Mike Huckabee

This morning, the Labor Department released new figures showing the consumer price index rose 6.8% in November from one year ago. That’s the highest inflation rise in 39 years. The previous high was 7.1% in June 1982, when Reagan was still trying to wrestle Carter-era stagflation under control.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/consumer-price-index-november-2021

Still, those reported secret meetings between the Biden White House and the lapdog media appear to be bearing rotten fruit, as the phrase “Biden Boom” briefly trended on Twitter yesterday.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2021/12/09/the-biden-white-house-propaganda-sessions-with-colluding-media-seem-to-be-working-as-biden-boom-trends-on-social-media-n489028

Believe it or not, “boom” is not the sound of this Administration imploding. The media are actually trying to convince us that the economy is booming thanks to this Administration’s brilliant leadership. It’s a jaw dropping insult to the intelligence of the American people.

To be fair, gas prices are actually a few cents lighter, which isn’t the only gaslighting going on, although Biden is having a little trouble saying so.

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-biden-extreme-brain-malfunction-live-tv-trying-explain-gas-prices/

But getting gas prices to under $3 a gallon when they were under $2 a gallon when you took over less than 11 months ago is not something to brag about. Neither is anything else in this economy.

Go to that first link at Redstate.com to see the charts that aren’t carefully edited and cherry picked. You’ll notice that the alleged “historically fast Biden jobs creation” is nothing but businesses reopening after being forced to close due to COVID panic, and the level of employment is still nowhere near what it was before that artificially-induced crash.

The propaganda campaign doesn’t seem to be working on small business owners.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/main-street-businesses-reject-biden-wont-reelect-61-39

A new Zogby poll found that among companies with $10 million or less in annual revenues, executives think things are worse under Biden rather than better by a 56-44% margin. Include their workers, and it’s the same result by 53-47%. Among those owners and executives, Biden’s reelection is opposed by 61-39%. Among executives of businesses that make over $10 million a year, Biden’s reelection is opposed by 54-46%. I have a feeling that if you filtered out Big Tech and pharmaceutical companies, that last number would look even worse.

Fortunately, the media have so destroyed their own credibility in recent years that I seriously doubt they have the brainwashing power to convince the 70% of Americans who think the economy is on the wrong track (November Fannie Mae National Housing Survey) that everything is rosy thanks to Joe, as they spend their kids’ college fund on a tank of gas and a week’s worth of groceries.

Mike Huckabee

As promised, here’s a follow-up on what to do in response to the egregious civil rights violations of the January 6 political prisoners.

Louis Gohmert of Texas, who along with fellow member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene finally got to see the facility where J6 prisoners are confined, has a fine opinion piece on his website, reprinted from The Epoch Times. It dates from November 4, the day they and their congressional staffs took “the tour” and spent an hour speaking personally with these prisoners.

https://gohmert.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399970

This piece shames the government for ignoring their repeated requests and “refusing to allow oversight of their actions, which gives every appearance of a cover-up of wrongdoing.”

“Should ideology and abuse of power continue to drive this administration’s actions,” it continues, “the Rule of Law will cease to exist...By its [lack of transparency], the Biden administration is shredding the foundations of our legal system and the rights of the people’s representatives to protect them from government abuse.”

Gohmert agrees that at least some of the people being treated this way are essentially political prisoners. And if we allow it and let this nation finish its transformation into a banana republic, there will be nowhere else for liberty-loving Americans to turn.

According to an opinion piece in the Washington Times by criminal prosecutor and former U.S. Congressman Robert L. Livingston, almost 700 people in and near the Capitol that day were arrested and charged. Eventually, most of these were released or “had their cases disposed of in varying ways.” (I would add that some of them, even though they’re no longer behind bars, are currently under house arrest and have yet to go to court.) Reps. Greene and Gohmert met with about 40 who are still languishing in a dismal Washington DC corrections facility.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/nov/10/jan-6th-detainees-must-receive-due-process/

Livingston is “shocked” to hear of “prospective defendants who have been arrested and deprived of their livelihoods; confined in solitary confinement with little or no reasonable access to the outside world, their families or adequate legal counsel; and denied formal charges levied against them without bail and in contravention to the right to a speedy trial.” He said that he spoke with an employee at the federal Public Defender’s Office and learned “that they were not representing any of these folks.”

So-called “civil rights defenders” such as the ACLU are nowhere to be found. “Most of these people are at worst guilty of trespass or destruction of government property,” Livingston said. But for crying out loud, charge them, arraign them, and bring them to trial with counsel of their choice.”

“This atrocity must stop, and it must stop soon.”

We also came across a story from October 28 that reprints a letter from one of the detainees, Nathaniel DeGrave, who found himself in prison after apparently walking into the Capitol Building through open doors. His plea for help paints an especially bleak picture of the lives of these political prisoners in what he calls “DC’s Gitmo.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/gut-wrenching-plea-help-january-6th-detainees-tell-letter-american-public-dc-gitmo-please-help-innocent-man/

To stay informed with the best reporting on January 6 --- particularly the emerging evidence suggesting the FBI was making sure there WAS an “insurrection” –- we recommend keeping up with the stories in National File. Here’s the latest.

https://nationalfile.com/exclusive-feds-withheld-exculpatory-evidence-charging-accused-1-6-protesters/

The current administration would like us to forget about these people, except as a cautionary tale of what can happen to those who step out of line. But we won’t.

We can send cards and letters to the detainees, letting them know they’re not forgotten, especially over the Christmas season when they'll be separated from their families (again). We can donate to defense funds and “adopt” families. We can send messages to our legislators, especially the ones who’ve already stepped up, including Greene, Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and Bob Good. Most importantly, as we move into the 2022 campaign season and look ahead to 2024, we can actively campaign to defeat Democrats and support those who want to clean house at the DOJ. This clean-out MUST happen, as you'll see if you go to the FBI website and discover there's nothing about, say, Antifa, but an obsession with January 6:

https://www.fbi.gov

Be concerned about down-ballot races, too, and work to defeat those local candidates who want to defund police, release violent prisoners without bail, and weaponize law enforcement against so-called "domestic terrorists" (Trump supporters). Some of them are funded by groups such as Justice Democrats (who brought us AOC) and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

The Capitol Building should have been secure that day, with clearly-set boundaries that protesters should have respected. But, ultimately, it is the current administration and the Department of “Justice” that is responsible for the travesty of justice we see today. Under President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, we have as disgustingly politicized a DOJ as there has ever been. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes it three of a kind. This coming year, we all have to work harder than we ever have to elect people who respect a uniform standard of justice, even for political adversaries.

Mike Huckabee

Not long ago, I said that when it comes to elections going forward, our lawyers have to be better than their lawyers.

Mark Hemingway at RealClearInvestigations has a similar warning in a new article, titled “Harvard’s ‘Lawfare’ Programs are an Omen of Elections Not Decided at Polls --- but in Court.” Check out the poster boy at the top of his screen; it’s Marc Elias. Elias is probably the man most responsible for the fact that Joe Biden is sitting in the Oval Office right now thinking about ice cream.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/30/harvards_lawfare_programs_are_an_omen_of_elections_decided_not_at_polls_-_but_in_court_804560.html

How dare President Trump challenge the results of the 2020 election! Why, that’s tantamount to treason, the argument goes. Even encouraging states to conduct forensic audits is a threat to “our democracy,” as it implies problems and destroys trust in the system.

Never mind that the system --- in its current, essentially un-auditable state, does not deserve our trust.

And never mind that in the elections of 2000, 2004 and 2016, Democrats formally challenged the results of presidential elections that had been won by Republicans, in another classic case of “our rules for you, no rules for us.” As Hemingway points out, it was that series of challenges by the Democrats that led to the development of the network of leftist election litigators we have today. Of course, we first think of the Hillary- and DNC-connected firm Perkins Coie and attorneys Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann (currently under indictment), but according to former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams, there were about 30 groups that jumped into action after the pandemic hit to make fast changes in state election laws, mostly to expand mail-in voting while removing any safeguards. The percentage of Americans who voted by mail doubled between the 2016 and 2020 elections.

After Trump lost in 2020 and some conservative states started re-tightening their rules, these armies of “progressive” lawyers got busy again, filing challenges to keep them from changing back.

So, do voters get to decide who wins, or do courts get to filter their voices and decide for them? Increasingly, we see the strategy of “lawfare.” So it might come as no surprise that Harvard Law School is getting in on this big-time, preparing attorneys for the day when election outcomes are routinely decided in court. Adams calls this next phase “Let’s set up an elite training academy.”

In April, Harvard Law started the Election Law Clinic, which gives students credit for working on campaigns (why am I reminded of the students at Georgia Tech who helped create the fake Alfa Bank story?), as well as “hands-on litigation and advocacy work across a range of election law areas, with an initial focus on redistricting and voter-suppression cases.” It doesn’t sound as though they’ll be working on any conservative campaigns, but maybe they can still get Stacey Abrams declared the rightful governor of Georgia.

The director, Ruth Greenwood, sees many students wanting to go into election law and wants them to be able to “hit the ground running as election lawyers from day one.” Law professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit sees this flood of new election specialists as creating more demand for that kind of expertise and litigation. In other words, it’s going to get much worse. Election days used to be something to celebrate as part of being American, but they’re increasingly something to dread.

In recent months, we’ve done some deep dives into the websites of some of these new groups that showed how amazingly organized and incestuous they are, and Harvard’s Election Law Clinic is part of that. Greenwood is a former fellow of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute and has also worked at the Campaign Legal Center.

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/campaign-legal-center/

As you can see, the CLC is funded in part by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, and also by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ford Foundation and ActBlue. Greenwood describes the proposed legislation in H.R. 1 –- what we like to call the “Legalize Voter Fraud Act” –- as “the biggest step the federal government has taken to protect the right to vote since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.” It would be a big step, all right, in that it would unconstitutionally place elections under federal control. Adams has his own name for the bill; he calls it “a partisan weapon masquerading as a civil rights law.”

Here’s how radical and intrusive this group is: Harvard Election Law Center adviser Nicholas Stephanopoulos (not sure if he might be related to George), in a piece he wrote for Marc Elias’ group Democracy Docket, argued that Congress should refuse to seat a candidate who benefits from voter suppression under Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution. He defines voter suppression as “policies that make it hard for people to register and vote.” We learned in 2020 how broadly they interpret that. They made it so easy to vote, any dead person can do it. And every vote by a dead person suppresses the vote of a live person who’s almost guaranteed to have voted Republican.

Another organization, Protect Democracy, is actually two: the 501(c)3 Protect Democracy Project, which is tax exempt and supposedly non-partisan hahahahaha, and the 501(c)4 United to Protect Democracy, which admits it is partisan. They list 70 employees on their website, but their address is a mailbox service they share with hundreds of organizations.

