Katie Pasitney and her mother, owners of the Universal Ostrich Farm in British Columbia, were arrested for defying a Canadian Food Inspection Agency order to leave their farm and surrender their birds as part of a response to a bird flu outbreak. The agency fears the disease could spread, so it plans to cull nearly 400 birds. The farmers have resisted, claiming the remaining ostriches are immune. The case took a turn when the Secwepemc Signatory Tribe declared the property unceded land and issued its own cease and desist to protect the animals and land. The case will now go to the Supreme Court of Canada, which halted the cull in the meantime.
Katie Pasitney and her mother, owners of the Universal Ostrich Farm in British Columbia, were arrested for defying a Canadian Food Inspection Agency order to leave their farm and surrender their birds as part of a response to a bird flu outbreak. The agency fears the disease could spread, so it plans to cull nearly 400 birds. The farmers have resisted, claiming the remaining ostriches are immune. The case took a turn when the Secwepemc Signatory Tribe declared the property unceded land and issued its own cease and desist to protect the animals and land. The case will now go to the Supreme Court of Canada, which halted the cull in the meantime.
Germany’s Biggest Tax Hike Since WWII: SPD Targets Families
Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
Faced with a rapidly worsening budget outlook, German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) believes he has finally found a fresh source of revenue. By scrapping the long-standing “marriage splitting” tax benefit—a system that allows couples to pool income and reduce their tax bill—he hopes to plug the ever-widening budget holes. It marks the preliminary climax of a tax hike debate designed less to fix Germany’s fiscal crisis than to relieve politicians from the pressure of implementing structural reforms.
In truth, this development comes as no surprise. The SPD has long sought to abolish marriage splitting. The measure is framed as a response to Germany’s structural deficit, which is projected to balloon to more than €170 billion by 2029—provided, of course, that the German economy does not sink even deeper into recession than it already has.
Ideology Masquerading as Fiscal Prudence
One must ask whether the recent public debate over inheritance tax hikes was nothing more than a test balloon, meant to measure how much additional burden the German population is willing to shoulder. Taken together, both initiatives—the higher inheritance tax and the abolition of marriage splitting—are perfectly complementary in the eyes of SPD ideologues. Both measures strike directly at a family and generational model regarded by the finance minister as “outdated” and now scheduled for fiscal liquidation.
The Social Democrats had long prepared themselves ideologically for this strike. And what else should one expect from a party that has, in large part, abandoned the classical family model—trading it in for identity-politics constituencies such as the transgender movement and other clientelist groups?
Klingbeil himself reveals what vision underlies this tax offensive: “Parental benefits should encourage men to take more responsibility in the family. Without those benefits for high-earning parents, it could once again become common for women to stay home. That would be a setback for equality,” he declared.
Beyond mere fiscal considerations, the SPD’s politicians are aiming for nothing less than the ideological reshaping of society. Through tax policy, they want to enforce a new societal model—one that strips citizens of real choice, stands in direct opposition to bourgeois traditions, and works against the civic foundations of the country.
DIW Provides “Scientific” Cover
And as always, whenever the state is on the hunt for new revenue streams, the Berlin-based German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) is close at hand. The economists around DIW president Marcel Fratzscher once again provide seemingly scientific cover. They calculate, down to the last decimal, how much the abolition of marriage splitting would bring into government coffers.
According to DIW, eliminating the system would generate additional tax revenues of €20 to €25 billion annually. This figure corresponds to the current shortfall created by the policy, since it primarily benefits couples with very unequal incomes—such as single-earner households. Voilà: the budget gap would be closed, at least temporarily. And all this without painful reforms, spending cuts, or coalition strife.
To DIW, marriage splitting is nothing more than a relic of patriarchy. But this view illustrates the real dilemma of publicly financed institutes: in case of doubt, they always bow to the prevailing ideology of the day, moving ever further away from their actual mission of neutral scientific analysis. In reality, it would be their duty to point out the blatant imbalances in Germany’s fiscal architecture—its bloated bureaucracy, its suffocating tax burden, and its overreaching state that strangles private enterprise.
Drowning in Revenue, Crying Poor
For the ongoing debate about higher taxes to occur against such a backdrop borders on the grotesque. Germany already operates with a state quota exceeding 50%. Federal revenues have soared in the last decade, rising from roughly €311 billion in 2015 to €440.6 billion in 2024—an increase of about 42%.
