Mike Huckabee

A lot of people are talking about (and I don’t know why) a Yahoo music editor’s article calling for replacing “The Star-Spangled Banner” as America’s National Anthem, possibly with “Imagine” by John Lennon. The excuse is that Francis Scott Key was a slaveholder (he also represented slaves trying to win their freedom in court, pro bono), and that the third verse that is never sung is “blatantly racist” (although his use of the term "slave" has been hotly debated and might mean people pressed into service by the British Navy, oh and by the way, did I mention that it’s NEVER SUNG?

This is hardly the first time anyone’s wanted to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner,” although until now, it’s usually been because it’s so hard to sing (the tune was taken from a drinking song with a high note you practically have to be drunk to attempt to hit.) The choice to replace it was usually Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” but we can’t have that now! Referring to God is almost as un-PC as honoring a slaveholder.

But what about “Imagine”? Look, I love the Beatles, but that has to be the most over-praised song of the past century. Even Lennon admitted that it’s basically the Communist Manifesto set to music. Radical leftists love it because it paints a picture of a utopian world without national borders, private property or religion, and Lennon often found himself having to correct their interpretations and reminding them that he wasn’t advocating for those things, he was just suggesting “imagining” that we didn’t have all those differences so we could work together globally.

But people DO have differences, and as experience has taught us, leftist prescriptions, like taking away religious freedom and property rights, do nothing but make them angrier and more likely for those differences to flare into war. Besides, imposing that "utopia" requires an ironfisted oppressive government, which isn’t likely in a world without borders. If the song has a dreamlike quality, that’s because it is a dream. A pipe dream.

Besides, if we had to do away with every song because the writer wasn’t a saint, we wouldn’t have much music left, and that includes John Lennon music. Wonder what the cancel culture would do if they realized John wrote a song intended as a feminist anthem that was called “Woman is the (N-word) of the World”?

As with all art, we have to learn to separate the creation from the creator. Francis Scott Key was a flawed human being, as are all human beings, but he gave us a great song that represents a great nation, and it stands for all our people. Some of the most inspiring renditions of it were performed by black entertainers, from Mahalia Jackson to Jimi Hendrix to Whitney Houston.

If the statue-smashing radicals really want to learn from the wisdom of John Lennon, I’d recommend instead a far better song: “Revolution.”

“You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world...

But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out…

You say you got a real solution, well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan.

You ask me for a contribution, well, you know, we're all doing what we can.

But if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell is brother you have to wait…

You say you'll change the Constitution, well, you know, we all want to change your head.

You tell me it's the institution, well, you know, you better free your mind instead.

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow…”

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

When last we left the Michael Flynn case, presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan had been advised by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to follow Attorney General Bill Barr’s orders and let it go. Give it up. Shake it off. And then maybe take a loooooong vacation. (Personally, I’d suggest a permanent one.)

But the stalemate continues, though it’s almost overshadowed by another revelation, made possible through the DOJ’s partial declassification of a note in Peter Strzok’s chicken-scratch handwriting, that Obama and Biden participated actively in a January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting about the incoming national security adviser. The notes even suggest Biden specifically brought up the Logan Act.

RELATED READING: Crazy: Judge Sullivan can't let Flynn case go

On Thursday, numerous pundits weighed in on the significance of this, and I was particularly intrigued by one comment from a source we’ve quoted with confidence, Undercover Huber, who tweeted: “Don’t laugh, but at this point, my working theory about Gen. Flynn and the Logan Act is that the people in the Obama administration got the idea from the freaking WEST WING cable TV show. An episode at the end of the series (“Transition”) shows the outgoing lame-duck admin in a foreign policy dispute between China and Russia. They carry out electronic surveillance of all calls with Russia and wiretap the incoming team and confront them about...the Logan Act!”

Dan Bongino brought this up in his Thursday podcast. Could it be?? We’ve seen real-life intersect with fiction before in this scandal; Christopher Steele apparently borrowed from the creative mind of wannabe screenwriter Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS. What if Biden got the idea to go after an incoming national security adviser for violating the Logan Act after seeing something similar on THE WEST WING?

We know he’s not above plagiarizing others’ words and ideas; in fact, he even dropped out of a presidential race after it was discovered he had plagiarized.

It’s likely he also stole a different idea from THE WEST WING, as Bongino illustrated by juxtaposing two clips: 1) Biden at a podium, likening the race to cure cancer to JFK’s call to put a man on the moon in 10 years, and 2) Martin Sheen playing the President in his office, giving essentially the same spiel, with similar delivery.

Hilariously, Obama borrowed the same idea, for his January 2016 State of the Union Address.

My guess is that then-Sen. Biden was a fan of that show, which depicts those in the corridors of government power the way they must love to be portrayed, with constant snappy reparte –- do they EVER tire of hearing themselves talk? –- and nonstop hectic lives, all in the interest of “governing.” Martin Sheen played a President Democrats could only dream of, and goodness knows they needed someone they could idolize in the early 2000s with George W. Bush in office. I’ve imagined this show as therapy for them.

I’d seen clips from THE WEST WING but never an entire episode. So I thought the best way to come to any conclusion would be to watch the episode in question: Season 7 (the final season), Episode 19, “Transition,” which originally ran April 24, 2006, and has been in reruns since. Obviously, this episode is set during the transition period, with President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) transitioning out and President-elect Santos (Jimmy Smits) transitioning in. Concerns are established early in the script about the new administration overstepping the old on foreign policy issues before Inauguration Day.

To set the stage, the episode opens with President-elect Santos returning congratulatory calls from foreign leaders, specifically from the G8 countries. He’s told by an aide that the rest can be dealt with by his chief foreign policy adviser. “Well, then we’d better hire one,” Santos quips.

When he gets to the call from the Russian president, he hesitates. The aide nods him forward, telling him Russia is “one of the G8's.” Santos replies, “He’s also leader of a nation we may find ourselves exchanging hostile fire with any moment.” They exchange uncomfortable looks, and Santos finally says, “Call him.”

A scene in the President Bartlet’s office establishes that the incoming President is going to be briefed in-depth on the “intervention” in Kazakhstan. Santos is taken to a secure deep-basement briefing room --- I’m guessing kind of like the one Adam Schiff’s committee used for their secret impeachment confabs --- where he’s told we’re “reaching full deployment” of ground and support personnel positioned between Chinese and Russian forces. (Say what??) When he asks what happens next, he’s has a big problem with their cavalier answer and the “entire adventure, as I’ve already expressed to the President.” He abruptly leaves the room.

Here’s where it gets interesting. As soon as he’s gone, there’s this exchange:

Official #1 --- The NSA picked up the President-elect’s congratulatory phone call with the Russian president.

Bartlet’s chief of staff (I think) --- They’re tapping his phone?

Official #2 --- In the current crisis, the NSA’s monitoring all contact with the Russian and Chinese governments as a matter of course.

Chief of Staff --- And?

Official #1 --- The Santos call contained nothing improper.

Hm, so why was this even brought up? Later in his office, Santos complains of the Kazakhstan “mess” that “they’re depositing on our doorstep.” He tells his aide to get the president of China on the phone. “China’s not one of the G8 countries,” the aide warns. The message to Santos is definitely "don't go there." But the call is placed as the scene cuts away.

Now, it gets even more interesting. We go to President Bartlet’s office.

Chief of Staff –- Sir, we have a problem.

Official #1 –- NSA monitors picked up a phone conversation between President-elect Santos and Chinese President Lian.

Prez: Yeah.

Chief of Staff: Sir, you’re not going to like what he said...

Then, everything hits the fan. There’s a twist later that reveals the incoming and outgoing Presidents --- who, significantly, are from the same political party --- had secretly coordinated this call to China, using it to play “a little geopolitical good-cop, bad-cop.” VERY different from the adversarial Obama-Trump transition. Still, the episode contains several clear messages.

1. That the incoming administration is supposed to wait till Inauguration Day to insert itself into foreign policy.

2. That the NSA wiretaps calls between incoming officials and foreign leaders. (Apparently when this episode came out in 2006, that practice was kept closer to the vest. Today, both President-elect Trump and incoming national security adviser Flynn would have been aware.)

3. That current security officials will listen to the calls and “tell” on the interlopers, even on the incoming President or his national security adviser.

So, could Biden have gotten the idea of using Flynn’s recorded calls with a foreign leader to prosecute him after watching this show? The words “Logan Act” are never spoken, but if Biden watched the show, it might have come up later in conversation among colleagues exploring possible ways of taking Flynn out. And everyone seemed to be exploring those.

Doesn’t sound too farfetched to me. These days, hardly anything does.

Mike Huckabee

The mayor of Seattle allowed a bunch of far-left radicals to create their own six-block Utopia. She called it a festival and a second “summer of love.” But after just a couple of weeks, what have we learned about what kind of America they would really create?

Well, we immediately learned that they would build walls and barricades around the border to keep out people they didn’t want inside. Those seeking entry would be greeted by armed guards demanding to see their papers. Instead of trained police accountable to the public, arbitrary “laws” would be enforced by a self-proclaimed “warlord” carrying around a semi-automatic rifle in a densely populated area, and passing out similar weapons to other people without any background checks whatsoever (All this is not what I've been told liberals wanted.) Nobody would have any protection from killings, assaults or robbery, including sexual assault; so much for women’s right to say “no” to unwanted sexual aggression. There will also be no food, except for what the capitalists they hate give to them.

And it’s not like they’re being coy about what their real end game is.

Now, the latest piece of sub-mental regression: to protect black people from the racism of white people, white people create special segregated areas where only black people can go.

But as Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media points out, this is not, as many people claim, a failure of the US education system to teach these young people about history, economics or anything remotely useful. It’s actually a triumph of the leftist project to infiltrate schools and indoctrinate a generation of young Americans with hatred of their own nation and its history and culture so they could be used as an easily-controlled mob.

