Monthly Archives: December 2023

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Daily Broadside | Foreign Hordes Crashing Our Shores Bring Disease and Crime With Them

I hope that you and yours had a wonderful Christmas. I sure did, as all the littles were home and spent several days with us. I received a few nice gifts, including three books that have been on my wish list. In no particular order, they are:

I’m a part time writer, and sentences are foundational to the written word. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle defined much of Western thought, which in our day is being corrupted by corrupt ideologies. The destructive nature of one of those ideologies, Marxism, is obvious, and I want to better understand it.

What do you read?

2023 is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. The United States is being overrun by invading hordes of foreigners. They are not the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free that the Leftists insist they are. They are not the “exiles” of the “Mother of Exiles,” or as we better know her, the Statue of Liberty.

They are thieving, greedy third-world grifters who have no respect for the United States or for the American people. If they did have respect, they wouldn’t be breaking the law to enter the country. They see a weak country and a craven, corrupt administration that will not defend its borders or its people and have decided that if they’re going to come, now is the time, when they can get money and health insurance and housing assistance and phones and free transportation to anywhere in the country, and its citizens can do nothing about it.

And with them come the criminals.

Every year, an estimated 2,000 Americans are killed by illegal aliens. In 2023, Breitbart News reported on several cases in which illegal aliens are accused of killing American citizens, as well as legal immigrants – many including young children.

Below, Breitbart News details the cases of 14 Americans and legal immigrants who were allegedly killed by illegal aliens this year.

Not only do these freeloading hordes bring crimimal elements with them, but they bring diseases that we had essentially eliminated from our country.

Leprosy, Polio, Malaria, TB, Measles… and Massive Unscreened Illegal Immigration

Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999 the nation’s last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana. A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the “consumption” that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.

Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the United States. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.

Gosh, you guys, what could possibly be causing the reemergence of these long-defeated illnesses?

Health officials say they are not sure why these and other infectious diseases are resurfacing. One distinct possibility, which officials are loath to discuss, is that the millions of migrants who have crossed into the country in recent years could be bringing the scourges with them, since many are from countries where such rare diseases persist and vaccination programs are not robust.

“The recent polio and leprosy cases are almost certainly imports to the U.S.,” said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and scientist at Stanford University, one of the most outspoken critics of official COVID-19 narratives in the last pandemic that later proved flawed.

Yes, yes, let’s make sure that US citizens are shamed and coerced into taking a “mandatory” vaccine to keep everyone safe, but don’t erect any barriers to entry for foreigners illegally storming our shores because that would be racist and xenophobic!

Neither the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) nor the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would discuss the issue with RealClearInvestigations (RCI). Legal immigrants are required to receive vaccinations for a host of diseases, but the DHS acknowledged it does not have vaccination records for the millions who have entered the United States since the Biden administration relaxed border controls upon taking office in January 2021.

LOL. What “border controls”?

The situation in the United States is further complicated by the fact that DHS officials don’t know where all of the more than 7.5 million migrants who’ve arrived since Joe Biden took office are living. Those whom Border Patrol agents have encountered and processed have immigration court dates, but those dates are years in advance. Many people with uncertain immigration status lack health insurance and stay off the grid as much as possible, meaning even if the U.S. launched some kind of vaccination program it would not know where to concentrate its efforts.

In addition, the historic flood of illegal immigration during the Biden administration has also featured a much more global population. DHS uses the term “historically atypical countries” to describe the panoply of countries outside of Mexico and Central America from which illegal immigration has soared. Between 2011 and 2022, the number of annual encounters involving immigrants from historically atypical countries soared from fewer than 8,000 to almost 1 million. The first six months of 2023 saw more than half of official encounters—these numbers do not include what Border Patrol calls “gotaways” for whom little information is available—from historically atypical countries. But infectious diseases largely forgotten in the United States remain public health issues in both hemispheres, and many of those nations have much less robust vaccination programs than most modern Western nations.

How is this not a treasonous dereliction of duty? The colonists fought the British for much, much less than the criminal Biden family and its mobs of enforcers throughout the government have done.

Herb Stein once said that, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” He said it in response to fears over America’s trade and budget deficits in the 1980s. In essence, it meant that we shouldn’t worry about things that we know can’t go on forever, because they will eventually stop of their own accord. It was also “a reminder that knowing if and when to act is never easy.“

Illegal immigration cannot go on forever. Or can it?

See you in the New Year.

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Daily Broadside | Where We’re Headed is Not Good, But There’s Still Time to Do Something About It

End of the week and the weekend before Christmas Day. I hope you enjoy this one because the next one might not be so jolly.

