Judge Andrew J. Napolitano, antiwar.com

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” — Voltaire (1694-1778)

A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and confined in prison has made a startling claim about the nature of political power. It claims not merely the authority to protect the innocent from violence, but the authority to inflict violence when no immediate threat exists.

It claims that the taking of human life, which it rightly condemns when committed by private individuals, somehow becomes morally permissible when committed by government agents. This is the fundamental contradiction of the death penalty: Government killing the helpless protects the living.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plans to have a convicted defendant executed publicly and livestream the killing represent a particularly repulsive vision of state power. If implemented, such a spectacle would not demonstrate the strength of American civilization. It would advertise its moral depravity. It would turn the deliberate destruction of a human being into political entertainment, with the machinery of government serving as producer and promoter.

The death penalty transforms the government from the protector of life into its deliberate destroyer, then asks the public to call the destruction justice. A publicly streamed execution would take that contradiction to its obscene extreme, turning death into spectacle and state violence into pornographic entertainment.

By Jason Ditz, antiwar.com

Anticipating another round of war with Hezbollah despite the fact that the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon hasn’t even ended, Defense Minister Israel Katz laid out a litany of threats against Lebanon that would happen if Hezbollah “joins Iran” in any attack on Israel.

Katz declared that the territory around Nabatieh and the Litani River would become part of “Israel’s permanent security zone,” an occupied territory that already includes parts of Nabatieh District and the Litani River to begin with.

The threats, however, grew substantially from there, with Katz also vowing that over a million Lebanese Shiites would be driven from their homes. That too already happened once this year, and several hundred thousand remain displaced from that operation, which includes the military occupation.

Claire's Observations:  Anyone who did not see this coming, simply hasn't been paying attention.

Israel is planning to take as much Lebanese territory to annex it to "Greater Israel" as it possibly can, and these so-called "security zones" are going to get much larger as the level of occupation increases.

 IF there is any Lebanese territory left for the Lebanese, the amount of real estate it will ultimately comprise, will be smaller than does Lichtenstein at the end of the day.

Dave de Camp, antiwar.com

The Israeli military has now killed more than 1,500 Palestinians in Gaza since signing a so-called ceasefire deal just over one year ago in October 2025, according to numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry, as it has continued constant violations of the agreement.

The Health Ministry said on Wednesday that over the previous 24 hours, Israeli attacks killed two Palestinians and another died of wounds sustained in an earlier Israeli attack, bringing the post-ceasefire deal death toll to 1,501. Another 5,323 Palestinians have been wounded in that time.

In that same period, seven IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza, including one who was killed by other Israeli soldiers in a friendly-fire incident in February of this year, and two who were killed in September in the accidental explosion of an Israeli military drone. The other four died as a result of “combat” in southern Gaza in October 2025, when Hamas militants were trapped on the Israeli-occupied side of the Strip.

Hamas has also not launched any rocket attacks on Israel and has agreed to a US-backed proposal that would see the group give up its weapons, but Israel rejected the potential deal. Despite President Trump calling for Israel to stop bombing Gaza because Hamas agreed to disarm, the US continues backing Israel’s daily attacks.

Israeli attacks in Gaza continued on Wednesday, with a woman reported killed by an Israeli strike on an apartment building in Gaza City early in the morning. According to a report from Al Jazeera Arabic, the woman’s three-year-old daughter was with her at the time of the strike and was rescued by Palestinian journalist Ali al-Jafrawi.

“I went up to the apartment, there were flames raging everywhere. I went in despite the fire and smoke and heard a child screaming from inside. I went in and found her, so I rescued her immediately. I carried her and handed the girl over to people to take her to the hospital,” al-Jafrawi told Al Jazeera.

Posted by Tyler Durden, Authored by Alastair Crooke

As part of its “blockade-for-blockade,” “airport-for-airport” strategy, Ansarallah carried out a third attack on Riyadh International Airport on Saturday — 12 people (mostly civilians) were killed and more than 300 injured. This, in tandem with Iran’s escalating attacks on tankers, and expanding its maritime operations, immediately increases the pressures on President Trump to respond — at the precise moment when midterm elections loom.

