Commentary: Was It Legal to Appoint Jack Smith in the First Place?

Jack Smith

Was Special Counsel Jack Smith illegally appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and is his prosecution of former Pres. Donald Trump unlawful? That is the intriguing issue raised in an amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court by Schaerr Jaffe, LLP, on behalf of former Attorney General Ed Meese and two law professors, Steven Calabresi and Gary Lawson, in the case of U.S. v. Trump.

We won’t get an immediate answer to this question because on the Friday before Christmas, the Supreme Court issued a one-line order refusing to take up Smith’s request that the court review Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, which was denied by the trial court, in the federal prosecution being pursued by Smith in the District of Columbia. The special counsel had petitioned the court to take the case on an expedited basis, urging the justices to bypass review by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Read the full story

Commentary: Ban TikTok or Let Beijing Control Our Broadcast Networks, Too

Tiktok User

In the dynamic landscape of global entertainment, the influence of Beijing over Hollywood has long been a topic of heated discussion. While the box office power of the Chinese market has waned, giving a breath of creative freedom back to our filmmakers, there looms a new and more pervasive form of influence on Hollywood and well beyond: TikTok.

Beijing may have lost theatrical market leverage, but it has more than made up for that with an overpowering social media presence that has become an epidemic, not just in Hollywood but throughout the United States. In fact, the Chairman of Congress’s Select Committee on China, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), accurately labels TikTok as “digital fentanyl” and has been aggressively campaigning to ban the social media app.

Read the full story

Commentary: When the Invaders Outnumber the Army

According to the website Statista, the United States has the third largest standing “Army” in the world. The website says that we have 1.3 million soldiers under arms. By “soldiers,” they’re referring to all of our armed forces—Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. Third largest in the world. Not bad, if you’re into measuring things. China and India are the only countries with larger militaries. Russia has one about the same size as us, as does North Korea.

In addition to our active force, Statista says we have over 760,000 reservists attached to our armed forces. For those unfamiliar, a reservist is also a soldier (generic term) who can theoretically be called into duty to do things the active forces do. They’re called reservists because they are the first line of replenishment for the active force. Reservists serve in various capacities in all of the branches of the US military. They train once a month with their unit and have a two-week annual training event where they go to an installation and ensure their skills are ready for wartime. Some call them weekend warriors. I call them heroes—many or most have other jobs and serve our great country because they want to serve. Of key importance is that all of these service members are federally authorized and work at the direction of the president.

Read the full story

Commentary: School Choice Keeps Spreading

Classroom

In just three years, the number of states with universal or near-universal private school choice programs has grown from zero to 10, and the number of students eligible for these programs has increased by 60%. According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to educational freedom—32 states (plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico) are using school choice as of 2023. Additionally, policymakers in 40 states debated 111 educational choice bills last year alone. Overall, approximately 20 million students—or 36% of all kids—are now eligible for some kind of private-choice program.

But what’s good for children and their families is problematic for the teachers’ unions and their fellow travelers. As such, on January 22—not coincidentally the beginning of National School Choice Week—the Partnership for the Future of Learning released a toolkit, maintaining that “voucher programs are “deeply rooted in segregation, racism, and discrimination.” The PFL, which is comprised of predominantly left-wing outfits—the National Education Association, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Learning Policy Institute, etc.—adds that private schools “do not have necessary accountability measures.”

Read the full story

Commentary: The Delusions of Davos and Dubai Surrounding Wind and Solar Energy

Solar Energy

In the most recent “Conference of the Parties,” otherwise known as the United Nations extravaganza that convenes every few years for world leaders to discuss the climate crisis, several goals were publicly proclaimed. Notable were the goals to triple production of renewable energy by 2030 and triple production of nuclear energy by 2050. Against the backdrop of current global energy production by fuel type, and as quantified in Part One, against a goal of increasing total energy production from 600 exajoules in 2022 to at least 1,000 exajoules by 2050, where does COP 28’s goals put the world’s energy economy? How much will production of renewable energy have to increase?

