Mike Huckabee

We’ve always said there would be a few previously-obscure names suddenly providing a whole new avenue of investigation and insight into "Crossfire Hurricane." As of Sunday, the name “Steven Schrage” is one of those. And, yes, he HAS talked with U.S. Attorney John Durham, and says he told Durham a couple of weeks ago that he now feels he must go public.

He has put together a first installment, called “The spies who hijacked America,” intended as a “preview” of what he’ll tell over the next several weeks. For when you have time later --- it’s extremely long but undoubtedly a MUST-READ --- here’s the link.

Schrage’s Ph.D. supervisor was Stefan Halper, whom we know was also an FBI confidential human source (SPY) known as “the Walrus.” Schrage decided to come forward ahead of the full Michael Flynn hearing because he felt the various investigations into Flynn's case had not progressed as they should have. In other words, he’s concerned about how long it’s taking.

"So, I think there’s a lot of people trying to cover the tracks of what happened to start this thing,” he told Maria Bartiromo on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES, and I think that’s why it’s so critical that we get to the bottom of it.” Sad to say, he includes "quite a few Republicans” in that group.

"This shouldn’t be political, about Democrats and Republicans,” he said he told Durham. “This is about officials undermining our democracy, and it needs to be known long before the election.”

Schrage is in a position to shed light on the targeting of Carter Page, which ignited the FBI’s “Trump/Russia” investigation. Page first met Stefan Halper at an overseas conference at Cambridge University in July, 2016. It was three months later that the FBI, after accusing Page in its FISA application of being a Russian agent, got a warrant to spy on him. (As we've noted, this warrant gave them a window into Trump's campaign and even to Trump himself, as it allowed them to go BACK IN TIME through Page’s communications to pick up other people connected to him.)

Schrage is the person who introduced Page to Halper while Page was at Cambridge for the conference

He was then working for Halper as part of his Ph.D. candidacy at Cambridge; he told Maria he had “a long background working on crime and terrorism with the White House and Congress” and had started work on this Ph.D. years earlier at Harvard. He was looking at presidential campaigns from the standpoint of the risks to national security but “had no idea that it would blow up into this.”

Looks to me as though he found a whole new risk to national security --- not one posed by a foreign country infiltrating a campaign, but by our own FBI. He might have a whole new topic for his dissertation now!

Anyway, he said it was when Halper and Christopher Steele’s former MI-6 boss Sir Richard Dearlove (you know that name if you’ve read Lee Smith’s book THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT) crossed paths with Page that Halper zeroed in. “At that point,” Schrage said, Halper “seemed to really focus on Page...isolate him, and kind of ingratiate himself with the Trump campaign, in ways that seemed like a real turning point.” To Schrage’s “surprise,” the Trump campaign started being characterized as a national security threat, and that narrative “took off.”

Schrage described the way Page ended up at Cambridge talking to Halper as “a comedy of errors rivaling ‘Dumb and Dumber.’” Ironically, because Schrage had “a Republican background,” he'd wanted the conference to be “balanced,” he said. If they were going to include, say, Madeleine Albright, they should also have a Trump representative.

(Not to inject any confusion here, but in 2019, Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, included Schrage in the suspicious group of individuals who should be investigated for their roles in getting Page to Cambridge Don't know if that has changed, but here's the story.)

Here’s another example of suspicion being cast onto Schrage.

Anyway, Schrage told Bartiromo they were looking for someone specifically to represent the Trump campaign, and that role sort of “fell into his [Page’s] lap," adding he didn’t think Halper even knew Page was coming “until I emailed him.”

To put this into a timeline, a few weeks previously, Christopher Steele had been hired by Fusion GPS.

Maria asked Schrage about Halper’s work in 2016 for the Office of Net Assessments (ONA), which paid him six-figure sums ostensibly for four reports on Russia and China, and how the timing of one big payment seemed to correspond with the start of wiretapping Page. Schrage said he’d never heard of such massive payments for that type of work “in an academic setting.”

He also thought it odd that after Page was smeared as a Russian agent, Halper thanked him profusely for introducing them. Then, in 2018, Schrage heard about the massive payments Halper got while Page was being surveilled, and it made sense.

"All these tentacles” lead back to the same little group, he said: Steele, Halper, Halper’s handler at the FBI. Significantly, no one at the Senate has subpoenaed these people, in four years.

This apparently is one reason why he feels REPUBLICANS have a role in protecting them. “How are we at a point so close to the election, and with Flynn’s hearing coming up, that no one has called these people and gotten to the bottom of this?”

Schrage, who recorded his conversations with Halper routinely as part of his studies, has a recording from January 10, 2017, five days after the infamous Oval Office meeting about Flynn and two days before the WASHINGTON POST leak about Flynn being investigated for Logan Act violations. (Halper and one of his students both had WAPO connections.) Schrage had previously told Halper that Flynn was extremely close with President-elect Trump. Even so, Halper seemed to know...somehow...that Flynn would be gone soon.

Halper: “If you go to the NSC, you have to consider very carefully if you feel it’s appropriate for you to work for Flynn. I don’t think Flynn’s going to be around long. That’s just my guess. The way these things work, you inevitably find yourself at odds with someone...probably lots of people. And...when people [who] oppose you are looking for ways of exerting pressure, they go to people that they know you’re at odds with. And that’s how it builds and then eventually you get squeezed pretty hard.”

He continues: “But Flynn’s reaction to that is to blow up and get angry...I mean, I don’t know where he goes from there. But that is his reaction. That’s why he’s so unsuitable.”

It seems to me that one reason Schrage might go public now is that he knows the Durham report is bad and wants to make sure he's not implicated by anyone in the scheme to use Page. But even if he did come forward out of self-interest, he has a detailed story to tell, with more coming soon.

Mike Huckabee

Weekend Must-Read: This article at the Bookworm Room blog makes some very thought-provoking points about the similarities of the elections of 1920 and 2020.

One hundred years ago, voters were exhausted and traumatized by years of a foreign war (World War I), reeling from a deadly pandemic (Spanish flu) and rattled by a series of bomb attacks by socialists and anarchists all across America. Sound familiar? They elected Republican Warren G. Harding with over 60% of the Electoral College vote because he promised “a return to normalcy.”

The article suggests that Trump should run on the promise to “Make America Normal Again” (MANA?) That is, to bring back law and order, end riots, get the economy up and running again, make our schools teach kids instead of indoctrinating them, and stop pitting Americans against each other into warring identity group camps. He had made great headway on a lot of those things, including re-establishing border security, American leadership and national sovereignty, even though the Democrats fought all his efforts tooth and nail. They think that to regain power, it’s in their interests to attack and undermine everything normal, from law and order to free enterprise and capitalism to patriotism and American pride to basic biology, the scientific method and objective truth, so that people don’t know their own history and can’t even tell what their gender is.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, it’s not. It’s actually a school of leftist “thought” that’s been around for a long time, and encompasses such arcane concepts as “critical theory,” “postmodernism” and “intersectionality.” Over the past few decades, this crackpot of poison stew has been carefully spoon-fed to young people to erode the nation’s foundations, which is what we’re experiencing right now. There’s more explanation and history of this in the linked article. It’s all coming to a head in 2020, and ironically considering the times, the mask is off. I think most Americans didn’t notice it sneaking up on us, but now that it’s yelling in our faces, we don’t like what we see. We want “normal” back.

The only problem is that Joe Biden is already running on a promise to return America to normalcy. Considering that the Obama/Biden Administration tried to cover up all its failures, like its anemic economy and sluggish job growth, by assuring us that this was “the new normal,” I question whether his side even knows what “normal” means. Their version of “normal” is like the brain Igor picked out in “Young Frankenstein”: “Abby Normal.”

But to Biden and those around him, their idea of “normal” is them running everything. Even if means destroying American history, race relations, the economy, and the basic facts of life, economics and science, things will be “normal” again according to them because we’ll have a President who doesn’t send out mean tweets.

Mike Huckabee

My friend (and you can’t imagine how proud I am to be able to say that) Dr. Alveda King had some choice words for the way former President Obama exploited Rep. John Lewis’ funeral to promote false historical narratives and score political points.

And as long we’re correcting Obama’s historical falsehoods, it’s worth pointing out that there’s only one politician currently active in the top level of politics who repeatedly praised George Wallace and other segregationists, and that’s Joe Biden.

Of course, you could say that was another time and he was just trying to get along with colleagues, although that’s not what it always seemed to be. But that would require looking at history in context, and since today’s Democrats hate that, I wouldn’t want to impose any context on them.

There has been a lot of criticism of the crass politicization of Rep. Lewis’ funeral, but there’s also another controversy discussed on social media that has gone largely unreported by the mainstream media. That is how Democratic politicians are telling other Americans that they can’t go to churches, or have indoor gatherings of more than 10 people, or even attend their own relatives’ or spiritual leaders’ funerals…but when one of their own colleagues died, there was a big, indoor church funeral and they exempted themselves from all the rules they imposed on others.

Here are a few of the commentaries on who deserves a big funeral (Rep. Lewis, George Floyd, etc.) and who doesn’t (your dad.)

Also as noted there, Georgia, where the Lewis funeral took place, is on DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s list of states which anyone returning from must undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine. She declared the funeral to be a government function, and those are “essential,” so those funeral guests were exempt. I hope the virus recognized that they’re VIPs and showed proper deference in not infecting them.

It will be interesting to see if Democratic officials declare Herman Cain’s funeral “essential,” or if it will be considered not “essential,” like those of all your relatives who died in nursing homes in blue states. And who may needlessly continue to do so in some blue states.

Mike Huckabee

Doctors are now speaking up to report their own successes in treating COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus with hydroxychloroquine, zinc and the antibiotic Zithromax, and more international studies are indicating that it is effective. So is the rising evidence in its favor actually causing Trump haters to ratchet up their opposition to it, with social media sites banning even actual doctors relating their personal findings as “dangerous misinformation”? Would someone actually hate Trump so much that they would discourage the use of a drug that might save lives if admitting that it worked might make Trump look correct?