We wrote about the Protect Democracy Project when it gave a $300,000 check to Whistleblower Aid, which supported Eric Ciaramella, whose ginned-up complaint started Trump’s first impeachment.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/23/senate-report-confirms-suspected-impeachment-whistleblower-met-ukrainian-prosecutors/

Time Magazine wrote a piece last February about the alliance of these political groups with business titans like Mark Zuckerberg --- not to question their actions, but to praise them for “saving” the 2020 election. It was “an extraordinary shadow effort, dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.” (If you need to take a break to run and throw up, go ahead. We’ll wait.)

Feel better? Here’s the link to the full article, but I warn you, you’ll just have to throw up again.

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

The Protect Democracy Project also conveniently owns a software company, VoteShield, that monitors voter databases. I am not kidding. Hemingway’s article has details.

J. Christian Adams, who has his own organization, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, says there are far fewer groups on the right to hold the left accountable for mistakes and/or misdeeds. I’d say going to law school now seems pretty much like going to journalism school –- not to practice law or journalism, but to “fundamentally transform.”

For when you have time, I’ll link to the video and transcript of a great interview by the founder and CEO of American Majority, Ned Ryun, with another Hemingway, this time Mollie, about the 2020 election. Having written the book RIGGED, she can summarize so clearly what was done, especially by sponsors such as Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Elias’ strategy, she says, is to “expand the sphere of litigation, depending on how an election turns out.”

And that’s why our lawyers have to be better than their lawyers.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/ned-ryun-interviews-author-columnist-and-fox-news-frontpagemagcom/

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Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

In a surprise announcement Monday, Rep. Devin Nunes revealed that he will leave Congress in January to become the CEO of Trump Media and Technology Group. That’s former President Trump’s company that plans to launch a new free speech social media platform called TRUTH that’s already raised $1 billion in private funding.

https://www.westernjournal.com/shock-news-devin-nunes-donald-trump-fire-first-shot-war-big-tech-tyranny/

Nunes was instrumental in exposing the Trump-Russia hoax that Democrats like Rep. Adam “Biggest Liar In Congress (And That’s Saying Something!)” Schiff pushed for years. Nunes endured a gale of hatred and mockery from the media, but in the end, he was proven correct.

Nunes has long been a fierce critic of Big Tech companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google for their censorship and shadow banning of conservative political views and prioritizing of leftist-slanted news. He also sued Twitter over two parody accounts with his name on them that he says defamed him, but the case was thrown out because Twitter has Section 230 protection since it’s a “neutral platform, not a publisher.”

(Pardon me while I clean up the coffee that I spit on my keyboard when I burst out laughing.)

While Nunes’ departure will leave the Republicans with one fewer vote in a closely-divided House, it likely won’t make much difference. Some Democrats talk about being moderate and not going along with the crazy, leftwing ideologues, but in the end, they almost always vote in lockstep, so one fewer Republican vote probably wouldn’t make much effect. And the Democrats who are destroying California just redrew the district where Nunes was reelected last year by over 54% to try to stick those voters with yet another Democrat, so he was facing a tough reelection.

Let’s just hope that after next November, there will be at least 60 more Republican votes, and his departure really won’t be felt that much. Judging from all the House Democrats who’ve announced that they’re leaving without even having new jobs lined up, I assume that’s what they expect, too. Then maybe the House can get to work doing something about that Section 230 protection.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Today is Pearl Harbor Day, the 80th anniversary of the “date which will live in infamy.” On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on the US Naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that brought the US into World War II. 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded, making it the deadliest attack on America until September 11, 2001.

It is very important that we commemorate these days. I know that the horror and tragedy are not easy to think about, but only by remembering these tragic days will we prevent letting ourselves be lulled into complacency about evil in the world and forgetting to prepare for unexpected attacks. Even now, we have an entire generation for whom 9/11 happened before they were even born, and the media’s attempts to suppress the ugly truth of it have convinced many of these young people that America somehow “had it coming.”

Americans are now very divided, and remembering these attacks also reminds us of how we put petty differences aside and came together as Americans, because what America stands for is bigger than any one group’s personal political agenda. That’s inconvenient for those who profit by dividing us, but it’s good for the nation. As one Vietnam veteran told Fox News, “If we don't unite today, we will certainly fall."

Fox News has more on the history of Pearl Harbor and veterans’ thoughts about it:

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/pearl-harbor-80th-anniversary-veterans-america-unite

And here’s a story about a small group of elderly survivors of the attack who gathered today at that site in Hawaii to remember the fallen heroes and the attack that launched America into World War II.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/pearl-harbor-survivors-gather-remember-lost-attack

All of us at the Huckabee Newsletter send our greatest respect and gratitude to them and to all veterans. I will end by saying what our grandparents said all through World War II:

“Remember Pearl Harbor!”

Mike Huckabee

We’re not hearing a lot about Nancy Pelosi’s January “9/11-style” committee to examine events of January 6, but rest assured, it's still going on, and they are playing hardball. After all, they have domestic terrorism to combat! In fact, the chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, made a shocking statement about how he intended to deal with a subpoenaed Trump supporter who worked at the Justice Department, Jeffrey Clark –- someone who never entered the Capitol that day and has not been accused of any crime.

“Our charge is to get to the facts,” he said on MSNBBC. “Mr. Clark, through his attorney, has been deliberately avoiding us...Obviously, he is aware that something went on that’s illegal. And rather than be responsible and answer, he’s pleading the Fifth. But if he’s saying, ‘Okay, I’ll come, but I’ll plead the Fifth, then in some instances, that says you’re, part and parcel, guilty to what occurred.”

What??

Sure enough, the committee voted unanimously to recommend that Clark be charged with contempt of Congress.

Jeffrey Clark is asserting his constitutional right not to testify. That doesn’t mean he’s guilty of anything. It might mean, however, that he’s concerned his testimony might be twisted and used by these partisan crazies to make him LOOK guilty. He gets to make that call. Rep. Thompson’s remark, if made in a court of law, might be enough to trigger a mistrial. A similar remark by a prosecutor almost did that during the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Tucker Carlson opened his Monday show with a segment on this, saying of Rep. Thompson’s comment, “What you just saw is far more imminently dangerous to our democracy than anything that happened on January 6.” And he is correct.

Carlson also noted that Democrats on the committee (plus Liz Cheney) have subpoenaed AT&T for the phone records of Caroline Wren, who used to work as a fundraiser for Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham and who helped organize donations for the January 6 rally. This includes all records, including text messages, from November 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021. They also want her bank records and even everything she’s written in her own handwriting, including personal diary entries. Talk about an overreach --- this is monstrous.

https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/210929%20Caroline%20Wren%20Letter.pdf

And apparently this is just one example. Others who have yet to be accused of any crime are being treated the same way. Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell is another; she’s been informed by AT&T that the committee wants several months of her phone records. This is because she was on a phone call with President Trump and the Georgia secretary of state about problems with the vote in Georgia. (Oh, goodness, don’t tell me there might have been problems with the vote in Georgia!)

AT&T is complying with the committee’s requests.

Another Trump supporter targeted with a subpoena is attorney John Eastman, who worked with Trump in the election aftermath and spoke at the January 6 rally. On Friday, Verizon notified him that unless he gets a court order to stop it, they’ll turn over his personal text messages to the committee. The Washington Examiner has a report.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/ex-trump-lawyer-john-eastman-plans-to-plead-the-fifth-to-the-jan-6-committee

Eastman also plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights, as his lawyer, Charles Burnham, has informed Rep. Thompson. His letter states, “Members of this very committee have spoken of making criminal referrals to the Department of Justice and described the Committee’s work in terms of determining ‘guilt or innocence.’ ...Dr. Eastman has a more than reasonable fear that any statements he makes pursuant to this subpoena will be used in an attempt to mount a criminal investigation against him.”

Burnham also objected to the “legal propriety” of the subpoena, saying that the “lack of a ranking minority member makes it impossible for the Committee to comply with clearly applicable House rules.”

So, why would there be no ranking member? Recall that Pelosi rejected some of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the committee –- which he was supposed to be allowed to make under the resolution that created it –- and herself selected anti-Trump “Republicans” Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger to serve. McCarthy had wanted the too-effective Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Indiana Rep. Jim Banks.

Thompson later named Cheney as co-chair of the committee for this show trial! Talk about a kangaroo court.

Eastman reportedly pressured Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the election results. Pence went ahead and did it, saying he lacked constitutional authority to refuse. It was also reported that Eastman spoke with legislators in swing states about sending alternate electors to the Electoral College.

Eastman appeared on Tucker’s Monday show, saying that not only has he not been charged with a crime, but there’s absolutely no evidence that he had “any connections or communications with anybody who is charged with a crime.” “This is the modern high-tech version of a general warrant [from English days of yore],” he said, the kind of thing that allowed fishing expeditions “to look for evidence of crime.” He said that in this case, “there’s no probable cause, there’s no linkage to any criminal activity that has occurred.” It’s the same for “hundreds of people on these subpoena lists that were sent to Verizon and AT&T, and probably every other phone company in the country. There’s no evidence at all, but they want to track Americans’ thinking, they want to know who your contacts are...about election integrity, and going back from before even the election occurred.”

The First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are all being trashed here. Eastman accused Rep. Thompson of presuming people guilty instead of innocent as the Constitution requires. Even the Sixth Amendment, the right to counsel, is being violated, he said, when attorneys such as Cleta Mitchell have to give up phone records that surely include privileged communications. “They’re just shredding the entire Constitution,” he said, “and then claiming that it’s us that don’t support the Constitution. It really is rather extraordinary.”

Eastman says the committee has the weight of the “Justice” Department behind it now when it issues criminal contempt citations. “Normally those don’t go anywhere,” he said, and we’ve seen that is true when it comes to particular officials who’ve gotten away with lying. He also speculated that even the phone companies would prefer not to comply with what this committee is demanding they do, but that they know “they’re gonna be held in criminal contempt if they don’t.”

He said it will now take a court order to try and block “these unbelievably expansive and unconstitutional subpoenas of our private records and communications.”

“We have got to push back against this stuff,” he concluded, “or we’re gonna lose our country before our eyes.”

