“Perfection is not attainable,” football coach Vince Lombardi told his Green Bay Packers in 1959, “but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” Do excellent people, I wonder, know when they’ve come as close as humanly possible to perfection?
Take scholar C.S. Lewis, the moment he finished writing his Christian apologetic novel “The Screwtape Letters” or singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, the first time he performed his wistful ballad “Pancho and Lefty” from start to finish. Did each virtuoso instinctively know his art was knocking on heaven’s door?
I suspect it won’t be the last time something magical happens at Sister Bay Bowl, a place that, in pursuit of perfection, has caught excellence.
I cannot ask Messrs. Lewis or Van Zandt, who’ve gone on to their eternal reward. But later this summer — and aptly in Lombardi’s adoptive state — I can ask the proprietors of Sister Bay Bowl, a supper club in Door County, Wisconsin.
The throwback business, which, like much of northeastern Wisconsin, is as America was, has remained in the Willems family since 1950. It was opened as a hotel, and in 1958, Earl and Rita Willems replaced their dance hall with a six-lane bowling alley. They added a supper club in 1964.
The hotel no longer operates, and the dining-cum-bowling establishment today is known to many of its devotees simply as “the Bowl.” In a world demanding constant connectivity, the Bowl provides an evening of disconnection from time and place, if only for a few hours.
Over the summer years, my five children learned to bowl there. They did this while my wife, Devin, and I watched them while waiting for our table, a mutually beneficial diversion for kids and reprieve for parents. The bowling tab was always reasonable, and the wait for seating was never too long.
Nobody there, it seems, is ever in possession of a smartphone. To be lost in one at the Bowl would be to miss out on the low-tech vibe — a Milwaukee Brewers game on the bar’s television being the only reminder of modernity — of late-20th-century Americana that’s on offer.
The moon is jokingly said to be a terrible place for a restaurant: great food but no atmosphere. Until I’d been to the Bowl, I never appreciated how much atmosphere matters. This isn’t to deprecate the fare, which, like many diners themselves, had been swimming in Lake Michigan merely hours before.
It’s simply to note that everyone is happy. It’s a rare spot in the cosmos where time seems to stand still and all feel they are where they’re supposed to be. A night at the Bowl hints at the eternal, rich with a sense of what mystical English poet Francis Thompson called “majestic instancy.”
Here, I fell in love with broasted anything — a Wisconsin delicacy — and rediscovered how good peaches and cottage cheese can be. Here, I do not embarrass my kids by asking the waiter to name the heartiest item on the menu. True to its Midwestern roots, everything is hearty at the Bowl.
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Best of all, years ago, I took Mary Devine, Devin’s grandmother, to dinner there the night I sensed our large family’s dining plan wasn’t taking shape quickly enough. “Nana,” I asked, “would you like to join me at the Bowl?” I can still hear her courtly reply: “Why, Mike, I’d love that.”
As the sun set on Sister Bay, I was treated to hours of conversation with an elegant Southern woman, usually laconic, yet that night, anything but. She never went to college but had more common sense than any person I know. It was an unforgettable night.
Nana died shortly after that dinner. Our evening together turned out to be a wonderful parting gift. I suspect it won’t be the last time something magical happens at Sister Bay Bowl, a place that, in pursuit of perfection, has caught excellence.
Conservatives face a “use it or lose it” moment on immigration enforcement and deportations. They’ve never had a stronger case — or more support, even as public opinion flags — for aggressive removals. They have the rationale, the electoral mandate, and now the federal funding. If they fail to act, the left — and even Donald Trump, who’s already flirting with amnesty for non-criminal aliens — will seize the opportunity.
Their argument will go like this: “We tried your way. Mass deportation doesn’t work. Now we need a ‘legal pathway’ for those who haven’t committed serious crimes.” That’s the amnesty trap. To avoid it, conservatives must escalate interior enforcement — fast.
No more excuses. Immigration reform by reconciliation is possible — if the political will exists.
Illegal immigration remains a policy problem, not a funding problem. Throwing money at it won’t solve anything if the rules stay broken. Congress could pour $1 trillion into ICE operations, but if every removal gets litigated case by case, Trump’s second term will end before we even scratch the surface of Biden’s four-year importation binge.
Since February, ICE has averaged just 14,700 removals per month. That’s roughly 176,000 a year — or barely 700,000 over a full term. Even with increased arrests, that pace won’t clear the backlog of criminal aliens, let alone the 7.7 million undetained cases on ICE’s docket, the 8 to 10 million admitted under Biden, or the broader illegal population likely numbering in the tens of millions.
