Posts on Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Christianity -- Maronite, Orthodox, Catholic, as well as other denominations -- was the dominant religion in the entire Levant before the Islamic military invasions and conquests in the seventh century. Constantinople (renamed Istanbul in 1930) was the capital of the great Christian Byzantine Empire. After defeating the Byzantine Empire in 636... the Islamic Arab Caliphate conquered Lebanon.... Today, Lebanon, like formerly Christian Turkey and Egypt, is majority-Muslim. Shia Muslims in southern Lebanon have been moving to Christian areas, increasingly displacing the Christians there.

In the gathering dusk of a North Norfolk evening, where the North Sea mists drift in from a cold and indifferent sea, James Nye, 44, whose family has run East Anglian inns for 30 years, stands behind the bar of the White Horse in Holme-next-the-Sea. The pub, a low, Grade II-listed sentinel of stone and brick, flickers beneath strings of fairy lights that feel less festive than quietly defiant. Nye, steward of 10 inns, draws a pint of Adnams Ghost Ship while the low growl of tractors fades along the lanes outside – protest vehicles nursing wounds deeper than any fresh furrow.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed a Washington Post report that the agency has inked a deal for the purchase of six planes for nearly $140 million, which will aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in deportations, allowing them to bypass charter airlines. In a post on Wednesday on X, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin reacted to the WaPo report about DHS reaching an agreement to buy several Boeing 737 planes for deportation flights. McLauglin pointed out what she said the outlet had failed to do: that the deal is going to "save the U.S. taxpayer $279 million."

The Trump-McMahon Department of Education (DOE) has moved to end the last of the Biden administration’s large-scale, illegal federal student loan bailout programs. DOE announced its agreement with Missouri to end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which was set to cost taxpayers almost $350 billion in a decade’s time. The Dec. 9 press release celebrated the move as being not only a win for taxpayers, but necessary clarity for borrowers duped by extravagant and unrealistic Democrat promises.

The United States military pressure on Venezuela's illegitimate president, Nicolás Maduro, which we've witnessed over the last few months, continues. While speaking to the press on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that we have seized a large oil tanker off the country's coast. It's been an interesting day from the standpoint of news," the president said while meeting with business leaders at the White House. "As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually." He added that "other things are happening" and that we will learn more about that later.

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith, failed leader of President Joe Biden’s Justice Department efforts to convict Donald Trump, is partnering with other leading figures in the lawfare against Trump to create a law firm. Smith is joining ex-Department of Justice prosecutors Tim Heaphy, David Harbach, and Thomas Windom. As Yahoo News reported: The ⁠lawyers all played leading roles ‌investigating Trump during his years out of power. Smith and two members of his team, Harbach and Windom, obtained indictments against Trump for attempting ‍to overturn his 2020 election defeat and illegally retaining classified documents. A former Obama-era U.S. Attorney, Heaphy was the lead investigative lawyer for the House of Representatives committee

Miami's mayoral election has been framed as a political earthquake, but those sweeping claims don't hold water. They do, however, evince the ignorance of all too many, across party lines, about the actual power structure in the city, Miami-Dade County, and Florida. (snip) The "nonpartisan" mayor of Miami holds a largely ceremonial role. Real executive authority rests with the city manager, who can only serve with the approval of the five-member city commission. That "nonpartisan" commission currently has a stable 3-2 Republican majority.

U.S. forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, marking the latest escalation in President Donald Trump’s targeting of the South American nation, according to new reports. The intercepted tanker had been sanctioned by the U.S. government, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News on Wednesday. The seizure could make it more difficult for the oil-rich nation to conduct trade, as shippers may be wary of handling its cargo. The majority of Venezuelan oil is sent to China.

In recent months, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) has spoken out against the dangers of domestic radical Islam while also filing legislation aimed at addressing the growing threat it presents to the United States. Tuberville's efforts have largely been met with support from Alabamians. But, AL(dot)com's Kyle Whitmire, who recently moved to Washington, D.C. to be a "Washington watchdog columnist" for the outlet, is clearly not part of that demographic. In an X post entitled "Tommy Tuberville says things George Wallace wouldn't have. There's no code language here," Whitmire effectively labeled Tuberville a racist for speaking out against the establishment of a private Islamic academy in Hoover.

