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On the Fourth of July, we celebrate having this exceptional nation and the freedoms it gives us, but we must always remember that we have those things because of all the soldiers who put their lives on the line to secure them for us, from Revolutionary times forward. There’s a story I love to tell that illustrates that for young people.

When I was Governor of Arkansas, I got to know an outstanding high school teacher in Little Rock named Martha Cothren. She was one of my original Huck’s Heroines, and I was always telling her it was my goal to make her one of the most famous teachers in America, because she’d be such a great example to all teachers. Here’s just one reason why.

Martha became concerned that many of her kids didn’t fully appreciate their precious American freedoms. So she prepared an unusual lesson for them. On the first day of school, the kids shuffled back into class only to discover that it was completely empty. Not a desk in sight. So they asked, “Miss Cothren, where are the desks?” She replied, “You don’t get your desk until you can tell me how you earn it.”

The kids were stunned, but they started trying to guess how they earned their desks. By getting good grades? No, that’s not the answer. By behaving in class? No, that’s not it. The first period ended with the kids leaning against the walls or sitting on the floor, but they never had figured out how they earn their desks.

Well, in trooped the second-period class. They were greeted with the same empty room and the same question they couldn’t answer. This went on all day, and by lunchtime, word was circulating all over school that Miss Cothren had gone crazy.

Finally, during the last class of the day, she told the students, “Okay, nobody’s figured out how you earn your desks, so I’ll tell you.” She opened the door, and in walked 27 military veterans, each one carrying a desk. As they quietly placed them in neat rows, Martha said, “Kids, you don’t have to earn your desks because these guys earned them for you.” She said you get free desks, free books and a free education, but it wasn’t free to these veterans…or to their friends who never came home from the wars they fought to give us all that freedom. She said, “Whenever you sit in that desk, try to remember who earned it for you.”

After that lesson, Martha was approached by one of those veterans, a news photographer, with tears in his eyes. He told her that when he returned from Vietnam, he was cursed and spat on, and made to feel ashamed of his service. He said, “Today is the first day since I’ve been home that I felt like someone appreciated what I did.”

Unfortunately, there can’t be a Martha Cothren in every school. I certainly wish I could replace every America-hating “history” professor in every university with a clone of her. But other teachers and parents can make sure their kids know who earned their desks for them. And we can all make it a point to say “thank you” to current and former members of the U.S. military. Seems to me, the 4th of July would be a great time to start.

MORNING EDITION

July 4, 2020 

By Mike Huckabee

A BIG SHOW THIS EVENING

We’re taking a brief break from the daily news so that my staff and I can enjoy some time off to celebrate the Fourth of July with our families. But don’t worry, we’ve prepared some newsletter material in advance. And if anything major occurs that cries out for comment, we’ll set down our hot dogs and rush to our laptops! We will return to covering the daily headlines on Tuesday.

Before watching the socially-distanced Fourth of July fireworks displays on TV, join me for some real fireworks on “Huckabee” on TBN! We’ve put together a very special July 4th show for you. I’ll have some new comments on the holiday and the news, plus we’ll revisit some of the very best, funniest and most patriotic moments from previous shows. I won't spoil the surprises, but I guarantee you'll love it.

It’s all coming your way tonight at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and the same times on Sunday, only on TBN. To find where you can watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.tbn.org/huckabee and click on the “WATCH” menu at the top. You can also stream previous episodes, highlights and Internet-only “Digital Exclusives,” like extended interviews and extra performances by our musical and comedy guests. It’s all at https://www.tbn.org/huckabee

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

Happy Independence Day and happy 244th birthday to the United States of America! No, this nation was not born in 1619 when slaves first arrived, no matter how many trinkets liberal “journalists” award themselves for creating bogus history. It was born on July 4th, 1776, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which officially kicked out the previous regime and kicked off history’s greatest experiment in freedom.

Today is when all Americans celebrate our freedoms. But sadly, too many young Americans have been miseducated to feel no gratitude for the titanic struggles and sacrifices made by those of previous generations to secure and preserve those freedoms. Even those who recognize how lucky they are to be Americans are often too willing to trade away their freedoms in exchange for hollow promises of comfort and security. As the great philosopher Joni Mitchell once said, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”

That’s why the Founding Fathers took such care to lock our most important rights safely within the First Amendment to the Constitution. There are more freedoms guaranteed in that one short sentence than people in most nations can even dream of. That’s why for centuries now, people from around the world have risked their lives to come to America, and why immigrants are often more aware of how unique America is and more grateful for those freedoms than native-born Americans. The Founders understood that freedom really is that precious.

When the framers of the Constitution first met in 1787, many feared that if they created a strong federal government, it would trample the rights of the people, just like the British king they’d fought to break free of. So to make sure the people’s rights would always be protected, they added 10 amendments - although George Mason thought they were so important, they should come first, as the Preface!

Now, in case you’ve never heard it or have just forgotten (as too many federal judges and a few Supreme Court Justices I could name have), here is the First Amendment, in its entirety. Don’t worry, this really won’t take long:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yep, that’s it. This was before the government needed a 2,000-page bill just to ruin your health insurance. Only 45 simple words were needed to protect our right to speak freely without fear of government retribution...Our right to publish those words so that other Americans can read and debate them…Our right to band together with like-thinking Americans and protest peacefully without fear of arrest (note: protesting peacefully does not include rioting, arson, and looting)…Our right to petition our leaders to change their policies…And our right to be free from having an official state religion forced upon us, but also from government interference with the free expression of our personal religious beliefs (like telling us we can’t gather in church to worship, but we can gather in Walmart.) A lot of people celebrate the first half of that religious right (no state religions) but pretend the second half (no state interference in religion) doesn’t exist. The Supreme Court even seems to be reticent lately to make clear that it means what it says, even though it takes only six words to say it: “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

These are the rights that together create the free American culture that those of who know real history celebrate today. The Founders thought they were all so important that somehow, they found a way to list every single one of them first.

Then, just to be certain that no future government ever tried to take those rights away, they made the very next amendment the right to bear arms.

And they emphasized that these rights are given by God, not government. So no matter how hard some people might try to scratch some of them off of the parchment, it won’t make a lick of difference. You can’t edit God.

YANKEE DOODLE

Usually, around the Fourth of July, we hear a lot of songs about all the great things about America: “God Bless America,” “God Bless The USA,” “America the Beautiful” (although you might not have heard them this year because of some people whining that hearing God’s name or praise for America “triggers” them.) But before them all, even before “The Star-Spangled Banner,” there was the original American patriotic anthem, “Yankee Doodle.” However, it didn’t start out as a celebration of Americans, but as a mockery of them.

Since 1776, the song “Yankee Doodle” has been as much a symbol of America as the flag. Every child learns it from the cradle. But many of us grew up without ever knowing what it really means. Like, why did he call his cap macaroni? Did he use cheese for hair mousse (I’ll bet a lot of recent college graduates actually believe that)? Well, I’ll answer those questions and more.

“Yankee Doodle” dates back long before 1776. It most likely started as a German nursery rhyme, since “dudel” is an Old German word for “fool.” It first became associated with America when British soldiers made up their own lyrics to it to mock the ragtag American Revolutionaries. That baffling line – “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” – makes sense when you know that a macaroni wig was one of those ridiculously large powdered wigs that dandies of the time wore. The Brits were ridiculing Americans as a bunch of hayseeds, so dumb they’d think sticking a feather in their hat would make them look sophisticated. Imagine a Huffington Post article about Trump voters from Alabama, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of just how much arrogant condescension they intended to convey with that.

Unfortunately for the British, it turned out wars weren’t settled according to who had the spiffiest uniforms (in fact, red coats just made you a brighter target.) Those unfashionable Americans were fighting for their homes, their families and their freedom. So they did what Americans have done ever since: they took the ridicule aimed at them, threw it back in the faces of those who mocked them, and got the last laugh.

The Americans took the song “Yankee Doodle” that was meant to belittle them and adopted it as their anthem. They marched to it in the streets, sang it in bars, and made up their own new lyrics to promote the cause of freedom and glorify leaders like General Washington, “upon his strapping stallion.” It wasn’t long before the British learned to dread the sound of that tune, especially when it was played on a fife and drum, accompanied by American militiamen. A Boston newspaper reported that Minutemen who captured two British officers forced them to dance to “Yankee Doodle” until they collapsed. After that, the Brits admitted that that mocking little song didn’t sound so funny to them anymore.

Well, now you know how “Yankee Doodle” came to be the unofficial American battle anthem that later inspired another great patriotic song for this time of year, George M. Cohan’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” As Cohan proudly sang, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, a Yankee Doodle, do or die…A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, Born on the Fourth of July!”

Of course, Cohan was actually born on the third of July. But that’s another story for another day.

BIBLE VERSE OF THE DAY (KJV)

 



Our Founding Debate

July 2, 2020

I hope you’re having a great 4th of July week, but between the celebratory fireworks on one hand and the anti-American political fireworks on the other, let’s take just a moment to reflect on what Independence Day really means and how it led to the freedoms and blessings that far too many Americans fail to appreciate these days.

Most historians (not New York Times writers, but real historians) mark the beginning of America as the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. But in truth, there was still a long road to travel before America as we know it came to be. First, of course, there was the matter of fighting a bloody revolution against Great Britain, one where victory was an overwhelming longshot, and win or lose, the leaders risked their lives and fortunes. Victory was followed by more heated battles over what kind of government we would have.

Our Forefathers finally agreed to a blueprint, the Constitution, that wasn’t even introduced until 1789 – over 13 years later. Today, many Americans take those hard-won freedoms very lightly and seem eager to trade them away for false promises of security. Some can’t even name the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Maybe they’d cherish them more if they knew how close they came to not having them at all.

Did you know that the Constitution very nearly got passed without the Bill of Rights? Even some of the wisest of our forefathers thought a Bill of Rights was a dangerous idea. Alexander Hamilton argued that it was risky to list the rights the government couldn’t take away because then, politicians might try to grab any and every power that wasn’t specifically prohibited to them (apparently, the ability to rap wasn’t the only way Hamilton predicted the 21st century). He and many others also felt that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary: since nobody was surrendering their God-given rights by agreeing to the Constitution, there was no need to list them, right? Hamilton wrote, “Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”

It’s ironic that Hamilton made that argument. Later on, as the first Treasury Secretary, he cited powers that the Constitution merely implied that the government had in order to take on debt, create a federal bank and impose unpopular taxes. Over a century later, when the federal income tax was passed, some lawmakers wanted to include a 10% limit, but they were voted down. Opponents scoffed that it was absurd to think the government would ever steal as much as 10% of an American’s hard-earned wages. Flash forward just 30 years, and they were happily taxing away 94%. So just imagine how few freedoms we’d have today if they’d listened to Hamilton and decided it wasn’t necessary to put specific limits on government power.

Luckily for us all, Thomas Jefferson won the argument, and the Bill of Rights was added. They even included the 9th amendment, which I’ll bet most people can’t even describe. Here’s what it says:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

It means that just because some God-given rights aren’t specifically listed, that doesn’t mean the people cede them to the government. Maybe because so many of the framers were also farmers, they understood that like weeds, government tends to grow and grow, choking out the productive crops -- and like a bull, it will trample you if you don’t corral it.

So if we want to preserve our freedoms, and keep government limited, maybe we should send more farmers to Washington -- and fewer lawyers.

We’re taking a brief break from the daily news so that my staff and I can enjoy some time off to celebrate the Fourth of July with our families. But don’t worry, we’ve prepared some newsletter material in advance. And if anything major occurs that cries out for comment, we’ll set down our hot dogs and rush to our laptops! We will return to covering the daily headlines on Tuesday.

