People go ballistic online after Minnesota paper praises Tim Walz's clemency for child sex offender

In the upside down world of progressive journalism, the Minnesota Star Tribune has decided that pardoning a child rapist is cause for celebration. Their columnist went out of her way to defend Governor Tim Walz for shielding an illegal alien who spent years assaulting a ten year old girl. The piece even tried to equate the crime with January 6 to make the whole thing seem reasonable.

Laura Ingraham and former Acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey have spent plenty of time pointing out how Democrats handle illegal immigration and criminal justice these days. They keep running into cases where the rights of victims, especially children, get pushed aside while illegal aliens who commit serious crimes receive soft treatment.

One recent example involves a lenient sentence for an illegal alien truck driver in California. This Minnesota pardon fits right into that pattern.The paper's columnist, Rochelle Olson, wrote a section titled "Cheers to Gov. Tim Walz." She praised the governor and failed vice presidential candidate for refusing to back down from his vote.

The Minnesota Board of Pardons, made up of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, voted unanimously on June 10 to grant clemency to Tou Lue Vang. Vang is a Laotian national who between 2002 and 2004 repeatedly raped a child. He was set to be deported when the pardon came through. Olson noted that Vang needed only two of three votes but received unanimous support. She mentioned a letter from the victim to the pardon board that supported clemency. She left out the details that the victim was a minor and that the assaults happened multiple times over two years.

A spokesperson for the paper defended the decision by saying the Star Tribune regularly publishes a wide range of opinions across the political spectrum. In this case, the columnist simply agreed with a unanimous pardon by the Minnesota state board of pardons, including Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson.To drive the point home, Olson compared Vang's crimes to January 6.

"Vang’s actions 20 years ago were awful, but so were the violent protests at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and those folks received presidential pardons," she wrote.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer saw it differently. "The Minnesota Star Tribune is cheering on Tim Walz protecting an illegal alien monster who raped a 10 year old girl. No one should read this depraved rag. They are sick," he said on X.

Online reactions were swift and sharp.

Dennis Neale wrote, "The Star Tribune likens repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl to protesting in the Capitol on Jan 6. You fluppin’ idiots."

Another commentator observed, "Minnesota’s largest paper actually figured out a way to shove January 6th into this as a way to excuse an illegal immigrant who sexually assaulted a child. One of the most insane things I’ve ever seen."

Dustin Grage called the column "Absolutely disgusting." Claremont Institute senior fellow Jeremy Carl captured the larger problem. "The degeneracy of the modern left would be impossible to exaggerate because it is impossible to exaggerate infinity." Nick Freitas added, "Every time I think I despise the main stream media enough, they triple their efforts."

None of the pardon board's work or the column's defense mattered in the end. On July 10, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the illegal alien had been deported to Laos anyway.

Rubio laid out the facts plainly. "Just weeks ago, a foreign child rapist was freed to once again endanger America's children after receiving a pardon from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz," he told Fox News Digital. "Tue Lue Vang admitted to committing heinous crimes against a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He attempted to pay his victim for her silence and dismissed his acts of child abuse as a 'minor thing.'"

"Just days before he was scheduled to be deported, the Minnesota Governor pardoned him, setting him free to endanger American families once again," Rubio continued. "That's why I terminated his legal status in the United States. Vang has now been removed from our country and will never pose a threat to any American ever again."

Walz was not finished defending his choice. Days after the deportation he asked, "Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?"

The question answers itself when the worst day in question involved years of raping a child. In the progressive mind, that apparently counts as something everyone should just move past, especially if the perpetrator is an illegal alien the government was ready to remove. The Star Tribune cheered the effort anyway. The rest of the country noticed the moral confusion and said so.

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Tim Walz Falls Behind Trump in Minnesota, Begins Losing Popularity Contest to Parking Meters and Unattended Snowbanks

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has achieved what many political analysts once considered impossible: becoming less popular in Minnesota than Donald Trump.

According to a new poll, Walz's approval rating has cratered to 39%, the lowest level of his six-year tenure, prompting state Democrats to launch an emergency investigation into whether reality itself has become a right-wing conspiracy.

The collapse comes as Minnesotans continue to grapple with the fallout from a massive fraud scandal that allegedly flourished under Walz's watch. Residents who once worried about potholes, taxes, and brutal winters now have the added burden of discovering that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars apparently wandered off unsupervised.

The poll found that voters trust Republicans more than Democrats to address the fraud issue, a result that reportedly caused several MSNBC producers to faint dramatically onto antique fainting couches.

Conservatives were quick to note the political significance.

"Tim Walz has a lower approval rating than President Trump in deep blue Minnesota right now," Townhall columnist Dustin Grage posted on X. "That’s how toxic the fraud has become for Democrats."

The Trump administration has spent the past year treating Minnesota like a crime scene, dispatching fraud investigators, conducting raids, and uncovering enough questionable activity to keep congressional committees employed for the next decade.

As if the fraud scandal weren't enough, Walz is also taking heat for the state's redesigned flag, which many Minnesotans reportedly regard with the same enthusiasm normally reserved for root canals and airline baggage fees.