Unfortunately for their would-be masters, their big mistake was in thinking that a group of angry, miseducated and overly-entitled brats could be “easily-controlled.” Note the growing calls for renaming liberal schools like Harvard and Yale that were started by people aligned with slavery, redistributing their precious vast endowments, and “canceling” any professors who argue against it.

Instead of concentrating so heavily on the writings of Karl Marx, maybe some of these leftist professors should have read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

Mike Huckabee

Some people like to look back to the old “Andy Griffith Show” for valuable life lessons. If I had to cite the best advice from that for big city mayors dealing with streets full of radical leftist vandals burning, looting and destroying monuments and historic statues, I’d point to the sage wisdom of Barney Fife:

“Nip it! Nip it in the bud!”

Unfortunately, with Democratic officials having ordered the police to stand back for weeks and let the mob “vent” and “express its feelings,” it’s too late for that. Instead of getting it out of their systems, they’ve just been emboldened to believe that their strategy for destroying America and its history is working, and they’re only ramping it up.

It’s obvious that the call to remove Confederate monuments was only a pretext, and that President Trump was right: they’ve quickly moved on to attacking statues of Washington and Jefferson, and to show their genuine historical illiteracy, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, World War II soldiers, and several prominent abolitionists. In Texas, a statue of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn was defaced, and there was even a threat against the Alamo (if they dare to damage that Texas shrine, Davy Crockett and company won’t be the only people who made their last stand at the Alamo.) There’s even talk about whether we need extra security to protect up Mount Rushmore. So this is not really about feeling “triggered” by Confederate monuments, it’s an all-out assault on all American history and culture, and everything and everyone who did something to contribute to it.

Christopher Bedford in The Federalist wrote one of the most talked-about editorials of the day, recounting the history of revolutionary mob violence and what happens when nobody stands up to them.

Bedford writes, “A society that believes in itself builds monuments, a sick society does not, and a dying society watches as they are torn down.” He further warns that “everywhere statues are torn down by the mob, history teaches that people are next.”

And we’re already seeing that come to pass, with physical assaults and even killings of police, protesters, and others unfortunate enough to attract the mob’s attention. Just last night, Democratic Wisconsin state Senator Tim Carpenter was beaten by “peaceful protesters” at the State Capitol. They claim he “provoked” them. He says he was just taking a photo. They were toppling two statues, one of them a statue of a Union officer who fought to free the slaves. So either they didn’t want their faces seen by police, or they were too ashamed of how pig-ignorant they are about history to show their faces.

President Trump has now ordered that if local Democratic officials refuse to do their jobs and protect public monuments, he will enforce the federal law protecting them. But what is these officials’ reaction to the expanding anarchy in their own jurisdictions? I’m not certain which would be the most accurate adjective: shameful, oblivious or insane? Take a look at this outrageous statement by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and you be the judge:

When asked about Trump saying Democratic officials should do more to protect monuments, Cuomo replied, “People are making a statement about equality, about community, to be against racism, against slavery, I think those are good statements…It’s a healthy expression of people saying let’s get some priorities here and let’s remember the sin and mistake that this nation made and let’s not celebrate it.”

Far be it from me to tell Gov. Cuomo how to do his job (although I did do that job for 10 years, and somehow managed to avoid killing thousands of nursing home residents, driving businesses to other states, or allowing communist radicals to run riot in the streets, destroying public monuments), but that is not “healthy expression.” It’s felony vandalism. You know, the kind of criminal act and threat to public safety that Governors are supposed to prevent.

It’s too bad Barney Fife isn’t with us anymore. He’d make a much better Governor than Andrew Cuomo.

Some good further reading on this subject: Conrad Black at National Review on why the assault on statues is really a fight against civilization:

Mike Huckabee

Come on, Judge Sullivan; at this point, you’re just embarrassing yourself.

I say this because at the time of this writing, late Wednesday night, Emmet Sullivan, the presiding judge in the Michael Flynn case, still has not complied with the federal appeals court that ordered him to drop the case. What he did was issue a “stay of the current settings” for a hearing already on the calendar and for any further briefings.

The vote was 2-1 from a 3-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. I’m not a lawyer, but it seemed to me that even the judge who dissented was doing it based on the timing of their intervention, not the merits of the case itself. But that’s not enough for Judge Sullivan, who, in defying Attorney General Barr’s decision to drop the case, has shown himself to be the very incarnation of Captain Ahab, determined to harpoon the Great White Trump if it sinks him.

(Aside: to show how apt this imagery is for describing TDS, I’ve included this quote from Melville’s MOBY DICK: “...all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable, in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”)

Anyway, Barr –- who is, after all, the prosecutor –- wants to dismiss the case. The D.C. panel wants to dismiss it. Lord knows Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell want to dismiss it. One would think even the original prosecutors would want the case dismissed, as Powell has amassed a mountain of evidence of their misconduct big enough to send THEM to the hoosgow. It seems the only one still involved who doesn’t want to drop it is Judge Sullivan, and the appeals judges have essentially kicked the ball back to his court. He doesn’t get to exercise his own discretion on whether or not to drop it, but he may choose to continue to stretch this out and have the matter re-heard by the full appeals court.

Former deputy Assistant AG John Yoo, speaking Wednesday with Shannon Bream, pointed out that issuing this writ of mandamus to Judge Sullivan’s court was “an extraordinary step on the part of the D.C. Circuit Court." They’re rare, and apply when a judge has abused power. He said Sullivan could indeed appeal to the full panel of 13 or even to the Supreme Court, but “that would just be prolonging his own mistake.”

We’ve been following the case against Flynn from the start, and it has recently been blown wide open with revelations from FBI interview notes, texts and other declassified documents that it was a trap set for him early on. As the incoming national security adviser, Flynn did nothing wrong in speaking with the Russian ambassador, and he never tried to be less than forthcoming in his interview with agents Strzok and Pientka. It’s clear now that Flynn was railroaded, but the judge is on a mission to take him down just for pleading guilty --- never mind that his plea was coerced and that Powell has the goods on what they were trying to do.

Just this Tuesday, the Justice Department informed Sullivan that it had just found another page of Strzok’s notes that are exculpatory for Flynn. Strzok was the lead investigator on “Crossfire Hurricane,” which encompassed Trump and Russia and also “Crossfire Razor,” the case against Flynn.

At the time of that report, the notes were subject to a protective order, but they've now been released with some redactions. Here is Solomon's updated story, which makes additional points about the case.

A former senior FBI official told Solomon that Strzok’s notes about the Oval Office meeting are a “red flag” that the Bureau, under Comey, “may have been involving itself illegitimately in a political dispute between the outgoing Obama administration and the incoming Trump administration.” Ya think?

The notes were said in Powell’s brief to have been taken January 4, 2017, the day Strzok relayed a request from “the 7th floor” to the lead investigator in the case telling him to keep it open, but that appears to be wrong, as they refer to events that happened on the 5th. The DOJ has said they were taken between January 3-5, which would have included the Oval Office meeting. But Strzok wasn’t at that meeting, so he was probably writing down someone else’s account of it.

Still, with stunning evidence like this on Flynn’s side, it’s quite a spectacle to watch Judge Sullivan trying so hard to keep the case going. Curiously, Sullivan seems as desperate to keep it open now, against all odds, as Strzok was in early January 2017. And we know that there were others back then who were just as keen on it, including both Obama and Biden. We know this because they attended a now-infamous Oval Office meeting January 5 to talk about this. And, yes, there are notes.

In her court filing, Powell referred to these: “...Former President Obama, James Comey, Sally Yates, Joe Biden, and apparently Susan Rice [James Clapper also attended] discussed the transcripts of Flynn’s calls and how to proceed against him. Mr. Obama himself directed that “the right people” investigate Gen. Flynn. This caused former FBI Director Comey to acknowledge the obvious: General Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak ‘appear legit.’”

Of course, we already knew from Sally Yates’ testimony that she was surprised to learn Obama already knew in detail about Flynn's recorded conversations. And we’ve long known from a Lisa Page text that Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing.”

Funny that in Strzok’s notes there is nothing about Obama saying to do everything “by the book.” Susan Rice wrote that to herself –- repeating the phrase three times –- a couple of weeks later in her very last act as a White House official, on January 20 just as Trump was taking the oath of office.

Biden is playing dumb about the Flynn investigation –- one of the few instances where it appears to be just an act. Either that, or he only mentioned the Logan Act in that meeting because he was the one person in the room old enough to remember the day it passed, in 1799.

Speaking of people playing dumb, on Wednesday ABC, CBS and NBC slammed the decision by Barr to drop the Flynn case as purely political and pretended to know nothing about the release of the notes implicating Obama and Biden.

Powell, looking understandably weary at the end of the evening on Sean Hannity’s TV show, said she wasn’t sure what’s going on right now. When Sean asked if she was confident justice would be done, she only said, “I feel very strongly that we will make a lot of progress in that direction...and I don’t know that it will be what everybody wants to see as full justice, but we’re heading in the right direction. Today was a big step forward.”

Flynn, though, seemed newly energized on Wednesday and made it clear he intends to fight for justice and the rule of law.

Mike Huckabee

In a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Monday that the Title VII ban on sex discrimination in hiring from the 1964 Civil Rights Act also applies to LGBTQ people, expanding gender employment protections to include gender identity.

Justice Gorsuch wrote, “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, and Thomas dissented, with Alito arguing that "There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation,” and that’s up to Congress, not the courts. Alito wrote, “The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity.’”

I think that most people would agree that it isn’t fair to fire someone from a job just because of their sexual orientation. However, the SCOTUS, as has become its habit in cases that push the envelope of LGBTQ rights, has once again thrown a monkey wrench into the system without making provisions to settle the inevitable chaos that will ensue.

For instance, when they “discovered” a hitherto unknown right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution, they added some vague words about how this shouldn’t be construed to trample First Amendment religious protections. But the ink was barely dry on the ruling before radical gay activists, who had argued that religious people had no reason to oppose it because it would never affect them, were gleefully filing federal lawsuits to force religious florists and bakers to cater same-sex weddings or else face bankrupting fines and even jail.