If Yemen continues to strike at key Saudi economic and energy assets with precision, the consequences for Riyadh will multiply — the battlefield will increasingly become that of Saudi infrastructure destruction and pain for the West versus Yemeni civilian casualties.

Even Edward Luttwak, known for his links to the western security state, observes that — …the reason for [the impotence] of Saudi Arabia, in the face of the Houthi offensive, is that, for the Kingdom’s ruling family, the most deadly danger has long been a military coup d’état — such as the one which ended Iraq’s monarchy and killed every single member of its Husseini ruling family on 14 July 1958.

Against that danger, the successive heads of the Saudi ruling family have implemented the most effective remedy possible: divide and rule, not against foreign enemies, but within their own armed forces. For that reason, the different combat elements of the armed forces are geographically separated in the country’s vast territory, and commanded by different princes in charge of various parts of the ministry of defence, all of which are subordinate to the minister himself, Prince Khalid (a younger brother of Mohammed bin Salman).

In the event of the collapse of MbS-led al-Saud family rule, this would not only topple the Gulf colonial project, but would then initiate a scramble for a fundamental geopolitical re-alignment of the region.

Claire's Observations:  So now, the silent question is being asked out loud;  what if the House of Saud falls and the Houthis successfully take over Saudi Arabia?!?

And how will US foreign policy be crafted, in order to achieve the minimal amount of disruption in the oil trade if, and when, it does?  Someone in the bowels of power in DC needs to be thinking about this, and seriously, because it very well might happen, possibly sooner than anyone imagines.

The Iranian parliament speaker invoked the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted eight years, suggesting Tehran is preparing for the possibility of a prolonged conflict with the US

By Dave De Camp, antiwar.com

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf said in a televised speech on Wednesday that the US must be “punished” in order for it to accept Iran’s demands to end the war.

Ghalibaf made the comments in the context of the latest response Iran received from the US in indirect negotiations, which Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, has called “inadequate” because Washington didn’t agree to all of Tehran’s conditions.

“The United States must be punished, change its behavior, and be made to understand unequivocally that it must accept the legitimate demands of the Iranian nation,” Ghalibaf said, according to Iran’s PressTV.

Claire's Observations: antiwar.com also features the following headline:  https://news.antiwar.com/2026/10/14/netanyahu-says-its-not-convenient-for-israel-to-attack-iran-before-elections/ President Trump has also stated that Iran will not be attacked until after the US mid-terms.

So, unless the above is a collective ruse by both gentlemen ahead of their respective elections, it may be that Iran will not be attacked prior to elections in the US and Israel. 

Neither man wants to be seen as responsible any major military losses before their respective elections, which is to be understood.

But then, the big question becomes, what happens to this war after these elections? 

 I think with Netanyahu, the outcome will depend on whether his party, Likud, is able to obtain a majority in Israel's Parliament, and that will dictate Israel's stance on the war after that.

But if the US Congress collectively changes hands from Republican to Democratic control in the mid-terms, it is possible that all bets are off, regarding what Trump can, and will do, before the new Congress is sworn in on 3 January of next year.   Constitutionally, he cannot refute the election results, nor can he attempt to "postpone" the election, due to a "national emergency."

That being said, there is a 60 day period between the mid-terms and that swearing-in, and I seriously doubt that President Trump is going to let this Iranian position stand for that 60 days.  

I would love to be able to say with a straight face, that I truly believed that Trump's "October Surprise" would be declaring victory, and bringing our military back home from Iran-centric deployments; unfortunately, I would be lying through my teeth if I said that.

My bet would be that whatever actions he takes after the mid-terms, if the election is as much of a Republican route as now appears to be unfolding, will be focused on making it very difficult for the new Democratic majority to undo this war, and will pursue every possible opportunity to keep it going, until he has accomplished something he perceives as "victory", no matter the costs to this nation. 

And folks, that last scenario scares the absolute stuffing out of me. 

Hegseth has pretty much eliminated all elements in the US military which could possibly object to anything he and President Trump conjure up. 

