03/12 -- Six vessels attacked amid reports of Iranian drone boats, sea mines; We can't afford US government
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Thomas L. Knapp
Mar 12, 2026, 6:18:27 AM (9 days ago) Mar 12
to Freedom News Daily
Freedom News Daily, 03/12/26
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Six vessels attacked amid reports of Iranian drone boats, sea mines
2) Sources blame “outdated intelligence” for US regime’s mass murder of Iranian elementary school students
3) Russia: Regime prepares 10% cut to “non-sensitive” spending, sources say
4) US Senators seek investigation into DOJ’s violations of law on Epstein files release
5) Trump visits Kentucky to campaign against Republicans
6) Norway: Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
7) Dementia becomes leading cause of death in Australia as experts call for “shift in thinking” about disease
8) Thune quashes Trump push to reform filibuster for SAVE Act
9) US mortgage applications increase 3.2% amid market volatility
10) Nigeria: At least 65 regime troops killed in jihadist raids
11) AZ: Trump regime opens “investigation” into 2020 election results
12) South Africa: Regime summons new US ambassador over criticism as rift deepens
13) Germany: Pols debate return to nuclear energy
14) Amazon: We don’t want people to buy stuff from us. Judge: OK!
15) Wealthy regimes pledge record release of emergency oil reserves in a bid to calm surging prices
16) UK: Police Ban Pro-Iranian London March
17) Canada: Carney inches closer to majority, as fourth MP defects to Liberals
18) MO: Federal jury awards $677,000 to Muslim men attacked by prison guards while praying
19) Cambodia: Regime aims to shut down all online scam centers by end of April
20) NH: Democrat wins previously GOP state House seat, notching 10th straight special election flip
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) We can’t afford US government
22) The Myth of “National” Resources
23) Congressional Republicans and the Ministry of Truth Social
24) Who Cares About Those 175 Dead Little Iranian Girls?
25) The Democratic tax fight that’s really over copying Republicans
26) Should SCOTUS Reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan?
27) Trump’s New Tariff Plan Still Asserts a Crisis That Does Not Exist
28) After Loneliness: Breaking Bread in Authoritarian America
29) The Reagan White House Rejected Trump’s Tariff Power Claims
30) Every Element of Stephen Miller’s Immigration Agenda Is Designed for Ethnic Cleansing
31) Iran’s new leader could spark a revolution
32) Filibuster and Forever
33) We Are The Villains In This Story
34) “Pick Your Ten”: The best advice I ever got in my life
35) Who Needs Glyphosate?
36) A Deeply Human Vision
37) Trump delivered [sic] for tipped workers; why do Democratic governors hate them?
38) But What About China? A Response to Tariff Advocates
39) Why Hezbollah’s “irrational” gambit against Israel makes sense
40) The Tea Party Stumbled So That MAGA Could Fall
41) Why the Democrats Are Not Radical Enough
42) The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides
43) War with Iran: Making the Same Mistakes All Over Again, or a Host of New Ones?
44) Copyright Bullying vs. Religious Freedom
45) Iranian women’s soccer team shows what real oppression looks like
46) It’s a War With Iran, Not an “Intervention”
47) Upholding Liberal Education
48) The End of “Legitimacy”
49) The War for Gulf State Capital
50) France, America, and the Trap of Extended Nuclear Deterrence
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) The Political Orphanage, 03/11/26
52) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 03/11/26
53) The Permanent Problem, episode 11
54) Jeffrey Sachs Is Trying To Fix The New York Times’s Iran War Coverage, One Email At A Time
55) Reason Interview: Mark Chenoweth
56) Rising, 03/11/26
57) The Kyle Anzalone Show, 03/10/26
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 03/11/26
59) Politics Politics Politics, 03/10/26
60) Free Speech Unmuted, 03/10/26
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Six vessels attacked amid reports of Iranian drone boats, sea mines
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Explosive-laden Iranian boats appear to have attacked two fuel tankers in Iraqi waters, setting them ablaze and killing one crew member, after projectiles struck four vessels in Gulf waters, according to reports. The ships targeted in late-night attacks on Wednesday in the Gulf near Iraq were the Marshall Islands-flagged Safesea Vishnu and the Zefyros, which had loaded fuel cargoes in Iraq, two Iraqi port officials told the Reuters news agency. … Reuters said reports of the use of explosive-laden unmanned surface vessels, which Ukraine has used with great effect in its war with Russia, come as Iran has blocked oil shipments from transiting the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas transits but which has been blocked since the US-Israeli war on Iran began.” (03/12/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/12/five-vessels-attacked-amid-reports-of-iranian-drone-boats-sea-mines
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2) Sources blame “outdated intelligence” for US regime’s mass murder of Iranian elementary school students
Source: Associated Press
“Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children, in the opening hours of the conflict, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on findings of a preliminary U.S military investigation into the incident. The bombing of the school and its casualties involving children has become a focal point of the war, and if ultimately confirmed to be at the hands of the U.S., would also stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by the American military operations in the last two decades.” (03/11/26)
https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-school-hegseth-trump-2ffff06808f7a584b0a03831897ab0b8
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3) Russia: Regime prepares 10% cut to “non-sensitive” spending, sources say
Source: Reuters
“The Russian government is preparing a possible 10% cut to all ‘non-sensitive’ spending in this year’s budget, sources told Reuters, but the final decision will hinge on the sustainability of the oil price rise triggered by the Iran war. … The Finance Ministry told Reuters in comments on this story that it is discussing measures to prioritize budget spending with other ministries. Andrei Gangan, head of the monetary policy department at the central bank, said an optimisation of spending can only be welcomed. The ministry added that decisions will not affect spending on what Russia terms its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine or social obligations to Russian citizens, but will help to avoid increasing debt and to retain long-term stability of state finances.” (03/11/26)
https://www.reuters.com/business/russia-prepares-10-cut-non-sensitive-spending-2026-sources-say-2026-03-11/
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4) US Senators seek investigation into DOJ’s violations of law on Epstein files release
Source: The Hill
“A bipartisan group of senators is requesting that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) handling and release of documents related to the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post and CNBC. The March 11 letter outlines concerns about redactions in the millions of files released by the DOJ and seeks clarity about how the information was reviewed. … The lawmakers argued the DOJ failed to adequately comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a criticism that has been leveled repeatedly at the Trump administration since the first batch of files was released in December. The law, authored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and passed almost unanimously by Congress, allowed victims’ identities and information that could jeopardize a federal investigation to be redacted, but not anything based on ’embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.'” (03/11/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5779038-senators-investigation-doj-epstein-files/
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5) Trump visits Kentucky to campaign against Republicans
Source: WKYT News
“President Donald Trump visited Kentucky on Wednesday, speaking at Verst Logistics, a contract packaging facility in Hebron. … The visit was in Rep. Thomas Massie’s district, where Trump is endorsing Ed Gallrein in this year’s Republican primary. During his speech, Trump criticized Kentucky congressmen Thomas Massie and Rand Paul. ‘And now Massie, he’s the worst. And I don’t say that, I never hate a guy like this. We call him Rand Paul Jr. — he votes against everything. But at least I like Rand a little bit,’ Trump said. Trump continued: ‘He’s gotta be voted out of office as soon as possible. On the other hand, Ed Gallrein has my complete and total endorsement.'” [editor’s note: Gallrein left the GOP when Trump got its 2016 presidential nomination, but has since returned and become a JD Vance type Trump suck-up – TLK] (03/11/26)
https://www.wkyt.com/2026/03/11/trump-speaks-northern-kentucky/
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6) Norway: Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Three Norwegian brothers have been arrested on suspicion of a ‘terrorist bombing’ at the US embassy in Oslo that caused minor damage at the weekend but no injuries. The police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference that the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive. … The blast took place at around 1:00am local time on Sunday at the entrance to the embassy’s consular section. American embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East owing to US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Several have faced attacks as Tehran responds by targeting industrial and diplomatic facilities.” (03/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/three-norwegian-brothers-arrested-us-embassy-blast-oslo
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7) Dementia becomes leading cause of death in Australia as experts call for “shift in thinking” about disease
Source: Independent [UK]
“Dementia has become the leading cause of death in Australia, a development that has prompted public health experts to call for a ‘shift in thinking’ about the disease. An estimated 446,500 people in the country are living with the disease as of 2026, according to data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. … a 2024 survey found that more than a quarter of Australians incorrectly believed there was nothing they could do to reduce their risk of dementia. … Estimates suggest that about two in five dementia cases in the country can be prevented.” (03/11/26)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dementia-australia-top-death-cause-b2936066.html
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8) Thune quashes Trump push to reform filibuster for SAVE Act
Source: The Hill
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told GOP colleagues Tuesday that they don’t have the votes to pass a House-approved voting reform bill through the Senate by forcing Democrats to use a talking filibuster to oppose it, rejecting President Trump’s full-court press. Senate Republicans at a Tuesday lunch meeting discussed the prospect of forcing Democrats to actively hold the floor for days — or even weeks — of continuous debate to make it as hard as possible for them to block the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which Trump called his ‘No.1 priority’ at an issues conference with House Republicans on Monday. Trump warned in Florida on Monday that passing the SAVE Act is critical to helping Republicans keep control of Congress in November.” (03/11/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5777802-talking-filibuster-gop-debate/
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9) US mortgage applications increase 3.2% amid market volatility
Source: HousingWire
“Mortgage applications increased 3.2% from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending March 6, 2026. On an unadjusted basis, the index increased 4.1% compared with the previous week. The refinance index 0.5% from the previous week and was 81% higher than the same week one year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 57.8% of total applications from 59.8% the previous week.” (03/11/26)
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/mba-applications-rise/
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10) Nigeria: At least 65 regime troops killed in jihadist raids
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“At least 65 Nigerian soldiers have been killed in jihadist raids across the country’s north-east in the last two weeks, as the west African state battles to contain one of the world’s deadliest terror groups. On 5 and 6 March, gunmen from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) overran four military bases in Borno state, the epicentre of the insurgency. Nigerian daily the Punch reported that about 40 soldiers were killed in total in these attacks. In a statement on 7 March, the same day a mass funeral was held for the fallen troops, the military disputed the death toll but did not provide an alternative number. … Last month, 200 US troops arrived in northern Nigeria to train their counterparts, weeks after the US president, Donald Trump, announced airstrikes on terrorist elements in the region.” (03/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/nigerian-soldiers-killed-jihadist-raids-north-east
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11) AZ: Trump regime opens “investigation” into 2020 election results
Source: ABC News
“The Department of Homeland Security’s investigations arm is investigating [sic] 2020 election results in Arizona, the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday. It is not typical for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to investigate election results, though the agency has investigated voter fraud cases in the past. The agency serves as the investigative arm of DHS and usually investigates transnational crime, including drug smuggling and human trafficking. … Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to relitigate the 2020 election, Biden won the election by 7 million votes, including winning six out of the seven battleground states. The overall electoral count was 306 to 232.” (03/11/26)
https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-administration-opens-investigation-arizonas-2020-election-results/story?id=130955159
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12) South Africa: Regime summons new US ambassador over criticism as rift deepens
Source: SFGate
“The new U.S. ambassador to South Africa has been summoned to explain his criticism, the country’s foreign minister said Wednesday, as a diplomatic rift continues over foreign policy that the Trump administration describes as anti-American and domestic policies it calls anti-white. Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III was summoned after speaking at a meeting of business leaders on Tuesday, where he challenged the South African government over its diplomatic ties with Iran and its affirmative action laws that advance opportunities for Black people ahead of other races. The rift has grown between the former allies since President Donald Trump returned to office. Ties have plunged to their lowest point since the end of apartheid, or white minority rule, in 1994. Trump has been critical of South Africa’s Black-led government. Bozell, a conservative activist appointed by Trump, took up his role in Pretoria last month.” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/south-africa-summons-new-us-ambassador-over-22070876.php
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13) Germany: Pols debate return to nuclear energy
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“At a nuclear summit near Paris earlier this week, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the move away from nuclear energy made by some European Union countries as a ‘strategic mistake.’ Nuclear power, she explained, is a ‘reliable, affordable source of low-emission electricity.’ The head of the EU Commission announced new financial aid for such power plants. Von der Leyen’s words reverberated in Germany, which switched off its last nuclear reactor in 2023. … However, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) said on Tuesday that previous federal governments had decided to phase out nuclear energy, and that rolling back this decision was not possible. He added, however: ‘I regret this, but it is the way it is, and we are now concentrating on the energy policy we have.'” (03/11/26)
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-debates-return-to-nuclear-energy/a-76305267
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14) Amazon: We don’t want people to buy stuff from us. Judge: OK!