Matt Margolis at PJ Media makes that case.

It is hard to believe that anyone would be so twisted as to prioritize political advantage over protecting human life. But then, we just had the mayor of Portland lecture rioters not to try to murder people by burning down a building with human beings locked inside because Trump might use the footage in his campaign commercials.

I wonder, has anyone done a test to see if hydroxychloroquine might be effective in treating Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Mike Huckabee

Michelle Obama is in the news again.

It doesn't surprise us --- one of my writers has said for two years that the former First Lady would be on the ticket for 2020 --- but Michelle O is starting to take a higher profile now that doubts are being expressed more publicly about Joe Biden’s mental decline. We know that even if he makes it across the finish line to Election Day and (shudder) wins, the new VP will be taking his place soon in the Oval Office. Biden won’t be able to find the Oval Office, or tell an oval from a rectangle.

Putting Michelle –- or someone, but probably her –- in at the last minute was likely the plan all along. She’s black, she’s female, she's famous, there won't be much time to take a hard look, and for many Democrats and possibly independents, she puts an appealing and, yes, moderate face on the increasingly radical Democrat Party, a friendly image that they very badly need now. She’s been voted the Most Admired Woman in America, and even Most Admired worldwide! But Michelle Obama is NOT in the mainstream.

Watch, though, how she can take a leftist goal like income redistribution and skillfully finesse it to make it seem downright middle-of-the-road. Wednesday, in her new podcast (yes, she has a new podcast), she did just that in a conversation with Michele Norris. She called coronavirus an opportunity to think about “how wealth is distributed” to lower-income essential workers.

Read the transcript, and you’ll see how she lays the groundwork for “thinking” about wealth in a different way. “...We have to think about that [being essential],” she says, “in terms of how wealth is distributed.” As she goes on about this, it sounds so reasonable, so thoughtful, so compassionate, until you realize that the solution to this, in the mind of anyone on the left, will be a monstrous government program involving large-scale bureaucratically-calibrated income redistribution, with more pages of regulations than in Obamacare (which is a good real-world example of what I’m talking about).

Michelle even helps us understand why nothing in the budget is ever cut. “...All the things that we look to cut were put in place in response to some crisis.” I see. That’s why, once we have a government program, we can NEVER cut it. The crisis never goes away, so we always have to keep it as-is (or bigger).

More: “...We actually have power; we can...change so much of what we do, we can sacrifice a little more...we can shift priorities, and not just in our own lives, ‘cause IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO JUST DO IT IN YOUR OWN LIFE IF YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO DO IT IN OUR BROADER POLICY.” (Emphasis mine.) In other words, out of compassion, we have to force everyone to do what we would have them do. This kind of thinking can be used to rationalize all kinds of control and taken to tremendous lengths. Goodbye freedom.

"It’s in our country’s DNA to step up,” she says. But she warns that this is “always with great opposition, because you’re asking people to sacrifice, to give up things that, that they think they deserve, that they’re entitled to, for the sake of the greater good.”

See how she subtly suggests that the “opposition” is against personal sacrifice and the greater good? Why, some people are just selfish, that’s what they are, thinking they deserve things. We’ll decide who deserves things! And to do that, we’ll have to force everyone into a “broader policy.”

Beware. Someone with this kind of skill, teamed with the more pushy radicals like AOC and "the Squad," could take control of just about everything in your life. Trump 2020!

Mike Huckabee

And the great turning continues, as liberal institutions that went all-in on supporting lawlessness and anarchy realize it’s going over with voters like a punch bowl full of manure. First, the mayor of Portland – PORTLAND! – admitted that people who throw incendiary devices into occupied buildings with the intention of murdering the people inside are not “peaceful protesters” (I’m sure that was a difficult concession for him to make.)

And now, the New York Times (!) has actually printed an in-depth article about the living hell inflicted on the people whose businesses were inside CHOP, the area of Seattle that the mayor turned over to violent leftist, Antifa anarchists, some armed, and tried to pass off as the new “summer of love.” Those businesses are suing the city for the massive costs inflicted upon them when officials failed to do their most basic duty of protecting public safety and private property. None of this is news to you, of course, but for the Times to suddenly wake up to reality is massive.

(The Times is behind a paywall, so I’m linking to a lengthy excerpt at Instapundit. There’s a link there to the full story if you are a Times subscriber. I also wanted you to see the comment by Instapundit founder, Prof. Glenn Reynolds, that all this abrupt backpedaling away from supporting rioters by leftwing politicians and media suggests that the Democrats’ internal polling on this issue must be truly awful.)

Between this lawsuit and others like it in similar blue cities, Nick Sandmann’s lawsuits against the media outlets that slandered him, all the lawsuits against leftist college administrators who denied students due process and First Amendment rights, and the countersuit the NRA just filed against New York’s Attorney General…

…it appears that conservatives have learned from the lawfare that liberals have been waging and are turning the left’s favorite weapon against them. It might even be more effective than expected, thanks to all the Trump judicial appointees who actually respect the Constitution -- one of the top reasons why it's so important not to believe any johnny-come-lately "law and order" rhetoric from the left and instead to reelect Trump.

Mike Huckabee

An unintended positive consequence of the pandemic is that college students who have to attend online will not be getting their standard fall dose of leftist, anti-American brainwashing.

And here’s a piece by a New York City nurse who points out that she has spent months working directly with COVID-19 patients, and grocery store employees kept working, so why should teachers be considered any less “essential?” Her husband, who is a public school teacher, opposes a strike and feels it’s his duty to serve in the classroom. My observation: some of those grocery workers are no doubt high school students themselves, so even the kids continued working while their teachers’ unions are fighting going back to work.

(FYI, that’s in the Atlantic, so of course the writer blames New York’s problems on the federal government and President Trump, who made sure New York had no shortage of ventilators or hospital rooms, and not on her own local and state Democratic leaders, who made every possible wrong decision and turned nursing homes into killing fields.)

Mike Huckabee

From Carol:

If you won the lottery, would you mail in your ticket or take it in person? Some things are important enough to do in person. For me voting is one of them.

From the Gov:

I couldn't have made the case for in-person voting better than you just have. Everyone pushing for mail-in ballots should have to answer your question.

Then, there was this, from Kathi:

Governor, I agree with your entire column up to the point that you started mask pandering by telling people to mask up and go vote. A virus with a 99+% recovery rate no longer requires and actually never did require a mask. Free Americans need to be free to vote as free Americans, and that includes having the CHOICE to mask up or not. I ask you to please #StopMaskPandering! #StayFree

From the Gov:

Kathi, if (when!) you go to the polls, and they insist that you put on a mask before you can come inside --- and they will --- what are you going to do? Elbow your way inside and demand a ballot? I guarantee, that will not get you anywhere. You will be made to leave, by force if necessary, and your voice in the 2020 election will not be heard.

No, if the mask issue is all-important, you will just have to vote absentee or, in the states that institute it, with a mail-in ballot. I suggest you think about Carol's letter, above, before deciding.

Is winning that one "mask" argument on that all-important day so vital to you that you will risk your vote not counting, or walk away rather than vote at all?

If you don't like the intrusion of "mask" rules, remember that if the Democrats take the White House, we will face intrusion into our lives such as we have never seen. If you don't want to put on the mask for any other occasion, we can have that discussion, but in this one case, I will say again, put on the doggone mask and vote.

Mike Huckabee

Imagine if President Trump had written an op-ed or gone on TV with a message to those who might be subpoenaed by, say, Adam Schiff or Jerrold Nadler: REFUSE TO COOPERATE.

Can you even imagine the fevered cries of “Obstruction!!”? Of course, in the chess game that was the phony “Trump/Russia” investigation, they managed to set it up so that virtually anything Trump said or did, even it it was well within his authority as President, could be viewed as obstruction of justice.

But Andrew Weissmann, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s infamous “pit bull” whose specialty is withholding exculpatory evidence, has quite arguably obstructed justice himself. Here’s the story from Daniel Chaitin in THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER.

In an op-ed in THE NEW YORK TIMES (where else?), he and co-author Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel, urged Justice Department officials to consider not cooperating with two investigations being overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr. There’s the wide-ranging John Durham investigation, and also the John Bash investigation into all that unmasking of American citizens. (Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was one of those unmasked, but there were many more.)

The reason Weissmann and Goodman are making a stink is that they don’t want either of the reports to come out before the election. So they maintain that putting it out before the election would be political --- an attempt to interfere with the election. But I say that keeping a completed report under wraps until AFTER the election would be political --- a calculated attempt to interfere with the election by keeping voters in the dark. Likewise, interfering with the investigation so that the report can’t be completed in time would be political. Sounds like obstruction to me.

"What can be done if Mr. Barr seeks to take actions in service of the President’s political ambitions?” they wrote. “...Employees who witness or are asked to participate in such political actions –- who all swore an oath to the Constitution and must obey Department policies –- can refuse, report and, if necessary, resign. Other models include speaking with Congress under subpoena or resigning and then communicating directly to the public. Reputable organizations are at the ready to advise whistle-blowers about the risks and benefits of pursuing these paths."

They’re probably talking about that same law firm that protected the “anonymous” whistleblower that kicked off Trump’s impeachment. How conveeeeenient. Of course, if Barr does anything at all that happens to benefit Trump, it must have been done “in service to the President’s political ambitions.”

One big take-away from Weissmann’s behavior is that he must think these investigations found some really, really bad stuff.

By the way, if you’re interested in a book not to buy, Weissmann has a book coming out in September, purported to explain why the Mueller team could have “done more” in their Russia investigation. Well, let’s see...according to Sidney Powell, they sure could have “done more” to get exculpatory documents to defense attorneys! A lot more.