In my last two posts I’ve mentioned a second civil war here in the U.S. I believe that, unless there is some divine intervention, we’re on track to a violent and bloody confrontation. I’m no Michel de Nostredame, nor am I somehow smarter than all other prognosticators. I just look at the developments around our country and think about where it will all lead. It’s really not hard to guess.

A writer I really respect is Victor Davis Hanson (or VDH). He’s an historian and understands the rising and falling of nations. Even he is looking at what is happening, especially in light of the Colorado Supreme Court ruling removing Trump from the ballot in that state, and he’s aghast.

Trump Derangement Syndrome became Orwellian with the recent ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court.

It approved the erasure of Trump from the Republican primary ballot in Colorado, by invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

That ossified clause was intended to bar any ante-bellum federal officials who joined the Confederacy from again holding federal offices after 1865.

In no way is Trump’s conduct on January 6 comparable to calling for secession, much less prompting a Civil War that cost the country 700,000 lives.

Right. It doesn’t make sense. The reason it doesn’t make sense is because “making sense” is not the goal. Removing Trump from the ballot is the goal. That’s the foregone conclusion of the four hacks-in-black; they just needed to find a law to fit their conclusion. When it didn’t exactly fit, they made it fit.

The Colorado court ruling is sadly only the most recent in a long series of disastrous firsts that are slowly unwinding the republic and making a mockery of the rule of law.

Remember the Russian collusion hoax and the 2016 Clinton/Fusion GPS effort to destroy a presidential candidate?

Recall the 2020 Russian disinformation farcical claim concerning the genuine Hunter Biden laptop?

Do not forget the precedent of impeaching a president twice and then trying an ex-president and private citizen in the Senate.

Then there was another first of raiding an ex-president’s private home over disputes about the removal of presidential papers that are typically solved bureaucratically and as a civil matter.

We are also witnessing ongoing lawfare waged by state and local partisan prosecutors to destroy the current leading presidential candidate.

Their indictments either have no merit or would never have applied to liberal politicians or both.

What will be Colorado’s precedent?

Will red-state courts now respond by erasing Joe Biden from their ballots on grounds that he is “guilty” of insurrectionary activity—by deliberately destroying the southern border, undermining U.S. security, sabotaging federal immigration law, and violating his oath of office?

He’s not the only one to think this is exceedingly dangerous. Ben Shapiro is a quick thinker and is dead-on with this:

This is, to put it mildly, unbelievably dangerous.

It sets up a perverse set of incentives for both political sides.

Trump can and will rightly claim that lawfare has been used to thwart the workings of democracy—that a slate of judges in any state can simply negate the will of the voters, and that President Joe Biden’s own Department of Justice has been attempting to drag him into court before the election in order to stymie his shot at the presidency.

Meanwhile, the Colorado Supreme Court has now set up expectations for Democrats across the country that Trump can be legally barred from the presidency—and when the Supreme Court overturns that Colorado Supreme Court ruling, they will claim that the Supreme Court itself is rigged.

All of which means that 2024 is going to be the most insane and ugly presidential election in American history. And that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are both years that existed. Under what circumstances, precisely, would Democrats accept the result of a Trump election? Under what circumstances, precisely, would Republicans accept the result of a Biden election?

The weaponization of the legal system creates an all-consuming fire, burning everything in its path. There is simply no 2024 result likely to result in anything but complete—and perhaps violent—chaos at this point.

The problem here is that we can listen to the warnings, even agree with them, and not know what to do. All of these developments are slowly becoming “the norm” and the danger is that we are lulled into dismissing them because they seem less than lethal one at a time over years. But, taken together, they form an alarming pattern and deviation from historical, legal precedent and American jurisprudence. We are slowly and steadily becoming a third-world nation where political criminals rule through the courts and the regulatory state.

I think the place to start is with recapturing the pride, gratefulness, and the fragility of our freedoms. Let me offer you three quotes to take with you this weekend.

First, Ronald Reagan warned us in 1961 that freedom is only one generation away from extinction.

The next two come from Eric Metaxas. The first is from his book, “If You Can Keep It.”

The Constitution given to us that 1787 was a sufficient beginning. It was the foundation of the United States of America, but merely existing—and merely obeying the laws that stem from that Constitution—was hardly what the founders had in mind. The idea that our government is “we the people” is not a corny idea that doesn’t mean much. It is something that is utterly real. It is in fact an idea of great genius and is the main operating principle by which this nation has stayed alive and has expanded its freedoms for over two centuries. But once “we the people” begin to forget that, and cease to do what is necessary as Americans, it all begins to fall apart. And alas and alack, we have gone a long way toward forgetting that and toward forgetting that and toward ceasing to do what is necessary as Americans. We are in desperate, indeed urgent, need of a primer on these vital things.

