Monday, August 7^th, was National Purple Heart Day, a day to honor military veterans who earned the Purple Heart for being wounded or killed while serving. While it’s not an official public holiday, many communities observe it in different ways. Here’s the website of a great organization dedicated to honoring Purple Heart recipients, with information on the day and videos of veterans saying what it means to them.

https://www.purpleheartmission.org/national-purple-heart-day

And here are three of many inspiring news stories about how Purple Heart Day was observed in different communities.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/decades-after-her-brother-died-in-wwii-97-year-old-woman-receives-his-purple-heart-medal/ar-AA1eVOil

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/norwalk-honors-wounded-veterans-first-annual-18279578.php

https://www.ksat.com/video/news/2023/08/07/on-national-purple-heart-day-local-veterans-see-glimpse-of-monument-honoring-fallen-soldiers/

Your confidential source, please

A federal judge has ordered former Fox/now CBS reporter Catherine Herridge to reveal her confidential source in a lawsuit by a Chinese-American woman who is suing the FBI for leaking confidential information about her alleged ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army.

https://redstate.com/jerrywilson/2023/08/08/former-fox-news-now-cbs-reporter-catherine-herridge-ordered-by-court-to-reveal-sources-in-possible-chinese-agent-story-n789189

The judge’s ruling reads, “The Court recognizes both the vital importance of a free press and the critical role that confidential sources play in the work of investigative journalists like Herridge. But applying the binding case law of this Circuit, the Court concludes that Chen’s need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege in this case. The identity of Herridge’s source is central to Chen’s claim, and despite exhaustive discovery, Chen has been unable to ferret out his or her identity. The only reasonable option left is for Chen to ask Herridge herself.”

So that’s all it takes to force a journalist to reveal a confidential source: that some aggrieved party can’t figure it out any other way? Redstate.com has more on this ruling and why it’s not reasonable at all. Herridge has yet to respond, but let’s hope she appeals. She’s a real journalist, and there have been too many assaults on their rights over the past few years, too often cheered on by people who claim to be journalists but are really nothing more than Deep State stenographers.

It's become all too common a story:

Some celebrity says something that sets the leftist rage mobs raging, then the celebrity issues a groveling apology, which is what those mobs thrive on. It makes them feel powerful to know they’ve scared another person into bending the knee and shutting up.

But lately, we’ve been seeing some welcome signs, from JK Rowling to Jason Aldean, that people are fed up with it and the leftist bully tactics aren’t working anymore. Now, kudos to rapper Ne-Yo for refusing to play the grovel game.

As the father of five boys and two girls, he told an interviewer about people pushing to let their children “transition” to another gender, “I feel like the parents have almost forgotten what the role of a parent is. If your little boy comes up to you and says, ‘Daddy I wanna be a girl,’ you just let him rock with that? If you let this 5-year-old boy decide to eat candy all day, he’s going to do that. Like, when did it become a good idea to let a 5-year-old, let a 6-year-old, let a 12-year-old make a life-changing decision for themselves? When did that happen? Like, I don’t understand that. I don’t get that."

Cue the predictable howls of outrage, followed by the quick social media post apologizing and promising to “educate myself.” But hold on: Ne-Yo says that apology came from a publicist, not him, and he has no intention of apologizing for having an opinion.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/08/08/ne-yo-retracts-publishers-apology-n2626752

He said, “Now, if my opinion offended somebody, yeah sure, I apologize for you being offended because that wasn’t my intention. My intention is never to offend anybody. However, I am entitled to feel how I feel — I am absolutely entitled to feel how I feel, the same way you’re entitled to feel how you feel.” He added that he has no problem with the LGBT+ community, but he’ll “never be OK with allowing a child to make a decision that detrimental to their life. I will never be OK with that.”

And "if I get canceled for this, then you know what? Maybe this is a world where they don't need Ne-Yo no more, and I ain't got no problem with that. I'm a hustler, I'll figure it out, I got kids to raise."

