Programming note: Tonight, Tuesday, I'll be here with another episode of our brand new Tale for Our Time. Tomorrow, Wednesday, we'll have a post-inaugural Clubland Q&A with questions from Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~Nice to see the wife of one of the most heroically heroic figures in American history belatedly waking up to the realisation that her hubby's no Jim Biden but just some schlub off the boat from Odessa who got played for a sucker by Mister Ten Per Cent:
OK, I changed my mind. These pardons were worth it just so I could see Rachel Vindman throw a tantrum over not getting one. pic.twitter.com/HFzUmgaaZh
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) January 20, 2025
~On Inauguration Day, on a deserted stretch of I-91 just south of the Vermont/Quebec border, a Border Patrol agent was murdered during what he thought was a routine traffic stop:
In a statement, the FBI said that in addition to the agent, a suspect in the shooting was killed and a second suspect was injured and taken into custody during the encounter on Interstate 91 in Coventry, about 20 miles (32 km) from the Canadian border.
The FBI said there was no ongoing threat to the public.
Oh, I wouldn't say that. Some years ago, I was stopped by a Border Patrol agent on more or less the exact same slab of shoulder. I was en route to my father's funeral, and so queried the officer's jurisdiction. He replied that the Border Patrol had full police powers anywhere within a hundred miles of the US frontier. I probably would eschew the jurisdictional banter today, but back then Vermont's North-East Kingdom (as they call it) was still a low-crime high-trust society.
Not now. As with the slaughter of three little girls in Southport, England, such events are the direct consequence of public policy across the western world. The fruits of such conscious policy are now being borne by law-enforcement officers and dance-class moppets alike. The newly proclaimed "emergency at the southern border" extends two thousand miles through all states to the northern border. I enjoy grooving to the Village People as much as the next red-blooded male, and tossing Thoroughly Modern Milley's just unveiled portrait straight in the dumpster even more so. But this murder reminds us that what we euphemise as "immigration" remains the overwhelming priority of Trump 47. It is not enough to pull up the drawbridge. It has to be made impossible to operate as an illegal in America - which shouldn't be beyond the state's doing: God knows it's difficult enough to operate legally. And there have to be, as the President has promised, mass deportations.
~On a related note, I see whoever's waggling the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock puppet that is Joe Biden also pardoned the accomplice of a murderer I made the mistake of employing a few years back. He's just some no-account career criminal, not a big cause celeb like Leonard Peltier or Tony "Gain-of" Fauci. And no one's pretending he's innocent. So it's almost as if President Husk is pardoning all these rapists and druglords and murderers as a necessary cover for the fact that he's the unjustly enriched boss of a crime syndicate who needs to pardon every living member of his family.
~As to the actual inauguration ceremonial, well, I appreciate I am not the target audience - the target audience presumably being people who have been pining for years for an overlong speech by Amy Klobuchar and who enjoy seeing "a technical difficulty" scuttle Carrie Underwood's orchestral accompaniment. Miss Underwood handled the latter with grace and aplomb, but it was not, I think, accidental. Those of us far-right Nazis who have spoken on stage in deep-blue cities know well that a "glitch" in the sound system is the easiest way to disrupt the event, and it happens remarkably often. In this case, this was the sole moment in the proceedings vulnerable to human error - and whaddayaknow, the human went ahead and made the error.
Like the incompetent DC traffic management yesterday, this tells us something: the self-righteous "resistance" will use any and all monkey wrenches to hand to derail this presidency. Trump faces an exhausting four years.
~Nevertheless, as 47 says, this is a time for action - and the actions taken within a few hours of the oath of office were sober and serious. America is out of the US-funded China-dominated and stinkingly corrupt World Health Organisation. It has likewise withdrawn from the Paris climate accord. Best of all, America's political prisoners are heading home:
JUST ANNOUNCED THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IS DROPPING MY JANUARY 6 CASE!!!!!!
4 YEAR AND 4 DAYS IN THE GULAG WITHOUT A TRIAL
IM FINALLY COMING HOME!!!! GOD BE MAGNIFIED!!!
MOUNTAINS DO REALLY MOVE IN JESUS NAME!!!
— Jake Lang - January 6 Political Prisoner 🇺🇸 (@JakeLangJ6) January 20, 2025
All the J6ers are pardoned, save for a handful still under review. As with Miss Underwood's accompaniment, there were elements in the federal administration who declined to follow the head of the executive branch:
I just called and was informed that because today is a holiday there is no one there to do the paperwork to process them out. So I asked the poor operator (who said I'd have to call back tomorrow to speak to someone in charge) that the public is not going to be happy to know that...
— Trigger Factory (@TRIC_Podcast) January 21, 2025
And another:
Who is this guy refusing to honor Trump's pardons? pic.twitter.com/nISQN6a8W4
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 21, 2025
Get their names and inflict consequences. The problem with any bloated bureaucratic state is that minor functionaries start thinking like Louis XIV: L'État, c'est moi.
~The most interesting of the executive orders was on "birthright citizenship", and Trump's attempt to end the practice of illegal aliens retrospectively legalising themselves through "anchor babies". As many readers will know, the crude rule is that Europe operates on the old Roman law of jus sanguinis (right of blood) while British nations prefer the Common Law right of jus soli (right of soil). Whether either applies to the descendants of the undocumented is a subtler question. But I note that Ireland in 2005 moved from one camp to another: having previously operated the British system, Dublin decided, after one solitary "anchor baby" case that made the papers, that merely being born in Cork or Dundalk was no longer sufficient; henceforth, one needed additionally at least one parent who was an Irish or UK citizen.
That makes sense in the conditions of the modern world. Whether it passes "constitutional" muster with Roberts and Coney Barrett is less clear.
~We thank you for all your kind comments this last grisly year - and especially all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in this coming year.