And in terms of timing, unless by some "miracle" Republicans again are in the ascendant in the mid-terms, that  60 day "window" between the exit of the current Congress, and the swearing-in of the new Congress, would nearly have to be when such a military action could, conceivably, happen.

President Trump has been threatening Iran very frequently while stumping for Republican Congressional candidates , so I would not be surprised if he and Secretary Hegseth have something "intense" planned as a military response to Iran, rather than looking at any kinds of negotiations through which to "ratchet down" tensions here between the mid-terms, and the first session of the new Congress.

 I hope to heaven I am absolutely wrong with this assessment, but looking at the last two years of Trump's second presidency, I seriously doubt that I am.

🚨BREAKING: The 26-page indictment has just been UNSEALED and it's HUGE! There are 18 FEDERAL COUNTS! He's been indicted on ESPIONAGE ACT statutes. HOLY. SHlT. https://t.co/qxjpNkmE8B

— Dave Hayes (@praying_medic1) October 14, 2026

Polish officials said German police detained two Turkish citizens linked to the Starlink ground station fire in Wola Krobowska, south of Warsaw. Authorities dated the blaze to September 23 and described it as deliberate arson against communications infrastructure. Poland said it issued arrest warrants and European Arrest Warrants that enabled the German detentions and now seeks extradition to continue the case in Warsaw. Officials said both suspects await transfer under the European Arrest Warrant process.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the attack was an act of hybrid warfare and tied the sabotage to wider threats facing Poland and its allies. Polish security services framed the operation as a coordinated effort involving the Interior Ministry, national police, and security agency to identify and locate the suspects across borders. Officials said protecting communications sites matters for national security and for allied support to Ukraine, which uses commercial satellite links for battlefield connectivity.

Two powerful earthquakes have struck in the Atlantic Ocean, prompting one expert to warn of a possible seismic 'chain reaction' that could affect the US. 

The US Geological Survey (USGS) detected a magnitude 6.9 earthquake along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Africa and South America at 8.23am ET.

A magnitude 6.7 quake struck less than seven hours earlier at 1.44am, just 50 miles north along the same seafloor fault line where the bottom of the ocean is slowly splitting apart.

However, geophysicist Stefan Burns told the Daily Mail that the double earthquake was not only historic in size, but is likely part of a seismic 'chain reaction' taking place this year which was closing in on fault lines near the US.

Paper losses on Bank of America Corp’s bond portfolio rose past US$100 billion (RM408.2 billion), bringing the spotlight back on a pain point that was at the heart of the 2023 regional-banking crisis.

Yields on seven-year and 10-year Treasuries are now above 5%, pushing down the market value of those bonds. That drove its unrealised losses on its total debt securities to more than US$109 billion in the third quarter, up 28% from the end of June, according to filings.

JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc “are sitting pretty while we all kind of forget that Bank of America is a mess”, Bill Moreland, founder of BankRegData, wrote in a newsletter this month.

Still, the US banks that have reported so far haven’t been immune. The impact of market swings on these securities’ portfolios filters through earnings via the firm’s so-called accumulated other comprehensive income. The AOCI losses more than doubled in the third quarter at JPMorgan and Wells Fargo & Co.

Cunningham wore a ball cap with a short message stitched on it, according to the Los Angeles Times. Smaller letters along the side read “No Cis Just.” The front carried one word in big, bold letters: “Woman.”

And she didn’t leave anybody guessing about what she meant. When the stadium announcer called her name and she walked onto the field to applause, Cunningham pointed at the cap with both hands, Breitbart News reported.

About as subtle as a lob pass to an open center.

For folks who don’t keep up with campus vocabulary, “cis” is the label activists cooked up for people whose sense of self matches their biology. Most Americans just call those people men and women. Cunningham’s hat made the same point without a lecture.

Wednesday has witnessed another Houthi ballistic missile attack targeting Saudi Arabia's capital. The kingdom's civil defense spokesman has confirmed bystanders were injured when missile debris from an inbound rocket fell after it was intercepted over Riyadh.

"The incident resulted in injury to an Arab resident and limited material damage to a residential building and a vehicle," stated the spokesman, as quoted by state SPA news agency.

