Monthly Archives: December 2025

Friday Focus

Quick Takes: Friday Focus The January 6 Pipe Bomber Is Finally in Custody After nearly five years of dead ends, grainy surveillance footage, and a $500,000 reward that went unclaimed, the FBI has arrested a suspect in one of the most chilling loose threads of January 6, 2021: the person who planted viable pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the Capitol riot. On Wednesday, December 3, 2025, agents took a 30-year-old Virginia man into custody. Sources familiar with the case say the breakthrough came from a combination of new forensic analysis of the bombs’…

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When the Alarm Bell Had to Be Un-Rung

The Week the Climate Narrative Lost One of Its Loudest Megaphones Something remarkable happened in the first week of December 2025, and most of the press that helped create it is pretending it didn’t. On Monday, December 1, the Wall Street Journal published a front-page autopsy titled “Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions-and Crippled the Economy.” It was a cold, data-driven indictment: Europe had indeed cut emissions faster than any other region, but in the process it had delivered the highest electricity prices in the developed world, shuttered chemical plants, triggered a moratorium on new data centers, and watched households ration…

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Tennessee’s CD-07 Special Election

A Tale of Polls, Hype, and a Solid GOP Win The dust has settled on Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District special election, held on December 2, 2025, to replace Rep. Mark Green, who resigned earlier this year. The result-Republican Matt Van Epps defeating Democrat Aftyn Behn by a solid 8.9-point margin-stands in stark contrast to the pre-election buzz that painted this race as a potential nail-biter or even a Democratic upset. Polls suggested a razor-thin contest, while media outlets hyped Behn’s progressive candidacy as a midterm bellwether. Yet, the numbers tell a different story: a decisive GOP hold in a Trump +22…

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Your Blue Slip is Showing

The Blue Slip: Last Bastion or Final Betrayal of the Framers’ Senate? A Follow-Up to “Restore the Republican Soul of the Senate” In the sweltering summer of 1787, as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated the bones of the new republic in Philadelphia, one institution emerged as the deliberate brake on the wheels of government: the Senate. It was not born of compromise alone but of a profound suspicion of unchecked majorities. James Madison, scribbling notes in the margins of his copy of Montesquieu, envisioned an upper house that would "refine and enlarge the public views" while tethering them to…

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The Art of the Hemisphere

How Trump Just Turned a Narco-Pardon into the Biggest Real-Estate Deal Since Manhattan In 1987 Donald Trump bragged that the best deals are the ones where you risk almost nothing but can win everything. Thirty-eight years later, with one signature freeing a convicted cocaine-trafficking ex-president, he just proved he still closes exactly that way; only now the asset isn’t a casino, a hotel, or a Manhattan skyscraper. It’s an entire continent’s balance of power. On November 28, 2025-Thanksgiving weekend, when half of Washington was still carving turkey-Trump quietly issued a full and unconditional pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the former…

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Trump’s Realpolitik Strategy

Using Venezuela as Leverage Against Putin The Big Chess Board Donald Trump’s foreign policy maneuvers in Venezuela exemplify a distinctive application of realpolitik, the pragmatic pursuit of national interest over ideological ideals. This approach, historically shaped by figures like Otto von Bismarck with his shifting alliances and Henry Kissinger with his Cold War détente, finds a contemporary expression in Trump’s “America First” doctrine. This philosophy emphasizes power, economic leverage, and strategic deals over moral or democratic crusades, contrasting with predecessors like George W. Bush’s nation-building in Iraq or Barack Obama’s reliance on multilateral institutions. It’s worth noting that Venezuela is a…

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