“Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Sherlock Holmes!” (Volume One.
“Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Sherlock Holmes!” (Volume Two.
“Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Sherlock Holmes!” (Volume Three.
“Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from Sherlock Holmes!” (Volume Four.)
From the article -- Those speaking out against these atrocities are concerned over the lack of coverage by prominent news sources and attention from political leaders around the world. Some have attributed the removal of nations, such as Nigeria, from the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) and lifting of U.S. sanctions on Syria as global measures that would have otherwise kept pressure on entities that severely violate international religious freedom.
As many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are persecuted, driven underground, and even martyred for a faith that some take for granted, continue to pray that the joy of the Lord is their strength, that they would continue to shine their light to the lost even under such intense pressure, and that peace would come to their land.
2) Federal And State Law Enforcers Must Tackle Deadly Abortion Drug Cartel (Kristan Hawkins and Kristi Stone Hamrick, Federalist)
From the article -- From the article -- Aid Access, an international pill pusher headed by Rebecca Gomperts, claims to have profited from more than 200,000 U.S. abortions since 2018. From July 2023 to August 2024, 84 percent of chemical abortion pills it sold went to states with limits on abortion, according to a recent report. That’s not an accident; it’s a business plan.
Gomperts regularly preens in the media about her deadly operation, pointing out her get-out-of-accountability-free card and telling reporters “I don’t care” about pro-life laws. “Where I work from, it’s legal to prescribe the medications. And so I’ll do that,” Gomperts told CBS.
3) The Persecution of Graham Linehan Should Terrify Us (Lauren Smith, The European Conservative)
From the article -- We can argue about proportionality or the lack thereof, but it’s impossible to talk about this awful display of totalitarianism without acknowledging that it is Linehan’s beliefs that are really being interrogated here. Yes, someone, somewhere found what he wrote offensive. But there is no real victim in this case. Rather, it is an opportunity for the state to flex its censorious muscles. Linehan wrote on Substack that, during his run-in with the law, he was quizzed about his views on “trans people.” When Linehan asked the copper what exactly he meant by that term, he said: “People who feel their gender is different than what was assigned at birth.” Linehan, very correctly, pushed back against the phrase “assigned at birth,” pointing out that it was activist language. The officer brushed this aside as “semantics,” but it’s clear that this is what Linehan’s persecution has been about—the fact that he refuses to say the magic words “transwomen are women.”
All this becomes even more absurd when you consider the fact that what Linehan believes is not some fringe, extremist position. It is a view held by the majority of normal people. Most Brits don’t want men in women’s bathrooms, prisons, or hospital wards. It’s even a belief that is, theoretically, backed up by law. Have we forgotten that, in April, the UK Supreme Court ruled that gender is defined by biology, for the purposes of the Equality Act (2010)? And that gender-critical views should—again, theoretically—be a protected belief under that same act? No matter the many, many flaws of the Supreme Court and the Equality Act, this is still the law. So why is it that it seems to be applied so selectively?
4) Trump Astride at Seven Months: Seven months in, Trump has curbed illegal immigration, steadied the economy, and scored foreign policy wins -- while Democrats flounder without a counteragenda. (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness)
From the article -- Many of the left’s cherished totems—massive Green New Deal subsidies, the diversity/equity/inclusion industry, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the USAID revolving door—are either comatose or in their death throes. The historic drop-off in military recruitment reversed shortly after Trump took office. Republican voter registration is up, and Democratic registration is down. Abroad, Trump finds remarkable successes.
5) The Choice: Trump or Obama -- MAGA influencers who attack Israel, Jews, and Trump’s Iran policy are fighting for the former president’s policies and allies—and his program of national euthanasia. (Lee Smith, Tablet)
From the article -- MAGA influencer attacks on Israel and pro-Israel activism have become so commonplace that even Megyn Kelly, a longtime supporter of Israel, has joined in piling on Israel. During her interview with Greene, she empathized with the congresswoman’s fearful exasperation after having to reject several offers of all-expenses-paid AIPAC trips to the Holy Land. “I’m looking at Israel in a different way right now than I was on Oct. 8,” Kelly said, concurring with Greene. “And I can feel the pressure being slightly ratcheted up.” Greene told Kelly that “Israel is the only country I know of that has some sort of incredible influence and control over nearly every single one of my colleagues.”