In related news, you’ll recall we’ve expressed strong suspicions that the FBI had agents mixed in with the crowd during Trump’s rally, spurring on the “insurrection.” Attorney Joseph McBride appeared briefly on Tucker’s Monday show, calling for the release of videos that he says will unmask these agents to reveal “the truth of that day.” He’s joined by a number of news outlets, including, believe it or not, The New York Times. The Washington Examiner has a report.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/attorney-asks-court-to-unmask-jan-6-footage-of-suspected-undercover-agents

Mike Huckabee

Chris Cuomo’s “indefinite suspension” from CNN has finally advanced to actually being fired.

https://www.westernjournal.com/chair-january-6-committee-exercising-constitutional-rights-hints-suspects-guilty/

The announcement was released Saturday night during a major college championship game, likely in hopes that nobody would notice it. Didn't work. CNN said Cuomo was fired because “additional information has come to light,” then refused to say what it was, which is sort of the opposite of information “coming to light.” It’s also rather strange to suppress a major story when you’re allegedly a news network, but then, “this…is CNN!”

The New York Times claimed it was because a former colleague at another network had made another sexual misconduct claim against Cuomo. So for the record, if you work at CNN, helping to cover up your brother’s political scandals, abusing your journalistic contacts to help him get dirt on women who accuse him of sexual harassment, lying about that, and being accused of sexual misconduct yourself will not get you fired. But if you get accused of sexual misconduct a SECOND time, that’s where they draw the line! They have standards, you know.

Check out that link for more. It also includes some undercover video (warning: rough language!) taken way back in March by Project Veritas. It shows CNN staffers saying it was an open secret that Andrew Cuomo was a “piece of (bleep)” boss, manager and Governor; comparing him to famous sex criminals Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly; and complaining that CNN should have stopped Chris from covering his brother on day one. So at least somebody at CNN does have ethics. Too bad it was nobody who was in charge.

Mike Huckabee

As the Supreme Court ponders its ruling in the Mississippi abortion restrictions case, Democratic strategists are hoping to gin up “OUTRAGE!” over abortion rights to turn around their increasingly dire election prospects for 2022. This was to be expected. When the Democrats are out of power, they can claim they have to be returned so that competent adult leadership can be restored. But when they’re in power, they can’t make that argument, for obvious reasons.

So they have to terrify their base with claims that the eeeeevil Republicans are going to take away women’s rights (actually, Democrats have done that, under the guise of “trans rights”), or bring back Jim Crow laws (a Democrat invention), or do away with the sacred Constitutional right of women to kill their unborn children. But there are signs that scaring people into voting for more incompetent Democrat rule is wearing thin.

For one thing, look around: it’s hard to think of anything scarier than the current situation under Democratic rule. Does the hypothetical loss of the right to kill your hypothetical unborn child really outweigh the very real fear that the violent criminals Democrats have turned loose on the streets will kill you? Besides, Americans have too many other things to worry about.

As Rick Moran at PJ Media points out, outrage over abortion laws may not be the motivating factor for voters that some Democrats think it is.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/12/05/a-post-outrage-world-abortion-wont-be-the-winning-issue-democrats-think-it-will-be-n1539027

Politico reported that it played no factor in the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey, where voters were more concerned about stopping school boards from assaulting their children than allowing abortionists to assault their children. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that voters rank abortion behind taxes and government spending, health care, climate change and the environment, immigration, jobs and the economy as an issue of interest. Exit polls in 2016 found that in picking between the pro-life Trump and the pro-abortion Hillary, only one in five voters named Supreme Court nominations as their most important voting factor, and by a wide margin, those voters were Republicans.

As Moran notes, polls show that only about 10-15% of Americans want abortion banned under all circumstances, 25-30% want it legal in all cases, and the vast majority fall somewhere in the middle. While I wish more people were pro-life, I know enough about politics to know that you can’t run a successful campaign on only that one issue. We’ll soon find out whether Democrats really believe they can retain power solely on a radical pro-abortion stance that’s shared by, at most, 30% of the country. That's actually lower than Joe Biden's approval rating, and that's the thing that has them genuinely terrified.

Mike Huckabee

President Trump, during a wide-ranging interview on Sunday’s LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN sparked by the release of his new book OUR JOURNEY TOGETHER, discussed what we know about “Election Fraud 2020” and the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which are linked through the law firm Perkins Coie.

It was Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias, host Mark Levin noted, “who went all through the states, from 2016 to 2020, trying to change the rules and so forth, had all kinds of dark money behind him.”

Trump interjected that Elias “got fired from Perkins Coie,” though our understanding is that Elias’ exit --- Michael Sussmann’s, too --- was part of an overall legal strategy, as The Elias Firm is still affiliated and is dedicated to getting “progressive” Democrats elected. But certainly Elias “was hot,” as Trump put it.

And, as we’ve known for a long time, all roads led back to Hillary. “They made it up in either her kitchen or a law office,” Trump said of the Russia “collusion” story. Hillary spent millions of dollars to hire “nut job” Steele, he said, though more accurately it seems Steele pocketed relatively little of the money that poured in to attorneys at Perkins Coie and dirt-diggers at Fusion GPS.

Trump reminded Levin that then-Sen. John McCain gave a copy of the “dossier” to the FBI, which we’ve noted was bombarded on all sides with copies of the phony document. “If you did a movie,” he said, “nobody would believe it.”

He said people come up to him and marvel, “How you survived is one of the most incredible things.” Had he not fired Comey, he said, “you might not be talking to me right now about a beautiful book of four years at the White House.” Yet he sees that crew coming back again, which he says “shouldn’t be allowed” to happen. That’s presumably what we have a special counsel for, to determine once and for all what the evidence shows about their roles in the hoax and to issue criminal indictments.

Lee Smith, author of THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT and THE PERMANENT COUP, has a new article examining how the media are now distancing themselves from the “dossier” –- not to put an end to the Russia Hoax, but to save it. There are some who will NEVER give up the Russia Hoax.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/12/02/investigative_issues_medias_nixonian_dossier_dodge_to_save_russiagate_itself_806294.html

Just because the “dossier” was discredited, The New York Times argues, doesn’t mean the “Russia” investigation is undercut. Really?

As Smith explains, this strategy is right out of the Watergate playbook used by President Nixon’s aides to try to head off looming disaster. It’s a standard ploy called “the limited hangout” that goes like this: When you can no longer maintain a phony cover story, acknowledge a few partial truths and a few “small, albeit honest miscues” in order to keep the most damning parts of the story hidden.

“Just as this strategy failed to protect Richard Nixon and his men,” Smith writes, “chances are it won’t help culpable reporters and news organizations avoid responsibility for their active role in the country’s biggest political crime of the past half-century. But it does show quite plainly what the American press has become.”

Here’s a link to the full article –- very highly recommended.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/limited-hangout-lee-smith

We don’t yet know if Durham has conclusive proof that Hillary was personally aware of her campaign's creation of the Trump-Russia hoax, but we do have circumstantial evidence in the form of her tweet about the fake Alfa Bank story. We also know from then-CIA Director John Brennan in a July 2016 meeting with Obama that Clinton had approved a plan concerning “Trump and Russia hackers hampering U.S. elections as a mean of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” Still, it’s crystal clear that, as Smith succinctly explains it, “top operatives in her 2016 campaign used concocted falsehoods to leverage active law enforcement officials who in turn used U.S. government programs and resources to spy on the Trump campaign –- a violation of American political norms whose only real parallel is Watergate."

Actually, we’d say it’s much more far-reaching than Watergate, as Smith points out that under the pretext of investigating the “collusion” story, at least 40 Obama officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, spied on Trump and/or his team.

And even with the circumstantial evidence that President Obama was aware of what was going on, he has never been asked publicly about the Russia story. Not once.

Smith offers a run-down of the various charges in the Sussmann and Danchenko indictments that will be familiar, but then goes on to hypothesize about how Durham will get what he needs on the FBI officials who were willing participants. “Durham now appears to be using well-documented and relatively easy cases to pressure Sussmann and Danchenko to give up accomplices ‘one rung up,’ likely under the threat of jail time.”

But as the media now scramble to put as much distance between themselves and the Steele “dossier” as possible, the “limited hangout” ploy is in full swing, even though there is no Russia Hoax without the “dossier,” which was the main piece of evidence presented to the FISA court. Smith offers a history lesson on how the Watergate story was broken by the Washington Post, as depicted in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, and how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were rightfully “lionized” for uncovering very real criminal wrongdoing. But when it comes to criminal wrongdoing related to Hillary’s campaign, we have the opposite situation today. WAPO and other major outlets were (and are) actually part of the cover-up.

“The job of these new media outlets was not to speak truth to the powerful men and women who owned their platforms and paid their bills,” Smith writes. “Rather, it was to serve as a megaphone for their power --- to use the forms of journalism like ‘investigations’ and ‘whistleblowers’ and ‘inside sources’ to protect and advance the interests of an increasingly ambitious oligarchy that employed the country’s corporate, political, academic and cultural elites as their retainers and servants.”

That pretty well sums up what has happened to journalism, seemingly in the past decade. The fact that the Pulitzer committee rewarded “journalists” for working with a government intel operation falsely targeting a U.S. president tells us we’ve entered a sad new era.

Smith’s article is lengthy and detailed but very clearly written. For when you have time, you can’t do better than this report for a comprehensive look, especially at Clinton campaign operatives’ attempt to frame a man named Sergei Millian, a naturalized U.S. citizen who’d dared to come out publicly in favor of Trump. He’d met Trump in Florida, where he’d assisted in selling some units in a Trump property, and liked Trump’s pro-business attitude. Russian name, support for Trump –- that’s apparently all it took.

I’ll leave you with some added perspective on the warped attempt of the media to tie Trump to some kind of Russia threat. While they’re still obsessed with that, here’s the threat Russia REALLY poses. This is VIP content, but the headline alone says it all.

https://redstate.com/andrewmalcolm/2021/12/05/while-biden-sleeps-putin-prepares-to-grab-ukraine-n486415

John Boozman, U.S. Senator

For nearly 50 years, Americans who have held to a belief that all human life is sacred and valuable have grieved the fact that the United States is among a handful of nations – including Communist China and North Korea – that allow for abortion on demand beyond the point when babies can feel pain.

Many on the other side of the political aisle often point to aspects of European culture or economic policy as worthy of aspiring toward, but refuse to confront the fact that even the overwhelming majority of these nations limit abortion at 15 weeks or earlier.

Which brings us to the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case on December 1, marking the first serious challenge in a generation to the abortion regime established under Roe v. Wade and clarified under Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The case concerns a Mississippi law that prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, when we know unborn children have limbs and fully-developed hearts, can taste, make facial expressions, yawn, hiccup, swallow and suck their thumbs.

Protecting these little ones from gruesome, painful and barbaric abortion procedures is the duty of any society that claims the mantles of morality and justice.

This is not a fringe position. In fact, three-quarters of Americans, including a majority who identify as pro-choice, want significant restrictions on abortion according to a Marist survey conducted earlier this year.

Americans may be familiar with the concept that the legal precent under Roe v. Wade grants women the right to terminate a pregnancy, but most are far less clear on the specifics around abortion or what it would mean if the nation’s highest court struck the ruling down.