A later update included more casualties: "Saudi Arabia's civil defense agency said on Wednesday that four people – two women, a man and a child – were wounded by debris from two intercepted Houthi cruise missiles in the capital and that 15 homes were damaged."

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has spent the better part of two years auditioning for the 2028 Democrat Presidential nomination.

He writes a column for the Wall Street Journal. He shows up on CNN so often they ought to give him a parking spot. And he works the podcast circuit like a man running for county commissioner in a district with no paved roads.

His latest stop landed him across the table from Sean Hannity on Hang Out with Sean Hannity, the Fox News podcast. The two covered a lot of ground, from past administrations to public safety to the sorry state of American schools.

But the moment that made the rounds involved the Democratic Socialists of America. Emanuel told Hannity that DSA candidates belong to a “separate party,” according to Fox News’ description of the exchange.

Constraints on the diesel market will extend well into next year, the International Energy Agency warned on Wednesday.

In its October Oil Market Report, the IEA said supply would remain tight into the latter half of 2027.

A counter-seasonal tightening in gasoil markets in the third quarter, combined with "much heavier-than-normal inventory declines" in the preceding three months, had "deprived global gasoil markets of crucial stock cover ahead of the peak winter demand season," the IEA said.

President Donald J. Trump made headlines in September when he promised to give $5,000 to every adult American citizen — but only if Republicans swept the midterms.

Now it looks like he has no solid plan in place to actually pay it.

The Trump administration is moving to finalize a proposed rule that would exclude millions of noncitizens without a green card from being counted in the 2030 census - a seismic shift that threatens to upend congressional maps and policies for millions. 

The proposed rule, if finalized, seeks to exclude individuals living in the US legally with student visas, under Temporary Protected Status designations, or who are here as asylum seekers or refugees.

And it would prohibit the collection of demographic information on race and ethnicity on the questionnaire - information that has long helped lawmakers understand and implement policies aimed at addressing systemic disparities. 

Critics have warned that the rule appears to be at odds with the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, and might not survive what is certain to be a raft of swift legal challenges. 

More practically, they have warned the chilling effect Trump's proposed rule could have on participation in the census. The short, once-per-decade questionnaire  impacts the drawing of congressional maps. 

Webmaster Addition: Non-citizens should not be included in the census.

Americans who depend upon Social Security will get a 3.6 percent raise next year, boosting the average check by $75 a month.

The extra payout was announced by the Social Security Administration this morning, just after officials rolled out the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) following the release of the September inflation report.

The COLA is how Social Security factors in the rising cost of living and gives beneficiaries enough extra money to keep up with inflation.

In the days leading up to her lightning fast removal as US Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle desperately attempted to scrub the Daily Mail's coverage of her lavish lifestyle from the internet.

Ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trip to Greece last week, the former Fox News host turned diplomat asked State Department officials if they could get the Daily Mail to delete an exclusive report detailing an unpaid dining tab, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Sources familiar with the exchange confirmed the bill was ultimately dispatched directly to the US Embassy, which is why Guilfoyle could not show proof of payment to the Daily Mail.

In response to Guilfoyle's request to have the story removed, State Department officials asked her to provide a receipt showing she had paid out of pocket. 

She failed to produce one.

Senate Democratic hopefuls continue producing memorable viral ads as the clock ticks down to Election Day.

In Texas, James Talarico's campaign turned Ken Paxton's real estate holdings into a spoof of House Hunters, highlighting the Republican's 15 properties in a video that racked up millions of views.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed took a similar show spoof route, unveiling a tongue-in-cheek 'Senate Island' video imitating the reality show Love Island, complete with the candidate pitching himself like a contestant looking for a match.

And in Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown's campaign turned up the heat on Republican Jon Husted, releasing a brutal ad featuring voters reacting angrily to his comments about poverty including an uncensored version laced with profanity. 

Republicans are throwing in the towel on a handful of races they're projected to lose, moving millions of dollars away from some of their own House incumbents.

The latest shake-up affects New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr and Iowa Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, whose campaigns will lose planned advertising support from major GOP-aligned political groups.