And now, the SCOTUS has done it again. Most people might side with the specific plaintiffs in this case, who were fired from jobs such as skydiving instructor and funeral director for being gay.

But what about churches that don’t want to hire, say, a cross-dressing gay or trans youth minister because that violates their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs? The Court has once again kicked open the door for countless drawn-out, expensive lawsuits, eating up church funds that could have been spent on things like helping the poor, and which will now have to go to lawyers. And all because the Justices can’t resist upending the long-established social order without a thought to providing clarity to head off the negative consequences. They’re like someone who throws a lit match into a fireworks factory, then walks away saying, “I’ll let the rest of you sort this out.”

Mike Huckabee

Monday, the Supreme Court not only rewrote the 1964 Civil Rights Act to redefine the ban on job discrimination by sex to include “gender identity” (setting the stage for endless nuisance lawsuits targeted at religious institutions), but they also rejected a number of cases in which citizens were appealing government interference with their Second Amendment rights.

For instance, the SCOTUS rejected an appeal by a New Jersey man who services ATMs and carries a lot of cash who understandably wants to carry a gun, but the local government requires that he name a specific threat to justify his need for one (as if he knows the name of the person who will eventually pop up and try to rob and likely kill him.) If you read the Second Amendment, you’ll notice that nothing in it says that citizens must justify their specific need for a gun to the government before they’re allowed to keep and bear one.

As the (sadly only) three Justices who dissented from the gay rights ruling noted, this Court is only too ready to pull new rights out of the ether when they involve abortion or LGBTQ issues, but they refuse to defend the clearly-enumerated Constitutional right that the Founders listed second in the Bill of Rights. It’s especially disappointing that alleged “conservative” Justices such as John Roberts and even Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch went along with the liberals in these activist rulings.

Why is it that so many so-called “conservative” Justices morph into liberals after just a short time on the SCOTUS (or as the media call it when a judge goes from respecting the text of the Constitution to rewriting laws from the bench, they "evolve”)? Some of it might be peer pressure, or just living inside the upper-crust liberal DC bubble. Some of it might also stem from the fact that ALL of our Supreme Court Justices attended the same handful of Northeastern Ivy League colleges (every one of them spent time at either Harvard or Yale) and were taught by the same liberal professors. While a few were able to resist the indoctrination, there is no real “diversity” on the Court. For instance, there’s not a single Justice who was schooled in the South or West, and can understand the needs of farmers or ranchers who bring cases to the Court.

Law Prof. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit sums up the problem in a recent book called “The Judiciary’s Class War.”

Reynolds argues that the problem with the judiciary isn’t political but a class divide. Since the judiciary is the only branch of government that requires members to attain elite schooling, it’s dominated by people from upper middle class, elite backgrounds. Once they’re on the bench, they tend to favor things that people of their class embrace (abortion, gay rights, birth control, open borders, etc.) and even invent new “rights” to promote them, while marginalizing the real rights that working class Americans care about, such as freedom of religion, property rights, gun rights and honest apportionment of legislators to represent legal citizens.

Victor Davis Hanson also has some related thoughts about how “class, not race, divides America”…

SCOTUS decisions like Monday’s will make many conservatives despair of ever being able to get America back on the right track of respecting the Constitution and laws as written by elected Representatives of the people. But if you give up and stop voting, then you’ll guarantee the election of people like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who will put their lead feet on the accelerator to take America over the cliff.

A Republican majority in both Houses and the reelection of President Trump would at least set the stage for passing legislation to replace the legislation concocted by the courts, and to keep allowing Trump to nominate conservative judges to lower courts who might someday be on the Supreme Court. And of course, to nominate SCOTUS judges who will actually defend the Constitution. So far, he’s batting .500 on that, which is .500 more than we’d ever get under Joe Biden.

Mike Huckabee

CELEBRATING FLAG DAY

Sunday, June 14th, was Flag Day, which commemorates the date in 1777 when the Second Continental Congress adopted the US flag, with 13 alternating red and white stripes and 13 white stars on a blue background. But if you missed Flag Day, don’t worry: it’s the first day of National Flag Week, so you can feel free to fly your flag all week. In fact, feel free to fly it every day of the year, and don’t let anyone tell you that doing so makes you a racist, fascist, xenophobe or any other word that certain college graduates who can’t even spell those words like to call people.

Mostly, feel free to fly the American flag because it is the symbol of everything that makes you feel free. Although, sadly, these days, simply flying the American flag may be seen as a brave act that will require vigilance.

But then, keeping the American flag flying has always required vigilance against America’s enemies, which is why it’s so appropriate that Flag Day and the birthday of the US Army fall on the same date. June 14th, 1775, was the date when the Continental Congress officially adopted “the American Continental Army.”

And by coincidence (or maybe not), it was also President Donald Trump’s 74th birthday. Trump issued his Flag Day Proclamation, which this year honored the flag, the military and also health care workers for their sacrifices in fighting the coronavirus. Trump said that the flag represents the unity of our country and its people, and the sacrifices made by patriots from generation to generation to preserve our freedoms, and that “today, and every day, I am proud to join my fellow Americans in standing tall and saluting our great American flag.”

Did you ever think a day would come when it would be considered by some to be “controversial” to talk about American unity, honoring previous generations who fought for America, and standing and saluting the flag?

NEW ATLANTA PROTESTS

A new round of violent protests broke out in Atlanta over the weekend, following the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a black man who was asleep in his car in a Wendy’s parking lot when police were called to investigate. Body cam video shows that the questioning of Brooks was polite and professional. But after he failed a breathalyzer test (his BAC was nearly .11%, and he didn’t even know what county he was in), they attempted to cuff him and he suddenly began fighting them.

Police say that Brooks grabbed a stun gun from one of the officers and ran, and while chasing him, he turned and pointed something at them, and they fired and killed him. He had reportedly been pointing the stun gun, but the officers say they couldn’t tell that in the dark. In such a situation, police have a split second to decide whether to fire or risk death by hesitating. (Warning: the police video at this link is very disturbing and contains foul language.)

The police chief has already resigned, and an investigation is underway, but that didn’t prevent both peaceful protests and violent rioting. Someone even burned down the Wendy’s, which had nothing to do with it. There’s a $10,000 reward for the arson suspect, who is reportedly a white female, most likely part of the radical left agitators who claim to be seeking justice for black people. Except now the black neighborhood has lost both a business and eating place, and the employees have lost their jobs.

It’s terrible that such a thing happened, and at such a sensitive time. Our prayers for Mr. Brooks and his family (he mentioned having young daughters in the police video, which is heartbreaking) and for justice to prevail. But this is what I warned about recently when I said that the rush to indict the cops in Minnesota due to mob violence was a worrisome trend since a similar situation was bound to arise, but not so clear-cut. Now the mob will demand instant retribution. But a careful, thorough investigation doesn’t just protect the cops’ due process rights. It also protects the integrity of the system and prevents acquittal by sloppy prosecutorial work.

Burning down a Wendy’s is bad enough. Let’s not burn down the entire justice system while we’re at it.

MONOLOGUE FROM SATURDAY'S "HUCKABEE" ON TBN 

(I think this is a very important message, so I want to share it with you in every way that I can, and I hope you will share it, too.)

Maybe the only news you’ve heard this week is bad news about armed Antifa terrorists taking over six blocks of Seattle with the local government standing around with their hands in their pockets. Or the disgusting video of some classless hooligans re-enacting the death of George Floyd by having a guy standing on the neck of another as the funeral procession passed by. Or the sheer stupid stuff such as HBO not airing “Gone With the Wind” anymore because it depicted a dark time in our history when the scourge of slavery still existed. Or taking the children’s TV show “Paw Patrol” off because one of the dogs was a police dog.

But getting less attention is the powerful story of a young white man in of all places, Selma, Alabama, who was randomly targeted as he was out for a run and was shot by a black man who had announced earlier that he was going out to kill some white people. As the young white man was taken into the Emergency Room, he told the medical staff that he hoped that his being shot would not lead to more violence or hate and that he was praying for the person who shot him to find forgiveness and God’s grace. That young man, who I talked to on the phone Wednesday night as he recovered in a Birmingham hospital awaiting another surgery to heal his wounds, showed that the battle in America right now is not political, economic, or racial. It’s spiritual.

There’s even more to the story to reveal that God was working in the midst of an evil, Satanic attack. Two men who happened to be nearby in a pickup truck witnessed the shooting and hurried to assist the victim. One had been given a tourniquet three days before, from a friend who told him he ought to keep it in his truck in case he ever needed it. At the time, he just thought it a strange gift. Three days later, his having it saved a man’s life - a man who would be more concerned about the soul of the one who tried to murder him than for his own life.

Selma didn’t erupt in violence or riots as it had in the 60’s. It erupted in prayer and forgiveness. It was not led by a politician or an activist, but by a man in his 20’s who ironically is adopting a non-white child.

It reminds me of what happened in Charleston, South Carolina, when a crazed white man went to the historic Emmanuel AME church on prayer meeting night and, after being asked to be part of the gathering, took out a gun and murdered nine black people in cold blood as they were in the act of praying for him. Yet riots, mobs or mass violent demonstrations didn’t materialize in Charleston because the people of the church and even the families of those slain said they didn’t want violence but forgiveness and reconciliation. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who lives in Charleston, was on our show to discuss how God intervened to help heal the community. And a daughter of one of the black murder victims was also on our show and described how she came to forgive the evil white man who shot and killed her father. I sat in awe of her as she spoke of God’s grace in her life.

Neither of those stories from Charleston or Selma led to hate-filled mobs burning businesses, looting stores or increased violence. They led to Godly people leading their communities to ask God to intervene with grace and forgiveness. The solution wasn’t a racial re-alignment or “social justice” or economic intervention or political change. It was divine intervention in which healing came from hurt.

