Author: nick

[ad_1] Ann Wright reports on Gaza Flotilla survivors’ accounts of horrifying abuse by Israeli forces — of the same suffered by Palestinians without any international official protest. Entrance to the Israeli Knesset, 2022. (Clema12 / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0) By Ann Wright It has been only four days since members of the Gaza flotilla arrived in Istanbul and told of the rape, assaults and abuse they endured from the Israeli military on their sailboats, from security personnel on the prison ship, from civilian police at the Ashdod processing center and from guards at the notoriously abusive Ktzi’ot prison where…

[ad_1] When I was in college, liberals, not conservatives, were more zealous in defending free speech, when it came to issues like whether pornography ought to be constitutionally protected. In 1990, when I was in law school, and my first-year constitutional law class discussed Texas v. Johnson, the famous flag burning case, only the more conservative students thought that what Gregory Johnson did should not be constitutionally protected expressive conduct. At that time, a decade before I took Professor Volokh’s free speech class when I was a graduate student in the political science department at UCLA, I hoped that someday,…

[ad_1] Joshua Scheer Pope Leo XIV is warning that artificial intelligence, if left in the hands of profit-hungry corporations and unaccountable tech oligarchs, could unleash a “social calamity” by replacing human work. And now even the markets are beginning to price in the fear. Prediction traders on Kalshi see a 60% chance that U.S. unemployment crosses 8% before 2030, while also betting that AI may already be the leading cause of job cuts this month. With the Pope writing “Work remains a fundamental dimension of the human experience, for not only is it a means of sustenance, but it…

[ad_1] Last week, President Donald Trump settled his own spurious lawsuit against the government he controls by wresting $1.8 billion from the federal treasury to use for his own ends. It seems clear the disbursement has no noncorrupt purpose, and the administration is relying on extremely weak legal arguments to make its case. The case stemmed from a January 2026 lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS, seeking $10 billion in damages, after a disgruntled government contractor leaked his tax returns to the press. “This claim is nonsensical and worthless,” according to Cato Institute scholar David Post, who estimated “a reasonable valuation of…

[ad_1] What is hegemony? Is the United States losing it? Michael Brenner for Consortium News HEGEMONY. “Hegemony, Hegemon everywhere — but not a ‘definition’ in sight.” Talk about American foreign policy is fixated on the word — omnipresent in all manner of discourse: academic, journalistic, political. It shares characteristics with other trendy terms that have won favor and fervor — e.g. existential or transgender — without any agreement on what real-world phenomena they refer to.  We don’t debate their precise meaning; instead, we make a facile assumption that any person’s individual understanding of its meaning is the implicitly genuine one…

[ad_1] U.S. households are now 18.79 trillion dollars in debt. In 1980, U.S. households were just 1.4 trillion dollars in debt. Over the past several decades we have witnessed a household debt binge that is unlike anything that we have ever witnessed in our entire history. But if consumers could handle that debt load, there wouldn’t be such a high level of concern. Unfortunately, just like we witnessed prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, Americans are getting behind on their debts at a staggering rate. This isn’t going to end well, but of course many of you…

[ad_1] As the Trump administration continues its deportation crackdown, it’s finding new ways to make it harder for people to immigrate to the United States legally.  On Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a policy memo requiring anyone seeking an adjustment of immigration status to do so “outside the United States,” unless they qualify for “extraordinary circumstances.” This policy—which is effective immediately but lacks the force of law, as it’s a guidance document—would be a sharp departure from the current process that allows those here on temporary status to apply for permanent residency without leaving the country. According…

[ad_1] One of America’s top AI companies—Anthropic—refused to sign off on a contract unless the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) promised not to use its technology to power autonomous killer robots or carry out domestic mass surveillance. So, the Pentagon accused it of trying to undermine U.S. sovereignty by dictating how we fight our wars. Defense Undersecretary Emil Michael put it plainly in a March 2026 interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box: “We realized we are dependent on this one provider who wants to insert their policy preferences in the middle of an operation.” Anthropic sued the Pentagon for labeling it…

[ad_1] I’m delighted to report that Prof. Ronald Den Otter (Cal Poly) will be guest-blogging this week about this new book. The publisher’s summary: In contrast to recent efforts to restrict students by putting more power in the hands of parents and school officials, Ronald C. Den Otter makes a bold and rigorously argued case for respecting the autonomy of students and expanding their free-speech rights. In recent years, the debate over student speech has roiled college campuses and elicited a wave of books and articles, from both the Right and the Left, over what speech is permissible and who…

[ad_1] From Judge Thomas O. Farrish (D. Conn.) last Monday in Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. v. Shell Oil Co.: The defendants, Shell Oil Company and others (“Defendants”), have moved the Court for an order compelling the plaintiff, Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. (“CLF”), to produce materials on which its expert witness, Dr. Naomi Oreskes, relied upon in producing her expert witness report…. The parties … had resolved all issues identified in the letter briefs except for “their dispute concerning Defendants’ request for the prompts Dr. Oreskes used in conducting her AI analysis and outputs.” … CLF first protests that artificial intelligence…