She was lying. D.C. insiders like Greene and Kelly know that Washington’s pro-China lobby runs nonstop congressional delegations to the People’s Republic, where they’re wined and dined by Communist Party officials. The pro-China lobby can afford to stuff Americans with a bottomless buffet of Peking duck and moo shu pork because it is extraordinarily wealthy, thanks largely to the huge trade surplus China runs with the United States, which since China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization amounts to many trillions of U.S. dollars. The pro-China lobby’s enormous budget dwarves the pro-Israel lobby, allowing it to exert enormous influence over Congress.
Other important reads for this weekend:
* Trump Should Take Down The American Medical Association’s Licensing Grift (Rachel Bovard, Federalist)
* An alternative universe: Hamas’s war against civilization pivots on its war against the Western and Israeli mind. (Melanie Phillips, JNS)
* Christians must unite against the evil Starmer stands for (John Hale, TCW)
* Transgender Mass Murderers: The Drugs and Demons That Drive Them -- Drugs, hormones, ideology, and the devil make for a deadly cocktail. (Melissa Mackenzie, American Spectator)
* Anonymous Federal Judges Go To War Against the Supreme Court: These people are not judges, they're operatives. (Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Mag)
It's a very simple game -- name your Ten Favorite Characters from Literature. And yes, we allowed a little liberty, as in accepting a "company" of characters from a particular work. Here are the lists we came up with. How about you?
Claire's Ten -- in no particular order:
* Aslan, Peter, Lucy, Edmund from The Chronicles of Narnia.
* Samwise Gangee, Frodo Baggins, and Aragon (Strider) from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
* Fr. Timothy Kavanaugh from the Jan Karon series of novels.
* Miss Ella Bishop from Miss Bishop by Bess Streeter Aldrich.
* John Sidney Howard from The Pied Piper by Nevil Shute.
* Sir Percy Blakeney from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
* Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
* Winnie the Pooh and his many friends from the books by A.A. Milne.
* Bishop Myriel from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
* Sherlock Holmes from the stories and novels by Arthur Conan Doyle.
And my list? Well, I agreed with Claire's selections of Sherlock Holmes, Fr. Tim Kavanaugh, Ebenezer Scrooge, Winnie the Pooh and friends, and the characters from The Lord of the Rings. The only point of clarification I would add is that my list read "Ebenezer Scrooge...or whoever is the protagonist from the Charles Dickens novel I'm reading at the time!"
But the differences? My list included...
* Ratty, Badger, Mole, and Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
* D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis from several novels by Alexandre Dumas.
* Atreyu from The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.
* Travis McGee from the series of novels by John D. MacDonald.
From the
article -- It’s time to face a simple truth: discussing black-on-white crime
isn’t racism. It’s reality, and reality doesn’t bend to our feelings or our
carefully crafted fairytales. Black-on-white crime exists. In fact, according
to National Crime Victimization Survey, blacks commit 85 percent of all
non-lethal interracial violence between blacks and whites.
Let me be
absolutely clear. This isn’t about defending one race or condemning another.
It’s about the lives of Americans — black, white, and every shade between — who
are left to live with the consequences. Crime that cuts across every racial
line exists. If we treat the problem as taboo, we stay silent while the damage
spreads.
The
numbers tell a story that makes many people deeply uncomfortable. Violent crime
is not evenly distributed across America. Certain communities commit violent
offenses at rates dramatically higher than others. The standard deflections
don’t hold water anymore.
2) “The British Aren’t Coming!-- The decline and fall of the non-American Anglosphere.”
(Ronald Dodson, The American Mind)
From the
article -- The flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, still “new” in
naval terms, is visiting Rosyth—not to assert British naval prestige but to
begin maintenance. Commissioned in 2017, the ship had already spent most of
2025 under repair after corrosion was found in its propeller shaft. Now,
despite recent $4.3 billion refits, it’s once more out of action for further
upgrades and inaccessible-system inspections, pushing its availability deeper
into the future.
Three
thousand miles to the west, a Canadian-born civilian sits on her living room
couch, contemplating her approaching death. She isn’t terminally ill, but the
state won’t provide the medical home care she needs. Canada has promised health
care via socialized medicine, but it will instead administer a lethal injection
within days. This is the regime of MAID, Canada’s euphemistically termed
Medical Assistance In Dying legislation that legalized assisted suicide in
2016. This “choice” is presented as a compassionate right. However, in practice
it underscores a disquieting fact: the machinery of death is more functional
than that of living care.
