Dakota Beacon

            Getting older does have advantages. With modes of technology advancing so rapidly, it becomes possible for folks my age to see the birth of technologies forward into their maturity.

Take drones for example. Toy drones began appearing as household playthings in the 1980s when Japanese toy manufacturers released what is widely credited as the first consumer toy drones. They were simple, remote‑controlled indoor helicopters with a plastic body and a small electric motor.

Remote‑controlled model airplanes certainly existed even prior to that. Radio‑controlled planes flown by hobbyists were popular in the 1950s and 1960s but they were not mass‑marketed as toys.

Sometime around 2009 toy drones advanced to the point where they were Wi-Fi controlled and included cameras. Arguments arose among townspeople over privacy, zoning, and noise requirements. Drones really became a nuisance when they invaded airspace over homes and began peeking in windows!

“They are programmed…,” Soviet defector and ex-KGB man Yuri Bezmenov warned decades ago about the ideologues we call “leftists.” “You cannot change their mind…. You are stuck with them.”

It’s common for people to say today when contrasting our two major ideological groups, “Conservatives think leftists are misguided; leftists think conservatives are evil.” I, though, am different.

I know leftists are evil.

Peter Schweizer’s new book “The Invisible Coup” opens a wide panorama on America’s problem with illegals and what to do about it. In his thesis, Schweizer argues that US immigration policy has been turned against American citizens by American elites, non-government organizations (NGOs), foreign governments, and criminal networks for personal and political gain. Over time, these entities intentionally devised the immigration flow to alter US political outcomes for their own personal and political gain. He frames the argument as an “invisible coup” -- a slow, systemic subversion rather than a single dramatic event. As you will see if you read the book, if you dismiss his argument as mere conspiracy theory, then you do so at your own risk. “Houston, we have a problem.”

In reality, the extreme focus on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti’s death is a distraction. It may sound terrible to say because, of course, human life is sacred. (Now, if only the Left accepted this on abortion.) But the real point here is not that Pretti is dead, but what got him that way. And, no, it wasn’t blood-lusting ICE agents salivating for their next victim.

It was this: a vast network of power-hungry demagogues, foreign financiers of intra-US destabilization, astroturfing communist/socialist activists, and expendable useful-idiot protesters.

How popular are the anti–Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protests in the US?

A leading China analyst, Gordon Chang, warns that the increasing surge of protests across the US may not be as home grown as they appear. He alleges that networks tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are covertly financing and directing the unrest.

Appearing January 19 on Newsmax’s Newsline, Chang said the CCP has a well-documented history of using proxies to destabilize adversaries, including the US, while maintaining plausible deniability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q

Anyone who thinks the Democrats oppose border control, or even deportation, in principle doesn’t grasp the principle operative here.

Leftists, morally relativistic/nihilistic to the core, don’t have principles—only provisional preferences. They could one day support the strictest immigration control imaginable, too. When? Well, while I’ll elaborate more on this later, here’s a hint:

No one wants the apple cart overturned when it’s his apple cart.

Question: Who in their right mind would choose a Toxic “Spanberger and Hashmi” meal while declining a steady diet of experience in Winsome Earle-Sears and John Reid?

Answer: Racist Virginia Republican voters that chose to stay home because a perfectly qualified Republican candidate for Virginia Governor happened to be Black.

On December 30, 2025, ABC News reported more than 100 immigration judges were fired nationwide during 2025 - something that may affect the immigration backlog in the near term.

Jeremiah Johnson served as an immigration judge for eight years. On Nov. 21 he was one of five judges let go on the same day.

"Immigration judges are employees of the Department of Justice. We are appointed by the attorney general. Part of the law indicates that, as an immigration judge, we should use our independent decision making, authority and discretion as independent immigration judges. So, we are protected. We should be protected from firing, from termination," said Johnson.

What?! No accountability required? If only the immigration judges’ decision making were truly independent! Read on.

A book review by Lynn Bergman

“Pagan Threat” by Lucas Miles

Pastor Lucas Miles, an ordained minister since 2004, is the lead pastor of Nfluence Church in Granger, Indiana, the President of The Nfluence Network, and the Senior Director of TPUSA Faith, installed by the late Charlie Kirk prior to his assassination.