The trend is accelerating. In just the first half of 2025, €273.2 billion flowed into Berlin’s coffers, a jump of 5.5% compared to the previous year. Tax receipts, the largest component of revenue, climbed from €282 billion (2015) to €375 billion (2024). By August 2025 they had already reached €247.6 billion. The state is, quite literally, swimming in money.
Despite this, Berlin keeps inventing new taxes to soften coalition conflicts and delay reforms. For 2026, the government plans another hefty spending increase of about 6%, taking total federal outlays to roughly €530 billion. Meanwhile, the private economy is forecast to shrink by 4–5%. The political class in Berlin seems to have forgotten a simple truth: state revenues ultimately depend on a thriving private economy. Instead of cutting spending in a time of depression, Berlin doubles down on statism and redistribution.
A Blow to Social Cohesion
That the SPD is now preparing the largest tax increase since World War II—deliberately targeting the family, the bedrock of bourgeois society—will inevitably deepen Germany’s already fragile social fractures. The decisive question is whether the coalition partner, the CDU, will mount a robust defense and reject the plan.
So far, conservatives remain evasive. Back in May, CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann dismissed an SPD proposal, stressing that marriage splitting must be preserved unless replaced by a broader “family splitting” model that also covers non-traditional households. In July, the CDU Women’s Union categorically rejected the SPD’s demand, underlining the high social value of supporting family structures.
Yet, as with so many issues, one never really knows where the CDU will stand in the end. If past experience is any guide, coalition loyalty may once again outweigh principle. In that case, Germany is heading toward its most consequential tax raid in generations—one that will weaken families, polarize society, and erode what remains of its economic backbone.
* * *
About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
Turkey Joins Arab States In Backing Trump’s Gaza Plan, But Hamas Likely To Reject It
As of Tuesday, President Trump gave Hamas “two or three” days to respond positively to his 20-point Gaza peace plan, which is now being studied by Hamas.
Axios says that Qatar and Egypt are the prime mediators, having presented the plan to Hamas leaders in Doha, while Turkey is also said to be urging Hamas to agree to the plan, or at least some form of it.
Qatari Prime Pinister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani has said, “We and Egypt explained to Hamas during yesterday’s meeting that our main goal is stopping the war. Trump’s plan achieves the main goal of ending the war, though some issues in it need clarification and negotiation.”
But al-Thani also cautioned on Tuesday that Trump’s plan is “still at an early stage and needs development” – so Hamas is likely to come back with conditions of its own, though Trump has said there’s “not much” room for negotiations.
Axios notes of a couple of key hurdles from the Palestinian and Arab point of view:
The plan calls for a phased Israeli withdrawal and for Hamas to fully disarm, something it has refused to do up to now.
Some of the changes on the conditions and timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza infuriated Arab officials, and might be hard for Hamas to accept.
Despite reports saying Turkey is on board with Trump’s plan, in a new speech by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish President chose his words carefully, putting himself firmly on the Palestinian side while not offering any specific critique of the Trump plan. He has praised Trump’s leadership for seeking peace, but hasn’t commented on specific conditions of the plan. “Turkiye now stands as part of the US initiative,” Qatar’s foreign ministry has confirmed.
Addressing the opening of new legislative year at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, he declared: “Genocide motion Turkish Parliament accepted in August sent very strong message to Israel.”
“We never abandoned heroic sons, daughters of Gaza resisting Israel. We devoted our lives to Palestinian cause, will defend right of Palestine, our first qibla, sacred Jerusalem, to last breath,” he continued.
And then Erdogan alluded to the peace plan in the works, by saying somewhat vaguely: “Granting peace for Palestinians is debt of Islamic world, international community to Palestinians. Türkiye will work to ensure that not a single bomb is dropped on Palestinians any more.” Again, he has only very broadly alluded to a peace plan:
“Despite so much suffering, despite the blood of innocent people in the hands of killers, we adhere to our hopes. Allah willing, we will see better days where peace and security reign, from river to sea,” he said, using a famous slogan for the Palestinian cause, to the applause of lawmakers.
There’s a current reporting consensus saying Hamas is very unlikely to simply agree to the plan in its current form, also after it reportedly underwent edits which Netanyahu pushed for.
* * *
Commentary in Rabobank agrees that Hamas will most likely reject the deal:
In the Middle East, Trump said Hamas has “three or four days” to respond to his 20-point Gaza plan or it will “pay in hell”, as the Qatari PM seemed to backtrack and say the plan still needs “clarification and discussion”, and Turkey’s spy chief arrived in Doha to hold talks with the designated terror group. The BBC has reported Hamas is likely to reject the deal, which regional experts think could presage an explosion of military action before it is then finally agreed the hard way – but nothing there is clear.