Mike Huckabee

If you’ve read my newsletter for a while, you won’t be surprised that I put the term “fact-checkers” in quotes. That’s because many “fact-checkers” these days don’t check facts so much as reinforce leftist opinions by citing biased sources to brand anyone who disagrees with them as being misinformed or a liar. We know this because what we do is check actual facts. For instance, if a story claims that a prominent person said something outrageous, we track down the original quote in context, in its entirety. Sometimes, that means we correct or don’t use a story from a conservative news source. But most often, it means we correct a liberal news source. Or sometimes, a so-called “fact-checker.”

The bias of “fact-checkers” is something that many conservatives have come to hold as conventional wisdom, but now, Sharyl Attkisson of Real Clear Investigations has taken a deep dive into their backgrounds and dug up solid evidence that all those assurances of non-partisan objectivity are anything but factual.

The study confirmed that media “fact-checkers” (surprise!) lean left. The claim of objective fact-checking is largely “illusory” and amounts to a “circular feedback loop of verification” in which “like-minded journalists or often Silicon Valley gatekeepers” rely on a small group of partisan news sources and political activists to control narratives and shape and censor information. One obvious example: for monitoring media bias, the far-left activist group Media Matters is treated as a trustworthy, reliable source for “fact-checkers” such as NewsGuard, while the conservative Media Research Center is ignored.

Facebook uses the World Health Organization as a source to fight “disinformation” about the coronavirus, even though we know the WHO has engaged in multiple incidents of spreading misinformation itself. Facebook also claims that members of its new oversight board “were chosen for their expertise and diversity” and “must not have actual or perceived conflicts of interest that could compromise their independent judgment and decision-making.” Yet 18 of the 20 have ties to George Soros’ far-left Open Society Foundations, while none have taken conservative stances on any controversial issue.

Google’s “fact-checking” group First Draft was not only started by the extremely liberal parent company, but it’s also supported by liberal nonprofits, including the Soros groups, and it routinely cites biased news sources to discredit non-leftist views. Its digital director frequently tweets and retweets “anti-American rhetoric and progressive positions.” First Draft even referred readers to an article that pushed the false claim that President Trump encouraged people literally to drink bleach.

This study simply confirms what anyone who’s been paying attention already knows: a great deal of today’s so-called “fact-checking” is just leftist advocacy in camouflage. This is why we have to spend so much time here fact-checking the “fact-checkers.”

Mike Huckabee

The mayors of such big blue cities as New York, Chicago and L.A. don’t seem willing or able to stop their residents from rioting or shooting each other, but they are going medieval on anyone who violates their coronavirus rules (unless they do it to protest the police, of course.)

It’s ironic that New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio is instituting checkpoint stops on in-bound travelers, quarantines and other strict rules that will make it even harder to come to New York at the same time that Gov. Cuomo is practically begging people who’ve bugged out to come back. Cuomo even pleaded, “I’ll buy you a drink!” Where? Aren’t the bars closed? And how do you drink through a mask? Well, he also promised to cook.

But let’s get real: New York has been losing its tax base for years as productive residents flee to other states like Florida. It isn’t just the Chinese virus that’s diving them out; it’s the virus of leftist policies that’s bringing back the bad old days of high crime, gangs, drugs, homelessness, filth and sky-high taxes.

I have sympathy for New Yorkers for all they’re having to endure right now (although they lost a lot of my sympathy when they voted to reelect DeBlasio.) But I have to assure them that they won’t have to worry about me coming anytime soon. The one negative about doing my former Fox TV show was that every weekend, I had to go to New York. You have no idea how much I love being on TBN and doing our show from our beautiful theater in Hendersonville, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville.

I’ve often wondered what would happen to New York (or to San Francisco and other big blue cities) if people ever realized that these days, much of the work they do, including stock trading, can be conducted via computer, out of an office in a beautiful spacious home overlooking the ocean in Texas or Florida, where there are no income taxes and the mortgage is less than what they were paying to rent an apartment the size of a Toyota. A gradual exodus from these cities may have been inevitable, but thanks to the necessity for all white-collar employees to work at home and all the arts and nightlife shutting down anyway, the coronavirus has pressed the accelerator to the floor.

Mike Huckabee

Here’s an important education story that I can’t find anywhere in the mainstream media:

Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul introduced the SCHOOL (Support Children Having Open Opportunities for Learning) Act. Since teachers’ unions are refusing to let schools reopen but expect taxpayers to keep funding them anyway, Paul’s bill would reallocate federal education funds directly to parents. Parents would get their own tax money back to use to educate their children however they see fit, whether in public schools, private schools or for supplies, tutoring and other expenses of home-schooling.

This is such a great idea that the media will surely try to bury it, as will Democrats, who depend heavily on teachers’ unions to get them reelected. I’m sure it will be assailed, just as school choice and vouchers are, as an assault on our sacred public school system.

Sorry, but I’ve studied theology, and I see nothing sacred about any governmental “system.” I think the public school system is a great and noble idea, and I have nothing but respect for the many dedicated teachers who are a part of it and who give their all (and sometimes spend their own paychecks on supplies the schools won’t provide.)

But the devil’s bargain between the union leaders and the Democratic Party has perverted that system. Our sole focus should be on how to provide the most effective learning experience for every student. Instead, we see failing schools kept open, students forced into them at detriment to their futures, political indoctrination substituted for real history and civics, and incompetent teachers protected, as if their job security were more important than our children’s futures. Just as with any other government system, I support the public school system as long as it works. When it starts doing more harm than good, then like a broken-down car, you either need to fix the problems or trade it in on something new that will get you where you need to go.

Mike Huckabee

You remember back in 2016, when Hillary Clinton thought she was a shoo-in for President, and Trump might question the validity of her win, and she expressed shock, outrage and horror that anyone would be so selfish and unpatriotic as to refuse to accept the results of a US Presidential election…then she lost, and she’s spent the past three years doing precisely that, along with millions of her fellow “Resistance” sore losers.

Now, it’s déjà vu all over again as the same never-Trumpers who’ve spent every moment since 2016 refusing to accept that Hillary lost are floating nightmare conspiracy theories that Trump might refuse to accept that he lost to Biden and leave the White House (to be fair, there were also some crackpot theories on the right that Obama would refuse to leave the White House.)

This kind of paranoia and refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power and the verdict of the people in elections is something new and extremely destructive in the history of the United States. It’s a large part of what’s led us to a period that may be the most divisive since the Civil War. And there’s growing concern that if Trump is reelected, it will actually get even worse (like Portland everywhere.)

To test that, a bi-partisan anti-Trump organization called the Transition Integrity Project (Ha!) secretly gathered 100 "former high-ranking government officials, senior political campaigners, nationally prominent journalists and communications professionals, social movement leaders, and experts on politics, national security, democratic reform, election law, and media." Together, they war-gamed various election scenarios to try to figure out what the reactions would be.

These scenarios ranged from Biden winning the popular vote and losing the Electoral College to a narrow Trump win but with claims of some Biden ballots being destroyed. In the end, there was only one scenario in which a candidate won a clear victory and the losing side refused to accept it, and that loser was Biden.

The moral I draw from this (aside from "be VERY prepared") is that Trump’s victory needs to be so overwhelming in both the popular vote and the Electoral College that there can be no disputing it. That won’t stop the left from disputing it anyway, because they may not believe in God, but they think they have a Divine right to rule us. It will, however, send them a signal that they’re outnumbered so maybe they'll finally develop a little introspection and realize it’s time to grow up, end their three-year-plus tantrum and start thinking about why so many people think they shouldn’t be within 100 miles of the levers of power.

Nah, that'll never happen! But at least they can comfort themselves that Trump won't run for a third term.

Or maybe he WILL!...

Mike Huckabee

A story exploded onto the media Wednesday that for the first time, Facebook and Twitter had banned President Trump from tweeting because of a video clip of him talking about reopening schools in which he said children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus, which the sites branded as “misinformation.”

That was actually due to sloppy reporting by the Washington Post, which confused President Trump’s personal Twitter account with his campaign account, which is where the clip actually was posted.

As to whether either social media platform had any business censoring Trump’s comment, that’s an entirely different and legitimate question. A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign said the President was merely "stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus," and the ban was “another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction. Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth.

I just wrote about a study showing the leftwing bias of the “fact-checkers” such sites rely on.

But I’ll toss this in, too: According to the CDC, the number of children in the US under age 15 who have died of COVID-19 is 42 out of 135,579 as of July 25th. That represents 0.03% of all virus deaths, and only 0.3% of all deaths in that age group. Eighty percent of COVID-19 deaths are among the elderly, and people under 45 account for less than 3%. COVID-19 is not even among the 10 leading causes of deaths of children school-age and younger. So while it must be taken very seriously, and obviously, all children are not immune to it, saying they’re “almost immune” doesn’t sound like it’s that far off the mark to me.

Incidentally, those numbers come from a must-read article by Heritage.org with a number of surprising facts and debunked popular claims about COVID-19. For instance, it is not the leading cause of death in America right now, the US does not have the highest COVID-19 death rate in the world, and Florida’s deaths-per-million rate is far from equaling that of New York (by 327 to 1,685.) Listen to the media long enough, and you’ll be like the old Firesign Theater album: “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”

Mike Huckabee

So, if you defund the police, what do you replace them with?

According to a blueprint reportedly backed by a majority of the Seattle City Council, the Police Department “perpetuates racism and violence” and upholds “white supremacy culture,” so they want to replace it with non-profit programs and “community-led activities.” They’re seeking groups that are “well-versed in de-escalation skills and mental health support,” including “trauma-informed, gender-affirming, anti-racist praxis,” and that are “committed to retention of social service workers with adequate and equitable pay and benefits, preferably unionized” and have a “demonstrated commitment to a harm-reduction model, including safer consumption practices.” They'd also better have really excellent medical insurance benefits.