I’ve not shared the young man’s name from Selma out of respect for his family and his privacy, but I have his permission to tell his story and to urge people to not be angry or bitter, but to love, forgive, and exemplify the love of Christ.

So if America survives these difficult days, it likely won’t be because of the familiar faces of famous people who lead, but rather because loving, Godly people whose names and faces are not familiar to most of us led us by example. And we should all surrender to being THAT kind of Christian.

TODAY'S MUST-READ

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen the results of giving in to the rabid, Twitter-bred “social justice warrior” cancel culture. They have people so terrified of being branded as racist and cast out of society that it’s emboldened them to the fever pitch of medieval witch burners. Sometimes, it seems as if they’re just closing their eyes, throwing a dart, and whatever it hits gets mauled. They’ve attacked everything from statues of prominent abolitionists to the 33-year-old TV show “Cops” and the British sitcom “Fawlty Towers” to “Gone With The Wind” to Hawaiian shirts (yes, Hawaiian shirts.) And as I wrote last week, one of the top SJWs recently targeted Cracker Barrel restaurants, saying that something about the name just “feels racist.”

Well, here’s a story that happened in a Cracker Barrel restaurant. I’m sure that the SJWs won’t like it because it upends every divisive narrative that they’re trying to promote.

I suppose I should point out that this moving story of racial harmony and mutual respect between the police and the citizens did not take place in a big city run for decades by “progressive” Democrats. It took place in Moody, Alabama, so that makes it a lot less surprising to me.

If you’d like to see the fundraising page for the family of the slain police officer whose sacrifice prompted the act of generosity by the black citizen (and maybe to donate), it’s right here:

I have to warn you, though, before you read his obituary, to watch out for shattered pieces of liberal media narratives about evil cops.

Mike Huckabee

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO LEFT-WING NUTJOBS

There’s one thing you can always count on with the left, and that is that when they have a political advantage, they will grab it and run so far with it that they quickly alienate the rest of society, resulting in the pendulum swinging back harder than a wrecking ball. I think we’re already beginning to see signs of that after legitimate protests of the shocking murder of George Floyd (which EVERYONE across the political spectrum condemned) quickly spiraled into lunatic fringe madness: from rioting, looting and assaulting and murdering police officers and demanding that police departments be defunded and dismantled, to “canceling,” shaming and firing anyone who even suggested that not all cops are racist monsters; to panicked corporations showering hundreds of millions of dollars onto far-left organizations, some of which are openly anti-capitalist (so I assume they’ll return the money? No?...)

…and finally degenerating into the ridiculous, like letting communist nutjobs with automatic weapons take over six blocks of Seattle, canceling “Cops” after 32 years on TV (and attacking all other cop shows, even shows as benign as “Paw Patrol”), yanking “Gone With The Wind" from HBO Max, and finally, and possibly the dumbest yet (although I have faith that this can get dumber), the insinuation that Cracker Barrel restaurants are racist and are a throwback to the Jim Crow era.

Not that anyone cares about facts anymore, but: the chain is named after the barrel of crackers that used to be in every general store, which symbolized the place where people would gather to talk and socialize. They existed everywhere, not just in the South (the general store cracker barrel is mentioned in “The Music Man,” which was set in Iowa.)

Finally, and I can’t remind you of this enough, Jim Crow laws were inventions of the Democrats. They started to arise in the 1870s, when Reconstruction ended and Democrats started replacing Republicans in Southern offices. From Wikipedia: “In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, after having used insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to suppress their voting. Extensive voter fraud was also used.” No wonder Democrats don’t want your kids to be taught accurate American history!

We all agree that Floyd’s murderers should face justice and that racism cannot be tolerated in any institution, especially policing, where one side has the right to use force against citizens. But hysteria can run rampant only so long before the inevitable backlash arrives, and Americans of all races know crazy when they hear it. They are starting to rouse themselves and say, “Enough is enough,” in a variety of ways. They don’t want free speech limited only to what the most far-left radicals agree with. They don’t want their cities taken over by lawless anarchists. And they know it’s entirely possible to disagree with the political agenda of Black Lives Matter without thinking that black lives don’t matter.

Surveys show that at least 85% of Americans oppose defunding the police (a 2015 Roper poll showed that blacks were twice as likely as whites to want more police in their neighborhoods.) 58 percent support using the military if necessary to stop violent riots and looting (an opinion that the New York Times will not allow into their formerly respectable parrot cage liner.)

An NYPD cop who took a knee at the mob’s demand to try to deescalate the situation now realizes that giving in to the mob only encouraged more violence and lawlessness. He’s written a letter renouncing his “wrong” decision and saying he will be shamed and humiliated about it for the rest of his life. Someone please force the mayor of Seattle to read that letter.

Prof. Walter Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog was targeted for “canceling” by Cornell University for criticizing the BLM organization. But instead of donning sackcloth and ashes, he’s forcing them to back down by challenging them to prove in open debate that his posts were in any way racist or inaccurate.

A rising number of commentators are starting to see the danger to their profession of allowing all speech to be censored by the most hysterical partisans around and are beginning to say “no.” As usual, Kurt Schichter was among the first.

NASCAR driver and team owner Ray Ciccarelli says he’s leaving over NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag. Ciccarelli says he couldn’t care less about the flag himself, but NASCAR shouldn’t be getting political and telling people what flag they’re allowed to wave and “(bleeping) one group to cater to another.”

And as Americans vote with their wallets, not only are gun sales through the roof, but so are DVD sales of “Gone With The Wind.”

As physicist Sir Isaac Newton taught us, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The left didn’t learn its lesson when it went full-on radical/riot in 1968 and helped elect “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon in a landslide. Now, they’re surprised that an equal and opposite reaction to their national fit of public insanity is already starting to form? They should’ve taken Physics instead of all those useless courses that their overly indulgent parents wasted their money on.

FAKE NEWS FRIDAY

Here’s a Journalism 101 tip for CNN’s Chris Cuomo. If you’re going to try to slam President Trump for “systemic racism” under his economy, don’t use statistics from when Obama was President.

CLEANING OUT THE CAPITOL

Nancy Pelosi is demanding that all Confederate statues be removed from the Capitol and all military bases named after Confederate officers be renamed because they glorify white supremacy. The Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee voted to rename the bases as well, but President Trump says absolutely not: those bases have become part of a great American military tradition where soldiers were trained who won two World Wars.

I don’t know what the eventual resolution of this will be, but it seems that if they’re determined to scrub away the names of anyone ever associated with the Southern White supremacist movement from taxpayer-paid structures, they might start with all lthe things named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a one-time KKK “Exalted Cyclops.”

I know, you’ll say I’m only saying that to stir up trouble because Robert Byrd was a Democrat. News flash: so were all those Confederate generals.

As a reminder that despite what we’re being told by the media gatekeepers, not all black Americans agree with the racially-divisive identity politics of the far left, here are five books by conservative African-American authors that take a very different approach to solving racial inequality in the US.

Part II: JUDGE GLEESON'S ATROCITY OF AN "AMICUS" BRIEF

Yesterday, I critiqued Judge John Gleeson’s “friend of the court” brief in support of Judge Emmet Sullivan’s bizarre refusal to allow Attorney General Bill Barr to drop the case against Michael Flynn.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but since yesterday, other articles have appeared that agree with what I had to say and go on to explain with much more specificity the ridiculousness contained in Gleeson’s brief. One very fine article by Andrea Widburg, an attorney in addition to being an editor at AMERICAN THINKER, goes into great, lawyerly detail, but I can boil down the basic arguments.

Widburg titles her piece “From the First Page, Judge Gleeson’s Brief Against Flynn Is A Travesty” and then goes on to tell exactly why.

Widburg accuses Judge Gleeson of LYING, in part by using “fake citations,” cases that don’t really stand for the principles asserted. This is typical of dishonest attorneys, she says, as they think they can get away with it because it’s not likely anyone will check. She checked. And, wouldn't you know, he lies right out of the gate: “Every one of his 14 citations in footnote 2 is a lie,” she says. “That’s all you need to know about his brief.”

She goes through all the case citations included by Gleeson as he tries lamely to argue that it was normal behavior for a judge to call in a third-party (him) to attack the defendant (Flynn) at the trial court level in a criminal case. The examples he cites deal with appellate courts, not trial-level courts like his. Inviting an “amicus” brief, she says, is “standard practice” at the appellate level, but this case is still at trial, where Sullivan is currently presiding. Also, he cites rules and cases that apply to civil litigation; this is a criminal trial.

Gleeson has also been dishonest about the evidence in the case. Widburg quotes someone on Twitter who found that Gleeson had said of Papadopoulos that he “divulged that Russia contacted the campaign.” Really? This judge hasn’t been keeping up very well with the exculpatory evidence that has emerged in the “Russia” probe.

If you’d like to know more about Judge Gleeson and how he came to be involved in this bizarre case, Paul Mirengoff has a piece in the PowerLine blog that tells all, and in more layman’s terms than Widburg uses.

To understand Judge Gleeson, Mirengoff says, you have to know that he sees himself as more of an advocate than a judge. He is by no means neutral. If he wants a particular outcome, he will wage a personal campaign to make that happen. The Flynn case isn’t the first time he's done it. This piece on him is a very interesting read.

While the Flynn case continues, the Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Ron Johnson, and now the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Lindsay Graham, are now both using subpoena power to call a large number of witnesses involved in “Crossfire Hurricane” and find out what those people knew about the sham “evidence” in the case. Former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein has already covered himself with shame by not-so-artfully dodging questions about how much he knew about the problems with the Steele “dossier” when he signed the warrant renewal application to keep spying.

Don't expect much media coverage of this as it's going on, as journalists are feasting on public unrest, left-wing craziness and disgusting racial politics that will intensify as we near the election (and likely afterwards). Lindsay Graham, on HANNITY Thursday night, pointed out that the Mueller investigation received round-the-clock coverage for two-and-a-half years. (I would add that this was followed by the media frenzy over the impeachment hearings.) But I'm telling you, have confidence --- just know that the stunning truth is going to come out anyway.