In the meantime, all of us here wish you and your families a safe, fun, and blessed Fourth of July weekend. Please remember, in the midst of the current radical anti-American garbage that’s taking up way too much space in the news that there is a reason why you’re called “the Silent Majority” and they are just the extremely loud, tiny minority. This is NOT a nation of racists and white supremacists with a shameful history based on nothing but slavery that deserves to be smashed and forgotten. This is instead history’s greatest experiment in freedom and respect for the God-given rights of the individual.

As we all gather peacefully and unapologetically, both native-born Americans and immigrants, to fly Old Glory, watch the fireworks and sing patriotic songs, let’s remember that when anyone tries to claim that America is an evil, irredeemable, racist nation that needs to be “fundamentally transformed,” they have the First Amendment right to say it, but they deserve no more serious consideration of their ignorant views from intelligent adults than do any other prattling children.

Yes, our ancestors were flawed human beings, as are we all. So far, there’s been only one perfect person in the past 2,000 years. But never has there been such a nation that continually strove to overcome its problems and prejudices, that was founded on the government being the servant of the people and not vice versa, that fought a bloody civil war to end slavery, and that has sacrificed so many lives to protect others around the world from oppression and tyranny. For generation after generation, Americans have worked and struggled to create a more perfect union, and to ensure the blessings of liberty and equal opportunity for people of all races and creeds so that the future will forever be brighter than the past. That is worth celebrating!

Handy Links

July 2, 2020

A petition opposing the renaming of John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

To remind you of why you need to sign that petition, here are 40 quotes from John Wayne, some of them amazingly timely, like, “I’m responsible only for what I say, not what you understand” and “Life is tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.”

Joe Biden has a new campaign slogan: “Vote for Biden and Pay Higher Taxes!” Okay, that’s not an official slogan, but it is now his official policy, as if we didn’t already know it.

If the mainstream media really believe that black voices should be heard, why are they trying to suppress Larry Elder’s new documentary “Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative” that dismantles the BLM narrative?

The New York Times has jumped on the Idiot Train in denouncing Mt. Rushmore as a monument to white supremacy built on land stolen from Native Americans. Which prompted the observation that the New York Times building is on land stolen from Native Americans for $24 in junk jewelry, so they should immediately sell it and give the money to the Lenape Tribe as reparations.

Must-See Video: You’ll enjoy this, I promise.

CHOP has been chopped

July 2, 2020

NEWS UPDATE: CHOP has been chopped. After degenerating from an alleged “festival atmosphere” and “second summer of love” into a dangerous, lawless war zone within days, the area of Seattle “occupied” by leftist radicals was finally cleared out Wednesday morning.

Mayor Jenny Durkan must’ve gotten tired of competing with Bill DeBlasio for the title of America’s Worst Mayor because she finally issued the order police had been waiting for. They moved and gave the big, tough social justice “warriors” eight minutes to clear out (yes, that’s how quickly this could have ended if the Mayor had ever done her job.) Among those who resisted, there were 31 arrests. Let’s hope that for probably the first time in their lives, they will discover what it means to face real consequences for their rotten behavior.

CHOP was a disaster and a massive dereliction of the city’s duty to protect its citizens. It was also an unwarranted tragedy that resulted in robberies, assaults and other violent crimes, three serious injuries from shootings, and the shooting deaths of two black teenagers - Lorenzo Anderson Jr. and Antonio Mays Jr. – by people who claimed they launched this radical Romper Room with no police allowed to protest the unjust killing of black people by police.

At the link is a post-mortem on what happened in Seattle and how (the first step was the mistake of electing a far-left government.) As bad as the entire episode was, it did serve one purpose: seldom has there been a more horrifying but useful illustration of how swiftly civilization can spiral into anarchy when you do something as stupid as abolishing the police and giving power to a bunch of socialist undergrads.

And now, something fun to take your mind off all the crazy and infuriating news, and remind you of how little most of America has changed. Ford commissioned a survey to find out just how much Americans love their pickup trucks. They were asked what they would give up before they would give up their pickups. Here’s what they said:

* 82% would give up Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video.

* 79% would give up drinking alcohol.

* 71% would give up drinking coffee.

* 47% would give up using their phone.

* 44% would give up eating meat.

* 38% would give up sex.

And if people had to give up alcohol, sex and barbecue, PLUS their pickups, we’d all have to give up country music, because there’d be nothing left to write songs about.

Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and America’s first black billionaire, has a message for all the virtue-signaling white liberals who are making a big show of their racial wokeness by vandalizing statues of historical figures and getting “The Dukes of Hazzard” taken off TV. And that message is:

Black people are laughing at you!

Johnson calls these overheated white racial warriors (have you seen the video of the entitled young white woman screaming in the faces of two black police officers about how they’re undermining her struggle against racism?) “borderline anarchists” and says their attempts to “cancel” people for thought crimes such as saying that “all lives matter” are "tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on a racial Titanic. It absolutely means nothing…White Americans seem to think that if they just do sort of emotionally or drastic things that black people are going to say, ‘Oh my God, white people love us because they took down a statue of Stonewall Jackson.’ Frankly, black people don’t give a d**n."

And he thinks the “silliest expression of white privilege” is white celebrities releasing videos of themselves apologizing for being white, and saying, “'Oh, my God, I am so sorry that I am white.’ I don't find any black people getting on Twitter and saying, 'Oh, I'm so sorry I'm black.' And we got the worst problems...My thing is: embrace being white and do the right thing."

Johnson said none of this self-righteous political theater is going to “give a kid whose parents can't afford college money to go to college. It's not going to close the labor gap between what white workers are paid and what black workers are paid. And it's not going to take people off welfare or food stamps.”

Incidentally, I should point out that that’s what he means by “Do the right thing,” not that you should watch the Spike Lee movie instead of “Gone With The Wind” and tweet at length about how woke to your privilege it made you.

Once again on Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear that he can no longer be considered part of the “conservative” wing of the Supreme Court, as he joined with the liberals for the third time in two weeks on major cases. This time, it was a 5-4 ruling striking down a Louisiana law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges to some hospital within a 30-mile radius.

While the pro-abortion lobby (and probably Kermit Gosnell from his cell) celebrated this ruling as a victory for “women’s health,” it is anything but. They fight tooth and nail against any laws that hold abortion clinics to the most basic standards of safety and hygiene that any other medical clinic has to meet. This is because to them, nothing must interfere with aborting babies, even protecting the health of the mother by ensuring that if something goes wrong during this invasive surgical procedure, that she can be quickly taken to a real hospital where they know how to save lives instead of just ending them.

As the article at the link makes clear, once again, Justice Roberts engaged in his patented form of legal reasoning that begins with choosing your preferred outcome, then working backwards to find a way to justify it. In this case, he argued that since the Court overturned a similar Texas law four years ago, “the legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”

Here are the problems with that: the Louisiana law was not as restrictive as the Texas law, yet four years ago, Roberts was on the dissenting side of the ruling against the Texas law. Also, in his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas scolded Roberts, pointing out that stare decisis is usually applied only to historic rulings with a long record of decisions stemming from them, not a case that was just decided four years ago.

I know it’s disheartening for conservatives to stand by as a so-called “conservative” Justice (he’s earned those sarcastic quotation marks) appointed by a Republican President (George W. Bush) stabs them in the back more times than Norman Bates, and then see any point in voting for a Republican President to appoint SCOTUS Justices. But it’s actually all the more reason why we need to do so.

There is a natural tendency inside the Beltway for judges to become more and more liberal with age (the rare principled Justices such as Thomas being the blessed exceptions.) Roberts now "swings" more than Hugh Hefner, so this can no longer be considered a majority conservative Court. The only way to protect the Constitution is to reelect Trump, whose most important contribution to America might not be his work on the economy but his many conservative judicial appointments. Given four more years, he could appoint another two or more SCOTUS Justices. Then Roberts could attend all the liberal cocktail parties he wants, and invent all the half-baked excuses for violating the Constitution that he wants, and it won’t make any difference because when he votes with the liberals, they’ll still lose 6-3.

But if, Heaven forbid, Joe Biden (or actually, his handlers) are picking those SCOTUS nominees, we might as well sell the Constitution to the Charmin company.

Great news: the First Amendment is still in effect, at least in some courtrooms. Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio from enforcing restrictions on outdoor and indoor gatherings of religious groups that are stricter than those on businesses and other types of gatherings. They'd even put tighter restrictions on religious groups than on businesses and gatherings that were classified as “non-essential,” which ranked religious expression as lower than “non-essential.”

It’s a great victory for religious liberty but what makes it extra sweet is that the judge based his ruling partly on the blatantly biased way that those two Democrats treated the recent street protests over George Floyd and the police.

Judge Gary Sharpe pointed out that Cuomo and DeBlasio not only allowed but endorsed and participated in protests that violated their own restrictions on large gatherings while harshly enforcing those restrictions on religious groups (DeBlasio even spoke at one – with no mask! – at the same time that he was threatening to arrest Jews who gathered in groups of more than ten to worship.) That denied churches, synagogues and other religious groups equal protection under the law.

Some legal experts noted that what they were also doing was establishing an unconstitutional state religion: the religion of secular leftism, which is allowed to flout the rules because the government deems its mission and message to be so much more important than those of traditional religions.

So now that we have an official ruling that secular leftism is a religion, I’m sure the leftists will agree with me that it has to be kicked out of public schools immediately.

The Democrats tweeted, then deleted, this message. But too late; it was archived.

So this is what we’ve come to in 2020. If you vote for Democrats, you’re voting to put people in charge of a nation whose own history and culture they hate so much that when they hear the patriotic phrase “President to attend 4th of July celebration with fireworks at Mount Rushmore,” what they hear is “President to attend white supremacist rally at sacred land stolen from indigenous peoples.”

I implore you: please have some sympathy for the poor Democrats and don’t curse them by forcing them to hold public office in a nation for which they are seething with hatred and obviously despise most of its people, whom they believe are irredeemable racist deplorables. Encourage them instead to retire to someplace where they would feel much more comfortable, like Cuba or Venezuela.

The number of coronavirus cases is spiking again (let’s see, what might have happened a few weeks ago to spread it that Democratic officials refused to lock down?...) Across America, officials are panicking and reinstating lockdowns and other draconian measures that did more harm than good.

The good news that’s being overlooked is that while testing is finding many more cases than we expected, the number of serious illnesses has dropped sharply. The vast majority of people found to be carrying the virus have mild or no symptoms, and those who are hospitalized are not getting as sick as before and are recovering in greater numbers. We’ve learned more about the disease and found better ways to treat it (and no, having a billion ventilators was NOT the key).

In fact, an Oxford study found that we’ve progressed so far so quickly that a hospitalized COVID-19 patient’s chances of dying are now one-fourth of what they were as recently as April. Of course, that one-in-four deaths is still all the fault of President Trump, while the three-in-four who now live owe nothing whatsoever to the massive public-private team effort he put together to study and battle the disease.

While early computer models were telling us the death rate could be as high as 2% of all who were infected, we’ve since learned that it’s much more widespread and asymptomatic than we first thought. Studies worldwide are finding between 10 and 100 times more infections that we knew, the average being 20 to 25 times more. While media reports are still using outdated, inflated figures, the actual death rate might be as low as 0.26% of those infected.

It’s still a bad disease, and certainly one that we should take all reasonable precautions to avoid. But it may be time to start putting the emphasis on “reasonable” instead of “all.”

Michael Flynn knows firsthand what it’s like when a small group of highly motivated people gets together behind the scenes to “affect change.” He was “changed” right out of the White House.

Lately, he’s applied that wisdom to the country at large and doesn’t like what he sees. Now that he can glimpse the light at the end of his own personal tunnel, he’s raising alarm bells to all Americans who want to continue their way of life. This is no time to be complacent, he says in an op-ed for the WESTERN JOURNAL. If we stand by, it’s not too much to say that America as we know it will be destroyed.

