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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff!
Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
1 Peter: 5:6-7
GUEST COLUMN
The Fight for America’s Soul
By Colonel Kenneth Allard
In the fortnight since the Durham Report was released, the nation’s tectonic plates have been strained to the breaking-point. It turns out that the “silent coup” Donald Trump had long suspected was actually quite real: two impeachments and “Russian collusion” originating primarily from a fictional dossier spun by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Columnist Robert Knight recently posed the most penetrating question about this lawlessness, “Officials who swore to uphold the Constitution have committed serial crimes that add up to sedition and even treason. Many Americans are asking when someone, anyone, will pay a price for subverting our self-governing republic.” https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/21/exposing-moral-evil-and-defrocking-those-who-weapo/
There was once a time in this country when those systematic abuses might have brought mobs into the streets. A timely reminder of that history was published last year by Stacy Schiff in The Revolutionary, her brilliantly, Pulitzer Prize-winning portrait of firebrand patriot Samuel Adams. “With singular lucidity, Adams plucked ideas from the air and pinned them to the page…He muscled words into deeds, effecting…a revolution that culminated in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence.”[1] Royal governors throughout the 13 colonies and even King George himself had good reason to tremble when Adams’ pen attacked their petty tyrannies. How sad that the FBI, an organization established in the last century to safeguard American liberties, has in this century been seduced and became the preferred political weapon of the governing elites (whose double-standards and snooty snobbishness have much in common with their Loyalist predecessors).
It is now considered the worst form of political incorrectness to recall in polite company the memory of our Founding Fathers. Yet whatever name you apply to those Old White Dudes, even a cursory reading of their lives and times is sufficient to establish that they had limited faith in the institution of Government. Actually, very limited faith Not only would they have been unsurprised that governmental excess would re-appear (while sporting shades, tailored suits and artfully concealed weapons) in our times: But they would have instinctively relied upon the institution of The Media to help correct any imbalance. Thomas Jefferson, whose exquisitely tuned mind provided the inspiration for most of our liberties, had an unwavering faith in the power of a free press. In his 1789 letter to Richard Prince, Jefferson wrote that, "Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.010_0744_0750/?sp=1
OK, so nothing lasts forever, maybe not even the faith to keep “the people well informed” once placed so unquestioningly as a core media virtue. But ever since the Vietnam War, “objective journalism” has been mostly ignored – either as an obsolete feature or one overcome by the ghostly ideal of the “crusading journalist;” either way, today we rarely hear anything other than what our media elites believe to be important. Now well-known as media bias,” over the last two decades, this phenomenon has attracted a long and distinguished group of analysts – from Bernard Goldberg who effectively invented the term in 2001 to Mark Levin, whose Unfreedom of the Press, is the genre’s latest jeremiad.
However, my favorite media analyst is Tim Groseclose, currently a professor of economics at George Mason University. In his 2011 book Left Turn, Prof. Groseclose provided persuasive, evidence of a startling conclusion: Overwhelmingly liberal “Newspapers, television, radio and online media are extremely influential, especially over consumers’ political views.” He found that over time the liberal bias of the media provided a “slant quotient” moving the “political quotient” of the average voter 24 points leftward. Worse yet, “thinking more liberally…makes us less able to detect the bias.” With startling foresight, he concluded, “It’s time the public wakes up. Media bias is more significant, complex and pernicious than people realize.” https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/26/pernicious-effects-of-media-bias/
A decade later, there is an especially pernicious relationship between liberal media and the abuses of government now widening into a daily cascade. While it is hard to know whether media or government corruption came first, together they provide a terrifying synergy, like a forest fire spread by strong winds. At the conflagration’s height, a former FBI general counsel was seconded to Twitter, acting as an information “traffic cop.” But this same arrogance is on stark display at every White House press “briefing” – an ongoing charade between the know-nothing briefer and timid “journalists” unwilling to risk their burgeoning careers with an incautious question.
Could someone please tell Sam Adams that we need a clean-up on Aisle 7?
LEAVE A COMMENT, KEN READS THEM>>>
America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
BIDEN SCANDAL WATCH
Wray STILL won’t turn over “1023,” will likely be held in contempt
I’ll give you the good news first: FBI Director Christopher Wray did show up on Capitol Hill on Monday as scheduled, and he had the “Form 1023” that House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer had subpoenaed.