The new banner, approved by a commission assembled by the Democratic legislature, has become a lightning rod for criticism. Opponents argue that the flag looks less like a proud symbol of Minnesota and more like a graphic that was accidentally approved after being generated three minutes before a deadline.

"Two issues that unite a majority of Minnesotans are the rejection of Tim Walz and his failed policies and our hatred for the Minnesota Somali state flag," Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told Fox News Digital. "The flag is an embarrassment and good on the cities who are actively removing it from their city halls and communities."

Emmer continued to pour salt directly into the governor's political wounds.

"President Trump is more popular than Tim Walz in his home state because Minnesotans are sick and tired of Walz siding with illegal aliens and Somali fraudsters over his hardworking, taxpaying constituents."

He added, "The legacy of Tim Walz will be the fires that destroyed Minneapolis, the fraud that he allowed to be stolen under his watch, and his failures that have harmed our great state."

The polling numbers suggest fraud has become the defining issue of Walz's final months in office. His support has dropped ten points in a year, while approval among Republicans has fallen to a statistically remarkable 1%, a figure usually associated with telemarketers calling during dinner.

Republican State Senator Michael Holmstrom had perhaps the most optimistic outlook for the departing governor.

"America rejected Tim Walz in 2024," Holmstrom told Fox News Digital. "Now Minnesotans are following suit. The good news for Tim is that, now that his record is on full display, he could soon be the most popular guy in the jailhouse."

Meanwhile, Republican State Senator Mark Koran argued that Walz's troubles are entirely self-inflicted.

"He let his fraud crisis blow up and didn’t do anything to fix it while he was busy shoving all this radical stuff into state government," Koran said. "After years of extreme far-left ideology and policies that don’t help normal people, Minnesotans have had enough. His legacy is going to be the fraud crisis and desecrating the state flag. Minnesota is just tired of it."

At press time, Walz's staff was reportedly encouraged by one promising development: the governor still maintains a slight polling advantage over mosquitoes, though analysts warn that race remains within the margin of error

Thank you for following Brain Flushings. Please take time to simply check out the sponsors on this page--it's one way to support my work and you don't need to purchase anything to do so. Of course, you can Buy Me A Coffee if you want to support me directly. And finally, don't be afraid to subscribe if you enjoy the blog--it's free, and worth the cost.

House GOP disembowels leftist Dems skipping Netanyahu speech

The Arab world's problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism--Bret Stephens 

There are [Warning: next word to follow is an oxymoron] progressive Democrats who are threatening to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at next month's joint session of Congress, and House Republicans are going hard against these selective misanthropes. It isn't like they'll be missed or make Bibi Netanyahu feel upset by their absence; it's just that it makes the Democrats look like the Party of Fools.

Netanyahu's address is expected to be delivered by July 24 while the Jewish State continues to fight terrorists in Gaza.

There are a number of Democrats upset with Israel for not allowing Hamas to kill them. They are also upset that when Hamas hid Jewish hostages among the Gaza Arabs and Israel rescued the hostages, a number of Arabs were killed in the process. Not surprisingly, even the BBC was upset that Israel didn't warn the terrorists that they would be coming to get their people and there might be some violence. After all, just because Hamas forgot to warn the young people at the Nova music festival that they were coming to kill them, rape and mutilate them, and take hundreds of them as hostages, is no reason the Jews should get a free pass.

Anyway, several Democrats have said they would boycott Bibi's address in protest of Israel having the audacity to be winning the war they didn't start. For some reason, this didn't sit well with the Grand Old Party.

The No. 3 House GOP leader, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), labeled Democrats "the anti-Israel party" in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"Their threats to boycott Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Joint Address is another notch on their long list of betrayals of our strongest ally in the Middle East," Emmer said.

Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY), called the would-be boycotters "apologists for terrorism," adding, "Their refusal to stand with our closest ally in the Middle East emboldens murderers and extremists who seek to destroy democracy and freedom worldwide."

Army combat veteran Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who led the House GOP's effort to sanction the International Criminal Court for threatening to go after Netanyahu, said of the Democrats' boycott, "Too bad they don't seem to care about the six Americans being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza as much as they care about establishing a Palestinian state."

Historically, Palestine was a Jewish state but the term was stolen by the scumwafer Yassar Arafat in order to give legitimacy to the Jordan Arabs who occupied it in the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Perhaps the most powerful Republican Representative was Mike Garcia (R-CA), a retired Navy pilot, told Fox News Digital that the speech would only be "a ’controversial' or 'counterproductive' speech" if Israel’s Democratic critics "make it one."

"There’s nothing controversial about allowing the elected leader of America’s greatest ally – who’s in the middle of a war against… U.S.-designated terrorists – speak to the Congress that’s funding and supporting Israel’s fight for survival," Garcia said.

There were many more responses but you get the picture. The Democrats have always pretended to be the virtuous Party, but they never were.

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McConnell moonwalks backwards from border bill

Suddenly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is urging Senate Republicans to vote against a border bill that was unveiled in the Democrat-controlled chamber on Monday, now that the bill has been read and exposed for the piece of Democrat crap that it is.

