Author: nick
The Constitution of the United States could not be clearer on the question of who possesses the authority to take the nation to war. Article I, Section 8 grants Congress alone the power “to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” The Founders understood that the decision to send Americans to kill and die in foreign lands was too consequential to rest in the hands of a single individual. They had witnessed the European monarchs drag their subjects into endless conflicts for dynastic glory and they resolved that the American…
Image by NASA. The planet’s climate system has turned erratic. Scientific reports over the past 24 months signal trouble ahead as forecasts become impossible with a helter-skelter system. It’s almost like the planet is regurgitating the anthropogenic (human) input of the past couple hundred years within two years, the biggest planetary vomit of all time. Studies over the past two years increasingly refer to major fundamental shifts that change everything civilization has been built upon, best expressed by John Marsham, professor of Atmospheric Science/University of Leeds: “Our entire infrastructure & civilization are based around a climate that no longer exists.”…
A jury sentenced former Missouri City, Texas, police officer Blademir Viveros to 15 years in prison for causing a deadly crash while on duty in 2024. Prosecutors said he was driving 107 miles per hour without using his lights or sirens when he slammed into another car, killing a mother and her teenage son. A third person, who was handcuffed in the back of Viveros’ police car, was partially paralyzed in the crash and later died. The verdict came after the jury previously found Viveros guilty on three counts of aggravated assault by a public servant. The post Brickbat: Too Fast for…
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard P. Feynman *** “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the…
A Dugong near Marsa Alam in Egypt. Photo by Camille Ménard, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” As our power-mad president tapped out that genocidal threat, a whale shark in the Persian Gulf was navigating waters it has known for millennia. It is the largest fish alive — the size of a school bus, spotted like a galaxy, moving with a gentleness that is hard to reconcile with its scale. If a diver comes too close, it curves its huge body to avoid them. Its wide-grin mouth is…
The American people need the Iran war like a fish needs a bicycle. For our politicians and permanent bureaucrats, it’s a different story. The political class, adrift after the Soviet Union fell, needed a new animating mythos. Neoconservatives taught them to experience preemptive war against tinpot tyrants as a civilizational crusade. The Middle East – where America’s “greatest ally” faced existential threats – offered the ideal stage for the clash between order and barbarism. Here was the role of a lifetime: to call the shots on a world-historical mission that cast unilateral hard power as virtue. No wonder they cling to it, even after every failed regime-change…
President Donald Trump owes the Pakistanis for securing a fourteen-day ceasefire with Iran. He now has a chance to extricate the United States from the biggest blunder of his second term. Tensions, however, remain high. “It is emphasized that this does not signify the termination of the war,” the Iranian government said in a formal statement. “Our hands remain upon the trigger, and should the slightest error be committed by the enemy, it shall be met with full force.” One must worry that Trump does not appreciate the ceasefire off-ramp as good luck or an unmerited gift; instead, he likely…
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) fires a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile during operations in support of Operation Epic Fury, Feb. 28, 2026. Photo: U.S. Navy. Before he became one of the great diplomats of the twentieth century, Henry Kissinger wrote his dissertation about the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich. Kissinger closely studied how European diplomats like Metternich constructed a new regional order after the defeat of Napoleon. Metternich was an early expert in the art of herding cats, with the felines being powerful European leaders. Drawing on those insights during his stint as national…
Israel’s latest war on Lebanon is not only being waged from the air. It is being reinforced politically from within, as Beirut moves in step with US-Israeli efforts to isolate Hezbollah and weaken Iran’s negotiating position. In a previous article, we examined the seven messages that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to communicate through mass killings in Lebanon. These messages were aimed at reshaping regional dynamics, asserting deterrence, and forcing new political realities on the ground. Those massacres have already resulted in hundreds of Lebanese killed and more than a thousand wounded, alongside vast destruction of civilian infrastructure, according…
Are the people as clueless as the Deep State expects them to be? You have to wonder. Standing on the tarmac in France before meetings with European foreign ministers, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained to reporters that for Iran to ever get nuclear weapons would be crazy. “Look what they’re willing to do with the weapons they have now.” It doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary that a country attacked repeatedly by the most fearsome nation on earth and its companion war provocateur should want to use the weapons in has now in self-defense. Rubio knows who attacked whom…