Source: PCMag
“Amazon has secured a major win in its lawsuit against Perplexity. A federal judge has ordered Perplexity to block its AI agents from placing orders on Amazon without permission. In the lawsuit filed in November, Amazon accused Perplexity of using its Comet AI browser to covertly access the Amazon website and users’ accounts to place orders on their behalf. Before filing the complaint, Amazon had also sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter accusing it of disguising Comet as Chrome to ensure its AI agents could avoid detection. … Amazon has welcomed the preliminary injunction. … For the e-commerce giant, the case could also be about protecting its advertising revenue. As Bloomberg notes, Amazon earned $68 billion from ads last year, as brands are still willing to pay huge sums for prime visibility across the platform. If customers purchase products without visiting the website, that revenue could take a hit.” (03/11/26)
https://www.pcmag.com/news/judge-orders-perplexity-to-block-its-ai-agents-from-placing-orders-on-amazon
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15) Wealthy regimes pledge record release of emergency oil reserves in a bid to calm surging prices
Source: SFGate
“A group representing many of the world’s wealthiest countries agreed Wednesday to release the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in its history, in a bid to counter the effects of the Iran war on energy markets and the halt of cargo shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The Paris-based International Energy Agency said it will make 400 million barrels of oil available from its members’ emergency reserves, which is more than double the 182.7 million barrels that the IEA’s 32 member countries released in 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. ‘This is a major action aiming to alleviate the immediate impacts of the disruption in markets,’ IEA executive director Fatih Birol said. ‘But, to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz.'” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/germany-austria-say-they-ll-release-oil-from-22070293.php
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16) UK: Police Ban Pro-Iranian London March
Source: US News & World Report
“British police said they had banned a pro-Iranian march due to take place in London on Sunday, citing the possibility of ‘extreme tensions’ with counter-protesters and the risk posed by Tehran during the conflict in the Middle East. The Al Quds march in central London is organised annually by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which the police said was supportive of the Iranian regime. The threshold to ban a protest is high in Britain, with the police saying this was the first time the power had been invoked in 14 years, but the risks of public disorder were ‘so severe’ it was right to block it. The ban also applies to any counter-protest marches.” (03/11/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-03-11/uk-police-ban-pro-iranian-london-march-due-to-extreme-tensions
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17) Canada: Carney inches closer to majority, as fourth MP defects to Liberals
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A fourth MP of the current Canadian parliament has defected to join the Liberals, bringing Prime Minister Mark Carney closer to a majority in the House of Commons. Lori Idlout, a member of the left-leaning New Democrats (NDP), is joining the governing party. In a statement issued by the Liberals, she said she had undergone ‘much personal reflection and encouragement from my community, family, and supporters’. Interim NDP leader Don Davies said he was ‘very disappointed,’ adding: ‘We believe that when someone rejects the decision of their electors and wants to join another party, they should put that decision to their voters.’ The Liberals said they were ‘deeply excited to welcome’ Idlout. Idlout was first elected as an MP from the Canadian territory of Nunavut in 2021. In its statement, the Liberal Party said she is ‘well known as a tireless champion for Nunavut.'” (03/11/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0e5jwz0703o
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18) MO: Federal jury awards $677,000 to Muslim men attacked by prison guards while praying
Source: The New Arab [UK]
“A federal jury on Monday awarded $667,000 in damages to a group of Muslim men incarcerated in Missouri who were pepper-sprayed by state correctional officers while praying. The lawsuit in eastern Missouri’s U.S. District Court alleged that the men had been allowed to pray together many times in their prison housing unit after the chapel was locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic. The money will be distributed among eight men who were handcuffed, pepper-sprayed and placed in solitary confinement after praying in the housing area at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre on Feb. 28, 2021. Those who were placed in solitary confinement at the 2,684-bed facility were left without access to soap or running water to wash off the pepper spray, and some resorted to washing their faces with toilet water, according to the lawsuit.” (03/10/26)
https://www.newarab.com/news/jury-awards-667k-muslims-pepper-sprayed-prison-guards
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19) Cambodia: Regime aims to shut down all online scam centers by end of April
Source: SFGate
“Cambodia hopes to shut down all of the country’s notorious online scam centers by the end of next month, the head of the Southeast Asian nation’s effort to combat the cybercrime said Wednesday. Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told The Associated Press in an interview that the government since July had targeted 250 locations believed to be carrying out the lucrative criminal activity, and has shut down about 80%, or 200, of them. He said police would carry out suppression activities after April in an attempt to keep the scam centers from reemerging. Cambodia has launched previous crackdowns against online scam centers but without major effect.” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/cambodia-aims-to-shut-down-all-online-scam-22070771.php
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20) NH: Democrat wins previously GOP state House seat, notching 10th straight special election flip
Source: The Downballot
“The third time was the charm for New Hampshire Democrat Bobbi Boudman, who flipped a Republican-held seat in the state House in a special election on Tuesday night. Boudman, a financial analyst, defeated Republican Dale Fincher, a Christian nonprofit speaker and investment firm founder, by a 52-48 margin to win Carroll County’s 7th District. … Since the start of Trump’s second term, Republicans have flipped zero Democratic seats.” (03/10/26)
https://www.the-downballot.com/p/breaking-democrats-win-gop-seat-in
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) We can’t afford US government
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal
“The U.S. government, with its state and local affiliates, is a much greater threat to your life, liberty, and property than any foreign power in the past century. This includes the old Soviet Union. Which one takes a large percentage of your money before you even see it? Which one then takes more of your money every time you buy something, or demands it in ransom so you’re allowed to keep what you already own? Which one makes and enforces arbitrary rules about the way you’re allowed to live? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Iran’s evil government. Right now, I’m not extorted to prop up an Iranian government, but if the U.S. government wins this fight, I will be.” (03/11/26)
https://www.easternnewmexiconews.com/story/2026/03/11/voices/opinion-we-cant-afford-us-government/232962.html
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22) The Myth of “National” Resources
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“The popular telling of the histories of Iran, Venezuela, and other countries, and their relevance to current U.S. policy, requires that we get something straight. While natural resources exist in such places, those resources do not naturally belong to the said country, people, or government. That would be collectivism and, thus, nonsensical. The proper owners of land and subsurface resources are those who discover and develop them, no matter where they were born or live. They are the Lockean owners (per John Locke’s homesteading principle). This means that someone from outside the territory could be the legitimate owner in a given case. Indigenous persons who had no role in the discovery and development have no natural claim based merely on their birth. That’s no achievement. The foregoing does not mean that outside entrepreneurs may morally disregard the Lockean property rights of indigenous individuals.” (03/11/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-national-resources
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23) Congressional Republicans and the Ministry of Truth Social
Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg
“Let’s state the obvious: We’re at war with Iran. My evidence? Turn on your TV. U.S. forces, working with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran and many of his top aides. We sank Iran’s navy and destroyed most of its air force. We bombed thousands of military sites across the region. President Donald Trump, the commander in chief, has demanded ‘unconditional surrender’ from Iran. He routinely refers to this as a ‘war.’ Pete Hegseth, who calls himself the secretary of war, also describes this as a war daily, such as last week when he said, ‘We set the terms of this war.’ The truth that we are at war is so simple that only politicians and lawyers could make it seem complicated. Indeed, a slew of Republican legislators insist we’re not actually at war.” (03/11/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/iran-war-congressional-republicans-declaration/
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24) Who Cares About Those 175 Dead Little Iranian Girls?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Who cares about the 175 Iranian girls, who were students at the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in the town of Minab, Iran, when a U.S. Tomahawk missile slammed into them, killing them all? U.S. national-security state officials? Don’t make me laugh. Despite any public displays of remorse they might express, the truth is that they couldn’t care less about the deaths of those little girls. After all, let’s not forget the obvious: U.S. officials for decades have been targeting those little girls and the rest of the Iranian people with death by starvation and illness through their enforcement of their brutal, vicious, and evil system of economic sanctions.” (03/11/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/03/11/who-cares-about-those-175-dead-little-iranian-girls/
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25) The Democratic tax fight that’s really over copying Republicans
Source: Semafor
by David Weigel
“Every Democrat agrees that the next election will hinge on which party is better at lowering the cost of living. They’re starting to disagree about how to make their case. For Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., it means a new tax cut that would double the standard deduction and push millions of people off the income tax rolls. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is preparing to outdo Booker and propose an even larger income tax cut, nearly doubling the number of people who could ignore the IRS. … Critics of Booker and Van Hollen’s plans, including older-line progressives at the Center for American Progress and newer post-Biden players on the left, argue that the party’s mission depends on doing good things with public funds — not pitching taxes as a pox that people need ‘relief’ from.” (03/11/26)
https://www.semafor.com/article/03/11/2026/the-democratic-tax-fight-thats-really-over-copying-republicans
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26) Should SCOTUS Reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan?
