On September 20, 480 BC, Greeks defeated Persian forces in the battle of Salamis.
All we have is the word of Department of Justice whistleblowers.
They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”
The targets were gun enthusiasts and those who questioned 2020’s election results.
“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.”
According to the whistleblowers, Facebook flagged allegedly subversive private messages and sent them to the FBI to be studied by agents specializing in domestic terrorism.
Facebook provided the FBI “with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” Subpoenas were then issued to obtain the conversations that Facebook had already revealed to the FBI.
According to one DOJ source: “As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”
Facebook has issued a denial. The FBI has issued a non-denial denial.
The allegations might seem very implausible but for the fact that as the November election approaches, the DOJ has been openly targeting Trump allies for claiming “that the vice president and/or president of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”
In short, for talking out of turn.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Michael Polanyi
When order is achieved among human beings by allowing them to interact with each other on their own initiative — subject only to the laws which uniformly apply to all of them — we have a system of spontaneous order in society.
Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (1951).
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First U.S. budget
On September 19, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first budget of the United States.
Congress last passed a budget in 1997.
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Watch: What Lao Tzu Said!
But it’s really Paul Jacob talking. And not just (or even mainly) about Taoist philosophy. Indeed, what the old sage said was just … Common Sense:
We live in interesting times. But that’s not what Lao Tzu said. For that and more, listen to Paul Jacob, who covers the big stories of the week as they have appeared on Common Sense with Paul Jacob, his daily commentary program. The stories?
This Week in Common Sense is Paul’s weekend podcast, available via your pod catcher as hosted on SoundCloud, and in video format as hosted on Rumble.
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Paul Feyerabend
Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge.
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1975).
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A Cornerstone
On September 18, 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building.
It has grown, since.
On September 18, 1838, Richard Cobden established the Anti-Corn Law League, which proceeded to bring free trade to Britain.
Should you talk to the police? Should you trust your mayor? Is it all about race? What about anarch0-tyranny and the Cloward-Piven Strategy? And the upcoming mid-terms?
Governing a large country is like frying a small fish.
Lǎozi was a Chinese philosopher (also called Lao Zi, Lao Tze, Lao Tse, or Lao Tzu), The Tao Te Ching (6th–5th century BC), Ch. 60.
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U. S. Constitution
On September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1849 on this same day in September, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in Philadelphia, but soon returned to Maryland to rescue her family. She made at least 13 trips into the slave-owning South to liberate more than 70 slaves before the Civil War — in which she served as a spy for the North.