I have a feeling he won’t have to worry about being canceled. In fact, he probably just made a whole lot of new fans.

RIP TO WILLIAM FRIEDKIN AND LATE NIGHT “COMEDY” SHOWS

By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder

First, I’m sorry to have to report that director William Friedkin died in L.A. Monday of heart failure and pneumonia at 87. Working right to the end, he has a new film called "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” set to debut at the Venice Film Festival this month.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/the-exorcist-director-william-friedkin-dead-87

One of the most versatile of the new wave of directors of the ‘70s, Friedkin was best known for “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” which won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor and Director (if you see it, make sure it’s the original version, not the one that’s recently been bowdlerized to remove scenes with racial terms that might “offend” delicate modern audiences.)

I’m also (kind of) sad to have to report the possible death of the late night comedy/talk show. It was born in the 1950s, delivered by Jerry Lester, perfected through the years by such talents as Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, and finally smothered to death in its sleep with a blanket of liberal smugness by hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers. While they’ve been slowly killing it for years, the WGA strike has proved to be a deadly accomplice in hastening the format’s demise.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/08/07/nolte-left-wing-late-night-hosts-disappear-for-3-months-and-no-one-cares/

As John Nolte at Breitbart.com reports, ratings for these shows have taken a nosedive since Trump left office and all they knew how to do was mock Trump. Even before the strike, Colbert’s audience had dropped from 3 million viewers to 2.1 million since 2018; Kimmel’s from 2 million to 1.5 million, and Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” from 2.3 million to 1.3 million (FYI: Johnny Carson pulled 9 million viewers on an average night.) Others barely registered at all. For instance, despite all the fawning media attention and awards, the relentlessly liberal “The Daily Show” drew only 366,000 viewers.

But since the writers’ strike started (I know what you’re thinking: “Someone WRITES that material?!”) and those shows have gone into reruns, ratings have cratered further. “The Daily Show” is under 250,000 viewers; Colbert is down to 1.3 million and Kimmel to 1.15 million. The others all show similar drops. (Note: Greg Gutfeld doesn’t use WGA writers, is doing new shows, and his ratings are still the highest in the field.)

Some critics are predicting this could put the final nail in the format's coffin. They say viewers just don’t care anymore. If there’s anything good on one of these shows (granted, a longshot), they’ll see it on YouTube. Much of the audience was holdover viewers watching out of habit, and now, the habit’s been broken, so why would they come back? The writers who went on strike (they actually think they deserve to be paid MORE?) might have struck themselves right out of a job.

I have mixed feelings since I used to love these shows. My ambition was once to write for Letterman. When Laura and I were writing the Comedy Wire syndicated radio service, I would tape all the monologues to make sure they didn’t do a joke we’d already written for the next morning (we didn’t want DJs thinking we stole it from them.) There was a period when that was virtually all I watched on TV, and Jay, Dave, Conan and Craig Ferguson provided some really great entertainment.

Sadly, those days are no more. They decided to go woke, go broke and go unfunny. Kimmel even boasted that he didn’t care if Republicans stopped watching his show. Well, congratulations, they did. They’re watching reruns of Johnny Carson now.

I have a feeling the same thing might happen to a lot of scripted shows that lecture audiences with leftist talking points. Their writers and actors are on strike, and nobody misses them. It’s not as if we lack for entertainment. I watch more YouTube video channels than major TV productions these days because they’re far more entertaining and not insulting. I also have countless books, recordings and DVDs of over 100 years of far better TV shows and movies than are being made now. I just bought a box set of the entire nine-year run of “Perry Mason” for around $70 on eBay, or less than a buck a disc for nearly 200 hours of high-quality entertainment.

It's odd to me that these writers are striking to make sure they aren’t replaced by AI. Want to make sure that never happens? Try writing something better than the formulaic pablum AI turns out.

