By Mike Huckabee
December 20, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team!
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
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Mike Huckabee
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News from Israel
Here’s today’s link to continually-updated news on the war on Hamas in Israel (Note: I am currently in Israel to show my support and to visit with Israeli officials and victims of the October 7th attack.)
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/december-20-israel-hamas-war
Today’s biggest news: While Israel is facing condemnation around the world for “targeting hospitals” in Gaza, the IDF released a shocking interrogation video of the head of a Gaza hospital admitting that it was used as a “safe place” for Hamas terrorists.
Kamal Adwan Hospital director Ahmad Kahlot is shown admitting that the hospital was used to hide up to 100 senior military and civilian Hamas officials at a time for up to 10 days because they knew they wouldn’t be targeted by Israel while they were in the hospital. He went on to say that he knew of 16 hospital staff members, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, who were also members of Hamas’ military wing.
Will this thermonuclear truth bomb have any effect on the dimwitted protesters accusing Israel of genocide because it’s searching hospitals for Hamas terrorists? If you believe that, you might need a mental hospital.
Israel’s representative to the UN Gilad Erdan reported that UN Secretary-General António Guterres (who has made a lot of accusatory statements about Israel) “finally” watched the graphic footage of the October 7th attack by Hamas. Erdon tweeted, "After he watched it, the Secretary-General himself said that it was humanity at its worst. Now we will see if his public statements change and if he truly understands Israel’s mission to eradicate this evil from the face of the earth and bring home the hostages."
I certainly hope so, although I still question why the leader of the UN criticized Israel for two months before he ever even watched the video of what started it.
The Epstein list
No matter how cold Christmas is this year, some powerful people are going to be sweating through it. A Republican-nominated federal judge ordered that the list of more than 170 people associated with the late sex criminal and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein be made public.
These names have been under seal since 2019, with journalists trying hard to obtain them because the list is rumored to include some prominent names in government and business who were Epstein’s powerful friends. The sealed list has become a symbol of how the system protects the powerful. It will be made public 14 days from Monday’s ruling, barring appeals, of which I’m sure there will be many, also with the identities of the people behind them carefully hidden.
Like the continually-renewed classified status of JFK assassination documents that are now 60 years old, I can’t help wondering what there is about this list that’s so vital to national security that it must be kept hidden from the public until the end of time.
A conflict of interest revealed
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is facing ethics violation accusations for allegedly failing to disclose income her husband received from medical malpractice consulting, which could have impacted her need to recuse herself from certain cases.
When Democrats started targeting conservative SCOTUS Justices for ethics accusations to take them off of cases, they never imagined that they would be held to the same strict standards they applied to others. This is one of many examples of how having the ability to engage in longterm thinking helps.
“This is the most election of our lifetime…”
With Joe Biden’s approval rating reaching Jack The Ripper levels and even Democrats suspecting that he’s better equipped to sit in a rocking chair than the Oval Office, his one insurance policy against being replaced is that waiting in the wings to replace him is Vice President and Czar-Of-All-Self-Created-Problems Kamala Harris. The Democrats don’t want her, either, but replacing her would mean jettisoning a black woman and angering two of their biggest identity groups.
So to remind everyone that it could (maybe) be worse if Biden doesn’t run, they sent Kamala out for a media appearance. She did not disappoint, from backstabbing Israel to dishing up a buffet of word salad worthy of Golden Corral:
Remember, in the words of Vice President Harris, “This is the most election of our lifetime,” and we “need to focus on what is happening now toward what is possible and should be possible the day after as we call it.”
Oh yes, there’s more. Take an Excedrin, then click the link above.
Our shrinking US military
There have been a lot of headlines recently about the US military’s recruitment crisis. With Biden’s weakness and incompetence upping the threat of military aggression around the world, the Pentagon is having trouble convincing young people to join. Our military is about to reach its lowest levels in 80 years. They’ve even started running recruitment ads that have a throwback, patriotic, “Top Gun” vibe designed to appeal to the sort of MAGA Americans that they’ve spent the past few years vilifying and trying to drive out of the military.
