Mike Huckabee

With a few rare and now-gone voices of sanity, such as John Delaney, the Democratic Primary has largely resembled a Bizarro World auction where the participants bid against one another to see who can give away the most stuff for “free.”

“Free” is in quotes because, as every child should be taught and obviously, far too few are these days, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.” That’s been true since the dawn of time, and putting the word “Democratic” in front of “socialism” won’t change it, any more than calling useless and counter-productive gun laws "common sense" will make them common sense. Not even the schools’ “free lunch” program is free: taxpayers pay a lot for it, and the money often comes with government strings attached. Or a “quid pro quo,” to coin a phrase.

Just last night, Tom Steyer added paying reparations for slavery to the list, and earlier, Bernie Sanders tossed another new expensive “human right” on the pile: a $1.2 trillion plan called “Free Child Care and Pre-K for All.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernie-sanders-unveils-free-childcare-plan-eye-popping-price-tag-1-5-trillion/

Personally, I can think of few ideas more chilling than every child from the age of three being put into an “education program” designed by Bernie Sanders. But I suppose we should be thankful that the cost of this one is “only” $1.2 trillion, or a little less than 1/4th of the entire current federal budget, rather than his typical plan that costs the entire US GDP.

I know that child care is very important. It’s a real problem for many low-income working people, and the government might have a role to play, although it should be on the state or local level, or better yet, handled by community organizations and churches. But spending nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget to create a new “human right” to free daycare is what passes in Bernie’s mind for “common sense” government action that isn’t “radical” at all.

I know that Bernie knows the word “privilege” because when he recently declared health care to be a “human right,” he added, “It is not a privilege!” I’ve written before about how “progressives” can’t win arguments on facts or experience, so they win by rewriting the language (for instance, liberals, leftists, socialists and communists became too infamous as purveyors of tragically failed policies, so they magically became “progressives.”)

But some of us still care about the English language, and how words actually mean things. As children used to be taught, a “right” is something you are endowed with by God, such as the right to free speech. It doesn’t require anyone else giving up their rights to provide it to you. Making a speech in a public park is a “right.” Demanding that the government provide you with a free P.A. system is a “privilege.” Just as demanding that other people attend medical school or deal with government paperwork to spend their time caring for you while others pay higher taxes to cover the cost makes that a “privilege.” You may say that you think health care should be a privilege of citizenship, but by definition, it can never be a “right.” Bernie goes around finding new “rights” the way my grandkids find Easter eggs, but they don’t have a "right" to chocolate eggs: that’s a privilege of me being their grandpa.

And as long as I’m offering a remedial primer on rights, I’d also like to point out that the Bill of Rights doesn’t list rights the government gives to you. It lists rights with which God endows you and that the government has no right to take away from you.

Mike Huckabee

Today is Ash Wednesday, and yesterday was Fat Tuesday. But in honor of the Democratic debate, it was renamed “Body Positivity Tuesday.”

If you had last night’s Democratic debate on in the background, between all the yelling, talking over each other, badmouthing Trump and audience applause for crazy socialist ideas, you might have mistaken it for a prime time episode of “The View.”

I could link to a video of the entire debate for you to watch, but I have a reputation as a nice guy, and that would blow it. So here’s a Washington Post recap that offers the “highlights” (all three-and-a-half minutes of them, which is pretty generous):

https://youtu.be/89dstGVVU10

Here’s a fairly dispassionate recap by the Daily Caller:

https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/25/dem-debate-biden-south-carolina/

And here’s PJ Media’s reliably sharp and brutally funny live blog:

https://pjmedia.com/blog/liveblogevent/liveblogging-the-south-carolina-democratic-debate/

With most of the candidates yelling at each other, talking over one another and completely ignoring the time limits (the moderators were about as effective as substitute teachers at Rock ‘n’ Roll High School), precious few moments of substance made it past the din. In short, they’re going to make the economy a whole lot better than it is now (with record low unemployment and 90% of Americans happy with their lives) but they’re not specific on how…They’re going to provide us with everything free and it will pay for itself…And Trump is very bad; very, very bad indeed, and they’re going to be a lot better than him.

The closest they came to discussing a real issue came after they’d all attacked Trump for allegedly failing to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and Amy Klobuchar was asked if she would block people with the disease from the entering the US. She dodged the question, presumably because it would have forced her to side with Trump and suggest that not everyone in the world has a right to waltz across our borders. Then she might have had to concede Trump is right that we shouldn’t let people with exotic Central American diseases bring them here, either. By dodging the question, she signaled that Democrats, for all their bluster about Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, would rather let it become a pandemic in the US that secure our borders against anyone.

A few other “highlights” included Bernie Sanders claiming his massive, budget-busting socialist ideas aren't "radical" at all, and Mike Bloomberg committing a “faux pas,” which I’ve defined before as a politician accidentally telling the truth. He was bragging about how he’d given $100 million to help elect the new House Democrats who voted to impeach Trump, and added, “I bought--- I got them.” No wonder he thinks he can buy this election; he figures he already bought quite a few, so what’s one more?

https://pjmedia.com/election/watch-mike-bloombergs-freudian-slip-i-bought-i-got-them-elected/

Elizabeth Warren went after Bloomberg over a claim that he once told a pregnant employee to “kill it.” She also reminded us that she lost a teaching job for being pregnant (the records show she was offered a new contract, but turned it down, but who are you gonna believe, her or some old employee records?) This was stunning, considering she and everyone else on that stage is a staunch promoter of abortion right up to, and in some cases beyond, the moment of birth. And incidentally, a baby isn’t an “it,” it is a “he” or a “she.” Sorry, but that’s binary.

