'Does anyone believe in free speech anymore?'

'The path we are on will further drive us apart'

Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post

Free speech appears to be a casualty of the Israel-Hamas war, says Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. Conservatives have tried to "shame students" and university administrators for expressing support for Palestinians following Hamas' Oct. 7 terrorist attack. The "basic argument for free speech" is "that it is better to hear those you violently disagree with than to ban or silence them." The alternative is driving discourse into the "gutters of political life where it festers."

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'Biden's energy policy stinks, but not because it reduces oil production'

Dominic Pino at National Review

Republicans need some new energy talking points, says Dominic Pino at National Review. In this week's presidential primary debate, Republican candidates blasted President Biden's green-energy push and insisted that increasing domestic oil production would decrease prices, even though U.S. oil production reached a record 405 million barrels in August. Biden's green-energy subsidies are wasteful and distort energy investment, but attacking him "for low oil production in a time of record-high oil production" doesn't help conservatives' cause. 

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'Crypto critics are having a moment'

Chicago Tribune editorial board

Sam Bankman-Fried was a disaster for cryptocurrency, says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. His looting cost customers of his now-collapsed FTX exchange billions, and shook the public's confidence in digital currency. But Bankman-Fried's "recent criminal fraud conviction provides an opportunity to break with an unsavory past and chart a respectable future." Crypto still has great potential. To realize it, the industry, regulators, and Congress have to get together on "stronger, better-fitting rules" to restore its reputation.

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'It's going to be 1977 forever if Republicans keep this up'

David Harsanyi in The Federalist

"The GOP has perhaps the strongest case to make for taking power in decades," says David Harsanyi in The Federalist. The border is a disaster. President Biden "is a doddering, incoherent mess." But Republicans are squandering this opportunity by failing to come up with a coherent message on the economy, consistently voters' top issue. Blame GOP populists, who focus their energy on "subservience to Trump" and "relitigating 2020," which will only lead Republicans to irrelevance.  

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