Now the bad and totally unsurprising news: He still refused to turn it over to the Committee. Only Comer, as chairman, and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, invited by the FBI (???) to join him as the Democrat ranking member, were allowed to view it in a SCIF, or secure room. Comer was limited to note-taking. Also, as it turns out, they didn’t get to see/take notes on the full document. Touching on one of Comer’s biggest concerns, part of the document had indeed been classified, as they were told during a briefing, and it’s not clear if even Comer and Raskin were allowed to see the “classified” parts. So now Comer says he’ll start hearings on Thursday to hold Wray in contempt of Congress.
This leaves us with new questions: When were the so-called classified” parts of the document designated as classified? Before or after the whistleblower was known to have spoken to Congress about it? Before or after it was subpoenaed? And how high a level of classification does this material carry? So high that even Comer, as Oversight Committee chair, doesn’t have a high enough security clearance to view it? Comer has said he’d already seen the document; did he see the parts that are now classified?
Reporters, too, had questions for Comer after the briefing was over. One asked, “Why do you need the document at hand? You just got a chance to view it --- why move forward with contempt when the FBI says they’re cooperating in good faith?”
“Good faith”? Comer replied that the White House is already calling the document “without merit,” “crazy” and a “conspiracy theory,” adding, “I’m supposed to take the FBI’s word that they’re investigating this?”
https://twitter.com/
One major take-away: the FBI did NOT disprove or discredit the document. What Jamie Raskin calls an “unverified tip sheet” is actually the product of a highly trusted confidential source who had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the FBI for his extremely reliable information.
Bonchie says that the contempt charge won’t have legal ramifications because Biden’s DOJ will never press charges, but that it “could help provide grounds for obtaining the FD-1023 form.” It also “helps get the overall story about Biden’s alleged corruption and criminality out in the open.” He says the battle is about to heat up.
RELATED READING:
Comer offered some interesting updates Thursday night. He told Sean Hannity that even though the date on the document was dated June 2020, there were notes in it that went back to 2017. That leads him to believe that the FBI’s confidential human source (CHS) initially informed them of the bribery scheme in 2017. His question to the FBI was, given that this CHS is one of their most highly credible, “What exactly have you done with this accusation?”
Their answer to him was that this is part of an ongoing investigation --- that’s what they say when they want to keep a lid on something. They won’t give him any details on what investigation it is, when it began, nothing at all. It seems clear that Comer is over the target.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/
Comer said that by holding Wray in contempt, Congress is “setting an example. When we subpoena information, there’s a reason why, and we expect to get that information...we have these federal bureaucracies that think they’re immune to oversight. So we’re following the money...What the human informant alleged on the FBI form is exactly the same as what we saw in Romania.”
He went on to paraphrase part of that document: “It specifically detailed allegations that the bribe would be made in a way that would be very difficult to find, that they would use various bank accounts and various shell companies.”
Yes, this quote from Comer strongly suggests that the country allegedly paying the bribe was Romania. But according to a FOX NEWS source, it was a “new country” we haven’t heard about --- not China, Ukraine, Russia or Romania. So there’s something else to be cleared up.
As for the document being partially classified and purportedly being used in an ongoing FBI investigation to keep it under wraps, legal analyst Margot Cleveland has already offered her take. She says the real focus regarding this document is not so much the bribery allegation itself but what, if anything, the FBI did to investigate it, given that the CHS was so highly credible. She sees Wray continuing to fight Sen. Grassley and the oversight committees “every step of the way” to prevent them from revealing this.
“America can survive selective injustices,” she says, “but it cannot withstand a corrupt bureaucracy that obstructs justice and interferes with elections.”
And if they did bury this allegation, it certainly is another example of election interference. The whistleblower who came forward about this document told the Oversight Committee that FBI headquarters had closed it out even though some of the details had been verified and others could have been. “Not only does this evidence suggest FBI headquarters obstructed justice,” Cleveland says, “but the date of the CHS’s report [June 30, 2020] indicates those responsible for misbranding the intel as disinformation sought to interfere with the 2020 election.”
Cleveland contrasts this with what happened after the FBI got “a vague tip from an Australian diplomat of unknown veracity that a low-level Trump volunteer had claimed the Russians possessed dirt on Hillary Clinton.” Within days, they had opened “Crossfire Hurricane” against the Trump campaign.
“I have a message for Chris Wray,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said last night. “...Chris is not a left-wing partisan; he’s a ‘company man.’ He believes that he’s protecting the FBI by circling the wagons. Let me tell you something, Chris. The FBI works for the American people. The American people have a right to have accountability, to know, is there evidence that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., the President of the United States, was personally involved in bribery from a foreign nation? Don’t correct the career partisans at DOJ. Instead, put the public good above parochial concerns. The American people deserve to know, what is the evidence that Joe Biden was personally involved with bribery?”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
I would reiterate that we deserve to see the document. This CHS was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money to give them information. We paid for it. Let’s see it.