I remember my dad referring often to Longfellow’s quote, “Of what had been and might have been (and who was changed and who was dead)"  . . . 

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency exists to fulfill a specific mission. That mission is to protect the United States through immigration enforcement and criminal investigations, with an emphasis on national security and public safety.

People breaking the law to protect law breakers – as is the case of the Minneapolis anti-ICE anarchists -- suggests the highest form of dishonesty.

On January 10, 2026, ICE officials released a legally verified partial list of criminal illegal migrants arrested, or re-arrested, during the ICE surge in the sanctuary state of Minnesota. Since this writing, ICE has arrested over a thousand more. Included are child rapists and murderers.

This migrant “protected class” that Democrat politicians and activists call "neighbors" roamed freely in Minnesota. Some of these criminal aliens have had final orders of removal for 30 years but are still protected by Minnesota sanctuary policy.

This column could easily have been titled “Grist for Ridicule”. There is a way to deal with liberal-progressive change agents who would force their aberrant views on us. Laugh at them. Laughter is the best medicine in more ways than one. Laughter is neither prohibited nor hate speech.

Ridicule typically uses humor along with satire to trash an opponent. It is one thing to laugh with a person. It is quite another to laugh at them. To laugh at a person, movement, or ideology is a kiss of death. Ridicule portrays individuals, movements, philosophies, and ideologies as the ridiculous pantomimes that they are.

I came across an article the other day by David DeMay in The American Thinker written December 21, 2025, titled “Why America Must Relearn Situational Awareness”.   I know this topic may not excite the reader. It may even sound a bit weird. But for one’s own safety and the safety of others the attribute of situational awareness must be understood, taken to heart, and practiced.

Many of us never give a second thought to situational awareness and many more may not even know what it is. But in today’s American cultural environment, especially in public places, awareness of what is going on around you could save your life.

Debt, Irresponsibility, Class Envy - roots of American problems

Somewhere it has been said that a person will identify with the Four Stages of Christmas between childhood and adulthood:

I believed in Santa Claus.

I believed my parents were Santa Claus.

I realized there was no Santa Claus.

Now I am Santa Claus.

In case you didn’t hear about it, and you might not have given that the outcome wasn’t media-narrative friendly, there was another tennis “Battle of the Sexes” yesterday. And, boy, it was not a good night for feminism and the “transgender” agenda. 

In case you didn’t hear about it, and you might not have given that the outcome wasn’t media-narrative friendly, there was another tennis “Battle of the Sexes” yesterday. And, boy, it was not a good night for feminism and the “transgender” agenda. 

Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer greet Christmas shoppers in their hustle and bustle. Excitement builds to a crescendo. But after Christmas the commotion subsides. What then? Surely, there must be more to Christmas than mere superficiality.

The Christmas story, recited over the centuries, must be told again.

The true and ancient roots of Christmas lie captured in the music of the Nativity. Regrettably, secular and commercial music has drowned out the traditional carols in the public square. Traditional carols, if played at all, are usually instrumental versions minus the words and the profound message of Christmas. Purging the Christian message from our culture becomes endemic.

Carols dating back hundreds of years present Christ’s arrival and His purpose unchanged. They sing of God the Father arriving in human form. The 18th century Latin hymn “O Come All Ye Faithful” offers a wonderful example.

With NATO’s raison d'être, the Soviets, gone, why does it still exist?

And given that our treaty obligations could draw into a (ultimately nuclear) war with the Kremlin, should we really be risking American blood defending left-wing Europe from right-wing Russia?

Early in my commentary career, I found myself debating the meaning of one of my articles in an online chat with a woman who’d read the piece. Why the argument? Well, I was mischievous, I’ll confess, and, having a little fun, didn’t tell her I was the author. Towards our interaction’s conclusion she told me, quite confidently, that I didn’t understand what the writer was trying to say! (I lack self-knowledge, I guess.)

At least, though, inherent in the exchange was the idea that original intent matters. I mention this because people today often behave as if it’s irrelevant. Just consider, for instance, the “birthright citizenship” issue, currently before the Supreme Court.