Simply put, a decision by a majority of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe would not create a federal ban on abortion. What it would do is return to the states and the people the policy decisions related to this issue rather than nine justices in black robes based in Washington, D.C. Notably, the movement to defend the unborn also does not seek to punish vulnerable women susceptible to the false notion that abortion is their only or most sensible option.

With the Dobbs case, the day I and many pro-life advocates throughout Arkansas and across our country have been praying for has come. There is a very real possibility that our nearly five-decade nightmare, which has cost the lives of over 60 million children, could be on the verge of ending.

I joined supporters of life who rallied out in front of the Court before and during the oral arguments in this case. I met Arkansans who traveled to the nation’s capital to lend their voices to this essential cause. It was encouraging to be with these passionate individuals who care deeply about this issue.

Defending the right to life is one of the most important things we can do, because every life is precious and protecting the sanctity of life will demonstrate where the true values of our country are found.

This moment could be a turning point in our society’s moral and cultural evolution. The science tells us the unborn are human beings worthy of protection. Our consciences echo that truth.

We pray that our nation’s highest court helps put us back on the right track. We must draw this line in the sand and not shrink back. The stakes are too high. We will continue to lift our voices in defense of life.

Mike Huckabee

In 2018, The New York Times and the Washington Post were honored with the coveted Pulitzer Prize for 20 articles described as “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the public’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”

The award was for their coverage of Trump-Russia "collusion," based on Christopher Steele’s thoroughly discredited “dossier,” and now that the story has been exposed as a lie, these “news” outlets should have to give it back.

Here's OUR description of their work (are you listening, Pulitzer committee?): deeply flawed, badly sourced yet relentlessly reported fake news that defied the public interest by furthering the public’s misunderstanding, by lying about Russian "collusion" with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.

Real journalist Aaron Mate at RealClearInvestigations has written a fabulous article on these publications’ completely inadequate attempts at “fixing” some of their mistakes/lies, offering detailed suggestions for how they really could correct what they wrote. It’s called “Five Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ Corrections We Need From the Media Now –- Just For Starters.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/24/five_trump-russia_collusion_corrections_we_need_from_the_media_now_-_just_for_starters_804205.html

It’s been FIVE YEARS since BuzzFeed published the “dossier,” peddled by Michael Sussmann, now under indictment by Special Counsel John Durham for failing to tell the FBI that he was Hillary’s attorney when he gave them the story. Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, is charged with lying as well. Sara Fischer at Axios has called this reporting “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history” and says the media’s response to its own fake reporting has been “tepid.” She points out that Axios did not publish the “dossier” or any original reporting based on its contents, as it was not verified. Thank you, Axios.

(Note: Also, in all these years, the Huckabee team has never had to retract or correct anything we’ve said about Trump and Russia.)

https://www.axios.com/steele-dossier-discredited-media-corrections-buzzfeed-washington-post-6b762a0b-64a9-4259-8697-298e2f04fb3e.html

Fischer does give WAPO credit for allowing their media critic, Eric Wemple, to write about the mistakes they and other media outlets made in covering the Russia “collusion” story. In contrast, BuzzFeed still has the “dossier” posted, with a note added that “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.” Nice of them to at least say that, five years later.

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s then-editor-in-chief, told Axios, “My view on the logic of publishing hasn’t changed.” He’s now a columnist for The New York Times.

Some outlets didn’t respond to Fischer’s calls about this. David Corn, in a comment to Wemple, revealed his continuing denial of reality: “My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.” What??

After the federal indictment of Danchenko, WAPO quietly re-edited a dozen stories related to Steele and the “dossier,” In a couple of cases –- stories written by Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamberger –- this involved removal of entire sections, changing headlines, and adding lengthier editor’s notes. But, as the RealClearInvestigations article points out, the editors never explain how the mistakes happened or offer names of the anonymous sources who deceived “them and the public over months and years.”

Helderman and Hamberger are two of the dozen-plus reporters who now share the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction---I mean, for Reporting. Neither WAPO or the NYT has given any indication that they might return the award, even though, as Mate points out, “the Post’s and the Times’ reporting has the same problem as the Steele document that these same outlets are now distancing themselves from: a reliance on anonymous, deceptive, and almost certainly partisan sources for claims that proved to be false.” (Note: I’d remove the “almost” –- the sources were certainly partisan.)

It took seemingly forever for WAPO to address this at all, as the “dossier” has been discredited since April 2019, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his FBI team failed to verify any of its contents. That didn’t matter; most of the media still aggressively pushed the Trump-Russia narrative. Some, like David Corn, will never really give it up.

After BuzzFeed published the “dossier,” WAPO and the NYT were joined by other outlets in a media frenzy. Mate cites particularly outrageous stories that ran in the New Yorker (a “fawning” profile of Steele), McClatchy (Mueller had "evidence" Trump attorney Michael Cohen had been to Prague), and The Guardian (Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy). BuzzFeed stayed in the act, too, with a false story that Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to Congress. All fake, fake, fake.

To add juice to the argument that WAPO and the NYT should return their Pulitzer, Mate documents five specific stories “containing false or misleading claims, and thereby due for retraction or correction, that were either among the Post and Times’ winning entries, or other work of reporters who shared that prize.” These outright falsehoods can be shown to be wrong with information that has “long been in the public domain,” he says.

FALSEHOOD #1: Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Russia and lied about it. We’ve covered the real story in detail here, throughout Flynn’s long ordeal of personal destruction. WAPO did not tell the truth in February of 2017 when they added their own spin and plenty of mind-reading to their report on Flynn’s phone call with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Both WAPO and the NYT continued the deception in articles from May of 2020 about the transcripts.

FALSEHOOD #2: Trump officials had repeated contacts with Russian officials. This fake story, written by three members of the NYT Pulitzer-winning team, came out the day after Flynn resigned as national security adviser in February of 2017. Debunked.

FALSEHOOD #3: George Papadopoulos’ “night of heavy drinking” with Australian envoy Alexander Downer in which he supposedly said the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary. This fake story was reported in December of 2017, a couple of months after it was revealed that Marc Elias of the Clinton-funded law firm Perkins Coie paid for the “dossier.” (Yes, this was uncovered that soon, by House Republicans led by Devin Nunes.) Their characterization of this conversation turned out to be false, as documented by declassified FBI recordings.

FALSEHOOD #4: Russia’s “sweeping interference campaign” posed a national security threat. Read the details in Mate’s article and you will see this story was a complete crock. To be fair, Mueller sensationalized this, too, as the body of his report fails miserably to live up to the headline.

FALSEHOOD #5: The DOJ never fully examined Trump’s ties to Russia. Reporters tried to “explain” why Mueller hadn’t found anything on Trump by saying Attorney General Barr and deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had handcuffed him. More fakeness. Even Peter Strzok later contradicted this.

Caution: reading through Mate’s article will raise your blood pressure, with example after example of this steaming load of Pulitzer-winning “journalism.” This utter waste of the public’s and the government’s time was created out of essentially nothing to damage Trump and his presidency as much as possible. It was all made up.

So, New York Times and Washington Post: GIVE THE PULITZER BACK NOW.

Mike Huckabee

Wednesday, the Supreme Court Justices drilled attorneys during oral arguments over Mississippi’s ban on abortion before 15 weeks, the most serious challenge yet to Roe v. Wade.

The general consensus among legal analysts was that the conservative Justices were trying to force the pro-abortion attorneys to offer some kind of concrete rationale for why abortion should be legal, the liberal justices were pushing to maintain the status quo, and Chief Justice John Roberts was looking for some way to split the difference, to allow Mississippi-like restrictions while still preserving the idea of a right to abortion under some circumstances. But even he didn’t seem inclined to defend Roe v. Wade, comparing its arbitrary “viability” standard to those in China and North Korea, which we don’t need to emulate.

https://www.westernjournal.com/normally-moderate-roberts-savages-roe-v-wade-becomes-hero-saying-everyone-else-thinking/

I linked yesterday to an article about four things the SCOTUS had to keep in mind in making their decision, and the liberals' push for maintaining the status quo was one of the logical fallacies mentioned. If a ruling is bad and has terrible consequences (in Roe’s case, the slaughter of over 60 million children in the womb), then saying it’s been around so long and so many people depend on it that we have to keep it is not a rational argument. If a ruling is that bad, then it should have been overturned sooner, not preserved forever. Under that thinking, we’d still have slavery. And preserving a bad ruling doesn't protect the Court's integrity or reputation, it erodes it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/four-things-supreme-court-must-keep-mind-takes-abortion-question/

In this exchange, Justice Clarence Thomas practically had to get his pliers and pull some teeth to get the pro-abortion attorney to admit that they were there to defend the right to abortion rather than just some vague manifestation of the rights to liberty, autonomy or privacy. It appeared that not even the person arguing that there’s a right to abortion in the Constitution wanted to be put in the position of trying to point out where it is.

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/susan-jones/justice-thomas-what-specifically-right-here-were-talking-about

Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave a great example of how foolish it was with the original Roe decision to expect lawyers in robes to make medical decisions, such as when a fetus becomes viable. Sotomayor argued, contrary to recent medical discoveries, that it was a “fringe” idea to suggest that babies in the womb can feel pain before 24 weeks, and compared fetuses to “braindead” people.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/01/follow-science-pro-lifers-slam-justice-sotomayor-compared-unborn-babies-braindead-people/

I can think of someone I could compare to braindead people, but that doesn’t mean she can’t feel pain.

For more, this is a good article from PJ Media, summarizing 10 key moments during the oral arguments.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2021/12/01/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-todays-oral-arguments-in-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization-n1538007

Finally, Larry O’Connor at Townhall.com shows how Justice Kavanaugh hit the nail on the head by pointing out that you cannot accommodate both sides, you have to choose. What does the Constitution say? Does it protect the right of humans in the womb to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or does it protect the right of a pregnant woman to abort her child?

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2021/12/01/justice-kavanaugh-just-boiled-the-abortion-debate-down-to-its-most-fundamental-core-n2599912

All I can say is that I’ve read the Constitution a fair number of times, and I’ve never found the word “abortion” in it anywhere.

Mike Huckabee

Actor Matthew McConaughey ended speculation Sunday by announcing that he’s decided not to run for Governor of Texas. He said, "As a simple kid born in the little town of Uvalde, Texas, it never occurred to me that I would one day be considered for political leadership. It's a humbling and inspiring path to ponder. It is also a path that I am choosing not to take at this moment."

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/matthew-mcconaughey-rules-out-run-public-office-texas

Even though a recent poll showed him as the frontrunner against both incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the Harold Stassen of our time, Democrat “Beto” O’Rourke, I can certainly understand why Matthew wouldn’t want to give up being a successful and beloved movie star to take on the heavy work and brickbats of being a Governor (salary in Texas: $153,750.)