Source: Town Hall
by Gregory Lyakhov
“Few constitutional rights generate more debate in American politics than the right to free speech. The First Amendment protects both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, principles often described as absolute pillars of a democratic society. In reality, the Supreme Court has consistently recognized that these freedoms have limits. Courts have long permitted restrictions based on time, place, and manner, and American law has also recognized boundaries when speech collides with competing interests such as national security, defamation, or public safety. The same principle applies to freedom of the press. Newspapers and journalists enjoy broad constitutional protections, but those protections were never intended to create a system in which the press operates without legal accountability. From the earliest days of the republic, American law recognized that publishers could be held responsible for false statements that damage a person’s reputation.” (03/11/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/gregory-lyakhov/2026/03/11/should-the-supreme-court-reconsider-new-york-times-v-sullivan-n2672636
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27) Trump’s New Tariff Plan Still Asserts a Crisis That Does Not Exist
Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum
“President Donald Trump’s original plan for addressing the purported threat posed by the longstanding U.S. trade deficit, which the Supreme Court rejected in February, involved declaring an imaginary emergency to justify tariffs under a statute that does not authorize them. His backup plan, which he revealed immediately after that decision, avoids the second difficulty but not the first one.” (03/11/26)
https://reason.com/2026/03/11/trumps-new-tariff-plan-still-asserts-a-crisis-that-does-not-exist/
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28) After Loneliness: Breaking Bread in Authoritarian America
Source: TomDispatch
by Mattea Kramer
“All the way back in 2023, the surgeon general diagnosed Americans as suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. More recently, amid the rise of American fascism, I started to notice that people were not only lonely but had also begun referring to the world as simply ‘the news.’ Perceived that way — as a phenomenon pre-packaged via our devices — our bond with the world was distilled into just two options: consume the news or don’t. A sense of powerlessness is baked into such a perception. By contrast, I remembered once reading an interview with billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who described the world as atoms constantly shifting and moving. With intention and focus, she pointed out, you can move those atoms yourself, and so move the world. Baked into that worldview was a sense of interconnectedness, not to mention power. Was such a perspective a luxury of the billionaire class? In fact, no.” (03/10/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/after-loneliness/
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29) The Reagan White House Rejected Trump’s Tariff Power Claims
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness
“In his latest bid to salvage his protectionist trade agenda, President Donald Trump imposed a new 10% tariff on all imports to the United States. To justify this move, Trump cited the existence of a trade deficit and invoked an obscure clause of the Trade Act of 1974, called Section 122. This clause allows the president to impose tariffs for up to 150 days; however, its provisions only apply in the presence of a ‘large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.’ Trump’s use of Section 122 is illegal because the United States does not currently have a balance-of-payments deficit. … He is the first president to attempt to use this clause for a reason. Previous administrations have examined its text in detail and come to the conclusion that Section 122 simply does not apply to common trade deficits.” (03/11/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/03/11/reagan-rejected-trumps-tariff/
-----
30) Every Element of Stephen Miller’s Immigration Agenda Is Designed for Ethnic Cleansing
Source: The UnPopulist
by Kyle Varner, MD
“Contemporary debates over U.S. immigration policy are framed almost entirely in the language of pathology: cruelty, incompetence, authoritarian drift, constitutional erosion. These diagnoses are not wrong, but they describe merely surface phenomena while neglecting to account for the scope and intent of the policies, thus obscuring the form of power that generates them. What was sold to voters as a program of robust law enforcement intended to restore order has become something wholly different: a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” (03/11/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/every-element-of-stephen-millers
-----
31) Iran’s new leader could spark a revolution
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“On Monday, while visiting Australia to compete in a tournament, five members of the Iranian women’s soccer team were struggling in a hotel room over whether to defect and escape suppression back home. Their struggle ended when Naghmeh Danai, an Iranian-Australian and a migration agent, told them, ‘You will have more respect [here].’ … This minor tale of Iranians seeking to be honored on their merits reflects a major theme during the many years of protests in Iran: An authoritarian theocracy purposely set up in 1979 to replace a dynastic monarchy has come to rely on nepotism and crony networks to keep itself in power, denying opportunities for many Iranians and leading to corrupt, ineffective governance.” (03/10/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0310/Iran-s-new-leader-could-spark-a-revolution
-----
32) Filibuster and Forever
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“You remember how the American filibuster works, right? Quick version: The Senate’s rules require not a simple majority of 51 votes but a supermajority of 60 votes to approve most legislation. However, it only takes a simple majority of 51 votes to change this rule — the so-called ‘nuclear option.’ Why, you may ask, does the filibuster endure? The usual story is “What comes around, goes around.” The other party will eventually get control of House, Senate, and presidency. Ending the filibuster helps your party fulfill its fondest dreams in the short run, but realizes your worst nightmare in the long run. Since both parties know this, the filibuster survives.” (03/11/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/filibuster-and-forever
-----
33) We Are The Villains In This Story
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Nobody wants to believe they’re the villain in the story. Nobody wants to believe their government is run by psychopaths who are inflicting unfathomable evils upon populations around the globe in order to rule the world. It’s much nicer to believe you’re the Good Guys. Much easier to sit with the idea that your government might make an innocent mistake here and there, but overall is a driving force for the good of humankind, and is certainly superior to the villains it makes war with. That’s a fiction, though. It’s a comfortable lie. A fairy tale that westerners tell themselves to avoid a profoundly uncomfortable truth: We are the villains. We are the terrorists. We are the tyrants. We are the evil regime. Our soldiers aren’t out there defending our country, they’re out there murdering people for defending their country.” (03/11/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/03/11/we-are-the-villains-in-this-story/
-----
34) “Pick Your Ten”: The best advice I ever got in my life
Source: The Eternally Radical Idea
by Greg Lukianoff
“You can have friends whose opinions you don’t take seriously, and you can have opponents whose point of view you very much do. So, pick your ten. Figure out who the small number of people are whose judgment you genuinely trust, the people who know you well enough and love you enough to tell you the truth when you’re wrong, when you’re being unfair, when you’re getting carried away, or when — to use the technical term — you are full of shit. Then, when the crowd is screaming, when the internet is losing its mind, when strangers are confidently informing you who you are and why you did what you did, bring it back to those ten. Ask yourself what they would think. … even better, go and ask them yourself.” (03/11/26)
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/pick-your-ten-the-best-advice-i-ever
-----
35) Who Needs Glyphosate?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joel Salatin
“President Donald Trump’s executive order of Feb. 18 invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 to ensure US glyphosate production and availability is neither necessary nor helpful. HHS Secretary and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) founder Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s endorsement of the order has created a firestorm in that health-interested base. On Feb. 22, Kennedy conducted triage explanations to his base with this statement: ‘Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.’ He went on to post that ‘if these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms ….’ Kennedy then described the many weed control alternatives that are being developed. All of us farmers in the nonchemical community already use many of these innovative alternatives …. We pay a slight premium, but these farmers have great yields and are certainly not going out of business like many more conventional operations.” (03/11/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/who-needs-glyphosate/
-----
36) A Deeply Human Vision
Source: Law & Liberty
by Samuel Gregg
“[Adam] Smith is convinced that the commercial society which he describes and analyzes in The Wealth of Nations cannot do without the morally sensitive being of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, if markets and liberty more generally are to be sustained over the long-term. There is, however, something else that unites the two books. Both flow from Smith’s commitment to the Scottish Enlightenment project of improvement, at the heart of which is what David Hume called the ‘science of man.’ That is the light in which we should place these two volumes. It reveals to us Smith’s essential humanism as someone who believed that the economy of natural liberty was part-and-parcel of what Smith called a ‘decent’ society.” (03/11/26)
https://lawliberty.org/forum/a-deeply-human-vision/
-----
37) Trump delivered [sic] for tipped workers; why do Democratic governors hate them?