To answer this question, it is necessary to recognize and account for the fact that most renewable energy takes the form of electricity, generated through wind, solar, or geothermal sources. And when measuring how much the base of renewables installed so far will contribute to the target of 1,000 exajoules of energy production per year in order to realize—best-case scenario—800 exajoules of energy services, the data reported in the Statistical Review of Global Energy is profoundly misleading.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Beltway Judge Hearing Trump Cases and Her Anti-Trump, Anti-Kavanaugh Husband

Washington glitterati assembled at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in October to celebrate federal employees making a difference in government. Hosted by CNN anchor Kate Bolduan, the black-tie affair featured in-person appearances by top Biden White House officials including Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack.

Midway through the evening’s festivities, Max Stier, president of the group sponsoring the event – the Partnership for Public Service, a $24 million nonprofit based in Washington that recruits individuals to work in the civil service – took the stage to thank his high-profile guests. “Great leaders are the heart and soul of effective organizations,” Stier said, “which is why I am so thankful to see so many of our government’s amazing leaders here tonight.”

Read the full story

Commentary: The Deep State will Receive a Shellacking Come November

Trump White House

President Donald Trump heads into February’s South Carolina primary in a formidable position—the strongest ever in his political career. Following Iowa’s near-clean sweep, in which the 45th President picked up 98 of 99 counties in the Hawkeye State (and the one county he lost by just a single vote), he routed the New Hampshire primary with a double-digit victory, once again winning all but a single county in the Granite State.

The momentum he carried into New Hampshire was so resounding that it forced Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once hyped as President Trump’s successor not so long ago, to drop out of the race days before the first official vote was even tallied. The New Hampshire result, which saw Trump thrash Haley with a 54% to 43% margin, would have been wider, but for all the former-Democrats-turned-undecideds in the state, who teamed up with left-leaning independents to artificially tilt the scales towards Haley.

Read the full story

Commentary: After Sweeping Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump Faces the Supreme Court Primary

After sweeping the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary — the first Republican in a competitive presidential nomination race to do so since the GOP started using the Iowa caucus in 1976 — former President Donald Trump will run unopposed in the Nevada caucus on Feb. 8 and appears to be safely ahead in polls in the South Carolina primary on Feb. 24.

The Republican National Committee even briefly considered naming Trump the “presumptive” GOP nominee before the plan was scrapped.

Read the full story

Commentary: Clever Teachers Unions Embed Socialism into Their Contracts

From Boston to Los Angeles, teachers’ unions and their progressive counterparts have quietly devised an unprecedented method to bypass the legislative process by embedding unrelated policy issues deep within the intricate terms of teacher contracts.

This new, covert strategy, hidden in plain sight, allows state and municipal officials to create sweeping policy changes that evade the scrutiny typically associated with customary legislative procedures, which include publicly available draft legislation, committee hearings, amendments and comprehensive floor debates.

Read the full story

Commentary: ‘Disturbing’ Collusion Between Biden White House and Trump Prosecutors

Before the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith in November 2022, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice was in the process of conducting two separate criminal investigations into Donald Trump: his attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government files.

Smith took over both matters to demonstrate the DOJ’s “independence” from politics, the public was told, although he took with him prosecutors and investigators already assigned to the existing inquiries. His team continues to insist their work is devoid of any influence from or cooperation with the Biden regime. Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland say the same.

Read the full story

Commentary: 100 Canadian Churches Torched or Damaged Following Indian Residential School Graves Hoax

St Jean Baptiste

To its credit, the London-based tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail recently carried a story most corporate news outlets have been avoiding: The Indian Residential School Graves hoax.

The paper, whose article titles are characteristically long and descriptive, leaves little mystery in the scandalous story’s headline: “Nearly ONE HUNDRED churches across Canada have been torched or damaged after activists lied that 200 indigenous children were buried under Catholic schools.”

Read the full story

Commentary: The Tricky Business of Branding

Patagonia Clothing

Brand development has become a major focus for firms hoping to find or maintain success in advanced markets. According to Steve Forbes, “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.” And he certainly is right.

A brand not only serves to identify firms and what they offer, it also conveys a company’s positioning strategy and value proposition. Promotional elements such as logos, names, symbols, and colors, are commonly leveraged for branding purposes but a brand can also be reinforced through pricing and distribution systems. For instance, if a company wants their product to be viewed as the best of the best, then they wouldn’t want it to be found on the shelves at a discount store. This is why Burberry has been known to burn excess inventory and perhaps it is also why premium brands will leverage opportunities to recycle their products.