Theme for today:  Lies my government told me

“Everything the Biden White House says now, about this topic [Biden family corruption] is a lie.”  That was Newt Gingrich on Sean Hannity’s FOX NEWS show Tuesday.  “It’s just plain, totally a lie.  But it HAS to be a lie.”  They’re “exactly like a mafia group,” he said.  And if that’s the case, it makes no sense to believe them on Biden corruption or any other subject.

Great segment, if you ignore Hannity’s remark that “the walls are closing in.”  I think he says that every night.  That expression needs to be retired, as the walls have been closing in for years now.  They close in so slowly that you can’t even see them move.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6332636464112

As a nation, we have to be done with the FBI’s lies.  Here’s the most clearly-presented explanation we’ve seen of what the FBI knew and covered up about the Bidens’ relationship with CEFC, described here as “a Chinese intelligence front company.”  This conduct is so far over the line, I wish it were possible to keep Joe Biden from spending even one more day in office and to shutter the FBI until we can figure out what to do with it.  Shame on all whose lies and cover-ups led us here.

A must-read, particularly the conclusion:

There’s more covering-up on Ukraine, too.  Example:  a lobbying firm recommended to Burisma by Hunter Biden, Blue Star Strategies, worked for the same Ukrainian prosecutor (Yuri Lutsenko, Viktor Shokin’s successor after Biden got Shokin fired) who let the Burisma investigation drop.  In 2021, the DOJ was supposedly investigating Blue Star for illegal foreign lobbying, but according to IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, they sat on a search warrant for Blue Star in September 2020 ahead of the November presidential election.  Who knows what that might have turned up?  Can you say “election interference”?

https://dailycaller.com/2023/08/08/burisma-lobbyists-hunter-biden-prosecutor-burisma/

Still more lying:  Just as Jack Smith is zeroing on in his target like a suicide drone by attempting to criminalize President Trump’s speech regarding the 2020 election and the rally on January 6, we learn that Nancy Pelosi’s now-disbanded Kangaroo Kommittee “did not archive” so-called “temporary” committee records.  (In other words, they DESTROYED them, even though they were required to preserve them.)  They no longer have records on such things as Capitol Hill security.  J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi is responding to requests for those records by saying, “The Select Committee was not obligated to archive all video records of transcribed interviews or depositions.”

Really, says who??  Bennie Thompson?  How con-VEEEEEEE-nient.  It’s official:  they have no self-respect and don’t even care what it looks like.

These records, according to FOX NEWS, include “documents, data and video depositions,” including communications with the Biden White House, all apparently now missing.  Let’s call this what it is:  “lying by omission.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/j6-committee-failed-to-preserve-records-has-no-data-on-capitol-hill-security-failures-gop-charges

There are more lies in a White House white-powder update:  According to a report in SOLDIER OF FORTUNE magazine, President Biden knows without a doubt who the baggie of cocaine found on July 2 belonged to, and they say it’s someone “in the Biden family orbit.”

Publisher Susan Katz Keating claims this information came from three security sources.  It may safely be inferred that when the Secret Service publicly announced that “due to a lack of physical evidence” they couldn’t come up with a name, they were lying, because they “were confident enough in their detective work to inform the Commander-in-Chief” of that name.

“If you want the name, ask Joe Biden,” one source said.  “He knows who it is.”

A second source said the drugs didn’t belong to Hunter.  (Aside:  they must belong to some other Biden who ISN’T currently in plea deal negotiations)

Keating sent several text messages to the White House, to give them an opportunity to respond, but “each time,” she said, “it bounced back as undeliverable.”

We’ve heard precious little about the Big Cocaine Mystery in the media in recent weeks.  At a rally on Tuesday, President Trump said, “I wonder where that cocaine came from, what happened?  That was the quickest investigation I’ve ever seen.”

