: Won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor airport gropers?
6) UK, allied regimes say Russian political prisoner Navalny was murdered with dart frog poison
7) Planned US-funded baby vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau blasted by WHO
8) KS: Kelly vetos anti-trans bill
9) Collins backs GOP’s (SAVE) America Act requiring voter ID, on one condition
10) MN: Lemon pleads not guilty in malicious prosecution for reporting on ICE protest
11) Cuba: Cigar festival called off as US blockade worsens energy crisis
12) A “ring of fire” solar eclipse will dazzle people and penguins in Antarctica
13) Germany: The spectacular multimillion-euro heist nobody noticed
14) Syria: US forces strike alleged Islamic State targets
15) States reliant on Colorado River fail to meet the latest deadline to find consensus
16) Replacement crew docks at space station, boosts crew back to seven
17) Barack Obama: “Aliens are real, but I haven’t seen them”
18) UK: High Court rules Palestine Action protest group’s designation as terrorist organization unlawful
19) CA: Marin Republicans say “dead people” are voting; county says they’re alive
20) Amazon-owned Ring cancels Flock deal amid controversy
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) The “Board of Peace” Already Has a Corruption Problem
22) Russell Vought Says “We are in a post constitutional moment in our country.” He’s Not Wrong.
23) Lefty Kooks 1, Trump Gun Thugs 0
24) The covid reality check for AI hype
25) There should be no partisan divide about naming Epstein’s fellow abusers
26) Apparently you should not want what you do want
27) 1761: When American Independence was Born
28) Which Party Is More Libertarian: Republicans Or Democrats?
29) Vladimir Putin’s finally starting to sweat; time for Trump to turn up the heat
30) Reviving a Revisionist: Clinton Hartley Grattan, Part 2
31) How America Has Destroyed Its Democracy, Part One
32) The Coming Constitutional Ice Age
33) A civics upskilling for Americans amid 250th celebrations
34) Proven Petroleum Reserves and the Myth of “Peak Oil”
35) The President Of The 0.00001 Percent
36) Worry, Don’t Panic, Over Trump’s Efforts to Subvert the Elections
37) Rubio’s spoonful of sugar helps hard medicine go down in Munich
38) Immigration vs. Settler Colonialism
39) Time to stop ICE’s efforts to “defenestrate” the Constitution
40) When speech no longer seems sufficient, part II
41) Trump Turning US Into the World’s Rogue Policeman
42) Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the US Surveillance State
43) Remembering Ed Crane
44) Is the MAHA Movement Building a Genuine Counter-Elite?
45) Democrats’ Munich meltdown exposes left’s intellectual void
46) The Politics of Hate: Weaponized Discord Is the Deep State’s Most Effective Tool
47) The ATF Created a Backdoor Gun Registry. Lawmakers Want an Explanation.
48) An Exercise in Paternal Piety
49) ICE Is Strangling the Minneapolis Economy
50) Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/14/26
52) Unattended Baggage, episode 329
53) Free Talk Live, 02/14/26
54) System Update, 02/14/26
55) The Tom Woods Show, episode 2735
56) Rising, 02/14/26
57) Fountainhead Forum, episode 424
58) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 02/13/26
59) The Rational Egoist, 02/13/26
60) The Climate Realism Show, episode 190
61) Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 02/13/26
62) Friday Philosophy with David Gordon, 02/13/26
63) Serious Trouble, 02/13/26
64) The Brian Nichols Show, 02/13/26
65) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/13/26
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Indian Ocean: US-based pirates steal second oil tanker
Source: BBC News [UK]
“The US military has boarded a second oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea where it was suspected of helping Venezuela avoid US sanctions. The boarding of the Panamanian-flagged Veronica III is the second such US interception in the Indian Ocean in the past week. It comes amid a US crackdown on sanctioned oil exports from Venezuela. … At least seven oil tankers have been [stolen by US-based pirates] since last year, as the Trump administration moves to control the supply of Venezuelan oil.” (02/15/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4ge763d7j6o
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2) Bitcoin Takes Step Towards Quantum Fix as Experts Diverge on Urgency of Threat
Source: Decrypt [UK]
“Bitcoin developers have taken another step towards addressing the risk posed by future quantum computers, merging BIP 360 into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals GitHub repository as the long-running debate over the timeline intensifies. Bitcoin developers have taken another step towards addressing the risk posed by future quantum computers, merging BIP 360 into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals GitHub repository as the long-running debate over the timeline intensifies. … The debate around how best to address a future quantum threat stems from Shor’s algorithm, which could derive private keys from public keys if run on a sufficiently powerful, fault-tolerant quantum computer.” (02/15/26)
https://decrypt.co/358068/bitcoin-quantum-fix-experts-diverge-urgency-threat
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3) Russia: Ukrainian drone strike sparks fires at Black Sea port ahead of US-brokered peace talks
Source: Associated Press
“A Ukrainian drone strike ignited fires at one of Russia’s Black Sea ports, officials said Sunday, ahead of fresh talks aimed at ending the nearly 4-year-old war. Two people were wounded in the attack on the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, which damaged an oil storage tank, warehouse and terminals, according to regional Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev. Meanwhile, falling debris from Russian drones damaged civilian and transport infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials said, causing disruption to the power and water supply. Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion.” (02/15/26)
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-talks-drones-geneva-90e731743c18d6d82c343314e07b1630
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4) Palestine: Israeli forces murder nine in Gaza
Source: NBC News
“At least nine Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the northern and southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian civil defence and health officials said, in what Israel’s military called a response to Hamas ceasefire violations. Medics said an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment housing displaced families killed at least four people, while health officials said another strike killed five in Khan Younis in the south.” (02/15/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/gaza/israeli-airstrikes-kill-gaza-tent-camp-rcna259130
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5) Shutdown Theater: Won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor airport gropers?
Source: Fox News
“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is shut down after Congress failed to fund the agency before the midnight deadline. The partial shutdown is due to deadlock over federal immigration operations, but it also means TSA agents at airports across the U.S. are expected to screen passengers and bags without pay. About 95% of TSA workers are deemed essential personnel and required to keep working.” [editor’s note: They’re not required to do anything. They can give up the thug life and go get real jobs any time they want to – TLK] (02/14/26)
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/dhs-shutdown-tsa-agents-working-without-pay-again-what-means-travelers
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6) UK, allied regimes say Russian political prisoner Navalny was murdered with dart frog poison
Source: Sky News [UK]
“Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison in Russia after being poisoned with a deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuadorian dart frogs, the UK and other allies have [claimed]. The ‘barbaric’ act — using a neurotoxin that is classed as a chemical weapon — could only have been carried out by Vladimir Putin’s government, they said on Saturday. … Russian authorities have previously claimed the dissident’s death was not suspicious but had been caused as a result of ‘combined diseases,’ including an irregular heartbeat.” (02/14/26)
https://news.sky.com/story/navalny-died-after-being-poisoned-with-dart-frog-toxin-13507402
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7) Planned US-funded baby vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau blasted by WHO
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A now-halted plan to run a hepatitis B vaccine trial involving thousands of newborns in Guinea-Bissau has been criticised by the World Health Organization as ‘unethical.’ The US-funded study had sought to give one set of babies the vaccine at birth, while another would have had the shot delayed until six weeks of age. The WHO said it had ‘significant concerns’ about the plan, and described the birth-dose vaccine as ‘an effective and essential public health intervention, with a proven record.’ The US health department, headed by Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has questioned the effects of vaccines, had sought to use the trial to answer questions about the jab’s broader health effects. The WHO said on Friday that its concerns regarded the study’s scientific justification, ethical safeguards and consistency with established standards for research involving humans.” (02/14/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78j5k2gk02o
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8) KS: Kelly vetos anti-trans bill
Source: Kansas City Star
“Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a bill Friday that aims to police the use of bathrooms and other private spaces in government buildings. It would also revoke driver’s licenses that reflect transgender Kansans’ identities. Kelly used her veto message to denounce SB 244 as ‘poorly drafted legislation’ that would have ‘numerous and significant consequences’ beyond limiting trans people’s ability to ‘use the appropriate bathroom.’ ‘Under this bill: if your grandfather is in a nursing home in a shared room, as a granddaughter, you would not be able to visit him,’ Kelly said. ‘If your wife is in a shared hospital room, as a husband, you would not be able to visit her,’ she continued, adding that college dorm rooms and government-owned sports facilities would also fall under the bill.” (02/14/26)
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article314693745.html
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9) Collins backs GOP’s (SAVE) America Act requiring voter ID, on one condition
Source: New York Post
“Senate Republicans gained a key ally in their quest to enshrine voter ID into law, but the lawmaker’s support comes with a condition. A trio of lawmakers, led by Sen. Mike Lee [R-UT] have undertaken a campaign to convince their colleagues to support the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, working social media and closed-door meetings to secure the votes. The campaign has proven successful, with the cohort gaining a crucial vote from Sen. Susan Collins [R-ME], who announced that she would back the SAVE America Act, which recently passed the House. … Collins noted that she did not support the previous version of the bill, known simply as the SAVE Act, because it ‘would have required people to prove their citizenship every single time they cast a ballot.'” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/us-news/sen-collins-backs-gops-save-america-act-requiring-voter-id-on-one-condition/
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10) MN: Lemon pleads not guilty in malicious prosecution for reporting on ICE protest
Source: Reuters
“Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday in a criminal case stemming from his coverage of a protest at a Minnesota church against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Lemon entered the courthouse in St. Paul on Friday afternoon wearing a black suit. On his way in, he clapped his hands and waved to supporters, but did not respond to questions from reporters. … Lemon, now an independent journalist, livestreamed a protest against Trump’s deployment of thousands of armed immigration agents into Democratic-governed Minnesota’s biggest cities. The protest disrupted a January 18 service at Cities Church in St. Paul. He was charged with conspiring to deprive others of their civil rights and violating a law that has been used to crack down on demonstrations at abortion clinics but also forbids obstructing access to houses of worship.” (02/13/26)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/journalist-don-lemon-enter-plea-minnesota-ice-protest-case-2026-02-13/
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11) Cuba: Cigar festival called off as US blockade worsens energy crisis
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“An annual cigar festival in Cuban capital Havana has become the latest casualty of a fuel shortage caused by a US oil blockade. The organising committee of the Festival del Habano announced on Saturday that this year’s event – which was due to take place over five days in late February – would be postponed until further notice. It said the decision was ‘motivated by the complex economic situation’ facing Cuba due to the ‘economic, commercial and financial blockade’ by the US. A fuel shortage causing power cuts on the Caribbean island has been worsened by the US seizing oil shipments from Cuba’s long-standing ally Venezuela. Cuba also has a shortage of aviation fuel, leading several airlines to suspend services there, while some countries, including the UK, have warned against non-essential travel to the island.” (02/14/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q30k2xzk2o
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12) A “ring of fire” solar eclipse will dazzle people and penguins in Antarctica
Source: SFGate
“The first solar eclipse of the year will grace Antarctica, and only a lucky few will get to bask — or waddle — in its glow. Tuesday’s annular solar eclipse, known as a ‘ring of fire’, will only be visible in the southernmost continent, home to research stations and diverse wildlife. ‘The penguins down there are going to have a great show,’ said astronomer Joe Llama with Lowell Observatory. Clear skies permitting, more people can catch a partial eclipse with small bites taken out of the sun from the tips of Chile and Argentina and bits of southeastern Africa including Madagascar, Lesotho and South Africa. Solar eclipses happen when the sun, moon and Earth align just so. The moon casts a shadow that can partially or totally block out the sun’s light from Earth.” (02/13/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/a-ring-of-fire-solar-eclipse-will-dazzle-people-21351817.php