Read the full story

Commentary: Dual Enrollment Is a Homeschool Resource

Mom and daughter learning

This year marks the completion of high school for two of my children. Navigating the high school years has been both exciting and challenging. By the time our children had reached high school age, two things were apparent. First, homeschooling had allowed my kids to find and pursue their special interests—ones that had future career potential.

Second, while mastery of most subjects had been relatively easy, math and science were a bit more difficult. Despite overall higher testing outcomes within the homeschool community, there is a documented math gap for many homeschoolers. In other words, most homeschoolers score slightly lower than their non-homeschooled peers in math and science. (This is understandable, of course: I don’t know many mothers qualified to teach high-level math or science, and most of us don’t want our kitchens being turned into chemistry labs.)

Read the full story

Commentary: The Left’s Ridiculous Disinformation on Tainted Zuck Bucks

Zuck Bucks

Anyone who’s followed the Mark Zuckerberg “Zuck bucks” story since 2020 has witnessed some spectacular acrobatics from the left.

First, it was denial that a partisan billionaire was trying to privatize the election in swing states. Then, when Democrats unseated President Trump, NPR and others praised Zuck bucks for “saving” the election. When the 2022 midterms came, the cry was for more private funding to “rehabilitate” democracy. Now the media’s latest stop: gaslighting the public into believing any criticism of leftist “dark money” is just conservative propaganda, rather than one of the worst election innovations of our time.

Read the full story

Commentary: Logically.AI of Britain and the Expanding Global Reach of Censorship

Computer Keyboard

Brian Murphy, a former FBI agent who once led the intelligence wing of the Department of Homeland Security, reflected last summer on the failures of the Disinformation Governance Board – the panel formed to actively police misinformation. The board, which was proposed in April 2022 after he left DHS, was quickly shelved by the Biden administration in a few short months in the face of criticism that it would be an Orwellian state-sponsored “Ministry of Truth.”

In a July podcast, Murphy said the threat of state-sponsored disinformation meant the executive branch has an “ethical responsibility” to rein in the social media companies. American citizens, he said, must give up “some of your freedoms that you need and deserve so that you get security back.”

Read the full story

Commentary: The Elite One Percent Behind the Cultural Civil War

American Flag

Scott Rasmussen has done America an enormous service. He and his team have identified the driving forces behind the destructive radicalism which is pushing us into a cultural civil war.

While doing their two weekly national surveys, Rasmussen and his team noticed an anomaly. Out of every 1,000 or so respondents, there would always be three or four who were far more radical than everyone else. After several months of finding these unusual responses, Rasmussen realized they all shared three characteristics.

Read the full story

Commentary: Big Labor State Politicians’ ‘Wall of Denial’ Is Starting to Crumble

California Illinois

For decades, cold, hard data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have shown that states like New Jersey, Illinois and California are paying a high price for allowing dues-hungry union bosses to continue getting workers fired for refusal to bankroll their organizations.

Year after year, far more taxpayers have been leaving forced-unionism states than moving into them.  And the average tax filer moving out of a forced-unionism state has reported having an adjusted gross income (AGI) on his or her IRS form that is substantially higher than the average for a tax filer moving into a forced-unionism state.

Read the full story

Commentary: America Can’t Afford Never Trump’s Nihilism

Ron DeSantis

It was a wise decision for Ron DeSantis to end his presidential campaign when he did. There would have been no point in prolonging a bitter and divisive primary battle when Trump has clearly won already. By endorsing Trump, DeSantis opened the door to repairing some of the damage from what turned out to be a disastrous career move. And he did the right thing for the country by signaling to his supporters that it was time to unite and focus on ending the Biden regime.

Unfortunately, just a day later, DeSantis took a gratuitous swipe at Trump. It was chum for many of DeSantis’ hardcore supporters, who remain full of spite after months of back-and-forth with the MAGA “cult.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Democrats’ Calls for Justice Thomas’ Recusal Are a Nakedly Political Ploy

Justice Clarence Thomas

In their latest attack on the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court, House Democrats are urging Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a case involving former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s Republican primary ballot.