(On that subject, CNN seems to believe there’s a yuuuuuge difference between a baby and a “fetus that was born during an abortion.” If the “fetus” survives, how long will they call it a “fetus”? Will “it” still be a fetus when it graduates college?)

https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/25/cnn-baby-abortion-fetus-that-was-born/

Joe Biden actually had a pretty good night, by his standards. Supporters were concerned because he often goes off talking gibberish, and on the eve of the debate, he told voters he was running for the United States Senate, and if you don’t like him, “vote for the other Biden.” No, really…

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-announces-running-senate-south-carolina-leaves-voters-worried/

But be fair: is that any worse than the stuff said by all the others on stage last night? That was a lot of gibberish, too; it was just glib gibberish. It was glibberish.

Joe didn’t get many words in, but at least he appeared more adult than the others by actually observing the time limits. He even had the best moment of the entire debate when he stopped in mid-rant when his time ran out, then asked, “Why am I stopping? No one else stops. It’s my Catholic school training.”

Unfortunately, he undid a lot of that good will with an epic Bidenism, by claiming that since 2007, 150 million people have been killed by guns. I have a feeling we would have noticed that, since it’s about 40% of the entire US population. That’s almost as many people as Thanos wiped out in “Avengers: End Game.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/according-biden-guns-killed-people-since-2007-communism-killed-20th-century/

In fact, there are about 30,000 gun-related deaths in the US per year. Of course, that’s 30,000 too many. But about two-thirds are suicides, and removing guns likely wouldn’t prevent them. Many of the rest are gang-related shootings in deep blue cities with strict gun control laws.

This debate is being called the last primary debate that will matter, since the rest fall after Super Tuesday on March 3rd, and the frontrunner will likely be set. Ordinarily, that might be true, but with the field so fractured, candidates hanging on even after the media declare them dead, and voters seemingly looking for “None of the Above” (Bloomberg obviously hopes to fill that slot, although Hillary might be dreaming of swooping in to take it herself), this could stay up in the air all the way to a brokered convention. Which, sadly, means my staff and I will probably have to watch the final debate on March 15th.

Although scheduling it on the Ides of March, the day when Julius Caesar was knifed in the back by a bunch of politicians, could be an omen of what might happen to whoever the frontrunner is at that point.

A P.S. on Tuesday’s Democratic debate: having just spent the past week in Israel, allow me to say the following on that subject…

1. No, Prime Minister Netanyahu is not a “reactionary racist,” and anyone who says that is demonstrating either vicious slander or gross ignorance. Looking at you, Bernie.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-s-top-diplomat-slams-horrifying-sanders-comment-calling-netanyahu-racist-1.8590906

2. Yes, it IS up to us to decide where our Embassy in Israel will be located. President Trump had the courage to finally put it in the correct place, after other Presidents had long promised to and failed to act. Elizabeth Warren obviously disapproves, but doesn’t even have the courage to say so. Which one sounds more “presidential” to you?

Mike Huckabee

With a few rare and now-gone voices of sanity, such as John Delaney, the Democratic Primary has largely resembled a Bizarro World auction where the participants bid against one another to see who can give away the most stuff for “free.”

“Free” is in quotes because, as every child should be taught and obviously, far too few are these days, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.” That’s been true since the dawn of time, and putting the word “Democratic” in front of “socialism” won’t change it, any more than calling useless and counter-productive gun laws "common sense" will make them common sense. Not even the schools’ “free lunch” program is free: taxpayers pay a lot for it, and the money often comes with government strings attached. Or a “quid pro quo,” to coin a phrase.

Just last night, Tom Steyer added paying reparations for slavery to the list, and earlier, Bernie Sanders tossed another new expensive “human right” on the pile: a $1.2 trillion plan called “Free Child Care and Pre-K for All.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernie-sanders-unveils-free-childcare-plan-eye-popping-price-tag-1-5-trillion/

Personally, I can think of few ideas more chilling than every child from the age of three being put into an “education program” designed by Bernie Sanders. But I suppose we should be thankful that the cost of this one is “only” $1.2 trillion, or a little less than 1/4th of the entire current federal budget, rather than his typical plan that costs the entire US GDP.

I know that child care is very important. It’s a real problem for many low-income working people, and the government might have a role to play, although it should be on the state or local level, or better yet, handled by community organizations and churches. But spending nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget to create a new “human right” to free day care is what passes in Bernie’s mind for “common sense” government action that isn’t “radical” at all.

I know that Bernie knows the word “privilege” because when he recently declared health care to be a “human right,” he added, “It is not a privilege!” I’ve written before about how “progressives” can’t win arguments on facts or experience, so they win by rewriting the language (for instance, liberals, leftists, socialists and communists became too infamous as purveyors of tragically failed policies, so they magically became “progressives.”)

