Mike Huckabee

Today, January 5, is supposed to be the day the Colorado secretary of state certifies the ballots.  So it looks as though the ballots will have to be certified with Trump’s name on them.  Even so, unless/until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in, we don’t know if they’ll be able to get away with not counting Trump votes, as the Colorado Supreme Court has determined they don’t have to count legally-cast votes, at least the write-in ones.  And if they don’t have to count write-in votes, why should they necessarily have to count Trump votes at all?  (We’re not attorneys but find the question intriguing.) 

By the way, in shocking-but-not-surprising breaking news, the totally objective and nonpartisan Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who publicly supported taking Trump off the ballot, attended a private fundraiser for Biden in November.  The state attorney general was apparently there, too.  Here you go.  This is what we’re up against...

https://dailycaller.com/2024/01/04/colorado-secretary-state-jena-griswold-support-remove-trump-ballot-biden-campaign-fundraiser

While awaiting a ruling from SCOTUS on the decision to remove Trump from their state primary ballot, Trump released a looooong analysis on “X” including all the documented ballot hanky-panky surrounding the ‘20 election.  The implication:  any sane person in his position would think the election had been stolen from him.  If it wasn’t, they sure were working feverishly for nothing.

And surely that will be part of Trump’s defense if it comes to that.  Special Counsel Jack Smith is alleging that Trump willfully committed fraud when he said the election was stolen and made moves to have the allegations looked into.  By putting all this out, Trump is saying he truly believes the election WAS stolen from him, and that once you go through all this, you’ll likely think so, too.

The problem, of course, is that those who already believe Trump is guilty will find some way to discredit (in their minds) all of this evidence.  But as Kanekoa the Great, who posted all this, says, “I look forward to fact-checkers debunking this, citing sources from the corporate media that spent four years claiming Trump was a Russian agent and dismissing Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation.”

And, voila, there’s already one such post, from “Grok,” and it’s particularly amusing.  Why, he informs us that Trump’s allegations have been debunked by none other than “PolitiFact, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning website,” and also (hold your breath) the BBC.  And the results were certified by Congress in 2021.  And multiple recounts in swing states such as Arizona and Georgia (recounts of the same ballots that were counted before), “have confirmed Biden’s win.”  Well, that’s good enough for me!

https://twitter.com/RomanValentinus/status/1742702839657316729/photo/1

This reaction was inevitable.  Kanekoa simply says, “I encourage you to review the numerous citations in this report and reach your own conclusions.”

Here are summaries of just a few examples:

Wisconsin was called by 20,682 votes.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled dropboxes illegal under Wisconsin law, and they had plenty of them in pre-determined locations, funded by outside groups.  It was election commissioner Meagan Wolfe who unilaterally declared dropboxes could be used, but the commission never voted to establish this.  You’ll want to read the decision by Justice Rebecca Bradley, as well as about the other ways they apparently “faked the vote” in Wisconsin.

https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1742670652472205596

Then scroll down and you’ll see Pennsylvania, which was called by a margin of just 80,555 votes.  Later it was determined that there were 121,240 more votes cast than there were voters.

Then there are Arizona and Georgia; what a mess.  We can’t have another election that’s as much of a mess as this one was.  It’s too bad that Trump released this at the same time the Epstein “names” were dropped, as the media can now conveniently ignore it all.

https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1742670652472205596

(Side Note: I’ve long said that you don’t even need claims of hacked voting machines or trucks full of fake ballots to be suspicious of the 2020 election. The way the media and the government colluded to silence conservative voices and suppress negative news about Democrats to tilt the table, while Democrats across America waged legal warfare to illegally change voting laws without legislative approval so deeply undermined public trust that it was inevitable that many people would refuse to believe the results before they were even announced. One of the pillars of American society that keeps so many people of widely diverse views united is faith in the honesty of our elections, and the Democrats have been swinging a wrecking ball at it for years.)

Speaking of Georgia, as we previously mentioned, True the Vote just won a decisive legal victory there, in their legal battle against Stacy Abrams' Fair Fight, legal teams led by Marc Elias, and the Biden Department of “Justice.” As announced in their press release, “a federal court in the Northern District of Georgia today affirmed that citizens have the right to lawfully petition their government in support of election integrity without fear of persecution or prosecution.” 

Their release is a must-read, and it includes a link to their video, “The Georgia Story Through the Eyes of True the Vote.”  Their president is Catherine Engelbrecht, a dear friend.

https://wethepeopleconvention.org/articles/True-the-Vote-wins-Important-GA-Case

Dr. John Gentry, a Georgetown University professor who was a CIA analyst for 12 years, is worried about the “significant problem” of politicization of the intel community and confident that those agencies will try to interfere with the 2024 election in ways similar to their efforts in 2020.

He’s researched this topic, past and present, for his new book, “NEUTERING THE CIA:  Why US Intelligence vs. Trump Has Long-Term Consequences.”  That sounds like one for the top of the reading list.  As he said to FOX NEWS Digital, “My guess is that the proverbial deep state within the intelligence community will re-emerge because presumably a Republican candidate will again be seen as a threat to the internal policies that many intelligence people like.”  Downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop was “clearly political,” he said, as a highly placed source told him “in no uncertain terms” that it was done “explicitly” with “intent to help the Biden campaign.”

He’s been reading the tea leaves in recent weeks and says former intel officials are likely to resume their political activity against Trump “or whomever the Republican presidential candidate is next year...The activities of the ‘formers’ have resumed already, a bit earlier than expected.” (This is consistent with what we’ve been saying about trying to set aside the conflict by choosing someone else.  How foolish --- they’ll do this regardless of our choice. In fact, they’re already trying to remove other Republicans who questioned the 2020 election from the ballot using the “insurrection” canard, and never mind that Democrats have also questioned every election they’ve lost for decades.)  

Gentry blamed DEI culture for the politicization of the CIA by shifting their attention away from day-to-day operations to “woke” policies.  (He must be familiar with those CIA recruiting films, too!)   We can thank President Obama for a huge step in that direction, Gentry said, courtesy of an executive order that pushed it.  Two other top-level activists were former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

We want to see what he says in his book about “soft totalitarianism,” which he says they were actually starting to talk about (in those actual words) during the Obama administration.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-cia-analyst-says-intel-agencies-politically-active-again-2024-election-significant-problem

The interview with Gentry doesn’t get into solutions, as is so often the case.  Let’s hope his book does.  In the meantime, we’ll offer a few starting tactics going into this year...

DON’T BELIEVE THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ABOUT ANYTHING.

DON’T BELIEVE LEAKS TO MAJOR MEDIA THAT PROBABLY CAME FROM THEM.

IF THEY ACCUSE THE RIGHT OF SOMETHING, TRUST THAT THEY’RE DOING IT THEMSELVES AND BE DULY WARNED.

INTEL WHISTLEBLOWERS – CULTIVATE YOUR COMMUNITY AND SPEAK UP RIGHT AWAY.

ANTICIPATE SOME “BLACK SWAN” EVENT THAT HAS PROBABLY ALREADY BEEN PLANNED.

Finally, as of this writing, we still haven’t heard from the U.S. Supreme Court about Colorado.  Jonathan Turley said on Wednesday that if the Court doesn’t come back with some answer, the Colorado court could seek to “moot” (temporarily) the appeal and avoid review.

This is a must-read column.  You’ll detect the deep note of sadness as Turley watches our country going through so much lawfare in so many states.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/01/03/a-sad-day-how-the-colorado-disqualification-decision-is-bringing-back-some-bad-memories-for-the-supreme-court/#more-213662

Mike Huckabee

January 6th, or "Democrat Christmas." It's when President Biden will launch into his January 6th “Scare people so senseless that maybe they'll vote for me again” tour. But we already got a preview in the form of his first campaign ad.

Not surprisingly, it doesn’t tout a single positive accomplishment of Biden’s tenure, since I guess they couldn’t think of one, either. It’s yet another dark, scary, divisive piece of fiction designed to demonize Trump and anyone who supports him as “insurrectionists” and threats to “our democracy.” This is an actual quote from Biden in the ad: “I’ve made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency. I believe in free and fair elections and the right to vote fairly and have your vote counted.”

So says the guy who is trying to jail his political opponent and block him from the ballot even as a write-in candidate, so that Americans aren’t allowed to vote for the candidate of their choice and have it counted. Got any mirrors around the White House, Joe?

I would go into more detail on this reprehensible piece of propaganda that’s further beneath a President than the White House sub-basement, but fortunately, Robert Spencer at PJ Media already did a great job of eviscerating it. Here’s his op-ed on the ad that he calls “as dishonest and embarrassing as you’d expect.”

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2024/01/04/biden-drops-first-campaign-ad-and-its-as-dishonest-and-embarrassing-as-youd-expect-n4925231

With tomorrow’s anniversary of the “worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 put together” January 6th “insurrection” looming, nobody seems to have noticed that there was an “insurrection” staged in the California state Capitol in Sacramento this week. A mob of radicals occupied the Capitol, shut down the first day of the session, blocked official business from taking place, forced lawmakers to flee, and refused to leave even after the lights were turned out.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/05/blue-state-blues-insurrection-is-ok-as-long-as-its-by-the-left/

But it turns out that they were leftist, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protesters, so they were allowed to leave peacefully with no arrests made. This was one of the “good” insurrections. Never mind!

Mike Huckabee

On Wednesday, President Trump appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that found him ineligible to be on the primary ballot in that state.  Those justices, 4-3, claimed he engaged in and incited an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021, and is thus prevented by the 14^th Amendment from running for any office.

It asks SCOTUS this question:  “Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot?”

This appeal is no surprise to anyone who knows President Trump, and in case anyone misread him, his attorneys announced their intention shortly after the Colorado ruling.  And on December 27, the Colorado GOP, joined by six voters and the secretary of state’s office, also filed a petition for immediate review by the Supreme Court.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/colorado-secretary-of-state-urges-supreme-court-to-expedite-trump-ballot-challenge

The significance:  President Trump remains on the ballot unless SCOTUS were to reject the petition by January 4 or otherwise rules against Trump.

January 4 --- that’s today!

Why so soon?  In that state, it’s the day before certification of the ballots for the primary.  January 5 is the deadline for the Colorado secretary of state to certify all those ballots, and it cannot be changed.  Once they’re certified, no challenge is allowed.  As they say, it is what it is.

Catherine Yang at THE EPOCH TIMES has an informative report on the President’s legal argument.  They say that over the past few months, more than 60 (!) lawsuits and administrative challenges have been filed against him to keep him off the ballot.  All of these are based on allegations that Trump engaged in insurrection and is therefore disqualified from holding office under Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment.

“First, the events of January 6, 2021, were not ‘insurrection’ as that term is used in Section 3,” Trump’s petition reads. The amendment was passed after the Civil War, and insurrection was understood to mean “the taking up of arms and waging war upon the United States,” they argued. More than 600,000 died in the war, and “focus on war-making” in the text was the “logical result. 

(As you certainly know, this amendment was ratified after the Civil War, to prevent those who had picked up their guns and literally waged war against the United States from serving in public office.  And even they could be permitted that privilege again with a two-thirds vote of Congress.)

“By contrast, the United States has a long history of political protests that have turned violent. In the summer of 2020 alone, violent protestors targeted the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, for over 50 days, repeatedly assaulted federal officers and set fire to the courthouse, all in support of a purported political agenda opposed to the authority of the United States.”

They also argue that the courts don’t have jurisdiction on this question: “Indeed, every federal court that addressed this issue with regard to the eligibility of President Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, and Senator Ted Cruz held that the issue was for Congress and not the federal courts.”

Of course, you know that Maine Secretary of State Shanna Bellows singlehandedly decided that Trump couldn’t be on the GOP primary ballot up there.  (And, gosh, something tells me she’s not even in the GOP!)  Surely knowing how far over the line she had gone, she did at least put her dastardly plan on hold: “I will suspend the effect of my decision until the Supreme Court rules on any appeal or the time to appeal has expired.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-takes-ballot-disqualification-battle-to-supreme-court

For when you have time, the NEW YORK POST has a more detailed story that we highly recommend…

https://nypost.com/2024/01/03/news/trump-attorneys-appeal-colorado-ballot-ruling-to-supreme-court/?&utm_campaign=nypevening

Attorney General Bill Barr has made it clear he does not want Trump to get the GOP nomination, but said this week that “the efforts to knock him off the ballot are legally untenable, politically counterproductive, and, most ominously, destructive of our political order.”  I wonder if he’s considered, though, that for the left, being “destructive of our political order” is not a bug; it’s a feature!

They also could backfire and help Trump, a scenario that, knowing Barr, likely motivates his words as well.

“As a legal matter,” he said, “states do not have the power to enforce the disqualification provision of the Fourteenth Amendment by using their own ad hoc procedures to find that an individual has engaged in an insurrection.”  It’s Congress --- not the individual states ---who has the authority to do that, he said.

Our whole election system could “collapse in chaos,” he warned, if each state uses its own definition of insurrection and its own procedural standards to block candidates.