Source: Fox News
by Andrew Bracy
“It’s never easy working for tips. For eight years, from 2014 to 2022, I did just that. I was a server at a Maine hotel, taking orders at the restaurant and bringing customers their food. Some nights, I’d make $200 or even $300. Other nights, I’d make half that, or less. … I got married to a coworker I met on the job, and before leaving the dining room, we had two kids. I had to bring home the bacon, but it was hard to estimate how much I’d make in a given year. And every year, come April 15th, I had a choice to make. Would I report my tip income on my taxes? Or would I keep it off the books and keep more money in my pocket? I always made the lawful choice. But it was tough.” [editor’s note: The “lawful choice” would be to pocket it all as “gifts” with no paperwork involved – SAT] (03/11/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-delivered-tipped-workers-why-do-democratic-governors-hate-them
-----
38) But What About China? A Response to Tariff Advocates
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert
“Erratic tariff policy is alienating our allies, weakening exactly the coalition we’d need to address Beijing’s behavior.” (03/11/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/but-what-about-china-a-response-to-tariff-advocates/
-----
39) Why Hezbollah’s “irrational” gambit against Israel makes sense
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Ali Rizk
“It is fighting for the survival of the organization and of Shiites there, and in the region. The US would be wise not to get sucked into this conflict, too.” (03/11/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hezbollah-lebanon-israel/
-----
40) The Tea Party Stumbled So That MAGA Could Fall
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Alan Mosley
“Political movements often begin as revolts against entrenched power, only to be absorbed by the very institutions they sought to challenge. The pattern is familiar in American political history. Grassroots insurgencies ignite public enthusiasm, mobilize voters around neglected issues, and briefly threaten the ruling consensus. Yet over time they are either neutralized or transformed into instruments of the existing political order. Two movements defined the political awakening of many Americans in the early twenty-first century: the Tea Party and the MAGA movement. Both promised a revolt against Washington. Both claimed to represent ordinary Americans against an unaccountable ruling class. Both attracted millions of supporters who believed they were witnessing the birth of something genuinely transformative. Yet both ultimately failed.” (03/11/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-tea-party-stumbled-so-that-maga-could-fall
-----
41) Why the Democrats Are Not Radical Enough
Source: Common Dreams
by Les Leopold
“Centrist Democrats argue that the party should not ‘go so far left in a primary that they can’t win against MAGA in the general.’ As the Center for Working Class Politics observes, these ‘Third Way’ Democrats stress ‘affordability’ and ‘abundance’ without taking on the billionaire class. Progressive Democrats, including groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party, are seen as just too radical to attract working-class voters. I disagree. I think the problem is that Democrats, even progressive Democrats, are not radical enough. We have only to look at former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 ‘Four Freedoms’ State of the Union address to be reminded of what our politics could be and should be. The ‘Four Freedoms’ (of speech and religion, from want and fear) are properly the best remembered parts of the address.” (03/11/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/dems-job-guarantee
-----
42) The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides
Source: Yascha Mounk
by Yascha Mounk
“It is impossible to understand the recent politics of the Western world without considering a giant sociological transformation—one that, inevitable though it may seem in retrospect, nearly nobody predicted: The bourgeoisie has switched sides. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the proletariat was the political stronghold of the left. The bourgeoisie was the stronghold of the right. Indeed, the assumption that affluent professionals would tend to be conservative is reflected in the most famous political treatises and pieces of art that the period produced. Karl Marx called on the workers, not on the lawyers or freelance illustrators, of the world to unite. … But of late, these realities have started to shift, with huge impacts on contemporary politics.” (03/11/26)
https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/the-paradox-of-infinite-voices-and
-----
43) War with Iran: Making the Same Mistakes All Over Again, or a Host of New Ones?
Source: Antiwar.com
by Cody Morgan
“For anyone looking into the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, what’s laid bare is not a history of friendship, diplomacy, and mutual respect, but rather a past marked with covert action, harsh rhetoric, and now, hot war.” (03/11/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/cody_morgan/2026/03/10/war-with-iran-making-the-same-mistakes-all-over-again-or-a-host-of-new-ones/
-----
44) Copyright Bullying vs. Religious Freedom
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Kit Walsh
“EFF’s client, J. Doe, is a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who became interested in the history of the organization’s public statements, and how they’ve changed over time. They created research tools to analyze those documents and ultimately created a website, JWS Library, allowing others to use those tools and verify their findings through an archive that included documents suppressed by the church. … There is no law against questioning the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Instead, Watch Tower argues that Doe’s activities constitute copyright infringement and seeks to use the special process provided in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to unmask them. It sent DMCA subpoenas to Google and Cloudflare, seeking information that would help them uncover Doe’s identity. The problem for Watch Tower is that Doe’s research and commentary are clear fair uses allowed under copyright law.” (03/10/26)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/copyright-bullying-vs-religious-freedom-0
-----
45) Iranian women’s soccer team shows what real oppression looks like
Source: New York Post
by Kirsten Fleming
“The post-Olympics news cycle was a dizzying display of handwringing over the supposed victimhood of empowered, badass American female athletes. If we were to believe much of our media and feminist commentators, these women had been disrespected by President Trump, who cracked a joke, and by the men of Team USA hockey, who laughed. It led to an online geyser of anger and indignation on the women’s behalf. During their match against South Korea in Australia last week, the Iranian women’s soccer team took part in a quiet protest by not singing along to their national anthem — less than 48 hours after the US began striking Tehran. Off the phony controversy, we heard the refrain that women athletes are treated like gum on the bottom of a shoe.” (03/10/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/10/opinion/iranian-soccer-team-shows-feminists-what-oppression-looks-like/
-----
46) It’s a War With Iran, Not an “Intervention”
Source: The Intercept
by Séamus Malekafzali
“Elected officials desperately want to cast our war with Iran as an ‘intervention’ or ‘operation.’ Don’t let them get away with it.” (03/10/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/10/iran-trump-forever-war/
-----
47) Upholding Liberal Education
Source: Liberal Currents
by Christopher M Cruz
“A genuinely liberal education is about freedom, and not in some utilitarian or sophomoric sense of freedom as a rejection of form or boundaries. The indispensability of a liberal education is the freedom from being tied to the zeitgeist of one’s age or situation to love what is true, good, and beautiful, and to be initiated into the world while cultivating a love for it. Such a vision of education advances an inward concern as opposed to the more technical processes typically promoted in teacher education.” (03/10/16)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/upholding-liberal-education/
-----
48) The End of “Legitimacy”
Source: Persuasion
by Sam Kahn
“We’re no longer in the domain of the Pax Americana, where the West’s gains at the end of World War II, and then at the end of the Cold War, are vigorously defended (even if the defense of the North Atlantic sometimes extended all the way to Afghanistan) with the premise that many of those gains are as much about principles — universal human rights, the rule of law — as territory. We’re also no longer in the kind of sovereignty that the Russians sometimes facetiously proposed — and that Trump not so long ago seemed interested in — where national autonomy is paramount regardless of sticky annoyances like human rights; or where, in an alternative version of the same theory, powers have exclusive control over their regional sphere of influence.” (03/10/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-end-of-legitimacy
-----
49) The War for Gulf State Capital
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Since Donald Trump kicked off a March weekend by attempting to bomb a country of 90 million people back to the Stone Age, there is a question nobody in the White House has been able to answer: Why go to war with Iran? The shifting set of justifications has been pretty comical to watch, whipsawing from liberating the Iranian people to self-defense from Iranian attacks to preventing nuclear capability after a breakdown in negotiations (which was apparently not true) to payback for the 1979 revolution to the complicated tale that Iran would hit U.S. targets anyway once Israel struck first, so we might as well preempt that and get the volley of munitions started early. But in a press conference on Monday, Trump quietly hit on another rationale, one that may have more truth behind it than the others.” (03/11/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/03/11/iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-gulf-state-capital-oil/
-----
50) France, America, and the Trap of Extended Nuclear Deterrence
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“French leaders and the French people should be very cautious about embracing extended deterrence obligations. Primary deterrence — threatening nuclear retaliation for an attack on one’s own country — has a high level of credibility, so long as the country has the necessary weaponry to mount a serious counterstrike. Indeed, the main point of the Cold War era’s de facto doctrine of mutual assured destruction was based on that logic. The credibility of courting similar devastation in response to an aggressor’s attack on another country — even a close ally of the defender — has always had much lower credibility.” (03/10/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/france-america-and-the-trap-of-extended-nuclear-deterrence/
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) The Political Orphanage, 03/11/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“A.I. and the Future of Scams.” (03/11/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/ai-and-the-future-of-scams
-----
52) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 03/11/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“As Iran War Escalates, Congress Passes Automatic Involuntary Draft Registration.” (03/11/26)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1AJEmOXOagbJL
-----
53) The Permanent Problem, episode 11
Source: Niskanen Center
“Defending liberalism (and how not to), with Damon Linker.” (03/11/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/defending-liberalism-and-how-not-to-with-damon-linker
-----
54) Jeffrey Sachs Is Trying To Fix The New York Times’s Iran War Coverage, One Email At A Time
Source: Racket News
“The road to regime change began 16 days after Inauguration Day. The Times isn’t interested.” (03/11/26)
https://www.racket.news/p/jeffrey-sachs-is-trying-to-fix-the
-----
55) Reason Interview: Mark Chenoweth
Source: Reason
“Can the Government Ban You from Telling the Truth?” (03/11/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/03/11/can-the-government-ban-you-from-telling-the-truth/
-----
56) Rising, 03/11/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave delivers his radar on a now-deleted tweet from CNN that sparked outrage for how it framed its story on the failed bombing plot in New York City.” (03/11/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/5774564-rising-march-11-2026/
-----
57) The Kyle Anzalone Show, 03/10/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski: Operation Epic Failure: Trump’s War in Iran Is NOT Going As Planned.” (03/10/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/the-kyle-anzalone-show-guest-lt-col-karen-kwiatkowski-operation-epic-failure-trumps-war-in-iran-is-not-going-as-planned/
-----
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 03/11/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“US-Israeli Strikes Hit Civilian Targets Across Iran, Coalition To End Draft Registration, and More.” (03/11/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTV0n0nLR4
-----
59) Politics Politics Politics, 03/10/26
Source: Politics Politics Politics
“The Dumb State of Iran Discourse. Scoping Out Trump’s Wartime Deadlines (with Kirk Bado).” (03/10/26)
https://www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/p/the-dumb-state-of-iran-discourse
-----
60) Free Speech Unmuted, 03/10/26
Source: Hoover Institution
“Equal Time, Stephen Colbert, and the Future of Political Broadcasting | Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer.” (03/10/26)
https://free-speech-unmuted.podbean.com/e/equal-time-stephen-colbert-and-the-future-of-political-broadcasting-eugene-volokh-and-jane-bambauer-hoover-institution/
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Six vessels attacked amid reports of Iranian drone boats, sea mines
2) Sources blame “outdated intelligence” for US regime’s mass murder of Iranian elementary school students
3) Russia: Regime prepares 10% cut to “non-sensitive” spending, sources say
4) US Senators seek investigation into DOJ’s violations of law on Epstein files release
5) Trump visits Kentucky to campaign against Republicans
6) Norway: Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
7) Dementia becomes leading cause of death in Australia as experts call for “shift in thinking” about disease
8) Thune quashes Trump push to reform filibuster for SAVE Act
9) US mortgage applications increase 3.2% amid market volatility
10) Nigeria: At least 65 regime troops killed in jihadist raids
11) AZ: Trump regime opens “investigation” into 2020 election results
12) South Africa: Regime summons new US ambassador over criticism as rift deepens
13) Germany: Pols debate return to nuclear energy
14) Amazon: We don’t want people to buy stuff from us. Judge: OK!
