The Brew: ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ Are Exactly What We Need

In the front of many of our minds are the horrors of the mass shooting at a Christian school, Abundant Life in Madison, Wisconsin, that took place Monday (I’ll have a column reflecting on that event appearing on The Stream later today.) For the basic facts about this horror, stripped of government double talk and rash social media speculation, see this deep dive by the courageous reporter Andy Ngo (the liberal journalist who was persecuted and assaulted by Antifa for his coverage of the George Floyd riots):

I was the first to break the news that the deceased mass shooter at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisc. is a 15-year-old girl named Natalie Lynn Rupnow. Here’s what I discovered: https://t.co/Pxp1xFGIAD

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) December 17, 2024

Pause for a moment today to pray for everyone involved in this Advent slaughter of the innocents, especially the families of the victims. For a perennial meditation on this type of evil and our rightful response, see this column I wrote some years ago after a similar shocking crime.

Will Liz Cheney Face Criminal Charges for Her Actions on the J6 Committee?

According to Gateway Pundit:

The Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released a second report on the events surrounding January 6 as well his investigation into the weaponized J6 Committee on Tuesday. … Loudermilk’s report outlined criminal recommendations against J6 Committee co-chair Liz Cheney for witness tampering based on her communication with J6 ‘star witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson.

The National Guard wasn’t deployed despite the president’s request; dozens of federal informants were found to be engaged in encouraging illegal actions; congressmen apparently were suborning perjury … and as a result, January 6 was a dark day in the history of our Republic, but not for the reasons the media have been telling us.

Should Trump Do Better Than Pardoning the J6 Victims?

My instinct has long been that Donald Trump should issue a blanket pardon of innocence (of the kind he issued for General Mike Flynn) to all the January 6 defendants, apart from the federal informants and provocateurs who urged illegal activity that escalated to violence. But now I’m having second thoughts about that after reading this deeply informed piece by J6 defendant William Pope at Revolver News. He writes:

The top priority, especially for those in prison, is immediate relief. This is why so many are calling for Day 1 pardons. However, immediate relief is not the only aspect to consider. Defendants would also like their records cleared. A pardon only forgives convictions; it does not erase them. For this reason, a pardon is not the best outcome for defendants because it will not result in exoneration.

Consider that some employers ask applicants if they’ve ever been convicted of a crime. Defendants who are exonerated can answer no to those questions, while those who are convicted and then pardoned must still answer yes. So if pardoned, these allegations will not go away. And the January 6 convictions in the eyes of most defendants represent wrongful convictions. Evidence was withheld. Due process rights were violated. Charges were excessive. The venue wasn’t fair. And the full truth of government involvement on January 6 is still not known.

Most of us defendants don’t want wrongful convictions hanging over us for the rest of our lives. We want the full truth. …

Furthermore,

if there were January 6 defendants who were working for the government on January 6, they might still be working for agencies and be used in the future to intentionally do things that hurt President Trump politically. So a blanket pardon without an investigation of government involvement would come with unknown risks.

Instead, Pope suggests a “reprieve,” which is also within Trump’s constitutional powers, which would let prisoners go home while the Justice Department sorts out how to get wrongful convictions and selective prosecutions completely expunged. Pope is a doctoral student who suspended his academic studies to defend himself and other nonviolent prisoners. His piece is detailed and fascinating. Go read the whole thing.

Of course, I’ve written here that some of these persecuted citizens need to be elected to Congress — in part to shame the members there who colluded in the discredited, evidence-trashing January 6 Committee. The Continental Congress had veterans of the Boston Tea Party, after all.

Time to Deport the Criminals

In both Jason Jones‘ and my recent columns on Trump’s plan to reverse and repatriate the millions of illegal aliens whom the Biden administration flouted the law to smuggle into our country, we each wrote that the first step is a tough-minded crackdown on the thousands who have criminal records. Remember that the Democrats invited this foreign crime wave, lied about it, threw potentially career-ending charges of racism at those who told the truth about it, and are even now spinning lawfare strategies to stop Trump from fixing it. Meanwhile, innocent Americans are getting terrorized and murdered:

Time from right wing conspiracy theory to front page news: about 6 months lol https://t.co/hOlK840Zha

— Peachy Keenan (@KeenanPeachy) December 17, 2024

But hey, at least things are even worse in Europe:

Moroccan migrant attempts to destroy a Christian nativity display with a hammer in Spain.

Immigrants are destroying Western Civilization. pic.twitter.com/rSARf76cuF

— Dominic Michael Tripi (@DMichaelTripi) December 17, 2024

Ugly Stuff on All Sides in Syria

I was never a defender of Syrian secular dictator Bashar al-Assad, though I worried that most of the plausible alternatives to his regime would likely prove even worse — and persecute religious minorities. Now that the facts about exactly how brutal Assad’s regime really was are emerging, the reactions of self-styled defenders of Arabs and Muslims are pretty telling:

There will be no campus encampments, no student protests, no global intifadas. I wonder why https://t.co/yg4VJYThMj

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) December 17, 2024

Meanwhile, the new regime led by al Qaeda affiliates is making noises that it won’t persecute Christians — doubtless out of a fear that the U.S. under Donald Trump might actually take action against it. Let’s pray that the fear of man, if not of God, keeps religious and ethnic minorities safe over there. But there’s reason to worry about the nature of the new regime, as this video from The Free Press makes clear. It’s an interview with a U.S. journalist who was captured, then tortured for years, by the very group now in power in Damascus.

“Devout Catholic” Joe Biden Threatens to Cut Off Electricity on Africans If They Don’t Legalize Abortion

When Joe Biden isn’t pardoning child porn addicts and cancer doctors who sell fake chemotherapy drugs, promoting the deaths of black children by threatening their parents, LifeNews reports:

The Biden administration is pressuring Sierra Leone to pass an unpopular pro-abortion bill before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, a former senior U.S. government official who has worked in the West African region told The Daily Signal.

It is common knowledge among nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, in Sierra Leone that a U.S. foreign aid agency called the Millennium Challenge Corporation is threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from a U.S. agreement with Sierra Leone unless the West African country’s parliament passes the bill decriminalizing abortion, the former government official said.

The Sierra Leone Compact is a five-year, $480 million agreement between the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, or MCC, and Sierra Leone aimed at providing affordable electricity.

While Stream contributor Jason Jones delivers coal for Christmas to Afghans freezing in the dark, Biden is threatening to turn off the lights on Africans if they won’t abort their babies. If there’s a White House Christmas pageant, Biden deserves to be cast as King Herod.

Along The Stream …

Later today, watch the amazing testimony of former Mafia crime boss Michael Franzese, who was born into organized crime, went to prison, and found Christ thanks to his prayer-warrior mother-in-law.

For years, our medical organizations, universities, media outlets and government have been gaslighting us, saying that “science” demands transgender treatments for kids. If you suspected that those were all just lies from the pit of Hell, you win a prize, as new Stream contributor Jason Mattera explains. Honest researchers and whistleblowers keep exposing the biased, flawed studies used to justify these Frankensteinian experiments on the young and the troubled, so those who profit from the transgender industry keep covering everything up.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.

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