Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

Hydroxychloroquine has been shown to protect against malaria –- I took it myself on a trip to India several years ago –- and it has been around for, oh, about 70 years. It’s considered by doctors to be quite a safe drug, though patients should be monitored by their health practitioner “just in case” because it has been associated with heart arrhythmia. Many people who have lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune problems have been on this drug for years, even decades, at a time, and some of these patients really need it to get along, as we're discovering now that they're having trouble obtaining it.

But to hear the media, this drug has terrible, life-threatening side effects. Never mind the stories of dramatic reversals and recoveries; this drug will KILL YOU, even if you're on it for a week or less. President Trump has been irresponsible for suggesting this drug might be helpful in keeping coronavirus patients out of the hospital and off ventilators.

Over the years, medical science has indeed brought us harmful drugs (thalidomide comes to mind) and ineffective drugs. But it looks as though hydroxychloroquine will go down in history as the first politically-incorrect drug.

Since they’ve gone on and on so much about the risks of taking this drug, I got curious and decided to do a little research. So, check these bad boys out: signs of an allergic reaction, such as “rash; hives; itching; red, itching, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin with or without fever; wheezing; tightness in the chest or throat; trouble breathing, swallowing or talking; unusual hoarseness or swelling of the mouth, face, lips, tongue or throat. Signs of liver problems like dark urine, feeling tired, not hungry, upset stomach or stomach pain, light-colored stools, throwing up, or yellow skin or eyes. Fever, chills, or sore throat; any unexplained bruising or bleeding; or feeling very tired or weak. Feeling confused. Hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there.) Not able to pass urine or change in how much urine is passed. Seizures. Very bad dizziness. Very bad headaches. Very bad joint pain. Vaginal itching or discharge. Diarhhea is common...Rarely, a severe form called C diff-associated diarrhea (CDAD) may happen. Sometimes this has led to a deadly bowel problem (colitis). CDAD may happen during or a few months after taking. Call your doctor right away if you have stomach pain, cramps, or very loose, watery or bloody stools...A very bad skin reaction (Stevens/Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis) may happen. It can cause very bad health problems that may not go away, and sometimes death. Get medical help right away if you have signs like red, swollen, blistered or peeling skin (with or without fever); red or irritated eyes; or sores in your mouth, throat, nose or eyes...Call your doctor or get medical help if any of these side effects or any other side effects bother you or do not go away: stomach pain or diarrhea, upset stomach or throwing up. These are not all the side effects that may occur...This is only a brief summary of general information about this medicine. It does NOT include all information about the possible uses, directions, warnings, precautions, interactions, adverse effects or risks that may apply to this medicine.”

Wow, that IS overwhelming. I'm not so sure I should ever take this medicine, even for just a few days; It seems you really could die from taking it. The list of possible reactions goes on and on.

But I suppose it’s time to tell you that this is not the list of risks associated with hydroxychloroquine. This list was taken directly from the insert that came in the bag from my drugstore yesterday along with my prescription for an antibiotic called Cephalexin. I’ve been prescribed this exact same drug numerous times in my life, even when I was a very young child with sinus infections; it went under the brand name Keflex. How could my doctor have been so irresponsible as to prescribe it for me? How could my parents have taken such a risk? But here I am --- I lived to tell the tale!

Just a little something to put this issue into perspective. If President Trump had touted Keflex as a way to (in my case) prevent infection after a relatively minor outpatient procedure, the media would be screaming that this is really a very dangerous drug and his ignorance is killing people.

As for me –- because I HAVE done my research –- if I do come down with COVID-19 (actually, I think my husband and I both had it last winter and want to take the antibody test), I will immediately ask my doctor for just three things: hydroxychloroquine, the “Z-pack,” and zinc. Anyone who has a problem with that can go take a long walk inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Mike Huckabee

Joe Biden’s adamant denial of former staffer Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation may be enough for Democrats who are doing Olympic-level backflips to back away from their previous “believe all women” statements. And the press, naturally, is helping by trying to dig up any discrepancies in Reade’s story and to question her motives, something they never did with Kavanaugh’s accuser, who was declared to be one of the greatest heroines of the year.