15) Wealthy regimes pledge record release of emergency oil reserves in a bid to calm surging prices
16) UK: Police Ban Pro-Iranian London March
17) Canada: Carney inches closer to majority, as fourth MP defects to Liberals
18) MO: Federal jury awards $677,000 to Muslim men attacked by prison guards while praying
19) Cambodia: Regime aims to shut down all online scam centers by end of April
20) NH: Democrat wins previously GOP state House seat, notching 10th straight special election flip
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) We can’t afford US government
22) The Myth of “National” Resources
23) Congressional Republicans and the Ministry of Truth Social
24) Who Cares About Those 175 Dead Little Iranian Girls?
25) The Democratic tax fight that’s really over copying Republicans
26) Should SCOTUS Reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan?
27) Trump’s New Tariff Plan Still Asserts a Crisis That Does Not Exist
28) After Loneliness: Breaking Bread in Authoritarian America
29) The Reagan White House Rejected Trump’s Tariff Power Claims
30) Every Element of Stephen Miller’s Immigration Agenda Is Designed for Ethnic Cleansing
31) Iran’s new leader could spark a revolution
32) Filibuster and Forever
33) We Are The Villains In This Story
34) “Pick Your Ten”: The best advice I ever got in my life
35) Who Needs Glyphosate?
36) A Deeply Human Vision
37) Trump delivered [sic] for tipped workers; why do Democratic governors hate them?
38) But What About China? A Response to Tariff Advocates
39) Why Hezbollah’s “irrational” gambit against Israel makes sense
40) The Tea Party Stumbled So That MAGA Could Fall
41) Why the Democrats Are Not Radical Enough
42) The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides
43) War with Iran: Making the Same Mistakes All Over Again, or a Host of New Ones?
44) Copyright Bullying vs. Religious Freedom
45) Iranian women’s soccer team shows what real oppression looks like
46) It’s a War With Iran, Not an “Intervention”
47) Upholding Liberal Education
48) The End of “Legitimacy”
49) The War for Gulf State Capital
50) France, America, and the Trap of Extended Nuclear Deterrence
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) The Political Orphanage, 03/11/26
52) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 03/11/26
53) The Permanent Problem, episode 11
54) Jeffrey Sachs Is Trying To Fix The New York Times’s Iran War Coverage, One Email At A Time
55) Reason Interview: Mark Chenoweth
56) Rising, 03/11/26
57) The Kyle Anzalone Show, 03/10/26
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 03/11/26
59) Politics Politics Politics, 03/10/26
60) Free Speech Unmuted, 03/10/26
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Six vessels attacked amid reports of Iranian drone boats, sea mines
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Explosive-laden Iranian boats appear to have attacked two fuel tankers in Iraqi waters, setting them ablaze and killing one crew member, after projectiles struck four vessels in Gulf waters, according to reports. The ships targeted in late-night attacks on Wednesday in the Gulf near Iraq were the Marshall Islands-flagged Safesea Vishnu and the Zefyros, which had loaded fuel cargoes in Iraq, two Iraqi port officials told the Reuters news agency. … Reuters said reports of the use of explosive-laden unmanned surface vessels, which Ukraine has used with great effect in its war with Russia, come as Iran has blocked oil shipments from transiting the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas transits but which has been blocked since the US-Israeli war on Iran began.” (03/12/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/12/five-vessels-attacked-amid-reports-of-iranian-drone-boats-sea-mines
-----
2) Sources blame “outdated intelligence” for US regime’s mass murder of Iranian elementary school students
Source: Associated Press
“Outdated intelligence likely led to the United States carrying out a deadly missile strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed over 165 people, many of them children, in the opening hours of the conflict, according to a U.S. official and a second person briefed on findings of a preliminary U.S military investigation into the incident. The bombing of the school and its casualties involving children has become a focal point of the war, and if ultimately confirmed to be at the hands of the U.S., would also stand among the highest civilian casualty events caused by the American military operations in the last two decades.” (03/11/26)
https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-school-hegseth-trump-2ffff06808f7a584b0a03831897ab0b8
-----
3) Russia: Regime prepares 10% cut to “non-sensitive” spending, sources say
Source: Reuters
“The Russian government is preparing a possible 10% cut to all ‘non-sensitive’ spending in this year’s budget, sources told Reuters, but the final decision will hinge on the sustainability of the oil price rise triggered by the Iran war. … The Finance Ministry told Reuters in comments on this story that it is discussing measures to prioritize budget spending with other ministries. Andrei Gangan, head of the monetary policy department at the central bank, said an optimisation of spending can only be welcomed. The ministry added that decisions will not affect spending on what Russia terms its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine or social obligations to Russian citizens, but will help to avoid increasing debt and to retain long-term stability of state finances.” (03/11/26)
https://www.reuters.com/business/russia-prepares-10-cut-non-sensitive-spending-2026-sources-say-2026-03-11/
-----
4) US Senators seek investigation into DOJ’s violations of law on Epstein files release
Source: The Hill
“A bipartisan group of senators is requesting that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) handling and release of documents related to the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post and CNBC. The March 11 letter outlines concerns about redactions in the millions of files released by the DOJ and seeks clarity about how the information was reviewed. … The lawmakers argued the DOJ failed to adequately comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a criticism that has been leveled repeatedly at the Trump administration since the first batch of files was released in December. The law, authored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and passed almost unanimously by Congress, allowed victims’ identities and information that could jeopardize a federal investigation to be redacted, but not anything based on ’embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.'” (03/11/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5779038-senators-investigation-doj-epstein-files/
-----
5) Trump visits Kentucky to campaign against Republicans
Source: WKYT News
“President Donald Trump visited Kentucky on Wednesday, speaking at Verst Logistics, a contract packaging facility in Hebron. … The visit was in Rep. Thomas Massie’s district, where Trump is endorsing Ed Gallrein in this year’s Republican primary. During his speech, Trump criticized Kentucky congressmen Thomas Massie and Rand Paul. ‘And now Massie, he’s the worst. And I don’t say that, I never hate a guy like this. We call him Rand Paul Jr. — he votes against everything. But at least I like Rand a little bit,’ Trump said. Trump continued: ‘He’s gotta be voted out of office as soon as possible. On the other hand, Ed Gallrein has my complete and total endorsement.'” [editor’s note: Gallrein left the GOP when Trump got its 2016 presidential nomination, but has since returned and become a JD Vance type Trump suck-up – TLK] (03/11/26)
https://www.wkyt.com/2026/03/11/trump-speaks-northern-kentucky/
-----
6) Norway: Three brothers arrested over US embassy blast in Oslo
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Three Norwegian brothers have been arrested on suspicion of a ‘terrorist bombing’ at the US embassy in Oslo that caused minor damage at the weekend but no injuries. The police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference that the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo and that police were investigating the motive. … The blast took place at around 1:00am local time on Sunday at the entrance to the embassy’s consular section. American embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East owing to US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Several have faced attacks as Tehran responds by targeting industrial and diplomatic facilities.” (03/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/three-norwegian-brothers-arrested-us-embassy-blast-oslo
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7) Dementia becomes leading cause of death in Australia as experts call for “shift in thinking” about disease
Source: Independent [UK]
“Dementia has become the leading cause of death in Australia, a development that has prompted public health experts to call for a ‘shift in thinking’ about the disease. An estimated 446,500 people in the country are living with the disease as of 2026, according to data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. … a 2024 survey found that more than a quarter of Australians incorrectly believed there was nothing they could do to reduce their risk of dementia. … Estimates suggest that about two in five dementia cases in the country can be prevented.” (03/11/26)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dementia-australia-top-death-cause-b2936066.html
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8) Thune quashes Trump push to reform filibuster for SAVE Act
Source: The Hill
“Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told GOP colleagues Tuesday that they don’t have the votes to pass a House-approved voting reform bill through the Senate by forcing Democrats to use a talking filibuster to oppose it, rejecting President Trump’s full-court press. Senate Republicans at a Tuesday lunch meeting discussed the prospect of forcing Democrats to actively hold the floor for days — or even weeks — of continuous debate to make it as hard as possible for them to block the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which Trump called his ‘No.1 priority’ at an issues conference with House Republicans on Monday. Trump warned in Florida on Monday that passing the SAVE Act is critical to helping Republicans keep control of Congress in November.” (03/11/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5777802-talking-filibuster-gop-debate/
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9) US mortgage applications increase 3.2% amid market volatility
Source: HousingWire
“Mortgage applications increased 3.2% from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending March 6, 2026. On an unadjusted basis, the index increased 4.1% compared with the previous week. The refinance index 0.5% from the previous week and was 81% higher than the same week one year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 57.8% of total applications from 59.8% the previous week.” (03/11/26)
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/mba-applications-rise/
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10) Nigeria: At least 65 regime troops killed in jihadist raids
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“At least 65 Nigerian soldiers have been killed in jihadist raids across the country’s north-east in the last two weeks, as the west African state battles to contain one of the world’s deadliest terror groups. On 5 and 6 March, gunmen from Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) overran four military bases in Borno state, the epicentre of the insurgency. Nigerian daily the Punch reported that about 40 soldiers were killed in total in these attacks. In a statement on 7 March, the same day a mass funeral was held for the fallen troops, the military disputed the death toll but did not provide an alternative number. … Last month, 200 US troops arrived in northern Nigeria to train their counterparts, weeks after the US president, Donald Trump, announced airstrikes on terrorist elements in the region.” (03/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/nigerian-soldiers-killed-jihadist-raids-north-east
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11) AZ: Trump regime opens “investigation” into 2020 election results
Source: ABC News
“The Department of Homeland Security’s investigations arm is investigating [sic] 2020 election results in Arizona, the state’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday. It is not typical for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to investigate election results, though the agency has investigated voter fraud cases in the past. The agency serves as the investigative arm of DHS and usually investigates transnational crime, including drug smuggling and human trafficking. … Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to relitigate the 2020 election, Biden won the election by 7 million votes, including winning six out of the seven battleground states. The overall electoral count was 306 to 232.” (03/11/26)
https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-administration-opens-investigation-arizonas-2020-election-results/story?id=130955159
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12) South Africa: Regime summons new US ambassador over criticism as rift deepens
Source: SFGate
“The new U.S. ambassador to South Africa has been summoned to explain his criticism, the country’s foreign minister said Wednesday, as a diplomatic rift continues over foreign policy that the Trump administration describes as anti-American and domestic policies it calls anti-white. Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III was summoned after speaking at a meeting of business leaders on Tuesday, where he challenged the South African government over its diplomatic ties with Iran and its affirmative action laws that advance opportunities for Black people ahead of other races. The rift has grown between the former allies since President Donald Trump returned to office. Ties have plunged to their lowest point since the end of apartheid, or white minority rule, in 1994. Trump has been critical of South Africa’s Black-led government. Bozell, a conservative activist appointed by Trump, took up his role in Pretoria last month.” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/south-africa-summons-new-us-ambassador-over-22070876.php
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13) Germany: Pols debate return to nuclear energy
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“At a nuclear summit near Paris earlier this week, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the move away from nuclear energy made by some European Union countries as a ‘strategic mistake.’ Nuclear power, she explained, is a ‘reliable, affordable source of low-emission electricity.’ The head of the EU Commission announced new financial aid for such power plants. Von der Leyen’s words reverberated in Germany, which switched off its last nuclear reactor in 2023. … However, Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) said on Tuesday that previous federal governments had decided to phase out nuclear energy, and that rolling back this decision was not possible. He added, however: ‘I regret this, but it is the way it is, and we are now concentrating on the energy policy we have.'” (03/11/26)
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-debates-return-to-nuclear-energy/a-76305267
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14) Amazon: We don’t want people to buy stuff from us. Judge: OK!