These two
scenes, thousands of miles apart, are sewn with the same thread: governance
through surrender—be it in defense, health care, or the stories the state
tells. In both countries there’s a clear willingness to cede the capacity to
preserve life, the life of a polity or of a person, in favor of an easier,
cleaner exit.
The
non-American Anglosphere, from Ottawa to Wellington, is drifting into a
post-sovereign condition. Their governments still perform the ceremonies of
independence, but in their essential duties of defense, stewardship of
demographic cohesion, and protection of vulnerable citizens, they have begun to
relinquish the will to endure.
3) “Yes,the whole world is wrong about Israel: Even some who say they don’t hate theJewish state yet rely only on the mainstream media for news think that theremust be some truth to the ‘genocide’ blood libel. Challenging it isn’t easy.” (Jonathan
S. Tobin, JNS)
From the
article -- After all, if you’ve grown up believing that what you’ve read in The
New York Times, watched on CNN or heard while listening to NPR is true, then
why question the assumptions about what’s been happening in the conflict that
are treated as accepted facts in those outlets and others like them? And even
if you are willing to question individual stories that are largely the product
of Hamas propaganda and spread by so-called journalists working in territory
controlled by those Islamist terrorists, the sheer volume of reporting that
bolsters these claims has established a baseline concerning assumptions about
the war. Those who consider themselves fair-minded and not prejudiced in their
opinions about Israel have long since accepted the idea that where there is so
much smoke about Israeli misconduct, there must be fire.
In this
way, the belief that the primary, if not sole, cause of suffering in Gaza is an
unjustified and heartless war policy pursued by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu becomes not merely a pro-Hamas talking point but conventional wisdom
accepted by those on the political left and even in the center, where legacy
liberal media outlets still have considerable influence.
4) “AmericaTakes a Stand for the Rights of Western Christians” (Jonathon Van Maren,
European Conservative)
From the
article -- There has, predictably, been much criticism of the Trump
administration’s advocacy for prosecuted pro-lifers; indeed, it is
extraordinary for an elderly pro-life woman to hear that the government of the
world’s reigning superpower is interested in her case and that the “United
States stands” with her, especially when so few others will.
But it is
common practice for governments to advocate for persecuted dissidents in other
countries; progressive regimes have been especially interested in defending
LGBT activists. What is uncommon is that a U.S. administration is taking
interest in the rights of persecuted and prosecuted Christians in the West.
Even though Christians are now a minority in the UK while LGBT activists still
cosplay as victims, the progressive establishment narrative still treats
traditional Christians as dominant oppressors and their reigning ideological
opponents as the underdog.
America’s
interest in the actual underdog reveals the much-denied reality and forces
profoundly uncomfortable questions for the ruling classes—and it is about time,
too.
5) “The Evil Idea That Has Taken Over the Woke Right: The coming of ‘critical religiontheory’” (Josh Appel, Commentary)
From the
article -- However, the evidence suggests that the new right-wing conspiracy
culture is more than just anti-institutional—it is a new adaptation of an
intellectual trend that has dominated the left for two generations. That trend
is “critical theory”—the study of the supposedly hidden systems of power and
oppression that shape society and must be exposed before being dismantled.
Critical theory has found its most salient and powerful expression in the
triumph of critical race theory, which posits that America was born in original
sin in 1619 and still functions as a machine to suppress black people whose
presence in the United States was a crime to begin with and whose problems are
the result of a centuries-long criminal conspiracy against them.
The woke right has adapted this and created what I call critical religion theory. It holds that a small elite has hijacked Western civilization and actively used its power to manipulate the world against religion. For these thinkers, the danger isn’t the policy, but that the policy reflects an anti-religious force subverting their worldview, and the world itself, behind the scenes. This movement sees power as illegitimate and influence as suspect. Those in “power”—by which they mean having wealth and success—are clearly part of a group trying to influence the masses. The tools of subversion are money, drugs, movies, devil worship (literally), and sexual blackmail. If you disagree, it’s because you are in on it, too.
Other
important reads for this week?