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13) Germany: The spectacular multimillion-euro heist nobody noticed
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“It has been described as Germany’s most ‘spectacular’ bank heist in years. On a quiet weekend just after Christmas, a group of thieves broke into a High Street bank in the western town of Gelsenkirchen, by boring through a wall with an industrial drill. They looted more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes and made off with millions of euros. Over a month later, police have yet to make an arrest. For the bank’s clients, some of whom say they have lost their life savings and precious family jewellery and valuables, this is a time of anger, confusion and shock. There is a strong sense that trust in institutions has been shaken. The case has thrown up all sorts of difficult questions, and some of them have been spelled out by Herbert Reul, the interior minister in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.” (02/14/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2y2538lz8o
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14) Syria: US forces strike alleged Islamic State targets
Source: United Press International
“The U.S. military struck dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria while conducting retaliatory strikes for the deaths of two soldiers and their interpreter. CentCom said it conducted 10 strikes on more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria from Feb. 3 through Thursday to ‘sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.’ The strikes over the past 1.5 weeks targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage facilities with precision munitions sent by fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft, CentCom officials said.” (02/14/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/02/14/syria-us-strikes-isis/6561771120705/
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15) States reliant on Colorado River fail to meet the latest deadline to find consensus
Source: SFGate
“The seven Western states that depend on the Colorado River missed a deadline for the second time Saturday to agree on a plan addressing record drought and water shortages. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo released a joint statement calling on Upper Basin states to offer more concessions. Those states include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. ‘The Colorado River is essential to our communities and economies, and our states have conserved large volumes of water in recent years to stabilize the basin’s water supplies for years to come,’ the governors said. ‘Our stance remains firm and fair: all seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation.’ Arizona, California and Nevada have offered to decrease Colorado River allocation by 27%, 10% and 17%, respectively, according to those states.” (02/14/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/states-reliant-on-colorado-river-fail-to-meet-the-21354290.php
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16) Replacement crew docks at space station, boosts crew back to seven
Source: Spaceflight Now
“A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule glided in for a Valentine’s Day docking at the International Space Station Saturday boosting the lab’s crew back to a full complement of seven one month after four other fliers came home early because of a medical issue. The Crew Dragon docked at the space-facing port of the lab’s forward Harmony module at 3:15 p.m. EST, 34 hours after launch Friday from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket.” (02/15/26)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/02/15/replacement-crew-docks-at-space-station-boosts-crew-back-to-seven/
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17) Barack Obama: “Aliens are real, but I haven’t seen them”
Source: New York Post
“The truth is out there. Former President Barack Obama said that aliens are real but he has no idea where they are during a podcast appearance released Saturday. ‘They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,’ Obama told YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen after he asked him about extraterrestrials. The former president did not offer any further details on what he mean by ‘real’ — and no follow-up questions on the topic were asked — but he used the appearance to cast doubt on several longtime theories as to where they might be. ‘They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,’ Obama said.” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/us-news/obama-says-aliens-are-real-but-i-havent-seen-them-in-out-there-new-interview/
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18) UK: High Court rules Palestine Action protest group’s designation as terrorist organization unlawful
Source: CBS News
“Britain’s High Court ruled Friday that the government’s decision last year to outlaw the protest group Palestine Action as a designated terrorist organization was unlawful, but it kept the ban in place pending an appeal. Judges Victoria Sharp, Jonathan Swift and Karen Steyn said ‘the nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities’ did not meet the ‘level, scale and persistence’ that would justify proscription. The judges said they were ‘satisfied that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action was disproportionate.’ … Last year, the U.K. government declared the pro-Palestinian group a terrorist organization alongside the likes of al-Qaeda and Hamas, making membership in or support for Palestine Action a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for holding signs saying, ‘I support Palestine Action.'” (02/13/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-palestine-action-terrorist-designation-unlawful-high-court-rules/
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19) CA: Marin Republicans say “dead people” are voting; county says they’re alive
Source: SFGate
“The chairman of the Marin County Republicans sounded alarms this week about possible voting by dead people during the special election last November. During a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, John Turnacliff requested that the county’s registrar of voters look into the matter. ‘I, along with others on our committee, have been dissecting Marin County voter rolls for over three years,’ Turnacliff said during the public comment portion of the meeting. ‘… And based on our analysis of the ballots that were returned for the Prop. 50 special election on Nov. 4, we found 73 people, 73 dead people had voted in that election.’ Asking Natalie Adona, the county’s registrar of voters, to review those numbers, Turnacliff said, ‘In summary, dead people are voting in Marin County, and we would like to know why.'” (02/14/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/marin-county-republicans-voters-21350060.php
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20) Amazon-owned Ring cancels Flock deal amid controversy
Source: Silicon Republic
“The Amazon-owned home security camera provider Ring has cancelled an upcoming partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance tech provider to US police forces. … In a statement yesterday (12 February), Ring said that after ‘a comprehensive review,’ it found that ‘the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,’ and therefore was cancelling the partnership. The smart doorbell platform attracted controversy this week around an ad broadcast during TV coverage of the Super Bowl on 8 February publicising another Ring feature, ‘Search Party,’ which was unrelated to Flock. The ad showed multiple Ring cameras throughout a neighbourhood being activated in unison to search for a missing pet. Online criticism of the feature notes that this network of surveillance could also be used to track people.” (02/13/26)
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/ring-cancels-flock-deal-amid-controversy
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) The “Board of Peace” Already Has a Corruption Problem
Source: The Realist Review
“Among the nine people Donald Trump named to his Board of Peace to run Gaza – which holds its first meeting in Washington DC February 19 – is billionaire private equity operator Marc Rowan. The board’s stated tasks include establishing financial controls and managing the reconstruction of a Gaza. You might think a savvy financier would bring solid credentials to such a job. You would be wrong. Let’s start with the obvious: this ‘Board’ is little more than a colonial operation—a modern day version of the British East India Company. And Marc Rowan is a perfect avatar for such an operation. Rowan runs Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, not with prudent stewardship but via a financial scheme that bears the hallmarks of two of history’s most infamous frauds: the accounting chicanery of Enron and the Ponzi dynamics of Bernie Madoff.” (02/15/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/the-board-of-peace-already-has-a
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22) Russell Vought Says “We are in a post constitutional moment in our country.” He’s Not Wrong.
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“Since voting is purely ceremonial affirmation of our masters’ authority over us, I don’t see that adding a card-flashing element to the liturgy makes much difference. I am, however, glad to see Trump once again reaffirming Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought’s 2022 observation that ‘we are in a post constitutional moment in our country.’ Vought says that like it’s a bad thing, calling on his audience to become ‘radical constitutionalists.’ His version of ‘radical constitutionalism,’ though, can’t be found anywhere in the actual Constitution. Instead of the mere functionary described in the Constitution, whose job is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ Vought envisions the president as Kim Jong Un on the Potomac. Which brings me back to voter ID.” (02/14/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20374
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23) Lefty Kooks 1, Trump Gun Thugs 0
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“The Trump administration has announced that it is abandoning its ‘surge’ — you’ll remember that term from the Iraq War — in Minneapolis. Other than two dead Americans, millions and millions of dollars in economic losses, and the further erosion of trust in armed federal agencies, what exactly has been accomplished? … at least one observer who had been very skeptical about the wisdom of so-called sanctuary city policies is now a little more sympathetic to those arrangements — and surely I am not the only one.” (02/13/26)
https://archive.is/DV16l
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24) The covid reality check for AI hype
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle
“Covid-19 gave everyone a harsh lesson in the power of exponentials, and that memory haunts any analysis of artificial intelligence. Sure, everything looks fine — now. But then, everything also looked fine in early March 2020. By the end of the month, we were locked in our houses with our strategic reserves of toilet paper. In a viral essay on X this week, Otherside AI founder Matt Shumer draws the parallel explicitly. ‘I think we’re in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid,’ he writes, before launching into a description of what’s already here for coders: AI agents building ‘usually perfect’ software from a plain-English description. He’s predicting a world soon in which AI blows up software development and moves on to every other profession.” (02/13/26)
https://archive.is/RPlHo
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25) There should be no partisan divide about naming Epstein’s fellow abusers
Source: Los Angeles Times
by LZ Granderson
“The general public’s awareness of Epstein’s heinous crimes came with political baggage. However at this point, the question we all should wonder is: How does redacting the names of the men who helped fund Epstein’s operation benefit either political party? It may be good for the rich and powerful men trying to avoid accountability, but it’s not exactly a campaign platform. … We have seen Congress kept out of session to avoid voting on the release of the Epstein files; we have heard equivocation about whether Epstein was a pedophile. We know Epstein’s island was a place where evil resided. The investigation, or lack of investigation, into Epstein’s fellow abusers should not be seen by anyone as a political quandary in which the object of the game is to keep your party in power.” (02/14/26)
https://archive.is/mLtKg
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26) Apparently you should not want what you do want
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“The latest critique of capitalism from Jason Hickel and Yanis Varoufakis …. ‘Capitalists are the ones who determine what to produce, how to use our labour and who gets to benefit. The rest of us – the people who are actually doing the production – do not get a say.’ This is simply factually wrong because markets. Capitalists might try to direct our labour into the production of things that we out here, we consumers, might not want. The Ford Edsel, say. But when we don’t want it then the capitalists stop so directing our labour into the production of what we do not want. For if they don’t they then go bust — as the death of four out of five new attempts at capitalism show. … This is not a complicated logical proposition but it’s one that seems to entirely escape two university professors here.” (02/14/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-you-should-not-want-what-you-do-want
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27) 1761: When American Independence was Born
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Mike Maharrey
“‘American Independence was then & there born. John Adams wasn’t talking about July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence. He was referring to the beginning of the real American Revolution that kicked off years earlier in February 1761. That’s when James Otis Jr delivered a fiery 5-hour speech railing against the writs of assistance. While the Declaration of Independence was a seminal moment in the Revolution, it was the culmination of more than 15 years of radical changes in the minds and hearts of the people that started with Otis’s speech.” (02/13/26)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2026/02/13/1761-when-american-independence-was-born/
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28) Which Party Is More Libertarian: Republicans Or Democrats?
Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer
“Assessing the freedom and liberty orientation of both parties on 10 key issues.” (02/13/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/13/which-party-is-more-libertarian-republicans-or-democrats/
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29) Vladimir Putin’s finally starting to sweat; time for Trump to turn up the heat
Source: New York Post
by staff
“With Vladimir Putin’s war machine sputtering, it’s time to push the Kremlin even harder to force an end to his war on Ukraine. President Donald Trump’s moves such as seizing ‘shadow fleet’ tankers and piling on new tariffs on importers of Moscow’s oil are plainly hitting hard: You can tell because Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is whining that Washington won’t make Kyiv agree to de facto surrender (e.g., Russian control over Ukraine’s post-war government) as he claims President Donald Trump had agreed to do. Why does Russia need America’s intervention, if it’s winning on the battlefield? ‘The United States has effectively declared a goal of economic domination,’ Lavrov cries — a clear sign that Putin’s feeling squeezed.” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/opinion/putins-finally-starting-to-sweat-time-for-trump-to-turn-up-the-heat/
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30) Reviving a Revisionist: Clinton Hartley Grattan, Part 2
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“Grattan highlights the propagandistic tricks that were directed at those who were neutral or critical. A lack of transparency was one of the tricks that left people unsure of the facts and so unable to argue effectively against war. Closed-door negotiations epitomized this secrecy for Grattan. Why We Fought discusses in detail the secret agreements that pushed America in the direction of war and prevented effective pushback against it. For example, the American diplomat Edward Mandell (Colonel) House negotiated a covert deal with England and France by which America pledged to intervene on the side of the Allies, although the official line was neutrality. This deal became known as the Secret Treaty. Months before the agreement was finalized, however, Wilson had campaigned and won the 1916 presidential election based on the claim that he had kept America out of the war and the promise that he would continue to do so.” (02/13/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/reviving-a-revisionist-clinton-hartley-grattan-part-2/
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31) How America Has Destroyed Its Democracy, Part One
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis
“This is going to be a three-part series defining the following: One, what our Founders (and others of their time) thought about democracy; two, how and why they thought it would fail; three, the kind of government and society they really wanted; and four, the role that feminism has played in destroying American democracy. The Founders didn’t foresee the fourth point, but they weren’t prophets and couldn’t predict everything. They knew history, though, and women have never done to any society what feminists have done to America. There is really no historical parallel. I’ll discuss that later. I have a lot of quotes here, some rather lengthy, some not so long, but all very interesting to those who enjoy history and want to know what our Founding Fathers intended for America.” (02/14/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/02/14/how-america-has-destroyed-its-democracy-part-one-democracy-is-most-vile-n2671288
-----
32) The Coming Constitutional Ice Age
Source: Judging Freedom
by Andrew P Napolitano
“Last fall during the opening of the United Nations in New York City, I recognized the face of a federal officer from his days working in law enforcement in New Jersey and mine as a trial judge. We chatted and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. I asked what ICE has to do with the U.N., and he told me that soon ICE will be everywhere. When I asked if ICE has become a paramilitary force, answerable to the White House, he just smiled, as if to say, ‘Don’t quote me.’ When I asked him why he was carrying two handguns and an AK-47 automatic rifle, he laughed and said, ‘I have more than you can see, judge!'” (02/13/26)
http://judgenap.com/the-coming-constitutional-ice-age/
-----
33) A civics upskilling for Americans amid 250th celebrations
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“If there is a bona fide kickoff moment for this year’s 250th anniversary of American independence, it is Presidents Day. For the three-day holiday weekend, many institutions tied to the nation’s history offered some sort of event. George Washington’s Mount Vernon, for example, announced free admission on Feb. 16, along with ‘a stirring reading’ of ‘Washington’s Prayer for His Country.’ Yet in addition to this year’s celebratory revelry, many Americans are seeking civic repair. … One example of a desire for understanding civic responsibilities is a bipartisan bill introduced last month in Nebraska. Since 2019, teens in the state have had to pass a civics requirement to graduate. But the bill would now require new members of the state Legislature to take a 20-question civics test, much like immigrants take for United States citizenship. And the scores would be made public.” (02/13/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0213/A-civics-upskilling-for-Americans-amid-250th-celebrations
-----
34) Proven Petroleum Reserves and the Myth of “Peak Oil”
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George S Giles
“Just how much oil does the world have? The American Petroleum Institute (API) is considered the world leader in petroleum statistics and they set the standards the worldwide industry uses. Those good old boys from Texas have created the incredible technology that brings high quality gasoline to your neighborhood each and every day. … The proven reserves of petroleum now stands at 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, up significantly from 1.3 trillion barrels in 2009. During this 17-year interlude, some 100 million barrels per day have been consumed by the world. This is clearly a paradox for the Hubbert Peak Oil believers.” (02/13/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/proven-petroleum-reserves-and-myth-peak-oil
-----
35) The President Of The 0.00001 Percent
Source: The Weekly Dish
by Andrew Sullivan
“Ah yes, those famous Trump family values: money, power, rape. And once the money landed in the Trump crypto accounts, of course, government policy changed. Trump gave the UAE rare and advanced AI chips, brought the UAE into the US Stargate AI project — along with an ownership slice of TikTok — and pardoned the sleazy billionaire felon, Changpeng Zhao, who had helped seal the deal with WLF. Not just corruption, but possibly at the expense of our national security, if those UAE chips make it to the CCP. This is the real Epstein class: utterly amoral networkers and nepotists with no loyalties to anything but their absurd bank balances and party invitations. And this is their administration.” (02/13/26)
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-president-of-the-000001-percent-36e
-----
36) Worry, Don’t Panic, Over Trump’s Efforts to Subvert the Elections
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andy Craig
“Donald Trump and his administration are waging an unprecedented, multi-pronged attack on this year’s midterm congressional elections. Even compared to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the scope and severity of this assault is unprecedented. Despite all this, most — if not all — of these lines of attack will fail. They are built on magical thinking, pursued by people who lack basic understanding of how these things work. Some of these threats are more serious and pressing. But there can be a temptation to doomerism that we should reject. Trump is dangerous, but he is not omnipotent.” (02/13/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/worry-dont-panic-over-trumps-efforts
-----
37) Rubio’s spoonful of sugar helps hard medicine go down in Munich
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Eldar Mamedov
“U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the Munich Security Conference this weekend to sooth transatlantic anxieties. After Vice President J.D. Vance’s criticisms of the old continent in 2025, the European dignitaries were looking for a more conventional American performance. What they got was a peculiar mix of primacist nostalgia and civilizational foreboding, with an explicit desire to forge a path of restoration together. ‘We are not looking for a rupture,’ the Secretary of State told his audience. ‘We want to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history,’ in a reference to the West. Predictably, Rubio – a neoconservative favorite in a pre-Trump GOP – ensured that it was America’s job to lead.” (02/14/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/rubio-speech-munich/
-----
38) Immigration vs. Settler Colonialism
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“The people performing those mind-boggling contortions to justify, on libertarian grounds, state violence against migrants without papers — restrictatarians, I call them — cite a 1994 article by Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) in support of their double-jointed acrobatics. Rothbard was correct about many things, but a position is not correct merely because Rothbard held it. I expect no disagreement over that.” (02/13/26)
https://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2026/02/tgif-immigration-vs-settler-colonialism.html
-----
39) Time to stop ICE’s efforts to “defenestrate” the Constitution
Source: Orange County Register
by Steven Greenhut
“In authoritarian Russia, critics of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have an odd habit of falling out of windows. These likely acts of defenestration serve as a stark warning for other critics, although the official line is usually that they tripped or committed suicide. In the democratic United States, opponents of ICE agents in Minneapolis sometimes also meet unusual fates. For instance, court documents show that ICE agents claimed Mexican immigrant Alberto Castañeda Mondragón experienced bone fractures and head injuries after he ‘purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall’ — an explanation that was disputed by the medical staff …. the Trump administration’s outrageous whoppers regarding myriad ICE incidents — that, say, victims of ICE violence were insurrectionists or terrorists — are a loyalty test. The more preposterous the claim, the more it separates blind MAGA followers from everyone else. The distortions echo the Kremlin’s approach: they’re a warning to its foes.” (02/13/26)
https://www.ocregister.com/2026/02/13/steven-greenhut-time-to-stop-ices-efforts-to-defenestrate-the-constitution/
-----
40) When speech no longer seems sufficient, part II
Source: Expression
by Samuel J Abrams
“Last week, I wrote that students are beginning to treat speech as insufficient, as though persuasion is a kind of performance and disruption or violence is the only thing that works. I shared my own attempt to explain this to my students. But that lesson didn’t go as I had hoped. I left that class unsettled, and more than a little upset, realizing that so many of my students seem unmoved by the premise that words are a better alternative to force. I promised myself I would go back and try again. … I went prepared. I took more than moral exhortation. I took the best empirical record we have about political change. And I left feeling unsure that my students had even heard me.” (02/13/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/when-speech-no-longer-seems-sufficient-e3f
-----
41) Trump Turning US Into the World’s Rogue Policeman
Source: Common Dreams
by John Feffer
