Let’s start with a purely hypothetical question. Which is worse?

1. Temporarily shutting down some government offices so well-paid, unfireable federal employees temporarily miss a few days’ worth of compensation in order to demand at least some concessions on crucial issues for the half of the U.S. population you claim to represent.? Or:
2. Lavishly funding all of your political enemies’ priorities, including funds for the Deep State agencies that are selectively persecuting your pro-life and Christian constituents, without even getting in return some enforcement of our broken borders — which, every day, admit thousands of future welfare state clients who will prove almost impossible to deport?

If you say 2., you have a bright future as a GOP member of Congress. Some 101 Republicans voted with Democrats Friday to pass the latest bill surrendering the “power of the purse” — which our Founders meant as one of the last backstops against a one-party State. House Speaker Mike Johnson did not invoke the old “Hastert Rule,” which would have insisted on support from a “majority of the majority” for the bill to pass. So the massive federal agencies that are targeting pro-life parents and Latin Mass Catholics while leaving our borders unguarded will get their next truckload of money borrowed from China, which our grandchildren will have to repay. And what have conservatives and Christians gotten in return for this?

Not even a mess of pottage.

House Majority Shrinks by One More Vote. Charlie Kirk: It’s Self-Sabotage

When elections are contested, the Constitution gives all sorts of power to the House. How do we think a Democrat House would wield that power, perhaps even later this year? We very well may find out, as yet another GOP member of Congress has resigned — and done so in a way that seems specifically designed to hurt his own party. Mike Gallagher (Rep-WI) quit Congress, setting his resignation date just after the legal deadline that would have allowed a special election. That means his seat will be empty, his constituents unrepresented, and the GOP down one more seat until November. Outraged, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (Rep-GA) has called for his expulsion.

Charlie Kirk explains:

More and more clear the collapsing GOP House position has been orchestrated by Democrats. They saw a slim majority and instead of giving up, they went to work.

They helped get rid of McCarthy as speaker.

They led the charge with the help of Republicans to remove Santos from…

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 22, 2024

Do you ever feel like a member of an Indian tribe whose leader has secretly cut a deal with the European colonists, selling your ancestral lands in return for some barrels of rum which your chiefs will drink in secret? That’s what being a Republican feels like right now, because it’s exactly what’s happening, right down to the crowds of foreigners pouring across our borders and seizing people’s homes — while party leaders assure us that “everything is fine.”

Are We Committing “Idolatry” by Fighting Evil? Or Are We Just Being Gaslit?

One of the favorite tactics of Regime Christians who want us to “stay out of politics” instead of defending the innocent and resisting evil is to pose as our spiritual mentors. They cop a “prophetic” stance and accuse us of worldliness, even idolatry, when we stand up for righteousness in these areas. Joseph Backholm, the Family Research Council’s senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement, offers a powerful analysis of the motives at work here. It’s a long tweet, but well worth the read:

The following position is something I can’t prove scientifically but have found lots of support for anecdotally:

Opposition to conservative political goals from inside the church is often framed as concern about idolatry or tone. But in virtually all cases, their criticisms…

— Joseph Backholm (@josephbackholm) March 21, 2024

The January 6 Kangaroo Committee Deleted Evidence, Intimidated Witnesses

We already knew that the partisan committee created to smear election integrity advocates deleted evidence that might have vindicated its targets. And now there is solid proof, as The New York Post reports. 

This isn’t just about the public’s right to know. It is about J6 defendants’ rights to access potentially exculpatory evidence produced by this committee.

The only reason Dems would conceal/destroy/delete evidence is bc it’s devastating to the J6 narrative.

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) January 22, 2024

What political witch hunt is worthy of the name if it doesn’t also intimidate witnesses? That’s what former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller is accusing the J6 committee of doing to him. According to The Daily Mail:

Donald Trump‘s former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller claims the January 6 committee threatened to ‘make his life hell’ if he kept claiming his former boss authorized National Guard deployment during the Capitol riot.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center said he became ‘fearful’ of aggressive tactics by members of the Democrat-led panel who tried to stop him speaking publicly about a narrative that didn’t align with their final report.

Miller’s bombshell claims follow a report by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk that reveals the committee withheld a transcript from an interview with a top White House official where he told Vice Chair Liz Cheney and other staffers that Trump did want to deploy troops.

The Deep State That Falsely Impeached Trump and Tampered with the 2020 Election Won’t Go Peacefully

Former U.S. State Department cyber-guru Mike Benz recently gave a now-famous interview to Tucker Carlson in which he explained that the methods the CIA and other intelligence agencies developed to destabilize enemy governments during the Cold War have now been turned on U.S. voters. He said part of the reason the U.S. Department of Defense helped build the internet in the first place was to use it as a tool of information warfare. Without a Soviet enemy, that infrastructure now targets domestic political enemies — that is, those who support freedom, up to and including the entire Trump administration.

Now Benz is digging deeper. Last week he said the reason Hunter Biden’s involvement in corrupt dealings abroad won’t ever earn him jail time is simple, if shocking: He was doing those deals not just to profit Biden, Inc., but on behalf of the CIA. That agency was desperate to gain leverage and control in Ukraine as it prepared for a major showdown with Russia.

Hunter Biden was advancing a CIA project in Ukraine to swing the natural gas market towards NATO & that’s why he’s untouchable. https://t.co/pDZZy2b0kV pic.twitter.com/TgL6hTZKRF

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) March 21, 2024

But that’s not the last of Benz’s truth-bombs. In a March 23 interview with Steve Bannon, Benz warned that the intel agencies which helped falsely impeach Donald Trump and falsely clear Hunter Biden just before the 2020 election won’t take a defeat by U.S. voters lightly. Remember how the FBI tried to destroy General Mike Flynn (with Mike Pence’s help) when he threatened to clean out the swamp? These people don’t kid around. Benz told Bannon:

[T]hey may go full authoritarian. You can argue they already have. I believe they already have with what they’ve done, breaking two and a half centuries of precedent with everything they’ve done with the Justice Department, the bankrupting folks, going after everyone around the populist universe, including yourself. But the other way is if a certain node within the blob itself can be convinced that it’s not worth going full control, that it would be too far in terms of creating international perceptions of illegitimacy if their crackdown is too hard.

The Left’s Double Standard Reaches from the Ghetto to Gaza

A few months ago we reported that almost unthinkably brave ex-Muslim scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali has abandoned atheism for Christianity. Perhaps her newfound faith is undergirding her courage, because Ali wrote a profound reflection at UnHerd linking the Left’s sleazy enabling of jihadi terror with its crass acceptance of criminality among the ethnic groups it decides to fetishize. She notes that in left-wing circles during the 1960s and 70s

Deviancy was defined down for one category of society: the lower classes and black communities. For the middle classes, who are overwhelmingly white and Christian, the opposite was true. Deviancy was in fact defined up, stigmatising and criminalising behaviour that was previously regarded as normal. In other words, there was a double standard at work.

Now that same double standard is being used to wink at savage acts of terror by Muslim groups such as Hamas while holding the Israeli military to impossibly strict rules — which the U.S. didn’t uphold in either Iraq or while defeating the Axis powers in World War II:

The ensuing demonisation of Israel for waging what is historically a standard siege, and the relentless calls for a ceasefire, have followed. And these calls have been so effective that now Israel’s great allies in the UK and the US are twisting Israel’s arm to concede. But even without the appeasement of a complete ceasefire, we know full well that it is only a matter of time before Hamas and her helpers reorganise and repeat the atrocities of October 7. We know it because this has been Hamas’s pattern. Attack, provoke a retaliation, complain of disproportionality. Then acquire the world’s sympathy, and negotiate ceasefire, aid, and the time to plan the next attack.

Go read the rest, and send it to friends who are wringing their hands about what’s happening in Gaza.

What Happens When Liberal Students Learn About Conservative, Christian Values?

A hopeful story at Boston magazine reports on what nowadays seems like a radical educational experiment: A professor asking his students to consider both sides of a question and give equal weight to opposing views before making up their minds. That’s right, at Tufts University one teacher is spending an entire semester guiding his lockstep leftist students through a course in conservative and Christian ideas and arguments. The result? After initially kicking and screaming, those students are doing what college students once did routinely: learning. Thinking more critically. Becoming more respectful of others’ beliefs. Imagine that.

Along The Stream:

Don’t miss Robert Morris’s uplifting message about learning to see God as He really is: a loving, generous Father who wants only the best for us, even during moments when we can’t see it.

Start off Holy Week right with Jack Graham’s message on the promises Jesus offered us when He entered Jerusalem en route to His Passion.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.