But some of us still care about the English language, and how words actually mean things. As children used to be taught, a “right” is something you are endowed with by God, such as the right to free speech. It doesn’t require anyone else giving up their rights to provide it to you. Making a speech in a public park is a “right.” Demanding that the government provide you with a free P.A. system is a “privilege.” Just as demanding that other people attend medical school or deal with government paperwork to spend their time caring for you while others pay higher taxes to cover the cost makes that a “privilege.” You may say that you think health care should be a privilege of citizenship, but by definition, it can never be a “right.” Bernie goes around finding new “rights” the way my grandkids find Easter eggs, but they don’t have a "right" to chocolate eggs: that’s a privilege of me being their grandpa.

And as long as I’m offering a remedial primer on rights, I’d also like to point out that the Bill of Rights doesn’t list rights the government gives to you. It lists rights with which God endows you and that the government has no right to take away from you.

---------------------------------

As liberal media people start to panic at the idea of Bernie Sanders being the nominee, they’re finally starting to do some background research into his previous kooky statements (both the ones we’re all known about for years, and some that are more…exotic.) As they put it at the Instapundit blog, Bernie keeps telling you what he is; you should believe him. Mike Bloomberg reportedly plans to spend some of his riches on blasting this oppo research far and wide, like Bernie’s ideas on child care that should make anyone recoil at the idea of a government day care program created by him.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bloomberg-spox-rips-bernies-loopy-comments-said-toddlers-should-run-around-naked-and-touch-each-others-genitals/

Even more concerning is Bernie’s admiration for communist dictatorships like Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR. He claims he doesn’t admire “authoritarianism,” but socialism without authoritarianism would be like trying to make coffee without coffee beans. If the government controls production and decides what choices you get to make (and Bernie is on record as thinking capitalism gives you too many choices of deodorants), then if someone disagrees and wants to make a different choice than what the government approves, somebody has to stop them to protect the “system.” Enter the government guns and gulags.

But Bernie is the eternal optimist, always able to see the daisy growing out of the pile of bull manure. First it was Castro’s “literacy program” (which forced people to read communist propaganda), and now he’s praising communist China for lifting more people out of extreme poverty than any other nation on Earth (too bad about all the genocides, forced sterilizations and destroying of churches.)

https://www.westernjournal.com/sanders-doubles-communist-regime-praise-gives-credit-china-fighting-extreme-poverty/

Actually, it’s socialism and communism that put people into extreme poverty, and capitalism that’s lifted more of them out of it than at any time in history. Even China made the advances they did by allowing limited amounts of capitalist free enterprise (but not too much freedom: see “Hong Kong.”)

Bernie’s go-to model for the US is Denmark, and other “Democratic socialist” Scandinavian nations. But there are things rotten in Denmark, and Bernie just can’t smell them. The problems with his argument include…

(A.) The Nordic nations are not socialist, as their leaders adamantly insist; by some metrics, Denmark has more economic freedom than the US. Norway’s prosperity is largely thanks to off-shore oil wells, which Bernie would surely ban…

(B.) These nations are actually rolling back some of the socialist-lite programs they instituted after realizing they were unaffordable and were eroding their people’s traditional work ethic (if you’ve ever heard the stories about “Norwegian bachelor farmers” and Lutherans on “Prairie Home Companion,” you know that if socialism won’t work on Scandinavians, who are raised to work hard and expect little in return, then it won’t work anywhere.)

(C.) The image of all those Danes who are happy as larks to pay exorbitant taxes in return for those amazing government services is a delusional fiction. Read this commentary from the Bookworm Room blog, on a book written by someone who’s lived there. Example: under that fantastic Danish government health care, the author visited an emergency care center and was told he’d have to make an appointment.

https://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/02/23/the-truth-behind-bernies-shtick-that-he-just-wants-to-make-america-like-denmark/

One of the comments on this story includes a great quote. The writer says that when the media were touting Denmark as the “happiest place on Earth” (they’re actually #2 in Europe behind Iceland in anti-depressant consumption), he met a Danish couple applying for US citizenship. When he asked why the Danes they were leaving behind were were so happy, she replied, “Because their expectations are so low.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to replace “Keep America Great” with “Lower Your Expectations.”

-----------------------------------

The stock market is taking a dive this week amid fears of the coronavirus spreading (or as President Trump called it, “a buying opportunity.”) It’s too early to know just how bad this could become, but it’s also too early to be launching panics over it. Here’s a little information that might help put things in perspective.

https://www.westernjournal.com/numbers-show-coronavirus-appears-far-less-deadly-flu-govt-media-keep-promoting-panic/

Mike Huckabee

I told you yesterday about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a much-ballyhooed dissent in the “public charge” immigration ban case. Her major gripe was that the Trump Administration calls on the SCOTUS too often to make emergency rulings rather than let challenges to its policies work their way through the courts. Trump defenders (myself included) pointed out that this is because so many liberal activist judges keep imposing unconstitutional nationwide stays that are beyond their jurisdictions, in a politicized attempt to thwart policies that the President has the Constitutional power to impose and hog-tie his Administration. The problem here is not an out-of-control White House, but an out-of-control judiciary.