Their reasoning is simple, but dangerously misguided: Because Thomas’ wife, Ginni, has expressed opinions about Trump and the 2020 election, he should be barred from adjudicating any case involving Trump and elections.

Read the full story

Commentary: More Gender Activists than Medical Professionals on WHO Transgender Health Panel

Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had formed a Guideline Development Group made up of 21 members tasked with writing WHO guidelines on “the health of trans and gender diverse people.”

As a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health, WHO is looked to by most of the world’s nations for leadership on public health policy. Of the world’s 195 countries, 194 are WHO member states, with Taiwan being the lone exception.

Read the full story

Commentary: Trump Makes History by Winning Both Iowa and New Hampshire Primaries

Trump NH

Former President Donald Trump easily won the New Hampshire primary against rival former South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley with a record number of votes for the contest, 166,000 and counting with 92 percent of precincts reporting, and the third highest percentage total, 54.6 percent, for a Republican in a competitive primary after Richard Nixon’s 78 percent in 1968 and Dwight Eisenhower’s 56 percent in 1952.

The margin, Trump’s 54.6 percent to Haley’s 43.3 percent, was an 11-point rout leaving little doubt about Trump’s dominant position in the race, continuing to display all the elements of the incumbency advantage even though he is not in the White House.

Read the full story

Commentary: Ruling Class Disturbance

WEF

The last few months have been interesting. We have started to see some very public disagreements among the world’s ruling classes. The gathering of elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has long fascinated observers and become a lightning rod for criticism, becoming a bogeyman of the right, as well as the hardcore, anticapitalist left. It is a front-row seat to the thinking and priorities of the world’s most powerful people.

In Davos, the world’s media, academic, political, and financial elites spend a few days in luxurious surroundings, praising themselves and forming a consensus on solutions to what they deem to be the problems of the world. This includes everything from facilitating mass migration, tackling global warming by moving away from fossil fuel energy, and the need for economic redistribution to the poor and the third world, all through the corporatist idea of “stakeholder capitalism.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Tennesseans Deserve Investment Transparency

For the first time in the United States, an investment firm is being sued for its misleading Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment strategies, and our state is leading the charge.

Tennessee State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti accused BlackRock, Inc. of deceiving Tennesseans by downplaying their ESG-related investment goals and pressuring corporate boards to do the same.

Read the full story

Commentary: Public Education’s Alarming Reversal of Learning Trend

School Work

Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.

The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

Read the full story

Commentary: This National School Choice Week, Let’s Celebrate Return to Founding Principles

The school choice policies sweeping the nation may be among the most innovative—and promising—enacted in recent memory. Yet they also embody a return to principles first enshrined in American law nearly 400 years ago.

In 1642, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony crafted the nation’s first education law, its objective was clear: Parents must educate their children.

Read the full story

Commentary: David Frum and the Axis of Errors

David Frum

Writing in The Atlantic, David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and cheerleader for endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror, warns us that if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election NATO will be wrecked, our allies around the world will suffer “potential disaster,” and “above all” Ukraine will be left to the mercy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Given Frum’s track record of advice about wars, one wonders why anyone would take his advice. Frum takes credit for Bush’s phrase the “axis of evil” to describe Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Frum’s advice about war should be labeled the “axis of error.”

Read the full story

Commentary: Tips for Practicing Everyday Hospitality

Waitress Customer

It’s not hard to imagine grandiose examples of hospitality. The older woman who hosts a crop of teenagers in her home every Thursday night. The man who frequently invites church visitors to his family’s Sunday dinner. The neighbor who throws quarterly block parties and welcomes the whole town.

In these situations, hospitality is obvious (and, let’s admit, impressive). But for those of us who don’t have the financial means or living space to host large dinners or parties, offering hospitality can seem elusive. For me, without a house of my own, hospitality can even feel impossible.

Read the full story

Roberts and Milei Put the Globalists in Davos on Notice

While globalists, heads of large corporations, and officials in international organizations may consider democracy more of a spectator sport than a representative political system embraced by countries around the world, at least they were willing to allow some competition into the ring this year. In addition to its usual list of drastically tired global elites such as John Kerry, Bill Gates, and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, The World Economic Forum decided to invite a handful of conservative leaders to its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland this past week. The opposition offered a reality check to those in desperate need of one, even if it wasn’t welcome. A couple of unabashed speakers even drew a little blood. 