There’s a lot more of this touchy-feely, leftwing fantasyland word salad at the link, but to help the citizens of Seattle, I’ll boil it down to just one word:

“MOVE!”

Mike Huckabee

Many Trump supporters are frustrated that the President seemed unprepared for some of the tough questions about the US coronavirus response in his Axios interview with Jonathan Swan. So he might want to take a cue from Matt Margolis at PJ Media, who has some advice for him on how to explain it in clearer terms.

Margolis points out that in comparing the US negatively to Germany and South Korea in terms of deaths per million, Swan cherry-picked two nations but left out a lot of others. In fact, the US is not #1 in deaths per million, but tenth.

Also, the US isn’t a small, homogenous nation with one all-powerful central government; it’s a collection of 50 states that the federal government can only offer aid and advice to as they make their own local decisions, and with Constitutional rights for individuals that must be accommodated (even if they are trampled in some blue states.) Because of that, many of the COVID-19 deaths have been in a small handful of Northeastern blue states. If you lifted New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and DC out and lumped them together as if they were a nation, they would lead the world in deaths per 100,000, while the entire remaining states together would come in 18th.

Liberal media outlets would like us to believe that Trump is somehow responsible for the bad decisions made by local Democratic officials, like forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients. Trump didn’t run the New York State or City response to the virus, but he did insure that the predicted deadly shortages of ventilators and hospital rooms (remember that scare story?) never materialized.

If Swan wants to know who was in charge of the response in New York, maybe he should interview New York City’s Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. Wait, I’m sorry: she’s now the former Health Commissioner. She just resigned and blasted Mayor DeBlasio on her way out the door. She wrote, “I leave my post today with deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the health department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been.” There had been longstanding conflicts between her and DeBlasio, who said he needs team players: “It had been clear in recent days that it was time for a change. We need an atmosphere of unity. We need an atmosphere of common purpose.” (Can you imagine the media's reaction if Dr. Fauci had resigned and blasted Trump, and he replied that he needed team players?)

Please note that I’m not even going to comment on which side is right here. I may think that DeBlasio has done a terrible job, but that doesn’t mean that he should have done whatever Dr. Barbot said. Way back in April, when there were reports of dust-ups between Trump and Fauci, I said I wouldn’t be surprised, since they both have different jobs. Fauci has only the health issue to deal with, and if he thinks we could prevent even only COVID-19 death by shutting down the economy for two years, he might think it’s worth it. But Trump is more like a general overseeing a battlefield: he has to consider all the ramifications and unintended consequences; he can’t focus solely on one platoon if it’s going to cost him the war in the long run.

We have pandemics all the time (remember swine flu in 2009?), but we can’t shut down the world for a year or more until we develop a vaccine for all of them. Maybe DeBlasio thought he was protecting both New York’s health and its economy. He simply failed on both counts.

Mike Huckabee

MEDIA-WORSHIP OF CHRISTOPHER STEELE LIKE A BAD JOKE NOW

The rug has been pulled out from under those who insisted for years that Christopher Steele was some brilliant British super-sleuth who had the goods on Donald Trump. He turned out to be pretty sorry at intelligence-gathering, and even his fiction appears to have been gleaned from others more creative than he.

As Mollie Hemingway reminds us in THE FEDERALIST, Steele was supposed to have a “vast network of credible and well-connected sources spread throughout Europe,” but he really didn’t.

In the media, Steele was reverently described as “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence.” Whew, that sounds impressive. Before he was even identified, MOTHER JONES described him as maybe the foremost expert in Russia matters in the world! Ooh, big stuff. They said he “spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and...now works with a U.S. firm that gathers information on corporate clients.” HA, that “U.S. firm” turned out to be Fusion GPS, the dirty oppo research company working for Hillary and the Democratic National Committee. Not quite so impressive now, is he?

As we’ve reported, Steele got all his information from his “primary sub-source,” identified as Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, who was a staffer at the leftist think-tank (make that “think”-tank) the Brookings Institute. Recall that the Brookings Institute was at that time headed by longtime Clinton ally Strobe Talbott. (Again, when it comes to lies and corruption, all roads lead back to Hillary.) Danchenko picked up nothing that was actually documented; instead, he depended on what Hemingway describes as “rumors, drunken gossip, and outright brainstorming, conjecture and speculation.”

Hearsay based on hearsay was conveyed to Steele, who, in his admitted desperation to keep Trump out of the White House, dramatically overstated it.

No one ever had any reason to believe any of this, other than that they just wanted to. They thought they could turn Trump’s image into that of some evil Manchurian candidate and keep him away from power. That’s why the media grabbed onto the outrageously fake story with both hands and wouldn’t let go. As Hemingway reminds us, Adam Goldman of THE NEW YORK TIMES actually won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting the false “Russia collusion” narrative. (I will add that he should humbly return it, as the award is as fake as the story.)

When the narrative turned out to be bunk, Goldman and his colleague Charlie Savage got together and turned on a dime to make their story more about the unmasking of Danchenko as Steele’s source. (Hemingway provides the link to this.) Clever, these media hacks. They gave no evidence that Danchenko had been promised anonymity, though he was promised immunity for speaking with the FBI. Late in their story, they do admit problems with the dossier --- what else can they do? --- while simultaneously glossing over them.

The Horowitz report, which came out last December, strongly criticized FBI investigators for mischaracterizing the Steele dossier and the results of the Danchenko interview to the FISA court, just to keep renewing their warrant to spy on Carter Page (and thus the Trump campaign, and thus Trump.)

As Hemingway reminds us, revisionists have tried to say that the “dossier” didn’t actually come out until after the election. But that timeline isn’t right; we know that it --- and other so-called “dossiers” designed to damage Trump --- were kicking around during the summer of 2016. Steele himself admitted in a British court (he was being sued by executives of Alfa bank) that he was meeting with media and law enforcement people about the “dossier” prior to the election, as he wanted it weaponized and used against Trump.

Steele even told a State Department official, Kathleen Kavalec, that it was his goal to get the story around before the election; she provided notes about that to the FBI investigators, so they knew good and well. And Michael Isikoff’s September 2016 story about Carter Page being a Russian asset was taken right from the “dossier.”

Other media outlets, mostly on the left but even THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, inflated Steele’s resume and mystique. They really should be embarrassed now; I wonder how many of them are. Read Mollie’s entire piece; it’s quite entertaining. In fact, some of it is a real laff riot, as when she quotes NYT reporter Scott Shane as saying in January of 2017, “If all the information in the dossier is false, it is a very sophisticated fabrication.” Hahahahaha. That sounds so ridiculous now.

Come on, it was a pile of stinking, unverifiable garbage that many of us could tell was fake from the start. You in the media were taken for a ride, and you’d buy the ticket again if it meant you could hurt President Trump.

Mike Huckabee

Since 2016, there’s been a Twitter account allegedly run by an anonymous Arizona State University anthropology professor who claimed to be gay and Native American and to have fled Alabama because of the South’s “oppression of queer folk.” The widely-cited account promoted leftwing social justice issues. Recently, the writer claimed to have contracted COVID-19 because she’d been forced to come in and teach. She accused ASU of forcing her to continue giving 200-person lectures and to have cut her salary by 15% while she was hospitalized. And then came the announcement that she had died.

It was all very sad and tragic and infuriating…until the announcement came that every word of it was a big, fat lie. ASU has been closed since March and didn’t cut anyone’s salary. Also, the professor never really existed. Tuesday, one of the account’s Twitter contacts, BethAnn McLaughlin, admitted to making up the entire hoax. In a statement through her lawyer, she said, “I take full responsibility for my involvement in creating the @sciencing_bi Twitter account. My actions are inexcusable. I apologize without reservation to all the people I hurt.”

On the plus side, this does impart a very valuable lesson: Twitter is an open fire hydrant of sewage. Be very careful about which Twitter accounts you trust. There’s mine, and…well, after that, you’re on your own.

Mike Huckabee

Susan Rice is the latest to be cited in the media as the current frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s running mate. He has committed to choosing a woman, and he's pretty well obligated to choose a woman of color as well. Naturally, the leftist media are obsessed with who it will be.

Folks, it’s all theatrics. Kamala Harris won't be it; Val Demings won't be it. And neither will Susan Rice, though she does have suitable Obama connections. Precisely none of the women mentioned as candidates for the #2 spot in recent weeks can help Biden win, and, more importantly, given the circumstances, none of them can be envisioned as President of the United States, because we all know that Biden, if he's still even the candidate on Election Day and (shudder) wins, will be replaced practically on the spot. Rice, with her foreign policy credentials, might have a little more gravitas than the others –- it wouldn’t take much to stand out in that crowd –- but she still has way too many problems.

For one thing –- not that it would matter to hard-core Democrat party hacks and rabid anti-Trumpers –- she’s a liar of great repute. By that I don’t mean little lies here and there, tiny fibs that might be rationalized as necessary for national security, but huge politically-charged whoppers told repeatedly on national TV and even under oath. I’m still enough of an optimist to think that this would matter to the independent voters, the folks in the middle, the thoughtful “swing” voters that Biden or any challenger would need to sway.

Of course, we all know that Rice lied her head off about the cause of the 2012 attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed. She went on five different Sunday shows and told the same fake story about an anti-Islam YouTube video setting off protests that turned violent. Hillary told the same story. We all know it was fabricated to cover up the fact that it was a terrorist attack. American personnel were not given the protection they needed and deserved, help was not provided once the attack was underway, and our people ended up dead. But Rice did her political duty. From then on, we knew what she was made of.

That was just the first. Later on, we found out that Rice had written a curious “note to self” on the very last day of the Obama administration --- just as Trump was being sworn in, in fact. It was a “memo to the file” about the meeting she'd attended (aside: WITH JOE BIDEN) in the Oval Office on January 5, 2017, to say that Obama had told them everything having to do with the “Russia” investigation had to be done “by the book.” I think she mentioned that five times. This is what you call a “CYA” memo. She was “C”-ing Obama’s “A.”