He had additional words of criticism, specifically for the left: “[This effort] is much like the left’s previous schemes to sidetrack or defeat Trump politically through legal ploys that stretched the law beyond its proper bounds...Nothing is more destructive to democracy than for one faction to try to win in the political arena by disenfranchising its adversaries.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/bill-barr-efforts-to-remove-trump-from-ballot-are-destructive-of-our-political-order

As you know, Special Counsel Jack Smith did not specifically charge Trump with insurrection, and he certainly would’ve done that if he thought it would stick.  Instead, he charged him with four other felonies:

--- conspiracy to defraud the United States

--- “conspiracy against rights”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241 

(If you read the description at the link, you’ll find it sounds very much like what Jack Smith is trying to do!)

--- conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding

--- “obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding”

The Supreme Court is going to be ruling on two of these charges soon, in the case United States v. (Joseph) Fischer (one of the OTHER J6 defendants)…  As legal analyst Margot Cleveland says, ”It is likely a majority of the Supreme Court will rule that the ‘crimes’ the special counsel charged are not crimes at all.”

If you’d like to get into the weeds on statutory interpretation and how it relates to Trump’s J6 case, we recommend taking time with her article.  Cleveland says a reasonable prosecutor would put the brakes on Trump’s criminal trial until the issues about these charges can be resolved by the Supreme Court, but that the special counsel and the district court “have both proven themselves anything but reasonable and have revealed their real goal is to obtain a conviction against Trump before the 2024 election, which is now less than a year away.”  Smith may be trying Trump on charges that don’t even exist, she says, lamenting that half the country doesn’t seem to care.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/02/why-scotus-will-likely-smack-down-two-of-jack-smiths-get-trump-charges-as-non-crimes/

Kenneth Allard

If today you are thinking of attending Harvard in the fall of 2024 as a four-year undergraduate, a three-year law student or even a two-year year graduate student in one of the university’s pricey professional schools, can I ask you something? Before expending the time, money and effort needed to move your stuff to the Cambridge (MA) 02138 area code, let me briefly relate one of my first “lessons learned” as a grad student there nearly a half-century ago.

Walking into the austere elegance of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, I was greeted a small sign prominently displayed next to the only parking space for miles around: DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE! That silent scream was effective. On these august grounds the newcomer had the immediate impression not only of academic rank (maybe the Dean Himself?) but also of larger political portents (Senator Edward Kennedy was even then preparing to run for Camelot II). Novices better watch your step, sample the ambience and see where you had landed. Hey, wasn’t that former Governor Mike Dukakis leading a class?

I eventually took a course with the affable former Governor, years before he went on to become a Democratic presidential candidate: But the Harvard of that day was an elite institution in every possible way. Truly distinguished scholars were everywhere. My foreign policy class was team-taught by Graham Allison (founding Dean) and Ambassador Joseph Nye. Professors Earnest May, Richard Neustadt and Thomas Schelling taught Presidential Politics; each having written definitive volumes on that subject. The unstated message to every student: Enjoy your access to these great and near-great scholars but in return give us your best. Like a prequel to The Paper Chase, Harvard demanded critical thinking on every paper and in every class. Fortunately, I had been honing these classic skills as an intelligence officer; my term paper for Allison and Nye even predicted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan weeks before it happened.

The real tests, however, would come much later, while teaching cadets at West Point, advising the Army’s senior leadership, and serving as Dean of the National War College. When confronted by those complex realities, judgment is not contained in the briefing books prepared for a hearing or the painstaking position papers prepared by high-priced lawyers. Just one month ago, nothing that Claudine Gay relied on when congressional leaders called her to accountability would have been more effective than an honest answer, stripped bare of any self-serving platitudes. Of all people, shouldn’t a black woman have sympathized with the fears of a persecuted religious minority – and on the campus where she reigned supreme? After her egregious plagiarism finally caught up with her this week, any remaining questions about Ms. Gay were resolved by her resignation statement, which should have been entitled, “It’s All About Me.” (I stopped reading after her first paragraph, which used the I-word four times.)

But here is the crunch-point for anyone thinking about attending Harvard. How much institutional damage has Claudine Gay done – or is much of the iceberg still lurking beneath the surface? Even as the legacy media ruminated about “conservative entrapment,” Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square capital and a prominent Harvard donor, suddenly went public with a 4,000-word jeremiad on Twitter/X. After a blistering tutorial on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), “a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard but the educational system at large,” Ackman charged that this ideology had corrupted Gay’s selection as president.

“The Corporation board…selected the wrong president and did inadequate due diligence about her academic record despite Gay being in leadership roles at the University since 2015…The Board failed to create a discrimination-free environment on campus exposing the University to tremendous reputational damage, to large legal and financial liabilities, Congressional investigations and scrutiny, and to the potential loss of Federal funding, all while damaging the learning environment for all students.”

He concluded, “It is time we restore Veritas to Harvard and again be an exemplar that graduates well-informed, highly educated leaders of exemplary moral standing and good judgment…”

https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760

Final point: While Bill Ackman deserves high praise for candor and courage, you may want to wait before booking that return cabin on the Titanic!

COL (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former West Point faculty member, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.

Mike Huckabee

As expected, Donald Trump’s lawyers appealed the unilateral move to try to keep him off of Maine’s ballot by unelected Democrat Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, which automatically stayed her order for at least a couple of weeks.

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/01/03/trump-appeals-maine-secretary-of-states-rabidly-partisan-move-1424515/

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed three of five counts against Trump and two January 6^th rioters in a civil lawsuit by the girlfriend of late Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. She’s trying to hold Trump responsible for his death, which was ruled by the medical examiner to be from “natural causes” due to a stroke suffered the day after the January 6^th violence, although he did claim the events “played a role in his condition.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-dismisses-three-civil-counts-against-trump-others-over-death-of-jan-6-officer-brian-sicknick/ar-AA1mnbCq

I can maybe see stretching that vague finding far enough to sue the others who actually pepper-sprayed Sicknick. But no rubber band has ever been invented that could stretch from that tenuous connection to blaming his death on Trump for telling people to “protest peacefully and patriotically.” Still, the judge allowed two of the counts for conspiracy to violate civil rights to move forward instead of throwing them out, too.

That’s been one of the great frustrations for me of all this anti-Trump lawfare: no matter how patently ridiculous the charges may be (like that Georgia case accusing people of “racketeering” for doing their job of scheduling a phone call between the President and the Governor), we’ve yet to see one judge have the integrity and spine to say what should have been said to all of these prosecutors from day one: “I’m dismissing this garbage case, which is clearly just election interference, and fining you for abusing your powers and wasting this court’s time with it.”

Former President Trump and former (thank goodness!) Representative Liz Cheney got into a spitting match on Twitter (X) this week. I assume Ms. Cheney must’ve been grateful for any publicity, since hating Trump is now the only reason anyone wants to talk to her anymore.

Trump unleashed a long screed, accusing Cheney of illegally deleting and destroying much of the evidence from the January 6^th hearings that he needs to defend himself against the Jack Smith indictments…

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-says-liz-cheneys-act-extreme-sabotage-made-impossible-attorneys-fight-jack-smiths-prosecution/

Cheney responded that Trump was lying, and that his lawyers had all the J6 Kommittee (my spelling) evidence and testimony plus the full Kommittee report. That conveniently glosses over several facts, such as: the Kommittee was stacked and called only witnesses hostile to Trump who were not even allowed to be cross-examined; vast amounts of video testimony, witness transcripts and Secret Service texts somehow got “deleted;” and the Kommittee’s final report was a garbage-in/garbage-out political document, not an objective finding from a legitimately-formed House Committee. If Pelosi had followed the rules, Cheney wouldn’t have even been on the Kommittee; she rejected the Republicans chosen by the GOP Leader as required, replacing them with anti-Trump ringers Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. 

If you’d like to see some enjoyable replies from X users to Cheney’s lies about Trump lying, Twitchy.com rounded up a few.

https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/01/02/liz-cheney-claims-trump-has-had-the-j6-footage-n2391310

Mike Huckabee

Now that 2024 is here, a number of new laws passed in the last year will be taking effect, and that means that red states should brace themselves for an even bigger onslaught of refugees fleeing blue states.

Like Illinois, where porn is being mandated in schools and public libraries…

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/01/01/illinois-law-mandating-sexually-inappropriate-material-in-libraries-is-now-in-effect-n2168181

…California, where court rulings upholding the Second Amendment apparently mean nothing…

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/12/31/insane-california-gun-ban-n2633019

And a number of states where various pro- and con- laws will be taking effect on the chemical and surgical mutilation of children in the name of the “trans” movement.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/12/30/2024-trans-laws-n2632905

Of course, being in a red state doesn’t necessarily mean your kids are safe from that. As that last linked story details, a new law in Iowa to ban sexually-explicit gender propaganda from elementary schools was blocked by a federal judge (apparently, gay porn in third grade is now a constitutional right), as was an Idaho law banning irreversible, experimental “gender” procedures on minors.

Disappointingly, citizens in Ohio didn’t even need a federal judge to swoop in and stop them from protecting children, since Republican Gov. Mike DeWine did that himself. He vetoed a bill that would have banned transgender treatments and procedures on minors and banned males from competing in girls’ school sports.

DeWine attempted to put a conservative justification on it, saying, “Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.” But that doesn’t apply here. Not even parents are allowed to expose their children to dangerous quackery. There are all sorts of laws protecting children from bad decisions by parents, even allowing states to take away custody.

I think you can tell how the Governor has been misled by trans radicals and medical activists by the fact that he called this butchery by their garbage term, “gender-affirming care.” Actual gender-affirming care would mean giving confused prepubescent kids the counseling they need to help them accept their natural genders, not convincing them God made a mistake and put them in the wrong bodies, but with enough chemicals and surgery, Dr. Frankenstein can fix that for them.

There’s an effort underway to override that veto, and more power to it. Meanwhile, here's more on that subject from Bonchie at Redstate.com.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/12/30/mike-dewines-excuse-for-vetoing-ban-on-gender-affirming-care-for-minors-is-hot-garbage-n2168099

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

I don’t know why TCM releases its “In Memoriam” video in mid-December because there are usually some deaths of famous people before the end of the year, and sadly, this year was no exception. Among those who passed over the Christmas-New Year’s week were two famous comedians and a highly-honored actor.

British actor Tom Wilkinson died Saturday of undisclosed causes at 75. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for “In The Bedroom” and Best Supporting Actor for “Michael Clayton.” He also appeared in dozens of hit films, including “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” “Batman Begins,” “The Full Monty,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/12/30/full-monty-actor-tom-wilkinson-dies-at-75/

Stand-up comic Shecky Greene died Sunday in Las Vegas of natural causes at 97. Greene appeared in a number of sitcoms and movies, and was a frequent performer on the old variety shows and Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” But his real stomping ground was Las Vegas. He was one of the few performers who was allowed to “go long” (within reason) if he felt like it. Usually, casino bosses strictly enforce show lengths to ensure the crowd leaves the theater and gets back to gambling ASAP. But they knew Shecky drew in the high rollers who would gamble anyway, so they gave them what they wanted.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/01/02/shecky-greene-legendary-standup-comedian-dies-at-97/

And last Tuesday, Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers died at home in California at 86, following a battle with cancer.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/12/28/comedian-tom-smothers-one-half-of-the-smothers-brothers-dies-at-86/

While the Smothers Brothers are probably best remembered for the controversy over their 1960s CBS series, that was only a small part of a career that spanned decades. Tom and his younger brother Dick started as a folk music act, but they said they didn’t know many songs, so they started doing humorous banter (“Mom always liked you best!”), which took over the act and made them stand out in the self-serious folk music scene. They cut over a dozen albums and even did a short-lived sitcom in 1965 with the ‘60s high concept of Tom being Dick’s dead brother/guardian angel.

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” debuted in 1967 and was an immediate hit with younger audiences. It was the first show to feature hip musical acts like The Who (it’s the show where Keith Moon put explosives in his bass drum without telling anyone and destroyed Pete Townshend’s hearing), and one of the first to feature hippie/pot jokes and do songs and sketches critical of the Vietnam War. It gave a first break to such writers as Steve Martin, Bob Einstein (aka “Super Dave Osborn”) and Mason Williams (“Classical Gas.”) But the controversial political content was too much for CBS, which fired Tom and Dick, sparking a lawsuit. Little remembered is the fact that they actually brought the show back more than once, but its moment had passed. They went on to other endeavors, including live shows, the Broadway hit “I Love My Wife,” Tommy’s winery and his later fame with kids as “The Yo-Yo Man,” showing off his trick yo-yo skills.

Dick Smothers later said that they were actually moderates, and if you look back at the show, its political satire is pretty tame compared to what we see now. It was just the first to do it. Years later, in accepting an honorary Emmy, Tommy jokingly thanked his writers for getting him fired.

