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Update

A Parting Shot

Dr. Fauci, transparency, China, covid

This week Tulsi Gabbard stepped down as Director of National Intelligence. But, before she left, she got one more bit of secret government out in the open: the files showing just how evil Anthony Fauci is and was. Here is the beginning of the ODNI press release:

Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID
New Evidence Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress
WASHINGTON D.C. — Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.
Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.

ODNI News Release 11-26, June 18, 2026.

Tulsi Gabbard’s video announcement is well-spoken, as usual:

The release of data (to be found on the ODNI website) has received a great deal of social media attention, one of the most illustrious being a tweet from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “Thank you, Tulsi, for documenting Dr. Fauci’s central role in causing the COVID-19 pandemic — among the most consequential crimes in human history.”

Paul Jacob has covered Fauci’s perfidy and the “lab leak theory” extensively:

Categories
Thought

Crawford

The art of paradox can be learned in five minutes, and practised by any child; it consists chiefly in taking two expressions of opinion from different authors, halving them, and uniting the first half of the one with the second half of the other. The result is invariably startling, and generally incomprehensible. When a young society critic knows how to be startling and incomprehensible, his reputation is soon made, for people readily believe that what they cannot understand is profound, and anything which astonishes is agreeable to a taste deadened by a surfeit of spices.

F. Marion Crawford, Saracinesca (1887).

Categories
Today

Not a Nation

On the 20th of June in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Oliver Ellsworth moved to confine legislative powers to two distinct congressional bodies, and to strike the word “national” from the document. Edmund Randolph of Virginia had previously moved successfully to call the government the National Government of United States. Ellsworth moved that the government should continue to be called, simply, the United States of America.

The final wording eventually became “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

The words “nation” and “national” do not occur anywhere in the Constitution as ratified by the original set of states, or as amended.

John F. Kennedy authored the Encyclopædia Britannica’s article on Ellsworth. This was Kennedy’s only contribution to the encyclopedia.

The image, above, is of a portrait of Oliver Ellsworth by Ralph Earl (1785); it is housed, perhaps with a tinge of irony, in the National Portrait Gallery.

Categories
ideological culture Internet controversy political economy

A Quiz to Teach

affordability, inflation, costs, bureaucracy, government, regulations

I’m too old.

I’m too old, that is, to qualify as a contestant in the “million dollar question” drawing held, this summer, by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). To be eligible to win the million-buck prize (minus taxes!) one must be 18-35 years of age. (I’m a bit older than 35.) FEE is sponsoring this Million Dollar Contest Quiz as a way to promote the idea of a free society and its superiority to never-ending government regulation, taxation and subsidy.

What’s the question?

Nothing other than “what’s behind the affordability crisis?”

The answer, in short, is too much government.

But the quiz format helps explain that better.

“Most people blame capitalism,” we read, “but the reality is different. Healthcare, education, housing, and childcare are some of the most heavily regulated, subsidized, and mandated sectors in the American economy. They aren’t free markets. They’re crippled capitalism; markets distorted by decades of government intervention until they can no longer deliver quality at a price people can afford.”

If you are old, like me, you have probably encountered this case before. (If you read this column, you most definitely have!) But young people? They’re not so lucky. Most have endured public schools and government-regulated and -subsidized universities and received, there, increasingly Marxist nonsense about how capitalism enslaves us all.

When capitalism — basically, free markets with markets in capital goods, making up what Ludwig von Mises called “mass production for the masses” — liberates. 

Who? Just white males?

No. Free markets liberate all peaceful people. As the quiz and its answers make clear.

So take the quiz. Learn something. But, if you’re over 35, pass it on to a young person!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Stigler

Dr. Smith and all of his sensible disciples have believed that people would not strive to do anything well unless there were a reasonable measure of agreement between the success of their efforts and the rewards they would receive.

George J. Stigler, “The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency,” Business Economics (1988): pp. 7-13.

Categories
Today

Juneteenth

“Juneteenth” (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation Day, is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those held as chattel slaves in the United States. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it has been celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, and on June 17, 2021, it was made into an official national holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies regulation

Mandatory Internet IDs

Parents Decide Act, privacy, law, OS

An assault on your freedom to use your computer without having to “verify your age” has migrated from states like California, Colorado, and New York to the United States Congress.

This is the so-called Parents Decide Act, which would “require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system.”

The honor system, the for-now method of the California law, doesn’t stop ten-year-olds from claiming to be 35. For such laws to “work,” the PC would have to require you to verify your age before you can use it.

That method cannot help but be invasive, like scans of your ID card or your face. Sure, many users of mobile computing devices have private security using their faces or fingerprints, but those users do not intend to share this secret information to third parties — which sure seems like what’s going on here.

PC Gamer observes that, although the method of age verification is crucial “in terms of privacy and data security,” the Energy and Commerce Committee will be deciding such things after passage. 

They’d have to pass the bill for us to see what’s in it.

Whatever the method, many users would obey, conscientiously giving the PC — and the PC or OS maker — ID or facial info that might be linked to purchase info in the company’s database.

Could such databases be hacked and provide criminals with new information with which to commit their crimes? Only if the umpteen stories per day on successful hacks of the databases of major companies are any clue.

“Save the children” is the familiar sales pitch, but if government is in charge of saving the children, our children are in trouble.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Mises

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy (1919).
Categories
Today

Susan B. Anthony

At the end of the trial in United States v. Susan B. Anthony, the defendant, Miss Anthony, was found guilty in an infamous trial and fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election, on June 18 of that year. Anthony never paid the fine.

She had registered in Rochester, New York, and would have voted for incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant if successful.



Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

First Amendment Needs Help!

JAWBONE Act, free speech, censorship, internet, social media

Newly proposed legislation would make it harder for federal officials to censor speech by pressuring third parties to censor speech.

The bipartisan bill has been dubbed the “Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression Act”— the JAWBONE Act — introduced by Senators Ted Cruz (R.-Tx.) and Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.). 

“Government coercion of such private speech intermediaries [like social media platforms] threatens freedom of speech and open inquiry,” it asserts, “particularly for users who have no say in, or knowledge of, how their speech or access to information is affected.”

Such censorship-delegation had been brought to light by lawsuits as well as by the willingness of a reconstituted Twitter — X, under the ownership of Elon Musk — to publicize communications between the federal government and Twitter employees during the COVID-19-era assaults on freedom of speech.

The JAWBONE act would prohibit federal agencies from coercing or threatening online and other services into changing content and would give victims the right to seek damages.

Now, you might be thinking, doesn’t the Constitution already prohibit the federal government from censoring us? Well, yes. It provides no exemption for government censorship implemented via plausibly (or implausibly) deniable delegation of the task. 

But we have had many legitimate debates about constitutional meaning. Further, we have also always had many illegitimate ones, in which people — including Supreme Court justices — seek to circumvent even the plainest and most unmistakable import of constitutional provisions. 

So the Constitution needs all the help it can get.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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