Now, as you knew he would, Trump himself has weighed in on Twitter. He said Sotomayor was accusing some of her fellow Justices of being biased in favor of him and trying to “shame” them into voting her way, but she never criticized Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg when she publicly made anti-Trump comments during the campaign. Trump said both Sotomayor and Ginsberg should recuse themselves from cases involving him, since they’ve both publicly expressed bias against him.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-sotomayor-ginsburg-should-recuse-themselves-from-cases-dealing-with-his-administration

I’m sure this will spark the by-now ritualistic cries of “outrage” from Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself.) That would carry a lot more weight if we didn’t just go through an impeachment process where the same people were demanding that Mitch McConnell recuse himself from voting because he’d publicly supported Trump. Frankly, I assume that in today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, nobody who isn’t forced by law to recuse him- or herself is ever going to do it.

Hey, speaking of that, Roger Stone’s Obama-appointed judge who praised an outrageously biased juror and accused Stone of things he wasn’t even charged with while sentencing him, just refused to recuse herself and let him have a new judge. Quote:

"If parties could move to disqualify every judge who furrows his brow at one side or the other before ruling, the entire court system would come to a standstill."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/23/roger-stone-judge-berman-jackson-117066

I don’t think there’s enough Botox in the world to hide a brow that furrowed.

Mike Huckabee

It’s easy to dismiss Bernie Sanders’ grandiose pie-in-the-sky socialist ideas, but now that too many people are actually voting for him, let’s take a look at just how high in the sky his pie is flying (take that, Cole Porter!)

Bernie has been notably vague about how much his socialist transformation of America would cost or how it would be paid for, but like all purveyors of questionable, overpriced goods, he assures the suckers that they will pay for themselves in the long run. Greg Re at Fox News reports that Sanders released a “fact sheet” (quotation marks intentional) Monday night on the financials, and both the costs and his plans for paying them make the mind reel. It’s a ruinous cocktail of massive spending and government expansion into every corner of your life, paid for by a mountain of new taxes, mandates, lawsuits, deep cuts in defense, and wishful thinking.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-payments-green-new-deal-medicare-for-all-explanation

For instance, he claims that the “Green New Deal,” which has been estimated to cost more than $90 trillion over ten years, would actually save $70.4 trillion over 80 years by averting climate catastrophe. No figures are given to back that up, but as Re notes, “the Trump administration's National Climate Assessment found that it was possible climate change could reduce the size of the U.S. economy by 10 percent by the end of the century, assuming no substantial changes in technology (including carbon-reducing innovations) or policy occur in the meantime.”

Aside from stressing the word “possible,” I’ll note that the end of the century is 80 years from now. Do you think there will be no policy changes or substantial changes in technology by then without massive government intervention (incidentally, in socialist nations, that always stymies technological advancement.) Think back to 80 years ago. How many changes in technology have there been since 1940? Today's young people laugh at the technology they see in reruns of "Friends"! And how many of the tech advances since 1940 have been led by the government? Sure, we learned a lot from the space program, but it was the private sector using that data that gave us home computers, smart phones, etc. It was only five months ago that the government finally updated the computers controlling our nuclear weapons systems so they no longer use floppy discs.

https://www.businessinsider.com/military-replaces-floppy-disks-used-to-control-nuclear-weapons-2019-10

Elsewhere, Bernie seems to think there’s an endless supply of super-rich people just waiting around like cows to be milked by the government. Like a communist Old McDonald, he plans to have a wealth tax here and a wealth tax there, oblivious to the fact that people don’t get rich by letting the government take all their money. They will simply shelter it or send it overseas, which will pull it out of productive investments and kill US job creation, reducing federal revenue. But never fear: he’ll stop people from doing what they want with their own money by expanding and empowering the IRS and having a lot more audits (does that make you feel more secure?)

Some other “revenue enhancements” include suing and taxing the daylights out of oil companies (goodbye, affordable gasoline!)…a range of taxes on everybody to pay for “Medicare For All” (but don’t worry, he says this will replace what you currently pay for insurance – but it will also replace the choices you currently have with a one-size-fits-all government health care program)…and a “modest” tax on Wall Street stock and bond transactions that would not only hit everyone with retirement accounts, it also adds up to five times the average online brokerage fee. Ironically, the federal government won’t let brokers charge that much because they’d consider it to be ripping off consumers. But socialists always believe that when the government rips you off, it’s for your own good.

PS – This article also mentions some more blowback on Bernie’s praising of Fidel Castro for implementing a literacy program. Critics say that literacy was already rising in Cuba before Castro’s revolution, and the program he instituted was largely to indoctrinate Cubans by making them read communist propaganda. I wonder if Bernie’s response to that will be “So what’s wrong with reading nothing but communist propaganda?!”

And here’s a little more about what really happened to education in Cuba under the benevolent Castro regime…

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article240425431.html

Mike Huckabee

I have been working from Israel this week, where I gave a speech on Monday promoting the reelection of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I described him, I think quite accurately, as not just a leader of Israel but a leader of the world, a Churchill in a world filled with Chamberlains.

Video of that speech has now been posted on Facebook, and I hope you’ll give it a look. Outside of our own elections, this is one of the most important elections to the US, since it will determine the future of our greatest ally in an area of the world where we need a strong ally like Israel to keep the peace. Netanyahu will insure that Israel remains strong.

https://www.facebook.com/LikudAnglos/videos/vb.157560110960960/246748056324121/?type=2&thea

And as a timely reminder to American voters, one of the Democrats’ leading Presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish himself, refused to attend next week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference. He accused Israel of “bigotry” against the Palestinians for acts that amount to nothing more than basic self-defense.

