Too often, it may seem that our jury system doesn’t hold powerful people to account. This time, it did.

A federal jury has convicted Milawaukee judge Hannah Dugan of a felony: obstructing federal agents who were attempting to arrest an illegal immigrant defendant in her courtroom.

Dugan’s case drew national attention last spring. ICE agents were waiting outside her courtroom to arrest an illegal immigrant, who was also a defendant in her courtroom on battery charges. Dugan sent the agents to speak with the chief judge, then ushered the defendant out through a discreet back door.

Judge Dugan was free to disagree with federal immigrant law or its enforcement. She wasn’t free to ignore it because it didn’t conform to her policy preferences.

Judges don’t get to decide which laws apply to them. When they break the law, consequences follow.

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As we move toward the end of the year—and look at January and 2026 in front us, it’s it is worth remembering that January is named after the Roman figure “Janus,” whose head looked forward and backward.

Looking backward, it was a year with some awful moments. We lost one of the youngest and brightest of our age in Charlie Kirk as well as one of the oldest and brightest of the age that educated all of us, Norman Podhoretz. The conservative constellation weeps over 2025. But as we look forward, we have much to celebrate and build on: Namely: Our 250th anniversary as a country which still very much is, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.” And, second, a presidency that has sidelined transnational progressivism in favor of Western superiority. Finally, the hope we all have for the uplift of our fellow citizens and the destruction of the enemies of civilization in a world torn between civilizational abuse and civilizational liberation.

From the Salem Media family to all of you: Happy New Year!

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As we move toward the end of the year—and look at January and 2026 in front us, it’s it is worth remembering that January is named after the Roman figure “Janus,” whose head looked forward and backward.

Looking backward, it was a year with some awful moments. We lost one of the youngest and brightest of our age in Charlie Kirk as well as one of the oldest and brightest of the age that educated all of us, Norman Podhoretz. The conservative constellation weeps over 2025. But as we look forward, we have much to celebrate and build on: Namely: Our 250th anniversary as a country which still very much is, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.” And, second, a presidency that has sidelined transnational progressivism in favor of Western superiority. Finally, the hope we all have for the uplift of our fellow citizens and the destruction of the enemies of civilization in a world torn between civilizational abuse and civilizational liberation.

From the Salem Media family to all of you: Happy New Year!

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America has many allies in what promises to be a decades-long Cold War 2.0 between the U.S. and its allies and the alliance of tyrants, led by China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Putin, Iran’s Khamenei and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. This quartet of dictators has some fourth-string powers allied with it in our hemisphere, like Venezuela’s Maduro and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel.

President Donald Trump is in the process of securing the Western Hemisphere against this alliance. He stated what I’d call the “Trump Doctrine.” In all caps: "YOU WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE IF YOU, IN ANY WAY, ATTACK OR THREATEN THE U.S.A."

In less than 25 words, President Trump put the whole globe on notice. The key word he included in his post: "THREATEN."

As 2025 comes to a close, the GOP is united on national defense. That’s a gift for everyone, whether they know it or not.

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Global antisemitism has surged since the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023. Now a civil-rights watchdog is exposing just how pervasive the problem has become on American college campuses.

StopAntisemitism’s 2025 campus report card examined conditions at ninety U.S. universities — and the findings are alarming.

Thirty-nine percent of Jewish students say they’ve felt forced to hide their identity. Sixty-five percent feel unwelcome in parts of their own campuses. And fifty-eight percent report that their universities failed to protect them.

Young people — members of a peaceful religious minority — are being targeted and marginalized at institutions that claim to prize inclusion. Even worse, administrators charged with maintaining safe, civilized learning environments are too often looking the other way.

Less than a century ago, the world vowed: “Never again.” Those words ring hollow when hatred is tolerated — or excused — in plain sight.

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Most of you know about Handel’s Messiah, perhaps the most popular and enduring work of George Frideric Handel. But few remember Charles Jennens, who wrote and conceived of the idea of the Oratorio, The Messiah.

The Oratorio is still performed thousands of times worldwide at Christmas.

Jennens wrote The Libretto. That's the text of Messiah, tying together the Bible central story, God's salvation of His people through the work of the Messiah. He used the very words of the Bible for his text. His purpose was to remind the audience of the truth and power of the story of salvation, and thus his attention on the Birth of Christ.

Handel put the words to majestic music in just 21 days. For unto us, a child is born. That is the prophet's declaration. That's God's great gift to us at Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

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“For unto us, a child is born. Unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace.”

That's what the great prophet Isaiah promised centuries before the birth of Christ.

The fulfillment of that promise is what we celebrate at Christmas. It happened in Little Bethlehem and the angel declared to the shepherds, “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

And so that baby was born, history was riven in two, and salvation came as the angelic host declared “glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

Now you and those you love, celebrate a wonderful Christmas filled with the glory of Christ.

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.If they would rather die, perhaps they had better do so and decrease the surplus population.

With that quote, Ebenezer Scrooge makes perfectly clear the true political message of A Christmas Carol.

Dickens was writing amidst a wave of hysteria about population growth triggered by Thomas Malfus, who argued that reproduction would exceed growth in food.

Scrooge was both anti procreation and anti-marriage.

Of course, Scrooge and Malfus who inspired him turned out to be wrong.

His nephew, Fred, and the ghost of Christmas present turned out to be right.

But the lessons from A Christmas Carol ought to give us strength today as well, as we press back against a message of outright hostility to family so prevalent among the woke left.

There is no such thing as surplus population.

God bless us everyone.

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