Polls can be deceiving, too. At this early stage, all the respondents know is the cool guy from the movies. But the glamor disappears fast once you get into the 24-hour colonoscopy of running for office. You have to take positions on issues that some people will strongly disagree with (and if you don’t, you’re criticized for that, too.) Matthew has some views that are conservative and some that are liberal, which means he’d face attacks from both sides.

I’ve read his recent book, “Green Lights,” and was impressed. Even more so when I interviewed him on TBN.

https://youtu.be/xOe-ZhFKunY

He seems to be a rare celebrity who has his head screwed on straight, and maybe this decision on staying out of politics is just more proof of that.

In the meantime, it’s bad news for Democrats, for whom a wild card McConaughey candidacy was their best shot at unseating a Republican Governor in 2022. But they still have “Beto,” and it’s reported that fools with money (I’m assuming from outside Texas) have already pumped $2 million into his latest quixotic run. That’s money that won’t be going to Democrats who have a chance of winning, so it’s “Awright, awright, awright” with me.

Mike Huckabee

Sunday on “Face the Nation,” I think Dr. Anthony Fauci might have finally reached his “A Face in the Crowd” moment. In that classic movie, Andy Griffith plays a “man of the people” drunk on his own power who falls from public grace after an open microphone reveals what an arrogant, power-mad demagogue he really is. In Fauci’s case, he knew the mic was on, he (as always) sought out the camera, but he still revealed in shockingly clear terms that he’s suffering from a terminal case of galloping egomania.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-blasts-fauci-astounding-alarming-represent-science

When asked about the justifiable criticism of him by such Senators as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for denying under oath that his NIH funded gain-of-function research when it was later revealed that it had, Fauci scoffed that it was just “noise.” As for Cruz pointing out that lying to Congress is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, Fauci laughed and asked, "What happened on January 6th, Senator?

For the record, Ted Cruz had nothing to do with January 6th, but the lies about gain-of-function research came directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth. And he wasn’t wearing three masks at the time, so we all heard it clearly.

But then came the really telling moment, when Fauci tried to dismiss any criticism of him as invalid by declaring, “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science. They’re dangerous.”

Cruz responded bluntly, blasting Fauci not only for being an "unelected technocrat who has distorted science and facts in order to exercise authoritarian control over millions of Americans" and for “ad hominem insults parroting Democratic talking points,” but also for his jaw-dropping hubris in declaring that any questioning of him is dangerous because he is the living embodiment of “science.” As I’ve had to remind people countless times over recent years, science is the process of asking questions and developing evidence that points to the truth, even if it disproves what everyone believed up to that point. This is why anyone who says, “The science is settled!” is actually admitting that they don’t know jack squat about what science is.

But now, we all know what science is. Dr. Fauci is “Science!” If he says it, it cannot be questioned! Too bad there’s no vaccine to prevent his head from swelling up bigger than a Macy’s Parade balloon. Frankly, I’m at the point where I’d put more faith in Mr. Wizard than in Dr. “Science.”

I’ll give the last word to Sen. Paul, who unlike Fauci is a doctor who’s actually treated patients:

"It’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity."

Mike Huckabee

Trigger warning for leftists: This commentary freely uses the terms “woke” and “woke-ism,” words you introduced yourselves as part of your attempt to control the language and, now that we use it pejoratively, criticize us for using. If this bothers you, so much the better. Curl up with some hot cocoa with mini-marshmallows and you’ll be fine.

…………..

The spirit of Christmas giving has been tarnished a bit this season with the revelation that the Salvation Army has published a new course of study for Salvationists called “Let’s Talk About Racism” --- gosh, we just never talk about racism any more, do we? --- that urges members to actively confront Christianity’s historic racism. National Review has details.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/salvation-army-peddles-critical-race-theory-urges-members-to-confront-their-racism/

On the positive side, it does say this activity is for Salvationists “who choose to participate.” And it does say there are “no correct answers,” just the will to have “an authentic conversation,” prayerfully, and open to the Holy Spirit. You’re even allowed to disagree. But there’s a glossary of terms so you use the correct language when you do.

The main course book has a more concise companion document, “The Study Guide On Racism”; both were created by the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission. They talk about unity and Scripture but still manage to parrot Ibram X. Kendi’s “anti-racist” view that white people carry “unconscious bias.” It reads, “The subtle nature of racism is such that people who are not consciously racist easily function with the privileges, empowerment and benefits of dominant ethnicity, thus unintentionally perpetuating injustice.”

The “Let’s Talk About Racism” book is the more in-depth of the two, with that exhaustive glossary of terms. We all know it’s very important to use the right vocabulary, at least until “progressives” decide to change it. (For clarification on what “anti-racism” is about, I recommend checking out this glossary.) For example, “structural racism...is the overarching system of racial bias across institutions and society. These systems give privileges to White people resulting in disadvantages to [blacks].” “Racist policy” is “any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups.” That refers to the anti-racist concept of “equity,” meaning equal outcomes for all groups. The implication: If there is not an equal outcome among groups, the policy must be racist.

Also, it defines racism so that only white people can be racist. Racism is “the prejudiced treatment, stereotyping, or discrimination of POC [people of color] on the basis of race. It is the “system of social advantage” based on a hierarchy of skin color that it describes as lightest on top and working down through darker shades. “What has not changed is that racial groups are placed into a hierarchy,” it says, “with White or lighter-skinned people at the top.”

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cache.salvationarmy.org/e0c074e3-39db-4b09-a6ea-aa5bdb6ecaa6_Let%2527s%2520Talk%2520About...%2520Racism%2520COMPLETE%2520SET.pdf

You’d think the solution to this hierarchy would be to adopt what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But no, that’s not it. Being colorblind “ignores the discrimination our Black and Brown brothers and sisters face and does not allow us to address racism properly.” Also, “Color-blindedness is often dangerous because while we may not claim to see color, we don’t address the race-based stereotypes of beauty, fame and intelligence which often support a supremacist ideology.” Sigh.

According to this study, there's no genetic basis for race at all. “Race is a social construct designed by humanity,” it says.

Here’s a link to the shorter, ten-page guide.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cache.salvationarmy.org/456ab604-ccb8-430e-af65-f75e04f223f5_Racism+Study+Guide.pdf

Much of what’s in this guide is very good. There’s a lot about unity. On the first page, called “The Salvation Army International Positional Statement on Racism,” it “denounces racism in all its forms.” But the SA apparently is not seeing what millions of concerned Christian parents do: that some of the “anti-racist” principles espoused here are, in themselves, racist.

The guide wisely says, “Racism is fundamentally incompatible with the Christian conviction that all people are made in the image of God and are equal in value. The Salvation Army believes that the world is enriched by a diversity of cultures and ethnicities.”

And the “Theological Framework” makes some valuable points about the spread of Christianity in the New Testament and the “global multi-ethnic reconciliation plan of God.” But, really, if it’s true that “in some mysterious way we shall retain our ethnic identities in heaven,” as this guidebook says, we hope the proponents of “anti-racism” will finally --- at long last --- look to their better angels and stop their eternal “harping” about race.

Oh, and the Salvation Army isn't the only charitable organization embracing Critical Race Theory. Goodwill industries is doing this as well.

Goodwill Embraces Critical Race Theory, Hires “Director of Anti-Racism, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion”

UPDATE: In breaking news, the Salvation Army has said they will "review" their racism guides. RedState.com has insightful commentary.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/11/28/in-a-victory-for-sanity-salvation-army-kinda-sorta-walks-back-woke-racism-guides-n483054

Steve Hilton, on his Sunday FOX News show “The Next Revolution,” had a segment about “Woke-ism” in general –- which, of course, includes Critical Race Theory –- now that seemingly everybody’s woke: the Democrat Party, the media, corporate America and even classroom teachers and local school boards. He explained that this authoritarian ideology dates from 1920s Germany –- The Frankfort School of Marxist philosophy –- as a strategy to get the oppressed proletariats to rise up and throw off their capitalist masters, as they had thus far failed to do. These Marxists decided that three things were in the way and had to be destroyed: faith, family and culture.

“Woke-ism” targets all three. In fact, Hilton’s guest Michael Shellenberger, in an article on Substack.com, argues that it, in itself, is a religion, as it's based on “a whole series of mythological and supernatural beliefs...” Sadly, it can take the place of actual religion, which is to say, the worship of God.

For example, climate change. Shellenberger argues the belief that the world is coming to an end is a religious idea. It’s not based in science, but in faith.

In his book SAN FRANSICKO, he writes about something that CRT proponents might want to examine: “the idea that people that are victims of ‘the system’ are sacred.” For example, there’s enormous concern for black Americans shot by police but relatively little for the 30-times-greater number of blacks who are killed by other black citizens in their neighborhoods.

I would add that the assertion in the Salvation Army guide that race has no genetic basis and is merely a social construct is another example. The idea that gender is not biological is yet another.

This type of thinking isn’t rational. So when we try to counter it with a rational argument, the conversation goes nowhere.

“These are supernatural views,” Shellenberger says, “that accompany the new morality of victim ideology.” But he thinks we’ll see woke-ism come to an end, because there are unfortunate consequences from this ideology, such as the dramatic rise in crime. He thinks “reality will intrude on woke religion,” and that most Americans “really just want to be equal citizens under the law.” But for now, the Religion Of Wokeness is making problems of racism and injustice MORE difficult to solve.

This is a fascinating read, offering a point of view on victimology that the Salvation Army should not leave out of its “authentic conversations,” but probably will.

https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-wokeism-is-a-religion

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

When a terrible fire engulfed Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, many people were rightly outraged over politicians declaring this as an opportunity to “reimagine” the historic landmark. There were horrible “conceptual” drawings of Notre Dame being rebuilt into a modern glass and steel monstrosity instead of the transcendent beauty of its medieval French Gothic architecture.

Well, Kim Hirsch at the Victory Girls blog reports that there’s good news and bad news. The restoration work is advancing, and most of it is intended to painstakingly restore the original structure. The bad news: some parts are being changed to include politically correct modern themes such as multi-culturalism and environmentalism, and in a style that’s being compared to Disney’s Epcot Center.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/notre-dame-cathedral-restoration-is-going-woke/

Incredibly, the areas getting these inappropriate updates were parts of the Cathedral that suffered the least fire damage and would have been the easiest to restore to their original condition. But restoring a 900-year-old cathedral whose creators intended it only to glorify God and lead people to Christ must take a backseat to leading people to the political causes that constitute the new religion of the left.

Maybe the current climate activist Pope believes that mixing PC causes with religion will draw people to Christ, but there’s not a very successful track record of that. Generally speaking, the closer a church hews to the Bible, the more likely it is to have a growing congregation, and the opposite is true for those who embrace secular views and liberal political causes.