The system can’t even expel one known gang member — Kilmar Abrego Garcia — without months of delay. Instead of removing him, the Justice Department has been forced into court defending itself against claims that it “defied” a judge by taking too long to return him from El Salvador.
And that’s just one case. The Justice Department has also spent untold resources fighting Hamas supporter Mahmoud Khalil, who now walks free — and is suing the government for $22 million. Yes, Khalil held a green card. But that doesn’t give him a right to stay in the United States while openly supporting terrorism in violation of federal law.
Despite Supreme Court rulings aimed at narrowing judicial overreach, federal courts continue to block nearly every facet of immigration enforcement. Two weeks ago, a district judge in California effectively shut down most ICE operations in Los Angeles. The Ninth Circuit declined to reverse the order.
That leaves no doubt: Even with the Supreme Court on record and billions in new appropriations to support removals, the system remains broken. If the Trump administration keeps obeying these court orders, something must change — and fast.
Here’s the danger: If deportations continue at a glacial pace and Democrats reclaim the House in 2027, Trump may throw in the towel. He’ll say, “Even I couldn’t make it work,” and cut a deal for amnesty, justifying it as the only realistic path forward. In effect, he’ll codify the de facto amnesty already in place.
So what should we do?
With Senate leaders floating another reconciliation bill, Trump should make judicial reform the centerpiece. The content, the campaign, the messaging — all of it must focus on dismantling judicial roadblocks to immigration enforcement.
Republicans won’t unify around cutting meaningful spending beyond the deal struck in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So Trump should spend every ounce of his remaining political capital on something transformational: ending judicial sabotage of deportations.
He should demand that all removal orders for noncitizens — or at least non-green card holders — become final, with no Article III court review. That change alone would defund millions of court cases and carry a direct budgetary effect. In the same bill, Congress should block federal courts from reviewing state-based immigration laws, leaving the final word to state judiciaries.
Trump must not let Senate leadership hide behind procedural excuses like the Byrd Rule. We’ve already seen how easily they override it when they want to. During the last reconciliation debate, Trump and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) ignored the parliamentarian to push through their tax strategy.
To extend the 2017 tax cuts without scoring them as new spending, the GOP simply redefined “current policy” as “current law.” When Sen. Bernie Moreno (D-Ohio) presided over the chamber, he ruled the provision in order — without even consulting the parliamentarian, who would have almost certainly objected.
Trump should demand that same treatment now. No more excuses. Immigration reform by reconciliation is possible — if the political will exists.
Trump should also deploy the National Guard to support ICE and the Department of Homeland Security directly. Use them to build temporary detention facilities, assist in arrests, and provide operational security. If Antifa resumes its terror campaign, arrests will stall before they even reach the courtroom.
The Justice Department and FBI need to move aggressively to disrupt and prosecute the groups organizing these attacks. If left unchecked, they will shield the illegal population from enforcement and grind federal operations to a halt.
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Former ICE official Dan Cadman has proposed forming a Homeland Security Reserve Corps composed of retired or former immigration enforcement officers. Trump should adopt the idea at once.
Rather than relying solely on new, untested agents — each bringing long-term benefit obligations — this reserve force would provide a cost-effective and experienced backup. Trained personnel could be rapidly deployed when enforcement surges, without the lag time of recruitment or training.
As Cadman put it, the reserve would cost less “to initiate and maintain ... than will be spent trying to fill out the ranks with newly minted but untested officers.” State and local law enforcement also offer a deep bench of willing partners.
Once legal and street-level interference is neutralized, the next hurdle becomes logistics. Deportations by commercial air remain expensive and inefficient.
Trump should leverage maritime resources — ships over planes. Water transport moves more people at less cost, and the federal government already controls the tools. The Navy, Coast Guard, FEMA, and the Department of Transportation all have assets that can scale removals quickly. There’s no reason not to use them.
Illegal aliens don’t just trespass borders — they break laws to stay employed. Identity fraud, document forgery, and fake Social Security numbers keep the jobs magnet humming.
Rather than flirt with amnesty, Trump should target this criminal network directly. He should order the Social Security Administration to resume sending no-match letters to employers when an employee’s name doesn’t align with the Social Security number on file.
These letters would compel businesses to terminate ineligible workers and refer them to ICE. The effect would be swift and far-reaching.
The truth? Both parties have long ignored this problem because major donors want cheap labor. But if document fraud laws were enforced consistently, the jobs magnet would shut off — and self-deportation would surge.
