This talk was delivered on Friday, September 2, 2022, to the Ron Paul Scholars Seminar in northern Virginia. The remarks I’ve prepared today relate to your personal and professional development, which are of course closely interrelated. This is not to be confused with “self-help,” a somewhat disreputable genre whose practitioners often want to sell you shortcuts. Development means just that: developing your skills, knowledge, and interests to advance toward goals which hopefully become more...

A new report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a program of the US Department of Education, confirms what most parents already knew: shutting down the schools because of the panic over covid was a disaster for American schoolchildren. According to the NAEP, since the 2020 school shutdowns the average nine-year-old suffered a decline in reading skills and math skills. The reading skills decline is the largest since 1990. The math skills decline is the first ever...

If you play poker with a guy named Doc often enough you learn to watch his hands carefully when it’s his turn to hold the deck. Same when the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Intelligence Community (IC), and the FBI sit down at the table with the American people. The game right now is will he or won’t he; will Attorney General Merrick Garland indict Donald Trump over something to do with classified information held at Mar-a-Lago? Everyone is holding their cards tight to the vest,...

Nowadays, political dogma trampling economic pragmatism drives European government action as shown by the imposition of Green Party ideology on Germany’s energy policy risking the deindustrialization of Europe’s leading economy. Another case is the conflict started by the Lithuanian government against China, illustrated by the Baltic country’s decision last year to open a “Taiwanese representative office”, an event that prompted the Chinese government to downgrade state relations, an...

Have you ever noticed how those who shriek the loudest about tyranny in foreign countries are always the same people calling for the censorship and deplatforming of anyone who criticizes the western empire? It’s a ubiquitous mind virus throughout western society. Anyone — and I do mean anyone — who aggressively and consistently criticizes the foreign policy of the US and its allies in front of a sizeable audience gets branded a Russian agent by empire apologists, and this consensus is...

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln In America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. “We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties. The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time, but the end...

Outraged western leaders are threatening a price cap on imports of Russian natural gas after Moscow cut supplies to Europe this month, deepening an already dire energy and cost-of-living crisis. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Europe will “freeze” this winter unless there is a change of tack. In this back-and-forth, the West keeps stepping up the rhetoric. Putin is accused of using a mix of blackmail and economic terror against Europe. His actions supposedly prove...

Yesterday, a filing by Special Counsel John Durham revealed that Igor Danchenko, who worked as a key contributor to the discredited Steele dossier funded by the Clinton campaign, was later put on the FBI payroll as an informant. The disclosure rocked Washington and raised additional questions of the FBI’s eagerness to pursue any allegations against Donald Trump despite being warned that the dossier appeared to be a vehicle for Russian disinformation. Danchenko is facing with five counts of...

It is astonishing how many observers of war in Ukraine who should know better have been inclined to take at face value the assertions of “sources” that clearly originate among the various governments that are involved in the conflict. Those leaders who are engaged in the inexorable march by the US and its allies to turn the Ukraine crisis into World War 3 surely have learned the lesson that managing the narrative of what is taking place is the greatest weapon that the war hawks have in their...

The New York Times has disclosed that the US shared vital intelligence with the Ukrainian military and took part in the preparation of the latter’s current “counteroffensive” near Kharkov. No matter the Biden Administration’s motivations in publicising its role in what western media is celebrating as a success story — presumably, with an eye on domestic politics in America — it could be factually correct. The media leak puts the dramatic happenings in the past 3-4 days in proper perspective. ...

A Swiss billboard is making the rounds on social media depicting a young woman on the telephone. The caption reads, "Does the neighbor heat the apartment to over 19 degrees (66F)? Please inform us." While the Swiss government has dismissed the poster as a fake, the penalties Swiss citizens face for daring to warm their homes are very real. According to the Swiss newspaper Blick, those who violate the 66 degree heating limit could face as many as three years in prison!Prison time for heating...

Most Americans are unaware how close Russia and Ukraine came to ending the current war in April. Last March 27, Ukraine president Zelensky told his people "Our goal is obvious – peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible." He was hinting at what went unsaid: Ukraine and Russia, brokered by NATO member Turkey, reached a tentative fifteen-point peace plan to end the month old war. Key points were Russia withdraw from all Ukraine except for breakaway Donbas...

Whatever your feelings about former President Trump, there are reasons to be skeptical when government officials say it was necessary to raid his Florida home to recover classified documents that threatened national security. Like the former president, I was once accused by the government of mishandling classified information connected to my representation of a detainee at Guantanamo Bay. There was nothing in my client’s file that posed any danger to national security. My client was an...

What would you do if you were Merrick Garland? Would you prosecute Trump? Or would you walk away, concerned about accusations you and the FBI were playing politics?Step One appears easy, put off any decision until after the midterms. Trump is not a candidate, key issues driving the midterms (inflation, Ukraine, Roe) are not his issues and though Trump is actively stumping for many candidates, initiating any prosecution before the midterms is just too obvious. Nothing else about Mar-a-Lago has...

The latest empty cliché that one hears out of the mouth of Christians is “Pray for Ukraine.” But do Christians who utter this pious platitude even know what they mean when they say it?I suppose that it is supposed to mean that we should pray for the people of Ukraine who are suffering because of the unjustified Russian invasion of their country. If only things were that simple.Some observations are in order.This appeal is based on the overly simplistic yet false and evil notion of Ukraine,...