Just hours after Sanders made those comments, Palestinian terrorists launched a rocket attack in the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza Strip. The rockets narrowly missed a Jewish school and damaged a playground just a few yards from the classrooms. Several people were treated for shock, but miraculously, no one was injured as there were no children on the playground. Not that the people who fired those rockets cared, since they would have celebrated any injuries to or deaths of innocent Jewish children.

https://www.westernjournal.com/hours-bernie-defends-palestinians-palestinians-shoot-rocket-israeli-playground/

I think Bernie Sanders and I have a very different definition of “bigotry.”

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Many stunning photos have appeared from the President and First Lady’s tour of India, and as usual, there have been comments about Melania Trump’s fashions. She’s a former model and incredibly stylish, so I think she always looks fantastic, but there are also the usual catty, snotty remarks from liberals.

Some people complain that there’s too much coverage of how Mrs. Trump dresses, that it’s either too laudatory or demeaning and sexist. So Fox News did a poll. They found that the public is split, with 37% saying media coverage of her looks and styles has been fair, 35% saying it’s been too negative and 9% saying coverage of her fashions has been “too positive.”

Here’s my question: who are the 9% who think that coverage of Melania Trump by the fashion media is “too positive”? Fashion magazines are so lockstep leftist that three long years into her tenure as one of the most beautiful and fashionable First Ladies in history, I can’t think of a single major women's or fashion magazine that’s put her on its cover even once. It’s absolutely shameful, and a perfect example of how the editors of these magazines prioritize leftist politics over fashion or fairness to the point of acting like a gaggle of high school mean girls with big expense accounts. They’d rather put Lena Dunham on a fashion magazine cover than Melania Trump. And that’s “too positive” for some people?

I just want them to know that we all know that has nothing to do with fashion. We are well aware that if Melania were married to a liberal Democrat President, they’d be worshiping her like she was the second coming of Princess Diana. When they attack her fashion choices or act as if she doesn't exist, they aren't fooling anyone other than themselves.

---------------------------------

There are two prominent names in this morning’s obituaries. Hosni Mubarak, the former strongman leader of Egypt who rule for 30 years before being deposed in 2011, has died in a Cairo hospital at 91 after undisclosed surgery.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/hosni-mubarak-egypts-former-autocratic-president-dead-at-91-report

And former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson has died at 101. She was one of a group of African-American women whose genius at math helped build the US space program. Their contributions went unrecognized for many years until their story was finally told in the book and 2016 movie, “Hidden Figures.” A big Huck’s Hero salute and the gratitude of all Americans to Katherine Johnson, and our prayers and condolences to her family.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nasa-mathematician-depicted-hidden-figures-katherine-johnson-passed-away-age-101/

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Pot, Meet Kettle: While Elizabeth Warren was blasting Mike Bloomberg for having female employees sign non-disclosure agreements, the Democratic Party was trying to keep the media from learning about any potential disasters in the Nevada Caucuses by requiring volunteers to sign…non-disclosure agreements!

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernies-win-nevada-caucuses-rocky-start-democrats-telling-volunteers-not-talk-media/

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Okay, I said I wasn’t going to run all of these “foaming-at-the-mouth leftists attack innocent Trump supporters” stories every day because there are so many of them, it would be all we ever got done. But to that anonymous Internet commenter who started this by claiming that most politically-motivated violence was perpetrated by people on the right, I can’t help adding this one.

https://www.westernjournal.com/couple-charged-felony-allegedly-running-boys-bikes-trump-flags-off-road/

Two details worth highlighting: there have been about 400 politically-motivated violent incidents against Trump supporters since September 2015 (those are just the ones that were reported; and it doesn’t take into account how many people have felt too threatened even to wear a MAGA cap or put a Trump sticker on their car or a sign in their yard, which is a blatant violation of their right to free speech.)

Also, note that this cowardly assault took place back in July but is only now coming to light because it took three months for Snapchat to turn the video over to police in response to a search warrant. Funny how when a Trump supporter posts a joke or meme that a leftist doesn’t like and they claim to feel “threatened” by it, social media sites somehow manage to take action overnight.

Mike Huckabee

Who was Philip Haney and why did he die?

I can offer some information regarding the first part of that question but none, at least yet, on the last part. “Brilliant, dedicated, devout” are some of the words being used by his stunned friends to describe Philip Haney, a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security who, according to one online tribute, “was characterized by tireless, intrepid, and in certain quarters unwelcome research and analysis about...Islam’s totalitarian code known as sharia and the supremacists who seek to impose it on all of us.”

Haney co-authored a book with Art Moore detailing the challenges of his work during the Obama administration called “SEE SOMETHING, SAY NOTHING: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad.” His job was to identify individuals and organizations with terrorist links, and he made it clear he saw people promoting sharia law within this country as America’s “enemy within.” He was self-taught in Arabic and had spent many years studying the Koran and other sacred and judicial texts.

"We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for his life and innumerable contributions to the cause of freedom,” the tribute continues, “many of which will never be publicly acknowledged or otherwise made known to his countrymen and women whom he did so much to secure.”

