Science is all about taking a look at the consensus and poking a hole in it and testing it and going, “I’m not quite sure of that.”
Ron Johnson, M.D., in an April 23, 2026, interview in The Epoch Times.
On May 10, 1768, riots broke out in London after John Wilkes was imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticizing King George III.
“The Pentagon on Friday unsealed the first tranche of what it described as ‘new, never-before-seen’ files related to otherworldly encounters,” reports The Military Times, just a few “months after President Donald Trump directed the government to begin disclosing intelligence related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, characterized the dissemination of the archives as an effort to achieve “complete and maximum transparency.”
“With these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’” the president wrote, adding, “Have Fun and Enjoy!”
The Department of Defense — in coordination with the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Energy, NASA and the FBI — disclosed 162 files on its newly launched “UFO” website. Additional batches are expected to be released on a rolling basis as they are discovered and declassified.
The website is not on the much-ballyooed, newly registered domains of alien.gov and aliens.gov. It is, as linked above, war.gov/ufo.
There has been much commentary, no little amount of hype, and a sizable amount of frustration: this was a carefully curated conglomeration of arcana. Not a full disclosure of everything some people in the government know. For instance, the FBI was never a leader in accumulating UFO information, but FBI files lead this “tranche.”
Highly recommended, though, are the files from NASA on what astronauts saw in lunar missions Apollo 11, 12, and 17. Check them out.
Paul Jacob has been covering the UFO disclosure movement for several years now. Use the search bar, above, to put keywords “UFO” or “UAP” through the paces. Or just click on the category “government transparency.”
On May 9, 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression. This was not caused by the boom and bust cycle, credit inflation followed by deflation, or sunspots. It was caused by the “15 days to flatten the curve” pandemic lockdowns that most states had started in March or April of that year and had continued well past the promised end date.
The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” (German: 1873; 1896), in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings (1999), translated by Ronald Speirs.
Back then, Mississippi was ranked 50th in so many categories by which the states were measured against each other that the Magnolia State saved those inhabiting states near the bottom from occupying that un-coveted dead last place.
This was still the case in 2005, when Mississippi ranked 50th in fourth-grade reading scores. In 2013, Mississippi students climbed one rung, to 49th. Then things started to change.
“The transformation began in 2013 with the passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, a controversial law that allows schools to hold back students who cannot read by third grade,” WAPT, Jackson’s ABC-TV affiliate, recently reported.
“The curriculum shifted from balanced literacy to a phonics-forward approach,” WAPT explained, “and the state invested millions into phonics-based instruction, strict accountability measures, and instructional coaches who work inside schools daily.”
Imagine going back to the way generations were taught to read and, lo and behold, it still works!!!
“Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed Mississippi fourth graders ranked 9th in the nation for reading scores and 16th in the nation for math scores,” the TeachMS website informs. “Since 2013, that same category of students ranks No. 1 nationally for gains in reading and math.”
“Mississippi has skyrocketed on national tests, while blue states lag,” acknowledged a New York Times account earlier this year, adding that “adjusted for poverty and other student demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 for fourth grade reading and math, and at or near the top in eighth grade, according to the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank.”
Thank God for Mississippi.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Non è mai alcuna cosa sì disperata, che non
vi sia qualche via da poterne sperare.
No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope.
Niccolò Machiavelli, from The Mandrake (A.D. 1524), Act I, scene 1
On May 8, 1919, Australian journalist Edward George Honey (1885–1922) suggested, in a letter to a London newspaper, the idea of setting aside five minutes of silence to commemorate the fallen in the Great War. Using the pen name Warren Foster, Honey hoped to influence the ceremonies then in the planning for the first anniversary of the Armistice that signaled the end of the war on November 11, 1918: the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”
Just a few of the many examples reported by The Epoch Times:
Ohio. The elderly couple who paid off the mortgage on their home long ago but cannot now afford the property taxes is one reason that people are signing a statewide petition to eliminate local property taxes. It will take about 413,000 signatures, collected by a July 1, 2026 deadline, for the measure to reach the November ballot.
Florida and Texas. Legislators in Florida and Texas hope to limit the “flexibility” that local governments enjoy in how they raise revenue.
Minnesota and North Dakota. Lawmakers are pushing a cap on property tax increases tied to inflation and population growth. Voters would have to agree to any change in the cap. Recent school-board driven increases of 8 or 9 percent would be limited to 3 or 4 percent in typical scenarios.
Montana. Lawmakers want a two-percent limit on tax hikes for “local government spending but not for schools, which consume about 55 percent of property tax revenues.” A fatal flaw? Public schools are better at bloating costs than improving education.
The author observes that 46 states and D.C. already impose some sort oflimits on local property tax increases — though “their designs and restrictiveness differ widely,” adds the Tax Foundation.
Let’s improve those designs and increase the restrictiveness ASAP.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.
Polybius, The Histories, Book XVIII, Chapter 43.