In June, the Texas Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit claiming that the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) had broken the law when it set the wholesale price of electricity at $9,000 per megawatt hour for about 80 hours during the Texas blackouts that occurred during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.

The PUCT’s commissioners had dictated the price of electricity because they believed that market-driven “energy prices across the system…as low as approximately $1,200” did not “accurately reflect the scarcity conditions in the market.”

Their decision drove the total cost of electricity for those three days to as high as $38 billion, more than Texans had paid for electricity over the previous 12 months.

The Supreme Court never sought to understand why….They did not question whether the PUCT actually could or should manage the almost $50 billion a year Texas electricity market.

Their focus was to “ensure that the courts will stay in their lane” by not interfering with regulators.

Last month, Britain made a dangerous swing to the left.

Private education has been attacked, more public housing, the promotion of environmental Marxism, and much more.

But that isn’t to say there wasn’t an unspoken gospel among the main parties concerning the deliberate impoverishment of the British Isles.

Merely aesthetic differences separate them.

A distinguished associate of mine told me about his grievances, the attacks against people earning lower wages and the political weaponization used by both major parties to score points from the electorate.

He also mentioned the infuriating behavior of leftist Samaritans preaching love, but when people vote contrary to their intentions, spew irascible diatribes.

Disappointing as it is, I am not terribly surprised. It would be a mistake to label the conservatives as oriented by free-market liberalism. Some permitted the organization of market forces; others such as Robert Peel, Margaret Thatcher and John Major were proponents of individual liberty.

Not only has Vladimir Putin, the putative emperor of Russia, been proven to have no clothes, but as evidenced daily in Kursk, the Russian Army militarily speaking has been caught stark naked as well by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

Ukraine’s stunning counteroffensive in Kursk that began on Aug. 6 is proving to be a major personal embarrassment to Putin and his regime – and it is continuing to gain steam capturing Russian territory at a faster rate than what Moscow has been able to achieve in the Donbas after months of bloody fighting and 500,000+ casualties.

Sometimes, as Col. Joshua Chamberlain did while defending Little Round Top at Gettysburg during the American Civil War, you have to “fix bayonets’” and attack.

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the AFU Commander-in-Chief, has done just that and boldly aimed them at the underside of Putin’s corrupt and decaying Russia.

In doing so, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals have proven the Russian Army to be one-dimensional. Putin’s army can lay siege – and it can inch forward bleeding bodies. However, it cannot maneuver.

This sad sack static Russian army is not their father’s Soviet Army. Rather, they are their great-great grandfather’s meatgrinder of an army that fled the battlefields of WWI

There’s a funny internet meme that uses a still frame from a British sketch comedy show in which two naïve Nazis wonder aloud, “Are we the baddies?”

The conservative humor site Twitchy is fond of referencing that joke whenever the U.K. government treats George Orwell’s 1984 as an instruction manual instead of a warning.

These days, the joke is everywhere because the world is watching Britain nosedive into abject tyranny.

U.K. officials do not like dissent. They do not like free speech. And they certainly do not like it when ordinary citizens criticize the government. For these reasons, the authoritarians across the pond caution their domestic serfs: “Think before you post.”

Included in that ominous threat is the promise that the Crown will come after anyone for “inciting hatred” online. What is “hatred”? Why, that’s for government functionaries to decide and for lowly commoners to find out! In a bit of cowardly arm-twisting meant both to encourage community snitching and to terrify concerned family members, Big Brother underscores its warning with this doozy: “Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences.” The government’s thought police would hate for something bad to happen to someone you love. So don’t force them to be the baddies, okay?

Iran’s strategy of Middle East conquest by proxy has proven remarkably effective.  Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have all turned into pawns in the Persian power’s quest for regional dominance.

The latest iteration of that playbook, Gaza, shows what happens to an Arab territory that subordinates its own interests to Iran’s hegemonic and anti-Israel aims.

Iran’s cynical strategy of “fighting Israel until the last Arab” is about to repeat itself in Lebanon, after Hezb’allah’s July 27 rocket attack murdered a dozen children playing soccer on the Golan Heights of Israel.

Iran’s strategy has been successful partly thanks to anti-Israel bias by the global media, the U.N., International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other actors that effectively abet Iran’s jihadi war on Western civilization.