By Mike Huckabee
June 22, 2022
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
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Primary Election Results
Tuesday, primary elections were held in Virginia and DC, and runoffs were held in Georgia and Alabama. Here are the results of all the races.
Much of the commentary about these races relates to how candidates endorsed by Donald Trump did, with the media desperate for any signs of his influence waning.
Tuesday was a mixed bag for Trump. He continued his cold streak in Georgia, as his endorsement failed to give Vernon Jones enough of a boost to beat Mike Collins for the GOP nomination for House District 10. But Chris Queen of PJ Media lives in that district and wrote a summation of all the races, and he says there were other factors that carried more weight than Trump’s endorsement.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/chris-queen/2022/06/21/georgias-runoffs-some-humid-takes-n1607025
In the end, Queen says, all politics are local and voters simply chose the people they thought would do the best job, which is as it should be.
In Alabama, Trump-endorsed Katie Britt, a former Chief of Staff to Sen. Richard Shelby, won the GOP nomination for Senate in a state that’s considered a sure Republican hold in November, setting her up to become Alabama’s first female Senator (but don't expect the media to give her any positive attention. Liberals can't say what a "woman" is; they just know that you can't really be one if you're not a liberal.) Britt beat Rep. Mo Brooks, who originally had Trump’s endorsement, but he switched to Britt.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/katie-britt-sounds-off-election-victory
I think the fixation on whether Trump-endorsed candidates win or not is born out of the liberal media’s incorrect belief that Trump is some sort of cult leader that Republicans follow blindly. They never have figured out that Republicans don’t worship Trump and do whatever he says. They just support him because he said what they had already been thinking for a long time. The media think that if they can just weaken Trump enough, the ideas he espoused will go away. The thought that conservative, pro-American ideas were so popular that they elevated Trump and not the other way around is just too terrifying for them to consider.
A bipartisan gun control bill
Tuesday night, 14 Republican Senators joined all the Democrats in voting 64-34 to clear the procedural cloture and advance a bipartisan gun control bill. Chuck Schumer is pressing for a vote on the bill by the end of this week, and with 14 Republicans supporting it and the House run by Democrats, it’s almost certain to pass – even though some Republicans are complaining that they’re being pressed to vote on it before they’ve even had a chance to read it or consider the long-range ramifications.
Here’s the story of the vote and what’s in the bill from NBC…
Here’s a more critical look at what’s in the bill from the conservative site Redstate.com, which is concerned about some aspects of it destroying Second Amendment and due process rights while others seem redundant, vague, expensive or just things that other departments of the government should be doing already.
One key concern is that the bill includes assurances that steps will be taken to prevent a citizen’s constitutional rights from being violated, but it doesn’t detail those steps and it allows a judge to determine whether there’s cause for the citizen to protest that his rights are being violated, which in itself is a big “red flag.”
This sounds like Congress is falling for the Democrats’ “hurry up and do something, even if it’s wrong” mentality on gun control, as well as its bad habit of passing bills first so they can find out what’s in them later. The NRA already issued a statement opposing it, saying:
“The NRA will support legislation that improves school security, promotes mental health services, and helps reduce violent crime. However, we will oppose this gun control legislation because it falls short at every level. It does little to truly address violent crime while opening the door to unnecessary burdens on the exercise of Second Amendment freedom by law-abiding gun owners.”
Maybe some of the provisions will actually do some good, but I have a feeling that others will eventually be struck down after long, expensive legal battles bankrupting innocent people who should never have been targeted. It would be nice if we could stop repeating that unfair and un-American process by simply writing good bills, reading them, and thoroughly debating their flaws before passing them.
In the meantime, I’m sure many of you are wondering who the 14 Republican Senators are who voted with the Democrats to advance gun control, and as some conservative commentators put it, threaten to derail an expected GOP midterm landslide by infuriating and betraying the Party base. Here are their names. Note that many of them, like lead negotiator John Cornyn of Texas, are not up for reelection for two to four years. Coincidence?
And here’s Matt Vespa at Townhall.com summing up the fury that many Republican voters feel at their elected Representatives letting themselves be roped in yet again to siding with Democrats against individual rights, and also asking what Republican in his right mind thinks it’s a good idea to give the FBI another $100 million right now?
SCOTUS: A victory for religious freedom
In a major victory for religious freedom, the Supreme Court struck down a Maine law that discriminated against religious schools.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/supreme-court-strikes-blow-religious-freedom-education
For decades, Maine has provided a tuition benefit that parents can use to send kids to the school of their choice. It can be public, private, or in or out of the state. But in 1980, Maine’s attorney general declared that it would violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution to allow the tuition benefit to go to religious schools. Since then, parents have been barred from using the state funds to send their kids to religious schools, even if that's what they want or they live in rural counties where those are the only schools available.
The SCOTUS has repeatedly knocked down Maine’s view of the Establishment Clause, but the state continued its discrimination against religious schools, on the hair-splitting claim that it wasn’t because they are religious but because they do religious things (like use the funds for religious instruction.)