I’d recommend checking out some of their albums of folk music-based humor, like “Curb Your Tongue, Knave,” or the funny children’s album, “Aesop’s Fables The Smothers Brothers Way.” And if you want a reminder of my favorite bit from their CBS TV show, look for a copy of the LP “Pat Paulsen For President.” Paulsen’s deadpan bumbling speeches are still a hilarious send-up of a certain type of clueless politician who could actually end up being President these days.

Mike Huckabee

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Today, if you have a moment, leave me a comment about something you read. Comments help me fine tune what I am writing, and they show that we have an active community of readers.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

Daily Bible Verse

Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord and depart from evil.

Proverbs 3:7 KJV

Newsletter Notes

8 stories

3,307 words

Reading time: About 14 minutes

Breaking News

Two people were killed and numerous others injured when a deranged man drove a car full of explosives into a crowd leaving a New Year’s Eve concert in Rochester, New York. At first, authorities suspected terrorism, but they’ve reportedly ruled that out after finding a suicide note. They believe it was an insane act of an emotionally-disturbed man. More details at the link.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/02/news/two-dead-five-injured-in-fiery-crash-outside-rochester-concert/

Israel-Hamas War Update

Over the holidays, useful idiots around the nation continued to try Americans’ patience by attempting to block holiday travel and disrupt Christmas and New Year’s celebrations with their moronic support of Hamas and demands for a ceasefire. I doubt the truth will penetrate their cement skulls, but it’s Hamas that’s refusing to agree to a ceasefire. In fact, here’s the latest on how Hamas is trying to use ceasefires to drag out the war and continue to hold hostages and get more terrorists released.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/hamas-waives-totally-base-demand-months-long-cease-fire-israeli-hostage-negotiation-report

The IDF also announced Monday that it has killed Adil Mismah, a Hamas commander who took part in the October 7^th attack. They also struck a target run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and confiscated a substantial amount of weapons.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/idf-confirms-troops-killed-hamas-leader-involved-attack

Meanwhile, the intensity of fighting in the northern Gaza Strip has started to wind down, and Israel is allowing some Israelis to return to their homes within a few miles of Gaza.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/some-israelis-allowed-return-border-communities-gaza-strip-military-says

Tragically, we learned over the Christmas break that 70-year-old Israeli-American Judith Weinstein Haggai, who was believed to have been taken hostage, was actually killed by Hamas during the October 7^th attack. Her husband, Gadi Haggai, was previously confirmed dead. It was thought that they were taken hostage, but apparently, they were both killed in the attack and Hamas had been holding their bodies. Yes, that’s who you’re supporting, Ivy League protesters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/american-israeli-woman-believed-to-have-been-held-hostage-by-hamas-was-killed-on-oct-7/ar-AA1maCFs

Melania Trump update

One of the more reprehensible traits of the leftist media is the way they threw away the notion of not attacking a politician’s family when it came to Trump. They ran ugly rumors about his young son Barron and viciously attacked his wife Melania every time she appeared in public. She was a beautiful woman, an ex-model and one of our most fashionable First Ladies, yet she never appeared even once in four years on the cover of a major women’s or fashion magazine. That should give you an idea of the lockstep leftist “mean girls” mindset of those publications. When she did appear recently at Roselyn Carter’s funeral, they couldn’t even show enough respect for Mrs. Carter not to use the occasion to criticize Melania.

So it’s hardly a surprise that she would avoid public appearances, although they also use that as grist for concocting nasty rumors. Well, former President Trump revealed why Melania hasn’t been seen in public much lately: he said her 78-year-old mother, Amalija Knavs, is “very ill.” He added, “Hopefully, she’ll be recovering,” but admitted, “It’s a tough one, a very tough one.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-reveals-crushing-news-melania-no-wonder-hasnt-public-lately/

I know you will join me in sending prayers and positive thoughts for Mrs. Knavs’ complete recovery because, unlike so many people in the leftist press, you are good people who haven’t let politics completely erode your sense of human decency.

Swatting politicians

When Maine’s Secretary of State Shanna Bellows decided to declare herself judge, jury and executioner and remove Trump from the ballot for committing a crime he hasn’t even been charged with, she probably thought it would result in cheers and confetti raining down on her. Instead, she’s getting rightly slammed.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/12/28/maine-secretary-of-state-gets-destroyed-after-trump-ballot-decision-n2168052

There’s now a motion in the legislature to impeach her…

https://www.westernjournal.com/maine-gop-state-rep-moves-impeach-secretary-state-shenna-bellows-removing-trump-ballot/

And on Friday, her home was “swatted,” making her one of a number of prominent politicians to fall victim to the latest dangerous prank of making a fake 911 call to report a shooting or violent crime so that armed cops show up at someone’s house. This is something that calls for a major crackdown before someone gets injured or killed. Over the past few weeks, it’s also happened to Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Brandon Williams and Kevin Miller, and even to the New York estate of George Soros.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/soros-southampton-ny-estate-latest-to-fall-victim-to-fake-911-swatting-call/ar-AA1mkriJ

Although it’s possible the caller didn’t intend to swat Soros. Maybe he just called 911 to complain about all the shootings and violent crimes that are the direct result of George Soros and the operator misunderstood.

Biden is setting records

You can’t say the Biden White House isn’t setting records. CBS News reports that as of December 27^th, border agents reported 225,000 migrant encounters, a new monthly record. That doesn’t include the roughly 50,000 entrants they process at legal ports of entry each month or the remaining four days of the month. Added together, it’s likely we saw a staggering invasion of 300,000 border crossers in just one month.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/migrant-crossings-at-us-southern-border-reach-record-monthly-high/ar-AA1maxXU

As CBS put it, these numbers highlight “the magnitude of the extraordinary migration crisis the Biden administration is grappling with.” I believe they meant to say, “the magnitude of the extraordinary migration crisis the Biden administration deliberately caused.” You’re welcome.

Final Celebrity Farewells of 2023

By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)

I don’t know why TCM releases its “In Memorium” video in mid-December because there are usually some deaths of famous people before the end of the year, and sadly, this year was no exception. Among those who passed over the Christmas-New Year’s week were two famous comedians and a highly-honored actor.

British actor Tom Wilkinson died Saturday of undisclosed causes at 75. He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for “In The Bedroom” and Best Supporting Actor for “Michale Clayton.” He also appeared in dozens of hit films, including “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” “Batman Begins,” “The Full Monty,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/12/30/full-monty-actor-tom-wilkinson-dies-at-75/

Stand-up comic Shecky Greene died Sunday in Las Vegas of natural causes at 97. Greene appeared in a number of sitcoms and movies, and was a frequent performer on the old variety shows and Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” But his real stomping ground was Las Vegas. He was one of the few performers who was allowed to “go long” (within reason) if he felt like it. Usually, casino bosses strictly enforce show lengths to ensure the crowd leaves the theater and gets back to gambling ASAP. But they knew Shecky drew in the high rollers who would gamble anyway, so they gave them what they wanted.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/01/02/shecky-greene-legendary-standup-comedian-dies-at-97/

And last Tuesday, Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers died at home in California at 86, following a battle with cancer.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/12/28/comedian-tom-smothers-one-half-of-the-smothers-brothers-dies-at-86/

While the Smothers Brothers are probably best remembered for the controversy over their 1960s CBS series, that was only a small part of a career that spanned decades. Tom and his younger brother Dick started as a folk music act, but they said they didn’t know many songs, so they started doing humorous banter (“Mom always liked you best!”), which took over the act and made them stand out in the self-serious folk music scene. They cut over a dozen albums and even did a short-lived sitcom in 1965 with the ‘60s high concept of Tom being Dick’s dead brother/guardian angel.

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” debuted in 1967 and was an immediate hit with younger audiences. It was the first show to feature hip musical acts like The Who (it’s the show where Keith Moon put explosives in his bass drum without telling anyone and destroyed Pete Townshend’s hearing), and one of the first to feature hippie/pot jokes and do songs and sketches critical of the Vietnam War. It gave a first break to such writers as Steve Martin, Bob Einstein (aka “Super Dave Osborn”) and Mason Williams (“Classical Gas.”) But the controversial political content was too much for CBS, which fired Tom and Dick, sparking a lawsuit. Little remembered is the fact that they actually brought the show back more than once, but its moment had passed. They went on to other endeavors, including live shows, the Broadway hit “I Love My Wife,” Tommy’s winery and his later fame with kids as “The Yo-Yo Man,” showing off his trick yo-yo skills.

Dick Smothers later said that they were actually moderates, and if you look back at the show, its political satire is pretty tame compared to what we see now. It was just the first to do it. Years later, in accepting an honorary Emmy, Tommy jokingly thanked his writers for getting him fired.

I’d recommend checking out some of their albums of folk music-based humor, like “Curb Your Tongue, Knave,” or the funny children’s album, “Aesop’s Fables The Smothers Brothers Way.” And if you want a reminder of my favorite bit from their CBS TV show, look for a copy of the LP “Pat Paulsen For President.” Paulsen’s deadpan bumbling speeches are still a hilarious send-up of a certain type of clueless politician who could actually end up being President these days.

A Pearls Before Swine New Year

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 01, 2024 - GoComics

Dems’ New Year’s resolution: to get Trump off the ballot

When last we saw the news about Special Counsel Jack Smith --- and I hope you didn’t spend much of your Christmas week thinking about HIM --- Santa had disappointed him badly by giving him an order from the Supreme Court declining to rule on Trump’s presidential immunity without letting the DC Circuit Court rule first, as they would normally do for any other person besides you-know-who. 

In his all-out effort to railroad President Trump before the ‘24 election, Smith thought it was fine to cut out a step in the process.  In the interest of time, you know.  And besides, this is Trump, who doesn’t deserve the rights of...well, any other American citizen you can point to.  We’ve got to stop Trump from becoming President again because he’s the reincarnation of HITLER!  Why, if he became President again, he would literally declare himself dictator, the way he did last time.  Oh, wait, he did nothing like that.  Still, he might try to get other candidates’ names taken off the ballot!  No, come to think of it, that’s the Democrats.  Never mind.

“Is this [Supreme Court ruling] going to upset the plans of Jack Smith?” law professor Jonathan Turley asked earlier this month.  “Yeah!”

So let’s see how Smith is doing, coming into the New Year.  Well, in his zeal, he appears not to have taken any time away from his work saving “our democracy.”  In the hours before 2023 became 2024, he made an appellate filing saying that Trump is “a danger to the American republic.” As reported in the NEW YORK SUN, “The special counsel reckons that the ‘Founders did not intend and would never have countenanced’ the expansive vision of presidential immunity propounded by Mr. Trump.’

“Rising to high rhetorical dudgeon, Mr. Smith declares that Mr. Trump’s invocation of the protections of the office he once held ‘threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation of our Republic.’” (At least a Democrat finally remembered we’re a republic, not a democracy.)

Smith’s brief reprises his core allegation that Mr. Trump “conspired to use knowingly false claims of election fraud with the goal of overturning the legitimate results” of the last election and “disenfranchising millions of voters.” 

While Mr. Smith allows that presidents are shielded from civil liability for their official conduct, he maintains that “any burdens of post Presidency criminal liability have minimal impact on the functions of an incumbent and are outweighed by the paramount public interest in upholding the rule of law through federal prosecution.” 

He also argues that the double jeopardy argument doesn’t apply simply because Trump was acquitted of insurrection in his impeachment, saying Trump can still be prosecuted for the underlying acts.  (Curiously, Smith didn’t charge Trump with insurrection while charging him with CONSPIRACY to commit insurrection.)

Smith brought up a point made by one of President Clinton’s attorneys, Nicole Seligman, during Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial, who argued that if the Senate acquitted the President (they did, of course), he could still be prosecuted in criminal court, like any other citizen, after his presidency was over.

Smith cited the “rigorous standards to prove criminal offenses and evidentiary limitations that would come into play” with the prosecution of a President.  Now, that’s one of those statements that should come with its own laugh track.  By now we’ve all seen the “rigorous standards” this special counsel holds himself to.

Here’s the full story at the NEW YORK SUN…

https://www.nysun.com/article/jack-smith-rings-in-new-year-by-asserting-that-trump-threatens-the-constitutional-foundations-of-our-republic

Now let’s move to the current status of state-by-state efforts to simply have President Trump dropped from primary ballots. Judge Andrew Napolitano, speaking on NEWSMAX on New Year’s morning, said the Supreme Court should strike down “unanimously” these states’ attempts to block him in this way.  A party-line vote will be seen as --- what else? --- political, and Chief Justice Roberts can’t let the court be seen as acting on this out of partisanship.

“There’s a lot of people who criticized the Chief Justice John Roberts,” he said, “but one thing you cannot criticize him for is his ability to amass a majority on the Court.  He said that what’s going on inside Roberts’ head right now is this: “How can this be resolved with unanimity because the Court cannot be made to look political.”