Do you know that Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, a man who coauthored the Citizenship Clause, clearly explained what we’re all now arguing about? Read on.

As the holidays beckon some folks are grudgingly considering physical fitness in their New Years resolutions. The over-50 crowd may feel like a million bucks and want to prove it. Funny how the mind says, “I feel like a kid again” but the body says, “Give me a break!”

For all the good intentions, it is wise to ease into physical activity especially for anyone who has abstained for any length of time. Standard advice: check with a doctor and follow his or her guidance. Feeling fine and being fine are two different things. Your doctor can best assess your ability to manage physical stress.

Christmas ‘tis the season for giving! What better way to say “I love you” than with the gift of a book? As a prerequisite, a recipient should harbor a wee bit of inquisitiveness about the world around them. Suggestions to follow include books meant to broaden a person’s perspective. They are all quite readable but not at all superficial. They might resonate with bad timbre or good. Take the bad first.

Reacting to invasion (im)migration trends years ago, Ambassador Alan Keyes put it bluntly.

“We’re being colonized,” he said.

And if ever there was proof of this, and the low quality of many post-1965 newcomers—and of the lie of “diversity”—it’s a viral video posted by one Wajahat Ali.

Mr. Ali is a Pakistani-descent Muslim whose parents came to the U.S. in 1965 and lived the American dream—and an un-American scheme. That is, they served prison time in the mid-2000s for conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering for defrauding Microsoft out of millions of dollars.

Want to hear about the 2026 and 2028 election fiascos in-the-making? Save this page for reference. Democrat activists advocate for adopting ranked choice voting (RCV) in future Democrat primaries. RCV allows voters to rank all candidates in order of preference with votes reallocated on later tabulations (without voting) until one candidate receives a majority. Working within Democrat Pary primaries provides a springboard to implement RCV nationalLY.

Such candidate elimination, re-tabulation, and redistribution of votes continue until one of the remaining candidates achieves a majority of the votes. Unfortunately, that candidate may ultimately have been the second, third, fourth, or last choice of many voters -- meaning that a candidate could win who was not the first choice of a majority of voters. This, a perversion of one-person-one-vote.

Test

Just recently I took a couple of friends to visit old hinterland haunts in upstate N.Y., places I used to visit on vacation or when house sitting. At issue are one-horse towns in rural Delaware County, which went for President Trump in last year’s election by almost 60 percent. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect to find an ex-Catholic church painted lavender-purple (pictures below) and flying the Jolly Roger “Pride” flag. But there it is, right on St. Hwy. 30 in the bucolic little Town of Roxbury, N.Y. 

It was a church I believe I might’ve attended one or twice during better days, and its sexual devolutionary transformation seemed quite scandalous. After all, the structure still looks like a church, with its stained-glass windows and a cross carved into its foundation. Interestingly, though, I didn’t find any significant news stories about it. So I did some digging.

Well, the verdict is in:  America has no talent.  And this comes directly from the horse’s mouth - the horse those Americans saw fit to elect as their President.  He should know.  

This narrative begins in March 1621 when a lone Indian approached the Pilgrim common house. A warning cry went up but it was too late. The Indian walked up the main street, entered the common house, and greeted Captain Standish -- in plain English. He requested food and beer. Having no beer, the Pilgrims offered him brandy which the Indian accepted. Even a casual observer must ask, “Where did this man learn to speak English sufficient to ask for beer, brandy, and bread?”

The Indian identified himself as Samoset, an Algonquin chief.

It’s called the “gender gap” (should be “sex gap,” really) in voting, and, boy, did it ever manifest itself Tuesday night. In fact, November 4 was a great day for the GOP.

That is, in an alternate universe in which only men vote.

You think the weather last winter and spring was memorable? Prepare for more of the same. Old Man Winter has us in his cross hairs. Gather your heavy coats, mittens, and snow shovels because the start of winter is just a few weeks away. It could be a stormy season for parts of the United States.

We last experienced a La Niña weather pattern in the spring of 2023. That La Niña officially ended in 2023 after an unusually long three-year run. Following that, the climate shifted into an El Niño or neutral phase until late 2024.