As Graham tells it, there were a couple of FBI agents who were skeptical of the “dossier” and its origins, and they apparently took the initiative to track down Steele’s Russian sub-source. These two agents were the ones who said it came across to them as not real, more like Russian disinformation. There’s a January memo documenting an interview with this sub-source, “basically shredding the reliability of the ‘dossier.’” Surely one or both of these agents went to Comey, McCabe or some other supervisor to advise them the “dossier” was not verified.

"I find it hard to believe that nobody at the top was told by the professionals in the organization, ‘Our case fell apart,” Graham says. “….I don’t believe McCabe and Comey could have possibly not known that the “dossier” had been rejected by the sub-source. I can’t believe the FBI is that poorly run –- that [in] the most important investigation in 30 years of a sitting President, that NOBODY told the top of the FBI, ‘Oh, by the way, our case fell apart.’”

Graham also vows not to let the lower-level agents who interviewed the sub-source take the blame. We shall see; the reluctance expressed by investigators to look at the actions of those at the VERY top is disheartening, to say the least. After all, this is serious criminal misconduct; by August of 2017, right after Rosenstein signed the final FISA renewal application and was writing Mueller's "scope" memo, there was apparently no evidence against anyone named in that memo --- not one bit.

I’ll leave you with a good suggestion for additional reading: Margot Cleveland’s excellent in-depth analysis of Sullivan’s behavior in the Flynn case and Gleeson’s outrageous “friend of the court” brief. As she puts it, “Gleeson more than gave the longtime federal judge exactly what he wanted: a hit job on Donald Trump that the press could parlay into a new faux scandal.” Highly recommended for when you have some time. This looks like a great weekend to turn off the TV.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Mike Huckabee

I joked recently that the Democrats’ best strategy for getting Joe Biden to November without him ever having to come out of his basement to answer questions live in front of a crowd or (shudder!) debate Trump would be to take a cue from the old TV show, “Max Headroom.” Just create a “virtual candidate” who only appears on TV screens and let political consultants feed him things to say. Well, I’ve got to stop giving them ideas because that seems to be exactly what they’re planning to do.

Fox News obtained a leaked video conference of top Biden surrogate Terry McAuliffe telling Virginia Democrats, "People say all the time, 'Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement. He's fine in the basement. Two people see him a day: his two body people. That's it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump's doing."

(If he does have to come out of the basement to debate Trump, I predict he’ll wear a face mask so we can’t tell that his lips don’t match the words being dubbed in long-distance by a Joe Biden impersonator at the DNC.)

McAuliffe went on to say that they’re concentrating on “building the digital,” i.e., building up social media messaging and online ads. I assume they’re also relying on traditional news media to keep attacking everything Trump says and does while promoting Biden and ignoring his Max Headroom-like brain gl-gl-gl-glitches, to provide the Democrats with billions of dollars’ worth of free in-kind campaign contributions.

Question: If Biden does win, will he also make his inaugural speech from a TV monitor, or will they have developed a hologram of him by then? Oops, sorry! Didn’t mean to give them any more ideas!

Mike Huckabee

We’ve all been waiting for Judge John Gleeson’s amicus brief on the Michael Flynn case, and it finally dropped on Wednesday. Sure enough, this “friend of the court” is no friend of Flynn, or apparently of justice being served in this case.

Recall that Judge Emmet Sullivan personally asked Gleeson to write it; this was just a couple of days after the op-ed Gleeson had co-authored on the subject that happened to appear in the WASHINGTON POST. Entitled “The Flynn case is over when the judge says it’s over,” this commentary told us all we needed to know about where Gleeson was going to stand and why the judge chose him to write the brief.

"The record reeks of improper political influence,” Gleeson stated on May 11, without even bothering to make that case. In fact, as I said weeks ago after reading the piece, he might as well have just made a copy of that and filed it as his amicus brief. That’s pretty much what he did, except the brief is a LOT more of the same.

If you have the time and inclination to read this 80-page pile of nonsense, here’s a pdf of the brief filed by Judge Gleeson.

Gleeson asserts in his brief that the DOJ’s decision to drop the Flynn case is “a gross abuse of prosecutorial power’ and, unbelievably, accuses them of “attempting to provide special treatment to a favored friend and political ally of the President of the United States.” This is such a politicized and wrongheaded piece of bilge, it’s hard to even know where to start.

Byron York, speaking with Martha MacCallum Wednesday evening, pointed out that it’s the “sole responsibility” of the Department of Justice to withdraw charges if it so chooses. It is NOT within the judge’s authority to deny that.

I'll add this: We've seen before that judges who don’t like the President can’t seem to help attributing the worst motives to everything he or his administration does, and this case is one more example. They just make it up and go with that. Where does Judge Gleeson get off with this “special treatment” garbage? President Trump has stood back and let the wheels of so-called justice turn ever-so-slowly while his “favored friend and political ally” was financially and professionally ruined. If that’s “special treatment,” I sure wouldn’t want it. The attorney general has solid motives for wanting to drop this case, ample reason to be troubled by what he has seen in the prosecution –- and persecution –- of General Flynn. Gleeson’s brief does not speculate about these, even though he has no trouble speculating about the President’s motives.

Gleeson makes three arguments: 1) that Sullivan’s court has the authority to deny the AG’s motion to dismiss, 2) that it SHOULD deny the AG’s motion to dismiss, and 3) that in sentencing Flynn, the court should “consider the defendant’s perjury,” a reference to his earlier guilty plea. Unbelievable.

To make this argument, Gleeson must maintain that the predicate for investigating Flynn was sound. As explained well in a piece at TheConservativeTreehouse.com, he has to defend not only the origins of “Spygate” but also everything else that stemmed from that. How does he do that when so much that has presumably been learned about it by U.S. Attorney John Durham is still under wraps?

"When you read the brief,” this article says, “if does make you wonder if Gleeson might be attempting to frame the current Flynn argument from the perspective of justifying the total Spygate operation. This approach would be of benefit to the corrupt DOJ and FBI small group who are viewed to have purposefully weaponized their agencies for political intents.”

To counter this, the DOJ might have to open up about why the predicate for the investigation of Flynn is invalid. After all, that’s what the DOJ is claiming in its decision to drop the case. If the investigation was corrupt, then the questioning of Flynn on January 24, 2017, was “materially and fundamentally flawed.” I would add that this is especially true considering FBI investigators recommended closing the case on January 4.

In suggesting that Flynn perjured himself by reversing his guilty plea, Judge Gleeson conveniently avoids the claim that Flynn's plea was coerced. He’s saying Flynn should be punished for lying about a crime he was coerced to plead guilty to. “Flynn has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings,” Judge Gleeson says, “for which he deserves punishment, and the Court has the authority to initiate a prosecution for that crime.”

Oh, but Judge Gleeson doesn’t say that Judge Sullivan should go THAT far, even though he could. Gleeson magnanimously recommends that Sullivan merely “take Flynn’s perjury into account in sentencing him on the offense to which he has already admitted guilt.” Perhaps the thinking is that this is a good way to justify prison for Flynn, which goads President Trump into pardoning him. Flynn, once again, is collateral damage in the effort to hurt Trump politically.

An article at RedState makes some strong additional points.

For one thing, it points out that Gleeson’s brief cites media reports --- which “are sourced to anonymous government officials, which we now know were former Obama administration officials who fed the entire false fantasy “Trump-Russian” collusion argument to gullible and willing anti-Trump media for the past nearly four years.”

Also, it notes that the IG report Gleeson used in his brief was necessarily limited, as “there is NO DOUBT that DOJ has more information available to it than the information reported in the IG report that Gleeson relies on.” In other words, Barr knows a lot more about this case than Gleeson does.

Gleeson also relies on that Intelligence Community Assessment from January 2017, which, as the RedState article says, “reached certain ‘conclusions’ that have been determined to not have been factually accurate.” As an example I would add that John Brennan argued strongly in favor of including the fictitious Steele “dossier” in that report and was able to get a summary in.

The RedState article goes into legal precedent as well, noting language from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that Judge Gleeson conveniently left out when he cited the case the U.S. v. Hamm: “As the district judge acknowledged, the prosecutor is the first and presumptively the best judge of where the public interest lies. The trial judge cannot simply substitute his judgment for that of the prosecutor.”

And this, from the same ruling: “...[T]his is a case in which the Government...decided that it would best serve the public interest to dismiss the indictments against the appellants. Neither this court on appeal nor the trial court may properly reassess the prosecutor’s evaluation of the public interest.” In other words, it’s Barr’s call.

Perhaps Gleeson’s insane, politically-charged argument won’t matter except to show the world even more of what is going on in Judge Sullivan’s kangaroo court. The case now goes to the D.C. Court of Appeals, and oral arguments are set for this Friday.

Mike Huckabee

With so many political leaders rushing to virtue-signal and genuflect to the most radical mobs in ever-more-embarrassing ways (the Minnesota city council voting to defund the police because wanting burglars kept out of your house is an example of "privilege," or Nancy Pelosi and her wealthy white colleagues all dressing in African garb like a Beverly Hills community theater Kwanzaa pageant), Americans might be forgiven for thinking that the leadership class of one of the major parties has gone stark raving nuts. But I’d like to assure you that, at least in some instances, that’s not true. They aren’t all insane. Some of them are just insanely cynical hypocrites who know that what they’re saying in public is nuts, but they’re just afraid to admit it publicly.

To quote Charlie Rich, “But when they get behind closed doors…” (Warning: Bad language at the link.)

Audio has leaked of a private conference call between Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and all the city’s Alderman in which she and Ald. Raymond Lopez went at each other in a profane exchange over Lightfoot’s dangerously weak response to rioting and looting. Lopez was concerned that the violence and lawlessness would spread from urban into residential areas.