He fears that a split decision could be so divisive that it could cause one of those “black swan” events, similar in power to COVID and the BLM riots, for disrupting the ‘24 election. “The Court can’t take sides in a political dispute,” he said.  The Court has the final word on what the Constitution means, and that final word needs to be articulated with unanimity, not an easy task when you have six conservatives and three liberals.”  He’s hoping the liberals can rule with the majority, that they will see the dangers of taking the right to vote out of Americans’ hands under the guise of a so-called “insurrection” that wasn’t one. 

Napolitano is hopeful, saying that “something happens when you have a lifetime job, something divorces you from the political process and causes you to focus on just the meaning and values and history of what you’re interpreting, in this case the 14^th Amendment.”  Well, let’s pray he’s right, as university professors have lifetime tenure and it doesn’t seem to be helping there.

You can imagine what Napolitano had to say about Shenna Bellows, the Democrat secretary of state in Maine who singlehandedly took Trump off the ballot in that state.  “She’s in the process of printing ballots almost literally as we speak,” he said, sometime in the next few weeks.  She may very well have thought that she could catch the Republicans flatfooted and print the ballots without his name on [them] before there’s even time for an appeal.  That would be a gross abuse of her office.”

The Supreme Court has to weigh in in Maine, he said, because the “Constitution has to mean the same thing in all states of the Union,” not 51 different things. 

“It’s a crazy situation that they have in Maine,” he said, “whereby a single unelected official can decide who gets on the ballot and who doesn’t --- without charges, without a trial, without a jury, without any conviction, without any finding of fault on the part of Donald Trump.”

All in the name of protecting “our democracy.”

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/andrew-napolitano-supreme-court-donald-trump/2024/01/01   

Here’s some background on Bellows.  Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung sums it up well:  “The Maine secretary of state is a former ACLU attorney” (correction: director of the state ACLU, but not an attorney), “a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.  We are witnessing, in real time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/29/shenna-bellows-donald-trump-maine-ballot-aclu-2024-primary

HUMOR BREAK!  Here’s the BABYLON BEE’s take on the above observation.  Democrats are NOT stealing the election in secret!  They’e doing it right out in the open, so there!

https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-disprove-claims-they-will-covertly-rig-election-by-rigging-it-in-plain-sight

Even the legal analyst at CNN, Elie Honig, cast shade on Bellows’ decision to take Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Maine. Sure, the Constitution is clear that if you “engage in insurrection, and you’re out,” he said.  The complicated part is “who gets to decide, and by what process.”

He explained that “if you look at the hearing, and she details this in the ruling, they heard from one fact witness, a law professor. She based her ruling on a lot of documents, but also YouTube clips, news reports, things that would never pass the bar in normal court. She’s not a lawyer, by the way. It’s a smartly written decision, clearly consulted with lawyers, but this is an unelected– she’s chosen by the state legislature. Chosen, elected by the legislature, but not democratically elected.”

“Clearly consulted with lawyers.”  Wouldn’t it be fun to know if she consulted with congressional attorneys for the J6 Kangaroo Kommittee?  After all, that’s the kind of “evidence” they were using in their staged and scripted “hearings.”

https://bongino.com/cnn-legal-analyst-maine-secretary-of-state-isnt-a-lawyer-and-partially-based-trump-ballot-removal-decision-on-youtube-videos

Last week on Sean Hannity’s show, former Hawaii congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard had similar words for Bellows, sounding the alarm about Democrats who “will stop at nothing” to maintain power.  And she’s right --- when have they ever backed down?

And, importantly, it’s not just Democrats.  (Please heed this warning when considering other GOP candidates.)  Gabbard noted that “efforts to sideline Trump extend beyond the Democratic Party, with some Republicans ‘threatened by’ his departure from ‘their establishment ways.’”  She didn’t name names, but I’m sure you can think of a few.  Some of them are running for President. 

From her interview with Pete Hegseth:

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/28/they-will-stop-at-nothing-tulsi-gabbard-slams-maines-dangerous-removal-of-trump-from-ballot/

I Just Wanted to Say

Thank you for reading my newsletter.

Mike Huckabee

When last we saw the news about Special Counsel Jack Smith --- and I hope you didn’t spend much of your Christmas week thinking about HIM --- Santa had disappointed him badly by giving him an order from the Supreme Court declining to rule on Trump’s presidential immunity without letting the DC Circuit Court rule first, as they would normally do for any other person besides you-know-who. 

In his all-out effort to railroad President Trump before the ‘24 election, Smith thought it was fine to cut out a step in the process.  In the interest of time, you know.  And besides, this is Trump, who doesn’t deserve the rights of...well, any other American citizen you can point to.  We’ve got to stop Trump from becoming President again because he’s the reincarnation of HITLER!  Why, if he became President again, he would literally declare himself dictator, the way he did last time.  Oh, wait, he did nothing like that.  Still, he might try to get other candidates’ names taken off the ballot!  No, come to think of it, that’s the Democrats.  Never mind.

“Is this [Supreme Court ruling] going to upset the plans of Jack Smith?” law professor Jonathan Turley asked earlier this month.  “Yeah!”

So let’s see how Smith is doing, coming into the New Year.  Well, in his zeal, he appears not to have taken any time away from his work saving “our democracy.”  In the hours before 2023 became 2024, he made an appellate filing saying that Trump is “a danger to the American republic.” As reported in the NEW YORK SUN, “The special counsel reckons that the ‘Founders did not intend and would never have countenanced’ the expansive vision of presidential immunity propounded by Mr. Trump.’

“Rising to high rhetorical dudgeon, Mr. Smith declares that Mr. Trump’s invocation of the protections of the office he once held ‘threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation of our Republic.’” (At least a Democrat finally remembered we’re a republic, not a democracy.)

Smith’s brief reprises his core allegation that Mr. Trump “conspired to use knowingly false claims of election fraud with the goal of overturning the legitimate results” of the last election and “disenfranchising millions of voters.” 

While Mr. Smith allows that presidents are shielded from civil liability for their official conduct, he maintains that “any burdens of post Presidency criminal liability have minimal impact on the functions of an incumbent and are outweighed by the paramount public interest in upholding the rule of law through federal prosecution.” 

He also argues that the double jeopardy argument doesn’t apply simply because Trump was acquitted of insurrection in his impeachment, saying Trump can still be prosecuted for the underlying acts.  (Curiously, Smith didn’t charge Trump with insurrection while charging him with CONSPIRACY to commit insurrection.)

Smith brought up a point made by one of President Clinton’s attorneys, Nicole Seligman, during Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial, who argued that if the Senate acquitted the President (they did, of course), he could still be prosecuted in criminal court, like any other citizen, after his presidency was over.

Smith cited the “rigorous standards to prove criminal offenses and evidentiary limitations that would come into play” with the prosecution of a President.  Now, that’s one of those statements that should come with its own laugh track.  By now we’ve all seen the “rigorous standards” this special counsel holds himself to.

Here’s the full story at the NEW YORK SUN…

https://www.nysun.com/article/jack-smith-rings-in-new-year-by-asserting-that-trump-threatens-the-constitutional-foundations-of-our-republic

Now let’s move to the current status of state-by-state efforts to simply have President Trump dropped from primary ballots. Judge Andrew Napolitano, speaking on NEWSMAX on New Year’s morning, said the Supreme Court should strike down “unanimously” these states’ attempts to block him in this way.  A party-line vote will be seen as --- what else? --- political, and Chief Justice Roberts can’t let the court be seen as acting on this out of partisanship.

“There’s a lot of people who criticized the Chief Justice John Roberts,” he said, “but one thing you cannot criticize him for is his ability to amass a majority on the Court.  He said that what’s going on inside Roberts’ head right now is this: “How can this be resolved with unanimity because the Court cannot be made to look political.”

He fears that a split decision could be so divisive that it could cause one of those “black swan” events, similar in power to COVID and the BLM riots, for disrupting the ‘24 election. “The Court can’t take sides in a political dispute,” he said.  The Court has the final word on what the Constitution means, and that final word needs to be articulated with unanimity, not an easy task when you have six conservatives and three liberals.”  He’s hoping the liberals can rule with the majority, that they will see the dangers of taking the right to vote out of Americans’ hands under the guise of a so-called “insurrection” that wasn’t one. 

Napolitano is hopeful, saying that “something happens when you have a lifetime job, something divorces you from the political process and causes you to focus on just the meaning and values and history of what you’re interpreting, in this case the 14^th Amendment.”  Well, let’s pray he’s right, as university professors have lifetime tenure and it doesn’t seem to be helping there.

You can imagine what Napolitano had to say about Shenna Bellows, the Democrat secretary of state in Maine who singlehandedly took Trump off the ballot in that state.  “She’s in the process of printing ballots almost literally as we speak,” he said, sometime in the next few weeks.  She may very well have thought that she could catch the Republicans flatfooted and print the ballots without his name on [them] before there’s even time for an appeal.  That would be a gross abuse of her office.”

The Supreme Court has to weigh in in Maine, he said, because the “Constitution has to mean the same thing in all states of the Union,” not 51 different things. 

“It’s a crazy situation that they have in Maine,” he said, “whereby a single unelected official can decide who gets on the ballot and who doesn’t --- without charges, without a trial, without a jury, without any conviction, without any finding of fault on the part of Donald Trump.”

All in the name of protecting “our democracy.”

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/andrew-napolitano-supreme-court-donald-trump/2024/01/01   

Here’s some background on Bellows.  Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung sums it up well:  “The Maine secretary of state is a former ACLU attorney” (correction: director of the state ACLU, but not an attorney), “a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.  We are witnessing, in real time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/29/shenna-bellows-donald-trump-maine-ballot-aclu-2024-primary

HUMOR BREAK!  Here’s the BABYLON BEE’s take on the above observation.  Democrats are NOT stealing the election in secret!  They’e doing it right out in the open, so there!

https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-disprove-claims-they-will-covertly-rig-election-by-rigging-it-in-plain-sight

Even the legal analyst at CNN, Elie Honig, cast shade on Bellows’ decision to take Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Maine. Sure, the Constitution is clear that if you “engage in insurrection, and you’re out,” he said.  The complicated part is “who gets to decide, and by what process.”

He explained that “if you look at the hearing, and she details this in the ruling, they heard from one fact witness, a law professor. She based her ruling on a lot of documents, but also YouTube clips, news reports, things that would never pass the bar in normal court. She’s not a lawyer, by the way. It’s a smartly written decision, clearly consulted with lawyers, but this is an unelected– she’s chosen by the state legislature. Chosen, elected by the legislature, but not democratically elected.”

“Clearly consulted with lawyers.”  Wouldn’t it be fun to know if she consulted with congressional attorneys for the J6 Kangaroo Kommittee?  After all, that’s the kind of “evidence” they were using in their staged and scripted “hearings.”

https://bongino.com/cnn-legal-analyst-maine-secretary-of-state-isnt-a-lawyer-and-partially-based-trump-ballot-removal-decision-on-youtube-videos

Last week on Sean Hannity’s show, former Hawaii congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard had similar words for Bellows, sounding the alarm about Democrats who “will stop at nothing” to maintain power.  And she’s right --- when have they ever backed down?

And, importantly, it’s not just Democrats.  (Please heed this warning when considering other GOP candidates.)  Gabbard noted that “efforts to sideline Trump extend beyond the Democratic Party, with some Republicans ‘threatened by’ his departure from ‘their establishment ways.’”  She didn’t name names, but I’m sure you can think of a few.  Some of them are running for President. 

From her interview with Pete Hegseth:

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/28/they-will-stop-at-nothing-tulsi-gabbard-slams-maines-dangerous-removal-of-trump-from-ballot/

Mike Huckabee

One of the big hot button issues on the left these days is any suggestion that America is a Judeo-Christian nation built on Biblical principles. To them, America is all about “diversity,” which means any religion is welcome except that of the majority of Americans since the beginning of our history. They will also argue that the Founders were not Christians, even if it means grabbing the thinnest reed of circumstantial evidence and waving it like a baseball bat. I think this is evidence that they learned even less in history class than they did in economics class.

In my book “The Three C’s That Made America Great,” my co-author Steve Feazel and I compiled a mountain of evidence of the importance of the Bible and Christianity to America’s heritage. Not just in the many Christian sects that came here in the early days seeking religious freedom, but deeply rooted in the culture and the foundations of our government and school system. Here are just a few examples. See if this sounds like the thinking of a group of closet atheists…

Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote that “The Bible…should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.”

Fellow signer Samuel Adams wrote of the importance of “inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…In short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”

The “Father of American Scholarship and Education,” Noah Webster, wrote, “In my view, the Christian Religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed…No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

While the Revolutionary War was raging, it was nearly impossible to import Bibles. Philadelphia Magazine publisher Robert Aitken requested that Bibles be printed in America to be used in schools. So in 1782, the Continental Congress approved the printing of what became known as the Aitken Bible, the first English Bible printed in America. That’s right: CONGRESS…printed the BIBLE…so it could be used in SCHOOLS! I can already hear liberals’ heads exploding at that revelation. The Bibles even included a statement that the US Congress “recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.”