Reading this piece, one can’t help but think that its author would have made such a fine national security adviser. (Who did we end up with after the FBI interfered? John Bolton.) It’s clear that he would be encouraging President Trump right now to set up a tough line of defense. This is a man who loves America while recognizing its flaws --- having almost been done in by them himself --- and who knows how vulnerable our democracy is.

"I believe the attacks being presented to us today are part of a well-orchestrated and well-funded effort that uses racism as its sword to aggravate our battlefield dispositions,” Flynn says. “The weapon is used to leverage and legitimize violence and crime, not to seek or serve the truth.”

Its end goal: the creation of a socialist society. “The very heart and soul of America is at stake,” he warns.

This is a wake-up call for us to face the reality of 2020. Obviously, Flynn sees America right now as a battlefield, and battlefields are something he knows quite a bit about. He understands that a small, highly motivated, and organized group can quickly gain control over a much larger group that isn’t fighting back hard enough. As he puts it, “If we’re not careful, 2 percent of the passionate will control 98 percent of the indifferent 100 percent of the time.”

"Treason and treachery are rampant,” he says, no doubt drawing on personal experience with our own government, “and our rule of law and those law enforcement professionals who uphold our laws are under the gun more than at any time in our nation’s history. This passionate 2 % appears to be winning.” He’s concerned that Americans don’t realize how severe the consequences will be if the “passionate” do win.

Voting is one very important part of this (it’s become a cliché, but in this case, it’s true that no election in our lifetimes has mattered more than this upcoming one.) But Flynn says we have to do more. We have to exhibit the “audacity and resolve” that the small, well-organized, fired-up groups do.

Speaking like a battlefield commander, he makes an intriguing point: that our enemies have vulnerabilities we don’t know about. “I also sense that only a slight push on our part is all that is required to defeat these forces.” Mostly he looks to our law enforcement professionals to hold the line against “the corrupt and the criminal.” They need our support most of all, the support of “our entire being.”

They are NOT the enemy, he says. “They bring light to the darkness of night through their bravery and determination to do their jobs without fanfare and with tremendous sacrifice.” (One might say this is the ultimate example of the enemy of our enemy being our friend.)

He also warns not to be taken in by fake news. Trust your instincts and your common sense to help you see the difference between right and wrong. “Those with courage will always choose the harder right over the easier wrong,” he says. He applies this not only to dealings with our enemies but with our own government, our own “so-called leaders,” the people WE put in charge and can remove as well. Politicians who have been in office too long have “discarded us like old trash,” he says.

Flynn communicates the same strong faith, commitment, and optimism that surely kept the soldiers under his command at their peak in the field. Our goal, he says, “is to remain an unwavering constitutional republic based on a set of Judeo-Christian values and principles.”

"In war, as in life, most failure comes from inaction.”

Reading this, I am angered anew that Michael Flynn was kept from being Trump’s national security adviser, and not just because of the criminal way he was treated. We were shortchanged; we deserved someone of this caliber working for us. Personally, I would love to see him put right back into that job. In the meantime, he has made his position clear, and the President knows, at least in general, the advice he would be giving.

Incidentally, Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell made some news in an interview on “The Vickie McKenna Show” on Madison, Wisconsin, radio by saying one reason Flynn was taken down was that he was prepared to “audit” the U.S. intelligence community. The big fish there: former CIA Director John Brennan.

Now, if you’ve been reading the HUCKABEE newsletter, you already knew that Flynn was planning to do that audit. As Lee Smith reported in his book, THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT, Flynn wanted to streamline the Pentagon and the intel community, and that would have involved financial audits and much-needed downsizing. They didn’t like it at all. One area of particular interest was the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which appeared to be hiring contract people to produce reports of dubious value. Interestingly, one of those contractors was...(yes) Stefan Halper, the very person who would go on to ambush Trump campaign associates as a confidential human source on foreign soil and record their conversations. On the books, he was being paid to “write reports.”

Anyway, there were lots of reasons why Obama’s intel community --- and Obama himself --- did not want Michael Flynn around. Ironically, he thought the CIA was “too political,” and it was the truth of this that ended up taking him down. The idea of his being national security adviser and almost certainly discovering what they'd been up to in the summer of 2016 had to be just too much. That’s why McCabe, Strzok, and the rest HAD to make sure the case against him stayed open and why they had to see him gone baby gone. Look around today and you can see that it was our country’s loss.

The streaming service Hulu has yanked an episode of the ‘80s sitcom “The Golden Girls” because Rose and Blanche appear in blackface – except they don’t. The two ladies are wearing mud masks on their faces, just like women (and some men) of all races have for centuries.

When a black character walks in on them, they’re embarrassed and insist they’re not wearing blackface, which shows that the writers were aware even then that blackface was offensive. But of course, trivialities such as accuracy, intention or context mean nothing when you’re competing to see who can find the next thing to be faux-offended by, or when you’re panicking in fear before the phony outrage of the cancel culture brats.

But there’s a larger point that makes what Hulu is doing seem even stupider, if that’s possible. Most people forget now, because “The Golden Girls” is so beloved by multiple generations for its humor, its cast and its wonderful characters who seem like family, but in its day, it was one of the most “progressive” shows on TV. Creator Susan Harris (who wrote the landmark abortion episode of “Maude”) filled the show with liberal messages that were on the then-cutting edge of what was allowed on prime time

Blanche, of course, was the poster girl for recreational sex, but the show also touched on adultery (Dorothy’s husband left her for another woman, and she later had an affair with a married man) and sex among senior citizens. Blanche’s single daughter wanted to get artificially inseminated, a lesbian had a crush on Rose, Dorothy’s brother was a transvestite (the girls also accidentally hired a transvestite band for a fundraiser), a male character confessed to having had a sex change operation, and Blanche’s gay brother showed up with his partner to announce that they were getting married.

This was well before “Friends” aired the first lesbian wedding, although that show made sure to put a thumb in the eye of Christian conservatives by casting Newt Gingrich’s lesbian sister to officiate and say that “nothing makes God happier than when two people – ANY two people – come together in love.” (I’d cite the Bible chapter for that, but I can’t find it.) “Friends” also included Kathleen Turner as Chandler’s trans dad. In the same way, “Will & Grace” is often lauded for using the sitcom form to promote acceptance of gays and “soften America up” for accepting same-sex marriage.

Even in the “Golden Girls” episode that Hulu is pulling, the storyline was about Dorothy’s son marrying a much older black woman and everyone having to overcome both racism and ageism.

But here’s that larger point I mentioned: The left always eat their own. The creators of “Golden Girls,” “Friends” and “Will & Grace” thought they were brave pioneers of tolerance for including all those liberal messages in their shows. Yet all three are now under fire from intolerant leftists: “W&G” for promoting swishy gay stereotypes, “Friends” for homophobic behavior by the men, and “GG” over a “blackface” scene that really isn’t. Instead of honoring them for pushing the envelope in an earlier time, leftists attack them for not living up to current standards that might not even exist if it weren’t for them. They demand that those shows be edited or yanked, just like they demand that statues be smashed or books be burned or bowdlerized – and by the way, the big streaming services are already doing that with some e-books.

In social justice warrior land, there is no honor or respect for those who went before. There is only ruthless judgement and condemnation for not meeting a standard that changes almost hourly. If you give into it, it’s like trying to appease the sharks circling your life raft by cutting off a finger and tossing it to them. The taste of blood will only make them all the more ravenous. It’s better just to give them the finger from your boat and preserve history the way it happened.

This is why my house is stuffed to the rafters with real books, LPs, CDs, DVDs, files on hard drives, singles, VHS tapes, cassettes, 8-tracks, Play-Tapes, etc. etc. If you have to rely on streaming for anything, then you don’t really own it.

Incidentally, for a great lesson in how to react to the SJW mob and how not to, look at Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel. Former partners on the raunchy comedy series “The Man Show,” Carolla refused to knuckle under to the mob. He started a very popular podcast so the networks can’t censor him, and he’s become a defiant champion of free speech. He’s often vilified, but he is never censored or silenced. And he has a new book out on that very subject called “I’m Your Emotional Support Animal” that’s sure to be a best-seller. (Warning: contains rough language that he refuses to self-censor.)

Meanwhile, his former partner Kimmel has tossed in his lot with the leftists. His once-funny late night show has become just another Trump-bashing snoozefest, and he’s as likely to deliver a teary lecture on some hot button leftist subject as a comedy monologue. But all that virtue signaling gained him zip: when it was revealed that in long-ago comedy bits, he’d worn blackface and said the “n-word” while impersonating black celebrities, he was forced to take a break to “spend time with his family.” He’s now playing the liberal martyr by blaming his problems on evil right-wingers digging up his old material. But it’s not right-wingers who are demanding his head for comedy bits he did 20 years ago. All they’d like from him is for him to be funny again. It’s the leftists he sucked up to and who will turn on him on anyone else in an instant if they smell any deviation from accepted groupthink.

My advice to him would be to spend less time interviewing boring leftists and more time with Adam Carolla.

I didn’t address this story when it came out on Friday because I have a standard rule: any shocking “blockbuster” anti-Trump story that comes from hostile media outlets such as the New York Times should be allowed to sit and air out for at least 48-72 hours to give the truth a chance to bubble up. Since this story came out on Friday, and it’s now Monday, I guess it’s safe to mention it.

The New York Times, citing its favorite source, “unnamed officials,” “reported” that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US troops in Afghanistan to drive the US out of the region, and that the President was briefed on it. Joe Biden, picking up the softball handed to him by the Times, declared:

“The truly shocking revelation that if the Times report is true, and I emphasize that again, is that President Trump, the commander in chief of American troops serving in a dangerous theater of war, has known about this for months, according to the Times, and done worse than nothing.”

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) screamed that Trump was guilty of Russian collusion (do they ever get tired of doing that?), and even some top Republicans are demanding an investigation. They really need to learn to count to 100 before taking anything seriously that comes from the New York Times.

So here’s what we know after waiting a couple of days: Russia called the story “fake,” and the Taliban denied there was any truth to it. Neither of those things may cut any ice with you, but Trump also tweeted that the Intelligence agencies reported to him that they did not brief him or the Vice President on this because they didn’t find the info credible (and that was even before they saw it in the New York Times.)

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence, but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.” So she's saying that maybe Russia did offer such a bounty (even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally), but the big anti-Trump “bombshell” part of the story was fake news. Unless you believe our intelligence agencies are willing to lie to make it appear that President Trump is NOT colluding with Russia. And if you believe that, you haven’t been paying much attention for the past three years.

In a somewhat related story, there’s a new movie coming out about the time in the 1930s when the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for fake stories covering up atrocities committed by Russian tyrant Joseph Stalin, an award they never returned. Now, THAT'S Russian collusion!

Well, it’s taken long enough, but I’m starting to sense a shift in the wind as the “silent majority” are getting sick of staying silent while America-hating jerks smash national monuments.

Immediately after President Trump signed an executive order requiring the enforcement of the federal law against vandalizing public statues and monuments, the Justice Department announced indictments of four men in connection with the attempts to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square in Washington.

The DOJ rightly drew a line between lawful protest and vandalism, stating, “This Office remains steadfast in its commitment to protect the sacred First Amendment right of individuals to peacefully protest, but these charges should serve as a warning to those who choose to desecrate the statues and monuments that adorn our nation’s capital: your violent behavior and criminal conduct will not be tolerated.”