There’s little doubt that Ukraine has an interest in escalating NATO-Russian tensions through these means, including by employing anti-government Russian and Belarusian nationals in this reported plot, but it’s debatable whether Poland is involved in this and the extent to which it might be if so.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned that Ukraine’s GUR and the Polish intelligence services (none of the several existing ones were specified) are cooking up a false flag attack in Poland, which might “involve a simulated attack on critical infrastructure”, in order to blame Russia and Belarus.
According to them, “Kiev hopes to incite European countries to respond to Russia with the harshest possible force, preferably militarily.”
The veracity of these dramatic claims will now be assessed.
In reverse order, it does indeed appear to be the case that Kiev wants to manipulate NATO members into initiating direct military force against Russia, whether in the specialoperation zone or elsewhere such as on the territory of its Belarusian mutual defense ally or in its exclave of Kaliningrad. This explains why Zelensky repeated his no-fly zone demands after the suspicious Russian drone incident in Poland and called for closing the Danish Straits to Russian shipping after similarly suspicious incidents in Scandinavia.
Of relevance, SVR claimed that the aforesaid Polish incident and an associated Romanian one were Ukrainian provocations, though it’s still unclear exactly what happened. In any case, it’s also relevant to mention the reports amplified by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova that Ukraine is preparing a false flag drone provocation against NATO as well as Zelensky’s partial responsibility for Trump’s flip-flip on Ukraine, all of which lend credence to suspicions about Ukraine’s motives.
Moving along, the part of their report about how “militants from the ‘Freedom of Russia Legion’ and the Belarusian ‘K. Kalinovsky Regiment’” have been selected for this next provocation might also be true since they’re known to be Ukrainian proxies, so each’s nationals could indeed be implicated in this plot. That would in turn make it more likely that NATO, including the US, is misled about who’s responsible. As for their claim of Poland’s joint involvement in orchestrating this, however, that’s much more debatable.
Conservative-nationalist Polish President Karol Nawrocki and his National Security Bureau weren’t informed by liberal-globalist Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government that the damage incurred by a home during last month’s drone incident was caused by a wayward Polish missile. They only found out after a source leaked this to the press, which followed Tusk’s government blaming that damage on Russia at an emergency UNSC meeting, thus suggesting that he wanted to manipulate Nawrocki and his allies.
As assessed here, the purpose was to deceive him into authorizing Polish participation in a no-fly zone over Ukraine in order to raise NATO-Russian tensions, with these convoluted means being employed due to his reluctance to further embroil Poland in the conflict. Circling back to SVR’s report, either their source about Poland’s joint involvement in this latest plot is wrong or subversives within its “deep state” are going behind Nawrocki’s back, but the point is that it’s unrealistic to imagine that he’s in on it.
As a reminder, some of SVR’s reports didn’t pan out such as their ones about US plans to replace Zelensky, which were critiqued here in summer 2024. It should also go without saying that Russia truly has no reason to risk an escalation of tensions with NATO by attacking Poland as explained here, here, and here in summer 2023. Nevertheless, given the credible possibility that Ukraine is plotting a false flag attack on Poland, Nawrocki and his own “deep state” allies should urgently launch an investigation.
The federal government just accumulated an additional $2 trillion in debt over the last 12 months. That’s the kind of debt surge America usually racks up in wartime or during major national emergencies. But today, as Republicans and Democrats engage in another budget-driven shutdown drama, we are not at war. There is no pandemic. The economy is humming. And another shutdown is happening. Yet it will solve nothing about the fact that the political class is burning through money at a pace that would make former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war cabinet blush.
The Daily Treasury Statement shows total federal debt rising from $35.5 trillion last September to $37.5 trillion this week. In peacetime, with unemployment low and the stock market booming, that’s breathtakingly reckless. Yet in Washington, winning at politics matters more than confronting the cause of the problem: relentless overspending, and especially the explosion of entitlement programs.
Republicans, despite their fiscal-hawk branding, have presided over much of this surge. They boast $206 billion in Department of Government Efficiency “savings” and $213 billion in tariff receipts—rounding errors when compared with the debt. As the Tax Foundation’s Alex Durante and Garrett Watson point out, tariff revenue does almost nothing to change the country’s fiscal trajectory.
