Friday, December 26, 2025
Beneath Him
The intellectual level of Vance’s explicit argument seems to me beneath him. Some translation is required. Vance is a no enemies on the right kind of guy. He’s sticking with his Qatar First buddy Tucker Carlson. The insane Candace Owens is better left unmentioned, but he’s sticking with her too. If you’re looking for someone to call out the anti-Semites who are damaging the conservative movement, it ain’t him, babe. He’s opposed to “self-defeating purity tests.”
Yeah, That Didn't Happen
In her interview with fangirl Esme Murphy on CBS Minnesota this past Sunday, Rep. Ilhan Omar related that her son had been pulled over by ICE in Minneapolis as a result of “racial profiling.” I doubt both the stop and the alleged racial profiling. The mantle of victimhood is handed down from generation to generation in the Omar’s family.
Minnesota Media
Murphy began this hard-hitting interview with her characteristic fangirl approach to Democrats, striking her usual tone with her first question: “I do want to ask first of all, how are you and what is it like being the focus of a president’s ire repeatedly over and over again?” Hey, Esme, skip to the easy questions! She takes Chris Farley’s tack with Paul McCartney: “How can you be so great?” However, Farley was engaged in comedy.
That's Not Gonna Be a Thing
The idea being that there is (or should be) a statute of limitations on illegal immigration enforcement: evade the authorities for long enough and you earn a de facto (or de jure) amnesty.
Democrats Make Electricity Unaffordable
Democrats have chosen to make “affordability” their theme for the 2026 midterm elections. This is ironic, since the big jump in the cost of living, around 10%, happened during the Biden administration and was the direct result of Biden administration policies. Nothing much has happened since Donald Trump took office 11 months ago; price increases have been modest, in keeping with historic levels. Some prices, like gasoline, have fallen. The problem is the big decline in the purchasing power of the dollar that we saw under Joe Biden.
Energy prices are a key element in the cost of living, since they affect the price of everything else. Here, the verdict is in: expensive electricity is a blue state problem.
And:
Why does electricity cost more in blue states? It’s no mystery. They have adopted anti-consumer mandates requiring the use of expensive and unreliable wind and solar electricity, which need natural gas backup to avoid blackouts. So residents of blue states pay twice.
Omar Married Her Brother
So, we are left with the questions of “what is evidence?” and “what is proof?” I suspect anything short of a written, signed, notarized and authenticated confession from both the bride and groom would be deemed “lacking.”
Equally displaced is the debate over motive. A close reading of the record suggests the marriage was undertaken to either (1) improve Elmi’s immigration standing or (2) to lower the cost of their mutual attendance at North Dakota State University, or both.
But given Omar’s lifelong history of poor decision making, attributing an intelligent and fully-thought-out rationalization for the marriage seems beside the point. At the time (2009), Omar was a private citizen with a political career still many years beyond the horizon. For brother deniers, the focus on motive is akin to the more extreme examples where the media downplay the carnage of terrorist attacks because the underlying motive remains “unclear.”
The deed was done, who cares “why?”
Absent DNA testing on the principals, or the emergence of new evidence acceptable to her supporters, we are left with a matter of belief. Either you believe the cumulative clues that point to Omar’s marriage to a close relative, or you stick to the belief that she would never commit such an unnatural act.Scott Johnson:
I’ve been on her case now nearly ten years. I documented the story in its early stages for City Journal in the September 2016 column “The curious case of Ilhan Omar.” Today I return to the scene of the crime with a first-person account in the Washington Free Beacon column “Yes, Ilhan Omar married her brother.”Ed Morrissey:
Indeed it would be, as long as the defamation lawyer could be certain that it is a defamatory claim. The problem is that Scott — himself an attorney — has compiled compelling evidence that the claims are true. Any lawsuit would force Omar to account for that evidence and to provide some compelling evidence to the contrary. It's true, as Turley points out, that it's difficult to prove a negative in theory, and that defendants (or more accurately in civil law, respondents) should not be forced into that position.
However, a defamation claim would put Omar into the position of proving that not only are the allegations false, but obviously false enough to overcome Sullivan. That would force Omar to essentially prove that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is not her brother as a threshold to receive a judgment in her favor, and would force Omar to participate in a discovery process that she will not enjoy for a single moment.
Civilizational Self-Defense
Despite all the evidence that Somalis as a group have no loyalty to the United States and see their route to success as exploiting the generous welfare systems of Western countries (In European countries that keep track of such things Somalis top the list of welfare recipients and sexual crime statistics, along with Pakistanis and Afghanis), when forced to choose between Somalis and the United States, liberals keep choosing Somalis.
Raising the Somali flag in place of the American flag is a strong statement of where liberals' loyalties lie, and it is not with America. As Muslims keep telling us that they want to transform America into something that mirrors their own societies, American politicians of a certain stripe applaud and ask for more.
Many people seem to think that kindness requires that we pretend that none of this is true. Not just pretend, but to actively deny it and choose to elevate cultures that are actively hostile to our own as superior.
This is insanity.
Rejecting this does not mean we should engage in pogroms against people of different cultures. It doesn't require us to act like Nazis and exterminate others, as liberals claim we want to do.
It just means that we need to engage in civilizational self-defense. If people come to the United States to live off our generosity while proclaiming that we are evil oppressors and should restructure our country to mirror that of the paradise they left, we should instead return them to that paradise so they can enjoy it.
Westerners shouldn't be ashamed of being who we are. We especially should not bow down to people who celebrate barbarianism.
Ketanji Bown-Wilson
Ketanji Brown-Jackson, no matter what you think, is not an idiot by most accounts.