Later, she covered her own “A,” too. She had her lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, who also happens to have been PRESIDENT OBAMA’S WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL, write a letter to Sens. Grassley, Graham, Feinstein and Whitehouse, saying, “While serving as National Security Advisor, Ambassador Rice was not briefed on the existence of any FBI investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, and she later learned of the fact of this investigation from Director Comey’s subsequent testimony.”

Oh, really?? Comey didn’t testify until March 20, 2017, but Rice was present at the January 5 Oval Office meeting that dealt with exactly that –- in particular, with the investigation into Michael Flynn.

And it gets worse. She also denied this under oath. On September 8, 2017, she gave sworn testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (then chaired by Republican Devin Nunes) that she knew nothing about the FBI’s “Russia” investigation while she was at the White House. Apparently anticipating some difficult questioning from Republicans, she arrived with two attorneys from Latham & Watkins (Ruemmler’s firm). Ironically, it was a couple of questions from Democrats that tripped her up.

Adam Schiff: “Director Comey testified that, in July of last year [2016], he began a counterintelligence investigation into people associated with the Trump campaign and what contacts they may have had with Russia. That investigative responsibility, wasn’t part of your portfolio, I take it?”

Rice: “No, not at all.”

Schiff: “And would Director Comey brief you on the progress of his investigation?”

Rice: “No. I think it’s important for everybody to understand: We were not informed by Director Comey or the attorney general that there was an active investigation of anybody in the Trump orbit...In the Obama White House, we maintained scrupulously the firewall between the people in the White House and contacts with Justice about potential or actual criminal matters. The only communication that was sanctioned in that vein was between the White House counsel and the Justice Department or the FBI.”

She goes on: “And Director Comey did not volunteer to us, not only then but for the duration of his administration, that there was an active investigation of anybody in the Trump orbit...I learned about it formally in the public domain after I left office.”

And later…

Eric Swalwell: “Is it fair to say that, as the national security adviser, you were not read in on active, ongoing investigations that the Department of Justice or the FBI were conducting?”

Rice: “Absolutely, that’s the case. Those were law enforcement matters...”

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Who is she kidding?

According to the Horowitz report, testimony from Comey differs markedly from that of Rice. Comey said the Obama team knew about the FBI’s investigation in detail, almost from the start. He said Rice was one of the people he had told (along with Obama) about “Crossfire Hurricane” in the summer of 2016. And, of course, her presence at the January 5 meeting shows she had to have been aware of the Michael Flynn case.

So, it appears that Biden’s current frontrunner for the VP slot has lied quite brazenly under oath. She'd had plenty of practice before then, too. Leftists won’t care one bit, but I don’t think swing voters will want to put someone in office who more appropriately belongs in jail. We knew Hillary belonged in jail; notice she didn't win in 2016.

This excellent article from RealClear Investigations details all of Rice's lies.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

AN OPEN LETTER TO MISS MANNERS (Judith Martin)

Dear Miss Manners,

Please let me preface this letter by saying I am a longtime fan of your column, as I am distressed by the lack of courtesy in today’s society and always appreciate your witty replies. You may or may not be aware that I have even affectionately parodied your column with “Miss Mannerly,” here on this very website. That said, here is the original, very thoughtful letter you received and your answer ("Clarifying racism for a white man") that has prompted my missive to you:

I do agree with you that talking about what racism is (or is not) is a semantic discussion. We currently have two “working” definitions of racism being used simultaneously, and we also have many people far too willing to throw around the “r-word.” Under one (the “classic”) definition, anyone of any race can be racist; it means the notion that people of another race are inferior to you and don’t deserve the same treatment as people of your own race. Under the other (the “evolved”) definition, only a white person can be racist, and, in part because he has lived his entire life with racial privilege by virtue of being white, he cannot be considered the victim of racism, either. Add nuance to taste, and stir.

The man who wrote to you, a self-described white male, told you he’d been informed that he would be viewed as racist for bringing up examples of how he personally was abused, targeted with racial epithets, and even lightly hit by a car while living in a mostly non-white country where he was in a racial minority.

The man was obviously trying to show empathy for others who have been treated badly because of their race. But because he is white, his view was considered unwelcome. They told him that the treatment he received was not out of racism, but “rather out of resentment for white people’s history of cruelty and injustice towards others.”

In your answer, you essentially agreed with his friends, saying that even though the treatment he had experienced had been “horrid and unfair,” it was not the same as “the experience of most marginalized groups” because it never took away his basic rights and equality. (Not having been in whatever country this was and experienced what he went through, I don’t know if that is necessarily true. As a woman, I could easily name countries that would take away MY basic rights and equality.)

You made what you called the "key" distinction between “retaliatory” bias and “inherent” bias. With all due respect, being on the receiving end of “retaliatory” bias for something one’s ancestors, as opposed to oneself, did is, to me, as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. I would make the case that it is also extremely racist.

You said his argument makes this gentleman look naive. I am hardly naive, and I agree with him.

If the treatment this man received was “...out of resentment for white people’s history of cruelty and injustice towards others,” I’m sorry, but that was still racism. The man himself had done nothing to anyone; he was being judged –- judged –- by the color of his skin. The argument being used to defend that, which you helped further, is a rationalization for racist behavior. One may agree with that rationalization or disagree as I do, but a rationalization it is.

One problem we have right now is that we’re all encouraged to be having “conversations” about race, but these “conversations” all have to be very carefully articulated in certain ways in order to avoid charges of racism. The man who wrote you obviously is not a racist, but he must speak in exactly the "right" way in order to avoid a minefield. The slightest deviation is heresy. I’m sorry, but that is not real conversation, Miss Manners. It is control. A real conversation is a two-way street, with give and take, and people try to understand each other. I don’t see that happening with this subject. To create a “safe space” for others --- even his own partner --- this person’s thoughtful view is being shut down.

Thank you, Miss Manners, for your attention. Though you are correct in saying this gentleman risks alienating some people –- that they might challenge his point and perhaps call him naive and even racist –- simply telling him to “stop” is to inhibit honest, heartfelt conversation. I, for one, am willing to (very politely) have that conversation, and if someone wants to wrongly accuse me of racism, that is the person who needs to learn some common courtesy –- and some common sense.

Mike Huckabee

When I heard the sad news that my friend Herman Cain had lost his fight with coronavirus, it was the same day, Thursday, as Rep. John Lewis’ funeral. Lewis, a strong partisan with whom I disagreed on most issues, had indeed been a brave leader for civil rights since he was a very young man and deserves recognition for that.

President Obama shared many positive words of tribute to the man and his fight for civil rights, and that was all fine. But he somehow...just...couldn’t...resist...getting political. What is it about Democrats and funerals that they just can’t avoid politics long enough to honor the dead person?

Here’s a link to the transcript of his entire speech, but I’d like to call attention to the brazenly political part, which he led into by saying we have to “keep vigilant” for the “darker currents”…

Obama:

"...Bull Connor may be gone, but today, we witnessed with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of black Americans. George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators. We may no longer have to guess the number of jellybeans in the jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power who will do their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining our Postal Service in the run-up to an election that’s gonna be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.

"I know this is a celebration of John’s life. There are some who might say we shouldn’t dwell on such things. But that’s why I’m talking about it. John Lewis devoted his time on this earth fighting the very attacks on democracy and what’s best for America that we’re seeing right now.”

ME:

Okay, Mr. Obama, you couldn’t have planned your words to be more divisive. The segregationist BULL CONNOR (a Democrat, by the way) was the city official in Birmingham, Alabama, who in the 1960s directed that fire hoses and attack dogs (!) be turned on civil rights protesters, even children, who were peacefully protesting. To bring up that kind of ugly and truly “systemic” racism of old now in light of what is happening today is as divisive and inflammatory as it gets. You should be ashamed.

By the way, since you mentioned George Wallace, I will add that this old-time segregationist actually helps exemplify the progress we’ve made in our society, in that in his later years, after being paralyzed by an attempted assassin’s bullet, he came to denounce his earlier views. But no, we have to ignore progress and dwell on the ugly past.

We aren’t seeing, as you described it, “police officers” kneeling on the “necks” of black Americans. We saw one very bad cop with his knee on the neck of a black man, and that bad cop, along with others who were complicit, have rightly been charged with MURDER. And our government did not send officers to use tear gas and batons on “peaceful” protesters. This is hardly a “peaceful” protest, and black lives are being destroyed. The neighborhoods being destroyed are largely black neighborhoods. Many of the cops are black, too, and I’m sure the last place they want to be is in the middle of that mess, having to deal not just with the violence but with racist abuse being hurled at THEM just for trying to keep the peace.

But you just had to say those things, didn't you? Thanks, Obama!

Then you went on to talk about “those in power” who will “do their darnedest” to keep people from voting. You didn’t have to get specific; we know and your cheering audience knew you meant my party, Republicans, led by President Trump, trying to stop blacks from voting…”with surgical precision,” as you put it. And in the most laughable comment you made, you said we’re “even undermining our Postal Service” when we warn against problems with mail-in ballots.

Undermining our great Postal Service? The problems with mail-in voting are real and well-documented; thousands of ballots can be “lost” at a time. THIS can be carried out with "surgical precision," as can other types of voter fraud. Imagine this in 2020 on a massive, nationwide scale.

What we want is a clean election. Most of all, we have to be able to trust the results. We want everyone to be able to vote safely --- either with distancing and masks, or with a documented absentee ballot --- and for every vote to count. EVERY vote. That’s it.

Yes, as you said, we are seeing attacks on democracy now. But I see them coming from organizations such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, largely run and funded by white people on the left. The left, where you reside.