Even if President Donald Trump collects every dollar of his “emergency” tariffs, the federal debt-to-gross-domestic-product (GDP) ratio would still climb above 124 percent by 2035. Remember that most of that revenue is paid by Americans, not foreigners—and that the tariffs’ growth-dampening effects offset much of the revenue in the first place.
Democrats, for their part, are pushing back by demanding even more permanent spending. Senate Democrats just blocked a clean continuing resolution to simply carry forward former President Joe Biden’s spending levels from December 2024. As a result, the government is shut down. Why? To leverage the threat, and now the pain, of a shutdown into $1.5 trillion in new entitlements, including making Obamacare emergency subsidy expansions permanent.
That’s on top of subsidies already bloated to absurd levels. The Paragon Institute’s Brian Blase notes that in 2014, taxpayers covered 68 percent of Obamacare premiums. By 2020, that figure had risen to 80 percent. With Biden’s COVID-19–era credits, taxpayers now cover 93 percent of premiums.
This is just the tip of the spending iceberg. The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards tallied the full scope of Washington’s handout empire: 2,623 benefit and subsidy programs now clutter the federal budget. In 1970, there were 1,019. In 2000, there were only 1,425.
The Department of Health and Human Services alone runs hundreds of welfare programs on top of Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Agriculture runs not just farm subsidies but rural subsidies, food stamps, the WIC nutrition program, and school lunches.
Mix in hundreds of tax breaks designed as stealth entitlements, and the budget metastasizes into an octopus of subsidies. It’s no wonder spending soars regardless of who’s in charge.
The results are visible in the calendar as much as in the spreadsheets. This year, “Deficit Day”—when federal revenues collected since January 1 run out—fell on September 21. Every dollar spent after that date comes from new borrowing.
Antony Davies and James Harrigan, the authors of the Deficit Day calculation, liken it to a household that runs out of money a week before the end of every month and has done so for 25 straight years. Washington spends $19 billion a day. That’s $7 trillion in 2025. Every penny from now until New Year’s is piled on top of the $37 trillion debt.
Both parties are guilty. Republicans borrow recklessly and pretend tariffs or efficiency “savings” will square the books. Democrats demand still more entitlements, paid for with money we don’t have. They use brinkmanship as a distraction, turning the most basic government housekeeping into hostage drama.
That’s not reform. It doesn’t shrink government. It doesn’t impose discipline. It wastes more money while the unchecked growth of entitlement and subsidy programs goes unaddressed. The resolution carrying forward Biden’s high spending numbers for seven weeks was far from ideal. But it was the least bad option: It would have avoided a shutdown, bought time, and not added new entitlements.
Either way, we still need a real solution. But it will require courage neither party has shown. Edwards says Congress should slash entitlements and comb the Federal Program Inventory to eliminate hundreds of low-value subsidies. Blase argues that Washington should roll back Obamacare subsidies and restore price discipline in health care. As Davies and Harrigan demonstrate, debt is no longer a “tomorrow” problem; it’s already upon us.
For now, we’re stuck with a government that borrows like it’s fighting World War III while insisting that it’s merely conducting business as usual.
The federal government just accumulated an additional $2 trillion in debt over the last 12 months. That’s the kind of debt surge America usually racks up in wartime or during major national emergencies. But today, as Republicans and Democrats engage in another budget-driven shutdown drama, we are not at war. There is no pandemic. The economy is humming. And another shutdown is happening. Yet it will solve nothing about the fact that the political class is burning through money at a pace that would make former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war cabinet blush.
The Daily Treasury Statement shows total federal debt rising from $35.5 trillion last September to $37.5 trillion this week. In peacetime, with unemployment low and the stock market booming, that’s breathtakingly reckless. Yet in Washington, winning at politics matters more than confronting the cause of the problem: relentless overspending, and especially the explosion of entitlement programs.
Republicans, despite their fiscal-hawk branding, have presided over much of this surge. They boast $206 billion in Department of Government Efficiency “savings” and $213 billion in tariff receipts—rounding errors when compared with the debt. As the Tax Foundation’s Alex Durante and Garrett Watson point out, tariff revenue does almost nothing to change the country’s fiscal trajectory.
Even if President Donald Trump collects every dollar of his “emergency” tariffs, the federal debt-to-gross-domestic-product (GDP) ratio would still climb above 124 percent by 2035. Remember that most of that revenue is paid by Americans, not foreigners—and that the tariffs’ growth-dampening effects offset much of the revenue in the first place.