As always with the left, they have endless bogus excuses but will never admit the real problem: the effort that started with Obama and has continued under Biden to turn the US military from a patriotic, lethal fighting force into a woke social experiment has turned off young people from families with a tradition of military service, and those are the ones most needed and formerly most likely to join up. They’re actively working to destroy the military’s proud tradition of colorblind meritocracy and replace it with DEI, reverse racism and appeals to fringe identity groups, like offering taxpayer-paid transgender surgery. And their incompetent desk-jockey leaders seem to treat the troops as cannon fodder for whatever foreign misadventure they want to pursue.
Milt Harris at PJ Media has a must-read article on this subject that quotes some military veterans who tell them exactly what the problem is. Whether the top leaders will listen is an open question.
Personally, I would start by requiring that all Pentagon leaders have combat experience. I’d then bust most of the current leaders back to privates and put them in charge of peeling potatoes to give them the chance to master at least one military-related skill.
Hypocrite
When “Squad”-associated “progressive” Democrat Rep. Greg Cesar was on the Austin, Texas, city council, he spearheaded the “defund the police” movement. He celebrated slashing the police budget by $100 million, which was (surprise!) followed by a huge crime wave. He also accused the Austin police of being a racist institution that targeted black and brown people, a charge he repeated just last week.
So imagine the cops' surprise when Cesar put in a request for enhanced police patrols around his own home last week for unknown reasons.
While the police say they protect everyone regardless of politics, Cesar is being deservedly blasted as a fraud and a hypocrite. Critics say he should pay for private security instead of denying police protection to others while requesting it for himself.
The president of the Austin Police Retired Officers Association told Fox News that their issue is “the whole, 'We hate the cops, we hate the cops, we hate the cops. Oh, please, come help us now'...He is the architect of defund the cops in Austin. He started this whole mess."
Say, maybe that’s why he thinks he needs enhanced protection!
Bye-bye reparations
The great thing about leftist policies is how well they work out…in Fantasyland. Put them into effect anywhere else, and they’re complete disasters.
Latest example: San Francisco, which thanks to decades of leftist rule has nearly apocalyptic problems to deal with, created an African American Reparations Advisory Committee. The members’ “job” was to figure out how much they thought the city owed every black person for slavery, which California never had. It must’ve been fun, sitting around on the taxpayers’ dime, dreaming up that simply by virtue of their skin color, every black person deserved a $5 million lump sum payment, all their debts erased, $97,000 a year for 250 years, and a house for $1. The cost of the $5 million payments alone was estimated at $175 billion, more than the annual budgets of 47 of the 50 states. Still, they claimed this wasn’t nearly enough.
Sadly, as always, reality eventually intruded. The committee requested a $50 million budget, reduced that to $10 million, and finally got $2 million. Now, due to cuts forced by a budget deficit caused by years of profligate spending and incompetent leftist leadership, the Reparations Committee has been eliminated. That’s right: San Francisco can’t even afford the Reparations Committee, much less the reparations!
Don’t worry, though: California’s leftist state government also thinks there should be lavish payouts for slavery reparations…oh, wait: never mind:
I hope this will serve as what Obama called a “teachable moment” about voting for politicians who promise lots of free stuff when that promise is in exchange for putting people in power who can’t even balance their own checkbooks.
Horrific
A prominent LGBT activist who “identifies” as a woman, and whom the Governor of Pennsylvania sought out to endorse and campaign for him, has been charged with a litany of horrific crimes against two boys under 13, including rape.
RELATED: Breitbart lists the Top Nine Degenerate Democrat Scandals under Joe Biden, the President who was going to “bring back decency.” Kudos to Breitbart for whittling it down to only nine.
Remember Celine in your prayers
The many fans of the great singer Celine Dion will want to remember her in their prayers after reading this update from her sister about her battle with a very rare neurological disorder that’s forced her to stop performing.