New CBS News chief Bari Weiss, whose center-left ideology is too far to the right for many of her employees, has done it again by naming a "mediocre straight white man" to anchor the division's flagship CBS Evening News. A report late Tuesday in the UK Independent claims that "many staffers at CBS News are not thrilled" with Weiss picking CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil to sit in the anchor chair. “It’s an insult to the storied news giants who came before him,” one CBS News reporter told the paper. If this were a stage play, this is where the script would indicate to the actor

A Somali Minnesota college student has come under fire for threatening to “pop” ICE agents in an expletive-laden viral social media rant. Hasan Mohamed was blasted after he posted the menacing anti-ICE tirade on social media, where he vowed to shoot immigration agents the next time they show up in his Owatonna neighborhood. “ICE, I actually heard you guys pulled up to Owatonna, the big O, and you pulled up when I was not there? Y’all so p–s-ass s–t, boy. You’re gonna get popped next time I see you,” he raged in the clip. “Bring the whole cavalry. Yeah, boy, you guys are scared.”

The suspect accused of shooting two Kentucky State University students, killing one, on campus Tuesday has been identified as an Indiana man who was not enrolled at the school. Frankfort police said 48-year-old Jacob Lee Bard, of Evansville, Indiana, was booked on murder and first-degree assault charges in connection with the campus shooting. Evansville is about 150 miles west of Frankfort. Authorities said Bard is not a student at the university, and police have not provided information as to a suspected motive. Frankfort officers responded around 3:10 p.m. to a report of a shooting at the Whitney M. Young Jr. residence hall and arrived within minutes.

Far too often, when bad public policy fails to deliver, the first reflex in Washington is to throw more money at the problem. This reflex has been destroying American health care for years. This pattern is seen clearly in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as millions of Americans learn their premiums will skyrocket in 2026. Washington has long thrown good money after bad -- and the result has been ever-increasing costs for patients and taxpayers. This pattern can also be seen in Medicare Part D. The stand-alone Part D market is now in active collapse.

An Australian women’s rights advocate has been ordered to pay a combined total of $95,000 AUD to two trans-identified men, with an additional $40,000 penalty in the case of non-compliance. Kirralie Smith was found guilty by a New South Wales court of “unlawfully vilifying” two trans-identified males who made headlines for participating in women’s sports. Justin “Riley” Dennis and Nicholas “Stephanie” Blanch lodged criminal complaints against Smith for raising public awareness of their inclusion in women’s football. Smith, a spokeswoman with Binary Australia, a campaign group dedicated to advocating for single-sex sports in Australia, had been raising public awareness of their inclusion in women’s sports after learning of injuries sustained

Europeans and Pravda Media are trying to convince you that Donald Trump has abandoned a century-long commitment to the security of Europe (if you include our intervention in World War I), and our 3/4 century commitment to NATO. As I argued yesterday, that is a serious misreading of Trump's and his administration's criticism of European policies. As his National Security Strategy makes clear, the United States wants to help Europe recover its strength and civilizational vitality, and is unwilling to enable its suicide. Whatever you think of the National Security Strategy and/or Trump's well-deserved criticism of European leaders, POLITICO quite rightly points out

A gang of Philadelphia teenagers accused of robbing a Dick's Sporting Goods store in Florida while attending a football tournament have been named and shamed by a no-nonsense sheriff. Members of the eight-strong mob were arrested and hit with felony charges after their alleged December 6 theft spree - something they may not have expected in their Pennsylvania home city, whose district attorney is a notoriously woke prosecutor called Larry Krasner. The teenagers are members of the United Thoroughbreds team from Philadelphia and were in Davenport to face the Coco Tigers team for the Prolifix Sportz National Championship.

Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is less popular among black voters than former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was in 2016, according to a new poll. Just 4% of black voters said they would support Buttigieg if the 2028 Democratic presidential primary were held today, according to the Fall 2025 Yale Youth Poll. Social media users were quick to point out that former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke received more support from black voters after announcing his Louisiana Senate campaign in 2016, with 14% of black voters backing Duke at the time. While Buttigieg was

An immigration think tank is calling for Congress to consider mandating the use of a citizenship verification for voter registration after the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to make the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements more user-friendly for state and local election offices. Last week, the DHS settled a case with four states -- Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio -- to overhaul the citizenship verification system. (Snip) The new settlement requires the federal government to modernize the citizenship verification tools so that every state and territory -- not just the four litigants -- can more easily prevent noncitizens from voting.