Democrats, for their part, are pushing back by demanding even more permanent spending. Senate Democrats just blocked a clean continuing resolution to simply carry forward former President Joe Biden’s spending levels from December 2024. As a result, the government is shut down. Why? To leverage the threat, and now the pain, of a shutdown into $1.5 trillion in new entitlements, including making Obamacare emergency subsidy expansions permanent.
That’s on top of subsidies already bloated to absurd levels. The Paragon Institute’s Brian Blase notes that in 2014, taxpayers covered 68 percent of Obamacare premiums. By 2020, that figure had risen to 80 percent. With Biden’s COVID-19–era credits, taxpayers now cover 93 percent of premiums.
This is just the tip of the spending iceberg. The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards tallied the full scope of Washington’s handout empire: 2,623 benefit and subsidy programs now clutter the federal budget. In 1970, there were 1,019. In 2000, there were only 1,425.
The Department of Health and Human Services alone runs hundreds of welfare programs on top of Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Agriculture runs not just farm subsidies but rural subsidies, food stamps, the WIC nutrition program, and school lunches.
Mix in hundreds of tax breaks designed as stealth entitlements, and the budget metastasizes into an octopus of subsidies. It’s no wonder spending soars regardless of who’s in charge.
The results are visible in the calendar as much as in the spreadsheets. This year, “Deficit Day”—when federal revenues collected since January 1 run out—fell on September 21. Every dollar spent after that date comes from new borrowing.
Antony Davies and James Harrigan, the authors of the Deficit Day calculation, liken it to a household that runs out of money a week before the end of every month and has done so for 25 straight years. Washington spends $19 billion a day. That’s $7 trillion in 2025. Every penny from now until New Year’s is piled on top of the $37 trillion debt.
Both parties are guilty. Republicans borrow recklessly and pretend tariffs or efficiency “savings” will square the books. Democrats demand still more entitlements, paid for with money we don’t have. They use brinkmanship as a distraction, turning the most basic government housekeeping into hostage drama.
That’s not reform. It doesn’t shrink government. It doesn’t impose discipline. It wastes more money while the unchecked growth of entitlement and subsidy programs goes unaddressed. The resolution carrying forward Biden’s high spending numbers for seven weeks was far from ideal. But it was the least bad option: It would have avoided a shutdown, bought time, and not added new entitlements.
Either way, we still need a real solution. But it will require courage neither party has shown. Edwards says Congress should slash entitlements and comb the Federal Program Inventory to eliminate hundreds of low-value subsidies. Blase argues that Washington should roll back Obamacare subsidies and restore price discipline in health care. As Davies and Harrigan demonstrate, debt is no longer a “tomorrow” problem; it’s already upon us.
For now, we’re stuck with a government that borrows like it’s fighting World War III while insisting that it’s merely conducting business as usual.
Doug McMillon, chief executive of WalMart, has said that artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting every single job in the corporation at all levels, impacting every sector. Many jobs will be eliminated, some created, and most all retooled in some way. It’s all happening very quickly.
There is surely cause for some celebration. But certainly experiences of the last couple of decades should make us equally cautious about this plunge into the unknown. It’s wise to ask about the costs. What might we be losing?
The great trouble with AI isn’t about its functioning, efficiency, or utility. It is amazing at all those things. The danger is what it does to the human brain. Its whole ethos is to produce the answers to all things. But getting the answer is not the source of human progress.
Progress comes from learning. The only way to learn is through the discomfort required to get the answer. You first learn the method. Then you apply it. But you get it wrong. And you get it wrong again. You find your errors. You fix them and still get it wrong. You find more errors. Eventually you hit on the answer.
That’s when it becomes satisfying. You feel your brain working. You have upgraded your mind. You feel a sense of achievement.
Only through this process do you learn something. It comes from the pains of failure and deploying the human brain in the process of problem-solving. A student or a worker who relies on AI to generate all answers will not ever develop intuition, judgment, or even intelligence. Such a person will persist in ignorance. Holes in knowledge will go undiscovered and unfilled.
This is a massive danger we are facing.
The point comes from MIT professor Retsef Levi, who spoke at a Brownstone Institute event last week. It was a marvelous talk that made many other points in addition. His grave warning: Building systems that rely fundamentally on AI could be catastrophic for freedom, democracy, and civilization.
Even from an individual point of view, there is a threat that AI will dissolve the capacity to think, simply because we are not required to do so. Very recently, nearly every document I access offers an AI tool with a quick summary, so that I don’t actually have to read anything. This is absurd and I wish these companies would stop this nonsense.