“A mere 15 years ago, during an epoch that now seems as distant as the Paleozoic era, an American president attempted to use military power to prevent a dictator from slaughtering his own citizens. Barack Obama billed the action in Libya as a humanitarian intervention, citing the new United Nations doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect,’ or R2P. The president hoped to avert a massacre by Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi rather than, as usual, coming in afterwards to count the dead and try to bring the malefactors to justice. Obama intervened like a global police officer, following the letter of the (international) law. Eager to be seen as a ‘good cop,’ the president even promised to ‘lead from behind.’ It’s impossible to know if the US-led action did indeed prevent massive war crimes.” (02/14/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-bad-cop
-----
42) Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the US Surveillance State
Source: Glenn Greenwald
by Glenn Greenwald
“That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become. The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.” (02/13/26)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/amazons-ring-and-googles-nest-unwittingly
-----
43) Remembering Ed Crane
Source: Foundation for Economic Educataion
by Daniel J Mitchell
“Ed Crane, the self-described Beloved Founder of the Cato Institute, passed away on February 10. He should be remembered first and foremost as an institution builder. In his 30-plus years as President of Cato, Ed took libertarian ideas from the fringe to the mainstream. That was no trivial accomplishment, given that so many of us in the liberty movement are nonconformists (organizing libertarians is akin to herding cats).” (02/13/26)
https://fee.org/articles/remembering-ed-crane/
-----
44) Is the MAHA Movement Building a Genuine Counter-Elite?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Renaud Beauchard
“As the entire world is having a temper tantrum over the most recent Epstein case revelations about our discredited elites – obsessing over the power networks, the private jets, the bank accounts in the Virgin Islands, the French ministers, the European royalty, the foreign intelligence agencies, etc. – I’m having an entirely different epiphany. And, strangely, a flicker of hope. The rot on display is hard to take your eyes away from, but I find myself thinking more about what might rise in its place. I’m not talking about another faction of whip-crackers wearing better suits or pushing slicker slogans, but a quieter bunch, who appear to have the capacity to generate moral assent to a new political formula. That new elite prototype has started to take shape inside the MAHA movement. It might not yet be a fully formed counter-elite, but it certainly looks like a promising kind of one.” (02/13/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-the-maha-movement-building-a-genuine-counter-elite/
-----
45) Democrats’ Munich meltdown exposes left’s intellectual void
Source: Fox News
by David Marcus
“When I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a galaxy of left-wing, even socialist, intellectual stars such as Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal whose works were like an inkwell that politicians and commentators could draw from. Judging from the Munich Security Conference this weekend, that inkwell has run dry. Take this gem of a comment on global order from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, queen of the democratic socialists: ‘What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes.’ Allow me to translate this into English: ‘The West is bad and mistreats the marginalized rest of the world.'” (02/14/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-democrats-munich-meltdown-exposes-lefts-intellectual-void
-----
46) The Politics of Hate: Weaponized Discord Is the Deep State’s Most Effective Tool
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“This country was built on the radical idea that government exists to serve the people — not to control them, monitor them, manage them, or rule over them. That idea is being systematically dismantled by a Deep State determined to entrench its power at our expense by keeping the nation divided, distracted, and perpetually at war with itself. This is what happens when those in power discover that a divided people are easier to manipulate than a united one — and that hate is not a byproduct of politics, but one of its most effective weapons. This nation is being destabilized by forces that masquerade as political movements, but dig down deep, and you’ll find that power and greed work the same no matter which party hat they wear. The ‘politics of hate’ is a bipartisan tool.” (02/13/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/13/the-politics-of-hate-weaponized-discord-is-the-deep-states-most-effective-tool/
-----
47) The ATF Created a Backdoor Gun Registry. Lawmakers Want an Explanation.
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“It has been illegal since 1986 for the federal government to establish a national firearms registry. As you might expect of the sort of people who gravitate to government employment, the bureaucrats at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), enabled by Biden-era policy changes, have taken that as a challenge. Now, members of Congress want answers from the federal gun cops about a vast gun registry database that could threaten the liberty and privacy of firearms owners. They have been stonewalled so far.” (02/13/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/13/the-atf-created-a-backdoor-gun-registry-lawmakers-want-an-explanation/
-----
48) An Exercise in Paternal Piety
Source: Law & Liberty
by Gage Klipper
“The concept of ‘filial piety’ is as old as Western civilization itself. From The Oresteia to Virgil’s Aeneid and Shakespeare’s King Lear, generational continuity has hinged on the children’s hierarchical duty to honor, obey, and sometimes even avenge their parents. But in the modern era, where individualism reigns, hierarchy is all but leveled, and historical change can occur within one generation, generational obligation feels more mutual. In literature, Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev was among the first to notice this shift.” (02/13/26)
https://lawliberty.org/an-exercise-in-paternal-piety/
-----
49) ICE Is Strangling the Minneapolis Economy
Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper
“President Trump’s ‘border czar,’ Tom Homan, announced Thursday that Operation Metro Surge (the violent occupation of Minneapolis and surrounding regions by DHS kidnapping squads) was going to end. At a minimum, it’s unclear how honest Homan was being; if the Minneapolis city council is any judge, ICE kidnappings were still ongoing Thursday, and Homan said that some officers would remain. On Wednesday, one particularly violent kidnapping in St. Paul left three cars wrecked and someone being taken out in an ambulance. Given the Trump administration’s outrageous dishonesty about every possible subject, it would be wise to assume that the occupation (with kidnapping squads regularly snatching people off the streets, with cars full of ICE goons hanging menacingly around workplaces, schools, and even day cares) will continue until proven otherwise.” (02/13/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/02/13/ice-minneapolis-economy-trump-homan-operation-metro-surge/
-----
50) Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider
“On January 25, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a U.S. naval ‘quarantine’ of Cuba. ‘If they are hungry,’ the president fumed, ‘they will throw Castro out.’ His ambassador to Cuba, Philip W. Bonsal, chided him with a moral reminder: ‘We should not punish the whole Cuban people for the acts of one abnormal man.’ If it was hard for the U.S. to hear that restraint then, it has become deaf to it now. For over 65 years, U.S. policy has been to employ an embargo to pressure Cuba until the regime collapses. … Despite the decades of economic and personal suffering, the policy has failed. The embargo has brought Cuba misery but not regime change. And yet, in the absence of a more promising plan, the Trump administration seems intent on simply intensifying the current plan. The result will not be regime change but more suffering.” (02/13/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trumps-cuba-policy-is-a-humanitarian-disaster/
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/14/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Kennedy CORRUPTION and the Libertarian Party.” (02/14/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YriFevVHjkg
-----
52) Unattended Baggage, episode 329
Source: Unattended Baggage
“We’re not suicidal either.” (02/14/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-329-were-not-suicidal-either
-----
53) Free Talk Live, 02/14/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Free Talk Live Valentine’s Day Jeffrey Epstein Files Deep Dive Special :: 2026-02-14 Hosts: Bonnie, Angelo, Elsbeth.” (02/14/26)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/ftl2026-02-14
-----
54) System Update, 02/14/26
Source: Glenn Greenwald
“AOC Makes Her Big Foreign Policy Debut, Then Promptly Falls Flat on Her Face.” (02/14/26)
-----
55) The Tom Woods Show, episode 2735
Source: The Tom Woods Show
“Authors Your Left-Wing Teacher Forgot.” (02/14/26)
https://tomwoods.com/ep-2735-authors-your-left-wing-teacher-forgot/
-----
56) Rising, 02/14/26
Source: The Hill
“Lindsey Granger gives her lens on the recent announcement from border czar Tom Homan that the controversial immigration surge in Minnesota is coming to an end.” (02/13/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5729366-rising-february-13-2026/
-----
57) Fountainhead Forum, episode 424
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Ricardo Sanchez on the politics of Chile and the new President, Jose Kast.” (02/14/26)
https://rumble.com/v75qn38-ff-424-ricardo-sanchez-on-the-politics-of-chile-and-the-new-president-jose-.html
-----
58) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 02/13/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“China Buys Gold & Dumps Dollars.” (02/13/26)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1BdxYZZzDmyKX
-----
59) The Rational Egoist, 02/13/26
Source: The Rational Egoist
“Sheldon Richman joins the show for a lively and informative discussion about how freedom lovers should view immigration.” (02/13/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRZThj1ztRo
-----
60) The Climate Realism Show, episode 190
Source: Heartland Institute
“The Endangerment Finding Is Dead. Here’s Why It Matters.” (02/13/26)
https://heartland.org/podcasts/the-endangerment-finding-is-dead-heres-why-it-matters-the-climate-realism-show-190/
-----
61) Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 02/13/26
Source: Freedom Works
“Ed Golly, Voice of Reason ‘Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?'” (02/13/26)
https://internetradiopros.com/freedomworks/?name=2026-02-14_zfw02112026.mp3
-----
62) Friday Philosophy with David Gordon, 02/13/26
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
“The Putnam Twist: The End of Value.” (02/13/26)
https://mises.org/friday-philosophy/putnam-twist-end-value
-----
63) Serious Trouble, 02/13/26
Source: Serious Trouble
“Hell No Bill.” (02/13/26)
https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/hell-no-bill
-----
64) The Brian Nichols Show, 02/13/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“Larry Sharpe INFILTRATES New York GOP Primary for GOVERNOR.” (02/13/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/tbns-larry-sharpe-infiltrates-new-york-gop-primary-for-governor
-----
65) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/13/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump: It Will Be Very Traumatic if No Iran Deal, Russia Willing To Keep New START Limits, and More.” (02/13/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_soLfRLrX0
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Indian Ocean: US-based pirates steal second oil tanker
2) Bitcoin Takes Step Towards Quantum Fix as Experts Diverge on Urgency of Threat
3) Russia: Ukrainian drone strike sparks fires at Black Sea port ahead of US-brokered peace talks
4) Palestine: Israeli forces murder nine in Gaza
5) Shutdown Theater: Won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor airport gropers?