The Court ruled that by conditioning benefits on the religious character of some schools, Maine was effectively penalizing the free exercise of religion, which is unconstitutional. There are many more details at this link, and I urge you to read it because this case should have far-reaching positive consequences for religious liberty and religious schools nationwide.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/supreme-court-strikes-blow-religious-freedom-education
The New York Times reports that “since John Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005, the Court has ruled in favor of religious organizations in orally argued cases 83 percent of the time,” more than any SCOTUS of the past 70 years. I suspect the Times thinks that’s a bad thing.
The only disappointment for me is that it was a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines instead of unanimous. Liberal Justice Sotomayor wrote, “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.” Does she seriously believe that the Framers thought that schools run by churches, which were the primary schools of their era, should be excluded from public support? And if they were fighting so hard for “separation of church and state,” why do those words not appear anywhere in the Constitution?
I would hope that even the most liberal Justices could recognize that discrimination on religious grounds is still discrimination, which I thought they were supposed to be against.
The price of gas
As gas prices continue squeezing Americans dry, and President Biden keeps blaming Vladimir Putin and greedy oil companies, some oil company executives are getting fed up with Biden blaming them for his own terrible policies restricting production and supplies, which has caused prices to skyrocket.
The CEO of Chevron released a letter to Biden, laying out the real cause of record gas prices, explaining what has to be done about it, and beseeching the President for some “clarity and consistency” on policy matters such as oil leases, infrastructure (i.e., pipelines, which Biden loves to cancel), and regulations. Biden’s response was so childish and petty, it just reinforced that he’s either incapable or unwilling to understand the connection between his war on domestic oil and skyrocketing gas prices.
Likewise, U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart is not impressed with Biden’s “leadership,” calling his ideas for a federal gas tax holiday (making for a whopping 18-cent per gallon discount) or giving out rebate cards to drivers (adding more federal deficit spending that fuels even more inflation) “unserious” gimmicks.
If you waste much time on social media, you know that Biden’s supporters will argue strenuously that he’s not to blame. One viral clip showed a woman going berserk about spending over $100 to fill her vehicle at Costco, only to start ranting that it was all the fault of the religious right, an idea she claimed to have gotten from Robert Reich even though it actually seems too crazy even for him. Another defense you’ll often see is the false claim that Biden hasn’t hampered federal oil leases, why, he’s allowed more than Trump did.
As anyone who knows how such leases work will tell you, that’s not true at all. Here’s an article about the subject, with a focus on how Biden is destroying oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. It even uses charts to compare the damage to Gulf oil production caused by hurricanes to that caused by Democrat policies.
Jan. 6 hearings: A MUST-READ about Bill Barr's testimony
The January 6 committee hearings prominently feature the video testimony of former Attorney General Bill Barr. In fact, they played it --- again --- yesterday. It’s understandable that they would, considering Barr said Trump’s claims of fraud were horse hockey (though he didn’t say “horse hockey”). It seemed to Democrats as if Barr were saying that Trump had no legitimate cause for challenging the election of 2020 and so had been trying to steal it.
If you’ve had trouble reconciling the AG who appointed John Durham to look into election interference against Trump in 2016 (the Russia Hoax) with the AG who seemingly discounts all election interference against Trump in 2020, Margot Cleveland at THE FEDERALIST is here to enlighten us. The justification Democrats feel for parading Barr’s testimony is misplaced.
Actually, as is often the case, neither side is getting it entirely right.
As attorney general, Barr was limited to looking at violations of federal election law. Therefore, Cleveland says, “in the aftermath of the November 2020 election, the former attorney general did not scrutinize, nor should he have, violations of state election law or potential violations of the Equal Protection Clause caused by the states’ disparate standards applied during the election.”
So he wasn’t talking about those. Yet the Democrats made it seem as though Barr were discounting ALL election fraud. That was not the case. As Cleveland states, “...Trump’s legal team had solid evidence of systemic violations of the election code and the widespread counting of illegal votes, as well as Equal Protection violations. Further, in the case of Georgia, there were enough illegal votes cast to likely render the state’s election results void.”
She explains: “Trump’s legal team obtained solid evidence that as many as 30,000 Georgia residents voted illegally in their prior county in 2020. Trump never had his day in court on this challenge, though, which theoretically could have resulted in Georgia’s election results tossed. That’s not the business of the attorney general, however, so those Republicans seeing Barr as derelict misunderstand his role. Likewise, those Democrats championing Barr’s words, believing it establishes a coup attempt by Trump, ignore that his testimony focused solely on [federal] election fraud.”
https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/20/why-both-republicans-and-democrats-are-wrong-about-bill-barr/
What Barr didn’t investigate --- and wasn't supposed to --- were “the many violations of state election law highlighted by Trump’s legal team in their lawsuits challenging election results.” The Democrats are trying to make it look as though Barr’s dismissal of violations were all-inclusive and that he was accusing Trump of a coup. That’s not what Barr said, though we wish he had been clear about his limited scope.
Barr also observed that “that 2,000 MULES movie” had not changed his mind. Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza didn’t let that go, calling the January 6 hearings “one-sided propaganda” (which they clearly are) and inviting Barr to try to rebut the movie. The jury is still out on the "mules," but remember, the movie is about violations of state election laws on ballot harvesting, which Barr in his capacity as AG does not address at all.