Finally, Metaxas argues that the American Church has a role to play here. In his book, “Letter to the American Church,” he writes:

I have written this book because I am convinced the American Church is at an impossibly—and almost unbearably—important inflection point. The parallels to where the German Church was in the 1930s are unavoidable and grim. So the only question—and what concerns us in this slim volume—is whether we might understand those parallels, and thereby avoid the fatal mistakes the German Church made during that time, and their superlatively catastrophic results. If we do not, I am convinced we will reap a whirlwind greater even than the one they did.

Do you understand what we have and the danger we face? Take time to reflect on it.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | The Insurrection Isn’t Coming from the Right. It’s Coming From the Left

Lots of reactions to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling from Tuesday, with Leftists, NeverTrumpers, anti-Americans, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself five-fold) predictably gleeful with the decision, and conservatives, Trump supporters and other patriots condemning the decision as unAmerican and “election interference.”

I don’t know how you can look at it any other way than a partisan effort to disrupt our election process. (This is contra what yesterday I wrote that, “All seven of the Colorado Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, so one can’t plausibly argue that it was a partisan decision.” I read something that I can’t find saying that the majority justices all attended an Ivy League law school [like Harvard or Yale] and the three dissenting votes attended non-Ivy League schools. So I stand corrected).

Trump has never been accused of, tried for, or convicted of being engaged in “insurrection.” There is no way that the Colorado Supreme Court has standing to 1) find that Trump engaged in insurrection and therefore, 2) to disqualify him from the ballot based on that finding.

They’re interpreting an amendment that was written to keep Confederate soldiers and leaders who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, but had then literally engaged in insurrection to the point of raising armies and killing other Americans, as applying to Trump.

All Trump did was encourage his followers to “fight” for what they believed in, and that is now “insurrection.” The Colorado Supreme Court stretched that word so far that if it had been Elastigirl, she would’ve dislocated her shoulder.

On closer inspection, the ruling undermines itself, leaving us to wonder what it’s all about.

The majority on Tuesday said every key legal issue came out against Mr. Trump.

“The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion, saying that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results amounted to engaging in an insurrection and that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, bars insurrectionists from federal office, including the presidency.

They’re unequivocal in stating their conclusion. Trump is disqualfied from holding office and therefore listing him on the Colorado primary ballots would be “a wrongful act” under the Colorado Election Code. One has to wonder how a State usurps federal prerogative to decide if a person engaged in “insurrection” or usurps the candidate’s State’s rights to make that determination.

Or if there is even a way to make that determination apart from a formal charge, trial and conviction.

But this is the interesting part of the Colorado court’s ruling: they issued a stay until January 4th.

The majority added: “We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

But the court gave Mr. Trump a provisional escape route. It put its ruling on hold through Jan. 4, and if he seeks review in the U.S. Supreme Court, as he said he will, the state court said his name would remain on the primary ballot.

What they don’t say is that in the ruling, which you can read here, it says,

Therefore, to maintain the status quo pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court, we stay our ruling until January 4, 2024 (the day before the Secretary’s deadline to certify the content of the presidential primary ballot). If review is sought in the Supreme Court before the stay expires on January 4, 2024, then the stay shall remain in place, and the Secretary will continue to be required to include President Trump’s name on the 2024 presidential primary ballot, until the receipt of any order or mandate from the Supreme Court.

In other words, because they knew Trump will immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, their “stay” will be in force indefinitely. Trump’s name will appear on the ballot no matter what.

So why are they doing this?

I think it’s because being the Leftists they are, they are piling on Trump. They’re part and parcel of the real “insurrection” that is taking place across the United States, with our political, educational, medical, judicial and journalistic institutions all subverting our traditional, historical and legal processes. If they can provoke a reaction from the Right, that would be a bonus. If they can set precedent for the Left in other states, that would be a win for them, too.

And, right on schedule:

In a letter dated Wednesday, California lieutenant governor Eleni Kounalakis (D.) urged California secretary of state Shirley Weber (D.) to “explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot,” given the Colorado supreme court’s decision. On Tuesday, the court voted 4–3 to disqualify Trump from appearing on the Centennial State’s ballot because he allegedly incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

“This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy,” Kounalakis wrote to Weber.

“California must stand on the right side of history,” Kounalakis added. “California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in [Anderson v. Griswold]. The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist.”

This isn’t about doing the right thing or being “on the right side of history” (what, exactly, does that mean anyway?). This is about finding semi-judicial means by which to eliminate Trump as a candidate. They start with the premise that Trump must be stopped; then they look for any “legal” means by which they can get that outcome.

Sen. Mike Lee put it this way:

“Lawless thuggery masquerading as jurisprudence.” Exactly.

