Crystal Coon

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@MarianHorne15 @jenniferwilkin @megbasham @MarianHorne15 She totally shouldn’t share her message of Bible literacy that encourages and convicts Christians to pick the word of God, open it and learn how to read unless that platform passes your political purity test. Such a good idea!

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@boxer_heaven Lucille

[ScottGordon @ScottGordonDFW]

POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE in Tarrant County, Texas, the biggest red county in the country. Democrat Taylor Rehmet beats Republican Leigh Wambsganss in state senate district that Trump carried in 2024 by 17 points. The district hasn’t voted Democratic in half a century.

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@robertjeffress @FLOTUS @POTUS Maybe they can cosplay having fun with Ghislaine next!

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@jkbjournalist @JakeLahut Ya girl

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Encouraging news: Spanish scientist Mariano Barbacid and his team at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre developed a targeted therapy that eliminated tumors in mouse models of the most common type of pancreatic cancer.

The findings have not yet been tested in humans but represent a major step toward treating one of the most aggressive cancers, with mortality rates as high as 97 percent.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

The power of music

Former prima ballerina with Alzheimer's listens to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and it all comes back.

[Erick Erickson @EWErickson]

A lot of my friends on the right think the President just caved to Democrats. You guys need to rethink the politics. Y'all are all sharing these GOP polls showing how popular Noem's strategy was and that polling is bs propaganda. Get out and talk to people outside politics. Normies like the deportations. They didn't like how Noem and Bovino were doing it.

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

Good luck to Trump pivoting from his mess on immigration to his mess on the economy.

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@DustyDeevers A “patriot” POTUS just fired from his role at Border Patrol. Noem is next.

[Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom]

"A doctor at Shohada Tajrish Hospital in north Tehran, a sprawling government medical facility, said that, on average, medical staff saw about 70 protesters with gunshot wounds per hour on the two days of peak violence. Many patients were dead on arrival." https://t.co/JJQkRAvgRS

[Tim Alberta @TimAlberta]

Okay so,

1) an American citizen exercises his First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and his Second Amendment right to bear arms, out of apparent concern that a tyrannical federal government is violating basic protections afforded under the Constitution

2) after coming to the aid of an unarmed woman who's been shoved to the ground by a masked federal agent, the citizen -- impaired by pepper spray, holding nothing but a cell phone -- is dragged to the ground by a group of other masked agents

3) during the scuffle, shortly after one masked agent removes the weapon from the restrained citizen's person, several other masked agents open fire, unloading 10 shots from close range and killing the unarmed citizen

4) despite video evidence, a spokesman for the federal government says the citizen approached agents with a gun, provoked a violent confrontation, and planned to "massacre" law enforcement

You really want to defend this? Go ahead. Just know, you look like an absolute fool.

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@bobbydownes @nuance_guy @tkped @Chris_Hadrick2 @JonahDispatch So give us the rest of the story then. If you’re so discerning and know more.

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@JonahDispatch I’m so distracted by the gilt filigree on the moldings of the Oval Office. There’s more than one crime of fetish in these photos.

[Home of the Brave @OfTheBraveUSA]

Officer Daniel Hodges narrates his body camera footage from January 6:

"That's me screaming because someone…is reaching underneath my visor and trying to gouge out my eye with his thumb while other people hold me down."

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

In 1936, J. R. R. Tolkien published a Christmas poem titled “Noel” in the annual magazine of Our Lady's Abingdon, in Oxfordshire. The poem was lost to history for nearly 80 years until scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull rediscovered it in the archives. It reads:

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains' teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o'er hill and dale.
The world was blind, the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O'er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven's towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven's King.

Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[David French @DavidAFrench]

Something is happening. One by one, Republicans are finding the courage to confront Trump. One by one, people are deciding not to be intimidated any longer.

[Crystal Coon @Cdrwenski]

@alexbruesewitz @camsavage Cam is one of the finest people I know. @RepBice’s dissension into the grotesque ethics of POTUS is to her shame. Cam will be remembered for being on the right side of history in helping Conservatives (the real ones) find their spine.

[Josh Kraushaar @JoshKraushaar]

George Will: "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement."
https://t.co/GgVgdQ7BBw