Lopez said, “I’ve got gang bangers with AK-47s walking around right now, just waiting to settle some scores. What are we going to do and what do we tell our residents other than ‘good faith people stand up’? It’s not going to be enough.”

Lightfoot tried to ignore Lopez’s question, then attacked him personally for asking it, but it’s obvious from the results in the streets that he was right, and I assume she knew it. May 31 was later revealed to be the deadliest day in Chicago in 60 years, with 18 people killed in 24 hours (by comparison, in Chicago’s notorious St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, only seven men were murdered.) The 18 black lives that were lost, including dads, college students and a high school girl, mattered a great deal to their loved ones, and they should matter to civic leaders whose #1 priority is to ensure public safety.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre did take place under a Republican Mayor. He was, in fact, the last Republican Mayor of Chicago. He left office in 1931, and the city has been run entirely by Democrats ever since. But Chicago's violence, corruption and racism are, of course, all Trump’s fault.

Speaking of Chicago, did you really think that Jussie Smollett wouldn’t try to use the current war on cops to wiggle out of his six felony charges for lying to authorities and faking a hate crime?

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

THIS IS SATIRE

Most Unsurprising News Of The Day: Former FBI deputy counsel Lisa Page has been hired as a “national security and legal analyst” by MSNBC.

Best known for her anti-Trump texting in late summer 2016 with then-lover Peter Strzok while he was leading the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of Trump and for helping him rewrite Michael Flynn's "302" interview notes, she ended up resigning from the FBI. She filed a lawsuit against the DOJ and FBI in December of last year for violating her right to privacy by illegally leaking the text messages.

What Ms. Page doesn’t know is that something else leaked: her job interview with the HR department at MSNBC. Don’t ask us how, but we managed to get the transcript…

HR: Well, Ms. Page, have a seat. We’ve been over your resume, and your work at the FBI is quite impressive.

PAGE: Thank you. As you can see, I REALLY loathe President Trump and will do anything I can to damage him politically. It’s there in my mission statement.

HR: Yes, yes, that is what particularly stood out here. Most impressive. In fact, I’d say it’s the Number One prerequisite for working here.

PAGE: Well, I really, really do. Really.

HR: I see here that you were Andy McCabe’s top legal counsel at the FBI.

PAGE: That’s right. Andy’s a great guy! He really can’t stand Trump, either. Oh, man.

HR: Right. McCabe's over at CNN now. We tried to get him, because he hates Trump SO MUCH, but I guess there was a lot of competition for him and we missed out.

PAGE: They love him over there.

HR: Understandably.

PAGE: They’ve hired ten of my old colleagues over there at CNN, can you believe it? There’s Andy, of course...Mr. Clapper; he was our Director of National Intelligence...James Baker; he was our general counsel and I knew him very well…one of Director Comey’s aides, I believe, Josh Campbell…and some others I know who really hate Trump, too. It’s like the glue that holds them all together.

But you’ve recently hired several people I know here at MSNBC, too. Wow, you’ve got Director Brennan; NOBODY hates Trump more than he does. Head of the CIA, what a catch! And I understand our assistant director for counterintelligence, Frank Figliuzzi, works here now; he used numerology to tie President Trump to the white supremacy movement while we were at the FBI. Fun times. It would also be really nice to work with my old colleague Chuck Rosenberg, Mr. Comey’s chief of staff; he really supported the Steele dossier when we were having trouble passing that off. Oh, and there are others I know who are working here, and they all hate Trump with every fiber of their being. I would feel right at home here.

HR: You’d fit in very nicely. And you’re certainly very qualified, although I see you’ve never worked as a journalist. Fortunately, that doesn’t matter! Even our journalists don’t work as journalists. There’s just one rather sensitive issue…

PAGE: Yes?

HR: We understand that at your previous job, you had an affair with a married co-worker. Is that correct?

PAGE: Well, yes.

HR: We just wanted to make it clear to you that this is not a problem at all. In fact, I think you’ll find that here in the media, people are still having affairs all the time, just like at the FBI. Have as many as you like. The #MeToo Movement applies only to nonconsensual sex involving conservatives.

PAGE: That’s a relief.

HR: So, that said, what do you think is your greatest attribute?

PAGE (smiling brightly): That I hate President Trump?

UPDATE:

LETTER FROM READER ON “LISA PAGE GETS A NEW JOB”

From reader John H:

This is a joke, right? How could this be real?

From Laura:

Hi, John. The “transcript” of Lisa Page’s job interview is indeed a joke --- but I assure you that the underlying news story, Page’s new job at MSNBC, is very real. (The story is at the link I included.)

I imagine that she, as their new legal analyst, might even be reporting on developments regarding the investigation of the FBI. We shall see if they have her cover those stories or pass them to someone else who is just as biased but perhaps not directly involved! She might be "recused" from talking about those on-air, not because of her bias but to shield her from getting into even more legal hot water than she's already in. Unbelievable but true.

All the mentions in the "transcript" of others who have been hired by CNN (such as Andrew McCabe) and MSNBC (such as John Brennan) are real as well. I’m a big believer in the principle that comedy should be based on truth, even if it makes you laugh until you cry.

IF YOU MISSED LAURA'S STORY CLICK HERE>>>

Mike Huckabee

Congratulations to Larry Elder for joining the elite club of conservatives who get branded by Politifact as saying something that’s “Mostly False,” even though it’s 100% accurate.

I had that honor once. It’s been so long, I don’t even remember that the story was, but I do seem to recall that the facts I quoted were not only accurate, they also came out of the Washington Post. I don’t remember Politifact’s reasoning, but I recall thinking at the time that it amounted to, “What he said is true, but if the facts were different, it would be false.” I think my missing “context” was that I failed to include hypothetical situations in which things were different from what they actually were.

More recently (like in the past three days), we’ve had several web pages at mikehuckabee.com be flagged and blocked by Google. These pages contained no commentary whatsoever: they were just reposts of news videos of comments by people such as the White House press secretary and the Minnesota attorney general. We had to appeal to get them reinstated. Is posting video of prominent people’s own words a thought crime now?

Anyway, when I put quotation marks around the phrase “fact-checker,” these are just a few of the many, many reasons why.

Mike Huckabee

A 75% majority of the Minneapolis City Council wants to dismantle the city’s police department - not "reform," but dismantle -- a move so insane that even the far-left mayor opposes it. But the council has the votes to override his veto.

Seems like a better solution would be for all the far-left city officials who’ve had a one-party lock on power for over half a century, and created what they admit is a corrupt, racist system, to resign en masse and let someone competent take over. But instead, they want to dismantle the police department amid widespread rioting, vandalism and looting, which is like dealing with wildfires by dismantling the fire department. It's official: Rose Nyland of "The Golden Girls" is no longer the dumbest person ever to come out of Minnesota. At least Rose was smart enough to move to Florida, and I bet a lot of Minneapolis residents will follow her lead.

If you live in Minneapolis, you might want to consider getting out while the getting is good, before you have burglars breaking down your door, and you call the city for help and get a lecture about your “privilege” – I guess in owning something the poor burglar doesn’t own. But with these morons in charge, he soon will. Does that "privilege" claim also apply to black homeowners who are burglarized by white criminals?

Please note, that comment about the desire for the cops to remove burglars from your house coming from a place of "privilege" is not a joke. It's an actual quote from the city council president. But at least she admits it will take years before the utopian "police-free future" arrives and police are no longer necessary. Liberals just have to find a way to perfect human nature and rid it of sin by throwing enough tax money at it.

Mike Huckabee

Correction And An Apology: Over the weekend, I was asked to comment on a report that three prominent Republicans announced they would vote for Joe Biden. They were Colin Powell (who reportedly hasn’t voted Republican in over a decade), Mitt Romney (what a surprise!) and former President George W. Bush. I said they should all “Get over it.” If they don’t like Trump’s personal style, fine; sometimes I don’t either. But he’s been great at cutting taxes and regulations, strengthening the military, putting America first, fixing the economy, creating jobs for all Americans, enforcing immigration laws, renegotiating trade deals in our favor for a change, appointing conservative judges, defending Israel and religious freedom, and standing up for the sanctity of life. Any vote for any modern Democrat is a vote for the exact opposite of all of that.

However, since this story was all over every media outlet (of course it was; it’s catnip to the anti-Trump crowd), I didn’t think to question whether it was entirely true. Turns out, part of it is fake news:

President Bush’s spokesman says that as a former President, he never reveals who he is voting for, and the claim that he’s not supporting Trump was “completely made up.” Had I known that it originated with the New York Times, I would have been far more skeptical. As I noted yesterday, the Times’ credibility as a news source is now on a par with that of old issues of High Times magazine, whose reporters at least had the excuse of being stoned out of their minds.

My apologies to ex-President Bush for not asking, “Wait a minute, did this come from the New York Times?” before believing it.

Mike Huckabee

In the obituaries today, let’s all bid a sad farewell to the New York Times. It has been very sick for a long time, barely surviving on the tattered remnants of its long-decayed reputation. But this weekend will be carved into granite as the date when it finally expired. Not that it won’t continue staggering on, a zombie-like shell of its former self, but it’s now just a dead paper walking and anyone who isn't also braindead should know it.

This weekend, the Times tossed its last remaining shard of journalistic integrity onto the Antifa-lit bonfire by announcing that James Bennet, its editorial page editor, would resign, and Jim Dao, his deputy, would be reassigned. Why? Because they had the temerity to print Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s op-ed, endorsing the use of US troops to quell the violent riots destroying American cities.

That’s an opinion shared by 58% of Americans, according to recent polls. But not by the young snowflake staffers of the Times, the generation taught that words they disagree with are violence and must be silenced. And the paper’s upper management, who used to claim to be liberals who believe in free speech, capitulated to their own internal mob. It’s now official: there is no place for any dissenting opinion on the New York Times’ opinion page. And you certainly won’t find any in the opinion pieces they run as news articles.