If Trump continues lauding these workers as “impossible to replace,” he risks creating moral and political inertia. That narrative will lower enforcement morale and momentum, fueling the next bipartisan push for amnesty.
One thing is certain: Trump won’t get another shot at this mandate. If he fails to deliver on his promise, the amnesty lobby will claim permanent victory — and entrench it. The consequences won’t be temporary. They’ll shape immigration policy for a generation. We should all consider — and fear — what comes afterward.
Thank God President Trump walked back his misguided order to grant de facto amnesty to illegal alien farm workers. Now he needs to kill the policy for good.
Trump won in 2016 — and again in 2024 — on two core promises: lower the cost of living and stop the third-world invasion of the United States. Since he shows no interest in cutting deficits in a way that might restore pre-COVID price levels, immigration remains the battlefield that will define his presidency. And unless he corrects course, he risks failure on that front too.
No more half measures or donor-driven compromises. No more weakness. Only total war on the policies, programs, and pipelines that keep America under siege.
To his credit, Trump moved quickly to shut off the surge at the southern border during his first week in office. But he did the same in 2017, and the long-term results didn’t last. A future Democrat administration will simply escalate. If Biden brought in 10 million, the next one will aim for 20 million.
Temporary border control and modest deportation numbers won’t solve the crisis. Fewer than a million removals over a four-year term won’t reverse the demographic or economic damage — especially while legal immigration, foreign student visas, and guest worker programs continue at record highs.
Trump must go beyond symbolic border enforcement. That means neutralizing judicial interference through must-pass legislation — or ignoring illegitimate court rulings outright. He should authorize maritime deportations using ships, suspend most of the 1.5 million foreign student visas — especially from China and Islamic countries — and permanently empower states to enforce immigration law.
Instead, Trump recently unveiled a set of policies that undermine those very goals.
He announced continued access for Chinese nationals to U.S. universities — just as a spy ring was uncovered at the University of Michigan. He expanded his support for white-collar visas for Indian nationals and revived his “golden visa” scheme, which allows wealthy Chinese Communist Party elites to buy their way into U.S. citizenship.
Worst of all, Trump issued an order halting removals of illegal aliens working in farming and hospitality. He later reversed course — but the damage was done.
In pushing for more illegal labor, Trump handed leftists a talking point they had already lost. He lent moral weight to one of their core claims: that America needs illegal immigrants to do the “jobs Americans won’t do.” That argument, long peddled by George W. Bush, John McCain, and the donor-class GOP, was the very reason millions turned to Trump in the first place.
Ten years after calling for a moratorium on illegal immigration and a drastic cut to legal migration, Trump now echoes the talking points he once dismantled. If he keeps this up, he won’t just squander his mandate — he’ll cement the invasion he was elected to stop.
The cash-based, transient, and legally vulnerable workforce offers a logistical gold mine for transnational criminal organizations. Cartels use job scams to traffic humans, set up safe houses, and move product. Rural communities lack the law enforcement resources to push back. The result: strategic sanctuary zones for America's most dangerous enemies.
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When Trump says these workers are “hardworking” and “not criminals,” he ignores the obvious fact that every illegal alien is a criminal. Amnesty for farm workers isn’t just a policy mistake — it’s an operational gift to America’s foreign adversaries.
Trump knows immigration is his strongest issue. The polls prove it. But if he wavers, even slightly, on mass deportations or illegal labor, he opens the door for his political enemies to sow doubt — and for cartel operatives to sow chaos.
He reversed the farm worker carve-out. Now he must bury it. Then, he needs to go farther. No more half measures. No more donor-driven compromises. No more weakness. Only total war on the policies, programs, and pipelines that keep America under siege.
His base expects it. The country needs it. The future depends on it.
Olive Garden apparently has a stricter identification policy for unlimited pasta than many Democrat-led states have for voting. Olive Garden posted a series of slides on X explaining to customers how to purchase a Pasta Pass. The Pasta Pass gives customers unlimited access to their Never-Ending pasta bowls. One user asked whether the pass can […]
All over the country, you'll find a microcosm of Western civilization known as the quintessential American diner.
Dallasites need to focus on good schools, low crime, cheaper housing, and low taxes before culture and lifestyle.
To listen to The New York Times’ David French about Cracker Barrel, free speech, Christians, or anything at all is to abuse your own mind.
Cracker Barrel is done. Woke executives killed it, wrapped the corpse in a rainbow flag, and then made it do a little puppet show in New York City for the entertainment of all their woke little friends.
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Oprah and The Rock are facing MAJOR BACKLASH over THIS