Source: PCMag
“Amazon has secured a major win in its lawsuit against Perplexity. A federal judge has ordered Perplexity to block its AI agents from placing orders on Amazon without permission. In the lawsuit filed in November, Amazon accused Perplexity of using its Comet AI browser to covertly access the Amazon website and users’ accounts to place orders on their behalf. Before filing the complaint, Amazon had also sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter accusing it of disguising Comet as Chrome to ensure its AI agents could avoid detection. … Amazon has welcomed the preliminary injunction. … For the e-commerce giant, the case could also be about protecting its advertising revenue. As Bloomberg notes, Amazon earned $68 billion from ads last year, as brands are still willing to pay huge sums for prime visibility across the platform. If customers purchase products without visiting the website, that revenue could take a hit.” (03/11/26)
https://www.pcmag.com/news/judge-orders-perplexity-to-block-its-ai-agents-from-placing-orders-on-amazon
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15) Wealthy regimes pledge record release of emergency oil reserves in a bid to calm surging prices
Source: SFGate
“A group representing many of the world’s wealthiest countries agreed Wednesday to release the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in its history, in a bid to counter the effects of the Iran war on energy markets and the halt of cargo shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The Paris-based International Energy Agency said it will make 400 million barrels of oil available from its members’ emergency reserves, which is more than double the 182.7 million barrels that the IEA’s 32 member countries released in 2022 in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. ‘This is a major action aiming to alleviate the immediate impacts of the disruption in markets,’ IEA executive director Fatih Birol said. ‘But, to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz.'” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/germany-austria-say-they-ll-release-oil-from-22070293.php
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16) UK: Police Ban Pro-Iranian London March
Source: US News & World Report
“British police said they had banned a pro-Iranian march due to take place in London on Sunday, citing the possibility of ‘extreme tensions’ with counter-protesters and the risk posed by Tehran during the conflict in the Middle East. The Al Quds march in central London is organised annually by the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which the police said was supportive of the Iranian regime. The threshold to ban a protest is high in Britain, with the police saying this was the first time the power had been invoked in 14 years, but the risks of public disorder were ‘so severe’ it was right to block it. The ban also applies to any counter-protest marches.” (03/11/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-03-11/uk-police-ban-pro-iranian-london-march-due-to-extreme-tensions
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17) Canada: Carney inches closer to majority, as fourth MP defects to Liberals
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A fourth MP of the current Canadian parliament has defected to join the Liberals, bringing Prime Minister Mark Carney closer to a majority in the House of Commons. Lori Idlout, a member of the left-leaning New Democrats (NDP), is joining the governing party. In a statement issued by the Liberals, she said she had undergone ‘much personal reflection and encouragement from my community, family, and supporters’. Interim NDP leader Don Davies said he was ‘very disappointed,’ adding: ‘We believe that when someone rejects the decision of their electors and wants to join another party, they should put that decision to their voters.’ The Liberals said they were ‘deeply excited to welcome’ Idlout. Idlout was first elected as an MP from the Canadian territory of Nunavut in 2021. In its statement, the Liberal Party said she is ‘well known as a tireless champion for Nunavut.'” (03/11/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0e5jwz0703o
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18) MO: Federal jury awards $677,000 to Muslim men attacked by prison guards while praying
Source: The New Arab [UK]
“A federal jury on Monday awarded $667,000 in damages to a group of Muslim men incarcerated in Missouri who were pepper-sprayed by state correctional officers while praying. The lawsuit in eastern Missouri’s U.S. District Court alleged that the men had been allowed to pray together many times in their prison housing unit after the chapel was locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic. The money will be distributed among eight men who were handcuffed, pepper-sprayed and placed in solitary confinement after praying in the housing area at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre on Feb. 28, 2021. Those who were placed in solitary confinement at the 2,684-bed facility were left without access to soap or running water to wash off the pepper spray, and some resorted to washing their faces with toilet water, according to the lawsuit.” (03/10/26)
https://www.newarab.com/news/jury-awards-667k-muslims-pepper-sprayed-prison-guards
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19) Cambodia: Regime aims to shut down all online scam centers by end of April
Source: SFGate
“Cambodia hopes to shut down all of the country’s notorious online scam centers by the end of next month, the head of the Southeast Asian nation’s effort to combat the cybercrime said Wednesday. Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith, in charge of the Commission for Combating Online Scams, told The Associated Press in an interview that the government since July had targeted 250 locations believed to be carrying out the lucrative criminal activity, and has shut down about 80%, or 200, of them. He said police would carry out suppression activities after April in an attempt to keep the scam centers from reemerging. Cambodia has launched previous crackdowns against online scam centers but without major effect.” (03/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/cambodia-aims-to-shut-down-all-online-scam-22070771.php
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20) NH: Democrat wins previously GOP state House seat, notching 10th straight special election flip
Source: The Downballot
“The third time was the charm for New Hampshire Democrat Bobbi Boudman, who flipped a Republican-held seat in the state House in a special election on Tuesday night. Boudman, a financial analyst, defeated Republican Dale Fincher, a Christian nonprofit speaker and investment firm founder, by a 52-48 margin to win Carroll County’s 7th District. … Since the start of Trump’s second term, Republicans have flipped zero Democratic seats.” (03/10/26)
https://www.the-downballot.com/p/breaking-democrats-win-gop-seat-in
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) We can’t afford US government
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal
“The U.S. government, with its state and local affiliates, is a much greater threat to your life, liberty, and property than any foreign power in the past century. This includes the old Soviet Union. Which one takes a large percentage of your money before you even see it? Which one then takes more of your money every time you buy something, or demands it in ransom so you’re allowed to keep what you already own? Which one makes and enforces arbitrary rules about the way you’re allowed to live? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Iran’s evil government. Right now, I’m not extorted to prop up an Iranian government, but if the U.S. government wins this fight, I will be.” (03/11/26)
https://www.easternnewmexiconews.com/story/2026/03/11/voices/opinion-we-cant-afford-us-government/232962.html
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22) The Myth of “National” Resources
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“The popular telling of the histories of Iran, Venezuela, and other countries, and their relevance to current U.S. policy, requires that we get something straight. While natural resources exist in such places, those resources do not naturally belong to the said country, people, or government. That would be collectivism and, thus, nonsensical. The proper owners of land and subsurface resources are those who discover and develop them, no matter where they were born or live. They are the Lockean owners (per John Locke’s homesteading principle). This means that someone from outside the territory could be the legitimate owner in a given case. Indigenous persons who had no role in the discovery and development have no natural claim based merely on their birth. That’s no achievement. The foregoing does not mean that outside entrepreneurs may morally disregard the Lockean property rights of indigenous individuals.” (03/11/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-national-resources
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23) Congressional Republicans and the Ministry of Truth Social
Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg
“Let’s state the obvious: We’re at war with Iran. My evidence? Turn on your TV. U.S. forces, working with Israel, killed the supreme leader of Iran and many of his top aides. We sank Iran’s navy and destroyed most of its air force. We bombed thousands of military sites across the region. President Donald Trump, the commander in chief, has demanded ‘unconditional surrender’ from Iran. He routinely refers to this as a ‘war.’ Pete Hegseth, who calls himself the secretary of war, also describes this as a war daily, such as last week when he said, ‘We set the terms of this war.’ The truth that we are at war is so simple that only politicians and lawyers could make it seem complicated. Indeed, a slew of Republican legislators insist we’re not actually at war.” (03/11/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/iran-war-congressional-republicans-declaration/
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24) Who Cares About Those 175 Dead Little Iranian Girls?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Who cares about the 175 Iranian girls, who were students at the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in the town of Minab, Iran, when a U.S. Tomahawk missile slammed into them, killing them all? U.S. national-security state officials? Don’t make me laugh. Despite any public displays of remorse they might express, the truth is that they couldn’t care less about the deaths of those little girls. After all, let’s not forget the obvious: U.S. officials for decades have been targeting those little girls and the rest of the Iranian people with death by starvation and illness through their enforcement of their brutal, vicious, and evil system of economic sanctions.” (03/11/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/03/11/who-cares-about-those-175-dead-little-iranian-girls/
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25) The Democratic tax fight that’s really over copying Republicans
Source: Semafor
by David Weigel
“Every Democrat agrees that the next election will hinge on which party is better at lowering the cost of living. They’re starting to disagree about how to make their case. For Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., it means a new tax cut that would double the standard deduction and push millions of people off the income tax rolls. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is preparing to outdo Booker and propose an even larger income tax cut, nearly doubling the number of people who could ignore the IRS. … Critics of Booker and Van Hollen’s plans, including older-line progressives at the Center for American Progress and newer post-Biden players on the left, argue that the party’s mission depends on doing good things with public funds — not pitching taxes as a pox that people need ‘relief’ from.” (03/11/26)
https://www.semafor.com/article/03/11/2026/the-democratic-tax-fight-thats-really-over-copying-republicans
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26) Should SCOTUS Reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan?