(If I linked to the Fox News write-up of this, you might think I was being biased, so I’ll let this former Times reporter who disagreed with Sen. Cotton’s op-ed tell you how awful this is).

And I’ll let John Lennon’s son Sean, who’s surprisingly become a rare voice of reason in the music industry, also provide an appropriate eulogy for the Times…

And lest you think I’m overstating the depths of rabid partisanship to which the Times has sunk, New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones (who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for “the 1619 Project,” a widely-debunked slice of historical propaganda claiming America was founded on nothing but slavery) told CNN that the Republican Party is a “rogue” organization, and the media should not treat it fairly by letting its opinions be heard because that would be “picking sides.” So it must pick one side and silence any dissent to avoid picking sides? So much for the value of a Pulitzer Prize.

And what does the New York Times think is “fit to print”? How about an op-ed telling people to stop talking to their relatives unless they publicly support Black Lives Matter? They say “love requires sacrifice.” As Ed Driscoll at Instapundit notes, this demand that you cut your friends or parents out of your life if they don’t accept your extreme beliefs is the standard operating procedure of cults.

The Times has ceased even to pretend being a legitimate newspaper. It’s now an oversized propaganda leaflet, and you should expect no more journalist integrity, objectivity or fairness from it than you would from a Xeroxed manifesto handed out on a street corner by some hairy guy who smells like a cat litter box.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Monday, the US House was the site of one of Washington’s rare instances of the fabled “shameless pander/blatant blame shift/embarrassing cultural appropriation,” the political equivalent of pulling off Rodney Dangerfield’s Triple Lindy high dive from “Back To School.” Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues donned African-inspired kente cloths, kneeled for nine minutes in memory of George Floyd, then introduced a hastily-written bill called the “Justice in Policing Act,” which they claim will “hold law enforcement accountable in court, improve transparency through data collection, and reform police training and policies.”

That’s all well and good, and I’d certainly be willing to hear any suggestions for improving police practices and efficiency, and reducing racism, conflict, and distrust. But pardon me if I can't quite keep a straight face while sniffing so much election-year pandering and insincere opportunism in the air.

The subtext of all this is to signal to black voters that they must once again turn out and line up to put Democrats in charge because only they will take action to correct all this perceived police racism and corruption. But as the linked story points out, all the worst such problems are in blue-state cities – Minneapolis, Baltimore, New York City, etc. - that have been run entirely by Democrats for decades. If these places are hotbeds of systemic racism, then guess who built the systems.

Also worth mentioning: while they try to blame President Trump as if racism were invented during the three years he’s been in office, we had violent race riots stemming from the deaths of black people during police confrontations in Ferguson and Baltimore while Obama and Biden were in office. Biden now joins in with the critics of police in denouncing a 1994 tough-on-crime bill that until recently, he was bragging about having co-authored. So his campaign pitch is that we must elect Democrats to fix the terrible problems that arose and festered for years under Democratic rule, including his own.

And what if we did give them that much power? From 2009 to 2011, we had a black Democrat President, a Vice-President who’s now running for President on the urgent need for police reform, and solid Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. What did they do about any issues related to police reform or race relations? Nothing whatsoever. It took Donald Trump to finally press for and sign the prison sentencing reform bill, the First Step Act.

Monday’s spectacle was an entertaining piece of political theater at a time when real theaters were shut down, so we couldn’t see “The Lion King,” that other example of African culture being appropriated for a cartoonish spectacle. And it didn’t go unnoticed by some African-Americans…

But if black voters really think that these are the people they can trust to keep their neighborhoods safe and clean up corruption in the very places where they’ve already been in charge longer than the Millennial protesters have been alive, then another cartoon analogy is more appropriate:

Lucy making big promises that this time will be different, then yanking away the football and leaving Charlie Brown flat on his back for the umpteenth time.

Mike Huckabee

Comic/podcaster Adam Carolla is blasting Walmart for its decision not to carry the DVD of “No Safe Spaces,” the excellent and chilling documentary that he and Dennis Prager created about the efforts to silence free speech, particularly by the left on college campuses. Carolla pointed out the irony that Walmart won’t carry a movie "about the importance of allowing Americans to share ideas freely.” He said, “You can't make this stuff up. It's a free country, and Walmart is free to ban our movie, but our fans are also free to let Walmart know how they feel about that."

In its defense, Walmart says they’re carrying the book based on the film, but DVD space is based off “data-driven customer insights” and its $1.3 million box office shows it doesn’t have enough commercial appeal. However, most documentaries don’t make nearly that much (“No Safe Spaces” was the top-earning political documentary of last year), and since it’s hard for them to find theater screens, they depend on DVDs and streaming to reach an audience.

I hope Walmart will reconsider this decision. In light of what we are seeing now across the country – the burning and looting instigated by some of the same radical elements discussed in the film, who are expanding from campuses to entire cities, and, yes, looting big box stores – it’s imperative that everyone in America see this documentary to learn who and what we’re dealing with, how we allowed it to get to this point, and why it must be stopped before free speech is silenced permanently.

To learn more about the film, stream it now or order the DVD online, go to https://nosafespaces.com

Mike Huckabee

I’m getting tired of people claiming that if you criticize the violent rioters and looters, you’re denigrating the value of black lives, the civil rights movement or the legitimate protests over the death of George Floyd. I’m seeing a lot of misplaced sympathy expressed for violent agitators who have hijacked the protests to stir up violence and racial hatred, and who are actually destroying black neighborhoods, homes and businesses, setting the protesters’ cause back, and harming the very people they falsely claim to be helping.

But since nobody wants to hear that message from a white male Republican, maybe it will make more of an impact coming from this lady. She’s an elderly African-American woman in New York City whose small shop is something she’s worked for years to build, only to come in and find the windows smashed, the stock looted and the fixtures demolished, leaving it to her to clean up their mess.

In the great tradition of no-nonsense grandmothers, she very appropriately reads these rioters the Riot Act:

“Tell me Black Lives Matter. You lied. You wanted to loot the store. You needed money? Get a job -- like I do. Stop stealing. This is a neighborhood. We’re trying to build it up, and you’re tearing it down.”

God bless this lady. Click the link to see the rest, and it’s a must-see. Rudy Giuliani is calling for Bill DeBlasio to be removed immediately as Mayor of New York. Can this lady take his place?

Mike Huckabee

Tuesday evening, I posted my promised “20 ‘Just for Fun’ Questions for Rod Rosenstein” in anticipation of his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, scheduled for Wednesday at 10AM Eastern Time.

John Solomon had a similar idea for a list of questions, though his list is the FOR REAL "Ten Most Important Questions for Rod Rosenstein." Let’s see how much overlap we have.

Solomon includes the full quote I referenced in one of my "fun" questions (asking RR if he was joking): “There’s a lot of talk about FISA applications. Many people I’ve seen talk about it seem not to recognize that a FISA application is actually a warrant, just like a search warrant. In order to get a FISA warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career law enforcement officer who swears the information is true...And if it is wrong, that person is going to face consequences. If we’re going to accuse someone of wrongdoing, we have to have admissible evidence, credible witnesses; we have to prove our case in court. We have to affix our signature to the charging document.”

This little lecture, highly amusing today in light of what we know, is from two years ago. You can see why I would have loved to ask him if he was joking (as he reportedly said he was about wearing a wire to secretly record the President). Rosenstein did affix his own personal signature to the final renewal of the FISA application to spy on Carter Page, in 2017. Nothing incriminating was ever found on Page, nothing to charge him with and nothing on which to base a renewal of the original application. Not even the original warrant application was based on verified evidence or a credible witness.

The Justice Department had to withdraw the very FISA warrant renewal that Rosenstein supposedly reviewed and personally signed after it was determined to be “inaccurate, undocumented, and FALSIFIED [emphasis mine] evidence.”

Rosenstein is (or should be) in a heap of trouble. He has asserted that even “the best” law enforcement officials make mistakes and that some of them are even involved in “willful misconduct.” If this is the sort of thing done by “the best” of them, then our whole justice system is in a heap of trouble.

Here, briefly paraphrased, are Solomon’s suggested questions, along with the gist of what I predict Rosenstein’s slippery answers will be...

1. Did you read the warrant against Page, review any evidence or ask questions before you signed the renewal?

RR: “THIS WARRANT HAD ALREADY BEEN INITIALLY APPROVED AND RENEWED TWO MORE TIMES AFTER THAT. BY THE FOURTH TIME, I NATURALLY ASSUMED ALL THE EVIDENCE AGAINST MR. PAGE HAD BEEN VERY WELL ESTABLISHED, SO I JUST WENT AHEAD AND SIGNED IT. HAVING TO TAKE OVER SO MANY OF MR. SESSIONS’ DUTIES AS ATTORNEY GENERAL, I WAS A VERY BUSY MAN AND SIMPLY DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO READ THE PAPERWORK OR REVIEW EVIDENCE THAT I TRUSTED.”

2. Do you now realize the application was flawed and regret signing it?

RR: “WELL, OF COURSE, I WOULDN’T HAVE SIGNED IT HAD I BEEN AWARE OF ANY PROBLEMS, BUT I HONESTLY SAW NOTHING WRONG AT THE TIME. I STRONGLY FELT IT WAS MY PATRIOTIC DUTY TO INVESTIGATE WHAT I SAW AS RUSSIA’S ATTEMPT TO HELP TRUMP BECOME PRESIDENT IN 2016, WHICH, OF COURSE, THEY DID.”

3. Given what we now know, would you still appoint Mueller as a special counsel if you had a do-over?

RR: “I REALLY FELT AT THE TIME THAT MR. MUELLER WAS THE MOST QUALIFIED PERSON FOR THE JOB. ROBERT MUELLER IS THE KINDEST, BRAVEST, WARMEST, MOST WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING I'VE EVER KNOWN IN MY LIFE. I WAS NOT ALONE IN THAT ASSESSMENT; THERE WAS AGREEMENT ACROSS THE BOARD AT THE TIME, AMONG BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS, INCLUDING SOME OF THE REPUBLICANS ON THIS COMMITTEE, SEN. GRAHAM. AS FOR WHETHER I’D DO IT AGAIN, I’D RATHER NOT ANSWER A HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION.”

4. Did you talk with Andy McCabe in 2017 about wearing a wire on President Trump as part of a plot to remove him under the 25th Amendment?

RR: “WE REALLY WERE JUST KIDDING AROUND. THERE WAS NOTHING TO THAT AT ALL. NEXT QUESTION, PLEASE.”

5. Who drafted and provided the supporting materials you used to put together the “scope” memo for Mueller’s team?

RR: “OH, ALL THAT STUFF CAME FROM PETER STRZOK, SOMEONE I TRUSTED AS A FINE CAREER BUREAU OFFICIAL. PETER STRZOK IS THE KINDEST, BRAVEST, WARMEST, MOST WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING I’VE EVER KNOWN IN MY LIFE. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY TALK TO HIM.”

6. In light of new evidence, do you have any concerns about the conduct of James Comey and Andy McCabe?

RR: “I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT THESE MEN WERE FINE CAREER BUREAU OFFICIALS. JAMES COMEY AND ANDREW McCABE ARE THE KINDEST, BRAVEST, WARMEST, MOST WONDERFUL HUMAN BEINGS I’VE EVER KNOWN IN MY LIFE. THAT’S WHY I ALWAYS RELIED ON THEIR JUDGEMENT. I TRUSTED EVERYTHING THEY BROUGHT ME.”

7. When did you learn that Carter Page had actually been an asset for the CIA (not a Russian spy), and that the Steele “dossier” had been debunked or linked to Russian disinformation?

RR: (after leaning over and huddling with lawyers) “I DON’T RECALL.”

8. Do you think the FISA court was intentionally misled, or that it was just a case of bureaucratic bungling?

RR: “IT WAS DEFINITELY THAT LAST THING YOU SAID, ‘BUREAUCRATIC BUNGLING.’”

9. What blame do you place on yourself for the failures in the case you supervised? Who else do you blame?

RR: “I BLAME MYSELF FOR CARING SO MUCH ABOUT MY COUNTRY AND OUR SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND FOR TRUSTING MY TOP OFFICIALS TO CARRY OUT A FAIR INVESTIGATION. WHO ELSE DO I BLAME? WHY, TRUMP, OF COURSE.”

10. Do you think anyone in the Russia investigation should face criminal charges?

RR: “IT’S MY OPINION THAT NO REASONABLE PROSECUTOR WOULD TAKE SUCH A CASE.”

That’s pretty much how I think it will go. To round out the discussion, here’s a link to an excellent piece from last October that appeared in THE AMERICAN THINKER. It’s about all the information we’d amassed on the whole “Russia hoax” that was still being ignored by most in the media. Half a year later, we know even more and have much more evidence, and it’s still being ignored. Rosenstein’s testimony on Wednesday will be ignored, too. But John Durham isn’t ignoring it, and is putting his criminal case together.

The Russia hoax: The Left's willful ignorance and denial

Mike Huckabee

In an extraordinary moment following his speech Monday night, President Trump, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka and several top officials, left the White House and walked across Lafayette Square to historic St. John’s Church, which had been damaged by rioters, and held up a Bible.

He was assailed from all sides, by media people claiming he was blaspheming (I have a feeling many of them were fine with that concept until just that moment), and by Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, Hillary, and the usual gang, claiming that peaceful protesters had been driven from the park so that he could do a “photo op” (Fact-check: It was long past the 7 p.m. curfew, and they would have been removed from the park anyway.)

So when a story went around that he was locked down in the White House by the Secret Service when the rioters got too close, his critics said he was a coward who wouldn’t come out of the White House. When he walked right out into the park, he was accused of being confrontational and escalating the violence. It’s nice to see that despite all the turmoil and upheaval, one thing never changes: to these people, no matter what Trump does, it’s always wrong.

Mike Huckabee

Here’s an example of the kind of “peaceful protester” that Hollywood celebrities are giving millions of dollars to bail out of jail. Note that he is an outsider who traveled to Minneapolis purely to riot, burn and loot and has no noble motives whatsoever, not even a pretense of any.

The media are trying desperately to push the narrative that the rioting and violence are not being instigated by leftwing agitators, but by rightwing white supremacist groups. This claim is as evidence-free as “Russian collusion.”

Officials in Minneapolis have reported that they have seen no substantial presence of any right-wing groups, but they have arrested plenty of white, leftwing outsiders who push to the front of protests and try to stir up violence. Peaceful protesters are starting to realize how they’re being used, and there have been several reports of protesters stopping agitators who began acting violently and handing them over to police.

I hope those who are legitimately concerned and protesting peacefully for change are now seeing how the violence and vandalism of groups like Antifa is setting back their own cause and harming the people they claim to want to help. If that’s not clear yet, then read this article. The title should tell you why it’s a must-read:

“A Plea from an Inner-City African-American to Stop the Madness, Looting and Rioting.”

Mike Huckabee

There’s no shortage of wealthy celebrities hiding out in their mansions inside walled and gated communities while cheering on and financially supporting violent rioters who are burning down and looting other people’s neighborhoods. But if you had to pick a poster child for liberal hypocrisy, former NBA and ESPN star Chris Palmer might have just taken the prize. (Warning: link includes foul language.)

Palmer started off by cheering on the burning of an affordable housing unit in Minneapolis (he later claimed he didn’t know what it was, but considering he tweeted, “Burn it all down,” it apparently didn’t matter that much to him what it was.) Just 24 hours later, the mobs were trying to breach the walls of his gated community in Los Angeles, and it was a very different story. Palmer was frantically tweeting, “Get these animals tha (bleep) out of my neighborhood. Go back to where you live.”

Later, he reported with relief that the hated police showed up and chased them away, and the only loss was a Starbucks (possibly some small business owner’s franchise, maybe even a black small business owner, but if you just want to “burn it all down,” then what difference does that make? But I digress.) Palmer tweet-ranted about the protesters who’d dared to threaten his property, “Tear up your own (bleep). Don’t come to where we live at and tear our neighborhood up. We care about our community. If you don’t care about yours I don’t give a (bleep.)”

I wonder if it occurred to him that some of the “protesters” in Minneapolis, the ones smashing property and setting fires, were also attacking someone else’s neighborhood, and the people who actually lived there didn’t want their homes and businesses burned down and looted any more than he did?

Mike Huckabee

In cities across the nation this weekend, protests continued over the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. And tragically, many of those protests turned violent, with assaults, rioting, burning and looting; from New York City, where two Brooklyn attorneys were arrested over the throwing of a Molotov cocktail into an empty police car…

…to Dallas, where a man carrying a machete and allegedly trying to protect his neighborhood was brutally beaten, stoned and left bleeding on the sidewalk.

Federal authorities believe that the radical leftist organization Antifa, which has been staging violent political demonstrations for several years, is behind much of the rioting. Democrats and liberals in the media deny that and are blaming the riots on outside “white supremacists” (Prof. Glenn Reynolds wryly commented, “These riots are entirely justified responses to systemic racism, and the only possible way to force social change, and they’re being instigated by white supremacists”), or on their favorite scapegoat for every story that makes the left look bad, Russian agents.

No, seriously. I wouldn’t joke about this subject, although blaming the current riots and looting on Russia is the most laughable excuse I’ve heard since Hunter Biden claimed that Russian hackers must’ve set up his account at the cheaters’ website, Ashley Madison.

In fact, jail records show most of the arrestees have Minnesota addresses (the looting is largely done by locals), and officials say the hardcore riot-instigating outsiders who were arrested were mostly white, far-left agitators and that “far-right groups have not yet made a significant appearance.”

In a (in my opinion) long-overdue move, President Trump officially declared Antifa to be a domestic terrorist organization, which will help unleash the FBI to investigate and prosecute them for organizing criminal and terrorist activities across state lines (don’t forget the RICO Act, too.) This will also help unveil communications between this group and its secret supporters, which will undoubtedly result in a lot of outraged howling from certain moneyed circles.

Attorney General Bill Barr released a statement explaining the move, which makes the very important point that this is not aimed at prosecuting peaceful protesters but at people who are hijacking the protest movement and ginning up violence and looting that is destroying minority neighborhoods, homes and businesses. Their mindless violence harms the cause of people seeking legitimate reform as much as it harms the quality of life in our cities.

For too long, this group has been indulged like spoiled children throwing a tantrum in the Walmart candy aisle. It’s time that they learned there are serious consequences for serious crimes. Kurt Schlichter put it succinctly when he said that the minute these trust fund babies realize that they’re looking at five years in Leavenworth instead of a small fine and a slap on the wrist, they will start squealing about who’s behind it all. He said, “The $600-an-hour lawyer that daddy hired will tell authorities, ‘Kayden is going to cooperate.’”

(Incidentally, if you think that’s an unfounded stereotype, here’s what a study in Germany revealed about the makeup of radical leftists arrested for violent protests. 

Apparently, the message about what Antifa is and what it’s really doing, to the detriment of every side of this issue, is lost on the offspring of some blue-state officials where the rioting and looting is at its worst. Jeremiah Ellison is the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. He’s also a Minneapolis City Councilman, so he should be old enough to know better than to take to Twitter and officially declare his support for Antifa.

Then again, his dad, who will be expected to oversee the administration of justice against organizers of mob violence, should also be mature enough to know that, but isn’t.

If these are the blue state officials that local residents have to rely on to keep violent radicals from burning down their homes and looting their businesses, then it’s no wonder the feds have to step in. The protesters chant, “No justice, no peace,” but they should realize that peaceful protests will not be heard as long as there’s no justice applied to the violent radicals who are hijacking their movement, harming the very people they claim to want to help, and turning the public against them.