Oh, something else: You said that if making changes to the Voting Rights Act means getting rid of the filibuster, “another Jim Crow relic,” then we should. You also likened this summer’s protests to the ones led by Dr. King. I certainly can’t speak for Dr. King, but it seems to me that he would be sickened by the violence.

As for the filibuster, yes, it was used by senators (mostly southern Democrats) to hold off passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But it has been used many times for many reasons; mostly it’s a tool to keep a bare majority from running roughshod over the minority. But the ends justify the means, right?

How I wish I could ask Herman Cain what he thought about this. On second thought, it would probably just tick him off (along with all the leftists blaming him for his own death), and he's in a much better place now.

Mike Huckabee

Many of you wrote to say you shared my disgust at the Democrats’ embarrassing attempt to take down Attorney General Bill Barr. But before I answer a few letters, I have to offer one quick update.

The way they treated the attorney general was shameful enough, but one Judiciary Committee member simply had to complain afterwards about HIS behavior. Here’s Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean: “He was disrespectful, spoke over [the] top of every one of us. In particular, he spoke over women. He was flanked by at least ten staffers –- not a person of color among them.”

Okay! We've pandered to women and people of color. Now, on to the letters...

From Linda:

Thanks for your continued excellent news, Governor! If I don't hear it from you, I don't trust it.

I think the Left sees that their end is near, and they are frantic in their targeting of Barr, Trump, and anyone who stands with them. They are trying anything and everything to take them down. But as Sen. Kennedy says, "The American people are not morons."

From the Gov:

You’re right about their fear of Barr; he’s too smart for them and knows too much. I’ll bet you could have smelled the fear in that room, and it wasn’t coming from him.

From Carlos:

As a Spinal Tap fan,"I know that Democrats "BREAK LIKE THE WIND.”

From the Gov:

And that’s the “Reader Comment Of The Day.”

From Tim:

Great article...Liberals are an embarrassment and are lawless with no dignity. No one is surprised by their behavior but everyone is very tired of seeing [it], and the coup continues in the streets at this point. The DOJ and GOP better do something about the censorship of conservatives on social media and the attack on voting with the mail-in election tampering and voter fraud.

From the Gov:

Agreed. I wish Barr showed more concern about mail-in ballots. Ballot integrity is CRITICAL this time –- every vote!

From Roberta:

I watched the hearing and was thoroughly disgusted with the way the Democratic representatives treated Mr. Barr. The Democratic Party is not the party that I grew up with...Surely the American people see through their lies and hopefully will reject any... Democrat candidate!

From the Gov:

I hope you’re right, and that traditionally independent voters will see it’s impossible now to vote for anyone with a “D” by his or her name. We’ve gotten a good look at what the party as a whole has become. Anything that strengthens the Democrat Party as it exists today is wrong for America.

From Karen:

Loved the reference to 1984 with the “two minutes of hate” comment. I am rereading 1984 after reading it the first time some 45 years ago. Orwell had no idea what a prophet he really was. Thank you for your common-sense approach to the news!

From the Gov:

Thanks, Karen. George Orwell imagined his bleak society of the future long before the digital age, GPS and video surveillance, which take “Big Brother” to a whole new level. But hate --- hate is timeless, like the quest for power. If the “democratic” socialists running the Democrat Party today could remake America, it would end up just like Animal Farm.

From Helen:

When Nadler said to the attorney general, "...You should be ashamed of yourself," it was too much for me. Nadler is the one who should be ashamed –- he should never show his face again. He should resign and go into hiding.

I wish there was a way to thank the attorney general and to let him know how much sympathy and sadness we have for him for going through that awful treatment.

From the Gov:

Nadler has no shame. And believe it or not, there are some who hate Trump so much, they applaud Nadler for abusing Barr. But I think Barr knows that lovers of the law are applauding HIM for his resilience. I also get the impression he’s determined to do the right thing, regardless, for its own sake. When Barr is in the room, Nadler and his Democrat colleagues are far outclassed. Not to mention outwitted --- that’s why they couldn’t risk letting him talk.

From Glenda:

Is there any way to censure the [House] Judiciary Committee for this proceeding? I have never seen anything like this before!

From the Gov:

They deserve that, but censure requires a vote on the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t about to allow that, as she is no doubt pleased as punch with them. This is the woman who tore up the President’s State of the Union speech and has essentially called Republicans murderers.

From Laurie:

Nadler, you have met Antifa and they are you.

From the Gov:

Laurie, you’ve hit on something. It reminds me of the Greg Gutfeld tweet we featured in our own commentary. People like Nadler are using their positions of power to do to America figuratively what Antifa is doing literally; namely, burning it down. In that sense, because these elected leaders do have such power, they are even more dangerous than people with torches.

From Shannon:

...I pray that the American people can see through this and show their feelings at the polls in November. God bless the United States of America.

From the Gov:

Indeed. And I’ll leave the discussion on that hopeful note.

Mike Huckabee

It turned out to be a good thing that Attorney General Bill Barr released his opening statement in advance of his appearance before Jerrold Nadler's House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, as that statement was just about the only way he had to express an opinion or offer any information at all.

In fact, he could have just submitted it and not even appeared, as Team Nadler had obviously huddled beforehand and decided not to let him answer their questions.

Their strategy was to berate him, throw an incriminating question at him, and, as soon as he began speaking, interrupt with the parliamentary phrase “Reclaiming my time,” intended to make him stop. When ranking Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio requested that they quit cutting Barr off, Nadler responded, “What you want is irrelevant. Irrelevant to the rules.”

While attempting to smear Barr as someone who acts politically, they turned their own hearing into the worst political spectacle since impeachment. (Once again, Democrats do the very thing they accuse others of doing.) The level of hate in that room was turned up to 10 –- for fans of Spinal Tap, 11 –- and it reminded me, uncomfortably, of the Antifa burn-it-all-down show currently playing in an American city near you. It was that nasty. Here’s an example of how it went down.

Here’s a more amusing take, as we could all use a laugh.

In the most bizarre, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink moment of all, Barr was implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide.

I get the impression the Democrats must start every day with a Two Minutes Hate against both Trump and Barr. They likely hate (and fear) Barr as much as they do Trump himself, as Barr has no doubt seen every bit of classified material that incriminates them in scandal. He KNOWS. They know he knows. And he knows they know he knows.

Chairman Nadler showed a similar lack of respect to his Republican colleagues, telling them they couldn’t even have water during the hearing. In retrospect, that might have been a good thing, because he refused even a five-minute bathroom break when Barr finally, politely, asked for one. He received no break for lunch or for...anything else.

Barr did get a few chances to express himself, such as when he said, “What makes me concerned for the country is that it’s the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our great political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence and the attack on federal courts.” Amazingly, he managed to call the Democratic Party “one of our great political parties” without revealing a trace of sarcasm, which would probably have been impossible for me to do.

Weirdly, Democrats keep trying to insist the protest has been “peaceful” when Barr sees it as decidedly not. No doubt you’ve seen video from Seattle, Portland and Atlanta; what do YOU think it is? Any sane person would agree with Barr. It has been a bloody freak show, and the violence needed to be shut down with the first brick thrown.

The always colorful and thoughtful Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana appeared Tuesday night on Shannon Bream’s FOX NEWS show, where he expressed disgust. He said he had to turn the hearing off after watching “bits and pieces” of it, because, he said, “It was triggering my gag reflex.” Rather than being a hearing, he said, it was “an attempted persecution" --- one he thought the American people would see through.

"I think the point that some of my Democratic colleagues seemed to be trying to make was that the attorney general is out of control. But what they really mean is that he’s out of THEIR control.”

Exactly!

He went on: “Bill Barr is guided by the rule of law, and he doesn’t do anyone’s bidding. He calls it like he sees it. I thought that he was, for the most part, his usual unflappable self. And he’s tough; you’ve got to be tough to be in that job. He’s tough as a pine knot, and I respect that about him as well.”

Since Barr didn’t get to talk much about the true nature of these “peaceful” protests, I’ll link to this excellent commentary from Victor Davis Hanson, who ends on an optimistic note that the American public will recognize what this is and push back forcefully on Election Day.

Finally, a couple of tweets to wrap up the day. Byron York tweeted: “Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton speaking to Attorney General Bill Barr, in a line that sums up today’s Judiciary Committee appearance: “You’ll have a chance to comment after your testimony is over today.”

And this caution, from Greg Gutfeld: “In that hearing you witnessed people whose salaries you pay, accuse a man of murder and treason – then refuse to let him speak or defend himself. You think the unbending mob on the street is worse? No, this is. And it’s coming for you.”

We’ll be ready. As Sen. Kennedy said, “The American people are not morons.”

Mike Huckabee

We’re seeing exactly what happens when we give the mob its wish and order the police to stand down. These protesters don’t say, “Well, that’s more like it” and go home; they ramp up the violence because now they figure they can get away with even more.

Law professor Glenn Reynolds of the Instapundit blog has written wisely that the inevitable result of this is not a utopian society with no evil gestapo cops, but vigilante justice. The people will only put up with being terrorized for so long, particularly when the officials they foolishly elected abandon them to the mob and tell them, as the Seattle Police Chief just did, that “we can no longer enforce the law. You are on your own.”

The only responses in such a case range across a spectrum from armed self-defense to neighborhood patrols to gangs to vigilante groups to militias. Do the leftist leaders of these cities really prefer any of those options to police (I exempt Chicago, since they’ve obviously preferred letting gangs run wild to backing the police for years)? As Prof. Reynolds puts it, “In the end, the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, they’re there to protect criminals from the public. Communities dealt with crime long before police were invented, usually in rather harsh and low-due-process ways. The bargain was, let the police handle it instead. No police, no bargain.”

All those who accuse the police of not being gentle enough with them when they assault someone or steal or destroy someone’s property really aren’t going to like what happens if the police go away and their victims start dealing directly with the problem themselves.