6) UK, allied regimes say Russian political prisoner Navalny was murdered with dart frog poison
7) Planned US-funded baby vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau blasted by WHO
8) KS: Kelly vetos anti-trans bill
9) Collins backs GOP’s (SAVE) America Act requiring voter ID, on one condition
10) MN: Lemon pleads not guilty in malicious prosecution for reporting on ICE protest
11) Cuba: Cigar festival called off as US blockade worsens energy crisis
12) A “ring of fire” solar eclipse will dazzle people and penguins in Antarctica
13) Germany: The spectacular multimillion-euro heist nobody noticed
14) Syria: US forces strike alleged Islamic State targets
15) States reliant on Colorado River fail to meet the latest deadline to find consensus
16) Replacement crew docks at space station, boosts crew back to seven
17) Barack Obama: “Aliens are real, but I haven’t seen them”
18) UK: High Court rules Palestine Action protest group’s designation as terrorist organization unlawful
19) CA: Marin Republicans say “dead people” are voting; county says they’re alive
20) Amazon-owned Ring cancels Flock deal amid controversy
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) The “Board of Peace” Already Has a Corruption Problem
22) Russell Vought Says “We are in a post constitutional moment in our country.” He’s Not Wrong.
23) Lefty Kooks 1, Trump Gun Thugs 0
24) The covid reality check for AI hype
25) There should be no partisan divide about naming Epstein’s fellow abusers
26) Apparently you should not want what you do want
27) 1761: When American Independence was Born
28) Which Party Is More Libertarian: Republicans Or Democrats?
29) Vladimir Putin’s finally starting to sweat; time for Trump to turn up the heat
30) Reviving a Revisionist: Clinton Hartley Grattan, Part 2
31) How America Has Destroyed Its Democracy, Part One
32) The Coming Constitutional Ice Age
33) A civics upskilling for Americans amid 250th celebrations
34) Proven Petroleum Reserves and the Myth of “Peak Oil”
35) The President Of The 0.00001 Percent
36) Worry, Don’t Panic, Over Trump’s Efforts to Subvert the Elections
37) Rubio’s spoonful of sugar helps hard medicine go down in Munich
38) Immigration vs. Settler Colonialism
39) Time to stop ICE’s efforts to “defenestrate” the Constitution
40) When speech no longer seems sufficient, part II
41) Trump Turning US Into the World’s Rogue Policeman
42) Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the US Surveillance State
43) Remembering Ed Crane
44) Is the MAHA Movement Building a Genuine Counter-Elite?
45) Democrats’ Munich meltdown exposes left’s intellectual void
46) The Politics of Hate: Weaponized Discord Is the Deep State’s Most Effective Tool
47) The ATF Created a Backdoor Gun Registry. Lawmakers Want an Explanation.
48) An Exercise in Paternal Piety
49) ICE Is Strangling the Minneapolis Economy
50) Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/14/26
52) Unattended Baggage, episode 329
53) Free Talk Live, 02/14/26
54) System Update, 02/14/26
55) The Tom Woods Show, episode 2735
56) Rising, 02/14/26
57) Fountainhead Forum, episode 424
58) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 02/13/26
59) The Rational Egoist, 02/13/26
60) The Climate Realism Show, episode 190
61) Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 02/13/26
62) Friday Philosophy with David Gordon, 02/13/26
63) Serious Trouble, 02/13/26
64) The Brian Nichols Show, 02/13/26
65) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/13/26
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Indian Ocean: US-based pirates steal second oil tanker
Source: BBC News [UK]
“The US military has boarded a second oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea where it was suspected of helping Venezuela avoid US sanctions. The boarding of the Panamanian-flagged Veronica III is the second such US interception in the Indian Ocean in the past week. It comes amid a US crackdown on sanctioned oil exports from Venezuela. … At least seven oil tankers have been [stolen by US-based pirates] since last year, as the Trump administration moves to control the supply of Venezuelan oil.” (02/15/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4ge763d7j6o
-----
2) Bitcoin Takes Step Towards Quantum Fix as Experts Diverge on Urgency of Threat
Source: Decrypt [UK]
“Bitcoin developers have taken another step towards addressing the risk posed by future quantum computers, merging BIP 360 into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals GitHub repository as the long-running debate over the timeline intensifies. Bitcoin developers have taken another step towards addressing the risk posed by future quantum computers, merging BIP 360 into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals GitHub repository as the long-running debate over the timeline intensifies. … The debate around how best to address a future quantum threat stems from Shor’s algorithm, which could derive private keys from public keys if run on a sufficiently powerful, fault-tolerant quantum computer.” (02/15/26)
https://decrypt.co/358068/bitcoin-quantum-fix-experts-diverge-urgency-threat
-----
3) Russia: Ukrainian drone strike sparks fires at Black Sea port ahead of US-brokered peace talks
Source: Associated Press
“A Ukrainian drone strike ignited fires at one of Russia’s Black Sea ports, officials said Sunday, ahead of fresh talks aimed at ending the nearly 4-year-old war. Two people were wounded in the attack on the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, which damaged an oil storage tank, warehouse and terminals, according to regional Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev. Meanwhile, falling debris from Russian drones damaged civilian and transport infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials said, causing disruption to the power and water supply. Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion.” (02/15/26)
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-talks-drones-geneva-90e731743c18d6d82c343314e07b1630
-----
4) Palestine: Israeli forces murder nine in Gaza
Source: NBC News
“At least nine Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the northern and southern Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian civil defence and health officials said, in what Israel’s military called a response to Hamas ceasefire violations. Medics said an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment housing displaced families killed at least four people, while health officials said another strike killed five in Khan Younis in the south.” (02/15/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/gaza/israeli-airstrikes-kill-gaza-tent-camp-rcna259130
-----
5) Shutdown Theater: Won’t someone PLEASE think of the poor airport gropers?
Source: Fox News
“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is shut down after Congress failed to fund the agency before the midnight deadline. The partial shutdown is due to deadlock over federal immigration operations, but it also means TSA agents at airports across the U.S. are expected to screen passengers and bags without pay. About 95% of TSA workers are deemed essential personnel and required to keep working.” [editor’s note: They’re not required to do anything. They can give up the thug life and go get real jobs any time they want to – TLK] (02/14/26)
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/dhs-shutdown-tsa-agents-working-without-pay-again-what-means-travelers
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6) UK, allied regimes say Russian political prisoner Navalny was murdered with dart frog poison
Source: Sky News [UK]
“Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison in Russia after being poisoned with a deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuadorian dart frogs, the UK and other allies have [claimed]. The ‘barbaric’ act — using a neurotoxin that is classed as a chemical weapon — could only have been carried out by Vladimir Putin’s government, they said on Saturday. … Russian authorities have previously claimed the dissident’s death was not suspicious but had been caused as a result of ‘combined diseases,’ including an irregular heartbeat.” (02/14/26)
https://news.sky.com/story/navalny-died-after-being-poisoned-with-dart-frog-toxin-13507402
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7) Planned US-funded baby vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau blasted by WHO
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A now-halted plan to run a hepatitis B vaccine trial involving thousands of newborns in Guinea-Bissau has been criticised by the World Health Organization as ‘unethical.’ The US-funded study had sought to give one set of babies the vaccine at birth, while another would have had the shot delayed until six weeks of age. The WHO said it had ‘significant concerns’ about the plan, and described the birth-dose vaccine as ‘an effective and essential public health intervention, with a proven record.’ The US health department, headed by Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has questioned the effects of vaccines, had sought to use the trial to answer questions about the jab’s broader health effects. The WHO said on Friday that its concerns regarded the study’s scientific justification, ethical safeguards and consistency with established standards for research involving humans.” (02/14/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78j5k2gk02o
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8) KS: Kelly vetos anti-trans bill
Source: Kansas City Star
“Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a bill Friday that aims to police the use of bathrooms and other private spaces in government buildings. It would also revoke driver’s licenses that reflect transgender Kansans’ identities. Kelly used her veto message to denounce SB 244 as ‘poorly drafted legislation’ that would have ‘numerous and significant consequences’ beyond limiting trans people’s ability to ‘use the appropriate bathroom.’ ‘Under this bill: if your grandfather is in a nursing home in a shared room, as a granddaughter, you would not be able to visit him,’ Kelly said. ‘If your wife is in a shared hospital room, as a husband, you would not be able to visit her,’ she continued, adding that college dorm rooms and government-owned sports facilities would also fall under the bill.” (02/14/26)
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article314693745.html
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9) Collins backs GOP’s (SAVE) America Act requiring voter ID, on one condition
Source: New York Post
“Senate Republicans gained a key ally in their quest to enshrine voter ID into law, but the lawmaker’s support comes with a condition. A trio of lawmakers, led by Sen. Mike Lee [R-UT] have undertaken a campaign to convince their colleagues to support the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, working social media and closed-door meetings to secure the votes. The campaign has proven successful, with the cohort gaining a crucial vote from Sen. Susan Collins [R-ME], who announced that she would back the SAVE America Act, which recently passed the House. … Collins noted that she did not support the previous version of the bill, known simply as the SAVE Act, because it ‘would have required people to prove their citizenship every single time they cast a ballot.'” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/us-news/sen-collins-backs-gops-save-america-act-requiring-voter-id-on-one-condition/
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10) MN: Lemon pleads not guilty in malicious prosecution for reporting on ICE protest
Source: Reuters
“Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday in a criminal case stemming from his coverage of a protest at a Minnesota church against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Lemon entered the courthouse in St. Paul on Friday afternoon wearing a black suit. On his way in, he clapped his hands and waved to supporters, but did not respond to questions from reporters. … Lemon, now an independent journalist, livestreamed a protest against Trump’s deployment of thousands of armed immigration agents into Democratic-governed Minnesota’s biggest cities. The protest disrupted a January 18 service at Cities Church in St. Paul. He was charged with conspiring to deprive others of their civil rights and violating a law that has been used to crack down on demonstrations at abortion clinics but also forbids obstructing access to houses of worship.” (02/13/26)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/journalist-don-lemon-enter-plea-minnesota-ice-protest-case-2026-02-13/
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11) Cuba: Cigar festival called off as US blockade worsens energy crisis
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“An annual cigar festival in Cuban capital Havana has become the latest casualty of a fuel shortage caused by a US oil blockade. The organising committee of the Festival del Habano announced on Saturday that this year’s event – which was due to take place over five days in late February – would be postponed until further notice. It said the decision was ‘motivated by the complex economic situation’ facing Cuba due to the ‘economic, commercial and financial blockade’ by the US. A fuel shortage causing power cuts on the Caribbean island has been worsened by the US seizing oil shipments from Cuba’s long-standing ally Venezuela. Cuba also has a shortage of aviation fuel, leading several airlines to suspend services there, while some countries, including the UK, have warned against non-essential travel to the island.” (02/14/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q30k2xzk2o
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12) A “ring of fire” solar eclipse will dazzle people and penguins in Antarctica
Source: SFGate
“The first solar eclipse of the year will grace Antarctica, and only a lucky few will get to bask — or waddle — in its glow. Tuesday’s annular solar eclipse, known as a ‘ring of fire’, will only be visible in the southernmost continent, home to research stations and diverse wildlife. ‘The penguins down there are going to have a great show,’ said astronomer Joe Llama with Lowell Observatory. Clear skies permitting, more people can catch a partial eclipse with small bites taken out of the sun from the tips of Chile and Argentina and bits of southeastern Africa including Madagascar, Lesotho and South Africa. Solar eclipses happen when the sun, moon and Earth align just so. The moon casts a shadow that can partially or totally block out the sun’s light from Earth.” (02/13/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/a-ring-of-fire-solar-eclipse-will-dazzle-people-21351817.php