But that hasn’t stopped the questions about whether Biden had minions remove papers from archives, or whether he’s trying to hide evidence, or even, according to Greg Gutfeld, whether he made a slip of the tongue that gave away more than he intended.

And of course, the Trump campaign already has an ad ready to point out his hypocrisy…

As I have said consistently for years, whenever such old allegations are made against anyone, be it Kavanaugh, Trump or Biden, the accuser deserves a respectful hearing, but the accused deserves the presumption of innocence and due process to get to the truth. That was sometimes a very lonely position to stake out, although I do suddenly have a lot of Democrats keeping me company.

But let’s put aside the comparisons to Kavanaugh and Trump, because those are just examples of expected media/political bias and hypocrisy. Instead, I’d like to draw your attention to a very interesting article by Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine. Sullivan is no Trump supporter (indeed, despite what he writes about Biden, he says he’ll still vote for him, just because he’s not Trump.) But he makes a strong case, one that I haven’t seen anyone else bring up, that putting aside Reade’s claim, by his own standards, Joe Biden is guilty of multiple sex crimes, many of which we can watch him commit on videotape.

That's because during the Obama Administration, Biden was instrumental in pushing the revamped guidelines for Title IX sexual discrimination and harassment on college campuses. Those were the draconian (many of us would say sexist and unconstitutional) rules that redefined sex crimes and stripped the accused (usually male students) of their basic rights to self-defense, finding them guilty until proven innocent – except they weren’t allowed to prove themselves innocent, since they couldn’t even see the evidence or question their accusers.

The definition of “sexual violence” was also expanded to include remarks about physical appearance and unwanted touching. How many times have we seen Joe do those very things to women - actions that, as Sullivan notes, would have destroyed the lives of male students under the rules Biden championed?

Fortunately, many of those rules have been rolled back (they had to be; too many colleges were losing expensive lawsuits by former male students.) Democrats naturally assailed the Trump Administration for doing it, accusing him of enabling sexual predators. But as Sullivan makes clear, if they really believe in those standards, then they are backing a Presidential candidate who is plainly guilty of multiple sex crimes under them, even aside from Ms. Reade’s accusation. This is yet another reason why I keep saying that if it weren’t for double standards, some of these people wouldn’t have any standards at all.

Mike Huckabee

"I don’t think we’ve seen the beginning of the reality of what was going on in this faux investigation, from the top to bottom.”

That’s Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, commenting on Sean Hannity’s TV show Thursday night about revelations in the Michael Flynn case. He’s right; there is much more to come. But one thing we know for sure is that James Comey deliberately set Flynn up, and he did it because he assumed he could get away with it. He almost did.

Flynn attorney Sidney Powell really is the hero in all this; I nominate her for “Person Of The Year.” She has changed history. If she hadn’t gone after the powers that be like a pit bull, Flynn, an innocent political victim, would have been stuck with a coerced guilty plea and would never have been exonerated. (Flynn truly is vindicated from this day forward –- Trump was right to hold off on a pardon for now and let Powell do her work instead.)

Oh sure, the same books and columns would have been written exposing what the intelligence community had been up to, and the people who actually read them would have been aware of the travesty, but it wouldn’t have made any difference in the life of Michael Flynn and others who were abused by the system. Thanks to Powell, and also to the doggedness of AG Bill Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham, and another U.S. attorney who’s been reviewing the case, Jeff Jensen, the scheme to take Flynn down is in the process of being exposed.

There MUST be accountability.