Read the full story

Commentary: The ‘Republicans’ Supporting the ‘Prove It Act’ Lay the Groundwork for Crushing Carbon Tax on Americans

by Michael McKenna   Last Thursday, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reported legislation (the Prove It Act) that sets the stage and lays the foundation to impose a carbon dioxide tax on American families, workers, and consumers. This new energy tax was voted out of committee 14-5, with four Republicans — Senator Kevin Cramer (from North Dakota, an energy producing state), Senator John Boozman (Arkansas), Senator Graham (South Carolina), and, most inexplicably, Senator Cynthia Lummis (from Wyoming, another state that produces energy) — joining ten Democrats to create this new tax. Five Republicans, led by Senator Capito from West Virginia, voted against the new energy tax. Like all energy taxes, this one will fall hardest on the poor, the elderly, those on fixed incomes, and local institutions that have limited budgets, like schools and hospitals. The legislation sponsors, which include Senator Cramer, have tried to disguise the actual intention of the legislation — which is to increase the price of energy and everything grown, made, or transported with energy in an attempt to address global warming — with propaganda about being tough on our trade competitors, including China. That charade is so embarrassingly thin that even Politico ignored it and declared in…

Read the full story

Commentary: The Reason Some Diamond Brands So Expensive

Diamond Ring

One of my first full-time jobs outside of college was working in the jewelry industry at Harry Winston in Manhattan. The experience I gained as a sales assistant, working at the historical house of Winston, expanded my understanding of the power of a brand.

The amount of money customers would spend on a Harry Winston diamond, while scoffing at what was down the street at Tiffany’s, seemed absurd. I was on a yearly salary of $35k, and people were dropping more than that amount on a tennis bracelet with less than 30 minutes of deliberation.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Loss of the Sacred in American Culture

Catholic Church

There’s a grim scene near the end of The Iliad in which the Greek hero Achilles, because of his rage and grief over the death of his comrade Patroclus at the hands of the Trojan prince Hector, slays Hector in battle and drags his corpse behind his chariot, day after day, desecrating the body in a manner unthinkable to the ancient Greeks. In fact, the affront to the dignity of this hero and prince, as well as the violation of the sacred customs of Greek society, eventually compels the gods to intervene. They tell Priam, the elderly king of Troy, to go to Achilles and plead for the body of Hector so that it may be properly honored and buried. The gods will not allow such a desecration to continue.

In these final lines of this epic poem—which, along with The Odyssey forms the bedrock of Western literature and arguably Western Civilization as a whole—Homer reaffirms a notion that all Greeks would have agreed with: There are certain lines that must not be crossed, certain sacred realities that cannot be defied, even by the semidivine hero Achilles.

Read the full story

Commentary: Inflated Grades, Increasing Graduation Rates, and Deflated Test Scores

Students Learning

Grade inflation is rampant and has been so for many years. Back in 2011, an in-depth study by three Ivy League economists looked at how the quality of individual teachers affects their students over the long term. The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years and, using a value-added approach, found that teachers who help students raise their standardized test scores have a lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage pregnancy rates, greater college matriculation, and higher adult earnings. The authors of the study define “value added” as the average test-score gain for a teacher’s students “…adjusted for differences across classrooms in student characteristics such as prior scores.”

But to those who believe in equity über alles, quality is an afterthought, and many states are ditching any objective criteria for entry into the teaching field. In California, teachers traditionally have had to pass the ridiculously easy California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) to gain entry into the profession, but the test is now under fire.

Read the full story

Commentary: Seven Ridiculous Examples of Government Waste in 2023

Congress Spending

Almost nobody doubts that the federal government wastes a lot of money. Every day we hear stories of fraud, mismanagement, and misplaced priorities that cost taxpayers millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

But just how much money is wasted? In his annual Festivus report—named after the fictional Seinfeld holiday—Senator Rand Paul tallies up some of the most egregious examples of government waste from the year. The report for 2023 came out on December 22, and as usual, the stories spanned the range from hilarious to deeply disconcerting. In all, Paul identified $900 billion in government waste from 2023.