You get the idea. And if what these Congressman and Senators say is true—that what the four horsemen of the Colorado Supreme Court did was “lawless thuggery”—then the next step is to impeach the four of them and remove them from the court.

Which will never happen of course. Because they’re Democrats.

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Daily Broadside | But Muh Democracy! Colorado Supreme Court Rules Trump Ineligible To Be on Ballot For Inciting “Insurrection”

Amazeballs.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s primary ballot.

However, the court stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, 2024, “pending any review by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

If the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review the issue by Jan. 4, the Colorado Secretary of State will be required to continued to include President Trump on the primary ballot. Otherwise, he will be removed from the primary ballot.

The hysterical and criminal Democrats are using lawfare any way they can to kneecap Trump in his quest to retake the White House in 2024, after stealing “fortifying” the 2020 election.

“We conclude that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” reads the majority opinion.

“Section Three” of the 14th Amendment reads,

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, has disqualified Trump for something he hasn’t been charaged, tried or convicted for. They’ve just decided that he engaged in “insurrection” and have ruled that he can’t be on the Colorado ballot.

Trump responded with his usual biting tone:

Trump Campaign Spokesman Steven Cheung wrote in a statement that an appeal would be filed on Tuesday night.

“Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice. Democrat Party leaders are in a state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls. They have lost faith in the failed Biden presidency and are now doing everything they can to stop the American voters from throwing them out of office next November,” Cheung wrote.

“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court and a concurrent request for a stay of this deeply undemocratic decision. We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits,” he added.

This is an escalation of the war on Trump, on his MAGA supporters and on conservatives everywhere. I’ve said before, many times, that the trajectory we’re on will lead to a civil war, and the Left seems to be actively trying to start one.

All seven of the Colorado Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democrats, so one can’t plausibly argue that it was a partisan decision. Further, the Justices recognized that their judgement would be appealed, so they stayed their decision until January 4, 2024 to see what the U.S. Supreme Court says.

I’m sure the majority weren’t influenced at all by their personal ideology. Not a whit!

It’s unlikely that Trump not being on the ballot would change the outcome of the election, since Brandon won Colorado by 13.5 points in 2020. It’s more the seriousness of the ruling, which is novel interpretation of Section Three, orignally written to keep former Confederate soldiers out of the government.

But there’s this:

Similar challenges have been heard or are pending in half the states across the nation, and state courts have thus far ruled that they do not have the jurisdiction to interpret and apply Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for a presidential primary.

Those states that still have pending disqualification lawsuits relating to Trump’s appearance on the ballot include Texas, Nevada and Wisconsin, and you can bet they will be watching how this plays out. It’s all going to boil down to defining an “insurrection” and whether Trump is guilty of engaging in one.

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Daily Broadside | In Spite of The Left’s TDS, Trump Dominates Republican Polls

President-in-exile Donald J. Trump has been the most persecuted of all public figures in recent memory. The first president in US history to be criminally charged faces a total of 91 charges across four criminal cases, including 44 federal charges and 47 state charges, all of them felonies.

But the attempt to drag him through the mud and to jail him before next year’s election is backfiring spectacularly.

Former President Donald Trump is dominating the Republican primary polls with 69 percent support, up seven points from November, a Fox News survey released Sunday revealed.

The Republican is the clear favorite among GOP voters, with his support having grown by a whopping 26 points since February.

Fewer than one third of Republican primary voters are backing all of Trump’s rivals combined, with 12 percent going to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, nine percent for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, five percent for businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, two percent for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and just one percent for former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

Every Trump opponent besides Hutchison has lost support within the last month, the poll found.

With a margin of error of ±3 percentage points, that puts Trump solidly at 70 percent support.

The Breitbart article does not hazard a guess as to why Trump’s numbers are skyrocketing, but as a former (and, if he’s the candidate, future) Trump voter, I don’t mind speculating.

First, we all know that the economy was better under Trump. Wages were up, inflation was nothing, prices were “normal” and everyone was feeling the benefit, especially the “black and brown” communities in lower income regions. Under Biden, gas prices have soared, inflation is a problem, and the cost of putting food on the table has hurt everyone, especially those with low income.

Second, Biden and his Marxist gang of creeps have not only done nothing to secure the border, but the so called Border Protection actively helps foreigners illegally enter our country. According to this New York Post article, close to 4 million “””migrants””” have entered the U.S. since Resident Brandon took office in 2021, not to mention the 1.5 million “gotaways” estimated to have entered the U.S. and disappeared without being processed.

However, according to this report, total border crossers since the Fool took office is 8 MILLION.

The number of illegal border crossings at the northern and southern borders and all ports of entry since January 2021 totals more than 8 million people, greater than the individual populations of 38 U.S. states.