A Message for John
My friend, musician and “Dukes of Hazzard” star John Schneider, talked to Fox News about how hard it will be facing his first Christmas without his wife Alicia, whom he lost this year to breast cancer.
I just wanted to share this with you, and send a message to John that those of us who know him personally and the millions who love him for the years of great entertainment he’s given us are all thinking of him and praying for him and his family to feel the joy of the Christmas season the way I'm sure Alicia would have wanted them to.
Turley: Colorado court decision to take Trump off ballot is “DEAD WRONG.”
Melissa Hart. Monica M. Marquez. Richard L. Gabriel. William W. Hood III.
These four unelected Colorado Supreme Court justices, in a 4-3 ruling, are guilty of one of the most preposterous cases of judicial overreach in the history of “our democracy.” Until this travesty can be reversed on appeal before the United States Supreme Court, our Republic is LESS democratic because of them. Democratic principles and the Constitution founded on them have been tossed out the window.
They ruled that Trump is ineligible to be on the Colorado ballot for President under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies sworn officials who “engaged in insurrection.” This is the dream of Trump-haters who were willing to do anything, sacrifice any principle, to strike him from the ballot and nullify the choice of Americans who support him.
Oh, and if you think those voters can just write in his name, you’re in for a shock. They thought of that, ruling that “the Secretary [of State] may not list President Trump’s name on the 2024 Presidential primary ballot, nor may she count any write-in votes cast for him.”
If anyone is a threat to democracy and unfit for public office, it’s these judges whose brains have been so eaten away by the TDS virus that they can’t be trusted to honor the Constitution and uphold the most basic rights.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/
This is election interference right out in the open. To accomplish this, they had to contort history and the law so much that these can hardly be recognized any longer.
Let’s look at history. As you probably know, the 14th Amendment was ratified soon after the Civil War, in 1868, for the purpose of disqualifying members of the Confederacy from holding U.S. office. The people who wrote it had just just been through a REAL insurrection that killed hundreds of thousands of people. I wonder if those Colorado judges have the slightest idea what that was, or if they even care. They were just grasping at whatever they could use.
Now, as to Trump himself engaging in “insurrection.” The barracuda currently masquerading as Trump’s special counsel would eagerly have prosecuted him for that if he thought for a minute he’d be able to make that stick, but he didn’t. Trump not only hasn’t been convicted of insurrection, he hasn’t even been charged with it, not by the most Trump-deranged prosecutor on the planet.
Dissenting Colorado Chief Justice Brian Boatright recognized this, arguing that Colorado’s election law “was not enacted to decide whether a candidate engaged in insurrection. In the absence of an insurrection-related conviction, I would hold that a request to disqualify a candidate under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a proper cause of action under Colorado’s election code.”
Another dissenter, Justice Carlos Samour, said in a lengthy opinion that this suit is not a “fair mechanism” for determining Trump’s eligibility for the ballot because it deprives him of his right to due process, as he has not been convicted. “Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past --- dare I say, engaged in insurrection --- there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office,” he wrote.
Hard to believe we’re linking to NEWSWEEK on this, but they actually have good coverage on what the dissenters (all Democrats, incidentally) said.
https://www.newsweek.com/
In Colorado alone, there are 3.8 million voters, including close to a million registered Republicans (that ratio, by the way, gives you a clue as to what’s wrong with their Supreme Court.) And this outrage is going on all over the country. As Kayleigh McEnany pointed out on FOX NEWS last night, there have been 31 cases seeking Trump’s’ removal from the ballot. More than a dozen cases remain pending, some in “red” states such as Texas and South Carolina. (One was dismissed in Florida. Thank you, Florida.)
Well, so much for the will of the people. In McEnany’s words, “If you can’t beat them, disqualify them.”
Former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker made a great point: “This was a close call for them. It was a 4-3 decision. And when you take someone off the ballot and disqualify a candidate, it should be with unbelievable evidence…” The facts are “very thin” here, he said, based on the findings of the ultra-partisan January 6 committee “from Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and others.” Trump, he noted, told his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol building to make their voices heard.
“This court just ignores anything that is evidence that helps President Trump.” He pointed out that other state Supreme Courts have looked at this issue and “nobody’s been willing to go out as far” as this one. It’s a completely partisan attempt that the left is celebrating right now.
Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say. Colorado only has till January 5 (!) to have this settled, so law professor Jonathan Turley says it’ll be put on the “rocket docket.” The U.S. Supreme Court absolutely must get involved, he says, because the Colorado Supreme Court is “dead wrong.” To get to their opinion on this, the Colorado court had to have a “sweeping interpretation on every single issue in order to get where they wanted to go” --- except on one particular issue, that of free speech. “Then they adopt a narrow interpretation. They suggest that Trump DOESN’T have free speech protection.” They even hearken back to speeches Trump made in 2016!
“The path that this court has put us on could not be more dangerous,” according to Turley. “...You know this country needs some healing. And what the Colorado Supreme Court did is they basically took a blow at democracy in the name of democracy...We never needed the democratic process more. We need voters to be able to make a decision. Because at some point we have to come back together.”
If this sort of thing were ever to be allowed to stand, we would no longer be recognizable as America. As Turley has written, “Such ballot-cleansing is common in countries like Iran, where citizens await to learn which opposition candidates will be allowed to run.” That’s why, we would add, this abomination has to be a shocking wake-up call for American voters, as it reveals just how far the left is willing to push the boundaries. They HAVE no boundaries. They say they care about “democracy”? Give me a break.
Here’s what Turley wrote about the lower-court judge’s opinion in November, before the case went to the State Supreme Court. Judge Sarah Wallace was right, he said, in rejecting the 14th Amendment argument but very wrong in her analysis when she said Trump’s speech was inciteful and unprotected.
As for legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, he had no problem calling this election rigging. Again, an “insurrection” means taking up arms against the United States, as the South did during the Civil War. “To remove Donald Trump from the ballot for an offense that he hasn’t even been tried or convicted of --- what is that? It’s violating his right to due process, which happens to be guaranteed by [that] very amendment, the 14th, and elsewhere in the Constitution.”
Importantly, Jarrett also pointed out that the language in the amendment doesn’t even apply to the office of President. Colorado officials have “brazenly manipulated the clause for purely political reasons, another example of election interference by Trump opponents. This is an effort --- make no mistake --- to deprive Americana voters of THEIR right to make the decision as to who should be President. It is ANTI-democratic. It’s the equivalent of rigging the ballot box.” Jarrett sees it as inflaming voters and further boosting Trump’s support (as it should).
RELATED: Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has said he’s removing his name from the Colorado ballot, on the principle that Republicans --- not the courts --- should be able to pick their own nominee. He’s calling on the other GOP candidates to remove their names as well. He sees failure to do so as “tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country.” Good for him!
Here, Vivek is included in a round-up of explosive social media reaction…
Ron DeSantis and even Trump’s staunchest Republican critic Chris Christie also slammed the decision, as did Robert Kennedy Jr., who tweeted, “Let the voters choose, not the courts!”
This outrageous ruling not only is a body blow to the rule of law and our democratic process, it also has done serious damage to America’s international standing, giving other nation’s the perfect response when we criticize their rigged elections. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele warned that "The United States has lost its ability to lecture any other country about ‘democracy.’”
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: This isn’t the only courtroom travesty going on. The six alternate Trump electors from 2020 in Nevada were indicted earlier this month.
And here’s some potentially good news for several January 6 defendants, including Trump. Watch this 7-1/2-minute video and see how the Supreme Court is getting involved...
For when you have time, here’s Julie Kelly with more on that…
https://www.declassified.live/
FINAL WORD: We’ll give that to President Trump, who posted on Truth Social: “‘Justice’ weaponization is a very dirty game to play, and it can have repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand. They ought to withdraw all of their Fake, Political Indictments against their Republican Opponent, me, immediately. This is a Pandora’s box, that works two ways, and it should be closed and tightly sealed RIGHT NOW.”
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