Source: Town Hall
by Gregory Lyakhov
“Few constitutional rights generate more debate in American politics than the right to free speech. The First Amendment protects both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, principles often described as absolute pillars of a democratic society. In reality, the Supreme Court has consistently recognized that these freedoms have limits. Courts have long permitted restrictions based on time, place, and manner, and American law has also recognized boundaries when speech collides with competing interests such as national security, defamation, or public safety. The same principle applies to freedom of the press. Newspapers and journalists enjoy broad constitutional protections, but those protections were never intended to create a system in which the press operates without legal accountability. From the earliest days of the republic, American law recognized that publishers could be held responsible for false statements that damage a person’s reputation.” (03/11/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/gregory-lyakhov/2026/03/11/should-the-supreme-court-reconsider-new-york-times-v-sullivan-n2672636
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27) Trump’s New Tariff Plan Still Asserts a Crisis That Does Not Exist
Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum
“President Donald Trump’s original plan for addressing the purported threat posed by the longstanding U.S. trade deficit, which the Supreme Court rejected in February, involved declaring an imaginary emergency to justify tariffs under a statute that does not authorize them. His backup plan, which he revealed immediately after that decision, avoids the second difficulty but not the first one.” (03/11/26)
https://reason.com/2026/03/11/trumps-new-tariff-plan-still-asserts-a-crisis-that-does-not-exist/
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28) After Loneliness: Breaking Bread in Authoritarian America
Source: TomDispatch
by Mattea Kramer
“All the way back in 2023, the surgeon general diagnosed Americans as suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. More recently, amid the rise of American fascism, I started to notice that people were not only lonely but had also begun referring to the world as simply ‘the news.’ Perceived that way — as a phenomenon pre-packaged via our devices — our bond with the world was distilled into just two options: consume the news or don’t. A sense of powerlessness is baked into such a perception. By contrast, I remembered once reading an interview with billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who described the world as atoms constantly shifting and moving. With intention and focus, she pointed out, you can move those atoms yourself, and so move the world. Baked into that worldview was a sense of interconnectedness, not to mention power. Was such a perspective a luxury of the billionaire class? In fact, no.” (03/10/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/after-loneliness/
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29) The Reagan White House Rejected Trump’s Tariff Power Claims
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness
“In his latest bid to salvage his protectionist trade agenda, President Donald Trump imposed a new 10% tariff on all imports to the United States. To justify this move, Trump cited the existence of a trade deficit and invoked an obscure clause of the Trade Act of 1974, called Section 122. This clause allows the president to impose tariffs for up to 150 days; however, its provisions only apply in the presence of a ‘large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.’ Trump’s use of Section 122 is illegal because the United States does not currently have a balance-of-payments deficit. … He is the first president to attempt to use this clause for a reason. Previous administrations have examined its text in detail and come to the conclusion that Section 122 simply does not apply to common trade deficits.” (03/11/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/03/11/reagan-rejected-trumps-tariff/
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30) Every Element of Stephen Miller’s Immigration Agenda Is Designed for Ethnic Cleansing
Source: The UnPopulist
by Kyle Varner, MD
“Contemporary debates over U.S. immigration policy are framed almost entirely in the language of pathology: cruelty, incompetence, authoritarian drift, constitutional erosion. These diagnoses are not wrong, but they describe merely surface phenomena while neglecting to account for the scope and intent of the policies, thus obscuring the form of power that generates them. What was sold to voters as a program of robust law enforcement intended to restore order has become something wholly different: a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” (03/11/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/every-element-of-stephen-millers
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31) Iran’s new leader could spark a revolution
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“On Monday, while visiting Australia to compete in a tournament, five members of the Iranian women’s soccer team were struggling in a hotel room over whether to defect and escape suppression back home. Their struggle ended when Naghmeh Danai, an Iranian-Australian and a migration agent, told them, ‘You will have more respect [here].’ … This minor tale of Iranians seeking to be honored on their merits reflects a major theme during the many years of protests in Iran: An authoritarian theocracy purposely set up in 1979 to replace a dynastic monarchy has come to rely on nepotism and crony networks to keep itself in power, denying opportunities for many Iranians and leading to corrupt, ineffective governance.” (03/10/26)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0310/Iran-s-new-leader-could-spark-a-revolution
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32) Filibuster and Forever
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“You remember how the American filibuster works, right? Quick version: The Senate’s rules require not a simple majority of 51 votes but a supermajority of 60 votes to approve most legislation. However, it only takes a simple majority of 51 votes to change this rule — the so-called ‘nuclear option.’ Why, you may ask, does the filibuster endure? The usual story is “What comes around, goes around.” The other party will eventually get control of House, Senate, and presidency. Ending the filibuster helps your party fulfill its fondest dreams in the short run, but realizes your worst nightmare in the long run. Since both parties know this, the filibuster survives.” (03/11/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/filibuster-and-forever
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33) We Are The Villains In This Story
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Nobody wants to believe they’re the villain in the story. Nobody wants to believe their government is run by psychopaths who are inflicting unfathomable evils upon populations around the globe in order to rule the world. It’s much nicer to believe you’re the Good Guys. Much easier to sit with the idea that your government might make an innocent mistake here and there, but overall is a driving force for the good of humankind, and is certainly superior to the villains it makes war with. That’s a fiction, though. It’s a comfortable lie. A fairy tale that westerners tell themselves to avoid a profoundly uncomfortable truth: We are the villains. We are the terrorists. We are the tyrants. We are the evil regime. Our soldiers aren’t out there defending our country, they’re out there murdering people for defending their country.” (03/11/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/03/11/we-are-the-villains-in-this-story/
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34) “Pick Your Ten”: The best advice I ever got in my life
Source: The Eternally Radical Idea
by Greg Lukianoff
“You can have friends whose opinions you don’t take seriously, and you can have opponents whose point of view you very much do. So, pick your ten. Figure out who the small number of people are whose judgment you genuinely trust, the people who know you well enough and love you enough to tell you the truth when you’re wrong, when you’re being unfair, when you’re getting carried away, or when — to use the technical term — you are full of shit. Then, when the crowd is screaming, when the internet is losing its mind, when strangers are confidently informing you who you are and why you did what you did, bring it back to those ten. Ask yourself what they would think. … even better, go and ask them yourself.” (03/11/26)
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/pick-your-ten-the-best-advice-i-ever
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35) Who Needs Glyphosate?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joel Salatin
“President Donald Trump’s executive order of Feb. 18 invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 to ensure US glyphosate production and availability is neither necessary nor helpful. HHS Secretary and Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) founder Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s endorsement of the order has created a firestorm in that health-interested base. On Feb. 22, Kennedy conducted triage explanations to his base with this statement: ‘Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.’ He went on to post that ‘if these inputs disappeared overnight, crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms ….’ Kennedy then described the many weed control alternatives that are being developed. All of us farmers in the nonchemical community already use many of these innovative alternatives …. We pay a slight premium, but these farmers have great yields and are certainly not going out of business like many more conventional operations.” (03/11/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/who-needs-glyphosate/
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36) A Deeply Human Vision
Source: Law & Liberty
by Samuel Gregg
“[Adam] Smith is convinced that the commercial society which he describes and analyzes in The Wealth of Nations cannot do without the morally sensitive being of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, if markets and liberty more generally are to be sustained over the long-term. There is, however, something else that unites the two books. Both flow from Smith’s commitment to the Scottish Enlightenment project of improvement, at the heart of which is what David Hume called the ‘science of man.’ That is the light in which we should place these two volumes. It reveals to us Smith’s essential humanism as someone who believed that the economy of natural liberty was part-and-parcel of what Smith called a ‘decent’ society.” (03/11/26)
https://lawliberty.org/forum/a-deeply-human-vision/
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37) Trump delivered [sic] for tipped workers; why do Democratic governors hate them?