I feel fairly certain that the idea of facing consequences for their actions will be a completely new experience for these folks, and one that their parents should have introduced them to long ago. They were among 15 people whose photos were tweeted by Trump and whom the DOJ is searching for. Naturally, some liberal media outlets accused Trump of “inciting violence” by tweeting their wanted posters. Here’s a hint: if you don’t want to be the subject of a federal manhunt, then don’t do things that put your face on wanted posters, like trying to smash national monuments. This seems like one of those “you knew the job was dangerous when you took it” situations.

Trump isn’t the only one who’s fed up with allowing rampant crime and destruction in the streets under the guise of protesting racism. In Oklahoma City, DA David Prater announced charges of terrorism, rioting and assault against protesters who turned violent in May. He said, “This is not Seattle. We’re not putting up with this lawlessness here.”

In Manassas, Virginia, a different kind of protest occurred when hundreds of people turned out for a “back the blue” march to support the police. Participants called it “disgusting” to tar every police officer because of what some bad cops elsewhere did, and said police might need better training or background checks for hiring, but as for “defunding the police, "Who in their right mind would even think that's a good idea…” In fairness, I don’t think being in your right mind has anything to do with that particular movement.

At this point, I guess I should stop and make it clear to those who like to take things out of context and leap to dumb conclusions that none of this is meant in any way to diminish the justifiable anger over the death of George Floyd. Indeed, that was something that people of all races across the political spectrum agreed on. The growing backlash is not against legitimate protesters who have genuine concerns about police behavior toward blacks. It’s against the radical left extremists from groups like Antifa, many of them young white adults from privileged backgrounds who were indoctrinated into socialism and hating America in college, who are exploiting the anger over Floyd’s death as a convenient excuse to attack the foundations of the country and try to eliminate the police.

They not only aren’t helping the black community, they’re actively harming it, and they don’t care. And not just by tarnishing the image of legitimate peaceful protesters. Their riots, arson and looting are destroying black-owned businesses and black people’s jobs, eliminating needed goods and services, and making black neighborhoods less safe by driving police out.

Even Bill Maher sees through this latest form of twisted “white savior” behavior as you can see at this link.

Also, check out the must-see video at that link by Ami Horowitz. He asked white leftists on the street who hate the police and want to abolish them if they think black people in East Harlem would agree with them. Well, of course, they would! So he went to East Harlem and asked black people about that. Their response: they think the white leftists who want to abolish the police are “ignorant” and “full of c**p.” They don’t want to live in the lawless chaos that would exist if there were no police.

And check out this blow-by-blow account of the scene at the attempt to take down the Emancipation memorial (the statue of Lincoln freeing a slave) in Washington. Black history reenactors attempted to tell the screaming activists (most of them white) the history of the statue and why it’s important. But what one young white woman called “disgusting” was the fact that they were expected to respect their elders.

And since there are so many white celebrities speaking for black people (without being asked) and calling for abolishing the police, here’s a celebrity rebuttal: Muhammad Ali Jr. says that his father would have called the people who are smashing shops and police stations, beating up innocent people and terrorizing communities “devils.”

And because I don’t believe in smashing heads to make political points, but I’m not averse to making leftists’ heads explode, I’ll also pass along this quote from The Greatest’s son, which has to represent the ultimate backlash against the past few weeks of anarchy:

“I think Trump’s a good president. My father would have supported him. Trump’s not a racist; he’s for all the people. Democrats are the ones who are racist and not for everybody.”

With the investigation of “Crossfire Hurricane” by U.S. Attorney John Durham looking more serious by the day, it’s obvious what the political cover is now. The memo has gone out to everyone in the Democrat Party and the media (but I repeat myself) to paint Attorney General Bill Barr, who had the gall to appoint Durham in the first place, as a purely political AG. Why, he’s not there to consistently enforce the law of the land; he’s just there to be President Trump’s protector, his lackey, his “wingman,” so to speak. (Wait, no, that was Eric Holder’s self-described role as attorney general for President Obama.)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, with visions of impeachment still dancing in his head, assisted in this effort last week by bringing in federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky to speak to his House Judiciary Committee about Barr’s “interference” last February in the sentencing of Trump campaign associate Roger Stone.

Keep in mind that Zelinksy was a member of Mueller’s get-Trump special counsel team and also used to work under Rod Rosenstein. He was one of four prosecutors who dramatically resigned from the Stone case; in fact, he even chose to leave his position but (big surprise) continues to work with the Justice Department. In an interview for NPR on Thursday, Barr dismissed his testimony as “simply false” and “double hearsay.”

"I was the decision-maker in that case,” he said, “because there was a dispute. And usually what happens is, disputes, especially in high-profile cases, come up to the attorney general.” He said he had not discussed the sentencing with Trump and had already decided to change his recommendation before Trump’s angry tweet. Barr said that Stone “doesn’t deserve a break, but he doesn’t deserve to be...singled out, and treated more harshly than everyone else.”

I’ll point out what few Barr critics have: this was simply a sentencing RECOMMENDATION. Judge Amy Berman Jackson may follow the suggested guidelines or not. So what is the all-fired big deal?

Trump’s political enemies want looooong sentences for his associates because that puts pressure on him to pardon them, and that would unleash a media hysteria to last until Election Day. If this means putting a 67-year-old man behind bars potentially for life (especially if he gets coronavirus in there), so be it.

The narrative from now on will be that Barr is motivated only by the desire to help President Trump. Therefore, everything he does will be examined strictly from that perspective. It doesn’t matter that Stone’s sentence WAS harsh, that invading his home with a SWAT team while CNN cameras rolled WAS an abuse of power, and that the Russia “collusion” story in which he was ensnared WAS a hoax.

But Kimberly Strassel, writing about the Michael Flynn case in the WALL STREET JOURNAL, departs from the chosen media narrative. She points out that the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled on Judge Emmet Sullivan’s rejection of Barr’s decision to drop the case has done something beyond simply rule on the legal merits.

Importantly, the ruling is also a rebuke of the FBI and Robert Mueller’s special counsel team. This isn’t being widely reported, of course, but Strassel says it marks the first time a federal court has acknowledged the misconduct that Barr is trying to bring to light.

Judge Sullivan had bought into the same (debunked) Democratic conspiracy theories the FBI had been using; recall that he flew into a fit and even called Gen. Flynn a “traitor,” right there in the courtroom. So, naturally, he couldn’t let this case go just because the attorney general told him to, choosing instead to call on retired Judge John Gleeson to take on the role of shadow prosecutor.

Strassel makes an important point: that if the circuit court judges had any thought that Sullivan was right about Barr playing political favorites, they could have allowed him to continue fighting that. Instead, they said quite bluntly that there was “no legitimate basis” to question the Justice Department's behavior.

They even went after Judge Gleeson for relying in his amicus brief on “news stories, tweets, and other facts outside the record,” contrasting that with the DOJ’s motion that “includes an extensive discussion of newly discovered evidence casting Flynn’s guilt into doubt.”

They said this “includes evidence of misconduct by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

According to Strassel, the DOJ had provided voluminous evidence --- I would add that this is thanks to the determination of Flynn attorney Sidney Powell --- that the FBI had improperly pursued Flynn, kept the investigation open even when it had produced no evidence of wrongdoing, gone after him on the never-used Logan Act when he had acted appropriately, and schemed to trap Flynn into perjury with an interview that had no “legitimate investigative basis.”

Recall that in February of this year, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review the Flynn case, and four months later, Jensen concluded that dismissal was “the just and proper course.” The appeals court decision was consistent with this.

Former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman was on FOX & FRIENDS on Friday to offer a similar viewpoint, saying that Flynn was so wronged that he should consider a “Bivens Action” against the Department of Justice and former Obama administration officials. A Bivens Action is the legal remedy to use when one’s rights have been violated by a federal investigator.

"I hope he is looking at it strongly,” Tolman said. I would imagine that at this point, Powell's team is already putting together that lawsuit. Let’s hope they are, and also hope he becomes an extremely wealthy man after losing his career and financial security over this bogus case.

Tolman agreed with Powell’s brief that the newly obtained notes penned by Peter Strzok, which describes the underlying action of Flynn’s phone calls as legitimate, show that stunning exculpatory evidence was withheld from Flynn’s defense.

He described what happened as “an absolute effort --- call it collusion, conspiracy, whatever you want to say --- that now we know goes as high as the Vice President and the President. To not only withhold information about the investigation to the incoming President, but to go after the incoming President through the incoming national security advisor on an investigation that did not have a foundation to it.” The fact that they should still have managed to bring a case should concern everyone, he said.

Tolman dared to voice what we’ve known for a long time: that they were trying to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.

So remember when Barr continues to be accused of politicizing the DOJ, it’s just another example of Democrats accusing others of what they themselves are doing. The attack on Barr is political, and it’s coordinated. It sure seems to me that Barr’s the one trying to get the politics OUT. If his decisions at times help President Trump, perhaps it’s because the President actually has the truth and the law on his side.

If you’re getting demoralized by all the polls showing Joe Biden winning in a landslide, don’t be. That’s the whole point of them. I’ll remind you that at this point in 2016, Hillary was supposedly ahead by 13 points, and I got plenty of eye rolls when I predicted that Trump would win. But if you wonder whether the majority of your fellow Americans have really gone crazy, then this might cheer you up a little.

Reporter Brian Cates reminds us of a number of important factors that the poll takers fail to take into account, such as state organization, ground game and campaign war chests. But the most important one of all is this:

“The Democratic party has openly turned into a party of stark raving lunatics.”

To be fair, I don’t know if the Party leaders are lunatics, or if they’re just pandering to lunatics, but neither one is a very convincing argument for giving them power over your life, your job, your business, your home and your family.

Remember when people used to complain about there being no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans? Is anyone still saying that now? It’s not just like comparing apples and oranges, it’s like the difference between Goofus and Gallant. Or Superman and Bizarro World Superman.

To start with, Minneapolis, like other big, longtime one-party Democrat cities, has suffered widespread riots, arson and looting and destruction of public statues and monuments by people who seem to thank that if you smash historic monuments, you change history (or as I call that, “Taliban logic.”) Their Goofus response: on Friday, the Minneapolis city council (which has not one single Republican) voted unanimously to abolish the police department. Some residents who vowed not to call the police and were immediately inundated with hundreds of homeless people and their various drug dealers and other problems could probably tell you where this is going to lead.

A local business owner whose bookstore was destroyed by arson said there are legitimate problems with the police, “but the way the politicians are going about it is just ridiculous. They are pandering to a certain segment of the public.” He said he won’t reopen his store if city leaders push through a “sufficiently stupid” plan. I feel confident that the one and only way in which the Minneapolis city council will exceed expectations is in the field of stupidity.

Fortunately, the city council doesn’t have the power to abolish the police force unless the citizens vote for it in November. Let’s hope they’re now undergone enough of the traditional process for clearing up one’s thinking (“A conservative is a liberal who got mugged”) to vote to abolish the current city council instead.

On the other side, President Trump’s Gallant response to the unrest was to sign an executive order requiring enforcement of federal laws against vandalizing public monuments and government property, providing assistance for protecting it, and withholding federal support and grants from local authorities who fail to do their jobs and protect it.

Trump has also taken measures to declare the violent radical left group Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, and his DOJ is reportedly already conducting dozens of investigations of their organizers. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Jerrod Nadler (Goofus, NY) stood up in the House and declared Antifa to be “imaginary.” That’s right: the same guy who wasted many months and untold tax dollars to impeach the President over nonexistent crimes, and who has spent years pushing a Russian collusion hoax, believes that it’s Antifa that’s imaginary.

At that link, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan disabuses Rep. Nadler of his delusions, and at this link, so does a former Antifa member, who was quite surprised to learn that all the rocks he threw through windows were actually part of a quilting circle.

Rep. Nadler might also want to check out this video and ask himself, “If Antifa is imaginary, who sprayed that extremist graffiti, shoemaker’s elves?”

