Commentary: Advent and Christmas at the Vatican

The Vatican

When I was a child, my parents and I would attend Christmas Eve Mass at St. John’s Catholic Church in Whitehall, Wisconsin. When we got home, my father and I would watch the replay of Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican on television. After watching the beautiful Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, we would say to each other, “One day, we’ll go there together!”

Sadly, my father and mother were never able to make the trip to the Vatican. However, as the former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, I was blessed to attend Christmas Eve Mass at St. Peter’s on several occasions. And each time, I brought the memory of my parents with me.

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DOJ Charges Two in Scheme to Supply Iran with Military Technology

The Justice Department announced charges against two men in a scheme to supply electronic technology to Iran, according to multiple media outlets.

Hossein Hatefi Ardakani and Gary Lam were indicted in September 2020 on charges of conspiracy to provide Iran with microelectronic technology to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Agence France-Presse reported. The pair, who made the purchases in 2014 and 2015, allegedly used front companies to carry out their plot, according to ABC News.

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Commentary: Neuroscientist Explains How to Listen to Your Hunger During the Holidays

Family Dinner Christmas

The holiday season is upon us, and with it, opportunities to indulge in festive treats. The proverbial saying “you eat with your eyes first” seems particularly relevant at this time of year.

The science behind eating behavior, however, reveals that the process of deciding what, when and how much to eat is far more complex than just consuming calories when your body needs fuel. Hunger cues are only part of why people choose to eat. As a scientist interested in the psychology and biology that drives eating behavior, I’m fascinated with how the brain’s experiences with food shape eating decisions.

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Feds Raise Concerns over New Pathway Fueling Migrant Crisis

Senegal

U.S. officials are encountering an increasing number of migrants from the African nation of Senegal who are taking advantage of a new pathway to reach the southern border, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday.

There are groups posing as travel agencies in the capital of Senegal that help migrants get to the U.S.-Mexico border by obtaining a visa to travel through the European Union, the spokesperson said. Border Patrol had more than 23,000 migrants in custody as of Tuesday evening, according to internal agency data obtained by the DCNF.

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Commentary: Don’t Let the Grinches Steal Your Christmas

Grinch costume

This Christmas season, the grinches are staying busy as usual.

There’s the usual crew who annually devote themselves to debunking the season, flailing away at everything from a babe born in a manger to the season’s extravagant buying and selling to taking offense when someone says, “Merry Christmas!” In Iowa, Satanists have honed in on the holiday, setting up a now-torn-down display in the state capitol in the name of “religious pluralism.” Pro-Palestinian protests occurred at the annual lighting of Christmas trees in places around the country, including New York’s Rockefeller Center and Ypsilanti, Michigan.

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Pro-Palestinian Vandals Desecrate Cherished Nativity Scene in Boston

Nativity Scene

Pro-Palestinian vandals graffitied a nativity scene in Boston, Massachusetts, on Thursday, according to the Boston Police Department (PD).

Boston PD responded to a call on Thursday morning alerting them that a nativity scene at the Boston Common City park had been vandalized, an officer told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Police arrived on scene to find the base of the nativity scene graffitied with white paint that wrote out “Jesus was Palestinian,” according to the Boston Herald.

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Federal Judge Rejects Bid to Remove Trump from West Virginia Ballot

Trump Happy Courtroom

A federal judge rejected a bid Thursday to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot in West Virginia.

Obama-appointed District Judge Irene Berger ruled that John Anthony Castro, the little-known presidential candidate who brought the lawsuit to remove Trump, lacked standing to sue. The decision comes days after Colorado’s Supreme Court found Trump was ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, likely setting up Supreme Court review of the issue.

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Border Patrol Chiefs Confirm ‘Illegal Aliens Spread the Word the Border Is Open’

Illegal Immigrants by Border Fence

As part of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security’s investigation into the “dereliction of duty” of U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, it and members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability conducted interviews with eight U.S. Border Patrol chief patrol agents and one deputy chief patrol agent. 

The interviews were conducted to obtain more information about operations in their sectors as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation “into the causes, costs, and consequences of the unprecedented crisis at America’s borders, and the role of Secretary Mayorkas in facilitating and maintaining this crisis.”

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Records Show President Biden Emailed Hunter Biden’s Business Associate 54 Times in 2014

Hunter Biden and Joe Biden

Records obtained and released by House Republicans show that when Joe Biden was vice president in 2014, he emailed his son Hunter Biden’s business associate 54 times. 

Some of the emails were sent around the time when Joe Biden went to Ukraine and when Hunter was working for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, according to NBC News.

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Commentary: Trump Should Love the Colorado Ruling

Trump Colorado Supreme Court

The Colorado Supreme Court, acting as supplicants for the enemies of Donald Trump seeking the most extreme remedy for driving the former president into the ditch, may have just unwittingly gifted the former president a Rocky Mountain high – in the polls. 

This time, four left-wing Colorado justices attempting to kneecap Trump were not even going to wait on due process – the very foundation of law – to effectively declare Trump guilty of insurrection, a crime for which he has not, repeat not, even been charged. After believing their attempts to wipe Trump off the ballot would be a knockout punch, it is the left that is about to get walloped to the canvas with a right hook. 

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Florida’s Largest Teachers Union Faces Decertification Under State Law

United Teachers of Dade

The United Teachers of Dade faces decertification after failing to clear a state-imposed threshold requiring that at least 60% of union members pay dues, CBS News reported.

The group is the state’s largest teachers union and represents 27,000 employees in Miami-Dade public schools. UTD on Tuesday sought to renew its certification with the state, but did not succeed due to its failure to meet the threshold, despite its own rapid growth in recent months.

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Commentary: This Landmark Conservation Bill Has Been an Abject Failure for Fifty Years

Richard Nixon

December 23, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by President Richard M. Nixon. The statute has put enormous power into the hands of bureaucrats at the two federal agencies that administer it – the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). It has also been adroitly used by environmental groups who have sued the federal government under the ESA to stop projects not of their liking through the broadest possible designation of a “critical habitat” for a plant or animal said to be either threatened or endangered.

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Oklahoma Superintendent to Propose Rules to Ban Drag Queens and Diversity Programs from Classrooms

Ryan Walters

Oklahoma’s top education official proposed rules on Thursday that will eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, prevent drag queen performers from becoming teachers and will protect religious liberty in schools.

Republican Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters will be proposing the new rules at Thursday’s Oklahoma Board of Education meeting. One proposed rule allows for the dismissal of teachers who have “engaged in sexual acts” in front of children, the second rule would eliminate funding for DEI programs in K-12 schools and the final proposed rule would ensure that students are allowed to participate in voluntary prayer.

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Commentary: Seven Timeless Picture Books for the Christmas Season

Girl Reading

“Aletheia!” A 7-year-old girl grabs my hands and pulls me through the playing kids toward my church’s stash of books. “Will you read us a story?”

The kids at my church enjoy picture books year-round, but—during the holiday season—the stories begin to revolve distinctly around Christmas. Several of these stories are ones I enjoyed when I was young; others contain lessons and art that I’ve grown to appreciate over the years.

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Commentary: With ‘White Christmas,’ Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby Helped Make Christmas a Holiday That All Americans Could Celebrate

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin was a Jewish immigrant who loved America. As his 1938 song “God Bless America” suggests, he believed deeply in the nation’s potential for goodness, unity and global leadership.

In 1940, he wrote another quintessential American song, “White Christmas,” which the popular entertainer Bing Crosby eventually made famous.

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Illegal Migrant Encounters at the Southern Border Surpass 547,000 in Less than Three Months

Illegal Immigrants

by Jennie Taer   Border Patrol encounters of migrants crossing the southern border illegally surpassed 547,000 less than three months into fiscal year 2024, according to preliminary internal data obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The number of encounters, which reached 547,593 on Thursday morning, is higher than…

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Harvard President Requests Even More Corrections to Her Academic Work as Plagiarism Accusations Mount

Claudine Gay

Harvard President Claudine Gay will request three new corrections to her Ph.D. dissertation following multiple plagiarism allegations, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Gay submitted two corrections to academic articles Friday involving “quotation marks and citations” but was the subject of fresh plagiarism allegations on Tuesday. Now, Gay is submitting additional corrections following a review undertaken by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing board; however, the Corporation said Gay’s actions did not constitute serious wrongdoing, according to the Crimson.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Hit with Ethics Complaint over Income Disclosures

KBJ SCOTUS

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson faces an ethics complaint from a conservative non-profit alleging that she failed to disclose income from her husband’s business for more than a decade.

The Center for Renewing America filed the complaint on Monday with the Judicial Conference Secretary alleging that she “willfully failed to disclose required information regarding her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income for over a decade.”

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Commentary: Partisan Lawfare’s Attempt to Destroy Trump

Trump Speaking

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

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

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Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks California Gun Law That Bans Concealed Carry in Most Public Places

A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked California from enacting a law barring permit holders from carrying firearms in numerous public locations.

United States District Judge Cormac Carney of the Central District of California, appointed by former President George W. Bush, issued a temporary restraining order, halting the law from taking effect on Jan. 1, The Associated Press reported. “The right to self-defense and to defend one’s family is fundamental and inherent to our very humanity irrespective of any formal codification,” Carney wrote in his ruling.

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Commentary: ‘Tis the Season for Streaming Christmas Movies

Love in the Wild

“It’s Christmas Eve and we are going to go celebrate being young and being alive,” Miles (Jack Black) declares to Iris (Kate Winslet) in the delightful Christmas romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), which concerns two “unlucky in love” women, Iris and Amanda (Cameron Diaz). The two decide to nurse their broken hearts and bruised egos by respectively swapping their Cotswold cottage and LA mansion for the holidays. As the fates would have it, Kate and Amanda each find love and a new outlook on life during their Christmas swap. I love this sugar plum saga, which I have previously written about in these pages, because it reminds us that friendship, love, and new adventures are always available. We only need to open our eyes to the world around us and celebrate our blessings. 

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Biden Looks to Tariffs to Bolster Struggling Electric Vehicle Market

Tesla Charging

The Biden administration is considering increasing tariffs on some Chinese products related to his green agenda, like electric vehicles (EV), in an effort to boost poor market demand and protect domestic industries, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Officials are considering setting higher rates on the already existing tariffs originally placed under the Trump administration, covering around $300 billion in Chinese goods, with Chinese EVs already having a 25% import tax, according to the WSJ. New tariffs could help domestic EV manufacturing, which has struggled with stagnant market demand, only rising from 3% in January to 4% in September of total vehicles sold in the U.S., while the share of EVs produced out of all vehicles has risen from 3% to 6% in that same time frame.

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Public Health Alerts Issued About Communicable Disease Spread Tied to Migrant Crisis

Entry Line

Federal, state and city health departments have issued public health alerts about increases of communicable diseases as illegal border crossers arrive in their communities.

Earlier this year, the New York City Health Commissioner instructed New York health-care providers to undergo several precautions and tests in light of “an alarming trend” of diseases spreading among illegal foreign nationals in New York City who arrived from the southern border. Dr. Ashwin Vasan expressed alarm about those arriving who hadn’t been vaccinated for polio or chickenpox and were coming from countries with high rates of infectious tuberculosis.

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Report: Sixty Percent of Illegal Alien Households are Supported by Taxpayer-Funded Welfare

Illegal Immigrants

A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals that almost 60% of all illegal aliens households in the United States are benefiting from at least one form of taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.

Breitbart reports that the study, written by CIS’ Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, found that illegal aliens households, as well as legal immigrants, use “significantly more” welfare than actual American citizens. Of illegal aliens currently occupying land in the U.S., 59% are on welfare that is funded by legal American citizens; 52% of legal immigrants are also using welfare. Meanwhile, less than 40% of American citizens use welfare.

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Lawmakers Sue Oregon to Block ‘Misinformation’ Contract to Counter Election-Related Claims

Oregon is trying to silence “criticism of its election system” through a contract to “identify and mitigate” purported mis-, dis- and malinformation (MDM) related to its elections, surveilling those whom the state deems “misleading,” according to a First Amendment lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade and Elections Director Molly Woon.

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Border Patrol Surpasses 23,000 Migrants in Custody, Releases Thousands into the Country with Court Dates

Illegal Immigrants

Border Patrol had more than 23,000 migrants in custody as of Tuesday evening while releasing more than 6,000 others into the interior of the country, according to internal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The latest data provide a window into a record daily totals of illegal immigration at the southern border in recent days. Three border sectors, Del Rio, Rio Grande Valley and Tucson, exceeded capacity as of Tuesday night, according to the data.

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Meet the Four Judges Who Kicked Donald Trump Off the Colorado Ballot

Colorado Supreme Court Justices

Former President Donald Trump was barred from appearing on the state’s 2024 ballot thanks to four Democrat-appointed justices.

Colorado Supreme Court Justices Melissa Hart, Monica Márquez, William Hood and Richard Gabriel comprised the one-vote majority that found on Dec. 19 that Trump engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 and was therefore disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment from appearing on the Colorado ballot.

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Commentary: A Total Meltdown at the Border, Thanks to Biden

Illegal Immigrants

President Joe Biden’s administration has set another record.

A total of 14,509 illegal aliens were encountered at the southern border Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Washington Examiner reported, a record for total daily encounters.

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Commentary: Some Observations on My Nine-Week Christmas

This year, the Christmas spirit knocked at my door two weeks before Thanksgiving, smiled coyly, and settled in like some stray feline who’s struck gold with a warm hearth and a bowl of Friskies Seafood Sensations. Never before had this spirit arrived so early and so unexpectedly.

It started with a review copy of Faith Moore’s Christmas Karol, a novel that copycats the plot of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. Here we meet Karol Charles, an attorney obsessed with success and money to the detriment of her husband, her two young children, her sister, and her employees. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, Karol is visited on Christmas Eve first by her deceased partner and then by three spirits of the season. Most of the action takes place in a hospital, a stroke of inspiration on Moore’s part as hospitals serve both the dying and the recovering. When we meet her, Karol’s soul is most decidedly on the critical list.

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Colorado GOP to Have Caucus Instead of Primary If Trump Ballot Decision Stands

Trump Colorado

The Colorado Republican Party said it would start using a caucus system rather than participating in a primary election if the state supreme court’s decision banning former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot remains in place.

After GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Tuesday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he would withdraw from Colorado’s primary ballot if Trump is not allowed on, the state Republican Party responded: “You won’t have to because we will withdraw from the Primary as a Party and convert to a pure caucus system if this is allowed to stand.”

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Commentary: Straw Poll Shows Young Trump Voters Want Carlson or Vivek as VP

Tucker Vivek

Young Republican voters overwhelmingly want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2024, and they only disagree on whether he should choose Tucker Carlson or Vivek Ramaswamy as his running mate, according to a straw poll of participants who attended Turning Point Action’s annual AmericaFest.

Obtained exclusively by RealClearPolitics, the results provide a snapshot of the youth vote just weeks before the Iowa caucuses. The online poll was conducted by Turning Point Action Dec. 17-18 and surveyed 1,113 attendees at the TPUSA conference in Phoenix, Ariz.

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