Kean is facing Democrat Rebecca Bennett, while Miller-Meeks is being challenged by Democrat Christina Bohannan.

Kean was absent from Congress for 116 days before returning to Capitol Hill on June 30. 

He missed more than 100 House votes during his extended absence before revealing he had been diagnosed with depression and had spent an extended period in the hospital receiving treatment.

NASA's DART mission made a cosmic mess four years ago — and now a new spacecraft is ready to scout out exactly what the first-of-its-kind collision accomplished.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into a small space rock called Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, in humanity's first test of planetary defense. That's the field dedicated to protecting Earth from the possibility of a calamitous asteroid impact, and DART mimicked how humans could change the orbit of a threatening space rock, taking it off its collision course.

The mission definitely succeeded, shortening the little asteroid's orbit around a larger rock called Didymos by about 33 minutes. But in order to make the most of the experiment, scientists ensured a second spacecraft would follow DART at a more leisurely pace. That decision will pay off this month with the arrival of a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft dubbed Hera, which launched in October 2024, two years after DART's impact.

Garland Nixon interviews Rumble host Stew Peters about new claims regarding the Charlie Kirk assassination, focusing on alleged Google Trends search activity tied to Fort Huachuca that Peters says points to a coordinated military operation. He argues that searches for government officials, military personnel, and others involved in his theory suggest planning around a weaponized microphone and claims evidence was later removed from Google, which he interprets as a cover-up.

Update(1629ET): Saudi Aramco facilities are once again under Houthi attack, with reports saying the kingdom is busy trying to intercept inbound ballistic missiles. Tuesday night saw several eyewitnesses report loud booms near the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company in Dhahran. However, Aramco has not immediately given confirmation of impact or that its sites are being targeted.

Importantly, Reuters reports: "A source with direct knowledge ⁠of the matter told Reuters the Aramco headquarters had been struck, though it ​was unclear if the building had been hit directly or by falling debris."

The City of Dhahran is in the Eastern Province of the country, and is the administrative center for the Saudi oil industry. "Interception and destruction of a ballistic missile launched by the terrorist Houthi militia towards the city of Dammam," said Saudi-coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki in a post on X.

Al Jazeera is separately reporting that "Shrapnel fragments from the interception fell in a residential area in Dhahran, where Saudi Aramco is headquartered."

A Los Angeles nonprofit boss tasked with helping domestic violence victims and homeless has reportedly been living in Hawaii for at least a decade while enjoying lavish perks paid for by her organization, including a luxury Santa Monica apartment and a BMW.

Carol Adelkoff, CEO of 1736 Family Crisis Center, also raked in a staggering $1.6 million over two years, making her the highest-paid homeless services executive in the city, according to the LA Times.

Nearly half of that sum came from a payout for unused vacation time she had accumulated over four decades, she told the LA Times.

Conservative leaders are sounding the alarm that more needs to be done in the final weeks before the midterm elections to educate and mobilize White evangelicals, a critical voting bloc in the president’s coalition. Republicans fear if they stay home, that could hand victories to Democrats in key races across the country with control of Congress at stake.

“I am not aware of any party machine that is at work right now to turn out evangelical voters,” one conservative evangelical pastor in Texas told CNN on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the risks for Republicans in the election. “Maybe they are assuming they are going to show up, but that is a dangerous assumption.”

The clip is being used as another piece of evidence that the protests are not really about reforms or improving education standards, but instead serve as a pretext for ethnic minorities to riot, destroy, and attack police.

After he calls for protesters to "smash everything," the crowd of Black youths and other ethnic minorities, many heavily masked, began hooting and screaming in response. The video further shows burning shared bicycles and electric scooters, the same products many on the left promote as an alternative to CO2-producing cars and trucks.

In a post from Belgian political activist Dries Van Langenhove, he writes about the video: "European people can't comprehend this because we're simply not the same. They destroy. It's what they do. It's who they are. Politicians now come up with all sorts of fake 'solutions': more money for education, more youth detention centres, military conscription, ... but it's all nonsense. There is only one real solution: they have to go back."