Senate Republicans offered up a serious police reform bill similar to but not as radical as the one from House Democrats. It was largely crafted by Sen. Tim Scott, one of the few black Senators and someone who’s had personal experience with racial profiling. Democrats, who claimed to care so much about black people that a bill had to be passed by July 4th, filibustered the Senate bill to kill it so it couldn’t even open up for changes and amendments, then insulted Republicans using racially charged terms such as “token.” Here was Sen. Scott’s response:

He also called Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to blame Republicans for the murder of George Floyd outrageous and sinful.

Meanwhile, back in Goofus Town, Speaker Pelosi claimed that only the Democratic House bill is worthy of “George Kirby’s name.” FYI: George Floyd was killed by a police officer in solidly Democratic Minneapolis. George Kirby was a gifted comedian and impressionist, best known for the 1970s TV show, “The Kopykats,” with fellow mimics Rich Little and Frank Gorshin. He was black, though, so she got that part right.

And while Democrats claim to be displaying their deep concern for black people by tearing down statues of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican who freed the slaves from their Democrat masters, the far-left California legislature just voted to put a measure on the ballot to rescind the state constitutional amendment barring discrimination based on race, gender or national origin. They claim this is good because it will allow them to impose race-based discrimination they approve of, so that the state can openly judge people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character. Since this is California, I won’t call that “Goofus” thinking. Let’s just call it Goofy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Must-Read Article: I recently linked to an article about how very different life is in rural and small-town America than it is in the deep blue cities filled with riots and “occupied zones” and cancel culture and attacks on police. The writer seemed unconcerned about all those things because they were in those horribly-run cities and wouldn’t touch the rest of the country. I argued that while he was certainly right about life being better and people getting along a lot better outside of leftist-run cities, he was wrong to think that “it can’t happen here.”

In fact, it already is happening. The woke mobs are starting to target smaller towns with the same smear tactics and organizational techniques they’ve perfected in cities to get sympathetic leftists elected to office where they release criminals and make cops stand down and kneel before rioters and monument smashers. Here are some examples of small towns where conservative mayors, school board members and other officials have been intimidated into resigning amid nonsense accusations of being “white supremacists.”

How does this happen? It happens when you’re not paying attention (that’s how AOC got into Congress via a low-turnout primary, the same method radical leftists are using to get local DA’s elected who “reform criminal justice” by refusing to prosecute or jail criminals.) It happens when officials knuckle under, apologize and resign instead of standing up for themselves. And it happens when citizens are too scared to fight back and say “No” to the mob’s demands. Yes, there is a silent majority, but we are quickly reaching the time when the majority can’t stay silent any longer, or it will find itself being oppressed by a very vocal, very leftist and very, very stupid minority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chief of Staff --- And?

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

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

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

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

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

Prez: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People are next

June 25, 2020

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

“Nip it! Nip it in the bud!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook censorship

June 25, 2020

Project Veritas has released another undercover video, this one allegedly exposing the free speech-crushing leftist bias inside Facebook.

Facebook insider/whistleblower Zach McElroy said, “We are essentially in charge of what gets said and what gets stifled,” and he’s willing to testify to Congress about Facebook’s bias and its algorithm that results in 75-80% of posts selected for review being ones that support Trump or conservative causes.

The video captures Facebook moderators bragging about how they target and sideline conservative posts. One is asked if she deletes every Republican post that comes up, and she replies, “Yes! I don’t give no (bleep)s, I’ll delete it.” As for anti-Trump posts that do violate policy, she said, “You gotta take it down, but I leave it up. If you see something that’s not supposed to be up, it’s probably me.” Another said, “If someone is wearing a MAGA hat, I am going to delete them for terrorism…I think we are all doing that.”

Check out the link to see the Project Veritas video, as well as video of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testifying under oath to Congress that Facebook doesn’t have any bias, why, “to the contrary, our goal is to be a platform for all ideas.”

He must define “all ideas” the way the New York Times defines “all the news” in its motto, “All the news that’s fit to print.” That is, all the news that fits the leftwing political agenda. If Congress doesn’t change the law to yank Facebook’s protection from lawsuits as a “neutral platform” (HA!), then can we at least see perjury charges brought?

It’s getting so that Democrats these days make so many outrageous, offensive and idiotic statements that it’s hard to decide who gets the honor of Worst Democratic Quote of the Day. After New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared destroying public monuments and statues to be a “healthy expression” of people’s political feelings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Hold muh chardonnay!” and came out with this stunner, in criticizing the GOP Senate police reform bill:

"For something to happen, they're going to have to face the realities of police brutalities, the realities of the need for justice in policing, and the recognition that there are many good people in law enforcement, but not all. And that we have to address those concerns. So, when they admit that and have some suggestions that are worthy of consideration -- but so far they were trying to get away with murder, actually -- the murder of George Floyd.”

Put aside for the moment that she’s suggesting she cares more about black lives than the creator of the GOP Senate bill, Sen. Tim Scott, who actually is black, as opposed to Pelosi, who is whiter than Caspar the ghost, although not nearly as friendly. Let’s examine her outrageous lie that REPUBLICANS are trying to “get away with” the murder of George Floyd.

I’ve said this before, but as a reminder: George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, who is part of a department run by a Democrat police chief in a city with zero Republicans on the city council, where there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in 47 years. All county officials are Democrats, including the prosecutors who declined to punish that officer over previous brutality complaints (like now-Senator Amy Klobuchar.) Higher up, the Governor is a Democrat, as are both Senators and five of the state’s eight Representatives (who include Ilhan Omar!) The State Attorney General is a Democrat who’s so far left that he promoted the Antifa handbook on Twitter. And the state is so sold blue that it’s the only state that voted for Mondale over Reagan in 1984. In short, the death of George Floyd is the end result of decades of rock-solid, uninterrupted Democratic Party rule.

And Minneapolis is hardly an outlier. Look at every city in America where there is widespread crime and violence, and complaints of filthy, substandard and dangerous conditions in black neighborhoods, and look who’s been running them for years. Here’s a hint.

Say, while we’re at it, let’s look at all the celebrities currently under fire for racism for wearing blackface. See any Republicans on this list?

No, Republicans are not to blame for the murder of George Floyd. We’re just trying to clean up the Democratic corruption that led to that, the same way Republican Abe Lincoln had to fight the Democratic Southern states to end slavery. Or the way the NRA had to defend the right of blacks to own guns to protect themselves from the Democratic KKK. Or the way Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had to send federal troops to then-Democratic Arkansas to enforce public school desegregation…

You know, it’s suddenly starting to dawn on me why Democrats are so eager to rewrite or erase all of American history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t often recommend watching speeches in Congress these days, but Wednesday brought one by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley that is a must-hear for Christian conservatives. It concerns the outrageous Supreme Court ruling, joined by alleged conservative Justices Roberts and Gorsuch (Gorsuch even wrote it) that refines the ban on “sex” discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “gender identity,” a concept that wasn’t even contemplated until decades after the law was written.

It is effectively a surrender to the left, since if judges can interpret the plain language of laws to mean anything they choose, then we no longer have a representative republic, we have rule by unelected judges and bureaucrats. Outrageously, Senate Republican leaders seem to be fine with that, brushing off the ruling as “the law of the land” (say, aren’t YOU supposed to make those?) and showing no interest in passing legislation to correct it. The Chamber of Commerce/Wall Street branch of the GOP is also fine with that, since they don’t care about social values issues anyway, and find them a bit of an embarrassment among their liberal country club friends. Hawley has some important words that they need to hear, and that Christian conservatives and other social values voters really need to hear.

Incidentally, since I think it’s suicidal to ignore your opponents, I also read this take on the same subject by a liberal Washington Post editor.

It’s infuriating because it makes the lazy and bigoted assumption that being opposed to letting the LGBTQ agenda steamroll religious rights, the law, the Constitution and basic biology is born purely out of personal animus toward gay people. But it’s worth reading to hear the arrogant attitude of the left toward millions of people they know nothing about and never even talk to. It boils down to “Why can’t you just take the crumbs we throw you and shut up?” Remember this the next time WaPo runs an article lamenting how some people just don’t recognize when they’re “speaking from a place of privilege.”

Supreme Court shock

June 20, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but…Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberals on the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, ruling that President Trump’s attempt to rescind Obama's DACA program is unlawful – even though Obama repeatedly stated that he had no constitutional authority to create it before going ahead and doing so.

The Court ruled that Trump didn’t give a good enough reason for why he rescinded it. Roberts wrote, "We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies. The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern. We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action."

Just off the top of my head, how about: “It's illegal because the President has no constitutional power to invent new immigration laws”?

The story at the link states, “No one disputes that the President has the power to end DACA. Instead, the focus of Thursday's case is whether administration officials followed procedural rules when terminating the program.” Actually, a lot of people disputed that Trump has that power, mostly based upon their delusional belief that Trump isn’t really President. The “reasoned explanation” argument was just the excuse that they thought might pass muster in courts, if they could find enough liberal judges. I can almost picture their attorneys leaving the SCOTUS, high-fiving each other and saying, "I can't BELIEVE they bought that!"

Personally, I have supported something similar to DACA in the past. I think it’s wasteful and cruel to send kids who were brought to the US by their parents when they were small and have only known America back to nations where they have no place and might not even speak the language, particularly after the state has already paid to educate them to the point when they’re about to become employed taxpayers. But this was NOT the way to deal with it. Letting a President simply ignore the Constitutional separation of powers as if his office conveys magical abilities is not the way to handle it, nor is restricting the powers of future Presidents from undoing the unconstitutional actions of previous Presidents unless they say “Mother, may I?” convincingly enough to a judge.

In the dissent, Justice Thomas, one of a dwindling number of SCOTUS members who remembers what the Constitution is and cares what words mean, warned that the Court’s decision means future presidents will be stuck with illegal policies inherited from their predecessors:

"Under the auspices of today’s decision, administrations can bind their successors by unlawfully adopting significant legal changes through executive branch agency memoranda. Even if the agency lacked authority to effectuate the changes, the changes cannot be undone by the same agency in a successor administration unless the successor provides sufficient policy justifications to the satisfaction of this Court."

I refer you again to Sen. Josh Hawley’s speech warning that we have become a nation in which laws are no longer made by the elected Representatives of the people but by unelected bureaucrats and judges who think that wearing a robe makes them wizards. I guess now we can add rogue Presidents to that list. Everyone can make laws except our lawmakers.

The good news: if Trump wants to bypass the Democratic House and create laws and programs by executive order, he can now feel free to go ahead, knowing that his successors can only do away with them if they can come up with a reason better than “But this is plainly UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!” As Roberts first signaled when he twisted the law into a pretzel to uphold Obamacare, that’s no longer a convincing enough reason for the SCOTUS to overturn something.

As for what to do about the SCOTUS, it's obvious that having Justices appointed by Republicans, even by Trump, is no guarantee that they'll protect the Constitution. But letting the Democrats have the Presidency and Senate would be exponentially worse. As law professor/blogger David Bernstein (who called the DACA decision "a very dangerous ruling" and "a very bad day for the separation of powers") said, the best insurance against 5-4 liberal decisions thanks to a rogue conservative Justice is to have a 7-2 or higher conservative bench.

In one week, the Supreme Court has managed to douse the Constitution with gasoline and light it on fire with two separate outrageous decisions. In the first, by declaring that “sex discrimination” in the 1964 Civil Rights Act also means “gender identity,” they affirmed that the plain words of laws don’t mean what Congress intended but whatever judges want them to mean, rendering the concept of laws written by elected representatives of the people to be meaningless. In the second, they ruled that President Trump cannot use an executive order to undo a previous President’s illegal and unconstitutional executive order unless the Court approves his reasons for doing so, which eviscerates the separation of powers, usurping for the Court a power reserved exclusively to the Chief Executive. And in both of these dangerous and destructive rulings, the key vote was that of Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the liberals.