They won’t. This all began with a phrase I despise: the “executive summary.” I don’t know from where this phrase came. Is the idea that a busy and fancy “executive” with a pager and a fast car can’t possibly be bothered with the details and narrative, because he has to take calls and make big decisions? I don’t know, but now the “executive summary” has invaded all things.
We now want everyone to cut to the chase, to skip to the “who done it” rather than read the drama, to hear the elevator pitch, because we just don’t have time to think much. After all, we always have better ways to spend our time. Doing what? Reading more “executive summaries,” one supposes.
This is all absurd pretense, and a consequence of believing that we are so advanced that we don’t actually have to know anything anymore. The system takes care of that for us.
At what point are we going to spend the time to think and learn? With all these tools to bypass actual contemplation, how do we know these answers that the system is giving us are the correct ones?
You might say that this is true for electronic calculators and the internet too. And that is true. Those both have that danger.
I’m probably among the last generation of students who went through college with card catalogs and physical stacks as the only resources available. When I wasn’t in class I was at the library, mostly sitting on floors, surrounded on all sides.
This was adventure. This was work. There was reward. Browsing stacks was joy, and I worked my way through the entire building gradually over two years. This is my knowledge base today.
I fell in love with learning. Not just knowing the answers but discovering how to get there.
Even finding periodicals required lifting heavy books and reading very closely. Once you discover the thing, you could go to the stacks and pick up bound volumes of literature dating back 150 years. You physically felt the pages and experienced them as previous generations did.
I often wonder whether this will ever happen again to students. I wonder what we have lost. No question that access is quicker. There are glorious features of the information age. Sadly, however, the entire system is organized around the idea of generating answers to every question. The more we bypass the process of discovery and struggle, the more we think the system works. I’m not so sure.
When I was in high school, I found Cliff’s Notes at the bookstore. There were short summaries of every bit of literature my teachers had assigned. I bought a few. I found out that I could spend thirty minutes getting the gist rather than nine hours reading the book. This would get me a B on exams and sometimes an A.
But then I noticed a problem. I was unable to talk with others about the book. They had reports of emotional experiences and thrills from actually reading. I had none of that. Who was the chump here? I was denying myself a wonderful experience: actually reading the book.
Knowing the characters and plot and conclusion, that is just data. What I did not have was the transformative experience of entering into another world created by the author. I was left with nothing memorable.
So on my own decision, I stopped doing this. I realized that getting the correct answers on the exam was not the point at all. The point was to learn, to go through the steps, to have the experience of discovery, to train the mind. The students who did this became intelligent and even wise. Those who did not stayed in place.
Eventually all students figure out how to game the system. This is especially true in graduate school. Professors want to be flattered and students figure out how to do that, without reading any of the material. These are the cynics. I knew many of them. I could never understand why they bothered at all.
Sure, they got through but to what end?
Sadly, the whole of our educational systems is about tests. The tests are designed to find out if the students get the right answers. Such a system will always be gamed. It becomes about passing true/false tests and multiple-choice things. With computers, it is worse. It’s habitual and lasts for 18 years.
This is not thinking. This is training robots.
AI only adds to the problem by taking the struggle and process out of everything. Struggling to get from here to there is the only way to build intellectual muscle.
I sometimes look back and remember how much time I spent practicing music, learning to play trombone, piano, and guitar, writing out music on manuscript paper that I heard on the records, sitting in practice rooms, and trying out at competitions.
Was it all a waste because I did not pursue it as a profession? Not at all. I was learning how to practice toward improvement.
Years later I bounced from one intellectual enthusiasm to another. For a while, I got obsessed with what is called eschatology, the theological theory of how the world ends. I must have read 60-100 books on the topic. Now I don’t care much, so did I waste my time? Not at all. I was training my brain to work.
This is why parents should not regret when their kids become obsessed with Harry Potter books and read them all five times. This is a fabulous way to boost mental capacity. Truly anything pursued with passion and diligence fights against the intellectual sloth.
That’s the problem right there. AI is a technology of sloth. We like that. We like it far too much. Right now AI seems magical because it is being paired with thinking people. (This is another point taken from Dr. Levi.)
What happens when thoughtful people gradually disappear and are replaced by sickly, lazy, thoughtless people who are incapable of generating any answers on their own?
That will be the end of the world. Maybe my books on eschatology will help more than I know.
Right now, the large language models I’ve used are often wrong, even very often wrong. I can usually spot the errors, for which the AI engine bears zero liability. We usually speak of such hallucinations as a problem. Maybe not.