* “SenatorsAsk AG Bondi to Investigate Abortion Pill Manufacturers” (Daily Citizen via
Harbinger's Daily)
* “Fourteen-Year-OldScottish Girl Arrested for Resisting Probable Assault by Migrants”
("Streiff," at Red State)
* “PleaseDeliver Us From the Poorly-Behaved Women...and the history they strive tocreate.” (Scott McKay, American Spectator)
* “Who's
the Crazy Alert: Mental Health Form for Girls Who Think Boys in Their Bathroom
is a Problem” (Beege Welborn, Hot Air)
* “Junkscience now dominates the reporting of the propaganda press” (Robert Zimmerman,
Behind the Black)
Among the highlights of these shifts were a lot of wonderful conversations with teenagers -- teenagers from Nebraska Christian School, from a community of special needs kids in Hastings, several musicians from a variety of the high school marching bands who were at the Fair that day, from a nearby high school which was using the Fair as a field trip, and more.
But we also had plenty of profitable visits with adults, including people wanting the free fetal models we were offering, Christians who wanted to come by and thank us for being there at the Fair, a number of curious vendors who had booths in the building, a goodly number who agreed to sign our petition urging Congress to completely defund Planned Parenthood ASAP, and many casual conversations with people who were drawn by our pro-life information, video, fetal models…and our winsome selves!
Thank you, Father, for the opportunity to serve You and the cause of “the least of these” through this important outreach. And please protect, encourage, and use for Your wise purposes all who will be serving at the NRL booth for the rest of this year’s State Fair.
From the article -- It is critical that you teach adults and youth in your church what a worldview is. For example, is there a God or not? If so, what is he like, and what is his relationship to the physical universe? What is the universe (an accident or purposefully created, infinite and eternal or not, etc.)? What is man (just an animal, unique from animals, related to God or not, basically good or inherently sinful, etc.)? Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Can we know truth, and if so, how can we know it? Is there right and wrong in an absolute sense, or is all morality a matter of opinion or majority vote?
Biblical Christianity answers these questions one way. The evolutionary view—which dominates our culture and public education and is humanistic and atheistic—answers these questions in a very different way. For the Christian, his or her answers should come from the Bible. Unfortunately, as the studies noted above show, many people in the church live their daily lives unconscious of the fact that they are actually influenced by the evolutionary humanist worldview more than they are by the worldview they profess to believe at church. So we must inform people about what a worldview is and how it affects our decisions and relationships.
2) “Topple Your Woke Idols: A modest proposal for healthy American assimilation.” (James Hankins, American Mind)
From the article -- In place of Christianity, public schools in the 20th century taught the civil religion of America. The chief doctrines of this quasi-religion were equality under the law; freedom of speech and religion; respect for God (a monotheistic but non-denominational God to be sure); respect for pillars of public order like the police, the churches, and the courts; and gratitude to those who had sacrificed themselves to preserve American freedom for future generations. Immigrants were encouraged to participate in our common American culture, especially in sports and music. For most of the 20th century, the public schools were egalitarian and public-spirited. They helped integrate waves of immigrants from all over the world into a common American culture and shared political values. With prodding from the Supreme Court, public schools were careful for over 60 years to exclude religious instruction entirely, but without, for the most part, adopting policies that were openly antagonistic to Americans’ faith traditions.
Since the 1960s, however, the public schools and other cultural institutions, public and private, have embraced a new religious faith: that of multiculturalism. Hollywood, of course, has been celebrating diversity for decades, casting its ghastly gaslight on our common life and history with ever-increasing detachment from reality. By now, after half a century, the lumpen Left have completely internalized the faith’s assumptions so that multiculturalism, with its subordinate dogmas of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, is understood simply as Moral, its opposite Immoral. Even more insidiously, traditional love of country has become “cringe,” the opposite of “cool.”
3) “We Need to Rethink AI Before It Destroys What It Means to Be Human -- AI is on track to erase human purpose, replacing work, struggle, and growth with machines—if we don’t slam the brakes, real life itself is at risk.” (Jeff Dornik, American Greatness)
From the article -- At last year’s We, Robot event, Musk unveiled Tesla’s new self-driving robotaxi. But what caught my attention was their preview of Optimus, the AI-powered humanoid robot. In their promotional video, Tesla showed Optimus babysitting children, teaching in schools, and even serving as a doctor. Combine that with Tesla’s fully automated Hollywood diner concept, where Optimus is flipping burgers and even working as a waiter and bartender, and you begin to see the real aim. Automation is replacing human connection, service, and care.
