News and Views: April 12, 2025

The Time Is Now to Refill America's Emergency Oil Reserve America stands at a pivotal crossroads in energy policy and national security. With oil prices hitting their lowest level in four years and global tensions escalating in the Taiwan Strait, we are staring down a golden opportunity that must not be wasted: refilling our Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

  Let’s be clear about how we got here. Former President Joe Biden drained our emergency oil reserve at a historic pace, cutting the supply in half. The SPR—meant to be our energy insurance policy in times of true crisis—was treated like a political slush fund to bring gas prices down from their historic highs before the 2022 midterms. Biden promised to refill it, but his allegiance to his green activists (or his other well-documented challenges) wouldn’t allow him to follow through. Now, America’s most critical energy safety net is compromised. That’s not just irresponsible. It’s dangerous.

---------------------------

UK: Is there a quiet revival underway? 

The ultimate hope is a new heavens and new earth. God uses revivals on the journey towards this future. But we must not despise a day of small things (Zechariah 4:10), because it is never a day of nothing at all.

   I pray this quiet revival is the real deal. I praise God for renewed interest in Christianity. I pray we will disciple new believers and they will learn to love God’s word. I pray too for more revivals that will bring us closer to our ultimate hope of a brand new world.

---------------------------

US Judge Declines To Block Immigration Raids At Churches  

The ruling came in a case brought by religious groups, including the Mennonite Church USA.

    The federal government’s new policy, announced after President Donald Trump took office, rescinded a policy labeling churches and schools as sensitive places, making it easier for agents to carry out immigration enforcement at these locations.

   The groups said the policy unconstitutionally interferes with their exercise of religion.

---------------------------

NATO Is a Corpse 

NATO is a corpse. All that remains is the grotesque performance art of a diplomatic zombie stumbling from summit to summit, mouthing tired clichés about “shared values” and “burden sharing,” even as its core strategic logic lies rotting beneath the surface. The Atlantic Alliance, once the steel scaffolding of Western security, has become a hollow ritual. Its military readiness is an illusion. Its political cohesion is fraying. Its future, if it has one, lies not in revival—but in reinvention or replacement. Image

---------------------------

The Week In Pictures:  Direwolf of Wall Street Edition 

---------------------------