John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog has a good example: his own church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/get-woke-empty-the-pews.php

In a post titled, “Get Woke, Empty the Pews,” Hinderaker notes that as the ELCA has become more and more liberal, its membership has shrunk from over 5 million in 1988 to 3.3 million today, and falling. And it’s doubtful that a recent pastoral letter from a presiding bishop that condemned the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal and claimed that the “idols of our society” are “guns, violence and white supremacy” will reverse that trend.

I like to believe that most people in our society still believe in the Ten Commandments, which means they have no other gods before the Lord and they make no idols or graven images. Those are, after all, the first two. And I think the churches that are growing by bringing more people to Christ are the ones that remain aware of that.

Mike Huckabee

Friday, stock markets tanked hard amid fears of more travel restrictions and lockdowns after a new COVID-19 variant was found in South Africa. It’s also popped up in Belgium, Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel, but not in the US yet.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-omicron-variant-no-cases-identified-yet-in-us-cdc

It’s been dubbed the Omicron variant (interestingly, the next letter in the Greek alphabet after the recent Nu variant is “Xi,” but since that’s also the name of the President of China, I guess it would be too politically incorrect to say that the China virus now has a Xi variant.)

Despite the panic mongers, there’s as yet no evidence that this variant is any more dangerous than what’s already circulating, or that it won’t be stopped by current vaccines and natural immunity. And Novavax says it’s already got a vaccine in trials that could be ready for manufacture in a few weeks.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/novavax-testing-vaccine-that-targets-new-covid-19-variant-2021-11-26/

This isn’t even unexpected: all viruses mutate as the potential host population dwindles; they usually become more transmissible but less dangerous. And South Africa has a very low vaccination rate, so this doesn’t mean the Xi (sorry, Omicron) variant can evade the vaccines. It hasn’t even been determined yet if this strain was responsible for the recent leap in cases in South Africa. Yahoo News has a good article explaining what we know about it so far, and considering all the hysteria, we actually know surprisingly little for certain.

https://news.yahoo.com/explainer-covid-variant-south-africa-111307372.html

Sure, this could be a new and terrifying threat, or it could be a last gasp of this disease that peters out in a couple of weeks. Pardon me if I decline to panic because I’ve lived through enough panics from our politicians and “health experts” who didn’t really understand what they were dealing with and who wanted to impose draconian policies that only made matters worse. For the first time in history, they quarantined the healthy while exposing the vulnerable to the disease in nursing homes; forced people to stay indoors (where the disease spreads easiest); and arguably caused more damage to more people’s mental, physical and economic health than the disease did.

In response to the new variant, President Biden met for a whole half hour Friday with his top medical advisors, who still include Dr. Anthony Fauci for some reason. I was willing to defer to Dr. Fauci early on, but he’s contradicted himself, pushed false narratives and put self-aggrandizement ahead of public safety too many times. I don’t understand why many people still think his prescriptions are handed down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. Our health officials and media have attacked, censored and tried to de-license actual doctors who are in the field treating COVID patients if what they report contradicts St. Fauci, a DC health bureaucrat who hasn’t treated a patient since he completed his residency in 1968.

And speaking of people who’ve been in Washington too long, President “I Will Shut Down The Virus,” not travel or the economy, announced that he was placing new travel restrictions on South Africa.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-announces-new-travel-restrictions-response-new-covid-variant/

Funny how Trump’s shutting down travel from China was racism, but Biden shutting down travel from the predominantly black nation of South Africa is just prudent health policy.

Please note that I’m not saying he shouldn’t shut down travel from South Africa. I’m just saying that while he’s doing it, he should also publicly apologize to Trump for slandering him and being a big hypocrite. Since he also pushed for “global vaccination” without thanking Trump for overseeing the rapid development of vaccines he badmouthed before he started taking credit for them, he might throw in an apology for that, too. (This is why I couldn’t be a modern Democrat: my memory stretches back farther than yesterday.)

Unfortunately, hypocrisy, dishonesty and political opportunism are three Washington epidemics for which we’ve never been able to find a vaccine.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

The International Olympic Committee has issued a new ruling that allows nations to send any athlete who claims to “identify” as female to compete in all women’s sports, effectively spelling the end of women’s Olympic sports.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/24/new-olympic-committee-rules-essentially-end-womens-sports/

This is the same policy that the Biden Administration is pushing on schools and destroying girls’ sports, and after he won office largely thanks to women’s votes. It’s one of many examples of how this Administration prioritizes LGBTQ++++ rights over women’s rights.

Do you know what else this Administration prioritizes over women’s rights? Placating China, which has launched a crackdown on the #MeToo movement and is targeting and silencing not just tennis star Peng Shuai but many other women who’ve dared to expose powerful men who sexually abused them.

https://whdh.com/news/its-not-just-peng-china-is-cracking-down-on-metoo-movement/

I think this cartoon sums it up chillingly well.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/487273/

Mike Huckabee

Wednesday afternoon, a jury returned guilty verdicts on nearly all charges, including felony murder and aggravated assault, against Travis McMichael, his father Gregory and neighbor William Bryan. The three white men were accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a young unarmed black man, near Brunswick, Georgia. They had spotted Arbery running past their houses and assumed he was fleeing from committing a burglary, although no evidence ever arose to prove he’d committed any crimes. They chased him, confronted him, and Travis shot him with a shotgun. He also reportedly used a racial epithet, which earned him an extra conviction for malice murder.

This link from Fox News has continually updated information on the case, which had officials on edge due to fears of rioting if they’d been acquitted. Which, it is important to remind people who constantly attack the court system as racist, they were not.

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ahmaud-arbery-trial-jury-deliberations-wednesday

This is the third high-profile murder verdict in less than a week, all in cases that involved charges of racist courts. Yet in this one, the white men who murdered a black man were found guilty. In the Andrew Coffee case, a black man who shot white police officers who staged a surprise late night raid of his home was acquitted on self-defense grounds. And in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, a white teenager who shot three white men who were attacking him was also acquitted on self-defense charges, which many ascribed to racism for unclear reasons. Some media outlets even mistakenly thought Rittenhouse's attackers were black.

I don’t know what conclusion we’re supposed to draw from all these verdicts about the American court system, but if juries are making their decisions based solely on race, they don’t seem very consistent about it. Here's a wild thought: maybe most jurors take their responsibilities seriously and base their decisions on the testimony and the evidence. And if that doesn't mesh with the verdicts of the media or random people on Twitter, maybe it's because the jury actually knows more about the case than they do.

Mike Huckabee

Congratulations to President Biden for finally getting a couple of things right. Monday, he angered “progressives” such as Elizabeth Warren by renominating Trump appointee Jerome Powell to another term as Federal Reserve Chair. Lael Brainard, whom the leftists wanted in charge, was nominated for Vice Chair.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-sparks-anger-left-reappointing-trump-nominee-key-position/

In a statement, Biden said, “I’m confident that Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard’s focus on keeping inflation low, prices stable and delivering full employment will make our economy stronger than ever before.”

Warren railed that Powell was a “dangerous” choice because he wouldn’t prioritize such burning issues as “climate mitigation.” Most financial analysts breathed a sigh of relief, however, since they’d rather see the Fed concentrate on reducing inflation and keeping the economy and the dollar healthy, rather than trying to change the weather.

The other move by Biden that suggests he caught a fleeting grip on reality was his decision to release 50 million gallons of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices, a move also being taken by other nations.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-strategic-petroleum-reserve-release-gas-price-spike

Don’t get me wrong: this is hardly a long-term solution. It’s only about a three-day supply for America. It won’t solve the problem of how to get a steady supply to fill our needs when the President and his Party are waging war on our domestic fuel industry. And as Joe Cunningham at Redstate.com suggests, they see this as just a mollifying stopgap while they force Americans to “transition” to unreliable and expensive green energy sources that can’t meet demand.

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/11/23/the-biden-administration-prepares-to-make-the-oil-crisis-worse-on-purpose-n480453

And former President Trump slammed the move because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is supposed to be for national emergencies, not temporary relief from the bad consequences of your own stupid policies.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/11/23/trump-slams-biden-for-tapping-the-strategic-oil-reserve-n2599532

Many others agreed.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/11/23/biden-to-release-oil-from-strategic-reserve-n2599531

But at least Biden did show signs of understanding, even if only for a day, that there is a relationship between the supply of oil and gas and the price of oil and gas. It may be a small victory, but I’ll take miracles wherever I can find them these days.

Mike Huckabee

A group of House Democrats, including (of course) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, penned a letter (news flash: they can write!) to Senate Democrats, demanding that they ignore the Senate Parliamentarian who ruled that a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants can’t be included in a budget reconciliation bill. Their “argument” is that the Parliamentarian’s role is only advisory, not binding, and that the citizenship change would have a “massive budgetary impact.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-dems-demand-senate-ignore-parliamentarian-and-use-infrastructure-bill-for-pathway-to-citizenship

Well, that’s one thing they got right! Except that with these people, everything they want to do has a massive budgetary impact.

For the record: budget reconciliation bills are allowed to pass on a simple majority vote not subject to filibuster, the idea being that something as important as keeping the government funded shouldn’t be held hostage to politics. However, Democrats have begun widely abusing this rule to shove through all sorts of unpopular, “transformative” legislation that could never garner 60% support in the Senate. That’s precisely why the Founders created the Senate: to prevent the “tyranny of the majority” and put the brakes on any unconstitutional power grabs that the hotheads in the House might send up.

AOC and other leftists find it terribly inconvenient that there are rules built into the system to prevent them from shoving their radical agenda down our throats with only the tiniest of majorities. Since taking power, they have dreamed up all sorts of rule changes to get around those roadblocks, from eliminating the filibuster to stacking the Supreme Court to suggesting a combined House/Senate majority vote. This is just their latest desperate gambit to seize more power. They’re trying to force as much America-transforming radicalism through as they can because they sense that after the next election, they’ll be such a tiny minority that they’ll be officing out of a broom closet.

I’m so old, I remember the hilarious claims by people like AOC that “Democratic socialists” were, like, TOTALLY different from old-style socialists! Those socialists abused power to force their will onto millions of people and steamrolled over anyone who got in their way. “Democratic socialists” are SO different! They have the word “Democratic” in their name.

Mike Huckabee

I’ve written before about the perilous situation for Christians in Nigeria, where radical militia groups are targeting them for terrorist violence, displacement, forced conversions and marriages, and other atrocities. This is being done as the government turns a blind eye and silences Christian leaders and journalists who try to expose the truth by cracking down on free speech and jailing them on trumped-up charges.