Brandon and Mayorkas are traitors. THIS IS A FOREIGN INVASION OF OUR SOVEREIGN SOIL and is an impeachable offense.

Trump built a wall and maintained the “remain in Mexico” policy. Illegal immigration dropped under his watch and he’s promising to make it so again.

Third, Trump appointed three (allegedly) conservative Supreme Court Justices. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett helped overturn Roe v. Wade 50 years after the abortion case was poorly reasoned and enshrined abortion as a “right.” One might expect DJT to nominate at least one or two more justices should he regain the presidency, locking in a conservative majority for the next generation.

As reasonable as those three reasons are for Trump’s enduring popularity, there’s an unspoken reason that I think trumps them all (pun definitely intended).

Most conservative Americans are tired of the steaming pile of progressive BS that the cultural Marxists have been ramming down our throats for the last decade. I would even venture a guess that some on the center-left are tired of it too. If you look at the polls, less than half of American citizens have a “great deal or fair amount of trust” in any federal government institution and are deeply divided by political party (which probably reflects the current political balance of power in Washington D.C.).

Here’s why 70 percent of Republican voters support Trump: he’s a symbolic middle finger to the elites who look down on Normal Americans. He represents the little guy who just wants to do his job and not be threatened by cultural Maoist terrorists because he won’t defile the English language to use some blue-haired malcontent’s preferred pronouns.

Even I feel that way sometimes. As I’ve written before, I’m not as sold on Trump as I once was. I think he’s his own worst enemy. “If only he had some verbal discipline,” I think. But you have to hand it to the guy: he’s like the immoveable object against which all the irresistable forces splatter.

There’s part of me that wants him to win just to stick it to Jack Smith and the other anti-Americans in Washington who have weaponized our institutions to take him down. It’s that simple.

But there’s an even deeper undercurrent that drives conservatives to Trump. Conservatives and like-minded Americans are deeply concerned about the trajectory we’re on and the wrecking ball that progressives have taken to the country. Trump seems to be the only one who is willing to get in there and fight for our country’s survival.

If the Democrats win in 2024, all bets are off. While 70 percent is a good start, I won’t rest easy until the Democratic nominee concedes the election to Trump and Congress certifies his win.

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Daily Broadside | Gay Sex in Senate Chambers Shows How Far We Have Fallen

I’ve been watching and responding to culture and politics for a long time now, and there’s not a lot that surprises me anymore. I’ve learned that politicians are, generally speaking, not upstanding, principled public servants but self-serving grifters who are mostly interested in staying elected to feed at the public trough.

That’s the baseline level of normal in politics now.

Every now and then, though, there are extreme, “watershed” moments that put me back on my heels as American traditions and norms are destroyed by the cultural Maoists who have infiltrated the ranks of federal, state and local governments.

One of those happened again last Friday.

Leaked amateur pornography shows a congressional staffer having anal sex with an unknown man in the Senate hearing room, video obtained by the Daily Caller shows.

The alleged staffer can also be seen in a photo, naked on all fours, looking back at the camera on the table where Senators often sit to ask questions during a hearing. 

There is so much that is wrong with this incident but before I get to that, note that if this was a heterosexual hook up videoed in a Senate hearing room, I’d have a problem with that too. My response is not driven by the fact that this was gay pornography. That’s a factor, but my response is driven by something more significant than that.

To begin with, we have an act of casual sex between (one assumes) two consenting adults. Again, this could’ve been a consenting man and woman having sex. Sex is one of our primal urges and is both the source of our greatest pleasure in life and the cause of many troubles throughout all of human history.

In the course of time, Amnon son of David fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David. Amnon became so obsessed with his sister Tamar that he made himself ill. She was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her.
(2 Samuel 13:1-2, NIV)

Read the rest here.

But not only is it sex, it’s homosexual sex. At this point in our cultural collapse, no one even cares anymore that it’s two men caught in flagrante delicto. It only took 60 years for homosexuality to go from a shameful closeted sin to a omnipresent cultural influence that is celebrated with its own “Pride” month.

But we forget that homosexuality, like casual sex between heterosexuals, is a perversion of God’s sexual design for man and woman.

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-10, NIV)

The footnote for the bolded phrase reads: “The words men who have sex with men translate two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts.”

But not only is it casual sex, and casual sex of the homosexual variety, but these two dudes decided to film themselves engaged in it. Again, that doesn’t surprise anyone anymore because there are so many “sex tapes” involving the rich and famous, the not so rich and famous, and thousands of unknowns because amateur pornography is rampant in our society. Anyone can set up a camera in the bedroom or the boardroom or on the beach and film their raw lust for all to see.

Why someone chooses to do that, with all the risks it entails, I’ll never know.