In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, laying the groundwork for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin to become states. It includes this statement on education: “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Today’s leftists and atheists would dismiss these as the opinions of some early American figures that were somehow swept away by the Constitution and its nonexistent “separation of church and state” clause. However, even after the Constitution was ratified, none of that was rescinded and the Bible continued to be used in public schools.

Among those outside of government, there was little disagreement about the importance of religion, the Bible and Judeo-Christian morality as the bedrock of American culture. In 1831, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the US to write his landmark work, “Democracy in America.” He declared that the first thing that struck him was “the religious aspect of the country,” and the longer he stayed, the more he perceived “the great political consequences” resulting from it.

De Tocqueville wrote that “there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America,” and it “must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions,” “for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.” He said he was certain that Americans “hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”

He further noted the unique importance of Christianity in making freedom the foundation of America’s government: “In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.”

Maybe that’s why, throughout the 1800s, no legal challenge to the Bible or morality being taught in public schools was ever raised. It took nearly 200 years for liberals to “discover” that the Founders weren’t really Christians, the nation wasn’t really built on Biblical principles of morality and justice, and the writers of the Constitution actually meant to ban Bibles from public schools.

I’ve shown my evidence for my argument. What’s theirs, other than “We feel that’s how it should be, and we found some activist liberal judges who agreed with us”?

(Partially adapted from “The Three C’s That Made America Great” by Mike Huckabee and Steve Feazel:

Buy our book: The Three Cs That Made America Great: Christianity, Capitalism and the Constitution - Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

Mike Huckabee

Melvin from Oregon wrote to share memories of a couple of Christmases that were made very special, thanks to a grandfather who never forgot what it was like to be a kid at Christmas.

“Christmas 1944: I am four years old and my dad is still overseas, so mom and I are staying with my grandparents. Christmas eve, it's time for me to hang up my sock. I'm just getting ready to hang it on the mantle when grandpa comes in. He has a giant sock and a big metal wash tub. I ask him what he is doing, and this is what he tells me:

‘I'm going to hang this big old sock up.’ He hangs his sock up then he puts the wash tub under the sock. He shows me that there is a hole in the toe of the sock, and it has a tennis ball in the hole. He then tells me that ‘when Santa comes tonight, he will start putting good stuff in his big old sock, and the tennis ball will fall out.’ Santa will keep stuffing his sock and the presents will fall into the wash tub, and he will get way more stuff than I will in my little old sock.

Well, I'm only four years old, but I know this ain't right. I go running to grandma and tell her that grandpa is going to cheat Santa. Grandma says, ‘Don't worry, because I know that Santa is much smarter than your grandpa is.’ So I go off to bed, but I am not happy.

Christmas morning comes. I run downstairs and see that my grandpa has a sour look on his face. I see my sock has all kinds of good stuff in it. I look at grandpa’s sock, and the wash tub is full. It has an old rubber boot with a big hole in it, a big half-rotten squash, some chunks of coal, an old broken shovel etc., etc. I guess grandma was right after all. Santa is smarter than grandpa.”

The next year, Melvin’s grandpa was still putting creativity into Christmas…

“Christmas 1945.  I am five years old, and we are still staying with my grandparents…My father was in Japan in the Second World War, his two brothers were in the European theater.  All three came home OK. I thank God for that and for all of the men that have gone before.

We are trimming the Christmas tree. Grandpa comes in, and he has all of these walnuts that he has painted silver and put a yarn loop on to hang them with. I think they’re neat, but that’s about it.

Christmas morning, I come down and start opening my presents. Grandpa says, ‘Why don't you open one of those walnuts?’ I say ‘Naw, I got to open my presents’… Well grandpa keeps after me. Finally, I say, ‘Okay!’  So I crack a walnut open, and a penny falls out. Well, NOW I'm opening walnuts!  There's dimes, nickels, and pennies.  When I get done, I have about a dollar fifty, and that’s big money in 1945.

…My grandfather thought enough of me to take the time to cut the walnuts open and take out the meat for grandma to cook with. Then he put a coin in and glued each one back together, just to make a little five-year-old boy happy on Christmas morning.

Sixty-five years later, I don't remember anything else I got that Christmas.  But I remember the walnuts and the love that went into making them. That might be something for young parents to think about... It really is the little things that count the most.” 

Thanks, Melvin, for giving us all something important to remember before we go frantically hunting for whatever the latest “hot” gift is. It’s not so much the gift that we remember years later, but the person who loved us enough to give it to us that matters.    

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31

Mike Huckabee

This time of year, one of the many great holiday songs we always hear is the late, great Glen Campbell’s “Christmas Is For Children.” That sentiment was also on the minds of many of my radio listeners whose most treasured memories of Christmas were tied to childhood – either their kids’ childhoods or their own.

Some were of the “Kids Say The Darnedest Things” variety. For instance, Joe from Georgia recalled when his son was 7, their church had a pancake breakfast with a “Happy Birthday Jesus” cake for the kids, and the Lord’s Supper for adults during the Christmas Eve service. His son tugged his sleeve and asked, “Dad, why am I allowed to eat the Lord’s Breakfast but not His supper?”

An eternal theological question, my son!

There's something about the excitement of Christmas that makes children even more hilariously discombobulated. Cleve from New Mexico wrote, "At our house, we always opened our presents on Christmas morning. I remember the first year my daughters were really, really, really looking forward to Christmas. On Christmas Eve morning, they jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, and hollered, 'Today's the night we get up in the morning!!'"

Well, they were right: it was!

Dolores from Texas recalled that during the Depression, her parents gave her and her sister Betsy Wetsy dolls, and made a little suitcase and a whole wardrobe for them. Dolores said it was the “best Christmas ever!” The girls were so excited, they didn’t even realize until years later that those were actually their old dolls, all cleaned up. The moral: To a child, a gift doesn’t have to be new…just new to THEM.

Claudine from North Dakota shared this:

“When my kids were little, the church was getting together some toys, gifts and food items for a poor family who had just moved to our area at Christmas time. While looking in the pantry to see what we might have extras of, I asked my children what they would like to give. My daughter - then six years old - went to her room and brought down her Barbie doll complete with Barbie outfits, that she loved to play with. It was her only one. When I said, ‘Oh, honey, you don't have to give your favorite doll’, she said to me, ‘Mommy, if you just give what you don't want, it's not really giving, is it?’”

When you “give till it hurts,” as some people put it, it can actually feel pretty good. Thank you, Claudine, for reminding us that sometimes, parents can learn from children.

BettyJean from California had a favorite childhood Christmas memory that reminds us not to look a gift horse in the mouth. She wrote:

"I was born in 1928 in a small town in Montana. My mother died in 1929... (and) we were very poor...One Christmas my friend, Rex, whose parents had a restaurant in town, gave me a beautifully wrapped present. I was SOOOO EXCITED! Christmas Eve, my brother and I unwrapped our two presents. My brother watched me unwrap mine: a box of candy. And I can still hear him, 70 years later...yelling out, "DAAAAAD! THERE'S A PIECE GONE!!!!!"

I guess that proves little boys haven't really changed much in all these years!

Of course, Christmas is also a time when many of us former children experience the sadness of memories of parents who are no longer with us. I received many stories from people who were rocked by a flood of emotions at something as simple as coming across an old family decoration that their dad made, or the smell of a favorite family dish that mama used to cook. You never know what unlikely things might trigger overwhelming emotions.

For example, Linda from Texas recalled that her grandfather’s last Christmas gift to her dad just before he died was a shirt. He never wore that shirt. But he kept it hanging in his closet for the rest of his life, carefully preserved as a reminder of his dad.

Ellen from Oregon would understand that feeling. Her mother died of a brain tumor that had scrambled her thinking and sometimes made her a little exasperating. Just before Christmas, she made a big production of being driven to the post office to buy Christmas ornament postage stamps. She debated at great length before settling on the design, which she insisted on calling the “Jingle Bell stamps.” The postal clerk put three sheets of stamps in an onionskin envelope for her. Her mom proudly took them home, wrote “Christmas stamps” on the envelope, and displayed them on the windowsill for all to see. It seemed a little silly to Ellen at the time.

One month later, as she and her sisters were cleaning out their late mother’s house, Ellen came across her mom’s beloved Jingle Bells stamps in the onionskin envelope with her handwriting on it. She wrote, “I took them into the bathroom and cried.” She took the envelope with the remaining stamps home with her. Long afterward, when her husband needed a stamp, she opened the stamp drawer, saw them again, and cried again.

She began calling them the “Jingle Bell stamps,” too. There are only three stamps left, and there always will be. Ellen said she could never use them. She wrote:

“It’s almost as if when those stamps are gone, one more thread will be cut…But somehow, I know I will never give up that little onion skin envelope. Whenever I buy stamps, it will always be in sheets, and I will always tuck them into that little onion skin envelope.”

Thank you for sharing that, Ellen. And please know that you are not alone. Many of us treasure things that might seem silly to others, but they hold value beyond gold to us. There’s no reason to be embarrassed about having a reminder of your mom in the stamp drawer. But it’s even better to know that we’ll always have memories of our loved ones who’ve left us tucked safely away in our hearts.

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Mike Huckabee

I’m just returning home from a very intense trip to Israel where I joined some other evangelical leaders in 3 days of meetings with Israeli officials, families of those who were kidnapped and taken hostage by Hamas terrorists, and survivors of the savage and barbaric attacks on innocent civilians, including babies, young mothers, elderly people, and teenagers. 

We visited Kfar Aza, one of the first communities that was overrun by Hamas where people were murdered on the morning of October 7 which should have been a quiet and peaceful Shabbat.  75 days had passed since the quiet community had been the site of some of the most uncivilized and indescribable atrocities since the Holocaust, and yet the stench of death still lingered in the air and despite attempts to clean up blood and body parts of the innocent victims, there were many reminders of how the last moments of life for these vulnerable Jewish residents of Kfar Aza were moments of pain, humiliation, and the most depraved violence that the world has ever seen.

We were escorted by military personnel from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and we were required to wear bulletproof vests and arrive via an armored bus due to the fact of it still being an active war zone.  We were less than 400 meters from Gaza and throughout our time there, the loud sounds of artillery shattered what would have otherwise been a quiet day.  Some of the shelling seemed closer than was comfortable.  After a few minutes we had gotten used to it. 

One of the first IDF soldiers I saw was a Major who I had just met and gotten to know in August of this year while visiting the military base that is used to train the dogs that the Israeli Army uses effectively for search and rescue, forward operation of attacks, and for direct defense.  He recognized me from my previous visit and we immediately struck up our conversation about the value of the dogs for such missions.   In August, we discussed the way the dogs were trained.  This time, he told me in graphic terms how the dogs were being used to save the lives of soldiers and hostages and how some had given their lives in the service of their country.

 I had the opportunity to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu, a long-time friend who I’ve known for decades and visit with during most of my trips to Israel.  I’m not sure anyone else would be so uniquely prepared to lead the State of Israel as effectively as Benjamin Netanyahu.  I told him that I thought he was like Esther of whom it was said was raised up “for such a time as this.”  I assured him that Americans overall strongly support Israel and the evangelical community most certainly does for the simple reason is that we are “people of the Book,” and understand that our Christian faith is based on the foundation of the Jewish law and prophets. 

I had lunch on Thursday in Tel Aviv with Yael Eckstein, the CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.  IFCJ is an extraordinary charity that provides more direct assistance to people than even the Israeli government.  In addition to providing food and assistance to families displaced by the terror activities of both Hamas and Hezbollah, they purchased over 5500 bullet proof vests for ambulance drivers, first responders, and the community defense teams charged with defending a community against future terrorist attacks.  I’ve traveled throughout Israel with Yael and have witnessed their assistance to people in poverty.  As we were having lunch with a few influential evangelical leaders, the sirens went off and we had to hurry to the bomb shelter.  Even as we were on our way we heard the blast above us of the Iron Dome intercepting Hamas rockets directly over our heads.  Israelis have to get to used to such things.  Once was enough for me!

The short but very intense trip was sobering and left a deep emotional imprint on me.  But it was the comment of a young mother that touched me with a reality I hadn’t processed before.  She’s trying to take care of 4 children while her husband is serving in the midst of the hostilities in Gaza.  It’s hard enough to corral 4 children when her husband is there to help.  But now she is doing it alone and several times a day having to rush with her children to shelters when the sirens go off signaling another attempt by Hamas to murder Jewish civilians.  She simply said, “I’m tired.  I stay tired all day and through sleepless nights.  I wonder if I’ll ever NOT be tired.”

What Hamas has done and continues to do is EVIL.  They have not launched a military action, but an attempted genocide.  More than ever, I stand with Israel and the Jewish people in Israel and around the world so they will know they will NOT be abandoned and feel alone. 

The establishment of Israel in 1948 as the restoration of the land God gave them 3500 years ago was to insure that never again would there be a time when they couldn’t defend themselves and suffer another Holocaust.  With the insane leftist lunatics screaming “from the river to the sea!” we can no longer assume they will be safe or secure even in their own homes.  And it’s why I hope you join me in praying for the peace of Jerusalem and the resolve of the Jewish people and the government of Israel and for those of us who truly believe the Bible will give support to Israel and our Jewish friends.