………………..
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
From Newt Gingrich, on Trump “likely” being indicted by AG Merrick Garland just as we’re learning the depth of Biden corruption:
“You see this in Venezuela, you see this in Zimbabwe, you see this in Cuba. But to see it in America...Remember, John Mitchell’s the only other attorney general ever to go to jail. It was for obstruction of justice. And I think the current attorney general is very close to that same problem, and the current director of the FBI is equally close.”
Leave me a comment here>>>
NEWS
Bud Light Backlash Update:
The North Carolina craft beer makers Appalachian Mountain Brewery was acquired by Anheuser Busch in 2021. In light of recent events, they’ve bought back their freedom and are no longer associated with AB.
And from our “What have they been drinking?” file, even after losing $27 billion in market value due to an association with “trans” social media figure Dylan Mulvaney, Anheuser Busch announced that it was marking “Pride Month” by donating $200,000 to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce to empower “LGBTQ+-owned businesses.” Sounds like Anheuser Busch is one of those businesses that the LGBTQ+ movement has completely owned.
Related: The Texas Rangers are the only Major League Baseball team that has refused to knuckle under to pressure and schedule a “Pride Month” theme night. The team issued a statement reading, “Our commitment is to make everyone feel welcome and included in Rangers baseball. That means in our ballpark, at every game, and in all we do — for both our fans and our employees. We deliver on that promise across our many programs to have a positive impact across our entire community.”
So rather than offending a majority of their customers by kowtowing to a loud minority, they’re going to stay out of controversial and divisive political issues and just concentrate on baseball? It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work!
Fun Link!
To get your mind off the news for a while, here’s a cool story about how Paul McCartney discovered a trove of long-misplaced photos he took during the rise of Beatlemania when the Fab Four first came to America to play “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They’re coming out in a book, but here are some samples.
Wouldn’t You Really Rather Have An EV?
Bad news if you spent big bucks on one of Jaguar’s I-Pace electric cars. All of them sold in the US are being recalled because of the minor problem that when parked and charging, the battery might suddenly burst into flame. Story with photo here:
From the story: “Jaguar is advising customers to park and charge their vehicles outside due to the fire risk until repairs are completed.” Helpful advice!
J6 Committee doctored video footage
This won’t come as news to my readers, but the world is finally catching up with the fact that Democrats on the January 6th Kangaroo Kommittee doctored the video footage that they showed the public.
MORE NEWS
Democrats denying history
This was a big weekend for Democrats denying history. First, and most shameful, after doing nothing whatsoever about that Chinese spy balloon they allowed to traverse our entire nation, the Biden Administration sent two senior officials to China (I picture them walking on their knees) to discuss “key issues in the bilateral relationship,”
As this report from Redstate.com notes, they would not comment on whether they would mention to China’s President the fact that they were doing this on the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I think I can guess, though, considering they don’t mind visiting even while China continues to engage in the same oppressive tactics by cracking down on protesters in Hong Kong just for trying to commemorate the slaughter in Tiananmen Square that Beijing wants to throw down the memory hole. It’s said that those who can’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. China doesn’t want anyone to remember the past, and they’re willing to repeat it just to force people to forget it.
Also, CNN’s attempts to become a legitimate news network again are floundering. Conservatives still don’t trust them, while liberals just feel betrayed at not being fed the DNC narrative 24/7. It doesn’t help that they still can’t handle the truth, as evidenced by the way they tried to mark the third anniversary of the BLM/Antifa George Floyd riots by praising their own coverage of them as “unflinching, unrelenting, uncut.” More like “Unbelievable!”
Nick Arama at Redstate.com reminds us that it was CNN that gave us the concept (and the eternal Internet meme) about “fiery, but most peaceful protests.”
Hat tip to Brad Slager at Redstate for coining the perfect phrase for this total rewrite of CNN’s history of riot coverage: “Teargas-lighting.”
Did an AI drone turn on its operator? The story keeps "evolving"...
The story of the AI drone turning on and “killing” its operator for aborting its mission just keeps changing. Initial reports falsely implied that it actually happened, and then it was reported to be a “simulation,” but then the Air Force official who said that claimed he “misspoke”: there wasn’t a simulation, just a “scenario,” or hypothetical thought experiment. Thank goodness he cleared that up.
https://pjmedia.com/
At that link, Richard Fernandez has more details about this constantly “evolving” story, along with some useful, if rather convoluted, information on what AI might or might not do, and even more worrisome, how it might be impossible for humans to comprehend or predict what it might do.
But men have no biological advantage in sports
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