But to top it all off, this particular homosexual act wasn’t filmed in a private bedroom, or an empty boardroom in some nondescript office building, or on some public beach under the shade of a palm tree. This homosexual act was filmed in what might be considered one of the most sacrosanct buildings in the world. It is home to what once was considered “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the envy of the modern world, one that commanded deferential respect.

Here served the likes of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, John C. Calhoun, Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, and John F. Kennedy, among others.

What these two men did was a moral abomination and an indefensible disgrace. While the one who was identified has been fired, the inviolable and solemn decorum historically associated with the Senate has been violated in a shocking and repugnant lack of decency.

I liken it to pissing on someone’s grave, but worse.

Believe it or not, this is all going to plan. What plan, you ask? (H/T Kevin Downey Jr.)

6. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and press.
7. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in the media.
8. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy.”

Well. Here we are.

Just like we can’t go back to the time before Slick Willy poked Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, we can’t undo the act of sodomy that desecrated the Senate. We cannot go back to an undefiled state. It’s happened.

And it’s happened because our culture produces the people who performed the act.

But we can reject the growing depravity we’re witnessing before it metastasizes and ruins us all. We can turn from our wickedness and seek God and beg forgiveness and mercy.

That’s my prayer.

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Daily Broadside | The Choose Your Own Lunacy Edition

So where should we start today in the clown world we live in?

With the latest murderous “joy ride” by morally atrophied automatons that have no respect for human life? Animals.

With the dystopian-esque demand from the World Economic Forum that the “world” cough up $3.5 trillion a year to fight the carbon apocolypse? Who died and made them boss?

With the intersectional leftwing firebrand president of Harvard posing as a scholar but accused of being a serial plagiarist? The Harvard Corporation — the university’s highest governing body — unanimously affirmed her continued “””leadership.”””

Or maybe with the same president of Harvard’s twisted excuses for anti-semitism on campus before a congressional hearing, along with the heads of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT. All are women. Top donors are withholding their donations from all the schools.

With the House vote to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry into Resident Brandon? Move any slower, GOP, and you won’t be able to impeach because he’ll either be voted out of office or dead.

With Boston’s Democrat mayor who mistakenly sent invitations for a holiday party intended only for minority city councilors to the entire council, including seven white members? She’s only sorry she got caught.

Maybe with Netflix’s “Leave the World Behind,” a cyber apocalypse movie warning about “white people” if “the world falls apart”? Barack Hussein and Michelle Obama are producers.

How about actor, producer and cultural influencer Rob Reiner’ latest film, “God and Country”? He wants to make normal Christian belief and involvement in the political sphere very, very scary because Christian Nationalism!

With the far-left anti-white racist dance company that DoCToR Jill Biden hired for the White House “””Christmas”””” video? How thoughtful and unsurprising of her to embrace “””art””” that unites the whole nation.

Or maybe we should start with the whoring, crackhead gun fanatic and bagman for his criminal family, Hunter Biden, who showed up in Washington not to testify in response to the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena, but to defy Congress and give a press conference in which he portrayed himself as a victim of those pouncing Republicans. Just jail the punk already, will you?

How about the insanity that is California, with their new law mandating “gender-neutral” toy sections in large toy retail stores? Who told the government they had the right to regulate product placement?

Wait. Do you have stock in IBM? Maybe we should start with the video of the CEO Arvind Krishna saying that employees should be fired and bonuses taken away if they don’t discriminate in the hiring process. Like any blue blooded American patriot would do.

Well, I can’t decide. Which should it be?

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | A Former Muslim, Then Atheist, Now Claims to Be a Christian

Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently announced that she has converted to Christianity. Her announcement created a significant amount of discussion on the Internet and social media, with criticism from both the left and the right.

If you’re not familiar with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. At the age of five, Ali underwent female genital mutilation (FGM). At age 23, she sought and received political asylum in the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage. In her early 30s she renounced Islam, identified as an atheist and became involved in Dutch politics.

She was friends with Theo van Gogh (a great-grand-nephew of Vincent van Gogh), with whom she collaborated on a film critical of Islam, called “Submission.” He was murdered in November 2004 by a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film’s message. The murderer stuck a note to van Gogh’s chest with a small knife, in which he threatened the life of Hirsi Ali.

With that threat and an ongoing controversy over how she had obtained her Dutch citizenship, she emigrated to the United States in 2006 and became a citizen in 2013. Due to her outspoken atheism and denunciation of all religion, she was widely considered one of the five leading “New Atheists,” who included Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

With that as background, Hirsi Ali’s conversion to Christianity elicited reactions from both atheists and evangelicals. But it’s not just her “conversion” that stirred the emotions; it was how she described her choice of Christianity that caused the greatest debate over what her conversion meant.