Again, “While Barr could testify concerning the cases of voter fraud the Department of Justice investigated...the former attorney general did not scrutinize, nor should he have, violations of state election law or potential violations of the Equal Protection Clause caused by the states’ disparate standard applied during the election.” And Trump had solid evidence of these.
Barr even said something that Cleveland says shows state election law is “outside his wheelhouse.” He “seemed to suggest,” she said, that a court would need to identify illegally cast or harvested ballots to rule election results invalid, when that is not correct. For example, all Georgia needs to call for a new election is evidence establishing there are “more illegal or irregular votes than the margin of victory.”
Trump’s team had already compiled this when he called the Georgia secretary of state's office and said to “find” the votes. The votes had already been found. But Georgia courts still refused to consider his challenges.
There were many more irregularities, though it’s taken more than a year for some of them to emerge. Cleveland says, “...evidence accumulated since Biden was certified the winner of the 2020 election makes clear that in every swing state, systemic violations of the electoral code occurred.” And they still haven’t been addressed.
“...Election integrity is not about Trump or Barr,” she says, “nor Democrats or Republicans: it is about our country and her future. That future depends on a serious revamping of the American electoral system –- and soon.” That’s what we SHOULD be holding hearings for, not deceitful partisan politics.
Speaking of deceitful partisan politics, she also has a new piece about Hillary Clinton.
Read the whole thing, but first, I can’t resist quoting the opening line: “Hillary Clinton needs to sit down, shut up, and stay out of the public sphere forever.” Hillary slams Trump for saying the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, Cleveland says, “while continuing to insinuate some six years later that the presidency was stolen from her.”
Hillary seeks to convince us that the only challenges Trump made were based on “crazy conspiracy theories” and that they were a direct link to the violence at the Capitol. Wrong on both counts.
Cleveland cites a major irony: that for all her criticism of Trump for rejecting the 2020 outcome, Hillary --- the ‘woman behind the curtain’ during the crazy Russia Hoax --- is THE reason Trump and many supporters found “even the most bizarre theories of voter fraud” believable.
Cleveland quickly runs through the details of the Russia Hoax, just to show how crazy it looks in retrospect, in a summary she says “doesn’t even scratch the surface of the plot hatched, paid for, and executed by, the Clinton campaign.” She reminds us that this plot continued long after Trump was in the White House.
“Yet Clinton claims Trump is the one who ‘wage[d] a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results and prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history.’ The projection lives loudly within her.”
Clinton clearly remains in denial about her 2016 loss, Cleveland observes, providing evidence from an interview she gave to Edward Luce for Friday’s FINANCIAL TIMES. This time, she blamed Republicans at the polls in Milwaukee and Detroit, and (as always) Vladimir Putin. She called the 2016 election outcome “almost eschatological.” Huh?? From Oxford Dictionaries...
eschatological (adjective) 1. relating to death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind
Really, Hillary? The fact that you didn’t end up in the White was the end of the world? Well, for you, sure. But for us, it was just the opposite –- it saved the world from your treachery. After all, it was your loss that led to us finding out just how deep and murky the swamp is.
And if Trump refused to accept the result in 2020, Cleveland says, it’s “because Clinton, Democrats, Never-Trump Republicans and the corrupt press proved they had the will and the way to do as they please in this country.”
“In a just world, they would be shamed into silence.”
Report: Violent crime is rising in these six major cities
Fox News reports that six major Democrat-run cities - Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and New York City – are all on pace to exceed their 2021 levels of violent crime.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/six-cities-pace-pass-violent-crime-2022
All of these cities have become notorious for being soft on criminals and hard on police, and this is the entirely predictable result. Even President Biden is urging them to use the money showered on them from the American Rescue Plan bill to beef up their policing before the expected summer crime waves.
Last month, Biden said, "Use these funds we made available to you to prioritize public safety. Do it quickly, before the summer, when crime rates typically surge. Taking action today is going to save lives tomorrow. So, use the money. Hire the police officers. Build up your emergency response systems. Invest in proven solutions."
If they want proven solutions, here’s the only one that’s likely to work: replace all those Democrats with Republicans who arrest, prosecute and jail violent criminals instead of playing catch-and-release like kids fishing at a boat show. It finally worked for New York City until voters with short memories decided to put Democrats back in charge because, hey, what could it hurt? Cities run themselves, am I right?
Taxpayer money is wasted in New Orleans
New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor LaToya Cantrell is being blasted from all sides after the unveiling of a statue honoring Juneteeth that resembles a giant Afro pick hair comb.
Some critics compared it to a joke in the Mel Brooks movie “Spaceballs,” while others said if a white mayor had done something so clueless and offensive, he would be recalled. Still others fumed at the city spending $7.2 million on bad public art when the streets are full of potholes and understaffed police are working 12-hour shifts to deal with all the murders and robberies (maybe they could use the statue to comb the streets for suspects.)
But this type of waste, crime and misplaced priorities are par for the course in cities that have been run for years exclusively by Democrats. All I can say to New Orleans taxpayers is, “You pays your money, and you takes your pick.”
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