Yesterday in the Senate, Constitutional scholar Sen. Ted Cruz took to the podium and spent about 10 minutes dismantling Roberts’ “legal reasoning,” in which he concedes that something is, of course, obviously what we all know it is, then yanks some rationale out of the ether for ruling the other way. It’s a must-see or must-read for anyone who cares about preserving – or more accurately now, reviving - the Constitution and the rule of law:

None of this is surprising since Roberts has made it clear from his writings and interviews that he doesn’t see his job as ruling on whether an issue before him is Constitutional or not – which is actually his ONLY job. He erroneously sees his job as being to look at something before him that he assumes the people want, like Obamacare, same-sex marriage, gender identity protections, DACA or keeping a citizenship question out of the Census and then work backward to try to find some legal mumbo-jumbo to justify it. He’s now done this so many times that he’s left the Constitution as full of holes as Swiss cheese.

(Incidentally, for Justice Roberts’ enlightenment, here are 10 instances where Obama himself admitted that he had no Constitutional authority to create DACA):

Since there are no elections for Supreme Court Justices, and impeachment is a longshot, there’s only one way to counter this. That is to ensure that President Trump is reelected and the GOP holds the Senate, so that Trump can continue appointing conservative, constructionist judges who can rise to the level of SCOTUS appointments, and we can all pray that he appoints enough of them so that if one or two decide, like Roberts, to go, rogue, they won’t be “swing” votes.

Of course, there is one other solution, but it’s not very likely. As Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton suggested, if John Roberts “believes his political judgment is so exquisite,” “I invite him to resign, travel to Iowa, and get elected. I suspect voters will find his strange views no more compelling than do the principled justices on the Court.”

Happy Juneteenth

June 19, 2020

Happy Juneteenth, and if you don’t know what that means, you probably will soon. Juneteenth (for “June 19th”) has been a popular holiday throughout the South for well over a century, but the current racial tensions have politicians and corporations around the nation suddenly jumping on the bandwagon to declare it a national or state holiday or paid leave day, only about 150 years late. Here’s what it’s about:

On June 19, 1865, Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3  to the slaves in Galveston, Texas, which informed them that they were free and now had “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves.” This was 2-1/2 years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Juneteenth was a Texas celebration for many years, starting in 1866, but ramping up in 1872, when former slaves bought 10 acres of land in Houston to create Emancipation Park, the city's only park and swimming pool open to African-Americans, and the site of a big annual Juneteeth celebration. It gradually spread throughout the South, but most people outside the South knew very little about it until very recently.

Ironically, Juneteenth has finally entered the national consciousness during a summer when the coronavirus has killed mass public gatherings, so the usual barbecues and concerts will mostly be restricted to virtual events, backyards and close family this year.

I know some people will be cynical and call the sudden push for Juneteenth pandering or politics, but as someone who grew up in the South, I can assure you you’re lucky to finally discover Juneteenth. It’s a great holiday that celebrates freedom just as much as the Fourth of July does, and while it’s considered an African-American holiday, it’s something that every American should celebrate. Anything that can get us all back into public parks, celebrating together with music, fireworks, and barbecues, and remind us that people of all races are free and equal in America, is more than welcome now. It's necessary.

In the months leading up to the 2020 elections, stories about COVID-19 and escalating civil unrest from the far left –- with race as the catalyst –- will continue to dominate the news. To be sure, the way we address these issues will determine the direction America takes in the next generation and beyond. But as important as these stories are, there is one more big reason for the intensity of the coverage: by focusing exclusively on these issues, the media will not have to give any coverage at all to what would otherwise be the story of the decade: the ongoing declassification of documents that shows we were right all along about the “soft coup” against President Trump in 2016 and afterwards.

Yes, it really did happen. And it is treachery.

At any other time –- especially if it had been the Republicans pulling this against, say, candidate and later President Obama –- the screaming would be heard in a galaxy far, far away, and many people would rightly be arrested and charged and end up under the prison. It took then-acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell and the newly appointed DNI John Ratcliffe to finally get the evidence out after years of stonewalling and CYA by the intel community. The latest revelation concerns the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that concluded the Russians had helped Trump win.

Remember how Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) pushed the line that “the 17 intel agencies” in our federal government concluded that the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election, specifically to damage Hillary and to help Trump win? (How releasing “Russian disinformation” about Trump cavorting with prostitutes in Moscow was supposed to HELP Trump is never addressed. Seems as though that would help Hillary, but hey, nobody said this had to make sense.) This line has been trumpeted since the ICA was first released, in redacted form, in January of 2017 –- as it happens, right before Trump’s inauguration.

We’ve learned through investigative reporters such as John Solomon, with their spot-on sources, that then-FBI Director James Comey, then-deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and then-CIA Director John Brennan –- perhaps the biggest proponent of the Steele “dossier” –- were insistent that this work of fiction be included in the ICA and that a summary of it was included as “Annex A.” You and I haven’t been able to see much of “Annex A” until now, but new DIR Ratcliffe has just declassified it. As reported on RedState.com, we can see now that this document “goes along with what we already know about the underlying information for the Russia Hoax investigation being a fraud from the start.”

As Catherine Herridge reports, the allegations that Brennan and his cohorts were making about Trump’s campaign associates knowingly working with Russian officials and even offering financial compensation had not been substantiated and therefore were not used in the body of the report, only in the “annex.” (I would add that today, the only person known to have paid Russians for campaign assistance is Hillary.) Later, when Robert Mueller investigated, he couldn’t substantiate them, either, but that didn’t stop the FBI from using them three more times to renew the warrant to spy on Carter Page.

What I find most interesting about “Annex A” is not so much what’s in it as what is NOT in it. It does not bother to name Christopher Steele. Neither does it identify Fusion GPS as the company that hired him or the Clinton campaign and DNC (same thing) as the clients who were funding him, even though the FBI knew. It merely says “the source collected this information on behalf of private clients.” This is consistent with the wording of that convoluted footnote in the FISA warrant that obscured who the “dossier” clients were.

The date on it –- January 6, 2017 –- is also revealing. This is two days after FBI investigators had recommended that the case against Michael Flynn, one of those purportedly suspected of “colluding” with Russians, be closed for lack of evidence, adding that IT COULD BE RE-OPENED IF EVIDENCE WAS FOUND. (Get the significance?) Interestingly, it’s also one day after the big Oval Office meeting with Obama, Biden, Comey, Brennan and the rest.

With our current knowledge of the FBI’s awareness that the Steele “dossier” was created for Hillary’s campaign, we can see that “Annex A” was their way to maintain that lie as the real deal. It was meant to help accomplish what the RedState article calls “a bureaucratic mafia hit on President Trump.” Quoting the article further: “Obviously, the Steele allegations had significant play in developing the FBI’s position on the IC assessment, as they had used it to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page which was a part of the IC assessment, but their first paragraph denies that to be the case. So now that they’ve said they haven’t verified or used it [the “dossier”], they attach all the allegations, which we now know to be utter [expletive], to the assessment and push for this annex to be made public knowing that the Trump administration would never stand the uproar.”

And that’s what they did. The IC assessment is what gave ammunition to CNN, MSNBC, THE NEW YORK TIMES and virtually every other major media outlet except FOX NEWS to scream “Russia, Russia, Russia!” nonstop for the next three years. The timing of the report ensured this would start before Trump was even inaugurated.

Jerry Dunleavy at the WASHINGTON EXAMINER has another excellent piece on this document.

Dunleavy clarifies that part of the annex was declassified in 2018, but the parts having to do with the source’s veracity –- the fact that there was only “limited corroboration” –- are only now being seen. (“Limited corroboration?” How about “no corroboration”?) Running only two pages, it makes out that this Russia “collusion” was serious stuff indeed: “An FBI source using both identified and unidentified sub-sources volunteered highly politically sensitive information from the summer to the fall of 2016 on Russian influence efforts aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” Wow. Basic physics tells us you can’t make something out of nothing, but these people somehow managed to do it with Steele’s report.

Steele is described mysteriously as a “source” who “maintains and collects information from a layered network of identified and unidentified sub-sources.”

Oh, and to lend more credibility to the unnamed Steele, “Annex A” also reports that “the source’s reporting appears to have been acquired by multiple Western press organizations starting in October [2016].” Wow, how could THAT have happened? We know that Steele himself was shopping the “dossier” around and that intel officials were leaking, too. Not to mention some in our own Congress and Senate. Political hacks all.

Read the full story for all the details. One person who increasingly stands out as vindicated is California Rep. Devin Nunes, who put a report together that was at odds with all those who accepted the Intelligence Community Assessment at face value. At the time, his report was shoved under the rug while anti-Trump reporters “trump”-eted the story about the ICA. No doubt they thought that after a few months more of this, they’d be able to take Trump down.

CELEBRATING FLAG DAY

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

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

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

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

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

NEW ATLANTA PROTESTS

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

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

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

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

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

MONOLOGUE FROM SATURDAY'S "HUCKABEE" ON TBN 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TODAY'S MUST-READ

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

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

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

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

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

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO LEFT-WING NUTJOBS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FAKE NEWS FRIDAY

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

CLEANING OUT THE CAPITOL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

While Americans around the nation, including in Chicago, were protesting the death of George Floyd and demanding the recognition of Black Lives Matter, it has been barely remarked upon for a week that Sunday, May 31st, was the most violent day in Chicago in 60 years. In that 24-hour period, 18 people were killed, including a high school student, college students with big dreams for the future, a hardworking father of two shot from a car driving by, and a father of three who was on his way to pay his phone bill when he was fatally shot.

From Friday evening through Sunday at 11 p.m., 25 people were killed and 85 wounded by gunfire. Most of the victims were black. This article tells more about them, and the heartbreaking loss of their lives for no reason whatsoever. They weren’t victims of cops but of an entrenched system that’s allowed poverty and violence to fester for decades as the violent death toll continues to mount. Don’t their lives matter, too? If there must be systemic change so their loss won’t be in vain, then stop the blame-shifting and political games, and change the system that actually led to their deaths.

The America I Love

June 11, 2020

Right now, the media are dominated by voices claiming that America is a land of racism and hatred, built on oppression and slavery and white supremacy. Well, pardon my language, but they are full of bull flop. There are a handful of bad apples, but it’s a very big barrel, and if we really were to do as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed and judge each other by the content of our characters rather than the color of our skin, I bet we’d mostly find a lot of good, caring people of every shade. If you don’t believe me, turn off all the hyperventilating hate merchants for a moment and look at this story:

Last Thursday, there was a car crash in Indianapolis, and a woman was trapped under an overturned van. Nearby resident Laurie Collins reported on Facebook that she heard the crash and ran to the scene. She said that suddenly, many people “came out of nowhere” to help. Some comforted and reassured the woman and tried to assess her condition while the others determined to lift the van off her somehow. They gathered around, called out, “1...2…3!” But they couldn’t move it. So more guys joined in, and the second time, they did the seemingly impossible: they lifted the van and pushed it off of her.

As you can tell from the photo, and from Collins’ description, there were “all kinds of different people and they were all trying to help together.” Please note that the people who rushed to help were men and women, and all different races. I’m sure many of them didn’t know the race of the victim, and couldn’t care less. When they heard someone was in need, and rushed in, joined together, and all lifted in the same direction to help.

That is the America I love and the American people I know. No matter how many buildings are set on fire or statues are vandalized or phony history books are forced onto students, you will never convince me otherwise.

NFL Guilt

June 11, 2020

Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell joined in the rush to take a knee by declaring that "we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier” when they enraged many fans by kneeling during the National Anthem. He said he would be "reaching out" to players who have "raised their voices," and the NFL will "encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest...Without black players, there would be no National Football League and the protests around the country are emblematic of the centuries of silence, inequality, and oppression of black players, coaches, fans, and staff."

Predictably, that was not good enough for the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is turning his funeral eulogies for George Floyd into political attacks on President Trump, and in Houston, into a demand that the NFL rehire quarterback Colin Kaepernick. This conveniently overlooks the fact that Kaepernick has had multiple opportunities to play and blown them with his own behavior. Last year, he was given an unprecedented private tryout for all 32 NFL teams, on a Saturday when the teams are normally busy preparing for games. But after the scouts showed up, Kaepernick moved it to another venue on 30 minutes’ notice. He also spoke to the XFL and AAF, but demanded a guaranteed paycheck 80 times larger than their normal salaries.

I’d be interested to hear if Goodell is equally apologetic about the league’s oppression of players who wanted to express their deep feelings about other issues, like the ban on the Cowboys wearing stickers honoring five Dallas Police officers who were murdered by a sniper during a protest of the treatment of blacks by police in Louisiana and (again) Minneapolis. Five Dallas cops died and nine others were injured as they heroically tried to protect the lives of the people who came to denounce them. But that doesn’t fit the current media narrative, so I’ll note that the NFL has also banned expressions of support for a number of other causes, including religion, mental health, and fighting domestic violence and breast cancer. That’s because they all violate the league’s ban on using uniforms to convey any unapproved messages on game day:

This stems from the original concept that’s gotten lost in all the fury and finger-pointing: when players are in the stadium, they’re in their workplace, representing their employers. Contrary to claims, Kaepernick never had his First Amendment rights taken away. That only prevents the government from censoring you. He was free to speak out on any subject on his own time, on radio, TV or a soapbox in the park. But he wasn’t allowed to stage divisive political protests that alienated customers while he was at work.

If the NFL is forced to take back Kaepernick, then does that rule apply everywhere now? Say you work at a car dealership, and you have some controversial opinions on social issues that you’re so passionate about, you feel you must force customers to listen to them before they can test drive a car, or make your colleagues sit through them every time they come into work. So now, you no longer have to worry about being sent to HR or fired with cause, you can just keep on doing it? How long do you think that dealership will remain in business?

Allowing these divisive protests in a place where fans traditionally came to escape from politics, put aside differences and root for their teams cratered NFL TV ratings. In the past few seasons, ratings have crept up again, largely because of the divisive politics finally receding. Goodell now wants to bring it all back with a vengeance.

This brings up another question, asked countless times by former NFL fans: How has Roger Goodell kept his job? He normally makes about $40 million a year; although during the pandemic shutdown, he agreed to reduce his salary to zero, and many of us think he’s finally being paid what he’s worth. His admitted wrong decisions (which he’s now been on both sides of) have cost the league billions, driven away fans and seriously harmed its reputation. He even admits he was in charge during years of “oppression of black players, coaches, fans and staff." If you did that to your employer’s business, would you still be employed?

Several prominent business leaders, such as the CEO of the Second City comedy troupe, have found themselves so wracked with white guilt that they’ve resigned their own jobs so they can be replaced by a black applicant. In that spirit, Goodell should step down to be replaced by a black former NFL player.

I nominate Burgess Owens.

Digital Biden

June 11, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Behind Closed Doors

June 11, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An article at RedState makes some strong additional points.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the latest attempts to scrub our cultural history of anything that upsets current PC sensitivities, it was announced that in a reboot of “Looney Tunes” (perfect timing for that!), famed hunter Elmer Fudd will no longer carry a shotgun.

Will he use a bow and arrow, like Ted Nugent? He’ll have to be quite an archer to hunt ducks and rabbits that way. I’d strongly advise him not to order any duck or rabbit traps from the Acme Company. Oh wait: Warner Brothers released a preview clip showing him running after Bugs Bunny with a scythe. A scythe?! How is that less violent than a shotgun? Besides, what kind of message is it for kids to show someone running while carrying a sharp instrument? It’s not safe!

Also, the HBO Max streaming service has yanked “Gone With The Wind” until they can add “a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement” of its sympathetic depiction of the Old South. I guess this is for viewers who need a reminder that (A.) the movie was made in 1939 and based on a book by a Southerner, Margaret Mitchell; (B.) Scarlett O’Hara was personally biased toward the South; or (C.) slavery was bad.

In its nearly four-hour length, “GWTW” covers a lot of territory, and it’s not all sympathetic to the Old South (its hero, Rhett Butler, is shunned for telling the Southerners that they’re suffering from “dreams of victory” and have nothing but “cotton, slaves and arrogance;” and it doesn’t spare us the carnage, waste and suffering caused by that ill-founded decision.) It also makes a number of points about all sorts of human dilemmas unrelated to its specific era, from personal relationships to moral decisions and their consequences.

One scene particularly resonates now: As Sherman is starting to burn Atlanta, Scarlett mocks the retreating Confederate army. Rhett replies, “I wouldn't be in such a hurry to see them go, if I were you, my dear. With them goes the last semblance of law and order.” Immediately thereafter, criminals start rampaging through the streets.

All the liberals demanding that we defund the police should have to watch that scene a few hundred times.

In a wide-ranging interview with FOX NEWS’ Bret Baier, Attorney General Bill Barr offered an update on the criminal investigation into allegations of FISA fraud and other abuses of power on the part of the FBI. I joined Judge Jeanine Pirro on Sean Hannity’s TV show Tuesday night to discuss it, as well as the escalating anti-police rhetoric that dominated Tuesday’s news.

The portion of Barr’s interview dealing with the Durham investigation is in this segment.

Incidentally, the Barr interview comes on the heels of a huge uptick in Senate inquiries on the subject of FBI misconduct, by both the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees, as I reported in this previous commentary, in case you didn’t see it. Sen. Lindsay Graham and Sen. Ron Johnson, who chair these two committees, will finally be using subpoena power; Johnson has a long list of documents to examine and witnesses he intends to call. As I reported, Graham has been hitting some resistance from the FBI to his request to interview “Case Agent 1,” identified as Stephen Somma. Somma played a pivotal role in the set-up to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Anyway, in his interview with Baier, AG Barr made it clear –- in his calm, understated manner –- that he sees the investigation into the Trump campaign as “very aggressive” considering the “very thin, slender reed” that was the basis for undertaking it.

"It seemed that the Bureau was sort of spring-loaded at the end of July to drive in there and investigate a campaign,” he said, “and there really wasn’t much there to do that on. And that became more and more evident as they went by but they seem to have ignored all the exculpatory evidence that was building up and continue pell-mell to push it forward.”

I would add that “Case Agent 1” appears to be the lower-level person who was making that happen in the beginning by choosing the information that would --- or wouldn't --- go into the FISA warrant application against Page. Was he taking this initiative on his own, or was he given direction from higher-ups on the “7th Floor”?

Barr was also concerned that after the election, they went “right back at it,” even though the Steele dossier, the main evidence being used, “was falling apart.” They were even making it public that they were investigating Trump when it was “painfully obvious” that “there was nothing there.” He said in the interview that he was “very troubled” by what had been called to his attention, though he wouldn’t characterize it further than that. Getting into specifics would obviously be premature. But in general, he was blunt.

"Here’s the thing," he told Baier. "For the first time in American history, police organizations and the national security organizations were used to spy on a campaign, and there was no basis for it. The media largely drove that, and there were all kinds of sensational claims...being made about the President that could have affected the election. Later on, in his administration, there were actions taken that really appear to be efforts to sabotage...” He said if people wanted to accuse of him of being politicized for looking at this, then “so be it,” because “that’s the job of the attorney general.”

Judge Jeanine highlighted one particular comment made by Barr that might not get the attention it deserves, given all the necessary focus right now on our suffering cities and the attacks on police departments. But it should offer at least some reassurance to my more pessimistic readers who don’t expect anything to ever come of all this investigating in terms of criminal referrals. Barr said (paraphrasing) that the wheels of justice have been described as turning very slowly, and they do, but don’t think that means people are going to get away with it.

"This isn’t being driven by producing a report,” Barr said in the interview. “We’re trying to get to a point where we can hold accountable anyone who crossed the line and committed a criminal violation.” He said there will also be some form of report, though, to provide “public disclosure” of what happened. If certain people were involved whose prosecution might be seen as too political for him to touch --- you know who I mean --- I would hope the report will tell the world the COMPLETE narrative, citing every last bit of evidence against every last person implicated.

In my own comment to Sean, I went back to something said in a previous segment of his show to make a point about the FBI. The implication had been made that a person in poverty is more likely to be engaged in crime. As someone who grew up poor, I have to take exception with that. I made the point that all these officials at the FBI that Barr is looking at now are NOT poor and NOT poorly educated. It’s not a “money problem”; it’s a moral problem. Poor people are not predisposed towards crime just because they’re poor. I saw that comment as a slam on poor people, many of whom are scrupulously honest. I will add here that I’d put such people up against the likes of Comey, Rosenstein and McCabe any day.

Moving on...Most of the media failed to cover the "FBI" portion of Barr’s interview, choosing instead to focus on, say, discrepancies between his account of what happened in clearing Lafayette Square and what some reporters have said took place. (I’d link to some of these, but your head might explode.) That way, they didn’t have to cover what he said about the FBI at all.

Is it any wonder that MSNBC hired Lisa Page as an on-camera legal analyst?

A More Perfect Union

June 10, 2020

The radical elements that have hijacked the recent protests, and those in power who are supporting/trying to placate them, are no longer even pretending that this is about the killing of George Floyd or reforming police procedures. They hate America and want to go back to our very beginnings, destroy everything that was ever revered, and rewrite our history, “1619 Project” style, into a litany of evils with no positives, progress or heroes allowed to be mentioned.

What better illustrations of that could there be than protesters targeting California homeowners for arson simply for flying American flags…

Or vandalizing, setting on fire, then tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Richmond, Virginia, and throwing it into a lake, while carrying signs reading, “This land is Powhatan land” and “Columbus represents genocide”? I wonder how many of them have signed over the deeds to their homes to the Powhatan tribe?

The greatness of America has never been that it was perfect from the start, but that the Founders created an unprecedented system in which power derived from the consent of the governed, and every citizen has God-given rights that cannot be taken away by government. They created a Constitution designed to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Note that it doesn’t say everything is perfect, but that we are trying to “form a more perfect union.” They knew that human nature being what it was, there would always be problems and injustices, but they bequeathed to us the tools to keep making things better. We even fought a bloody Civil War to end one of those injustices. But racism remained, so we fought on to desegregation and the Civil Rights Act and other efforts to “form a more perfect union.” We didn’t always take the right steps, but Americans of good faith have worked together to keep us heading in the right direction, and we have come a long, long way.

Now, we’re under assault by a small, hateful minority who want us to throw away centuries of progress. To do that, they have to convince us that there has been no progress, that America has always been totally evil and still is. That we were born in sin, and there has been no attempt at atonement and no redemption possible. Don’t listen to that, and don’t be afraid to call it what it is: a poisonous lie.

We may never have a “perfect union,” because perfection doesn’t exist on this Earth. We must always keep working to “form a more perfect union,” that is, one that moves ever closer to the goal. But we will never get closer to perfection by attacking each other and tearing down our own history. What the proponents of that path want is anarchy, and they make no secret of it.

If there are injustices that need to be remedied, then Americans must do what we have always done: we’ll listen, we’ll debate, we’ll compromise, and we will work to fix the problems TOGETHER. But we’ll never get closer to the goal if we let our enemies panic us into running in the opposite direction.

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

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

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

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

They Hurt Themselves

June 9, 2020

As always happens after a bender, the leaders of blue cities who allowed rioters and looters to “vent” are waking up with a big headache and realizing just how much longterm damage has been inflicted – in this case, on the very people the protesters claimed to be championing.

After previous riots in cities like Watts and Detroit, the damage to the economy and quality of life lingered on for years, even decades. Once again, the victims taking the brunt of it are the law-abiding black residents of the neighborhoods that were trashed, burned and looted. They lost friends and family members killed and injured while trying to defend the businesses they’d spent their lives building, lost their homes, and lost jobs they needed in order to take care of their families.

And now comes the secondary pain: the stores that were burned and looted closed, many, possibly for good. The residents depended on those stores for food, medicine, clothing, and other necessities. Now, they’ll have to travel long distances for basic needs. Liberals used to decry what they called “food deserts.” President Trump promoted tax breaks and other incentives to get businesses into these neighborhoods to provide goods, jobs, and services. Now, liberals, in the name of “helping” those communities, are driving the businesses out, leaving the mayors to plead with them not to leave for good.

It’s going to take a lot of convincing to get businesses to stay after this. It will require a leader who knows how to talk to business people, who understands their needs and has experience negotiating deals that will entice reluctant investors to sign. If only someone like that were running for President in 2020!

THIS IS SATIRE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PAGE: They love him over there.

HR: Understandably.

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

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

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

PAGE: Yes?

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

PAGE: Well, yes.

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

PAGE: That’s a relief.

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

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

UPDATE:

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

From reader John H:

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

From Laura:

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

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

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

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

It’s understandable, considering the level of threats, slander and vitriol being hurled, but still disappointing to see so many people folding and groveling for saying things that we should all agree with, but that far-left radical activists have declared to be double-plus ungood wrongthink. It is entirely possible to condemn racism and want reform of police corruption (particularly in long-time one-party Democratic cities/states, where the racism and corruption have been deeply entrenched for up to half a century, even though they blame it on Donald Trump) and still oppose rioting, looting, vandalism, violence and threatening, racially-divisive, anti-American rhetoric. This is the time for the silent majority to stop being silent and speak up for racial unity, not race war. Don’t wait until November to make yourselves heard, although I expect there will be quite a roar unleashed at the ballot box

There were a number of sobering opinion pieces this weekend, warning that the attempted purges we’re seeing now, including the push to do away with police, aided and abetted by powerful political and media/social media forces, are not an honest reaction to the murder of George Floyd but long-planned actions of radical elements exploiting Floyd’s killing as a fuse for the bomb they’ve spent years building.

Here’s Roger L. Simon on the Mao-ing of America

The difference between the ‘60s radical rioters and today’s

And a timely message to celebrities who are knuckling under to criticism of comments that were not really offensive…

Here’s a quote from the third article

“The left has graduated to literal struggle sessions. They are intent on forcing us all, through shame and abuse, to bow to an ideology that is demonstrably toxic and divisive instead of allowing us to pursue, of our own free will, a common-humanity politics that will actually lead to a more just society. If you are a creative, don't bend. Don't apologize to these people -- ever. Because they will never be satisfied. As soon as you show your belly, they will continue to harass you for every tiny imperfection they can perceive. And you don't deserve that. Hardly anyone does.”

NY Times Grief

June 9, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

76 years later: D-Day

June 9, 2020

Saturday, June 6, was the 76th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the mass invasion of France that spelled the beginning of the end of Hitler’s reign of terror in Europe in World War II. More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft joined in support against entrenched Nazi positions on the coastal cliffs. More than 160,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy. 9,000 were killed or wounded that day, but their courage and sacrifice enabled over 100,000 more troops to start the long, bloody pushback of the Nazis and liberate Europe. It was the biggest military operation in history, and amazingly, it was all pulled together in secret without anyone leaking the plans and warning the enemy, something it’s virtually impossible to imagine these days.

As the architect of D-Day, Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower, said, "I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!" And that they achieved, no matter the cost.

I held off writing about D-Day until today because I wanted to see whether the commemorations would be able to go forward, with France ravaged and shut down by the pandemic and so few surviving elderly veterans able to leave their homes. I’m glad to be able to say that while there couldn’t be the huge memorials that marked last year’s 75th anniversary, the grateful people of France made it clear that they have not forgotten that sacrifice for their freedom.

95-year-old US Army veteran Charles Shay, who stormed Omaha Beach as a 19-year-old medic, now lives near the beach and was the only veteran able to be standing there at dawn. But he wasn’t alone. A few dozen locals and tourists, some in period attire, gathered to honor and remember those heroes. The theme from “Saving Private Ryan” was played. Later in the day, French fighter jets staged a flyover. And even before dawn, local fisherman Ivan Thierry was standing on the beach, holding up an American flag.

He said, “There is not nobody here. Even if we are only a dozen, we are here to commemorate.”

But even if the elderly heroes of D-Day couldn’t make it back to France, they were not forgotten at home. Around America, they were honored by their neighbors. For instance, in Niles, Michigan, the local VFW presented them with certificates of honor and Michigan challenge coins, and the Western Michigan Gold Star Mothers gave them American flag quilts.

And in Billerica, Massachusetts, the family of John DiClemente, a veteran of both D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, told him they were taking him to a veterans’ event. It was actually a vehicle parade in his honor by local police and firefighters.

There were many such commemorations around the nation, small but heartfelt. Whether we hold giant commemorations or just local observances, the important thing is that we never lose our gratitude for the sacrifice of these true American heroes, and that as that Greatest Generation passes into history, that we teach future generations what they did and to be thankful for them. We’re currently getting a very harsh lesson in what happens when we entrust that important job to people who hate and blame America for all the world’s ills, and who refuse to teach its real history. It’s time for parents to take that job back.

Sadly, this D-Day anniversary weekend was also marred by continuing violent protests, including protesters who scrawled profane graffiti on a statue of Winston Churchill in England and on the World War II memorial in Washington, DC, as well as the Lincoln Memorial (a strange way to protest racism, to desecrate the memorial to the man who led a war to free the slaves.)

I wonder how many of these protesters who hide behind the First Amendment to justify their vandalism and disrespect for these heroes realize that if it weren’t for them and their comrades, they would have no First Amendment rights? I wonder if the protesters in England think they’d be better off today if there had been no Winston Churchill to rally the nation and help plan D-Day and destroy Nazism? Do they even understand what fascism is?

I seriously doubt it. Possibly the most disrespectful desecration, far beyond that of any spray paint can, came from Bernie Sanders’ “foreign policy adviser” Matt Duss, who declared D-Day to be the “largest Antifa operation in history.”

No, it was the largest genuine anti-fascist operation in history. The soldiers of D-Day were real warriors facing heavy, deadly fire; not make-believe “social justice warriors” who expect to be allowed to attack anyone they please with no consequences. The soldiers of D-Day were fighting real fascism, not using fascist tactics to terrorize anyone who disagrees with them (Antifa's definition of “fascists.”) The soldiers of D-Day were greeted with cheers because they were there to bring freedom and liberation, and drive out the people who burned, threatened and looted the neighborhoods. They weren't there to burn, threaten and loot them.

And the soldiers of D-Day, as John DiClemente recalled, were greeted by “good people” in “France, Belgium, Germany and Russia. They didn’t want to fight us. Every time we went into a city, they fed us wine, (gave us) flowers, hugs, kisses and what have you. They were glad to see us.”

Is anyone glad when Antifa shows up? I think many of us will be glad when they finally start showing up in federal prisons.

I’ve already written about the attempts by so-called “health professionals” to explain why it’s fine for masses of people to gather for anti-racism protests, but it’s a deadly coronavirus superspreader event when people protest endless lockdowns.

That Mt. Everest of hypocrisy is getting so much furious blowback that some of them are trying to rationalize it by claiming that the racism protests have aspects that mitigate the spread, such as being outdoors with more space between people.

Like this protest in London, supported by the mayor and hilariously juxtaposed with his warnings to stay home and keep two meters apart from others if you go out. I’ve seen canned sardines that weren’t packed as tight as the people in that protest photo.

But here’s the stunning quote that really gave away the game, and no, it’s not from the Babylon Bee. It’s real:

Apparently, “health professionals” have decided that if they strongly approve of an issue, it’s okay to rally for it, but if they disapprove, then it’s too dangerous to allow because it might spread the coronavirus. Did the virus post a “Black Lives Matter” logo on its Facebook page and agree not to infect anyone at an anti-racism rally?

Or is this just, as I’ve written previously, irrefutable proof that the only “science” the alleged “party of science” really cares about is political science? Since they believe that life begins when the mother and the abortionist decide to let a baby live that’s already been born, or that climate science is “settled” no matter how many times the computer models are wrong, then I’d say they have no more inkling of what “science” is than they do of what common sense is.

The idea of defunding and dismantling police departments, as approved by Minneapolis’s far-left city council, is so “stand-on-you-head-in-a-toilet” crazy that not even Joe Biden, who endorsed the Green New Deal and chose AOC as a “campaign adviser,” will get behind it. His spokesman said Biden does not support defunding the police, but he “supports the urgent need for reform,” which includes “funding for public schools, summer programs, and mental health and substance abuse treatment separate from funding for policing — so that officers can focus on the job of policing.” So funding for police and for everything else. That’s a pretty standard Democratic position.

And since Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, and other Congressional Democrats are dodging the question like mad, I think we can safely assume they won’t back it, either, they’re just terrified to say so.

Not surprisingly, President Trump gives a firm “no” to the idea of defunding the police. In a meeting Monday with law enforcement leaders to discuss reforms, Trump said he believes there have been instances of racism, but that most cops are “good people.” He said what happened with George Floyd and other such incidents “should never have happened,” and we need to “talk about ideas, how we can do it better and how we can do (policing), if possible, in a much more gentle fashion” (that might require a summit meeting with America’s criminals to get their cooperation.) But he said there will be no defunding of the police on his watch.

And memo to the Minneapolis city council: your attempt to pander went so far overboard that even the president of the NAACP is signaling you to reel it back since he also won’t support defunding the police.

I’d point out this article contains an assertion (“the ‘defund the police’ movement that has gained momentum in recent days”) that I refute. It’s gained publicity, but not momentum. This has been a goal of the radical Antifa crowd for years. They’d love to be able to set fires, smash property and assault, threaten and intimidate people with no consequences, so of course, their goal is to demonize and eliminate the police. They don’t care about George Floyd or racism any more than they care about the black people harmed by their rioting and looting; they just saw this as a convenient trigger to launch their long-planned revolution. But most Americans are smart enough to know “crazy” when they hear it.

I’ll bet if you asked most of the people in the neighborhoods where the rioting took place, they wouldn’t want to do away with the police, either. Who would protect them the next time the rioters turn out to “help” them?

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

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

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

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

Minnesota Morons

June 9, 2020

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

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

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

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

What A Spectacle

June 9, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feel-good story

June 9, 2020

We need a feel-good story right now, and here’s a great one. In Buffalo, New York, 18-year-old Antonio Gwynn Jr. was so upset by the trashing of his neighborhood by protesters that he grabbed a broom and some trash bags and went to work at 2 a.m., cleaning it up. He worked for 10 straight hours. By the time volunteers arrived to clean up, they found that Antonio had just about finished the job all by himself.

When word spread of what Antonio had done, local businessman Matt Block was so impressed, he saw that Antonio was looking for car-buying advice on his Facebook page, so Block gave him his prized 2004 red Mustang convertible. He didn’t realize how it would affect Antonio, who was stunned into silence because his late mother used to drive a red Mustang.

As word spread, another local businessman kicked in a year of free auto insurance, saying, “I just felt compelled to help him out. We just need to get together our whole city and show people how there’s so many good people here." And Medaille College in Buffalo offered Antonio a scholarship to study business.

Finally, I guess I should mention this: Antonio is black, and Matt is white. But that really should be the least important part of this story.