After reviewing the indoctrination she experienced growing up under the Muslim Brotherhood—a relentless and uncompromising education that allowed no dissent—she goes on to describe how she came to leave Islam and embrace atheism.

You can see why, to someone who had been through such a religious schooling, atheism seemed so appealing. Bertrand Russell offered a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people. For him, there was no credible case for the existence of God. Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear: “Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.”

As an atheist, I thought I would lose that fear. I also found an entirely new circle of friends, as different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with them — people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.

The reference to Bertrand Russell is a lecture that he had given in 1927 entitled “Why I am Not a Christian” which she read in 2002. She then turns to why she left atheism and embraced Christianity.

So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

She recognizes that Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization and that without it, we find ourselves in an increasingly chaotic, violent and illogical world that isn’t sustainable.

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

[…]

And so I have come to realise that Russell and my atheist friends failed to see the wood for the trees. The wood is the civilisation built on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it is the story of the West, warts and all. Russell’s critique of those contradictions in Christian doctrine is serious, but it is also too narrow in scope.

Her decision turns out to be socio-political in nature—we have to embrace “the Judeo-Christian tradition” in order to fend off the global threats we face. That seems to be a Christ-less conversion which, if scripture is to be believed, is no conversion at all.

But wait! There’s hope.

Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational. We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy. And we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.

As I read her testimony, it seems to be a mostly pragmatic adoption of an organizing philosophy that has succeeded better than any other in human history. But … she also has found a lack of personal meaning in her life to be “unendurable.”

So while she never mentions Jesus, salvation or the cross, it does look as though she has placed herself in close proximity to the Truth. She writes, “I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday.” My prayer for her is that she comes to a personal relationship with God through Christ as she attends services each week.

I encourage you to read the whole thing.

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Daily Broadside | Writing More Laws Won’t Solve the Problem. Plus You’re Trampling My Rights

Sorry I was AWOL last week. Lots of factors at play. Upside was keeping my eyes off the screen; downside was a lapse in my snappy, incisive commentary on the circus that is the United States of America these days.

I happen to live in Illinois and our esteemed governor, JB Pritzker, signed a broad ranging “assault weapons” ban in January this year that requires owners of any guns on the banned list to register them with the authorities by December 31, 2023. They can keep such guns (how benevolent! how gracious!) but if that person doesn’t register them with the Illinois State Police before the end of this year, they risk being fined or jailed or both.

This is, of course, an extreme infringement on our Second Amendment rights: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

INFRINGE, verb
1 : to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another

Whenever there is some kind of law or regulation enacted on the ownership of firearms, there you have an infringement. Making me fill out paperwork and register with the government is an infringement on my right to “keep and bear arms.” Making me pay a fee in order to own a gun is an infringement. A “right” in its purest form is not something that a government bestows or manages, but something that I already have, free and clear from government interference.

Yet that doesn’t stop the “””elected””” bureaucrats from trying to manage speech, religion, guns or any of a dozen other things that the US Constitution guarantees to its citizens.

Illinois citizens are fighting back.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A firearms retailer and a national gun rights group have filed an emergency plea with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to block Illinois’ assault weapons ban.

The plea argues that law-abiding citizens in Illinois are facing irreparable injury as their fundamental right to keep and bear arms is being infringed.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency request for an injunction made earlier this year. I’m not overly confident that this will fare any better.

Meanwhile, the Illinois State Police is urging gun owners in the state to register their assault-style weapons in compliance with the Protect Illinois Communities Act. The legislation prohibits the sale of 170 firearms, but owners of previously possessed weapons can maintain them if they are registered with the state before January 1, 2024.

This is where it gets interesting. The Illinois State Police are urging Illinoisians to register their guns, but Illinois sheriffs are not being so supportive.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments vow to defy state assault weapons ban
The sheriffs say they believe the law violates the Second Amendment.

By Peter Charalambous
January 13, 2023, 6:01 PM

Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff’s offices.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.

You might pass the legislation, but enforcing it is a whole other world.

I don’t support this legislation. It came on the heels of a heinous crime in a community not far from where I live, as described in the Response in Opposition to Renewed Application for Injunction Pending Review filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by the City of Naperville and the State of Illinois.

“On July 4, 2022, a shooter armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle and 30-round magazines opened fire on an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois. This weapon made it possible for the shooter to fire 83 rounds in less than a minute, killing 7 and wounding 48. A Highland Park ordinance prohibited the sale of assault weapons, but the shooter had legally purchased the murder weapon elsewhere in llinois.”

Yes, a heinous crime committed by a kid who bought the gun legally. The reaction by our state legislators—the Democrats—is to ban anyone and everyone from having any gun they deem an “assault weapon” so that such crimes are no longer committed.