The garbage heap $118,000,000,000 package is not about border security--it's about Democrat's election security in 2024. It's designed to get our demented President re-elected. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the bill "legalizes illegal immigration." Many other GOP senators have already voiced strong opposition to the steaming dung heap and now McConnell, realizing his political career hangs in the balance, is urging remaining GOPers to block the bill.

“McConnell recommended to GOP senators behind closed doors that they BLOCK the border bill on Wednesday, per multiple sources, bc it’s clear that most Republicans are preparing to vote no — either because they oppose the bill or want more time,” reporter Andrew Desiderio wrote on X.

“McConnell explicitly recommended a NO vote on cloture on the motion to proceed, according to several attendees,” he continued. “McConnell said the problem isn’t what Lankford negotiated, it’s that the political mood in the country has changed.”

Political mood has changed? The nation overwhelmingly never felt that illegal immigration was okay. It was only the far-left that held this belief. 

Top House Republicans signaled shortly after the bill was unveiled that it would be dead on arrival if it made it to the lower chamber. Lankford lied to us.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), and Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) killed the bill in a joint statement.

“House Republicans oppose the Senate immigration bill because it fails in every policy area needed to secure our border and would actually incentivize more illegal immigration,” the statement said. “Among its many flaws, the bill expands work authorizations for illegal aliens while failing to include critical asylum reforms. Even worse, its language allowing illegals to be ‘released from physical custody’ would effectively endorse the Biden ‘catch and release’ policy.”

“The so-called ‘shutdown’ authority in the bill is anything but, riddled with loopholes that grant far too much discretionary authority to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – who has proven he will exploit every measure possible, in defiance of the law, to keep the border open,” the statement continued. “The bill also fails to adequately stop the President’s abuse of parole authority and provides for taxpayer funds to fly and house illegal immigrants in hotels through the FEMA Shelter and Services Program.”

“America’s sovereignty is at stake,” the statement concluded. “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it.”

As usual, the Democrats were hoping the Republicans wouldn't actually read the bill and just sign it first, like Nancy "Dancing Dentures" Pelosi once suggested.

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Finally, the GOP is starting to get it together: Mike Johnson gets the House gavel

Finally, with three weeks without a Speaker of the House, the GOP finally elected Mike Johnson (R-LA) to hold the gavel. Just the other day, I was starting to write about House Majority Whip, Tom Emmer, having received the nomination among a host of other hopefuls, and just like that, he bowed out of the election.

In the first House floor ballot Wednesday, Johnson defeated Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) who was nominated by his party. The vote tally was 220-209 in which a simple majority was needed for victory.

Finally, someone basically united the Republican conference with its minute House majority where the three prior nominees: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA); House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN); and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) failed to do so.

“A man of deep faith, Mike epitomizes what it means to be a servant leader. A deeply respected constitutional lawyer, Mike has dedicated his life to preserving America’s great principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said in her speech nominating Johnson on Wednesday.

Today is the day that House Republicans will humbly look in our hearts and elect @RepMikeJohnson as Speaker of the People's House.

A man of deep faith, Mike epitomizes what it means to be a servant leader. A deeply respected Constitutional lawyer, Mike has dedicated his life… pic.twitter.com/JJJBGf4dRS

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik)

Meanwhile, not House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, was dealing with a lot of dust in his eyes.

"Give me liberty of give me mcdeath Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) had been serving as speaker pro tempore during the past few weeks.

Johnson had called for the quick passing of a resolution to condemn Hamas after its barbaric terrorist attacks on Israel, whereas Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called for Hamas' nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. [Not as farfetched as you might imagine.]

 Looking ahead to the 2024 appropriations process, Johnson included a provision for August that says, “DO NOT break for district work period unless all 12 appropriations bills have passed the House.” Another listed aim of Johnson’s was to expand the GOP majority with the 2024 elections.

Johnson, 51, is a “dedicated husband and father of four and an attorney who has devoted his life and career to fighting for the fundamental freedoms and traditional values that have always been a priority to the people of Louisiana,” according to his congressional biography page. He had also worked as a  constitutional law attorney a college professor, and a radio talk show host, before joining public office.

Once in Congress, Johnson voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and a healthcare bill that would repeal parts of Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act).

He also introduced a a border security bill and legislation to make it a crime to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion without “satisfying parental involvement law.”

The problems within the party aren't new, but they were exacerbated when Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a “motion to vacate the chair” in which Speaker McCarthy sat, in early October after the GOP-controlled House passed a short-term spending bill to avert a government shutdown. Gaetz and seven other glory-hogging Republicans joined with Democrats. Yes, they joined Democrats and got some of us to believe they were right to do so. They ouster McCarthy in a simple majority 216-210 vote.

McCarthy and thankfully Gaetz, along with Scalise and Jordan, rallied in support of Johnson in the end. Former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race, encouraged members to support Johnson on Wednesday after previously endorsing Jordan for speaker.

Democrats don't like Johnson's being the GOP nominee due to his support of the U.S. Constitution, Old Glory and life.

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