The only thing worse than an AI system that is sporadically wrong is one that is always right. It’s the latter that is most likely to breed laziness and stupidity.
Advice to WalMart: Don’t build any systems in your supply chains whose functionality is wholly dependent on a technology only recently deployed and which no one really understands. If you do, you will find that your resilience as the world’s leading retailer to be vulnerable to competition from companies that value people, judgment, and wisdom over soulless machines cranking gibberish without a conscience.
The Attorney General has proposed regulations for procedures for persons to apply for removal of federal firearm disabilities. Most disabilities are found in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). Under § 925(c), a person prohibited from firearm possession may petition for relief from federal disabilities by applying to the Attorney General, who “may grant such relief if it is established to his satisfaction that the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant’s record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”
In my view, overall the proposed regulations are fair and reasonably implement the above statutory provision. However, there are two items that should be eliminated or modified. Both provide that applications will be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if the applicant has been convicted of two types of offenses. Those convictions should be considered on a case-by-case basis instead of being subject to presumptive denial.
Common-law assault convictions
Proposed § 107.1(a) provides in part: “Applications will therefore be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if the applicant: (1) Has been convicted under state or federal law of any offense punishable by a term exceeding one year (as defined in 18 U.S.C. 92l(a)(20)) that involves the following conduct, excluding jurisdictional requirements: … (iii) Assault or battery….”
That may be reasonable as applied to such convictions that are truly felonious and aggravated. However, it creates the presumptive denial of relief where the person was convicted of the common-law state misdemeanor of assault and battery, which is punishable by imprisonment for over two years because there is no upper limit on the punishment. That situation exists in Maryland and maybe other states. United States v. Coleman, 158 F.3d 199, 203 (4th Cir. 1998) (en banc), held about Maryland law:
A “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” is defined in pertinent part so as to exclude “any State offense classified by the laws of the State as a misdemeanor and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less.” … While a Maryland conviction for common-law assault is classified as a misdemeanor, the offense carries no maximum punishment; the only limits on punishment are the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clauses of the Maryland and United States Constitutions. See United States v. Hassan El, 5 F.3d 726, 733 (4th Cir.1993). As such, a Maryland common-law assault “clearly is punishable by more than two years imprisonment” and is not excluded from the definition of a “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” by the misdemeanor exclusion. Id.
There are plenty of convictions of this type based on minor incidents, such as a fight in a bar when one is young, that may result in two days in jail, if that. In United States v. Schultheis, 486 F.2d 1331, 1332 (4th Cir. 1973), “The ‘felony’ conviction upon which the indictment was based was appellant’s 1966 conviction of simple assault, a common law crime in Maryland, which grew out of appellant’s involvement in a fist fight. For this crime appellant was given a suspended 90-day sentence, fined $25.00 and placed on unsupervised probation for two years.”
Accordingly, common-law assault and battery convictions should not be subject to presumptive denial.
Knowing importation of a firearm or ammunition
Proposed § 107.1(a) also provides in part: “Applications will therefore be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if the applicant: … (2) Has been convicted under state or federal law of any felony offense involving conduct prohibited under 18 U.S.C. 922 … (1). Section 922(l) makes it “unlawful for any person knowingly to import or bring into the United States … any firearm or ammunition….” Exceptions exist for licensed importers, certain other licensees, and members of the Armed Forces.
Knowing import of a single firearm or a single round of ammunition, absent a wrongful purpose, is a mala prohibita offense that should not presumptively be cause for denial of relief.
In the Gun Control Act, “the term ‘knowingly’ does not necessarily have any reference to a culpable state of mind or to knowledge of the law.” Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184, 192 (1998). Since it is not “necessary to prove that the defendant knew that his [act] was unlawful,” the term ‘knowingly’ merely requires proof of knowledge of the facts that constitute the offense.” Id. at 193. By contrast, “with respect to the conduct … that is only criminal when done ‘willfully,'” “[t]he jury must find that the defendant acted with an evil-meaning mind, that is to say, that he acted with knowledge that his conduct was unlawful.” Id. at 193.
There are numerous gun shows in Europe where an American collector might buy a gun and bring it back without going through a licensed importer. There are shooting matches worldwide in which a participant might bring back a few rounds of unused ammo. The same occurs when a hunter brings back a rifle that had to be replaced or some unused ammo from a foreign country. Such persons may not know that the import must be through a licensed importer, and in such cases the importation would have been granted if done through a licensee.
Such innocent acts contrast sharply with traffickers bringing in guns or ammo for nefarious purposes. Instead of presumptive denial, these should be fact-based decisions.