Mike Huckabee

Once again on Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the Court’s liberals against First Amendment religious freedom protections. In a stunning 5-4 ruling against Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley in Nevada that echoed a similar ruling in May against a California church, the SCOTUS refused to hear an appeal arguing that churches, synagogues and mosques shouldn’t have to comply with the Democratic Governor’s 50-person limit on worship services to combat COVID-19.

This is blatantly discriminatory against people of faith because it applies only to them. In a blistering dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that the restriction doesn’t apply to casinos or movie theaters, which could easily be packing in hundreds of people with far fewer health precautions than places of worship are imposing. Not to mention all the anti-police protests for which restrictions never apply, since they’re an exercise of First Amendment rights that liberal officials agree with.

Sen. Ted Cruz sarcastically tweeted that churches should install craps tables; then maybe they’d be allowed to open. My reaction was blunter: I called on Roberts to repent and resign:

Here’s another great commentary by Andrea Widburg on this outrageous ruling that calls it “a constitutional no-brainer.” She writes that “There’s something very wrong at the Supreme Court, and Justice Roberts seems to sit at the heart of the problem.” She adds that the only way to insure a real conservative majority on the Court is to reelect Trump so that he can make more appointments, and if Biden is elected, the “Constitution will be abandoned for the foreseeable future.”

(Ms. Widburg also makes the excellent point that Nevada’s COVID-19 death rate is only 0.02%, with almost all the cases concentrated near Las Vegas, more than 400 miles away from the church. Yet the casinos can open and the church cant’?)

Roberts seems to believe that his job is not to declare unconstitutional laws unconstitutional (it's actually his #1 job), but to find some legal excuse to justify whatever the government does, on the theory that if elected officials did it, then the people must want it. The Bill of Rights does not exist to insure that the government or even the majority always get what they want but to protect the people from their own government. It’s also not a list of rights granted by government until they have a good reason to take them away. It’s a list of God-given rights granted to every American by their Creator that the government has no power to take away.

If Chief Justice Roberts can’t figure out the difference by this stage of his career, then it’s time to find a new career.

Mike Huckabee

There’s been a huge development related to the story we brought you a few days ago about Peter Strzok’s plan to use President Trump’s first official intelligence briefing to spy on him in January of 2017. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Thursday declassified a memo that details the specifics of an earlier briefing, with then-candidate Trump, in August of 2016. That briefing must have made Strzok very happy, because one can see from this new memo that they were already using such meetings to spy on Trump when he was still a candidate.

In fact, they filed the memo in several very interesting places mostly unrelated to the stated purpose of the briefing: under “Crossfire Hurricane,” code name for the “Trump/Russia” investigation; under “Crossfire Razor,” code name for the investigation of Michael Flynn; under “FARA,” the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and also under the vaguely titled “Russia Sensitive Investigative Matter.”

As reported by John Solomon, the memo shows that agent Joe Pientka attempted to gather evidence against both Trump and Flynn, not just briefing the candidate but also writing down the questions Trump asked during the meeting and scrutinizing the demeanor of attendee Flynn as well.

Recall that Strzok wrote later in an email to his boss Bill Priestap that he was “angry” (his word) he’d been left out of the loop ahead of the January 2017 briefing, as he planned to use it to further his investigation and wanted to offer input beforehand. In other words, this was far more than just an intelligence briefing; it was a set-up to play "gotcha" with the newly-inaugurated President, and his colleagues knew it. Unbelievable.

But true. As for the earlier briefing of then-candidate Trump, a source told FOX NEWS that “...the briefing was used as ‘a cover to listen for any remarks’ by Trump or others about the Russian federation.” See the report by Brooke Singman and Gregg Re here.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/source-says-fbi-agent-used-2016-briefing-on-election-interference-as-cover-to-question-trump-team

This intelligence briefing, held August 17, 2016, was supposedly to brief candidate Trump on foreign election interference. But according to the typewritten notes of FBI agent Joe Pientka, the agent “actively listened” for what was said on certain topics, particularly the Russian federation, using his 13-minute briefing for “cover” to monitor both Donald Trump and Michael Flynn.

The briefing was held at the FBI’s New York Field Office. Also in attendance was Trump campaign adviser and former candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. (As far as we know, all this is news to him.)

It was Pientka’s duty as the one giving the briefing to “warn and tell the candidates what they needed to watch out for.” Yet even with their supposed evidence about the Russians targeting the Trump campaign, Pientka did not tell Trump and/or Flynn that this was happening.

Interestingly, the document written by Pientka and supplied to FOX NEWS shows that it was approved by both Peter Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith. Clinesmith, you’ll recall, is the subject of a criminal referral –- so far the only one we know of –- for altering a document to say that Carter Page had not worked as our own asset for the CIA when he actually had done just that. (Page’s work with the CIA would have been exculpatory evidence for him, but somehow they ‘forgot’ to mention it in the FISA application to spy on him, altered evidence of it, and accused Page of being a Russian agent instead.)

According to the FOX NEWS source, Pientka was at that time also handling the FBI’s investigation into Flynn. (Recall that Pientka and Strzok were the two agents who went to the White House to interview Flynn just a few days into his new job as Trump’s new national security adviser.) The same source told FOX NEWS that the briefing was used as “a cover to listen for any remarks” by candidate Trump or others about the Russian federation.

Note that these officials were really out to get Flynn at that time; this particular incident of spying may have been just as much about snagging HIM as it was about stopping candidate Trump. With all Flynn knew about the inner workings of the intelligence community, they did NOT want him working with Trump. This concern would no doubt become a desperate one after Trump was elected.

Another senior administration official did not hold back in commenting to FOX NEWS, saying that this document “shows the same cast of virulent characters that spearheaded the Russia hoax and set Trump up from ‘jump.’” They were trying to make good on their promise to keep Trump from winning. It was “a scam briefing from a scam crew of miscreants at the FBI.”

Then-FBI Director James Comey later testified that he had assured President Trump he was not personally under investigation. (Recall that Trump at the time was understandably upset that Comey wouldn’t come out and state it publicly.) But Comey was lying to Trump. The FBI had Trump under an electron microscope, both before and after he was in office.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, on Sean Hannity’s TV show Thursday night, clarified how they conducted that early briefing. “The FBI went to then-candidate Trump...They told him Russia might try to spy on you; what they didn’t tell him is, ‘WE’RE spying on you.” And they did it just 17 days into this investigation. It opens on July 31; August 17, they do this. Thirteen minutes for the ‘defensive briefing,’ the part...you’re supposed to get; and then an hour and 42 minutes where they’re trying to get information and set the [candidate] up.”

Jordan went on to say that this came very shortly after Strzok’s August 8 text to Lisa Page in which he said, “We’ll stop it [Trump’s election],” and his August 15 text to Page about the “insurance policy” discussed in “Andy’s office” (Andrew McCabe). Just two days later, they start implementing that insurance policy.

Gregg Jarrett, also on Hannity’s show, brought up the fact that Pientka has been scrubbed from the FBI website and is now cloistered in the San Fransisco Field Office, where the FBI refuses to make him available after repeated demands by Congress. And who is responsible for that, as well as for the excruciating delays in releasing these memos? Why, that would be current FBI Director Christopher Wray, of course! Every time we have a story that involves slow-walked evidence, we always seem to end up back at Wray’s office door, which is always closed.

Mike Huckabee

Remember when we said that if Biden were elected, he’d essentially be bringing back the old Obama machine to the White House? (Of course, my writer Laura Ainsworth has been saying for two years that Michelle Obama will end up either being the nominee or running on the ticket with Biden –- if he manages to make it to the election –- with the goal that she end up in the Oval Office with the original Obama team.)

Well, we'd like to thank Ray Arroyo on Laura Ingraham’s “Seen and Unseen” segment Wednesday for pointing something out. Former President Obama and presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden got together to record a video conversation, and the Biden campaign has released a trailer. The campaign made quite a production out of it, with cameras following the two men as they exit their cars with entourages in tow and even time their entrances from the elevators. Arroyo describes it as playing “like a streaming event.”

He also points out one moment in this trailer in which “Obama reveals more than perhaps he intended.” Can you guess what it is?

It's when Obama says this: “You are going to be able to reassemble [pause and big hand gesture] the kind of government that cares about people and brings people together.”

Okay...REASSEMBLE? Arroyo recalls for his audience the “old group” of Susan Rice, Eric Holder and John Kerry; of course, there are many more. (Quite a few of them are probably still at the FBI.) Whether or not Michelle Obama is Biden's running mate, it’s easy to see that the same old Democrat machine will be back if he wins. Deja vu all over again.

And does anyone think Biden would be willing and able to stop the lawlessness in “blue” cities around the country? No, the only way he'd be able to quell the protests would be to give those thugs everything they demand. They have a long list of "reforms" that would end America as we know it, and Biden would just do it all. I like what Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia said on BREITBART NEWS TONIGHT about Biden, that he is the “leader of lawlessness.”

Collins, who is now running for the U.S. Senate, praised President Trump for working to restore law and order when that is exactly what our country desperately needs.

Elections have consequences, said host Matthew Boyle, and he had a message for those who care about law and order: “I’m calling out to all the listeners of Breitbart Radio tonight: do not think for one second the conservative voice in America needs to be complacent in this country. If you don’t like [it] in these cities, if you don’t like lawlessness, if you don’t like the liberal takeover of your rights and your freedoms, your guns, or anything else, then you have to do more than simply just talk about it.”

We have to fight for what matters, he said. That includes having “a bigger conversation” about “the fact that Joe Biden in his basement in Delaware has been subscribing to these ultra-leftist positions of defunding the police and disrespecting the police.” He has “caved to leftist groups.”

Nothing less than a “conservative movement” will stop this.

But these are the people to whom Joe Biden would bow.