Recall that White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre chastised reporters who asked questions about the ownership of the cocaine as “incredibly irresponsible.”  To that we’d say it’s incredibly irresponsible to believe anything the White House spokesperson says about this, or anything else.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/08/white-house-cocaine-belonged-to-biden-family-orbit-report/

Speaking of government lies, the White House continues to accuse its political opponents, notably House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, of doing the very thing it does, namely, lying.  But to say THAT is a lie. As Sean Hannity reported Tuesday night, White House spokesperson Ian Sams --- who might surpass even Karine Jean-Pierre for the lamest statements ever --- complained that McCarthy is lying about three things:

1)  that the Biden administration has obstructed House Republican investigations.  Sams says this is false, but he is lying --- it is TRUE.  There have been tons of roadblocks; even POLITICO and CBS NEWS said as much, and we’ve seen how much trouble committee chairmen Rep. James Comer and Sen. Charles Grassley have had getting subpoenaed records, notably the unclassified “1023” that alleged $10 million in Biden bribes.

2)  that a “Russian oligarch” gave the Bidens $3.5 million.  Sams says this is false, debunked by the WASHINGTON POST, but he is lying --- it is TRUE, as evidenced by bank records and Devon Archer’s testimony.  And this money for “consultancy” services was just a drop in the bucket; her company later invested an estimated $120-200 million in their real estate fund, a branch of Rosemont Seneca, according to Archer.  When Rosemont Realty was sold, Hunter apparently cleaned up.

I guess you could more accurately describe Elena Baturina not as a Russian oligarch but as the ex-wife of a Russian oligarch who was once the mayor of Moscow.  But is that really different?

3)  that the FBI didn’t act on bribery allegations in the “1023” form made by its informant.  Sims says this was also debunked by the WASHINGTON POST.  It was not --- unless by “act” you mean hiding the form from Congress --- and Sims never addresses the “four Pinocchios” given to Joe Biden by WAPO for his now-laughable lies during presidential debates, denials that his family had ever made any money in China, nor does he comment on Biden’s many other lies about knowledge of and involvement in Hunter’s foreign business.

Seamus Bruner, director of research for the Government Accountability Institute said, “This isn’t just pay-to-play...the Bidens are a national security threat when they’re dealing with the Chinese Communist Party.”  Finally, some truth, but you’ll notice that it’s from a watchdog group, not the government.  Bruner thought McCarthy had actually been “overly fair” to the Bidens.

Jason Chaffetz, also a guest on the show, said this scandal is “worse” than bribery, because “it comes along with policy that actually moved and changed.”  We’ve cited the scrapping of the China Initiative as an obvious example, but that’s just scratching the surface, and policy might have been affected in ways we’ll never know.

“We’re talking pay-to-play with our worst enemies,” he said.  This HANNITY segment is a must-watch…

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6332635848112

As we’ve seen, the government can, and does, lie all day and try to silence other voices, but as Victor Davis Hanson said on Tuesday, “Somebody’s gonna have to say, ‘You can call me any name you want; it has zero --- it means nothing, it has no consequences, as long as I speak the truth as I see the truth.  And all of us, each according to our stations, can do that, and this ‘revolution’ will dissipate, ‘cause it has no sustenance.  It has no popular support.  It’s institutionalized by the elites and corporate America, sports, the universities, the media, the foundations, but not the people.  They’re not behind it.”

And we can fight it.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6332642126112

RELATED:  Recall that Charles McGonigal, former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office, was arrested earlier this year for conspiring with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; specifically, violating the Emergency Economic Powers Act --- also with money laundering and conspiring to commit money laundering.  He was allegedly secretly trying to help Deripaska get around sanctions.  He’s expected to plead guilty next week.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/07/ex-fbi-official-slated-to-plead-guilty-in-corruption-case/

The irony here is that McGonigal was a key player in the start-up of the Russia Hoax, investigating Trump for Russia “collusion,” when he himself is apparently guilty of...Russia collusion.   I guess in his current situation he should just be glad he’s not Donald Trump.  If he were, they’d want him behind bars for 500 years.  Former assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker laments how far the FBI has fallen.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6332634979112