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13) Germany: The spectacular multimillion-euro heist nobody noticed
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“It has been described as Germany’s most ‘spectacular’ bank heist in years. On a quiet weekend just after Christmas, a group of thieves broke into a High Street bank in the western town of Gelsenkirchen, by boring through a wall with an industrial drill. They looted more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes and made off with millions of euros. Over a month later, police have yet to make an arrest. For the bank’s clients, some of whom say they have lost their life savings and precious family jewellery and valuables, this is a time of anger, confusion and shock. There is a strong sense that trust in institutions has been shaken. The case has thrown up all sorts of difficult questions, and some of them have been spelled out by Herbert Reul, the interior minister in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.” (02/14/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2y2538lz8o
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14) Syria: US forces strike alleged Islamic State targets
Source: United Press International
“The U.S. military struck dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria while conducting retaliatory strikes for the deaths of two soldiers and their interpreter. CentCom said it conducted 10 strikes on more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria from Feb. 3 through Thursday to ‘sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.’ The strikes over the past 1.5 weeks targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage facilities with precision munitions sent by fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft, CentCom officials said.” (02/14/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/02/14/syria-us-strikes-isis/6561771120705/
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15) States reliant on Colorado River fail to meet the latest deadline to find consensus
Source: SFGate
“The seven Western states that depend on the Colorado River missed a deadline for the second time Saturday to agree on a plan addressing record drought and water shortages. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo released a joint statement calling on Upper Basin states to offer more concessions. Those states include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. ‘The Colorado River is essential to our communities and economies, and our states have conserved large volumes of water in recent years to stabilize the basin’s water supplies for years to come,’ the governors said. ‘Our stance remains firm and fair: all seven basin states must share in the responsibility of conservation.’ Arizona, California and Nevada have offered to decrease Colorado River allocation by 27%, 10% and 17%, respectively, according to those states.” (02/14/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/states-reliant-on-colorado-river-fail-to-meet-the-21354290.php
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16) Replacement crew docks at space station, boosts crew back to seven
Source: Spaceflight Now
“A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule glided in for a Valentine’s Day docking at the International Space Station Saturday boosting the lab’s crew back to a full complement of seven one month after four other fliers came home early because of a medical issue. The Crew Dragon docked at the space-facing port of the lab’s forward Harmony module at 3:15 p.m. EST, 34 hours after launch Friday from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket.” (02/15/26)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/02/15/replacement-crew-docks-at-space-station-boosts-crew-back-to-seven/
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17) Barack Obama: “Aliens are real, but I haven’t seen them”
Source: New York Post
“The truth is out there. Former President Barack Obama said that aliens are real but he has no idea where they are during a podcast appearance released Saturday. ‘They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,’ Obama told YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen after he asked him about extraterrestrials. The former president did not offer any further details on what he mean by ‘real’ — and no follow-up questions on the topic were asked — but he used the appearance to cast doubt on several longtime theories as to where they might be. ‘They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,’ Obama said.” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/us-news/obama-says-aliens-are-real-but-i-havent-seen-them-in-out-there-new-interview/
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18) UK: High Court rules Palestine Action protest group’s designation as terrorist organization unlawful
Source: CBS News
“Britain’s High Court ruled Friday that the government’s decision last year to outlaw the protest group Palestine Action as a designated terrorist organization was unlawful, but it kept the ban in place pending an appeal. Judges Victoria Sharp, Jonathan Swift and Karen Steyn said ‘the nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities’ did not meet the ‘level, scale and persistence’ that would justify proscription. The judges said they were ‘satisfied that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action was disproportionate.’ … Last year, the U.K. government declared the pro-Palestinian group a terrorist organization alongside the likes of al-Qaeda and Hamas, making membership in or support for Palestine Action a crime punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for holding signs saying, ‘I support Palestine Action.'” (02/13/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-palestine-action-terrorist-designation-unlawful-high-court-rules/
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19) CA: Marin Republicans say “dead people” are voting; county says they’re alive
Source: SFGate
“The chairman of the Marin County Republicans sounded alarms this week about possible voting by dead people during the special election last November. During a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, John Turnacliff requested that the county’s registrar of voters look into the matter. ‘I, along with others on our committee, have been dissecting Marin County voter rolls for over three years,’ Turnacliff said during the public comment portion of the meeting. ‘… And based on our analysis of the ballots that were returned for the Prop. 50 special election on Nov. 4, we found 73 people, 73 dead people had voted in that election.’ Asking Natalie Adona, the county’s registrar of voters, to review those numbers, Turnacliff said, ‘In summary, dead people are voting in Marin County, and we would like to know why.'” (02/14/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/marin-county-republicans-voters-21350060.php
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20) Amazon-owned Ring cancels Flock deal amid controversy
Source: Silicon Republic
“The Amazon-owned home security camera provider Ring has cancelled an upcoming partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance tech provider to US police forces. … In a statement yesterday (12 February), Ring said that after ‘a comprehensive review,’ it found that ‘the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,’ and therefore was cancelling the partnership. The smart doorbell platform attracted controversy this week around an ad broadcast during TV coverage of the Super Bowl on 8 February publicising another Ring feature, ‘Search Party,’ which was unrelated to Flock. The ad showed multiple Ring cameras throughout a neighbourhood being activated in unison to search for a missing pet. Online criticism of the feature notes that this network of surveillance could also be used to track people.” (02/13/26)
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/ring-cancels-flock-deal-amid-controversy
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) The “Board of Peace” Already Has a Corruption Problem
Source: The Realist Review
“Among the nine people Donald Trump named to his Board of Peace to run Gaza – which holds its first meeting in Washington DC February 19 – is billionaire private equity operator Marc Rowan. The board’s stated tasks include establishing financial controls and managing the reconstruction of a Gaza. You might think a savvy financier would bring solid credentials to such a job. You would be wrong. Let’s start with the obvious: this ‘Board’ is little more than a colonial operation—a modern day version of the British East India Company. And Marc Rowan is a perfect avatar for such an operation. Rowan runs Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, not with prudent stewardship but via a financial scheme that bears the hallmarks of two of history’s most infamous frauds: the accounting chicanery of Enron and the Ponzi dynamics of Bernie Madoff.” (02/15/26)
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/the-board-of-peace-already-has-a
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22) Russell Vought Says “We are in a post constitutional moment in our country.” He’s Not Wrong.
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“Since voting is purely ceremonial affirmation of our masters’ authority over us, I don’t see that adding a card-flashing element to the liturgy makes much difference. I am, however, glad to see Trump once again reaffirming Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought’s 2022 observation that ‘we are in a post constitutional moment in our country.’ Vought says that like it’s a bad thing, calling on his audience to become ‘radical constitutionalists.’ His version of ‘radical constitutionalism,’ though, can’t be found anywhere in the actual Constitution. Instead of the mere functionary described in the Constitution, whose job is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ Vought envisions the president as Kim Jong Un on the Potomac. Which brings me back to voter ID.” (02/14/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20374
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23) Lefty Kooks 1, Trump Gun Thugs 0
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“The Trump administration has announced that it is abandoning its ‘surge’ — you’ll remember that term from the Iraq War — in Minneapolis. Other than two dead Americans, millions and millions of dollars in economic losses, and the further erosion of trust in armed federal agencies, what exactly has been accomplished? … at least one observer who had been very skeptical about the wisdom of so-called sanctuary city policies is now a little more sympathetic to those arrangements — and surely I am not the only one.” (02/13/26)
https://archive.is/DV16l
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24) The covid reality check for AI hype
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle
“Covid-19 gave everyone a harsh lesson in the power of exponentials, and that memory haunts any analysis of artificial intelligence. Sure, everything looks fine — now. But then, everything also looked fine in early March 2020. By the end of the month, we were locked in our houses with our strategic reserves of toilet paper. In a viral essay on X this week, Otherside AI founder Matt Shumer draws the parallel explicitly. ‘I think we’re in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid,’ he writes, before launching into a description of what’s already here for coders: AI agents building ‘usually perfect’ software from a plain-English description. He’s predicting a world soon in which AI blows up software development and moves on to every other profession.” (02/13/26)
https://archive.is/RPlHo
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25) There should be no partisan divide about naming Epstein’s fellow abusers
Source: Los Angeles Times
by LZ Granderson
“The general public’s awareness of Epstein’s heinous crimes came with political baggage. However at this point, the question we all should wonder is: How does redacting the names of the men who helped fund Epstein’s operation benefit either political party? It may be good for the rich and powerful men trying to avoid accountability, but it’s not exactly a campaign platform. … We have seen Congress kept out of session to avoid voting on the release of the Epstein files; we have heard equivocation about whether Epstein was a pedophile. We know Epstein’s island was a place where evil resided. The investigation, or lack of investigation, into Epstein’s fellow abusers should not be seen by anyone as a political quandary in which the object of the game is to keep your party in power.” (02/14/26)
https://archive.is/mLtKg
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26) Apparently you should not want what you do want
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“The latest critique of capitalism from Jason Hickel and Yanis Varoufakis …. ‘Capitalists are the ones who determine what to produce, how to use our labour and who gets to benefit. The rest of us – the people who are actually doing the production – do not get a say.’ This is simply factually wrong because markets. Capitalists might try to direct our labour into the production of things that we out here, we consumers, might not want. The Ford Edsel, say. But when we don’t want it then the capitalists stop so directing our labour into the production of what we do not want. For if they don’t they then go bust — as the death of four out of five new attempts at capitalism show. … This is not a complicated logical proposition but it’s one that seems to entirely escape two university professors here.” (02/14/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-you-should-not-want-what-you-do-want
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27) 1761: When American Independence was Born
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Mike Maharrey
“‘American Independence was then & there born. John Adams wasn’t talking about July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence. He was referring to the beginning of the real American Revolution that kicked off years earlier in February 1761. That’s when James Otis Jr delivered a fiery 5-hour speech railing against the writs of assistance. While the Declaration of Independence was a seminal moment in the Revolution, it was the culmination of more than 15 years of radical changes in the minds and hearts of the people that started with Otis’s speech.” (02/13/26)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2026/02/13/1761-when-american-independence-was-born/
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28) Which Party Is More Libertarian: Republicans Or Democrats?
Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer
“Assessing the freedom and liberty orientation of both parties on 10 key issues.” (02/13/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/13/which-party-is-more-libertarian-republicans-or-democrats/
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29) Vladimir Putin’s finally starting to sweat; time for Trump to turn up the heat
Source: New York Post
by staff
“With Vladimir Putin’s war machine sputtering, it’s time to push the Kremlin even harder to force an end to his war on Ukraine. President Donald Trump’s moves such as seizing ‘shadow fleet’ tankers and piling on new tariffs on importers of Moscow’s oil are plainly hitting hard: You can tell because Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is whining that Washington won’t make Kyiv agree to de facto surrender (e.g., Russian control over Ukraine’s post-war government) as he claims President Donald Trump had agreed to do. Why does Russia need America’s intervention, if it’s winning on the battlefield? ‘The United States has effectively declared a goal of economic domination,’ Lavrov cries — a clear sign that Putin’s feeling squeezed.” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/opinion/putins-finally-starting-to-sweat-time-for-trump-to-turn-up-the-heat/
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30) Reviving a Revisionist: Clinton Hartley Grattan, Part 2
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“Grattan highlights the propagandistic tricks that were directed at those who were neutral or critical. A lack of transparency was one of the tricks that left people unsure of the facts and so unable to argue effectively against war. Closed-door negotiations epitomized this secrecy for Grattan. Why We Fought discusses in detail the secret agreements that pushed America in the direction of war and prevented effective pushback against it. For example, the American diplomat Edward Mandell (Colonel) House negotiated a covert deal with England and France by which America pledged to intervene on the side of the Allies, although the official line was neutrality. This deal became known as the Secret Treaty. Months before the agreement was finalized, however, Wilson had campaigned and won the 1916 presidential election based on the claim that he had kept America out of the war and the promise that he would continue to do so.” (02/13/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/reviving-a-revisionist-clinton-hartley-grattan-part-2/
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31) How America Has Destroyed Its Democracy, Part One
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis
“This is going to be a three-part series defining the following: One, what our Founders (and others of their time) thought about democracy; two, how and why they thought it would fail; three, the kind of government and society they really wanted; and four, the role that feminism has played in destroying American democracy. The Founders didn’t foresee the fourth point, but they weren’t prophets and couldn’t predict everything. They knew history, though, and women have never done to any society what feminists have done to America. There is really no historical parallel. I’ll discuss that later. I have a lot of quotes here, some rather lengthy, some not so long, but all very interesting to those who enjoy history and want to know what our Founding Fathers intended for America.” (02/14/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2026/02/14/how-america-has-destroyed-its-democracy-part-one-democracy-is-most-vile-n2671288
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32) The Coming Constitutional Ice Age
Source: Judging Freedom
by Andrew P Napolitano
“Last fall during the opening of the United Nations in New York City, I recognized the face of a federal officer from his days working in law enforcement in New Jersey and mine as a trial judge. We chatted and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. I asked what ICE has to do with the U.N., and he told me that soon ICE will be everywhere. When I asked if ICE has become a paramilitary force, answerable to the White House, he just smiled, as if to say, ‘Don’t quote me.’ When I asked him why he was carrying two handguns and an AK-47 automatic rifle, he laughed and said, ‘I have more than you can see, judge!'” (02/13/26)
http://judgenap.com/the-coming-constitutional-ice-age/
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33) A civics upskilling for Americans amid 250th celebrations
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“If there is a bona fide kickoff moment for this year’s 250th anniversary of American independence, it is Presidents Day. For the three-day holiday weekend, many institutions tied to the nation’s history offered some sort of event. George Washington’s Mount Vernon, for example, announced free admission on Feb. 16, along with ‘a stirring reading’ of ‘Washington’s Prayer for His Country.’ Yet in addition to this year’s celebratory revelry, many Americans are seeking civic repair. … One example of a desire for understanding civic responsibilities is a bipartisan bill introduced last month in Nebraska. Since 2019, teens in the state have had to pass a civics requirement to graduate. But the bill would now require new members of the state Legislature to take a 20-question civics test, much like immigrants take for United States citizenship. And the scores would be made public.” (02/13/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0213/A-civics-upskilling-for-Americans-amid-250th-celebrations
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34) Proven Petroleum Reserves and the Myth of “Peak Oil”
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George S Giles
“Just how much oil does the world have? The American Petroleum Institute (API) is considered the world leader in petroleum statistics and they set the standards the worldwide industry uses. Those good old boys from Texas have created the incredible technology that brings high quality gasoline to your neighborhood each and every day. … The proven reserves of petroleum now stands at 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, up significantly from 1.3 trillion barrels in 2009. During this 17-year interlude, some 100 million barrels per day have been consumed by the world. This is clearly a paradox for the Hubbert Peak Oil believers.” (02/13/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/proven-petroleum-reserves-and-myth-peak-oil
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35) The President Of The 0.00001 Percent
Source: The Weekly Dish
by Andrew Sullivan
“Ah yes, those famous Trump family values: money, power, rape. And once the money landed in the Trump crypto accounts, of course, government policy changed. Trump gave the UAE rare and advanced AI chips, brought the UAE into the US Stargate AI project — along with an ownership slice of TikTok — and pardoned the sleazy billionaire felon, Changpeng Zhao, who had helped seal the deal with WLF. Not just corruption, but possibly at the expense of our national security, if those UAE chips make it to the CCP. This is the real Epstein class: utterly amoral networkers and nepotists with no loyalties to anything but their absurd bank balances and party invitations. And this is their administration.” (02/13/26)
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-president-of-the-000001-percent-36e
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36) Worry, Don’t Panic, Over Trump’s Efforts to Subvert the Elections
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andy Craig
“Donald Trump and his administration are waging an unprecedented, multi-pronged attack on this year’s midterm congressional elections. Even compared to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the scope and severity of this assault is unprecedented. Despite all this, most — if not all — of these lines of attack will fail. They are built on magical thinking, pursued by people who lack basic understanding of how these things work. Some of these threats are more serious and pressing. But there can be a temptation to doomerism that we should reject. Trump is dangerous, but he is not omnipotent.” (02/13/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/worry-dont-panic-over-trumps-efforts
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37) Rubio’s spoonful of sugar helps hard medicine go down in Munich
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Eldar Mamedov
“U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the Munich Security Conference this weekend to sooth transatlantic anxieties. After Vice President J.D. Vance’s criticisms of the old continent in 2025, the European dignitaries were looking for a more conventional American performance. What they got was a peculiar mix of primacist nostalgia and civilizational foreboding, with an explicit desire to forge a path of restoration together. ‘We are not looking for a rupture,’ the Secretary of State told his audience. ‘We want to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history,’ in a reference to the West. Predictably, Rubio – a neoconservative favorite in a pre-Trump GOP – ensured that it was America’s job to lead.” (02/14/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/rubio-speech-munich/
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38) Immigration vs. Settler Colonialism
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“The people performing those mind-boggling contortions to justify, on libertarian grounds, state violence against migrants without papers — restrictatarians, I call them — cite a 1994 article by Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) in support of their double-jointed acrobatics. Rothbard was correct about many things, but a position is not correct merely because Rothbard held it. I expect no disagreement over that.” (02/13/26)
https://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2026/02/tgif-immigration-vs-settler-colonialism.html
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39) Time to stop ICE’s efforts to “defenestrate” the Constitution
Source: Orange County Register
by Steven Greenhut
“In authoritarian Russia, critics of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have an odd habit of falling out of windows. These likely acts of defenestration serve as a stark warning for other critics, although the official line is usually that they tripped or committed suicide. In the democratic United States, opponents of ICE agents in Minneapolis sometimes also meet unusual fates. For instance, court documents show that ICE agents claimed Mexican immigrant Alberto Castañeda Mondragón experienced bone fractures and head injuries after he ‘purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall’ — an explanation that was disputed by the medical staff …. the Trump administration’s outrageous whoppers regarding myriad ICE incidents — that, say, victims of ICE violence were insurrectionists or terrorists — are a loyalty test. The more preposterous the claim, the more it separates blind MAGA followers from everyone else. The distortions echo the Kremlin’s approach: they’re a warning to its foes.” (02/13/26)
https://www.ocregister.com/2026/02/13/steven-greenhut-time-to-stop-ices-efforts-to-defenestrate-the-constitution/
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40) When speech no longer seems sufficient, part II
Source: Expression
by Samuel J Abrams
“Last week, I wrote that students are beginning to treat speech as insufficient, as though persuasion is a kind of performance and disruption or violence is the only thing that works. I shared my own attempt to explain this to my students. But that lesson didn’t go as I had hoped. I left that class unsettled, and more than a little upset, realizing that so many of my students seem unmoved by the premise that words are a better alternative to force. I promised myself I would go back and try again. … I went prepared. I took more than moral exhortation. I took the best empirical record we have about political change. And I left feeling unsure that my students had even heard me.” (02/13/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/when-speech-no-longer-seems-sufficient-e3f
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41) Trump Turning US Into the World’s Rogue Policeman
Source: Common Dreams
by John Feffer