Read the full story

Commentary: No, Ladies, We Cannot Have It All

Woman Stressed out at work

The phrase “having it all” came from the title of a 1982 book written by Helen Gurley Brown, then editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. As Antoinette Lattouf, writing in The Guardian in early 2023, put it, this self-help book for women focused on “money, sex, diet, exercise, and appearance.” Notably, it made no mention of children or family.

Since then, of course, the phrase has come to take on an even broader meaning. Today, “having it all” is touted as a woman’s reaching her full potential by having an education, lucrative formal career, rewarding marriage, happy children, and an active social life. Of course, this ideal is vague at best and destructive at worst.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Hysterical Style in American Politics

White Silence

The post-Joe McCarthy era and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater once prompted liberal political scientist Richard Hofstadter to chronicle a supposedly long-standing right-wing “paranoid style” of conspiracy-fed extremism.

But far more common, especially in the 21st century, has been a left-wing, hysterical style of inventing scandals and manipulating perceived tensions for political advantage.

Read the full story

Commentary: DEI Destroys Excellence, Military Cohesion at Service Academies

Military

Applicants who self-identified as a member of a race the Academy wished to privilege—at the time I was on the Admissions Board it was African American, Hispanic, and Native American—were briefed separately to the committee not by a white member but by a minority Navy lieutenant. Briefings (a minute and forty seconds per applicant, no more) ran through a number of factors quite quickly and offered a recommendation that we had been told was appropriate: “qualified” for USNA if grades A/B for white applicants (but not minorities, who needed only C grades), 600 score in each part of the SAT for white applicants (but about 550 for minorities who come to USNA without remediation), and Whole Person Multiple (points given for grades/tests, school leadership positions, and sports) of at least 55,000 for whites, no bottom for minorities.

Read the full story

Commentary: The Intellectual Foundations of MAGA

MAGA Hat

Republicans are dumb. They are easily led suckers, voting against their own best interests, manipulated by dangerous demagogues. This accusation is accepted as fact by most Democrat voters and is relentlessly reinforced by the media Democrats rely on. From MSNBC, Democratic strategist James Carville says Republicans “have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries.”  From New York Magazine, “Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republicans?” From Vanity Fair, “Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?”

Even some conservative columnists can’t criticize the Democrats without taking a shot at those stupid Republicans. Daniel Henninger, writing for the Wall Street Journal, characterized national politics this year as “The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party.” As for the leader of the Republican Party, we have this from The New Republic, “Trump Is an Extremely Dumb Fascist.” And as James Carville said, “When stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”

Read the full story

Commentary: DC Appellate Judges Use ‘Unprecedented Approach’ to Get Trump’s Twitter Files

Trump DC

In January 2023, two months after his appointment as special counsel, Jack Smith applied for a search warrant to obtain all of the data associated with Donald Trump’s long-dormant Twitter account. Smith sought not just public posts but direct messages, drafted and deleted posts, and the identity of any individual with access to the account. Smith also asked for “all users [Trump’s account] has followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked, and all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” Trump’s account.

The application was stunning in scope with no justification as to why the government needed such a limitless trove of information—particularly one that clearly ran afoul of Trump’s right to assert executive privilege. So, Smith neatly settled that matter by additionally asking for a nondisclosure order that prevented Twitter from notifying Trump about the search warrant for 180 days.

Read the full story

Commentary: Combating the Federal Government’s Determination to Allow a Border Invasion

Illegal Immigration

The invasion of illegal aliens on our southern border is getting worse by the day. Texas is at the forefront of this problem, comprising almost half of the nation’s border with Mexico. After years of failure by the Obama and Biden administrations, our state has finally decided to act to protect our citizens.

A new law was signed by the governor, making illegal immigration a state crime and empowering local and state law enforcement to carry out this new law. This should have happened years ago. The border crisis is not new. Inaction by the governor has continued to allow illegal aliens, including documented terrorists, into our state.

Read the full story

Commentary: Only Trump Can Save America

I believed that Republican voters were ready for a new post-Trump chapter of the America First movement. I now believe I was wrong. Those of us who backed Ron DeSantis – or the other Republican candidates – should read the room. Former President Trump winnowed the field effortlessly and then crushed the remaining three candidates in Iowa. He leads in the polls everywhere else. It is time to coalesce and unite behind the clear preference of the GOP grassroots, Donald John Trump.