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the Biden family’s alleged financial improprieties has to do with Hunter’s “sugar brother,” wealthy Hollywood attorney/producer Kevin Morris.

Early reports about Morris’ huge outlays to Hunter made it seem as though the two were longtime best friends.  We simply assumed this was the case; after all, who else but a best buddy would step in and pay millions of dollars to Hunter to resolve the back taxes from his “Burisma” years, foot the $20,000/month bill for a Malibu beach rental and who-knows-what other lavish expenses, and even continue to pay his top-drawer DC attorneys, who in general are known for charging rates upwards of $1,000 an hour?

It was Morris who even paid to fly Hunter by private jet to his daughter’s child-support hearing in Arkansas, where he pleaded lack of funds in an effort to get the monthly payments to his daughter reduced!  (Just a thought:  maybe Hunter’s sugar daddy would like this responsibility, too --- perhaps even visit her from time to time, as the little girl’s own daddy will have nothing to do with her, not to mention her grandparents.)

But Kevin Morris was no longtime friend of Hunter’s.  News reports have consistently said they met at a Democrat fundraiser for Biden’s 2020 campaign.  Allowing that some people just “click” and become friends quickly, the two still hardly knew each other.

They had been acquainted for about TWO MONTHS when Morris paid about $2 million to settle Hunter’s overdue taxes.  It’s like something out of the movies:  a fantasy about some mysterious stranger coming forward with a suitcase full of thousand-dollar bills.  If anybody needs a rich friend/benefactor/enabler, it’s Hunter.  He can spend it faster than even he can get it.

And, of course, that was just the start of the money flow.  Morris also bought Hunter’s artwork --- that’s a story unto itself --- and was put in control of Hunter’s 10 percent share of Chinese company BHR.  That appears to have been so the Bidens could technically declare that Hunter had divested himself of ownership in Chinese companies.

So, two whole months after meeting Hunter, Kevin Morris was there to prop up all things related to his life.  That’s what Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee noted to Maria Bartiromo on FOX NEWS SUNDAY yesterday.  Until Morris met Hunter, he was known mainly as a very successful Hollywood attorney who was also a big Democrat donor, two things that typically go hand in hand in Hollywood.  Then suddenly he was paying for all the outrageous expenses of someone he barely knew.

“The question is,” Smith said, “why would Kevin Morris pay almost $5 million for tax filings and also to subsidize Hunter Biden’s lifestyle?  What is Kevin Morris getting from Hunter Biden or from Joe Biden?  These are things that we need to look into,” Smith said.

And his committee has been trying to do that.  (Ways and Means is the only committee that can take a first-look into an individual’s confidential tax information.)  In October, they issued a press release saying that according to the handwritten notes of an IRS whistleblower in 2022, Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf (David Weiss’ assistant) told them she was not “personally interested” in looking into a potential campaign finance violation centering on Morris paying Hunter’s tax bill in 2020.

And James Biden, Hunter’s uncle and Joe’s brother, told FBI investigators he “didn’t know why” Morris had paid Hunter’s taxes.

You’d think both Wolf and James Biden would’ve been interested in the answer to this fascinating question.

As Jason Smith said in the press release, “One of the biggest benefits to the Joe Biden presidential campaign in 2020 was Kevin Morris trying to cover the tracks of Hunter’s mounting legal troubles.  Moreover, the American people deserve to know why, when IRS investigators smelled a potential campaign finance violation and wanted to investigate the matter further, the Justice Department moved to shut down the investigation.”

https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/icymi-new-evidence-reveals-justice-department-blocked-investigation-into-potential-biden-campaign-finance-violations/

(Lesley Wolf avoided answering most of the questions put to her in a congressional interview last week.  It was also revealed that weeks ago, she had very, very quietly left the “Justice” Department.)

But just when you think this administration has gone as far as it can to show it considers itself immune from scrutiny, it goes a little farther.  And this time, the story concerns Kevin Morris.  The Ways and Means Committee asked to interview him under oath, but as Chairman Smith told Maria, his committee was advised that Morris would be out of the country from Thanksgiving through the end of the year and therefore unavailable for interviews.

Here’s the November 15 press release from the House Oversight Committee about calling for Morris’ testimony.  It includes a link to their letter to Morris.

https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-jordan-smith-call-on-kevin-morris-to-appear-for-a-transcribed-interview/

The statement that Morris would be out of the country turned out to be a lie.  A picture has turned up of Hunter Biden’s press statement at the Capitol, taken from the side, and can you guess who is standing right there, next to fellow Hunter-enabler California Rep. Eric Swalwell, the orchestrator of the event?  That’s right, it’s Kevin Morris!  He was right there on Capitol Hill while the committee waited in vain to hear Hunter’s testimony.

“That’s Kevin Morris’ picture, alongside Hunter Biden,” Smith said.  “He...came up repeatedly among the IRS whistleblowers that came before our committee.  [He’s] an individual that we need to bring forward and ask questions to.  We’ve been working with Kevin Morris’ attorney to bring him in, but they told us that he is out of the country on vacation between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.”

So Smith must have been quite surprised to see this picture of Morris.  Smith simply commented that “it sure doesn’t look like he’s out of the country.”

Smith reminded Maria that according to an email released by the IRS whistleblowers, Morris wrote to Hunter’s tax preparer three weeks before the 2020 Super Tuesday primaries, saying that they must pay off these returns “or there will be great political risk.”  And we know that the only political risk at that time was for candidate Joe Biden.  This is what caused the IRS whistleblowers to suspect campaign finance crimes, the area which Lesley Wolf refused to let them investigate.

Maria said, “That’s amazing that Hunter Biden could go defy a congressional subpoena, set up shop right in front of the steps of the Capitol, to a press conference with the guy who’s helped pay all this stuff out, and then...walk away.”  And she’s right:  it doesn’t get much more in-your-face than this.  Smith rightly pointed that if “you or I or any other American” did this, we’d be prosecuted.  This is the reason the IRS investigators blew the whistle on it.

“The fact that Hunter Biden was supposed to be in the halls of that building, going through a congressional subpoena, through depositions, and he defied that, by standing on the steps of the Capitol and doing a press conference, the fact that he’s the President’s son and he’s doing that is creating a very severe Constitutional crisis.”

Of Kevin Morris’ whereabouts, he absolutely has been dishonest, Smith said.  “This is just a pattern that we’ve been seeing for this entire investigation.”  As for the latest bit of hairsplitting in the defense of President Biden, saying that Joe wasn’t FINANCIALLY involved in his son’s business, Smith said, “Well, let me tell you, the emails and documentation we’ve been getting from the IRS whistleblowers prove otherwise.”

The IRS whistleblowers testified that “in their ten-plus years of investigations, they’ve never seen this kind of obstruction.”  So what now?  Smith says the fact that every single Republican voted in favor of the impeachment inquiry “shows that the evidence that’s been coming forward...highlights the need for continued investigation.  And that’s in fact what we’re going to do…[through] additional tools.”  They’re still waiting, not just for key testimony, but documents and tax records that are still being withheld.

Whatever these “additional tools” are that the House vote gives the committees, they had better pack some punch.  Congress should’ve acted fast and served Morris a subpoena right there in front of the Capitol.  And Hunter already was defying a subpoena; isn’t that when you bring out the handcuffs?

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6343400042112

https://www.foxnews.com/media/house-gop-absolutely-push-meet-hunter-biden-sugar-brother-paid-millions-back-taxes

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

Mike Huckabee

“I’ve never seen such a display of arrogance and entitlement as I saw today, when you had over a dozen members of Congress in a committee room waiting for Hunter Biden to appear, because he was lawfully subpoenaed, while we were there with staff who had spent countless hours preparing questions, substantive questions, at the same time Hunter Biden goes out and has a press conference and plays the victim card, defies a congressional subpoena, says he wants to tell his story, and then gets in the car and drives off.”

That was House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, speaking on Wednesday’s HANNITY about Hunter’s latest move to thwart oversight and accountability in the Biden financial scandal.  We’d say Hunter’s statement has all the “classic earmarks” of something conjured up by his attorney Abbe Lowell.  And Hunter’s appearance was apparently orchestrated by none other than similarly-Chinese-compromised California Rep. Eric Swalwell.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/12/13/what-was-eric-swalwell-doing-standing-with-hunter-biden-as-he-defied-subpoena-n2167502

Since Swalwell was arguably helping Hunter defy a subpoena, the GOP leadership may file an ethics complaint against him.  Come on GOP, “may” is too wishy-washy.  Do it!

https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1735135791272050824

Comer called Hunter’s press event “a publicity stunt that went bust.”  He said that “today, Hunter got into more trouble if that’s even possible, by defying our lawful subpoena.”  He’s sure Americans want to know what the Bidens were doing to generate “tens of millions from our enemies around the world.”

(SIDE NOTE:  I’ll be hosting Dick Morris on my TBN show this weekend, specifically to talk about this.  It’s the focus of his new book, “CORRUPT:  The Inside Story of Biden’s Dark Money.”)

https://www.dickmorris.com/dicks-new-book-corrupt-the-inside-story-of-bidens-dark-money/

Congress lamentably did not vote Wednesday to hold Hunter in contempt.  THEY SHOULD HAVE, if only to show us which Republicans wouldn’t vote to support it.  Recall that when Peter Navarro chose not to honor a congressional subpoena (Navarro’s strong argument, which doesn’t apply in Hunter’s case:  executive privilege), he was charged with contempt by Democrats, arrested and cuffed at the airport by FBI agents and put in leg irons.

We’ll never forget this, because it happened while he was boarding a plane to Nashville to appear on my TV show!  If Democrats are going to play rough, our choice to take the high road means they’ll just run us over.  Hunter should have been charged.

Here are must-see comments from the committee chairmen after Hunter failed to show…

https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1734969473998745687?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp

Bonchie at REDSTATE was fed up with the GOP for not voting immediately to hold him in contempt of Congress…

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/12/13/new-gop-caves-will-not-vote-to-hold-hunter-biden-in-contempt-n2167510

By the way, did you know that in October 2021, President Biden said that people who defied subpoenas should be prosecuted by the DOJ?  Well, of course he did, because back then they were talking about people who were subpoenaed by Pelosi’s January 6 Kangaroo Kommittee.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/12/13/whoops-biden-gets-trapped-by-his-words-from-2021-about-what-should-happen-to-those-who-defy-subpoenas-n2167522

But that was then; this is now.  And, wow, this time, Biden also has AOC in his corner…

https://rumble.com/v4149j5-can-someone-please-tell-ocrazio-cortex-about-tony-bobulinski-devon-archer-a.html

Anyway, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they’ll “do a report” and pass it through the committee and on to the full House.  (Might a vote still be held later on contempt charges for Hunter?  That wasn’t made clear.)  Jordan also noted that on Wednesday, every single Republican did vote to move ahead with the impeachment inquiry against President Biden.  The reason: “Anyone can see what’s going on here.”  Well, of course!  But that doesn’t necessarily translate into action, as we also saw that day.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/13/news/house-approves-impeachment-inquiry-into-biden-after-hunter-cameo/

A report from NEWSMAX noted “lingering concerns among some in the party [GOP] that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the President.”  I would like to know which members of the party still believe this and into what hole they have been sticking their heads.

Jordan pointed out that in his press statement, Hunter narrowed the claim of his father’s lack of involvement even further, saying there’s no evidence his father had FINANCIAL involvement.  (Actually, there is.)  He expounded on this on the floor of Congress after Hunter’s bit of theater…

https://rumble.com/v41435k-jim-jordan-on-why-impeachment-inquiry-is-necessary-and-how-doj-is-covering-.html

(Incidentally, the New York Times was caught misquoting Hunter, apparently to try to cover for Joe. Their motto used to be “All the news that’s fit to print;” now, it’s “All the news that fits the Democrat narrative we print.”)

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/12/13/the-new-york-times-alters-hunter-biden-presser-quote-to-cover-for-joe-biden-n2167521

Here’s Hunter’s full statement, if you’d really like to see it.  If you’re a regular reader, you’re no doubt able to spot the distortions and catch the manipulation tactics.  Hunter’s theme is that he’s a victim of “the MAGA right.” Funny, I don’t recall forcing him to peddle influence to hostile nations, spend millions on drugs and prostitutes, and refuse to pay his taxes or child support.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/13/hunter-biden-says-he-wont-testify-behind-closed-doors-resisting-subpoena/

Wednesday evening, speaking with Laura Ingraham, law professor Jonathan Turley picked up on the “shifting rhetoric.”  When Biden was campaigning for President, he stated flat-out that he had “no knowledge” of Hunter’s business dealings, which has been proven demonstrably false.  But now, Hunter says only that his father wasn’t “financially involved.”  What does that mean, exactly, especially when the payments made to his father from Jim and Sara Biden suggest otherwise?