Yet the Epoch Times reports that the Biden State Department inexplicably removed Nigeria from its list of “countries of particular concern” in advance of Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Nigeria to sign a $2.1 billion assistance agreement.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/blinkens-africa-tour-includes-heart-to-heart-with-embattled-nigerian-pastor_4116398.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

The State Department claims the money will support health care, education, agriculture, and good governance. But local Christians fear it will help prop up the oppressive government and fuel more violence against them.

Click the link to read more and hear from the Rev. Joseph Hayab, the brave chairman of the Kaduna state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, who, along with four other representatives of Nigerian civil society, met with Blinken privately and warned him, “Our government is full of lies, and to make sure the world does not get the truth of what is happening in Nigeria, they are against free speech.”

Hayab said he’s baffled by Bliken removing Nigeria from the "nations of concern" list and saying things are improving there “because Christians in Nigeria and others suffering persecution feel like they cannot rely on the U.S. government to help them. That is like telling a sick man in the hospital to go home to die.”

Sadly, a lot of people around the world are learning that they can’t rely on this Administration to help them, or even to make sane, humane foreign policy decisions. Maybe they believe that helping to enrich the oppressive Nigerian government will convince them to end religious oppression. How is that working out with China?

Mike Huckabee

When we talk here about so-called fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact, we typically put quotations around the word “fact.” That’s because when it comes to politics, these websites often select their “facts” carefully, leaving out or shading information that is inconvenient, and sometimes even manufacturing it as needed –- all while accusing others of doing just that –- to “debunk” a claim and support a different narrative. When they can’t make that happen, they’ll sometimes borrow a skill often used in court or on the debate stage: change the original assertion so they can argue against their preferred one instead.

The people who work this way are not fact-checkers but advocates, or, to use the vernacular, hacks.

PolitiFact, created in 2008 to cover that year’s presidential election, became part of the Poynter Institute in 2018. The Poynter Institute trains journalists –- yes, believe it or not, they get training! –- and we would venture to say that the state of journalism today does not speak well of their performance in this area. The line between news reporting and opinion writing is now as meaningless as the border between Mexico and Texas.

The Poynter Institute also includes the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which is “dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide.”

https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/

More than 60 fact-checking organizations on six continents participate in IFCN’s work and sharing of “best practices,” and more than 30 organizations have passed the vetting process to become signatories to its Code of Principles for Fact-Checkers. Given some of the fact-checks we’ve seen from PolitiFact, that is indeed a scary thought.

Oh, but wait –- they’ve won the Pulitzer. Yes, and so did The New York Times and the Washington Post for their wildly inaccurate coverage of Trump-Russian “collusion” fantasies. I guess if those newspapers can win a Pulitzer for their misreporting and the Academy Award for Best Original Song can go to “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp,” then this bunch can have a Pulitzer, too.

“Each year, Poynter trains over 100,000 journalists from more than 70 countries in person and online...in virtually every country in the world.” That should keep you up at night. They’re very proud of their reputation, they say. A few of the news organizations that hire Poynter include National Public Radio, NBC News, Newsweek, and the Washington Post.

Click on “Support for Content & Training to Strengthen Media Literacy,” and you’ll find such groups as The Democracy Fund, Facebook (“Helping MediaWise and PolitiFact in the fight against mis- and disinformation to help people sort fact from fiction online”), Google, Microsoft, and TikTok (“Helping PolitiFact continue to fact-check elected officials and hold government officials accountable”).

https://www.poynter.org/poynter-thought-leader/

“Founded in 1975,” their website says, “Poynter is an inspirational place but also a practical one, connecting the varied crafts of journalism to its higher mission and purpose. From person-to-person coaching and intensive hands-on seminars to interactive online courses and media reporting, Poynter helps journalists sharpen skills and elevate storytelling throughout their careers.” They “explore the intersection of journalism, technology and the public interest.”

The reason why we wanted to examine this is that Dan Bongino called attention to a so-called fact-check from Politifact that is really quite shameful, supposedly debunking something President Trump said in a media briefing on August 31, 2020, soon after Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested for killing two and injuring one in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Their verdict: “Trump paints false picture of Kyle Rittenhouse shootings ahead of Kenosha visit.”

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/sep/01/donald-trump/trump-paints-false-picture-kyle-rittenhouse-shooti/

Trump had said the video showed Rittenhouse “was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like...fell, and then they very violently attacked him.”

Now, if you watched the trial this month, you saw that video over and over, many times. It showed that Rittenhouse was trying to get away from them, fell, and then they very violently attacked him.

Yes, PolitiFact said, Rittenhouse “tripped and fell as a group of people pursued him on the night he allegedly killed two protesters and injured a third.” But, they said, Trump left out “vital context”: that “Rittenhouse ran away after PROSECUTORS SAY [emphasis mine] he had already shot and killed someone.”

“The President correctly describes some minor details about that night,” PolitiFact said. “But, overall, his comments grossly mischaracterize what happened –- leaving out that by the time of the events he described, prosecutors say Rittenhouse had already shot and killed a man.”

What??

PolitiFact also concluded that since Rittenhouse had already been arrested and charged with homicide, Trump was wrong to say the matter was “under investigation.” Note: an incident doesn’t stop being investigated just because charges have been filed.

“Rittenhouse did fall as a crowd followed him, but Trump’s comments leave an incendiary and false picture,” PolitiFact said. “By the time he fell, according to criminal charges, Rittenhouse had already shot and killed one man that night. We rate [Trump’s] claim FALSE.”

Well, because they accepted as true the prosecutor’s version of events, which turned out to be false, we rate PolitiFact’s fact-checking FALSE, and it’s not the first time. How wonderful that the Poynter Institute is training fact-checkers all over the world, with the help of Facebook and TikTok.

Derek Hunter at Townhall has a great opinion piece --- notice we say “opinion” --- about the outrageous media misconduct concerning the Rittenhouse case.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/11/21/a-special-kind-of-stupid-media-and-the-kyle-rittenhouse-case-n2599418

As a palate-cleanser, we’d like to show you a case in which a conservative site got the fact-checking right in debunking a story, even though that story might have fed a more conservative narrative.

https://www.conservativereview.com/fact-check-was-a-woman-kicked-out-of-a-hockey-game-for-wearing-a-lets-go-brandon-shirt

A video on Facebook had showed what appeared to be a woman being kicked out of a Wichita Thunder hockey game on November 5 for wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt.

“Check Your Fact” at Conservative Review looked into this and learned that the woman was escorted out of the arena by security after “she was using extremely profane language and gestures toward our staff and those around her,” according to a statement from the team. She was part of a group who were all wearing “Brandon” shirts, and she was the only one who had to leave.

This fact-check was objective, reasonable, non-political, “just the facts.” Maybe contributor Mecca Fowler, who wrote it, should be the one training all those legions of fact-checkers around the world, This example shows that at least somebody knows how to do it right.

Mike Huckabee

In breaking news Friday afternoon, Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges. No one can say these jurors didn't do their duty and carefully consider all the evidence before rendering a verdict, as it took them four days of deliberation under tremendous psychological pressure. We'll have a roundup of commentary and our own analysis over the weekend. Meanwhile, pray for peace in Kenosha, Wisconsin, tonight.

Prior to the verdict being announced, the two biggest developments had to do, as is typical of this case, not with justice but with media malfeasance and prosecutorial misconduct. First, the judge barred anyone from NBC or MSNBC from the building after a freelancer working for NBC was stopped for running a red light and claimed he was trying to keep up with the sealed juror bus. He said an NBC News booker in New York had assigned him to follow the jury bus, possibly in hopes of booking interviews with jurors whose identities are being shielded for their own protection from mob threats.

https://www.westernjournal.com/rittenhouse-judge-bans-msnbc-courthouse-freelancer-follows-juror-bus/

NBC released a statement reading, “While the traffic violation took place near the jury van, the freelancer never contacted or intended to contact the jurors during deliberations, and never photographed or intended to photograph them. We regret the incident and will fully cooperate with the authorities on any investigation.”

Fine, but you’ll be doing it from outside the courthouse, where you belong. Considering what a huge role MSNBC has played in promoting indendiary false information about this case from day one, I wouldn’t blame the judge for banning them from Kenosha permanently. I doubt that any locals would complain.

The story involving more possible prosecutorial misconduct relates to a witness identified only as “Jump Kick Man.” He’s a man in white pants seen in a video running up and drop-kicking Rittenhouse as he was running away, which allowed the two men to catch him and attack him, and get shot.

It was reported that a man named Maurice Freeland was “Drop Kick Man,” and that he’d offered to testify for the prosecution. They turned him down, ostensibly because they couldn’t positively identify him, but critics note that it might have hurt their case because Freeland is a convicted felon with a violent criminal record who was on probation. The misconduct charge could arise from the prosecution failing to inform the defense about Freeland, whom they might have wanted to call as a defense witness.

https://www.westernjournal.com/key-rittenhouse-witness-development-identity-man-kicked-kyle-face-comes-light-report/

And as long as we’re rightfully bashing the prosecution, they also told the jury that Rittenhouse shouldn’t have used a gun to stop someone who was beating him over the head with a skateboard because “Nobody’s ever died as a result of being hit with a skateboard.” Putting aside the fact that it’s rather hard to ponder that question when you’re being HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH A SKATEBOARD, Todd Starnes did some research. He came up with numerous news stories about people being beaten to death or nearly to death with skateboards.

https://www.toddstarnes.com/show/starnes-debunks-rittenhouse-prosecutors-claim-nobodys-died-from-skateboard/

Finally, as we wait, please read this article by Bari Weiss, who was driven out of the New York Times for daring to stand up for free expression and against the paper’s capitulation to woke Twitter mobs.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-medias-verdict-on-kyle-rittenhouse

It’s her own confession of how she was misled by the media into believing a long list of things about Rittenhouse and this case that the trial has exposed as complete lies. She goes through those lies one by one, and then gives us specific examples of the politicians and media figures who spread them. It’s a great thing to bookmark in case you ever experience a weak moment and start to trust any liberal media outlet again.

Mike Huckabee

Since the not guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse was announced, it’s been both instructive and disheartening to see how many political leaders and media figures have proven violently hostile to the rule of law and the rights of due process. They’re the ones whose false reporting and inflammatory language fueled another night of violent protests, riots (in Portland, naturally) and looting. Because nothing says, “I disapprove of the verdict in a trial I didn’t watch in Kenosha, Wisconsin,” like looting a Louis Vuitton store in San Francisco.