Readers may spot other provisions that warrant revision. Written comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking must be postmarked and electronic comments must be submitted on or before October 20, 2025.
The Attorney General has proposed regulations for procedures for persons to apply for removal of federal firearm disabilities. Most disabilities are found in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). Under § 925(c), a person prohibited from firearm possession may petition for relief from federal disabilities by applying to the Attorney General, who “may grant such relief if it is established to his satisfaction that the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant’s record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”
In my view, overall the proposed regulations are fair and reasonably implement the above statutory provision. However, there are two items that should be eliminated or modified. Both provide that applications will be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if the applicant has been convicted of two types of offenses. Those convictions should be considered on a case-by-case basis instead of being subject to presumptive denial.
Common-law assault convictions
Proposed § 107.1(a) provides in part: “Applications will therefore be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if the applicant: (1) Has been convicted under state or federal law of any offense punishable by a term exceeding one year (as defined in 18 U.S.C. 92l(a)(20)) that involves the following conduct, excluding jurisdictional requirements: … (iii) Assault or battery….”
That may be reasonable as applied to such convictions that are truly felonious and aggravated. However, it creates the presumptive denial of relief where the person was convicted of the common-law state misdemeanor of assault and battery, which is punishable by imprisonment for over two years because there is no upper limit on the punishment. That situation exists in Maryland and maybe other states. United States v. Coleman, 158 F.3d 199, 203 (4th Cir. 1998) (en banc), held about Maryland law:
A “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” is defined in pertinent part so as to exclude “any State offense classified by the laws of the State as a misdemeanor and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less.” … While a Maryland conviction for common-law assault is classified as a misdemeanor, the offense carries no maximum punishment; the only limits on punishment are the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clauses of the Maryland and United States Constitutions. See United States v. Hassan El, 5 F.3d 726, 733 (4th Cir.1993). As such, a Maryland common-law assault “clearly is punishable by more than two years imprisonment” and is not excluded from the definition of a “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” by the misdemeanor exclusion. Id.
There are plenty of convictions of this type based on minor incidents, such as a fight in a bar when one is young, that may result in two days in jail, if that. In United States v. Schultheis, 486 F.2d 1331, 1332 (4th Cir. 1973), “The ‘felony’ conviction upon which the indictment was based was appellant’s 1966 conviction of simple assault, a common law crime in Maryland, which grew out of appellant’s involvement in a fist fight. For this crime appellant was given a suspended 90-day sentence, fined $25.00 and placed on unsupervised probation for two years.”
Accordingly, common-law assault and battery convictions should not be subject to presumptive denial.
Knowing importation of a firearm or ammunition
Proposed § 107.1(a) also provides in part: “Applications will therefore be denied, absent extraordinary circumstances, if the applicant: … (2) Has been convicted under state or federal law of any felony offense involving conduct prohibited under 18 U.S.C. 922 … (1). Section 922(l) makes it “unlawful for any person knowingly to import or bring into the United States … any firearm or ammunition….” Exceptions exist for licensed importers, certain other licensees, and members of the Armed Forces.
Knowing import of a single firearm or a single round of ammunition, absent a wrongful purpose, is a mala prohibita offense that should not presumptively be cause for denial of relief.
In the Gun Control Act, “the term ‘knowingly’ does not necessarily have any reference to a culpable state of mind or to knowledge of the law.” Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184, 192 (1998). Since it is not “necessary to prove that the defendant knew that his [act] was unlawful,” the term ‘knowingly’ merely requires proof of knowledge of the facts that constitute the offense.” Id. at 193. By contrast, “with respect to the conduct … that is only criminal when done ‘willfully,'” “[t]he jury must find that the defendant acted with an evil-meaning mind, that is to say, that he acted with knowledge that his conduct was unlawful.” Id. at 193.
There are numerous gun shows in Europe where an American collector might buy a gun and bring it back without going through a licensed importer. There are shooting matches worldwide in which a participant might bring back a few rounds of unused ammo. The same occurs when a hunter brings back a rifle that had to be replaced or some unused ammo from a foreign country. Such persons may not know that the import must be through a licensed importer, and in such cases the importation would have been granted if done through a licensee.
Such innocent acts contrast sharply with traffickers bringing in guns or ammo for nefarious purposes. Instead of presumptive denial, these should be fact-based decisions.
Readers may spot other provisions that warrant revision. Written comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking must be postmarked and electronic comments must be submitted on or before October 20, 2025.
