The RPI Challenge

There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo made that declaration in a speech concluding his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association. Because Cuomo’s spiel sought to rewrite history to exonerate politicians who ravaged Americans’ rights and liberties, it requires a rebuttal. Cuomo declared that “we maximized the moment...

“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”—Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis A federal COVID-19 vaccination strike force may soon be knocking on your door, especially if you live in a community with low vaccination rates. Will you let them in? More to the point, are you required to open the door? The Biden Administration has announced that it plans to send federal “surge response teams” on a “targeted community...

While reading this week's Ron Paul Institute email newsletter, published by my colleague Daniel McAdams, I was struck by a quote that I've certainly read before, but it's just so relevant when reading it again today: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn What is it about lies? Why are we constantly tasked with wading through a sea of lies? Well, part of...

Wanted: a pediatrician who actually believes in science and not child abuse. My children are months overdue for their checkups because they are distraught about having to wear masks. The baby, who doesn't yet have to cover her breathing orifices, was traumatized at her recent visit by seeing everyone dressed like a mummy. How can it be that the doctors responsible most for the health of children can't read simple data and studies showing clearly that children are more at risk from the trauma...

Progressives who work to end individual rights violations committed by the NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, and other federal agencies usually overlook, or even support, the routine violations of Americans’ rights by the IRS.For example, progressives rarely, if ever, speak out against the IRS’s targeting of the opponents of those in power. When liberal Democrats control the White House, the IRS targets advocates of free markets. When hawkish Republicans are in power, the IRS targets antiwar activists.The...

“Endemicity” is not a word that rolls off the vernacular tongue. Still, its new prominence in the halls of governments around the world is a huge ray of hope. It means that governments have at long last begun to regard the pathogen as potentially a manageable part of our world. The word endemic is a contrast to pandemic. A new virus of the sort we’ve been through moves from the pandemic stage to a manageable stage – and so it has been for all of history. And by manageable, epidemiologists do...

Imagine a massive nuclear exchange between the United States and China. That obviously would not be a pretty sight for the people of either nation. As the mushroom clouds arose over both nations, imagine thinking to yourself: “All this because of a socialist road.” According to an article in the London Daily Mail, the governments of China and Montenegro entered into an agreement in which China agreed to build a road for Montenegro that would extend to the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The road...

The American people have increasingly become aware that government surveillance and corporate censorship have combined to keep people ignorant and controlled. What is taking place has generated some dark humor. A friend of mine, also a former CIA officer, wrote to me recently and said tongue-in-cheek that he retains a lot of respect for the Agency because it is the only major government national security entity that does not read our mail and emails. Those jobs are the responsibility of the...

“Beatings will continue until morale improves” has morphed from an old joke to the latest prescription for national salvation. “Compulsory National Service Could Unite America,” whooped a New York Times Op-ed headline last week. Prominent media outlets, think tanks, and too many professors and former generals are calling for government to commandeer a year of young Americans’ lives to forcibly restore their faith in the political system. Rep. John Delaney made a one-year mandatory service...

The British newspaper Daily Telegraph did some kite-flying in the weekend that London is considering open-ended deployment of a contingent of elite special forces to Afghanistan “ to provide training to Afghan units and deploy with them on the ground as advisers.” At the same time, the New York Times reported that White House approves Gen. Austin S. Miller, the top American commander in Afghanistan, staying on at his post for “at least a couple more weeks,” although US troop withdrawal is...

The past year and a half has acted as a consistent test of our ability to process fact from fiction. Turn on the TV and you’ll surely run into a CDC or Big Pharma sponsored commercial demanding the population-wide embrace of the latest radical “solution” to the “scary virus” out there. Walk through any major American city and you’ll find yourself bombarded with advertisements and placards in both public and private spaces requesting your help with the campaign to “stop the spread” of COVID-19....

If Wednesday morning’s passive-voice ("Russian hackers are accused of"), evidence-free New York Times article titled "Attempted Hack of R.N.C. and Russian Ransomware Attack Test Biden" has a familiar ring, look who wrote it. The senior author is David Sanger, the NYT’s chief Washington correspondent. Based on Sanger’s unenviable record, the story he wrote with Nicole Perlroth can be dismissed as a proverbial nothingburger with Sanger sauce. The article claims that Russian hackers breached a...

Truth and politics are often mutually exclusive concepts when dealing with the progressive American Left. This unfortunate fact is being driven home in spades in an ongoing spat between two lefty online personalities. Anyone following Aaron Maté (149K followers on Twitter); The Young Turks (TYT, with 440K followers as an institution, and as many followers each tracking the activity of co-hosts Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian); the comedian Jimmy Dore (274K followers); or any number of other...

Time was when Britain’s mighty fleets ruled a quarter of the earth’s surface. I’ve been savoring the names of its dreadnaughts and battle cruisers like George V, Prince of Wales, Hood, Princess Royal, Iron Duke and scores of other renowned warships. Last week, the imperial British lion made a last, feeble roar by sending one of its new anti-aircraft destroyers, ‘Defender,’ to annoy the Russians by patrolling off the south-western coast of Crimea. Russia and Ukraine both claim Crimea, which had...

Two different media watchdog outlets, Media Lens and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), have published articles on the complete blackout in mainstream news institutions on the revelation by Icelandic newspaper Stundin that a US superseding indictment in the case against Julian Assange was based on false testimony from diagnosed sociopath and convicted child molester Sigurdur Thordarson. FAIR's Alan MacLeod writes that "as of Friday, July 2, there has been literally zero coverage of...

The end of the 20-year US war on Afghanistan was predictable: no one has conquered Afghanistan, and Washington was as foolish as Moscow in the 1970s for trying. Now, US troops are rushing out of the country as fast as they can, having just evacuated the symbol of the US occupation of Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base.While perhaps not as dramatic as the “Fall of Saigon” in 1975, where US military helicopters scrambled to evacuate personnel from the roof of the US Embassy, the lesson remains the...