So where do humans fit in? That is the terrifying part. Musk and Bill Gates have both pitched the idea of universal basic income to replace traditional employment that AI is going to replace. Musk has said there will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want one for personal satisfaction, but AI will do everything. Gates has proposed taxing robot labor to fund people who no longer work.
The reality is that work is more than a paycheck. It is not just how we survive; it is how we find purpose. It is how we grow, how we learn, and how we take responsibility. Struggle is not a flaw in the system; it is part of what makes us human. The daily grind, the failures, the perseverance, the sense of accomplishment. Strip all of that away, and you have stripped away humanity.
4) “The New Allure of Positive Eugenics” (Chuck Donovan, Washington Stand)
From the article -- Eugenics, of course, has a well-earned bad name. It reached its first zenith in the Third Reich, but its origins date decades earlier with the arrival of inheritance studies and the findings of Darwinism, particularly the work of Sir Francis Galton, a gifted polymath whose contributions to measuring and understanding science were varied and substantial. The best account of the history of eugenics, in both its positive and negative forms, is that of Edwin Black, published in 2004. “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” is meticulously detailed and lays out the many ways in which scholars and social leaders in the West, including Europe, drove the Nazi campaign to weed out people the government was convinced were a drag on human accomplishment.
The new American voices for eugenics are politic enough that they do not openly speak of destroying embryos that are not up to snuff, whether that be compromised physical health, predictions of future diseases, or inferences of lower IQ. They do rely on techniques like IVF and embryo genetic testing that rely on identifying the “best” embryos and selecting them for implantation and gestation. The rest are presumably set aside, forgotten, discarded, or donated for research. What is most enlightening in Elinson’s article is how robust and advanced the “Silicon Values” genomics industry already is.
5) “Pro-Life Quotations? We Got a Bunch of 'Em!” (Vital Signs Blog, Denny Hartford)
From the article -- “The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.” (Saint Basil)
“When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” (Pioneer feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton)
“It seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
“Abortion does not kill a potential human person, it kills a human person with great potential.” (Anonymous)
“The best decision I ever made was keeping my baby.” (Poet Maya Angelou)
“The Bible makes it clear that God sees the unborn infant not as a piece of superfluous biological tissue, but as a person created by Him for life.” (Billy Graham)
“Abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.” (1963 pamphlet by Planned Parenthood)
Other excellent reading for this week:
* “What America First Says to the World: We remain the beacon of ordered liberty for all mankind.” (Kristen Ziccarelli and Joshua Treviño, American Mind)
* “Report: Left-Wing Bureaucracies Are Quietly Subverting Red State Governance” (Shawn Fleetwood, Federalist)
* “The Cost of Conformity: Study Reveals 88% of Students Feel Compelled to Adopt Progressive Facade” (Sarah Holliday, Washington Stand)
* “How Does Planned Parenthood Treat Pregnant Women Who Don’t Want Abortions? Answer: Not very well.” (Sarah Terzo, NRL)
* “The Lucy Connolly scandal reveals the folly of policing hatred: If we do not want a repeat of this authoritarian farce, we need to take an axe to our hate-speech laws.” (Tom Slater, spiked!)
* “Education and Wealth Trump All Identity Politics: Under Trump, we stand a chance of returning to our Constitution.” (Bruce Thornton, Front Page Magazine)
“The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.” (Saint Basil)
“When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” (Pioneer feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton)
“It seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
“Abortion does not kill a potential human person, it kills a human person with great potential.” (Anonymous)
“Probably nothing has been as damaging to our cause as the advances in technology which have allowed pictures of the developing fetus, because people now talk about the fetus in much different terms than they did 15 years ago. They talk about it as a human being, which is not something that I have an easy answer on how to cure.” (Harrison Hickman, pollster for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League)
“The best decision I ever made was keeping my baby.” (Poet Maya Angelou)
“The Bible makes it clear that God sees the unborn infant not as a piece of superfluous biological tissue, but as a person created by Him for life.” (Billy Graham)
“Abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.” (1963 pamphlet by Planned Parenthood)