“It’s really otherworldly to see these denials,” Turley said.  “But I gotta tell you, even though Washington is known as the ‘theatre of the absurd,’ I’ve never seen anything like what we saw with Hunter and his lawyers today.  I can’t come up with a legal rationale for what they did.  I mean, he effectively engaged in legal self-immolation.”  Hunter had two choices:  to go in and testify, or go in and not testify.  To put it in terms even Joe Biden would understand, Turley said, “There is no third flavor on this ice cream stand.”

Turley said it’s “nonsense” to say that Joe Biden didn’t benefit from this money.  He told Laura Ingraham, “There are federal cases on bribery and other crimes where the courts have said that payments to family members DO constitute benefits legally for those actual criminal charges.  And it also applies to impeachment…”

There are even Democrats in media, he said, who now accept that “this was a massive influence-peddling operation.  They’re just arguing that the President really didn’t know about it.”  (We can answer that in two words:  Viktor Shokin.)

Importantly, Turley pointed out that there was already a formal impeachment inquiry going on in the House committees, and because the subpoena to Hunter came from the Oversight Committee, which has “independent subpoena authority,” he believes that Hunter is “in flagrant contempt of Congress.”  In fact, Turley has “rarely seen such open contempt for Congress.”

Jordan wishes they’d had Hunter under oath, just to ask, “Who’s the Big Guy?”  Followed by, “When you were in Dubai on that call to the White House, what did you ask your father to do regarding the prosecution of Burisma?”

The committees have found over $24 million that went into the Bidens’ shell companies.  “We have no idea what the Bidens did to receive the money,” Comer said.  (Actually, I think we have a pretty good idea at this point, even without a single record of any product or service ever being provided.)  “[Hunter] can explain,” he added. “If I’m misunderstanding this, he can tell us exactly what these different companies did.”

Gee, why wouldn’t Hunter have wanted to take the opportunity to do that??  If his dad did nothing wrong, just clear it all up to pave the way for the election!

……….

RELATED:  HANNITY guest Mark Levin had a strong response to the earlier segment with Comer, Jordan and Jason Smith.  “I think you really need to focus in,” he said.  “I have no opposition to focusing on the financial fraud and the selling of public office by the Biden family.”  But that’s not the primary impeachable offense for President Biden, he said.  His main transgression is violating the oath that both President and VP take: “I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  By failing to enforce the laws, he has made himself impeachable.

As Levin says, “We don’t need hearings, we don’t need depositions, we don’t need testimony, we don’t need text messages, we don’t need anything.  Joe Biden has violated every single federal immigration law that’s on the books...He is defying and undermining the law.”  In doing so, he has committed “multiple high crimes.”  (Note:  we would add that this is why Alejandro Mayorkas needed to be impeached as well.)

A second article of impeachment would be the student loan issue, in which Biden seized the power of the purse from the House after the Supreme Court had already ruled that he didn’t have it.  At any rate, Levin says Congress could just go for it.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6343034526112

Mike Huckabee

One of my most useful lessons as a Texas rookie was never admitting that I held a graduate degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. From church fellowships to the Texas schools where I now taught, understating your achievements was the only way to go. Even in San Antonio, Military City, USA, my story was strange: a Vietnam-era draftee improbably accepted at Harvard en route to teaching on the West Point faculty?  While teaching cadets, I also completed my doctoral dissertation. Published in 1990 as a book by Yale University Press, it won a national award and even led to my selection as Dean of the National War College. But to avoid all that yadda-yadda, I deflected most casual questions, simply becoming “The Colonel.”

Privately, however, I understood that much of my success reflected Harvard’s uncompromising standards of excellence. Meeting those standards, both in the classroom or in grunt-level research across far-flung archives - was just how you paid the high price of excellence. Or so I thought until Harvard’s current president, Claudine Gay, began demolishing every known standard of leadership through sequential actions that have now dragged on for over two months. When the Harvard campus exploded with violent demonstrations favoring Hamas, she defended the 31 student groups who noisily pledged their support for a new intifada. Just last week, called to Capitol Hill to defend her leadership, she offered only well-coached non-answers before settling down to a tedious defense of “context” that immediately went viral. Even afterwards, she never conceded the short fuse between hate-speech and mob violence; nor did she acknowledge that Jewish students entitled to her protection had good reason to fear for their lives.

At the same time, nagging new questions arose about Ms. Gay’s fitness to serve as Harvard’s president. Although the University finished dead last in a recent survey rating free speech, new allegations were raised about controversial racial policies, like diversity, equity and inclusion. (DEI). In an interview with the  Washington Examiner , Heritage Foundation senior education fellow Jay Greene charged that DEI had helped Gay’s rise at Harvard. "DEI is something that Harvard has institutionally committed to, and that's part of why she was selected as its president…(But) Claudine Gay personally has used DEI as a tool for eliminating potential critics and clearing the path for her rise to the top…So DEI is not just an ideological worldview — it is also a tool, a club that is used to defeat one's enemies."  Jeremiah Poff, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/harvard-president-claudine-gay-academic-record-faces-scrutiny/Dec 13, 2023

Most alarming was Aaron Sibarium’s report in the December 11 ^th  editions of the  Washington Free Beacon . “Harvard University president Claudine Gay plagiarized numerous academics over the course of her academic career, at times airlifting entire paragraphs and claiming them as her own work, according to reviews by several scholars.” In compiling its report, the  Free Beacon  claimed to have “worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own  anti-plagiarism policies ..” Another academic expert observed, "The question here is whether the president of an elite institution such as Harvard can feasibly have an academic record this marred by obvious plagiarism," said Alexander Riley, a sociologist at Bucknell University. "I do not see how Harvard could possibly justify keeping her in that position in light of this evidence."  https://freebeacon.com/campus/this-is-definitely-plagiarism-harvard-university-president-claudine-gay-copied-entire-paragraphs-from-others-academic-work-and-claimed-them-as-her-own/

Yeah, but what do the experts really know? On Tuesday. December 12, the Harvard Board issued a momentous decision. "Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing…In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay," the 13-member board added. Madeline Halpert , BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67694492

In place of Harvard’s formerly uncompromising standards, its Board has sounded a new and most uncertain trumpet, ironically just yards from where George Washington once took command of the fledgling Continental Army. Harvard’s decision effectively erases those memories as well as its motto of Veritas, (Truth). By ignoring Ms. Gay’s appalling leadership performance and substituting the neo-orthodoxies of political correctness and DEI, Harvard betrayed its own history in a saddening Day of Infamy; its explosive impact will be remembered as long as there is a college bearing that formerly august name. 

Colonel (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst .

Mike Huckabee

When you thought that Ivy League University Presidents were incapable of demonstrating a complete lack of common sense, decency, and moral character, the Presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT went before Congress and pretty much said, “Hold muh Bud Light and watch this!”

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York repeatedly asked each of them if having their students publicly advocate for the genocide of Jews was harassment and if it violated their university rules.  Should have been an easy answer.  They all should have emphatically declared that “yes, of course it’s harassment to publicly call for the murder of Jews and it not only violates the rules of our university, but the basic rules of civilized people!”  Except NONE of those university presidents said such a thing.  They instead mumbled through carefully worded and prepared responses that said that it depended on the “context.” 

Well, here’s some context for you highly educated but obviously not so brilliant scholars—when you are so morally bankrupt that you can’t simply say that a call for killing Jews is a repulsive act of antisemitic hate and beyond the bounds of free speech and even sanity, then you should in fact resign and sell hot dogs on the street corners from a little cart.  And I mean that as no disrespect to the people selling hot dogs on the street from a little cart.

Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund executive who has given millions to Harvard, but says he won’t anymore, called on all 3 to resign in disgrace and urged big-dollar donors like himself to turn off the money spigots once and for all.

Not since the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s have academicians so blatantly sided with evil.  Keep in mind these are the same type of University Presidents who have not allowed conservatives, pro-life advocates, or evangelical Christians to speak on campus and have labeled them homophobes, transphobes, misogynists, and climate deniers but have no problem with allowing people on their campus to ignore the massacre of innocent babies, elderly people, and families.  They have led the so-called “me too” movement and demanded that a woman should be believed if she alleges sexual assault even if the incident happened 40 years earlier and has no witnesses.  Careers were ended, and even members of Congress were forced to resign due to alleged, but unproved accusations.  These same university leaders created “safe spaces” for students who were triggered by anything from a Halloween costume to the mere mention of the Bible and had to escorted to a “safe space” where they were treated with puppies, Play-Dough, and popsicles.  No one threatened THEM with murder.  They were just frightened by the sight of a conservative student, a Bible, or a pro-life banner.  College students have parents who are paying north of $70 thousand a year to supposedly get an education, but who instead are paying for their weird and wussy darlings to get an indoctrination into the finer art of Marxism, self-centeredness, and godless socialism.  If these are the future leaders of America, then we are surely toast--without butter or jelly!

No parent should entrust their money or more importantly their offspring to a school whose leader refuses to boldly speak out against antisemitic calls for the murder of a minority who comprise 0.2% of the world’s population and yet who have disproportionately suffered the most from hate crimes and now are threatened with genocide. 

What was done systematically to Jews in the 1930’s is looking all too familiar with what is happening now.  In the lead-up to the Holocaust, most of the world’s population thought that talk of annihilating Jews was just over-the-top political hyperbole.  It seemed so preposterous that the highly educated elites in Europe and the US dismissed it as not possible.  Eleven million murders later, with 6 million of the victims being Jews, the world decided “Never Again!” There was a profound sense of guilt and regret that the threat to Jews, the infirm, the elderly, and those who spoke up in support of Jews was not taken seriously until it was too late.  We can’t sit by silently and let this evil happen again.  And if university presidents are just too plain dumb or cowardly to lead the battle to protect all human beings, but including the Jews from genocide, then we at least need to send our children and our money to institutions who haven’t lost their minds and their decency.

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.”

Luke 2:10

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.”

Luke 2:10

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

11 And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Matthew 2:11

Mike Huckabee

If anyone needed another reason not to go into hock to send their kids to an “elite” university, they certainly got one this week when the three female presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania appeared before the House Committee on Education and Workforce. Pressed to explain the widespread pro-Hamas protests by leftist students, with their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel chants that have terrorized Jewish students, the three stooges of the left dodged and dissembled, refusing to condemn this vile and violent hate speech as bullying or harassment, or to say that it violated their codes of conduct. They suggested it was “free expression” and had to be considered “in context.”

This from the same people who have spent the past few years firing, expelling and censoring any professors, students or guest speakers who dared to express a moderately conservative thought or even an unassailable fact, like that men can’t wish themselves into being women. But when their leftist students start holding the equivalent of Nuremberg Rallies on their campuses and chanting for a Jewish genocide, suddenly, they become defenders of free speech – even though open threats of violence are among the few legal exceptions to free speech protections.

The public backlash against these noodle-spined enablers of Hitler’s Harvard fan club was swift and furious. Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy declared that his company will no longer hire Harvard, Penn or MIT grads, and I think he’s probably one of many business owners thinking that, he just said it out loud.

One of them is hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who previously called on Harvard to release a list of all the student groups that signed that statement blaming Israel for Hamas’ attack so that he and other CEOs will know not to hire them. He’s given millions to Harvard in the past, but he says he’ll never donate again. He called on all three school presidents to “resign in disgrace” for their “utter moral bankruptcy.”

https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2023/12/06/resign-in-disgrace-bill-ackman-excoriates-the-failed-leadership-of-harvard-mit-and-u-penn-n2167235

These academics seem to be notoriously slow learners, but even they quickly realized how badly they’d botched it because within 24 hours, they were already releasing video statements backtracking. NOW, they’re condemning threats of genocide against the Jews as “vile,” and claiming they just weren’t “focused” when they answered the question.

https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2023/12/06/harvard-president-under-intense-pressure-to-resign-now-says-threats-to-jewish-students-are-vile-n2167247

https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2023/12/06/watch-here-comes-the-groveling-apology-video-from-penns-president-n2167265

I am as close to a free speech absolutist as any conservative Christian is likely to be, and I certainly didn’t attend Hah-vahd, but I don’t need 24 hours to think it over when asked if calling for a second Holocaust is acceptable on-campus speech.  

What’s happening in our streets and on Ivy League campuses is looking all too familiar to anyone who knows the history of the 1930s.  In the lead-up to the Holocaust, most of the world’s population thought that talk of annihilating Jews was just over-the-top political hyperbole.  It seemed so preposterous that the highly-educated elites in Europe and the US dismissed it as impossible.  Only after eleven million murders, with six million of the victims being Jews, did the world declare, “Never Again!” There was a profound sense of guilt and regret that the threat to Jews, the infirm, the elderly and those who spoke up in support of Jews was not taken seriously until it was too late. 

“Never again” means we can’t sit by silently and let this cycle of evil repeat itself.  If university presidents are just too plain dumb or cowardly to lead the battle to protect all human beings, especially including the Jews from genocide, then we at least need to send our children and our money to institutions run by people who haven’t lost their minds and their decency.