A noble goal, but impossible to achieve. All they’re doing is stripping law-abiding citizens of their rights. The problem isn’t the gun; the problem is the person who’s using the gun.

This is where we try to use laws to tame the human heart—an impossible task. The only thing that can change a heart is the love of Christ, and that can’t be legislated.

For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:5-6)

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Daily Broadside | Mice, Rice and a Review That’s (Mostly) Nice

Happy Monday! Hope you all had a nice weekend. I spent mine getting the house decorated for Christmas. I hate the amount of time that it takes us to “put up Christmas” both inside and out. On the other hand, I enjoy the fruits of our labor when the front of the house is all lit up and the inside has been transformed into a veritable wonderland with the ornamented and lit tree, the red and white table cloths, the mantle with lights and pine branches. It really is a special time of year and very festive.

One of the things we discovered as we were hauling out large plastic bins full of Christmas decor was that a mouse (two? more?) had gotten into a 25 lb. bag of rice that we had on a shelf in our storage room. They had nibbled through a corner of the bag.

We found out because a blow up mattress that we had to move to get at some decorations had rice falling out of it — there was literally a hole chewed in the plastic and something had been storing rice inside of it. That led us to the bag of rice and — I kid you not — fully three-quarters of it was gone. Gone! That’s 18.75 lbs. of rice! Where did they take it? Besides the blow-up mattress (which we had to throw out) we found another large pile of rice under the cushions on a sofa.

But we didn’t find 18 lbs. of rice. Where’s the rest of it?

I know, I know …. first world problems. But I was astonished that however many mice were helping themselves to the rice, they had moved almost 19 lbs. of it! If they had been smart mice, they would’ve just left it in the bag and come back to get what they needed when they needed it.

A few posts ago, I wrote about a new film from Angel Studios called “The Shift” and told you I’d let you know what I thought of it when I saw it. Well, I went to see it last night with the Missus, having gotten the specially-priced $5 tickets for us.

Let me start with what the film did well. The cinematography was excellent. Apart from one or two moments where the scenery felt low budget, the rest of it was extremely well shot. The majority of the movie has a dark, grim dystopian look which fits the sci-fi genre like any big budget Hollywood movie.

The acting is excellent. Neal McDonough (Yellowstone) turns in a terrifyingly real performance as the ice-cold villian known as “The Benefactor.” The protagonist, Kevin, played by Kristoffer Polaha (Jurassic World Dominion), and his wife, Molly, played by Elizabeth Tabish (The Chosen), both make their characters truly believeable, with some of the best dialogue I’ve heard in a Christian-themed movie when they meet in the opening scene.

The premise is intriguing. A married man (Kevin) is “shifted” from one reality to another by The Benefactor, where his life continues while trying to find a way back to Molly, while another Kevin apparently takes his place back in his original reality. It’s an imaginative plot that holds a lot of promise.

However, in my opinion, the movie fell short in both character development and in story-telling.

For instance, while Kevin and Molly’s relationship is developed quickly as a time-saving device, the development of other relationships is barely shown at all. After his initial encounter with The Benefactor, the next thing we know Kevin has been in his new reality for five years.

In his new reality, Kevin has to work, but we’re never shown how he gets his job or even what he does. We see him sneaking folded sheets of paper to a co-worker, Gabriel (Sean Astin, The Lord of the Rings), but we have no backstory to their relationship or why Kevin has chosen to give Gabriel these pages (they end up being scripture passages he recalls and types out, though not word-for-word). It’s obvious that having or citing scripture is illegal, but we don’t know what this reality is or who “owns” it.

In a restaurant scene, everyone in the place seems to know The Benefactor and is terrified of him. But we have no idea why. Is this The Benefactor’s “home” reality? Has he shifted all of these people to this reality and have they all decided to work for him? Why do they fear him if he promises to give them something they want in return for working for him? Or has he threatened or deceived them all?

One of the waitresses is clearly traumatized by The Benefactor. When she falls victim to a whim of Kevin’s through the power of The Benefactor, it’s not shocking because we don’t know her story. It’s holes like that in the plot that make it difficult to stay with it.

The other misstep, in my opinion, was the overt Christian messaging. I really think this movie, which is loosely based on the story of Job in the Old Testament, could have stood on its own if it strengthened the plotline and stayed away from the preachy-ness that often keeps movies like this from reaching a larger audience. Sound of Freedom, another Angel Studios product, was very successful in allowing the story itself to be the message, rather than using the dialogue to “explain” the message.

In the end, it was hard to keep up with and figure out what was going on as the story progressed. My better half didn’t like it at all. There were some things that I liked about it but overall I didn’t find it to be a great film, which is too bad. However, as a Christian-themed movie, the solid acting, cinematography and creative approach gives me hope that we’re making progress for faith-based films.