Powell appeared on the Hannity show as well, saying that the case absolutely must be dismissed, “preferably for government misconduct,” and that in any event the guilty plea has got to be thrown out, as there is finally documentation that Flynn was coerced in “a secret side deal” involving the threat of prosecution of Flynn’s son, who himself had just become the father of a newborn baby. She recapped the story we already know, that they “tried one thing after another,” starting with the Russia hoax (they’d been trying to falsely associate him with Russians since 2014-15), which failed to find anything on Flynn.

Now we have a revealing timeline for January 2017. On January 4, the FBI file is closed on the Flynn investigation, “Crossfire Razor,” with nothing derogatory found. When Strzok hears this, he texts an unknown recipient, "Hey, if you haven't closed RAZOR, don't do so yet." (Recipient: "Okay.") On January 5, Obama meets in the Oval Office with Comey and the crew; Steele also “wipes” his records, including those on Fusion GPS. On January 6, Comey briefs Trump on the “dossier” to give BUZZFEED and CNN a “hook” for using the story. It goes on from there; January is 'abuzz' with activity, both before and after Trump’s inauguration.

I’ll refer you to Sara Carter for a rundown of the documents released on Thursday. These communications are absolutely stunning, particularly the texting among Strzok, Page and Priestap about how they planned to question Flynn. Texts between Strzok and Page also reveal that they substantially re-wrote the original 302 of the ambush interview, “crafting the narrative,” in Powell’s words, “to charge Gen. Flynn with a crime he did not commit.” Unfortunately, there are still some redactions in the texts as released, but what these people were doing is obvious.

One disturbing piece of information that might explain a lot: According to Powell, the person who advanced the career of Andrew Weissmann was none other than...(drum roll, please)...our current FBI Director Christopher Wray. Wray was Weissmann’s supervisor when they were at the Department of Justice “running roughshod over the rights of everyone in Houston.” (This backstory is discussed in her book LICENSE TO LIE.) “There are people there who still have nightmares as a result of his [Weissmann’s] conduct,” she said to Hannity, “in violation of everyone’s rights, naming over 100 people as unindicted co-conspirators, forcing them to ‘lawyer-up,’ threatening witnesses right and left, every variety of prosecutorial misconduct you can imagine. He was a terrorist of a prosecutor. And he was handpicked for that job by Michael Chertoff and Bob Mueller and James Comey and people like that, during the Bush administration.” That’s right, “the swamp” pre-dates Obama, but his administration sure did take full advantage of it.

Since Wray was presiding over all of this earlier in his career, Powell has no illusions that as FBI director he will seriously address the corruption. I would really like to know the backstory of how he got that job. Surely there was a lot Trump didn’t know when he appointed him. Wray does serve "at the pleasure of the President," and it's hard to imagine that the President is at all pleased.

There are similar questions about Robert Mueller. As Sekulow mentioned Thursday, the documents and notes that have just been released had the same notation: “OSC,” for “Office of Special Counsel.” So, where was Mueller? If he had been doing his job, those documents would have been turned over to the defense. But, no, he said, “the Weissmanns of the world were running that office.”

One must-read article about the misconduct in this case is by Jonathan Turley at THE HILL. He goes down the list of FBI officials who have lied and otherwise “acted in arguably criminal or unethical ways,” such as leaking and falsifying evidence, but have not been charged. In Turley’s words, “the disconnect of these cases with the treatment of Flynn is galling and grotesque.”

Turley also has plenty to say about the presiding judge in the case, Emmet Sullivan, who has treated Flynn shamefully. “Even the federal judge used Flynn to rail against what he saw as a treasonous plot,” Turley says. Of course, he's referring to the phony “Russia hoax” plot, not the ACTUAL treasonous plot that was going on inside Sullivan's own courtroom, courtesy of the DOJ and FBI.

Now watch the media pull out all the stops trying to dismiss and/or rewrite this. Turley is no Republican or Trump cheerleader, but he’s objective enough to recognize a miscarriage of justice when he sees one. His commentary here is magnificent.