Mike Huckabee

If the Democrats are planning to use Hunter Biden’s indictments as their excuse for ditching Joe Biden and his plummeting approval rating (notice they haven’t done that to Bob Menendez, whom they need to keep in the Senate – remember, with them, it’s always about staying in power), they’ll need someone to take his place. And despite his insincere denials, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has obviously been running a shadow campaign for months while waiting in the wings for Joe to trip over a bag of Hunter’s Chinese money.

So if Gavin is going to be the nominee and promise to do for America what he’s done to…sorry, “for”…California, voters should take a good look at his record. Warning: you might need a hazmat suit to examine San Francisco.

So, how’s Gavin doing? This should give you a good idea: Fox Business News reports that due to a severe tax revenue decline caused by productive citizens fleeing California for red states like Texas and Florida, the state is having to slash spending to deal with a projected record $68 billion budget deficit.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-faces-severe-revenue-decline-record-billion-budget-deficit-mass-exodus-continues

Sounds like Gavin has done for California what the Democrats have already done to America, so who needs him in Washington?

Mike Huckabee

Former U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson, who was present at the January 6 riot but for some reason shrouded in mystery was never called to testify before Nancy Pelosi’s J6 Kangaroo Kommittee, has announced on “X” (the platform formerly known as Twitter) that he’s releasing police scanner audio recordings from that day suggesting a “set-up” and cover-up of what really happened.  He has always maintained that all the officers “should have been more prepared that day.”

Johnson’s announcement comes on the heels of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s release of all the security cam video from the Capitol building.  Out of concern for his own safety, Tarik Johnson has already entrusted the recordings to Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and has indicated that he’s given a journalist working with THE BLAZE “permission to receive the info and do whatever he believes is best with that info in the unlikely event I disappear.”

He said on X that he had wanted to check with his attorney before releasing the audio to make sure of all the legal ramifications of doing so.  “[My lawyer] stated he didn’t see any and if something arose we would deal with it together,” Johnson said.  “So it’s a go!!!!!!!!!!”

He asked for patience, as he is not a tech person and was having to figure out how to load 12 hours of audio on his page in addition to working his regular job and dealing with “family stuff.”  He thinks he’ll have it all uploaded by Wednesday, though.  (One question:  how did Lt. Johnson happen to come into possession of this much recorded material?  The story doesn’t tell us.)

The first release of audio has already taken place, on Sunday, and it does call into question the actions taken (or not) by then-Assistant Chief Yogananda Pittman, who was sitting in a command center that gave her access to radio traffic and a 360-degree view of the outside of the Capitol, plus additional views inside.  Chief Steven Sund, he said, was on the phone trying to obtain assistance from the National Guard and other law enforcement agencies.  Johnson was specifically asking Pittman for help, and not getting it, as the audio makes clear.  Johnson has spoken publicly about this before, but finally now we can hear the audio that backs him up.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2023/12/04/ex-capitol-police-officer-releases-audio-proving-j6-cover-up-n4924455

Matt Margolis reports for PJ MEDIA that “the J6 police scanner audio indicates that Pittman appeared unavailable or uncooperative in aiding Sund's efforts to deploy the National Guard. The recording supports the criticism of Capitol Police for its failure to take decisive action to safeguard the Capitol and members of Congress, especially in light of prior warnings of potential violence. The audio corroborates Sund's claims after the riot when he revealed that multiple requests for the National Guard before and during the riot were denied.”

As reported by REDSTATE, Johnson also “called out Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger for opposing the release of the J6 footage and using non-disclosure forms to keep officers silent.”

Though we would say there’s blame to go around (Nancy Pelosi, for one), Tarek Johnson blames Pittman for the disaster that unfolded:  “We now know Pittman was the one that caused what occurred on J6 but [Manger] is fighting Speaker [Mike] Johnson from releasing all the video footage, ensuring all the NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] USCP [U.S. Capitol Police] employees were forced to sign remain in place and declining to allow anyone to see the LWOP deal negotiated with Pittman so she could get her retirement and take a job gifted to her in California making over a quarter million dollars annually.  And, I almost forgot, ensuring USCP whistleblowers don’t get proper protections when they want to report corruption or malfeasance within the Department.”

Johnson is referring to the job Pittman got as UC Berkeley’s chief of police.  Prior to this, she had become the interim chief of the Capitol Police when Steven Sund resigned two days after the J6 debacle.  In her case, this appears to be yet another example of someone in DC failing upwards.  Or had she simply been doing a superb job of following orders?

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/02/01/its-official-uc-berkeleys-new-police-chief-is-sworn-in

Reading this glowing press release, one would certainly never know of the controversy surrounding Pittman’s response (or lack thereof) on January 6.  She said on the day she was sworn in, “The events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 --- I certainly don’t want to talk about that today...but it’s part of my journey and something I will build on.”  Let’s just say that she had plenty of reason not to want to talk about what appeared to be a spectacular failure on her part.

On the other hand, according to a Berkeley Police Department write-up on her selection, she has “demonstrated commitment to the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice, and she has developed expertise in modern policing principles.”  Well, that’s the important thing.

……………

RELATED J6 NEWS:  Almost three years after the protest and riot of January 6, 2021, the “Justice” Department is still busy targeting J6 protesters.  Actor Siaka Massaquoi had his home raided in 2021, and now, almost three years after the protest, he has been arrested and charged with four misdemeanors.  Numerous celebrities and commentators have spoken out in support of him, including Elon Musk, who said that “this has gone too far.”

Video from the Capitol building that day shows Massaquoi just inside the threshold of a door for about a minute, apparently trying to help the police direct foot traffic out the door.

Massaquoi is a conservative and a Trump supporter, and one has to wonder if the FBI was making a peripheral point by arresting him the day he attended the DAILY WIRE’s new movie LADYBALLERS, which dares to make fun of biological men competing in women’s sports.  Whether that’s a coincidence or not, his arrest also comes a couple of months after he joined with a group to sue the FBI, Director Christopher Wray, the DOJ, and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

This class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of people “who were peacefully protesting in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, but who did not commit any felonies or engage in any violence, but have been subjected to unconstitutional, illegal surveillance by Defendant Wray and his agents in the aftermath.”  They allege that Wray and Garland have turned the FBI into their personal “Gestapo” to “target, arrest, and wrongfully prosecute” those who protested on January 6.

And now Massaquoi finds himself to be Exhibit A.  Must-read details here...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/fbi-arrests-conservative-actor-for-taking-part-in-jan-6-protests-5540219

Mike Huckabee

You almost have to feel sorry for the Democrats these days (BIG “almost.”) After three years of them being in charge of the nation with results akin to trusting the Three Stooges to housesit, the public is finally wising up to all their false narratives that are being debunked (Russia collusion, the “very fine people” lie that even got dismantled again last week on Bill Maher’s show)…

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/12/02/pigs-are-flying-bill-maher-says-trump-is-right-on-education-point-then-helps-blow-up-fine-people-lie-n2167079

…And of course, the January 6th Kangaroo Kommittee show trial…

https://www.westernjournal.com/american-confronts-adam-schiff-airport-tells-democrat-ashamed/

They now seem almost punchy as they scramble for any desperate, transparent falsehood to cling onto power. We’ve seen the hysteria ramped up to 11 over the past couple of weeks, as they screech that Donald Trump is a fascist and Hitler, an existential threat to America, and he’ll end democracy and weaponize the government to throw his political opponents in prison (Uh, guys?…That’s you.)

But this latest lie really takes the cake. They lifted a line out of a Trump speech and claimed he was “admitting” that he’s waging war on democracy. Problem: If you listen to the sentences before and after it, it’s clear that he was saying it's the Biden Administration that's waging a war on democracy.

How clear? So clear that even the notoriously left-leaning “fact-check” site Snopes.com ruled that it was clear he was talking about his opponents.

https://www.westernjournal.com/snopes-sides-trump-biden-campaigns-false-smear-rare-move-enraging-leftists/

And how is the left reacting? If you guessed that they’re attacking Snopes for telling the truth and whining that they’ll never read it again, then give yourself a cookie. But not a very big one because that reaction was pretty easy to predict.

Kenneth Allard

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

- Isaiah 9:6

Mike Huckabee

Good grief, how bad does it have to get?  By now, you’ve probably heard about the update from House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, who has taken the incriminating findings against Joe Biden and his family even further.  This information comes straight from subpoenaed bank records, which as we’ve said form the backbone of the Biden impeachment inquiry.  They really are indisputable.

Bank records show that Joe Biden received $1,380 each month from Owasco PC, one of Hunter’s entities associated with his Chinese business activities.  The easiest way for you to familiarize yourself with this new development is to watch Comer’s video, here.  It’s as clear as it can be...

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/04/hunter-biden-monthly-payments-joe-bank-account-chinese-money-james-comer        

Comer also appeared on HANNITY Monday night to explain at greater length why this money was not just a “loan repayment” as the White House maintains (while refusing to provide documentation).  The White House does not dispute that the money came from China.  A must-watch.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6342366169112

On Friday, several GOP members of Congress told the DAILY CALLER that they were planning to hold a floor vote on whether or not to go ahead with an impeachment of President Biden.  But Comer indicated that day that he was not currently “whipping” a floor vote on that.  The impeachment INQUIRY, he explained, is an investigation being handled by his committee.  Actual impeachment would be handled by the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan.

Some view a Biden impeachment as a colossal waste of time, as conviction and removal by the Democrat-controlled Senate is a major long-shot.  (And NOBODY wants a President Harris.)  But the corruption being exposed is so bad, and President Biden has lied about it for so long, that Congress is almost duty-bound to impeach him.  Not doing it just seems...wrong.  And impeachment would at least get the story out there, whether Biden is convicted or not.

Democrats probably see the writing on the wall and are preparing themselves.  The DAILY CALLER “found” a memo from House Oversight Committee Democrats in a Capitol building hallway that warns, “House Republicans have collected an extraordinary amount of evidence in their investigation of Hunter Biden’s business activities.  And this evidence comes on top of evidence collected by Senate Republicans who conducted their own investigation of Hunter Biden in 2020.”

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/01/shady-business-games-house-republicans-say-plan-bring-biden-impeachment-inquiry-house-vote/

RELATED:  More is percolating.  As Jim Jordan mentioned on Monday, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler testify again today before the House Ways and Means Committee.  We assume that’s behind closed doors, as it apparently deals with confidential tax matters.

Mike Huckabee

Friday, the House once again proved that Republicans are held to a far higher standard than Democrats, when New York Republican Rep. George Santos was expelled by a 311-114 vote, despite having not been convicted of any crimes and pleading not guilty to the charges he’s facing. This sets a worrisome new precedent because nobody has ever before been expelled from Congress even before facing trial.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/01/congress-expels-george-santos-first-member-expelled-in-over-two-decades/

As usual, the Republicans also managed to shoot themselves in the foot politically, removing one vote from their tiny majority margin and setting up a special election for a seat that will be very hard for them to hold with outside Democrat groups pouring in millions for advertising while the RNC is still trying to find the district on a map.

To be clear: Other than his right to the presumption of innocence pending trial, which I defend for everyone, I have no interest in defending Santos, who appears to be at best a wildly creative liar. But his expulsion over charges of misrepresenting his background, violating ethics rules and allegedly misusing campaign funds has sparked cries of “What about the rest of them who are no better and still in Congress?”

Are Santos’ alleged crimes really worse than charges of having hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribery cash and gold bars in your pockets and closet? That’s what Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez is accused of, and he’s still in office. He was previously charged with crimes, got off and was never forced out, certainly not before being tried. Even Sen. John Fetterman (who has proved to be a surprise thorn in the side to fellow Democrats with his staunch support of Israel and blasting of Hamas apologists) called the charges against Menendez “much more serious and sinister,” and said “if you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow somebody like Menendez to remain in the Senate?”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sen-bob-menendez-much-more-sinister-than-george-santos-fetterman/ar-AA1kRJ0T

Or how about Rep. Jamaal Bowman, caught on video “committing insurrection” by pulling a fire alarm to disrupt a budget vote, then lying about it to police until video disproved his story? He got off with a slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanor, a move to expel him went nowhere, and the House Ethics Committee wouldn’t even look at him.

In terms of pure fabulism, even Santos can’t compete with the breathtaking lies of Adam Schiff, and Schiff spews his slanderous falsehoods straight into the Congressional Record. Then there’s Ilhan Omar and her alleged “interesting” stories about her background and her uses of campaign funds, not to mention the anti-Semitism. Speaking of which, how about national embarrassment Rashida Tlaib, who still draws a taxpayer-funded House paycheck even as she continues to slander Israel and offer support to terrorists who mass-murder Jews?

What do all of them (and more I could list) have in common? They’re Democrats, so don’t hold your breath waiting for anyone to hold them to any standards – not even the Republicans who voted to throw out George Santos.

Mike Huckabee

BY MIKE HUCKABEE

Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! 

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV