A Moment in History Pregnant with Purpose

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

A reader recently posted a comment that has stuck with me.  He asked, “Why do I even bother awakening to face another day of truly impending doom?”  He sarcastically added, “May as well get drunk and go back to sleep cuz the ‘Republicans’ won’t do enough this year or next five to prevent the really bad times coming which will make the Depression/WWII seem like the good old days.”  As someone who regularly partakes in gallows humor, I chuckled at the sentiment.  Over the next day, though, the serious thought behind that sentiment began to increasingly sting like a smart jab to the ribs.

I write a lot about “doom and gloom” issues during this era of great social change, much like how a Bangkok meteorologist writes a lot about rain during monsoon season.  Sometimes the steady downpour of “doom and gloom” feels as if it will never come to an end — just as a persistent monsoon often convinces the body that it will never stop raining.  The wet season, however, does finally pass.  So too will this period of prolonged madness.  

It is why I also write so much about a “Great Awakening” happening both here in America and across the West, in which more and more minds are becoming alert to the evils around us.  Sometimes these “awakenings” happen in spurts, where punctuated events jolt sleeping brains awake for the first time.  Seeing people experience an “Aha!” moment is like watching the clouds part so that sunlight can briefly reach the ground.  Those epiphanies are becoming more frequent, and more sunlight is steadily breaking through the swirling chaos that surrounds us.  That doesn’t just fill me with hope; it provides me with a sustained comfort that comes from a firm belief that we will overcome this chaos together.  Why awaken to face another day of impending doom?  Because we are blessed to be “awake.”

I frequently compare our present historical moment to the era of America’s Founding Fathers, as they fought for independence.  It is not just that self-determination and liberty are once again being threatened by an unaccountable and tyrannical State, but also that the contest before us is difficult and not for the faint of heart.  Even in classrooms where American history has not been censored or rewritten, it is easy to read about the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights as if they were preordained.  We celebrate America’s birth on the Fourth of July, but few take the time to remember that the struggles for America’s existence occurred not in a single day but rather over the course of several decades.  If calls for American self-governance blossomed after the Stamp Act of 1765 and the security of America’s sovereignty remained a bit wobbly until the conclusion of the War of 1812, then our revolutionary forefathers spent nearly half a century establishing the United States on firm foundations before bequeathing to us a legacy of human liberty.  In those volatile years, there was war, starvation, social upheaval, fierce public debate, and spiritual awakening.  Even though great things happened and inspired revelation rolled over the land like mid-storm sunlight, it was definitely monsoon season for many years.

Still, even during the chaos of the late eighteenth century, people got married, had families, formed communities, and persevered through trials and tribulations that most of us have never endured.  The “American Experiment” might have been the finest jewel of the Enlightenment, but to have read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in the local tavern, to have endured British occupation in Boston, or to have been on the receiving end of the first volleys at Lexington and Concord would have felt like the beginnings of a long journey with just as many tortuous uncertainties as inspired truths.  If America’s success story was foreordained, it is because America’s Founders steadfastly believed in God’s gift of freedom.  

What should we take from that lesson?  Well, for starters, it means that we alone possess the means of preserving liberty for posterity.  Governments do not hand over freedom to people because it is not theirs to give.  People assert their freedoms as God-given human rights against any form of government that insists otherwise.  That power does not come from artificial intelligence, military-grade weapons, central bank funny money, or an entrenched bureaucracy that spends its time shackling citizens with new rules, regulations, and laws.  Freedom’s power comes from God’s inspiring presence within the human mind.  As another reader recently commented, good things happen when we invite God “into our hearts, families, and country.”

Do you believe in God?  If so, then do not allow yourself to be mesmerized by despair.  If the Devil showed up at your doorstep with a billion-demon army and demanded that you join, would you acquiesce to your conscription?  Or, having been forced to confront the existence of Evil face to face, would you dust off the full armor of God and pray for strength, guidance, and grace?  Often, it is when we are tested most harshly that we find courage that we never knew we had.  Do you think that’s because God prefers ninth-inning comebacks, or perhaps because God knows that to get the best from each one of us, He must challenge the very fiber of our souls?

Do you question that God’s hand is sculpting the challenges we face today?  If so, it is never too late to “awaken” to God’s truth and, through His truth, to find implacable strength.  As one of the most popular Christian hymns ever written ebulliently declares: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me! / I once was lost, but now am found; / Was blind, but now I see.”  John Newton, an English slave-trader turned evangelical cleric and abolitionist, wrote that stanza, coincidentally enough, around the same time that Americans were declaring their independence from Great Britain.  Throughout history, spiritual awakenings have consistently provided the timely foundations for every great struggle for human liberty.  Ours is not at all different.

Enlightenments are messy.  Social and political revolutions are fraught with unpleasant moments.  Every quest for human emancipation is filled with heartaches, setbacks, and miseries.  Yet it is what we do with the obstacles before us that changes the course of history.  We are not expected to pick up the weight of history, heave it over our shoulders, and carry it to the place it belongs.  We are nudgers.  We push and pull at the current and help shape its path.  You feel that impulse in your soul, don’t you?  That’s because God is nudging each one of us, too.

There’s a reason why so many warriors come home from battle and struggle with depression.  When engaged in combat, they have a mission before them and a military family to protect.  They have people who depend upon them.  They have purpose.  And sometimes returning home means physical safety comes at the cost of that spiritual purpose.  When you look around at society today, you can see that this is a problem that affects more than returning service members.  Americans are lost and lonely and experiencing that excruciating pain that torments souls bereft of purpose.  Society suffers because false prophets have demanded that individual consciences be amputated for the “greater good.”

Do not be discouraged.  This is the golden hour when dormant consciences come roaring back to life.  It is an era such as our forefathers experienced, when the quiet burbles for liberty raged into a rippling boil.  It is a time to be tested, to find God, and to answer new callings.  It is a moment in History that is pregnant with purpose.  We are privileged to be alive.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- February 9

 

The Absurd Democrat Border Con ~ VDH

It remains unclear why Biden and Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both Americans and millions of illegal migrants?

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

In 2021, Joe Biden opened wide an inherited, secure southern border that had finally stopped mass illegal immigration.

When he overturned Donald Trump’s efforts, a planned flood of over 8 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S.

Almost all arrived without background checks, health screening, or vaccination certificates—but with massive needs for free housing, education, healthcare, and food entitlements and subsidies.

For four years, Donald Trump battled the courts, his Democratic opposition, and the open-border establishments within his own party to ensure legal-only immigration. Somehow, he rebuilt some of the old porous border fence. He had begun to build his long-promised new wall to the Gulf of Mexico. He had ended Obama-era catch-and-release.

Would-be refugees had to apply for asylum in their home country. Trump leveraged Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to police his own border and stop cynically transiting millions of illegal aliens into the U.S.

There was general Democratic Party opposition to all of Trump’s measures, both through Congress and via the courts.

For the last three years of Biden’s mass influx, the left has applauded open borders. That is, until late last year, when overwhelmed southern border state governors began busing and flying illegal immigrants en masse to northern sanctuary-city jurisdictions.

For years, these sanctuary zones had preened their liberality about open borders. They smeared as “racists” and “xenophobes” any who insisted on legal-only immigration.

But now they were subject to the real-life ramifications of their own destructive ideologies.

Major blue-state cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., became outraged that they were inundated with tens of thousands of immigrants, all without legality, veritable identification, or background checks.

Some proved violent. Others crowded out scarce resources essential to millions of inner-city poor.

The liberal architects of illegal immigration are usually rich and powerful enough to be insulated from the consequences of their utopian policies.

But not so their poor or minority constituents. They deal first-hand with spiking crime, appropriation of their parks and civic centers, and restricted access to now overwhelmed social services.

So the once open-border Democrat Party and Joe Biden are in a quandary. They now fear mass defections of core Latino and Black voters in an election year.

But how can they square the circle of insisting on open borders with the need to appear to their own voters as determined to close them?

We saw the absurd answer this week. Shameless Democrats tried to enlist naïve and foolish Republicans to bail them out with a “comprehensive immigration bill.”

It was really designed to keep the border open while spending billions of dollars to facilitate more rapid and orderly transits—and more substantial welfare support for millions of illegals here and still to come.

Now Democrats, in lunatic fashion, claim that anyone who did not sign on to codify and regulate illegal immigration was responsible for their own deliberate open border policies in the first place!

To add insult to injury, they next sought to piggyback their toxic immigration bill onto massive aid for Israel and Ukraine. It was a transparent effort to blame any Republicans for harming Israel and aiding Putin, should they not sign on to a more efficient open border.

The real agendas of the bill’s supporters were absolutely no return to Trump’s legal-only immigration and a secure border.

That simple solution requires no new legislation and almost no new spending. But it does imply acknowledgement that the hated Trump had solved the problem executively—and that admission is apparently taboo.

Finally, public outrage from the left and conservative anger at foolish and naïve Republican enablers stopped the bill.

Still, it remains somewhat unclear why Biden and his Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both American hosts and millions of illegal immigrants?

Did they want new long-term constituents, given that their neo-socialist agendas cannot win over a majority of current Americans?

Is importing millions of the poorest and most in need on the planet a way to ensure a still larger Great Society of entitlements and, with it, higher taxes on the “filthy rich?”

Do they assume that America’s increasingly non-Election-Day balloting ensures far less authentication and rejection of mail-in ballots, and thus it will be relatively easy for non-citizens to vote?

Many, left and right, make no effort to hide their desire for cheap imported labor—even though the current labor participation rate is only 62 percent of the potential American workforce.

Finally, one might expect this artifice from the left that is wedded to open borders.

But why some establishment Republicans aided and abetted these disingenuous efforts is yet another reminder why the doctrinaire Republican Party had to be reinvented by Donald Trump.

Hawaii Court Gives Middle Finger To SCOTUS, Claims ‘Spirit Of Aloha’ Overrides Constitution

The court used omissions and ahistorical Warren Burger quotes to make sweeping conclusions about the existence of gun rights.

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

The Hawaii Supreme Court issued a decision on Wednesday formally infringing on island residents’ right to keep and bear arms because justices claimed guns interfered with the “Spirit of Aloha.” The ruling seeks to nullify not only the authority of the Consitution but also the Supreme Court’s longstanding interpretation of Americans’ Second Amendment protections.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in its 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen decision that citizens’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms for self-defense requires no demonstration of a “special need” like New York required for its unrestricted concealed-carry licenses. Before that, the highest court in the land found in its 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision that DC could not ban handgun possession in the home because, under the Second Amendment, American civilians, not just military personnel, have the right to own firearms and use them for lawful self-defense.

Justices in the Hawaii court rejected both examples of the top court’s jurisprudence when they upheld a conviction for island resident Christopher Wilson, who was charged in 2017 after carrying a loaded gun without a concealed weapons permit.

The state court claimed Wilson could not use Bruen to argue his “constitutional right to protect
himself” because he is not a “well-regulated militia” and he did not apply for a concealed carry weapons permit (CCW). The justices claimed that, under the 1968 political interpretation of Hawaii’s 1950 constitution, “the historical background of the Second Amendment indicates that the central concern in the right to bear arms was the right of the states to maintain a militia.”

“When the Hawaiʻi Constitution was first ratified, courts throughout the nation’s history had always interpreted and applied the Second Amendment with the militia-centric view,” the court wrote. “This was what everyone thought.”

Except it was not. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the Second Amendment describes an individual right to possess firearms, not just a military one.

Additionally, even if Wilson initiated the permit process, he almost assuredly would not have received approval. Before Bruen, the Hawaii police chiefs in charge of issuing CCWs only awarded six in 21 years.

The court didn’t just affirm Wilson’s conviction. It also used omissions of guiding principles and law and ahistorical, sort of fake Warren Burger quotes to make sweeping conclusions about the existence of gun rights based on the islands’ cultural history before statehood instead of American legal tradition.

“The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities,” the court wrote. “The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”

In invoking the whims of the “Hawaiian Islands” instead of our nation’s principles, the court admitted the broader goal of its decision was to disregard both the Supreme Court and the Constitution’s sovereignty.

“The United States Supreme Court disables the states’ responsibility to protect public safety, reduce gun violence, and safeguard peaceful public movement,” the justices claimed.

The first line of the Hawaii court’s firearm ruling acknowledges that “Article I, section 17 of the Hawaiʻi Constitution mirrors the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution” in affirming “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Yet, the justices claimed that Hawaii has “no state constitutional right to carry a firearm in public.”

“Conventional interpretive modalities and Hawaiʻi’s historical tradition of firearm regulation rule out an individual right to keep and bear arms under the Hawaiʻi Constitution,” the decision states.

Even if Hawaii’s governing document did not explicitly affirm its citizens’ right to bear arms as it does, Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution establishes the federal principles and laws enacted in 1787 as the “supreme Law of the Land.”

The Aloha bench once again rejected the supremacy of the federal court when it claimed that its twisted interpretation of Hawaii’s constitution would supersede any rights outlined by the Founding Fathers.

“We believe that the proper sequence to consider matching constitutional text is to interpret the Hawaiʻi Constitution before its federal counterpart,” the decision documents say.

Hawaii’s rejection wasn’t backed by philosophical reasoning or a profound understanding of the law. Rather, it was rooted in a quote about the “old days” from the HBO television drama series “The Wire.”

“As the world turns, it makes no sense for contemporary society to pledge allegiance to the founding era’s culture, realities, laws, and understanding of the Constitution,” the justices wrote. ‘The thing about the old days, they the old days.’”

The Hawaii court’s scrutiny of the Supreme Court for “handpick[ing] history to make its own rules” didn’t stop at guns. It also included a jab at “the Dobbs majority” for using “historical fiction” to repeal Roe v. Wade in 2022.

There’s no doubt that the activist Hawaii court’s Feb. 7 decision sets a dangerous precedent. The justices’ blatant disregard for the superiority of the Supreme Court and the Constitution not only poses a grave threat to Americans’ rights. But, if left unchecked, it could easily inspire other blue states that disagree with the nation’s founding principles to defy much more than the Second Amendment.

Things Get Awkward When 'View's' Sunny Hostin Reveals Her Ancestors Owned Slaves

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

"The View" is unquestionably one of the most toxic, obnoxious TV shows in America where virtue signaling, holier-than-thou attitudes, and wokeness are as commonplace as rats in a New York City sewer.

Though co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar are the veteran longtimers on the show, Sunny Hostin is clearly the ringleader, whipping up the studio audience and shocking viewers at home with her racist rants about Republicans she doesn't like (read: all of them) while bragging about a supposed legal expertise that in reality leaves a helluva lot to be desired.

She's not above attacking her colleagues every once in a while, either.

Hostin views most white people as guilty of racism if for no other reason than the fact that some of their ancestors likely owned slaves.

But it was Hostin herself who was in for the shock of her life when she recently found out that her ancestors not only were slaveowners but would flee to other parts of the world to continue being involved in the slave trade:

But what I found out was that my mother's family while they are Puerto Rican, they actually originate from Spain, and the reason that they moved to Puerto Rico is because the slave trade had been sort of canceled in Spain and then Curaçao and then they moved all their slaves to Puerto Rico. So, the family business, I have been told, that they were printers and journalists but they were, in fact, enslavers.

Even worse for Hostin was finding out that her family was more "white" than she previously realized:

As Hostin processed the news later in the episode, she observed that her "mother’s family does look white," referencing the new information about their Spanish lineage. When Gates, Jr. jokingly asked Hostin what she had against having Spanish roots, she replied, "Just the colonization of other people. I’m surprised that they were enslavers, actually. That’s disappointing."

Hostin went on to say that her "mother certainly identifies as Puerto Rican and non-white," and that she "hates this for her" mom as a result.

"She’s going to see how deeply white she is," Gates, Jr. responded.

As one might imagine, things got a little awkward on the Thursday "View" segment when Hostin addressed the issue, as evident in this first clip where Hostin looked embarrassed to have to admit it toward the end:

And then there was this one, where Hostin bizarrely said she was still in favor of reparations and also chided people for saying she didn't deserve any because she was more white than she thought she was:

So Hostin, I guess, believes her family should be on the hook for paying and receiving reparations should that ever become law. I mean, how will that even work?

Hostin's obsession with racial identity politics and wokeness knows no bounds, and while we have no control over our ancestral history, I can't think of a more fitting person to receive the news that she has more white in her family tree than originally thought than Sunny Hostin.

Justice Jackson Shuts Down After Trump Lawyer Explains Why ‘Insurrection’ Mania Is A Stupid Talking Point

‘The events were shameful criminal violence, all of those things, but did not qualify as insurrection as that term is used in Section Three.’

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson quickly abandoned her “insurrection” questioning on Thursday when former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell pointed out that the term, although used widely by corporate media, Democrats, and Colorado’s lawyers, does not accurately describe the events of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

The exchange occurred during oral arguments for the presidential frontrunner’s challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court’s December 2023 ruling affirming Democrats’ decision to remove Trump from the Centennial State’s 2024 primary ballot.

After going back and forth with Mitchell several times about what constitutes eligibility for constitutional disqualification from holding office, Jackson pivoted to the definition of insurrection.

In a question about “the violent attempts of the petitioner’s supporters in this case to ‘halt the count’ on January 6 qualified as an insurrection as defined by Section 3,” Jackson asked Mitchell to clarify his position on whether or not Trump engaged in “insurrection” during the Capitol riot in 2021.

Jackson clearly sourced her framing from the corporate media and Democrats who, mere minutes into the 2021 Capitol riot, deemed the bedlam a criminal product of Trump.

They immediately lumped the patriotic, law-abiding citizens with concerns about the 2020 election’s legitimacy protesting in D.C. with the people who vandalized Capitol property. Big Tech weaponized this mischaracterization to justify its censorship of Trump’s social media calls for peace. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice also adopted the sweeping insurrection accusations as its primary motivation to prosecute any and every one of its political enemies in or near the federal building that day.

“I read your opening brief to accept that those events counted as an insurrection but then your reply seemed to suggest that they were not,” Jackson said.

“We never accepted or conceded in our opening brief that this was an insurrection,” Mitchell retorted. “What we said in our opening brief was President Trump did not engage in any act that can plausibly be characterized as insurrection.”

Jackson, unsatisfied with Mitchell’s prompt rejection of her assertion, doubled down.

“So why would it not be?” Jackson pressed. “What is your argument that it’s not? Your reply brief says that it wasn’t because, I think you say, it did not involve an organized attempt to overthrow the government.”

Mitchell conceded “an organized concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence” is one of the defining factors of an insurrection but said Trump’s actions never met that standard.

“My point is that a chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?” Jackson asked.

“We didn’t concede that it’s an effort to overthrow the government either, Justice Jackson,” Mitchell replied. “None of these criteria were met.”

“This was a riot. It was not an insurrection,” Mitchell concluded. “The events were shameful criminal violence, all of those things, but did not qualify as insurrection as that term is used in Section Three.”

Mitchell continued but was interrupted by Jackson who hurriedly ended her questioning time.

Democrat Lawyer Admits At Supreme Court That Only One Party Can Be Allowed To Rig Elections

Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson ended her argument at the Supreme Court admitting both parties can’t be allowed to ballot rig.

Eddie Scarry reporting for The Federalist

There was never a purer demonstration of how traitorous Democrats are about “defending democracy,” or whatever corny phrase they like to use, than what just happened at the Supreme Court.

At the very end of oral arguments in the Colorado case determining whether the state had the right to remove former President Donald Trump’s name from the 2024 ballot, Justice Samuel Alito asked the state’s solicitor general, Shannon Stevenson, what’s going to happen if other states “retaliate” by, say, removing Joe Biden from theirs. Elected officials in at least six states have suggested it as a course of action.

It’s an obvious question that Stevenson either wasn’t prepared for or knew it would expose her state’s case as a tragic joke. “Your honor, I think we have to have faith in our system that people will follow their election processes appropriately, that they will take realistic views of what insurrection is under the 14th Amendment,” she said. “Courts will review those decisions, this court may review some of them.”

What she said next should have resulted in her being laughed out of the room. “But,” she said, “I don’t think that this court should take those threats too seriously in its resolution of this case.”

Alito challenged Stevenson on whether she thought the suggestion of retaliation, coming from places like Florida, Arizona, and Georgia, all potentially swing states in the next election, was truly unfounded.

“Um, I think we have processes—” she said, before being interrupted.

“We should proceed on the assumption that it’s not a serious threat?” said Alito.

Stevenson said there are “institutions in place” that should “handle” such matters. Asked to specify which institutions, she said, “Our states, their own electoral rules, the administrators who enforce those rules.” She also said voters would have to rely on “courts.”

In essence, to believe this entire case by Democrats is an effort to safeguard democracy, rather than rig an election, is to trust that Republicans would never dare try doing the same. If they did, it would ruin Democrats’ plot. Alternatively, if such threats were made good, we should expect enough opposition to render them neutral.

In fairness, a lot of Republicans are naive morons who time and time again respond to Democrats politically kicking their teeth in by saying, “Well, if we do anything back, we’re no better than them.” So, Stevenson’s is not a terrible gamble.

But there’s a long way to go before the election. Attitudes change, and they will rapidly if Colorado is successful and other Democrat states decide to follow the example of unilaterally determining Trump is ineligible to run for a second term, all because he rejected the accuracy of election results (as Democrats do on a routine basis).

The media’s fixation on the Colorado case has focused solely on the legal merits of the case, when the more urgent matter has always been not what happens if it’s ruled legal to keep Trump off a ballot, but what it means for future democratic elections if he is.

There’s a reason until recently it was not only abnormal but unthinkable in America for one political party to use the justice system to exterminate its opponent. The reason is self-evident— mutually assured destruction. If they can do it to us, we can do it to them. It’s what they do in the Congo and every other war-torn state across the globe.

Alito intentionally invoked that perilous likelihood. Stevenson’s response — “I don’t think that this court should take those threats too seriously” — showed just how seriously Democrats take “defending democracy.”

Biden Plans to Do What He Said He Couldn't Regarding Illegal Immigration

Matt Vespa reporting for Townhall 

President Joe Biden has finally remembered he can issue executive orders to strengthen border security. Whether this realization occurred during a phantom conversation with dead European leaders or not, Biden plans to issue some orders to curb the flow of illegal aliens. As you’d expect, the problem is what these new directives will be and whether they will help federal immigration officers get rid of people who shouldn’t be here. 

The second part is that unlike 10-15 years ago, the value of the information provided by anonymous sources has degraded, much like Biden’s mental capacity. Let’s see what they roll out if they use this reported ‘Plan B’ option. But it’s striking, and, again, unsurprising, that this administration finally realized they could issue executive orders on immigration, even though Biden said he was powerless to do anything until those poor Ukrainians got additional aid (via NBC News): 

The Biden administration is considering taking executive action to deter illegal migration across the southern border, according to two U.S. officials. 

As passing legislation on border security in Congress appears unlikely, the plans under consideration signal that the White House wants to take action before numbers at the border, which have dropped in the past month, rise again as expected. 

The plans have been under consideration for months, the officials said. In December, as Congress prepared to leave town for the holidays with no border solution, illegal crossings of the southwest border hit records at more than 10,000 per day. 

The unilateral measures under consideration might upset some progressives in Congress, the officials said, but they noted that Democratic mayors who have asked for more help from the federal government to handle the influx of migrants in their cities would be pleased. The measures are still being drafted and are not expected to take place any time soon. 

[…] 

Regardless of how much any executive action might appear to increase immigration enforcement both on the border and in the interior of the U.S., the officials said, it would pale in comparison to the effects that would arise if Congress had passed the border security bill. 

“It’s a plan B,” an official said. Both officials said doing nothing is not an option. 

That’s patently false. Biden’s not going to do it, but if he reauthorized every Trump EO on immigration, the pace at which we could resolve the southern border crisis would be immensely accelerated. The bill before the Senate provided taxpayer-funded lawyers to migrants under 13, created a new class of permanent residents in children of H-1B visas, and put unvetted Afghan refugees on a pathway to citizenship. 

Only around $20 billion was allocated to the border, whereas $60 billion was marked for Ukraine. It’s a foreign aid package disguised as a border bill. It’s logrolling at its worst, and lawmakers wasted three months of negotiations thinking this had any shot at passing. The GOP base’s reaction was revulsion, and any Republican who supports this deserves a primary challenge.

Was this the plan the entire time: craft a bill that Democrats knew wouldn’t get enough GOP votes, which would create a situation in which the Biden White House can issue executive orders and thereby look like they’re doing something about illegal aliens during an election year? 

I can’t say because Joe Biden probably thinks he’s talking to Paul von Hindenburg or Anthony Eden right now.

Poor Taylor: Forced to Sell the Smaller of Her Private Jets Due to Carbon Embarrassment

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

Poor Taylor Swift.

I will admit that until recently, I had very little idea who Taylor Swift was. My tastes in music are eclectic, running from Alan Jackson to Aerosmith to Amadeus, but Taylor Swift was never really on my radar, other than the fact that my kids listened to her from time to time and that she, like many musicians, travels a lot on a private jet with the concomitant enormous carbon footprint.

I don't give two hoots about Miss Swift's carbon footprint, but a young man named Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, apparently gives several hoots. He has been tracking Miss Swift's travel and estimating her carbon output, which has proved embarrassing enough to prompt poor Taylor to sell one of her private jets — the smaller one, mind you — and get along with only one.

Taylor Swift has sold one of her private jets for $40 million, according to a new report. 

The pop sensation sold her Dassault Falcon 900LX on January 30 to Missouri-based car insurance company Car Shield, according to documents obtained by Daily Mail. 

Swift reportedly purchased the jet for $40 million in 2011, but the plane is now estimated to be worth around $7million second-hand, the Daily Mail reported. She still owns the larger Dassault Falcon 7X, which is worth around $54million brand new and has been her primary mode of transportation during the international leg of her Eras Tour. 

The 34-year-old singer-songwriter has been under pressure to cut down on her carbon emissions for years, especially as she travels around the world between tour shows and appearances to support boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce at his NFL games. In 2022, Swift topped the list of the worst celebrity private jet CO2 emission offenders, according to Yard, a sustainability marketing agency that prides itself on "cutting-edge data and analysis."

Are you wondering what a Dassault Falcon 7X looks like? So was I, and I was shocked — SHOCKED — to see the conditions in which poor Taylor is compelled to travel:

You have to feel for poor Taylor, being forced to travel on only one of these luxurious private aircraft.

Now that I'm done shedding crocodile tears over Taylor's hardships, I'm going to do something I don't think I've ever done before: Give some well-deserved credit to a climate activist, that being the aforementioned Jack Sweeney. While I disagree (vehemently) with Mr. Sweeney's positions on carbon output, he deserves some credit for putting his money where his mouth is. Too many of these celebrities clutch pearls over carbon emissions and wag their fingers at those of us who drive an SUV or a Super Duty pickup while cruising to climate summits in their private jets; it's good to see a member of that climate movement calling at least one of them out on their hypocrisy.

This isn't the end of the story. While Jack Sweeney has managed to embarrass Taylor Swift into selling one (the smaller one) of her private jets, he is getting some backlash from the pop-tart's legal department. 

Swift's attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sweeney in December, blaming his automated tracking of her private jet for tipping off stalkers about her location, stating that "the timing of stalkers" suggests a connection to Sweeney’s flight-tracking sites, according to The Washington Post. Sweeney is also accused of "disregarding the personal safety of others"; "willful and repeated harassment"; and "intentional, offensive, and outrageous conduct and consistent violations of our client’s privacy."

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television, but this seems like pettifoggery to me. There are flight-tracking sites all over the Web. It seems that finding out Miss Swift's itinerary based on news stories of her performances and travel plans would greatly simplify identifying her expensive, luxurious, carbon-spewing private jets, especially now that she only has one (poor Taylor!). And if Taylor continues to warm the atmosphere with her own complaints about carbon emissions, she should be thick-skinned enough to take some criticism when called out on her hypocrisy.

Remember when bands traveled on buses? I remember, when I was about 20, being out on the highway somewhere and passing a row of tractor-trailers, in front of which was the Aerosmith band bus. I blasted my truck's horn as I passed the bus and was rewarded by a honk from the bus. You can't have those little bits of fan interaction in a private jet, and that's just too bad.

To Taylor Swift, I can only say this: Young lady, you have been hoist with your own petard. Deal with it.