This DHS “whistleblower” apparently did not receive whistleblower protection when he exposed some intricate ties inside the Obama administration to the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic groups they called their “outreach partners.” It might come as little surprise that for his efforts, Haney was reportedly subjected to various job actions, investigations and threats. Rep. Louis Gomert apparently helped him clear his name and retire with full benefits; Gomert’s glowing review of Haney’s book, in which he calls Haney “a modern-day hero” and “an honorable, truthful patriot,” can be found on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/See-Something-Say-Nothing-Governments/dp/1944229205

Haney’s wife Francesca died last year after a long struggle with her health, but Haney had gone on with his life and was planning to be married in about a month.

Early unofficial reports said that Haney had been found on the ground next to his vehicle, killed by one gunshot to the chest, near the intersection of two highways in Drytown, California, not far from his home in the San Francisco area. The story is developing, with few details so far and some conflicting reports, but at the time of this writing neither suicide nor foul play can be definitively ruled out. National security specialist Ilana Freedman, who had worked with Haney, said in an interview Sunday with The Gateway Pundit that she was very surprised and that people who knew him wouldn’t believe he committed suicide. “He was a very religious man who believed suicide was a sin," she said. "A fellow associate I know said Philip stated several times that if he was accused of suicide not to believe it. He said that to a lot of people.”

She said he was working on a project involving some very serious allegations that was going to be published later this year. I’m passing this information along just to let you know this is what his friends are saying. But, as I said, no one can get inside someone else’s mind, and I would not want to come to a conclusion at this point based on speculation. I’ll have more information to share when this story passes that stage.

In the meantime, check out the interview Haney gave in June of 2016 with Sean Hannity.

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/02/22/report-obama-administration-whistleblower-found-shot-to-death/

Mike Huckabee

Bernie Sanders notched up a decisive win in Saturday’s Nevada Caucuses. At this writing (early Monday morning), with 88% of precincts reporting (and why is it taking so long to count these votes? Do they let Bernie's economic advisers handle the math?), Bernie has 47.1% (13 delegates) with Joe Biden a distant second at 21% (2 delegates), followed by Buttigieg (13.7%, 1 delegate), Warren (9.6%, no delegates) and everyone else below 5% (Bloomberg didn’t participate.)

This sets up Bernie Sanders as the Democrats’ definite front runner. Biden is calling his second-place win a comeback, but he was leading in Nevada polls until recently. He’s hoping that South Carolina will bring him back into the lead, but it now seems harder than before, since Biden was counting on strong African-American support, and Nevada proved that Bernie is drawing a lot of that. Bernie also got the lion’s share of Latino support, which is surprising, since you would think Latinos would have friends or relatives from places like Nicaragua, Venezuela or Cuba who would warn them not to fall for the siren song of socialism.

In fact, they’re trying. In case you missed it, try this…

https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/socialisms-victims-warn-us-bernie-sanders-your-enemy-dont-fall-it-people-are

Or this…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/02/15/donald-trump-venezuela-socialism-bernie-sanders-ilhan-omar-column/2861461002/

If Sanders can keep his momentum going through Super Tuesday, it will be hard for anyone else to overtake him, since the Dems have no winner-take-all states. So even if Sander loses a state, he’ll still likely add to his delegate total (as with “doing away with the Electoral College,” the Democrats are always changing the rules to give themselves an advantage in the last election without thinking ahead to what it might do to them in the next election. Here’s a story from back in 2018, warning them that they were setting themselves up for a fiasco in 2020, but did they listen?...)

https://prospect.org/power/democrats-just-set-fiasco/

So now, Democratic Party leaders are panicking and their press agents in the “news” media are in meltdown mode over the possibility that the Party’s Presidential nominee won’t even be a Democrat but instead a ranting Socialist with fiscally ruinous policies, and a severely misplaced admiration of such communist Utopias as the USSR and Cuba.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/liberal-tears-flow-msnbc-bernie-win/

Lest you think I’m slandering him, “60 Minutes” ran an interview with Bernie just last night, in which he praised Castro’s murderous, oppressive dictatorship, saying this, which echoes the praise of Mussolini, that at least he "made the trains run on time"...

“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but it’s unfair to simply say everything’s bad. When Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-fidel-castro-cuba-socialist-defense

On Twitter, Charles C.W. Cooke noted that “came into office” is a “euphemism for the ages,” while Cory Morgan writes, “Literacy is always a good thing in a totalitarian dictatorship. You want to be able to read those 50-year-old books donated to the prison library as you do your 15-year stint for being critical of the state.”

https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/02/23/not-the-onion-bernie-sanders-praises-the-castro-regime-in-new-60-minutes-interview/

As for Bernie’s attempts to deflect his genuine admiration of communist dictators by pointing out that Trump has said nice things about Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, I’d like to point out that that’s just a negotiating tactic when he was trying to get them to sign a deal. It was summed up well by Will Rogers, who said that “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”

Personally, I have to congratulate Bernie. He’s dangerously wrong about absolutely everything, but he campaigned hard, he fought for the votes, and he won fair and square, which must be a real novelty for him in a Democratic Primary.

But that said, as any American should be, I’m also appalled that an open socialist would ever come within a thousand miles of a major party Presidential nomination. Some people think this is great for Republicans because Trump would beat him so badly, it would harm Democrats all down the ticket. But as much as I want to see the House flipped, I’d like to see it done because Americans realize that Republican ideas work better, not because one of the two major parties committed suicide, or because vast numbers of Americans have been so misled and miseducated that they would actually vote away their birthright for socialism’s poisonous, empty promises of “free stuff.”