“A mere 15 years ago, during an epoch that now seems as distant as the Paleozoic era, an American president attempted to use military power to prevent a dictator from slaughtering his own citizens. Barack Obama billed the action in Libya as a humanitarian intervention, citing the new United Nations doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect,’ or R2P. The president hoped to avert a massacre by Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi rather than, as usual, coming in afterwards to count the dead and try to bring the malefactors to justice. Obama intervened like a global police officer, following the letter of the (international) law. Eager to be seen as a ‘good cop,’ the president even promised to ‘lead from behind.’ It’s impossible to know if the US-led action did indeed prevent massive war crimes.” (02/14/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-bad-cop
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42) Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the US Surveillance State
Source: Glenn Greenwald
by Glenn Greenwald
“That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become. The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.” (02/13/26)
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/amazons-ring-and-googles-nest-unwittingly
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43) Remembering Ed Crane
Source: Foundation for Economic Educataion
by Daniel J Mitchell
“Ed Crane, the self-described Beloved Founder of the Cato Institute, passed away on February 10. He should be remembered first and foremost as an institution builder. In his 30-plus years as President of Cato, Ed took libertarian ideas from the fringe to the mainstream. That was no trivial accomplishment, given that so many of us in the liberty movement are nonconformists (organizing libertarians is akin to herding cats).” (02/13/26)
https://fee.org/articles/remembering-ed-crane/
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44) Is the MAHA Movement Building a Genuine Counter-Elite?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Renaud Beauchard
“As the entire world is having a temper tantrum over the most recent Epstein case revelations about our discredited elites – obsessing over the power networks, the private jets, the bank accounts in the Virgin Islands, the French ministers, the European royalty, the foreign intelligence agencies, etc. – I’m having an entirely different epiphany. And, strangely, a flicker of hope. The rot on display is hard to take your eyes away from, but I find myself thinking more about what might rise in its place. I’m not talking about another faction of whip-crackers wearing better suits or pushing slicker slogans, but a quieter bunch, who appear to have the capacity to generate moral assent to a new political formula. That new elite prototype has started to take shape inside the MAHA movement. It might not yet be a fully formed counter-elite, but it certainly looks like a promising kind of one.” (02/13/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-the-maha-movement-building-a-genuine-counter-elite/
-----
45) Democrats’ Munich meltdown exposes left’s intellectual void
Source: Fox News
by David Marcus
“When I was growing up in the 1980s, there was a galaxy of left-wing, even socialist, intellectual stars such as Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal whose works were like an inkwell that politicians and commentators could draw from. Judging from the Munich Security Conference this weekend, that inkwell has run dry. Take this gem of a comment on global order from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, queen of the democratic socialists: ‘What we are seeking is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates the hypocrisies around when too often in the West we look the other way for inconvenient populations, to act out these paradoxes.’ Allow me to translate this into English: ‘The West is bad and mistreats the marginalized rest of the world.'” (02/14/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/david-marcus-democrats-munich-meltdown-exposes-lefts-intellectual-void
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46) The Politics of Hate: Weaponized Discord Is the Deep State’s Most Effective Tool
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“This country was built on the radical idea that government exists to serve the people — not to control them, monitor them, manage them, or rule over them. That idea is being systematically dismantled by a Deep State determined to entrench its power at our expense by keeping the nation divided, distracted, and perpetually at war with itself. This is what happens when those in power discover that a divided people are easier to manipulate than a united one — and that hate is not a byproduct of politics, but one of its most effective weapons. This nation is being destabilized by forces that masquerade as political movements, but dig down deep, and you’ll find that power and greed work the same no matter which party hat they wear. The ‘politics of hate’ is a bipartisan tool.” (02/13/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/13/the-politics-of-hate-weaponized-discord-is-the-deep-states-most-effective-tool/
-----
47) The ATF Created a Backdoor Gun Registry. Lawmakers Want an Explanation.
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“It has been illegal since 1986 for the federal government to establish a national firearms registry. As you might expect of the sort of people who gravitate to government employment, the bureaucrats at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), enabled by Biden-era policy changes, have taken that as a challenge. Now, members of Congress want answers from the federal gun cops about a vast gun registry database that could threaten the liberty and privacy of firearms owners. They have been stonewalled so far.” (02/13/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/13/the-atf-created-a-backdoor-gun-registry-lawmakers-want-an-explanation/
-----
48) An Exercise in Paternal Piety
Source: Law & Liberty
by Gage Klipper
“The concept of ‘filial piety’ is as old as Western civilization itself. From The Oresteia to Virgil’s Aeneid and Shakespeare’s King Lear, generational continuity has hinged on the children’s hierarchical duty to honor, obey, and sometimes even avenge their parents. But in the modern era, where individualism reigns, hierarchy is all but leveled, and historical change can occur within one generation, generational obligation feels more mutual. In literature, Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev was among the first to notice this shift.” (02/13/26)
https://lawliberty.org/an-exercise-in-paternal-piety/
-----
49) ICE Is Strangling the Minneapolis Economy
Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper
“President Trump’s ‘border czar,’ Tom Homan, announced Thursday that Operation Metro Surge (the violent occupation of Minneapolis and surrounding regions by DHS kidnapping squads) was going to end. At a minimum, it’s unclear how honest Homan was being; if the Minneapolis city council is any judge, ICE kidnappings were still ongoing Thursday, and Homan said that some officers would remain. On Wednesday, one particularly violent kidnapping in St. Paul left three cars wrecked and someone being taken out in an ambulance. Given the Trump administration’s outrageous dishonesty about every possible subject, it would be wise to assume that the occupation (with kidnapping squads regularly snatching people off the streets, with cars full of ICE goons hanging menacingly around workplaces, schools, and even day cares) will continue until proven otherwise.” (02/13/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/02/13/ice-minneapolis-economy-trump-homan-operation-metro-surge/
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50) Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider
“On January 25, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a U.S. naval ‘quarantine’ of Cuba. ‘If they are hungry,’ the president fumed, ‘they will throw Castro out.’ His ambassador to Cuba, Philip W. Bonsal, chided him with a moral reminder: ‘We should not punish the whole Cuban people for the acts of one abnormal man.’ If it was hard for the U.S. to hear that restraint then, it has become deaf to it now. For over 65 years, U.S. policy has been to employ an embargo to pressure Cuba until the regime collapses. … Despite the decades of economic and personal suffering, the policy has failed. The embargo has brought Cuba misery but not regime change. And yet, in the absence of a more promising plan, the Trump administration seems intent on simply intensifying the current plan. The result will not be regime change but more suffering.” (02/13/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trumps-cuba-policy-is-a-humanitarian-disaster/
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/14/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Kennedy CORRUPTION and the Libertarian Party.” (02/14/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YriFevVHjkg
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52) Unattended Baggage, episode 329
Source: Unattended Baggage
“We’re not suicidal either.” (02/14/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-329-were-not-suicidal-either
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53) Free Talk Live, 02/14/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Free Talk Live Valentine’s Day Jeffrey Epstein Files Deep Dive Special :: 2026-02-14 Hosts: Bonnie, Angelo, Elsbeth.” (02/14/26)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/ftl2026-02-14
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54) System Update, 02/14/26
Source: Glenn Greenwald
“AOC Makes Her Big Foreign Policy Debut, Then Promptly Falls Flat on Her Face.” (02/14/26)
-----
55) The Tom Woods Show, episode 2735
Source: The Tom Woods Show
“Authors Your Left-Wing Teacher Forgot.” (02/14/26)
https://tomwoods.com/ep-2735-authors-your-left-wing-teacher-forgot/
-----
56) Rising, 02/14/26
Source: The Hill
“Lindsey Granger gives her lens on the recent announcement from border czar Tom Homan that the controversial immigration surge in Minnesota is coming to an end.” (02/13/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5729366-rising-february-13-2026/
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57) Fountainhead Forum, episode 424
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Ricardo Sanchez on the politics of Chile and the new President, Jose Kast.” (02/14/26)
https://rumble.com/v75qn38-ff-424-ricardo-sanchez-on-the-politics-of-chile-and-the-new-president-jose-.html
-----
58) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 02/13/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“China Buys Gold & Dumps Dollars.” (02/13/26)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1BdxYZZzDmyKX
-----
59) The Rational Egoist, 02/13/26
Source: The Rational Egoist
“Sheldon Richman joins the show for a lively and informative discussion about how freedom lovers should view immigration.” (02/13/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRZThj1ztRo
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60) The Climate Realism Show, episode 190
Source: Heartland Institute
“The Endangerment Finding Is Dead. Here’s Why It Matters.” (02/13/26)
https://heartland.org/podcasts/the-endangerment-finding-is-dead-heres-why-it-matters-the-climate-realism-show-190/
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61) Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 02/13/26
Source: Freedom Works
“Ed Golly, Voice of Reason ‘Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?'” (02/13/26)
https://internetradiopros.com/freedomworks/?name=2026-02-14_zfw02112026.mp3
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62) Friday Philosophy with David Gordon, 02/13/26
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
“The Putnam Twist: The End of Value.” (02/13/26)
https://mises.org/friday-philosophy/putnam-twist-end-value
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63) Serious Trouble, 02/13/26
Source: Serious Trouble
“Hell No Bill.” (02/13/26)
https://www.serioustrouble.show/p/hell-no-bill
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64) The Brian Nichols Show, 02/13/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“Larry Sharpe INFILTRATES New York GOP Primary for GOVERNOR.” (02/13/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/tbns-larry-sharpe-infiltrates-new-york-gop-primary-for-governor
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65) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/13/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump: It Will Be Very Traumatic if No Iran Deal, Russia Willing To Keep New START Limits, and More.” (02/13/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_soLfRLrX0
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