She is something much, much worse: an ideologue who rejects the fundamental legal principles that underpin the Constitution. What most people interpret as stupidity is in fact a commitment not just to progressive outcomes, many of which could be accomplished through winning successive elections, but to the Wilsonian progressive vision of a technocratic rather than democratic, rules-based Constitutional order.
Ironically, she even shares Wilson's racist views, although she inverts them. Wilson was convinced that the white race was inherently superior to others, and society should be organized to ensure the dominance of whites over the other, inferior races. Jackson holds the opposite view, that white people are morally inferior and the rules of society should be employed to put them in their place.
Jackson is famously fond of expounding on her theories of government, which even her most liberal colleagues appear to find tiresome and offensive. Despite being the most junior justice, she speaks more than any other Justice—1 1/2 times as much as the next most talkative Justice, and what she says sounds kooky to anybody familiar with the Federalist Papers and the plain meaning of the Constitution.
Importing Voters
Stop the fraud or win elections. This is the choice now facing Democrats in Minnesota. Want to guess which one will prevail?
The ethnic-Somali population in Minnesota (including refugees and 2nd generation) numbers around 107,000, according to census data. Thirty-five (35) years ago, that number was zero. Nearly all are citizens.
The total foreign-born population in Minnesota sits around 500,000, most of whom are naturalized American citizens.
Even allowing for persons who have not yet reached voting age, we have sizable voting blocs here that lean heavily towards the Democrats.
Terrible Guests
Somalis have not one, but three units of "oppression" in the oppression Olympics, and they and their advocates are trying to use every advantage they have to push back on people noticing that they have been terrible guests in our country. They are "migrants," they are black, and they are Muslim.
Obviously, they are the oppressed, and we are the oppressors.
These oppression points have worked to their advantage for years. Somalis have brought with them all the ills of their home country, and in many cases, they are quite proud to have imported their failed culture to Minnesota. Far from acculturating, they have, as a group if not in all individual cases, found that Minnesotans are sheep and they are happy to be wolves. But we have not been able to point any of this out because it is "racist" to do so.
Elmi's Connections
There are other Omar connections in the wide world of the Feeding Our Future fraud. Chadwidk Moore explores them in the New York Post story “What did Ilhan Omar know about the $1B welfare fraud case in her Minnesota district?” Good question. Moore quotes Bill Glahn: “She had been inside the [Safari] facility on numerous occasions and couldn’t put two and two together? Either she’s terminally naive, or knew and didn’t care.” Good answer.
Moore’s story is the first I have seen to note Omar’s connection to the convicted Feeding Our Future defendant Guhaad Hashi. As I have written on Power Line many times (see, e.g., “Omertà for Omar”), Hashi was Omar’s enforcer. A photo caption in Moore’s story accurately observes: “Guhaad Hashi Said worked on Omar’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns as an ‘enforcer overseeing voter mobilization in the Somali community. He pleaded guilty to running a fake food scheme and stealing millions from taxpayers.” I have used the thumbnail photo of Hashi (at right) instructing Somalis to shut up to accompany just about everything I have written on the Feeding Our Future case.
The Magic Word
That gets to the heart of the immigration crisis. Every person who lives in the Third World and wants to come to America, whether for opportunity or welfare, knows that if he or she is apprehended at the border, the word “asylum” is magic. Rather than being treated, properly, as an illegal alien, under the Biden regime everyone who uttered the word “asylum” would be admitted the the U.S., flown to a desirable destination, and given a date, probably years hence, for an asylum hearing. For which the illegal alien hardly ever showed up. And Democrats classified all of these “asylum seekers” as legal immigrants.
It was a scam that had devastating consequences for American communities. What we really need to do is amend our immigration laws to drastically narrow the “asylum seeker” loophole. Meanwhile, the administration’s order is an important step in the right direction.
Laughingstock
I was asked on television whether Walz will withdraw from the race for governor, which seems to be what the New York Times wants. I honestly have no idea, but I doubt it. Walz has no skills that would make him employable in the private sector. So, to paraphrase Richard Nixon, I think we will have him to kick around for some time to come.
And:
No doubt you have seen the infamous clip where Tim Walz, on Meet the Press, says he takes responsibility for putting fraudsters in jail. As Power Line readers know, the fraud prosecutions in Minnesota have been carried out exclusively by Joe Thompson and his crew at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Keith Ellison’s AG office has had nothing to do with them, nor has Tim Walz, in any capacity.
Diversity is Not Our Strength
First things first: once you get past the fuzzy-brained claim that it is wrong to make the assertion that some migrant groups are net positives to a society and others are net negatives, let's clear something up: this is a statement of fact, and has been well documented by European studies in Nordic countries that have calculated the costs and benefits of migration.
In the Netherlands, for instance, Somali immigrants on average cost the taxpayers and the economy on average a million Euros in public support, and their children cost even more and contribute less than their parents. Immigrants from European Union countries and the United States, on the other hand, contribute on average 500,000+ more than natives from the Netherlands.
In other words, immigration is not one thing; some immigrants are net contributors, while others drain resources and increase social instability and reduce social trust.
Go figure. It's not like we couldn't figure that out based on common sense.
Nordic countries have done a 180 on immigration in the past couple of years for this reason. Once the most generous in granting asylum from s**thole countries, to the extent that Swedes and Norwegians opened their own homes and extended generous welfare benefits, they are now working assiduously to kick out the migrants, and even paying tens of thousands in bonuses for those who leave voluntarily.
Unless liberals want to believe that Sweden went from being the most welcoming country in the world to one of the most restrictive on immigration because the population suddenly woke up one day and realized they were white and migrants were not, they should concede that perhaps something—in this case experience—changed their minds.
