And now for something totally different.
Imagine you’re involved in a legal battle overseas — whether in Europe, Latin America, or Asia — and you know critical evidence or witnesses are sitting in the United States. What if you could use American courts to get that evidence, even if your main case isn’t happening here?
That’s exactly what Section 1782 (28 U.S.C. § 1782) lets you do. It’s a powerful, often overlooked U.S. law that allows people, companies, or foreign courts to request documents, testimony, and other evidence from anyone in the United States for use in legal proceedings abroad.
This guide — written by me — breaks down how Section 1782 actually works in plain English. Whether you’re a business owner, executive, or international lawyer trying to level the playing field in a cross-border dispute, you’ll find clear explanations, real-world examples, strategic tips, and the latest developments.
Excellent quote. Since I've been on blended Anglo/German heritage kick lately, we should remember that a major part of what beat the European Germans was the 2nd largest group of Germans in the world - the American Germans. On D-day, in the ships & skies, and in the factories.
1/
Flew into Mexico City from DC last night and I’m already clocking the shift in energy.
I left my England shirt in the bag for this flight despite wearing it loud and proud on every single one before now without any second thoughts.
But here? The Mexico fan vibe isn’t reading as normal rivalry. It’s heavier and meaner. It’s not banter; there’s no playfulness about it. There’s actual aggression in it, and underneath that, something colder and almost unhinged.
Walked a few blocks around the hotel in my England shirt this morning and got called “puta gringa” - white whore, basically. The whole atmosphere is steeped in this hostility.
Police have shut roads down, running checkpoints, confiscating glass bottles like they’re expecting things to pop off. Riot vibes. I’ve traveled everywhere in this shirt and never once felt this on edge.
It feels like it’s more than “just football” at stake here. I hope that I’m reading it all wrong, that it’s just pre-match noise that burns off once the final whistle blows and everyone goes home.
If you’re a small country of the size that Streeck finds ideal, say 5-30 million people, you can’t really diversify very much. On the other hand, the world economy allows you to specialize in high-end functions; especially if you abandon any pretense at sovereignty and surrender to the empire.
This is a high-risk, high-return leveraged bet. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you miss out for a generation or even longer. The path dependence in industrial development is really powerful, especially for nations without Chinese levels of state capacity.
The big winners of this game in the past generation are Singapore, Taiwan, Switzerland, South Korea, and more recently, Czechia and Vietnam. Korea and especially Vietnam are just small enough to able to pull this off, although Vietnam might test the limits.
If you’re a big country, they will come after you. The submission strategy cannot work for you. You’re gonna need nuclear weapons, a real combined arms military, and a formidable portfolio of missiles and so on. Otherwise the West will crush you.
This logic applies especially to China and India. But in the future, the same limits of Metropolitan tolerance will apply to Iran, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh and so on.
I find this pattern of size-dependent developmental possibility space rather interesting. This is at the core of the issue of functional specialization in the world.
Today, as we enter the summer of Homer's Odyssey, we publish one of our most important pieces to date. Professors James Diggle and John Underhill continue their quest to find the *true* Ithaca, arguing that the hero's homeland was in fact no island at all. https://t.co/eDdVz1dWPf
Brilliant. Confucius said it more simply: keep taxes low and don't opprsss the people.
In the premodern Western Christian tradition there is a deep belief that it's absolutely legitimate to makea moderate profit using your own labor, and working for the sake of others like your family, the community, and the city. The Christian West made its peace with the profit economy as early as the 13th century.
But deep suspicion in the premodern era attached to anyone who made a great deal of money very quickly. That person was assumed to be doing something immoral - committing fraud. Dante condemns 'la gente nuova [immigrants] e subiti guadagni [quick profits] as the cause of Florence's fall into evil.
Catholic teaching aims to correct this error by insisting that what is to be condemned is a wrong manner of making money and money-making driven by avarice and greed rather than by rational moral purpose. The evil comes from avarice and fraud and not from riches per se. Compound interest is not usury. That banks may legitimately charge interest has been affirmed by the Church since Leo X issued the bull 'Inter multiplices' in 1515.
I conclude that the spread of sound Catholic teaching would help Westerners refine the crude moral instincts exploited by Marxism and reconcile themselves to a morally sound capitalist economy, even one that produces subiti guadagni. @LawLiberty@elonmusk@pmarca@JDVance@RonDeSantis@BishopBarron@ActonInstitute@catholicthing@ArturKluz
Imagine telling someone in 1999…
The year is 2026.
The President is Donald Trump in his second non consecutive term.
The richest man in the world is PayPal cofounder Elon Musk… but not because of fintech or Paypal. Because of rockets, electric cars, AI, satellites, brain chips and something called “Boring Company”.
Apple is worth trillions but its main business isn’t computers… its selling glass rectangles everyone stares at for 9 hours a day.
People don’t watch TV. They watch teenagers explain geopolitics, finance, and relationship advice in ~60 second videos.
The biggest taxi company owns no taxis.
The biggest hotel company owns no hotels.
The most powerful media companies are social networks where everyone argues with strangers for free.
Kids are making millions filming themselves playing video games.
AI Robots write emails, code, legal memos, songs, essays, and breakup texts.
The internet is mostly bots arguing with humans who are trying to prove they aren’t bots.
You can summon a car, groceries, a doctor, a date, a private jet, or a dog walker from your phone.
People pay real money for invisible currencies, digital monkeys, AI girlfriends and pictures that disappear after 24 hours.
The richest companies in the world don’t sell oil, steel, or cars. They sell attention, compute, data, and addiction.
And somehow, after all of that everyone is still using Excel.
An additional thought: Wolford should be the end of courts applying "common use" or other similar standards to determine whether a law banning a type of weapon implicates the Second Amendment's plain text. The Court says that the plain-text meaning of arms is implicated when the answer to the following is yes:
"Does [a law] concern any form of 'Arms,' i.e., any weapon customarily used for offensive or defensive purposes?"