For a brief, shining moment in 1945, the United States stood astride the world like a colossus. In four years, we had built the greatest military machine in human history, liberated half the planet, and dropped the sun itself on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prove the point. Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan (three empires that had terrorized the globe) lay in smoking ruins. The message was unmistakable...[Snip] What we are living through in 2025 is not a series of unrelated crises; it is the culmination of an eighty-year campaign to hollow out the greatest republic the world has ever known.

European Christians have celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ in their town squares for roughly 400 years in what became known as "Christmas markets." They began in German-speaking regions of Central Europe and spread to Poland, Croatia, France, and beyond. Then the globalists gavaged marauding Muslims into Europe. Since then, Christmas in Europe hasn't been the same. It's been downright dangerous. Erbach, Germany, was one of the latest scenes of Yuletide destruction, which frequently occurs at the hands of Islamist freebooters who demand tolerance but can't seem to thole some back to their hosts. Sometimes the pillagers have gone so far as to decapitate the Baby Jesus.

How far did the wokeness mania inside Joe Biden’s White House go? Far enough that his former secretary of State ordered the department to shift typefaces on the basis of diversity and inclusion. Now, Donald Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is switching it back — and the media somehow thinks that’s the fact they should be mocking, not the fact that Biden’s people switched typefaces because of DEI. And they wonder why Donald Trump got elected in 2024. Multiple reports Tuesday confirmed that Secretary of State Rubio ordered the State Department to switch from the font Calibri — a sans-serif font — to Times New Roman, generally considered

Dallas pastor Frederick Haynes, who hailed anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan as a "great" man and lashed out at Israel in a sermon just one day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, is running to replace a member of his congregation in Congress: firebrand House Democrat Jasmine Crockett (Texas). Haynes filed paperwork for Texas's 30th district on Monday, shortly after Crockett launched a campaign for Senate. "She’s the baddest sister out there," Haynes, the pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church, said at a Senate kickoff event for Crockett. Haynes is likely to have an advantage in the race thanks to his alliance with Crockett, who frequently attends Friendship-West

The Justice Department will no longer pursue civil rights lawsuits based on “disparate impact theory,” the Trump administration announced Tuesday. The move comes after 50 years of government policy that encouraged lawsuits against “race neutral” policies without showing evidence of actual racial discrimination, the department said. Disparate impact theory is a framework that often assumes discrimination when there are different outcomes for different groups of people, even if there is no explicit discriminatory practice in place. “For decades, the Justice Department has used disparate-impact liability to undermine the constitutional principle that all Americans must be treated equally under the law,”

What is it about the National Defense Authorization Act that makes it a dumping ground for every dumb liberal pet project? First the Trump administration pushed an AI data-center amnesty that would have stripped states of authority over massive, power-hungry facilities. Then lawmakers tried to slip in Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s housing bill, a package built to subsidize Section 8 tenants and builders and to fuel the very forces driving the current housing bubble. After a backlash, both provisions came out of the NDAA. Now congressional leaders plan to pass the Massachusetts Democrat’s housing bill on its own.

During oral arguments this week, liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Solicitor General D. John Sauer, “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government.” To which anyone following this case should say “Amen!” The case involves Trump’s decision in March to fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission whom Trump appointed to the FTC in his first term, but decided that letting her remain would be “inconsistent with the administration’s priorities.”

The Wisconsin judge presiding over a politically-motivated case against attorneys who represented President Donald Trump in 2020 should be removed from the case on grounds of “judicial misconduct,” alleges a motion filed late Monday afternoon. Exactly what Dane County Circuit Court Judge John Hyland did is not clear from the succinct motion, but something sure stinks in the leftist hive that is the Dane County Court. Jim Troupis, a former conservative judge in that hive and the target of far-left Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul’s political prosecution, filed the motion via his attorney. Apparently Hyland’s conduct was so atrocious that Troupis is looking to clear the bench.