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/rittenhouse-trial-jury

Starting at the top: President Biden said he didn’t watch the trial, but “the jury system works and we have to abide by it.” The White House later released a statement reading, “While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken… I urge everyone to express their views peacefully, consistent with the rule of law. Violence and destruction of property have no place in our democracy.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-issues-hypocritical-statement-rittenhouse/

That’s pretty good, possibly the most presidential statement he’s ever made – except for the part about him feeling angry and concerned, especially since he just admitted he hadn’t watched the trial. It’s reminiscent of his previous false accusation that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist, which helped taint the jury pool. As a chief executive, whether President or Governor, it’s your duty to support the jury system and the rule of law, not try to undermine the public’s faith in it with your own uninformed opinions.

But Biden was practically Abe Lincoln compared to his fellow Democrats. We had Rep. Jerrold Nadler, repeating debunked claims on Twitter and calling for the politicized, weaponized DOJ to subject Rittenhouse to double jeopardy. He thinks a federal civil rights prosecution is in order, since Rittenhouse infringed on the First Amendment protest rights of the people he shot. Note to Nadler: the First Amendment doesn’t give you a right to physically assault someone or point a Glock at his head during a protest. But the Second Amendment gives you the right to use a gun to stop it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/alert-rittenhouse-not-guilty-verdict-overturned-jerry-nadler-sets-stage/

There were also the many Hollywood celebrities and sports stars taking to Twitter to repeat debunked MSNBC talking points and condemn the jury and the verdict. Because how could jurors who’d spent over a week listening to the testimony and examining all the evidence, then days longer deliberating over it, possibly know more about this case than people who heard about it from the media and Twitter?

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/486464/

It’s no surprise that some of the most uninformed, rabble-rousing comments came from America’s worst mayor, worst Governor and worst ex-Governor: Bill DeBlasio, Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo, the Three Stooges of jurisprudence.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/11/19/mainstream-media-convicted-on-all-counts-of-lying-about-kyle-rittenhouse-n1534559

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2021/11/19/sit-down-calif-gov-newsom-joins-lefts-gaslighting-spin-fest-after-rittenhouse-verdict-hint-its-bs/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/11/19/andrew-cuomos-ominous-reaction-to-the-rittenhouse-verdict-n1534730

As Robert Spencer at PJ Media points out about Cuomo, a man who was forced out of office after trying to cover up thousands of COVID deaths in nursing homes due to policies he imposed while allegedly sexually molesting multiple female staffers has no business calling a legitimate jury verdict a “stain on America.” All of these men, who hold (or held) top leadership positions that require them to defend and protect the Constitution and the rule of law used this occasion to stain themselves by trashing those concepts, to repeat claims that anyone who followed the trial knows were exposed as lies, and to do so knowing full well they were encouraging more mob violence.

How dare they claim this verdict encourages vigilante justice? Rittenhouse was arrested, given a trial in front of a jury of his peers (a jury taken from a pool so tainted by liberal media misinformation that two-thirds of them came to court convinced he was guilty), and yet was still found innocent. So they’re now ginning up mob violence. Who’s promoting vigilante justice again?

While it was obvious before now that none of these men should be in any position of power, this should draw a big red line under it. But perhaps even worse was the condemnation of the verdict (complete with more repeating of media falsehoods) by the ACLU.

https://reason.com/2021/11/19/kyle-rittenhouse-verdict-acquitted-aclu-media-liberals/

This is an organization supposedly created to defend the Constitutional rights of every American, yet they’re siding against Rittenhouse’s now-jury-affirmed right to self-defense and in favor of a prosecution that repeatedly broke the rules in an attempt to railroad him into prison, including hiding evidence from the defense and violating Rittenhouse’s Fifth Amendment rights. And that’s just the tip of the corruption iceberg. Here’s some of what the ACLU is actually defending.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/11/19/how-unethical-were-the-prosecutors-trying-to-put-kyle-rittenhouse-in-prison-let-us-count-the-ways-n1533326

Finally, the comments that tick me off the most are the ones that try to sow more riots and racial division by claiming the jury was protecting “white supremacy” (FYI: everyone involved was white) or that Republicans who sided with Rittenhouse would never have defended the rights of a black teenager in the same position.

Excuse me? I’ve publicly defended the due process rights and presumption of innocence even for Andrew Cuomo, and believe me, that’s not easy! Like most Republicans, I absolutely believe that all law-abiding Americans of all races have fundamental rights to trials by jury, to own legal firearms and to use them responsibly to defend themselves and their families from attackers. That includes violent radicals who were attacking black people and burning down black neighborhoods during the 2020 riots that Democrats approved of. These were the same anarchists Democrat officials refused to prosecute and who were bailed out of jail by donations from the staff of our current Vice President.

I would remind these race-baiters that in an earlier time, other Democrat radicals like the KKK were also burning black neighborhoods, and Democrat public officials also refused to provide protection. Who stood up for black people’s right to defend themselves with firearms? The NRA.

Mike Huckabee

On the heels of a new report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz saying the “Justice” Department has a problem with public trust and the perception that they are partisan –- surprise! –- the FBI has just taken actions in Mesa County, Colorado, that reinforce that view.

In what is likely the most outrageous and underreported story of the week, the FBI conducted simultaneous early-morning raids Tuesday on at least four people, including Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters –- an outspoken critic of the 2020 election –- and three of her associates. These heavy-handed raids against nonviolent people involved armed agents in combat militia-style gear, the use of handcuffs, and, in at least one case, a battering ram.

One reason for the media’s hesitance to cover this might be that it emerged via the TV channel of “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who is generally seen in the media as having cooties and absolutely will not be taken seriously no matter how valid a story he breaks. He did interviews with two of the women, Peters and “America’s Mom” Sheronna Bishop. Lindell already knew both of them, as they had participated in his on-air election integrity symposium in August and had reportedly even flown in on his private plane.

The first write-up we saw in print media was at conservative WVW Broadcast Network, which told the story of a raid conducted early Tuesday morning at the home of Bishop, a concerned Christian mom who has become an activist on issues such as Critical Race Theory and forced masking in schools. (She’s homeschooling her kids.) When we first read about this, we suspected the raid on her house probably had something to do with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dictate that parents who get angry at school board meetings should be dealt with like domestic terrorists. (Garland denied this policy before Congress, but we now know he was not being truthful.)

https://www.worldviewweekend.com/news/article/americas-first-mom-raided-fbi-october-4th-doj-memorandum-she-fought-against-voter

But the target on her back seems to have more to do with her association with Peters, who is on extremely bad terms with Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Peters has apparently been under investigation over allegations of leaking election data, and the search warrant authorized confiscation of her phones and cyber devices.

Brannon Howse conducted the TV interview with Peters on Tuesday, with additional guest cybersecurity expert Sean Smith. In the interview, she explains about the four raids carried out that morning on her and “some of her friends,” saying that one of them indeed had involved a battering ram. Apparently that was the raid at Bishop’s house; Bishop has said her front door was broken down.

Peters said at the time of this interview that the affidavit for her search was still sealed and that she didn’t know what the “probable cause” was. Here’s the interview in full.

Exclusive: FBI Raids Home of County Clerk Tina Peters in Attempt to Cover Up Voter Crimes? | Frank Speech the Home of Free Speech

(SIDE NOTE: At about 38:30 in this video, there’s a phenomenal 6-minute clip of several former FBI agents who are appalled at this new abuse-of-force approach by the FBI against non-violent targets such as Roger Stone. One of them said that if he’d been on a S.W.A.T. team and ordered to do that raid at Stone’s house, he would have refused. That’s the kind of FBI agents we need; too bad so many of them are of the generation that's now retiring from the Bureau.)

Anyway, Peters says that since she started looking into the results of the 2020 election in Mesa County --- she claims that 29,000 election records were illegally deleted --- she's been attacked "on every front" and is facing civil litigation and huge legal bills. She says this raid is obviously an intimidation tactic aimed at the larger community.

In Bishop’s interview with Howse, which debuted Thursday on Lindell TV, she says the agents were likewise armed and in combat gear, that they treated her and her daughters roughly and that she was handcuffed for about 30 minutes. (Peters was not handcuffed.) The agents were in Bishop’s house for about three hours.

Bishop is a former campaign manager for conservative Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert. She describes herself as a “very strong supporter” of Peters.

In the interview, she reads from the search warrant, which authorized them to confiscate her phones and other cyber equipment, alleging that she caused "intentional damage of a protected computer" --- "I have no contact with a computer," she says --- "wire fraud" --- "they couldn't explain to me what that even meant" -- and "conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer and/or commit wire fraud." It also listed the names of the others who were being searched, including Peters. She says all she has done is exercise her First Amendment freedom to be an advocate for Peters, whom she claims has "hard evidence" about Colorado officials and Dominion Voting Systems, and that they’re trying to make her go away and be quiet. She says officials who are "running Colorado" are criminalizing free speech.

She says she has made herself completely available to officials and that there was no reason other than intimidation for them to treat her and her family this way.

Here’s the link to her TV interview.

https://home.frankspeech.com/tv/video/exclusive-colorado-mom-becomes-first-parent-have-her-door-broken-down-doj-and-fbi-target

We’ve seen a few reports of the raids in mainstream media, but they focus not on the violation of civil liberties –- since when do Trump supporters have civil liberties? –- but on allegations that Mesa County election results were allegedly leaked to some “QAnon conspiracy theorists.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lauren-boeberts-ex-manager-sherronna-bishop-also-targeted-in-fbi-raid-on-maga-election-clerk-tina-peters

It’s impossible to sort out all the accusations and counter-accusations going on in Mesa County. We just find it interesting that this angle from THE DAILY BEAST doesn’t address the FBI’s intimidating use of force against non-violent targets. The DB also reflexively calls the hypothesis that the 2020 election was stolen “a baseless idea.” That is wrong; it’s not proven, but it’s certainly not baseless.

Another outlet, TALKING POINTS MEMO, describes Peters as “a Trumpy Colorado county clerk already under investigation” and identifies the QAnon personality as Ron Watkins, “a right-wing influencer that many believe to be behind the posts that spurred the QAnon conspiracy theory,” according to reporter Matt Shuham. The armed raids are characterized by a Mesa County spokesperson as “four federally court-authorized operations into potential criminal activity.” All documents related to these “operations” are apparently still sealed.

We can’t say this investigation is being carried out to take focus off what Peters might have FOUND regarding the voting machine data. But we can’t say it isn’t, either.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/feds-raid-home-of-trumpy-colorado-clerk-under-scrutiny-after-election-data-leak

That’s the story so far. We’ll leave you with an outstanding companion piece by Victor Davis Hanson called “Can the FBI Be Salvaged?” that lists many familiar examples of the FBI overstepping, lying, leaking, colluding, hushing-up, setting-up, intimidating, witch-hunting, infiltrating, improperly surveilling, abusing, withholding evidence and more.

He should add these armed raids in Mesa County to his list.

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2021/11/18/can-the-fbi-be-salvaged-n2599279