Source: Fox News
by Andrew Bracy
“It’s never easy working for tips. For eight years, from 2014 to 2022, I did just that. I was a server at a Maine hotel, taking orders at the restaurant and bringing customers their food. Some nights, I’d make $200 or even $300. Other nights, I’d make half that, or less. … I got married to a coworker I met on the job, and before leaving the dining room, we had two kids. I had to bring home the bacon, but it was hard to estimate how much I’d make in a given year. And every year, come April 15th, I had a choice to make. Would I report my tip income on my taxes? Or would I keep it off the books and keep more money in my pocket? I always made the lawful choice. But it was tough.” [editor’s note: The “lawful choice” would be to pocket it all as “gifts” with no paperwork involved – SAT] (03/11/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-delivered-tipped-workers-why-do-democratic-governors-hate-them
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38) But What About China? A Response to Tariff Advocates
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert
“Erratic tariff policy is alienating our allies, weakening exactly the coalition we’d need to address Beijing’s behavior.” (03/11/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/but-what-about-china-a-response-to-tariff-advocates/
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39) Why Hezbollah’s “irrational” gambit against Israel makes sense
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Ali Rizk
“It is fighting for the survival of the organization and of Shiites there, and in the region. The US would be wise not to get sucked into this conflict, too.” (03/11/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hezbollah-lebanon-israel/
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40) The Tea Party Stumbled So That MAGA Could Fall
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Alan Mosley
“Political movements often begin as revolts against entrenched power, only to be absorbed by the very institutions they sought to challenge. The pattern is familiar in American political history. Grassroots insurgencies ignite public enthusiasm, mobilize voters around neglected issues, and briefly threaten the ruling consensus. Yet over time they are either neutralized or transformed into instruments of the existing political order. Two movements defined the political awakening of many Americans in the early twenty-first century: the Tea Party and the MAGA movement. Both promised a revolt against Washington. Both claimed to represent ordinary Americans against an unaccountable ruling class. Both attracted millions of supporters who believed they were witnessing the birth of something genuinely transformative. Yet both ultimately failed.” (03/11/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-tea-party-stumbled-so-that-maga-could-fall
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41) Why the Democrats Are Not Radical Enough
Source: Common Dreams
by Les Leopold
“Centrist Democrats argue that the party should not ‘go so far left in a primary that they can’t win against MAGA in the general.’ As the Center for Working Class Politics observes, these ‘Third Way’ Democrats stress ‘affordability’ and ‘abundance’ without taking on the billionaire class. Progressive Democrats, including groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party, are seen as just too radical to attract working-class voters. I disagree. I think the problem is that Democrats, even progressive Democrats, are not radical enough. We have only to look at former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 ‘Four Freedoms’ State of the Union address to be reminded of what our politics could be and should be. The ‘Four Freedoms’ (of speech and religion, from want and fear) are properly the best remembered parts of the address.” (03/11/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/dems-job-guarantee
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42) The Bourgeoisie Has Switched Sides
Source: Yascha Mounk
by Yascha Mounk
“It is impossible to understand the recent politics of the Western world without considering a giant sociological transformation—one that, inevitable though it may seem in retrospect, nearly nobody predicted: The bourgeoisie has switched sides. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the proletariat was the political stronghold of the left. The bourgeoisie was the stronghold of the right. Indeed, the assumption that affluent professionals would tend to be conservative is reflected in the most famous political treatises and pieces of art that the period produced. Karl Marx called on the workers, not on the lawyers or freelance illustrators, of the world to unite. … But of late, these realities have started to shift, with huge impacts on contemporary politics.” (03/11/26)
https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/the-paradox-of-infinite-voices-and
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43) War with Iran: Making the Same Mistakes All Over Again, or a Host of New Ones?
Source: Antiwar.com
by Cody Morgan
“For anyone looking into the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, what’s laid bare is not a history of friendship, diplomacy, and mutual respect, but rather a past marked with covert action, harsh rhetoric, and now, hot war.” (03/11/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/cody_morgan/2026/03/10/war-with-iran-making-the-same-mistakes-all-over-again-or-a-host-of-new-ones/
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44) Copyright Bullying vs. Religious Freedom
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Kit Walsh
“EFF’s client, J. Doe, is a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who became interested in the history of the organization’s public statements, and how they’ve changed over time. They created research tools to analyze those documents and ultimately created a website, JWS Library, allowing others to use those tools and verify their findings through an archive that included documents suppressed by the church. … There is no law against questioning the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Instead, Watch Tower argues that Doe’s activities constitute copyright infringement and seeks to use the special process provided in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to unmask them. It sent DMCA subpoenas to Google and Cloudflare, seeking information that would help them uncover Doe’s identity. The problem for Watch Tower is that Doe’s research and commentary are clear fair uses allowed under copyright law.” (03/10/26)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/copyright-bullying-vs-religious-freedom-0
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45) Iranian women’s soccer team shows what real oppression looks like
Source: New York Post
by Kirsten Fleming
“The post-Olympics news cycle was a dizzying display of handwringing over the supposed victimhood of empowered, badass American female athletes. If we were to believe much of our media and feminist commentators, these women had been disrespected by President Trump, who cracked a joke, and by the men of Team USA hockey, who laughed. It led to an online geyser of anger and indignation on the women’s behalf. During their match against South Korea in Australia last week, the Iranian women’s soccer team took part in a quiet protest by not singing along to their national anthem — less than 48 hours after the US began striking Tehran. Off the phony controversy, we heard the refrain that women athletes are treated like gum on the bottom of a shoe.” (03/10/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/10/opinion/iranian-soccer-team-shows-feminists-what-oppression-looks-like/
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46) It’s a War With Iran, Not an “Intervention”
Source: The Intercept
by Séamus Malekafzali
“Elected officials desperately want to cast our war with Iran as an ‘intervention’ or ‘operation.’ Don’t let them get away with it.” (03/10/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/10/iran-trump-forever-war/
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47) Upholding Liberal Education
Source: Liberal Currents
by Christopher M Cruz
“A genuinely liberal education is about freedom, and not in some utilitarian or sophomoric sense of freedom as a rejection of form or boundaries. The indispensability of a liberal education is the freedom from being tied to the zeitgeist of one’s age or situation to love what is true, good, and beautiful, and to be initiated into the world while cultivating a love for it. Such a vision of education advances an inward concern as opposed to the more technical processes typically promoted in teacher education.” (03/10/16)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/upholding-liberal-education/
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48) The End of “Legitimacy”
Source: Persuasion
by Sam Kahn
“We’re no longer in the domain of the Pax Americana, where the West’s gains at the end of World War II, and then at the end of the Cold War, are vigorously defended (even if the defense of the North Atlantic sometimes extended all the way to Afghanistan) with the premise that many of those gains are as much about principles — universal human rights, the rule of law — as territory. We’re also no longer in the kind of sovereignty that the Russians sometimes facetiously proposed — and that Trump not so long ago seemed interested in — where national autonomy is paramount regardless of sticky annoyances like human rights; or where, in an alternative version of the same theory, powers have exclusive control over their regional sphere of influence.” (03/10/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-end-of-legitimacy
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49) The War for Gulf State Capital
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Since Donald Trump kicked off a March weekend by attempting to bomb a country of 90 million people back to the Stone Age, there is a question nobody in the White House has been able to answer: Why go to war with Iran? The shifting set of justifications has been pretty comical to watch, whipsawing from liberating the Iranian people to self-defense from Iranian attacks to preventing nuclear capability after a breakdown in negotiations (which was apparently not true) to payback for the 1979 revolution to the complicated tale that Iran would hit U.S. targets anyway once Israel struck first, so we might as well preempt that and get the volley of munitions started early. But in a press conference on Monday, Trump quietly hit on another rationale, one that may have more truth behind it than the others.” (03/11/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/03/11/iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-gulf-state-capital-oil/
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50) France, America, and the Trap of Extended Nuclear Deterrence
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“French leaders and the French people should be very cautious about embracing extended deterrence obligations. Primary deterrence — threatening nuclear retaliation for an attack on one’s own country — has a high level of credibility, so long as the country has the necessary weaponry to mount a serious counterstrike. Indeed, the main point of the Cold War era’s de facto doctrine of mutual assured destruction was based on that logic. The credibility of courting similar devastation in response to an aggressor’s attack on another country — even a close ally of the defender — has always had much lower credibility.” (03/10/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/france-america-and-the-trap-of-extended-nuclear-deterrence/
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) The Political Orphanage, 03/11/26
Source: The Political Orphanage
“A.I. and the Future of Scams.” (03/11/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/ai-and-the-future-of-scams
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52) Ron Paul Liberty Report, 03/11/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“As Iran War Escalates, Congress Passes Automatic Involuntary Draft Registration.” (03/11/26)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1AJEmOXOagbJL
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53) The Permanent Problem, episode 11
Source: Niskanen Center
“Defending liberalism (and how not to), with Damon Linker.” (03/11/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/defending-liberalism-and-how-not-to-with-damon-linker
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54) Jeffrey Sachs Is Trying To Fix The New York Times’s Iran War Coverage, One Email At A Time
Source: Racket News
“The road to regime change began 16 days after Inauguration Day. The Times isn’t interested.” (03/11/26)
https://www.racket.news/p/jeffrey-sachs-is-trying-to-fix-the
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55) Reason Interview: Mark Chenoweth
Source: Reason
“Can the Government Ban You from Telling the Truth?” (03/11/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/03/11/can-the-government-ban-you-from-telling-the-truth/
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56) Rising, 03/11/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave delivers his radar on a now-deleted tweet from CNN that sparked outrage for how it framed its story on the failed bombing plot in New York City.” (03/11/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/5774564-rising-march-11-2026/
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57) The Kyle Anzalone Show, 03/10/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski: Operation Epic Failure: Trump’s War in Iran Is NOT Going As Planned.” (03/10/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/the-kyle-anzalone-show-guest-lt-col-karen-kwiatkowski-operation-epic-failure-trumps-war-in-iran-is-not-going-as-planned/
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58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 03/11/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“US-Israeli Strikes Hit Civilian Targets Across Iran, Coalition To End Draft Registration, and More.” (03/11/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTV0n0nLR4
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59) Politics Politics Politics, 03/10/26
Source: Politics Politics Politics
“The Dumb State of Iran Discourse. Scoping Out Trump’s Wartime Deadlines (with Kirk Bado).” (03/10/26)
https://www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/p/the-dumb-state-of-iran-discourse
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60) Free Speech Unmuted, 03/10/26
Source: Hoover Institution
“Equal Time, Stephen Colbert, and the Future of Political Broadcasting | Eugene Volokh and Jane Bambauer.” (03/10/26)
https://free-speech-unmuted.podbean.com/e/equal-time-stephen-colbert-and-the-future-of-political-broadcasting-eugene-volokh-and-jane-bambauer-hoover-institution/
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