Here are just a few of the ideas these “woke” prosecutors in the Seattle area –- King County –- would like to see considered:

First, to not necessarily file third-degree assault charges against someone who attacks a police officer. “These (charges) often arise from aggressive responses by law enforcement officers toward persons of color, or from an arrestee’s mental health or substance abuse episode,” so such cases should be filed “reluctantly.”

Also, to not file third-degree assault charges against someone who attacks a police officer if the officer didn’t have his bodycam turned on or didn’t have proper training in de-escalation and “implicit bias.”

In addition, to give crime investigators “less input” into bail recommendations. But this group does have recommendations of their own; for example, they think “Burglary 2” suspects with no violent history shouldn’t be held in jail during a pandemic “simply because [Seattle] PD is annoyed by how often they’re responding to break-ins.” (!)

They also recommend that prosecutors not file charges on referrals for: escape, eluding, drug possession, drug possession with intent to deliver, delivery of controlled substance, second-degree burglary, and auto theft, “as long as the suspect “has remained crime free from when the case was referred to present.”

I wish I could say I was making this up, but it’s real. All of these crimes would essentially go unpunished. As in, go and sin no more!

The prosecutor who brought this letter to the attention of FOX Q13 (and did not wish to be identified) was disheartened. “I don’t even know why we’re prosecutors anymore,” this person said. Indeed. “It seems almost as if the prosecutor’s office becomes less and less relevant and necessary to a safe society when we’re willing to let burglars or robbers go free or have a license to assault police officers.”

This letter isn’t the only “starting point” for long-term “reform” of law enforcement in Seattle. Tuesday, an internal memo from the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention outlined their plan to end juvenile detention by 2025 and to close the King County Jail in downtown Seattle once the pandemic is under control.

And this November, King County residents will vote on whether the sheriff will continue to be elected or instead be appointed, responsible just to county officials. Some, obviously, in county government are pushing to have more direct control over the sheriff. Voters will also decide whether or not the charter can be changed to transfer some policing functions to “other offices.” (Uh-oh.) As councilmember Girmay Zahilay said, “Millions of people around the nation have said we need to redirect most policing functions to unarmed, public health, and community-based alternatives. The King County Charter as currently written does not allow us to do this.”

Maybe the people who wrote the King County Charter “as currently written” were not insane. Does anyone think that a (shudder) President Joe Biden --- or whoever his chosen successor might be --- would do anything to preserve law and order in an environment such as this? Biden has already said he definitely would “redirect” funds away from the police. There is no question that he would support redirecting their duties as well.

This would be a hopeless situation for law enforcement. So what we need to do this November is “redirect” the power away from leftists and back towards law enforcement, and the one we can count on to oversee that is President Trump.

Mike Huckabee

Judicial Watch has done it again. We now have even more texts and emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, who were having an affair during the time they were targeting Donald Trump, first as a hated candidate and later as President-elect. These two were texting and emailing each other so much that it’s hard to imagine they ever got any work done, but somehow they managed. At this point, I’ve lost track of the number of communications we’ve seen that relate to abuse of FBI power.

The emails we’re just now seeing –- still heavily redacted, unfortunately –- were written right around the time of Trump’s inauguration, with some concerning a White House intelligence briefing of the new President. Besides including Strzok and Page, these emails were circulated among then-deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap, and others as well. The frantic flurry of communications going on just before and after Trump’s inauguration testifies to the mood among top FBI officials at that time.

I’d say the most interesting email of all is that from Strzok about the White House briefing --- one that could “play into” the FBI’s “investigative strategy.” The exchanges leading up to it, written the night before the inauguration, are heavily redacted (NOTE to FBI Director Wray: these redactions obviously are for the FBI’s own “CYA” and are not acceptable), but then, we see that on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump was sworn in, Strzok forwarded to Lisa Page and another person (name redacted) an email he’d sent earlier that day to Priestap, asking them to “not forward/share.” Strzok had written Priestap in reference to the White House briefing: “...I am angry that Jen [counterintelligence official Jennifer Boone] did not at least cc: me. AS MY BRANCH HAS PENDING INVESTIGATIVE MATTERS THERE, THIS BRIEF MAY PLAY INTO OUR INVESTIGATIVE STRATEGY [emphasis mine], and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle the WH [White House] detailee interaction.”

Translation: I want to use the White House intelligence briefing of the new President to continue investigating him, and I’m mad because Jen left me out of the loop.

Other emails from this period detailed in the press release relate to Strzok’s assessment of media reports on the Steele “dossier.” We’ve looked at one such memo by Strzok already, the one in which he admits the NEW YORK TIMES report on Trump colluding with Russian agents was false. Much more detail is here in the press release; it’s kind of “into the weeds,” but if you have time to go through it, some of this stuff is quite entertaining.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton (who deserves huge thanks for working for so long to obtain all this evidence), had this to say, in part: “These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office... And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noticed that Wray’s FBI and Barr’s DOJ continue to slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails --- which means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won’t be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!”

This is because the FBI has been processing emails at the rate of only 500 pages per month (!) and has yet to process text messages. Again, this is completely unacceptable, Director Wray. Who knows what is still buried in there? (Answer: maybe Director Wray does.) But right now, we go with what we’ve got, and what we’ve got is tons of incriminating material.

John Solomon at JUST THE NEWS has also written a piece --- highly recommended --- on Strzok’s email about the White House briefing. It goes on to quote some longtime intelligence analysts who can hardly believe this happened. They told Solomon that “...any effort to use official briefings of the President and his White House to spy, investigate or gather information violated the necessary trust for keeping a President apprised of intelligence in a dangerous world.”

Mike Huckabee

As most expected, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the city’s hyper-partisan top prosecutor, set aside the city’s huge backlog of homicides and charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey with felony unlawful use of a weapon for brandishing a rifle and a pistol to warn protesters away from their home. The case made national headlines. Mark McCloskey, who is an attorney himself, said the protesters (sorry: “peaceful protesters”) broke through a gate, entered his private property, and were advancing toward his home, threatening him, his family, and their dog.

Worth noting: When Gardner ran in the Democratic primary in 2016, she was backed by a far-left PAC partially funded by George Soros. This is part of a heavily-financed campaign (the type that got AOC into the House) which targets low-turnout races in one-party districts and cities, winning the nomination, and hence the election, for Democrat DA’s who then institute “criminal justice reform” by legalizing crime and refusing to prosecute criminals. Of course, if you dare try to protect yourself from the criminals they release, then they’ll prosecute you. From her public statement:

“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner at those participating in nonviolent protest, and while we are fortunate this situation did not escalate into deadly force, this type of conduct is unacceptable in St. Louis. We must protect the right to peacefully protest, and any attempt to chill it through intimidation will not be tolerated.”

Fortunately, it appears that almost as soon as Gardner released that statement, her case against the McCloskeys began unraveling. For one thing, the “peaceful protesters” were on private property and behaving in a threatening manner as verified on video, and Missouri has a strong Castle Doctrine law that protects the right to use a weapon to defend your life and property. There are also reports that the McCloskeys were only bluffing: the rifle wasn’t loaded and the pistol was a prop, which means neither would meet the law’s definition of a weapon “readily capable of lethal use.”

On top of that, within hours of the charges being filed, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a brief seeking to dismiss the charges, calling it “a politically-motivated prosecution by a prosecutor who is not interested in prosecuting violent crimes.” He said he would “not stand by while Missouri law is being ignored,” and he’s doing this not just for the McCloskeys but “for every Missourian whose rights are threatened by a rogue prosecutor who seeks to punish people for exercising their fundamental right to self-defense."

And if somehow, this case does come to trial, Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons says he’s already considering pardoning them.

Like all these leftist DA’s, Ms Gardner has her job definition backwards. She’s supposed to jail criminals and protect law-abiding citizens, not the other way around. On August 4th, she’s facing one challenger in the Democratic primary, Mary Pat Carl. St. Louis voters will have a very stark choice. Critics of Carl claim she will represent the law enforcement “status quo” and will end the “progressive” direction that Gardner has set the city on.

Look around you, St. Louis residents. Look at all the damage and the graffiti, the crime and bullying and assaults on police. That's the "change" Ms. Gardner has helped usher in. Does it look like “progress” to you?

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

My wife Laura and I live in the Dallas-Ft. Worth suburbs and our house used to be surrounded by woods. Recently, many of those wooded areas have been bulldozed to make way for big, ugly cement warehouses (the councilman we didn’t vote for calls this “progress;” we call it destroying our neighborhood.) Anyway, the wild animals have a dwindling habitat, and some have started appearing overnight in our backyard, foraging for food.

Since we keep raccoon hours and are up all night at the computer, we watch through the windows. We’ve seen a fox and a shockingly beautiful skunk that looks like it was brushed and groomed for the Westminster Skunk Show. But mostly, each night brings a constant stream of possums and raccoons coming and going.

I feel bad for them, so I started putting out a pan of dry dog food, which I replenish several times a night, and a bowl of water. The possums are polite: they just eat, drink and move on. The raccoons are more like frat boys on spring break. When they devour all the food and I go out to refill the dish, some of them trot alongside me like tame dogs (maybe it’s all the dog food they eat.)

But after a few months, they’ve started to lose their gratitude and act a bit…entitled. If I don’t refill the dish fast enough, they come up on the back porch, knock over the big plastic container, pull open the lid and spill food all over. So I’ve been trying to stay on top of the refills.

Then last night, I discovered that even though there was still food in the dish, some raccoon had turned over the bin anyway. They still had food, but rather than being grateful for what they’d been given, they felt entitled to simply take more from the person who had to work to pay for it.

That’s when I realized: our raccoons have become Democrats.

To wean them off their folly, I had to move the food bin inside the garage where they can’t get at it. I just hope they don’t burn the house down now. It occurred to me that they feel entitled to break something open and take things that don’t belong to them, and they’re all wearing black masks. They’re not only Democrats, but I think they might have joined Antifa.