Read the full story

Commentary: A Pointless Republican Primary

Trump AF1

President Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. He is far ahead in every primary poll. His supporters originally worried that he would be too polarizing and would go down in flames in the general election, but it appears he will also win the general election against incompetent, unpopular, and increasingly demented Joe Biden.

Indictments, lawfare, media propaganda, and phalanx-style opposition from the organs of conservatism have all been arrayed against Trump. He has also earned the contempt of the managerial class’s elite: the judges, the academics, and the think tankers, as well as the GS and SES class around Washington, D.C.

Read the full story

Commentary: Moderna Came Up with a Vaccine Against Vaccine Dissent

Moderna Vaccine

Finances at the vaccine manufacturer Moderna began to fall almost as quickly as they had risen, as most Americans resisted getting yet another COVID booster shot. The pharmaceutical company, whose pioneering mRNA vaccine had turned it from small startup to biotech giant worth more than $100 billion in just a few years, reported a third-quarter loss last year of $3.6 billion, as most Americans refused to get another COVID booster shot.

In a September call aimed at shoring up investors, Moderna’s then-chief commercial officer, Arpa Garay, attributed some of the hesitancy pummeling Moderna’s numbers to uninformed vaccine skeptics. “Despite some misinformation,” Garay said, COVID-19 still drove significant hospitalizations. “It really is a vaccine that’s relevant across all age groups,” she insisted.

Read the full story

Commentary: The SITE Act Could Save Tennesseans Millions in Healthcare Spending

The escalating cost of health care in America has reached an unsustainable level, leaving millions of Americans saddled with medical debt. In Tennessee alone, 61 percent of residents have grappled with the burden of health care affordability, with 78 percent expressing concerns about affording health care in the future. As many of my fellow college students would agree, working within the confines of a tight budget means that the impact of high medical bills is that much more acute. And as a concerned and engaged citizen, I feel compelled to shine a spotlight on these critical affordability issues that impact everyone in my community.

 High health care costs have rightfully become the focus of intense scrutiny. Many Americans are wrestling with all-too-high medical bills, and government health care programs consistently rank among the largest annual federal expenditures. With an aging population and an ever-changing public health environment, it is incumbent upon our elected officials to examine more solutions to bring down health care costs.

Read the full story

Senator James Lankford Commentary: The Abortion Industry’s ‘Very Safe’ Lie Is Putting Women at Very Big Risk

James Lankford

It sounds so simple. Take these pills, and your problem will be over—except, it isn’t. People do not forget an event so significant. A few months ago, social media went into a frenzy when Britney Spears shared that she was pressured by her boyfriend 20 years ago to take abortion pills. After two decades she still described the chemical abortion as “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.” She is not alone.

The abortion industry has worked overtime to convince women that chemical abortions are “very safe”—even making the claim that they are safer than Tylenol. They attempt to conflate chemical abortions with contraceptive pills to push them on moms as a “safe” way to end a pregnancy. But the drugs used in a chemical abortion are far more dangerous.

Read the full story

Commentary: Four Things People Can Do to Change the Culture in 2024

People Praying

Maybe I am on a new year high, but as I consider the West’s cultural renewal, I sense an optimism in the air I haven’t felt for years.

In 2023, we saw a growing public awareness about the dangers and futility of transgender surgery. Alongside that, many woke up to the hypocrisy of the climate alarmists. And building on the success of Roe v. Wade’s demise, many states have now passed heartbeat bills, providing robust protections for many of the nation’s unborn. Surprisingly, pollsters even picked up on a decline in support for same-sex relationships.

Read the full story

Commentary: Lawfare Against Trump Is Running Out of Gas

We should dispense with the tired narrative that four conscientious state and federal prosecutors — independently and without contact with the Biden White House or the radical Democrats in Congress — all came to the same disinterested conclusions that Donald Trump should be indicted for various crimes and put on trial during the campaign season of 2024.

The prosecutors began accelerating their indictments only once Trump started to lead incumbent Joe Biden by sizable margins in head-to-head polls. Moreover, had Trump not run for the presidency, or had he been of the same party as most of the four prosecutors, he would have never been indicted by any of them.

Read the full story