Enjoy your freedom:
- Freedom from warrantless surveillance
- Freedom of speech (link fixed!)
- Freedom to travel (and late-breaking bonus!)
- Freedom to sleep under bridges … at least for a couple more years.
Recent Bluessky Posts- We are not saying we don't know. Many brave people on the ground are bearing witness and putting bodies on the line. From far away we applaud them. And organize for the midterms, I guess... January 19, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- No one takes any official action in response to this criminal assault? Law has collapsed, at least for now. January 19, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Literally first 3 items on my feed today: 1. Trump wants to invade Greenland because Norwegians (sic) won't give him the Peace Prize; 2. Trump plans to send soldiers, national guard, FBI to MN; 3. Trump invites Russia & Belarus to join Gaza management committee. Happy MLK Day. January 19, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Jotwell Conlaw: Lorianne Updike Schulzke, Adding Color to the Founding, JOTWELL (January 19, 2026) (reviewing James G. Basker & Nicole Seary, eds., Black Writers of the Founding Era: A Library of America Anthology (2023)), conlaw.jotwell.com/adding-color.... January 19, 2026 Jotwell
- There ought to be 500 members of the House ready to vote impeachment for this threat to invade a treaty ally and start a world war out of personal pique. There are not even three Republicans ready to save the world. Now what? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... January 19, 2026 Michael Froomkin
Thx for this & happy new year anyway. BTW I think yr Freedom of Speech link needs an “http” prefix to work right.
Thanks. What concerns me is the slow erosion of freedoms over time. It happens on a regular pace but just slow enough that people get side tracked by so many other shiny objects. We still have the best country in the world IMHO. Once talked to a guide from Thailand who told me he wasn’t even allowed to visit the United States without a VISA. Not only did it cost money but he needed a valid reason to travel. Just going for fun and vacation wasn’t enough to be approved to leave his country. That to me .. is scary!
I was not aware that Thailand had exit visas (and a very quick Google search didn’t find anything about them). Could it be perhaps that this was an ENTRY visa requirement imposed by the US? In which case the approval wasn’t to leave his country, but rather to enter this one.
I wasn’t aware either but the guide we had that day who also worked for the Thai Navy … he did specifically tell me he needed a Visa to exit the country. I flat out asked him “so you need a Visa to exit, you have to pay for it and saying you just want to see the United States for vacation isn’t a good enough reason?”
He confirmed that was true. He had to pay for a Visa and he would need a better reason than a vacation request.