I have long said that neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, and the country is healthier when we have a strong two-party system with open debate. If we lose that, it will be because the Democratic Party leadership flushed away their own legitimacy. If they’re panicked by Bernie’s success, what did they expect? They created it.

First, their attempts to rig the last primary for Hillary insured that Bernie would start 2020 with a strong organization fueled by fired-up supporters who felt that the Establishment had ripped them off and who were dead set on insuring that it didn’t happen again (this is part of the parallel I made recently between Bernie and Trump.)

And in a larger sense, the Democrats spent decades taking over the schools so they could spoonfeed socialism and blaming-America-for-all-the-world’s-ills to generations of kids. Now, they’re surprised that their party is being taken over by young radicals who hate America and don’t know how horrible socialism is? They’re like Dr. Frankenstein being surprised that the monster he created turned on him. Unfortunately, now the monster is threatening the entire village.

Let us hope Democratic primary voters come to their senses. If not, then we can look forward to the starkest choice in Presidential election history, a choice that really will be “the most important election of our lifetimes,” since it could determine whether America remains America or not.

Mike Huckabee

Roger Stone was sentenced by Judge Amy Berman Jackson as originally scheduled on Thursday, despite revelations about the vicious anti-Trump views and Democrat activism of the jury foreperson.

Stone, who is 67, didn’t receive the stunningly punitive seven-to-nine year sentence recommended by his prosecutors, but it’s still pretty substantial, especially considering that numerous others who have lied to Congress are still walking around free, profiting off book deals and contracts with CNN and MSNBC. Jackson sentenced Stone to serve 3 years and 4 months, pay a $20,000 fine, spend 2 years in supervised release and perform 250 hours’ community service.

But because of the allegations of juror bias and misconduct, she did suspend the imposition of all those punishments pending her ruling on Stone’s request for a new trial. Of course, if she grants one, those punishments are voided. President Trump could also pardon him.

The backstory: Prosecutors recommended an outrageously harsh sentence for Stone –- seven to nine years, when typically it would be about three –- and the DOJ reduced that to something approaching that average. Four prosecutors responded by acting like babies and leaving their jobs in protest (good riddance). Democrats went bat-nuts and accused AG William Barr of doing Trump’s bidding, ludicrously calling for him to resign or else be impeached. Trump complained in his tweets about the excessive sentence, but Barr says the DOJ decided to intervene before hearing anything from him.

Tucker Carlson noted on Thursday that Jackson is the judge who placed both Paul Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates under house arrest pending trial, though neither was a flight risk or had any criminal history. It was also Judge Jackson who revoked Manafort’s bail and placed him in solitary confinement.

In her courtroom Thursday, she lit into Stone, saying he was “prosecuted for covering up for the President.” She said Stone lied because he knew that public disclosures that he was in touch with WikiLeaks would “reflect badly” on Trump. The left cheered her for this, but what she said is a lie. First, unless she’s one of those “certified authentic psychics,” she can’t possibly have known this was in his mind. Second, Stone was NOT actually in touch with WikiLeaks. Third, Stone was not charged with helping Trump cover up anything; there was nothing to cover up, as nobody associated with President Trump has been prosecuted for “colluding” with Russia or any related crimes, let alone has been found guilty of such crimes. In fact, a two-year special counsel investigation found no evidence of anything on Trump’s part that needed to be “covered up.” Question: how much hate must a federal judge have for the President to say such a thing in her courtroom?

Carlson also told his audience that Stone “would be on this show right now to respond, but he can no longer speak in public. Amy Berman Jackson has revoked his First Amendment rights.” Stone can be defamed mercilessly,” he said, “but if he dares to express his own opinion, Amy Berman Jackson will send him to jail immediately --- she said that.” Jackson banned Stone from speaking publicly, in ANY forum, about his case, and no one else can speak on his behalf. “...What you’re watching is the capricious authoritarianism of a Democratic activist wearing robes.”

Predictably, just the fact that Stone received prison time is being used by the media to suggest Trump himself is a criminal. The words of this judge enable them to continue their phony “Russia collusion” narrative, which is well past its expiration date and beginning to stink. The President still “colludes” with Putin, they say, and if we just keep digging, we’ll eventually find some piece of evidence that confirms it.

At least Jackson knew she’d better defer to Barr’s more reasonable recommendation and scale back the sentence, but Stone shouldn’t have been sentenced at all. After learning about the horrendous bias of the jury foreperson, Democrat activist Tomeka Hart, this judge should have had no choice but to start over with a new trial for Stone –- and a change of venue from Washington DC –- or else let him go after all he’s been through. Instead, she praised the jurors for having “served with integrity under difficult circumstances.” Maybe some did, but not all.

And tell me, given Hart’s activism and social media history, how did she get a seat in the jury box in the first place? She was so invested in the outcome, she continued expressing interest in the prosectors and the sentencing even after the verdict was reached; this was none of her concern.

Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign advisor who suffered his own legal problems as a result, was on with Carlson to ask people to sign the petition at FreeRogerStone.com, asking for Stone to be pardoned immediately. That’s “immediately,” meaning “now, not after the election.” Trump has said he wants the case to “play out to its fullest,” as he thinks Stone “has a very good chance of exoneration.” He’d like to see it go through the system, although “the system” has failed Stone thus far.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/150000-have-signed-petition-urging-president-trump-to-pardon-roger-stone/

So I hope he listens to the many thousands who have signed and will sign this petition, as opposed to people like Adam Schiff, who is desperate to continue the “Russia” hoax and who, interestingly, talked about Stone in almost the same words Judge Jackson used: “Roger Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress. He did it to cover up for Trump...to pardon Stone when his crimes were committed to protect Trump would be a breathtaking act of corruption.”

Of course, the Grand Poobah of the Great Russia Hoax, former CIA Director John Brennan, will do all he can to preserve the false narrative. Thursday, he tweeted: “We are now in a full-blown national security crisis. By trying to prevent the flow in intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES is helping maintain this fiction, having just reported that Russia plans to “meddle” in the 2020 election. I like what Trey Gowdy had to say about that: “I don’t know anyone who really thinks that Russia prefers Donald Trump to win over Comrade Sanders.”

Roger Stone sentenced to over 3 years in prison as judge slams him for 'covering up for' Trump

Mike Huckabee

Los Angeles is supposed to host the 2028 Summer Olympics, but there’s concern that the city’s ever-worsening crime, filth and homelessness will cause problems and reflect badly on America. We don’t want the athletes having to compete in new events, like “Outrunning Typhus” and “Jumping Over Garbage Piles.” This week, President Trump warned the city’s liberal leaders to “clean it up, fast,” and if they can’t do it themselves, the federal government will take it over and do it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-gets-tough-los-angeles-clean-going/

This isn’t the first time Trump has pointed out the disgusting conditions in liberal-run cities such as Baltimore and Nancy Pelosi’s home district of San Francisco, and threatened federal intervention to clean up the filth. But if he does, he’d better send some federal troops to protect the trash collectors.

Recently, Scot Presler, who started a group of volunteer Trump supporters who clean up filthy, neglected neighborhoods in leftist-run cities, led a clean-up effort in San Francisco. He noticed two things different from every other city they’ve helped to clean: 1. He’d never seen so much human feces on the streets. 2. It was the only place where Antifa thugs showed up to threaten, curse and protest them. Presler said, “I never thought I would see the day I’d be protested for picking up trash.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/02/05/exclusive-trump-supporter-shares-story-of-leftists-protesting-sf-street-clean-up/

Try to think of the people who keep voting to reelect politicians who allow crime, homelessness, trash and disease to get worse and worse the same way you think of elderly relatives who become hoarders and get enraged if you try to throw out their old pizza boxes or stacks of newspapers from 1987. You have to tread carefully with them because even though you can see they’re living in dangerous, unhealthy filth, they can’t, because they have a mental disorder.

Mike Huckabee

On Tuesday night, the WASHINGTON POST reported that Attorney General Bill Barr “has told people close to President Trump --- both outside and inside the White House --- that he is considering quitting over Trump’s tweets about Justice Department investigations, three administration officials said...”

The spokesperson for the DOJ, Kerri Kupec, tweeted this in response: “Addressing Beltway rumors: The Attorney General has no plans to resign.”

We don’t know what’s really going on, as WAPO has often gotten stories wrong –- especially when they involve Trump –- and this is another one of those “anonymously sourced” stories. But no matter what the stresses are, Barr has got to hang in there. He is the Last Great Hope for reform in our justice system. If he goes, for whatever reason, I think we may as well pack it in and say goodbye to America as we once knew her. The two-tier justice system is still very much alive and well and must be leveled.

As Constitutional scholar John Eastman said on Tuesday’s THE INGRAHAM ANGLE, “The tensions may be high, but...the WASHINGTON POST is a bit of a propaganda tool, trying to create a wedge or [throw] gasoline on the fire of what might have been a minor tension, and trying to blow it into a major tension. I don’t think it’s a major tension, [judging from] President Trump’s comments today and Attorney General Barr’s spokesman as well. Look, the President is extremely frustrated with what’s gone on, and the unequal treatment under the law --- you know, the President’s friends ought not to get special favorable treatment, but neither [should] they be targeted for special UN-favorable treatment, merely because they’re the President’s friends. And that seems to be what was going on out of the Mueller investigation [and] the indictment of Roger Stone, [with its] grossly excessive sentencing recommendation...”

Eastman thinks Stone’s sentence recommendation “quite frankly, was a set-up,” citing a report that the night before they filed it, prosecutors falsely told their DOJ superiors that it was going to be relatively modest. So what happened? Seven to nine years in prison for a 69-year-old nonviolent offender is not even close to modest. Naturally, Trump was going to Tweet about this. Eastman suspects WAPO is trying to “fuel the fire” on this story.

He described the line a President has to walk: “The President is right; he has the Article II power. He is the head of the Executive Branch. But there’s a reason every President normally stays out of individual cases, because of concerns about interjecting politics in the normal functions of justice. And speaking of “interjecting politics,” he pointed out that “twenty to one, the Department of Justice lawyers backed Hillary Clinton over President Trump with their [campaign] contributions.” He also pointed out that the DC jury pool is “90 percent hostile to Trump.” Yes, there’s good reason for the President to be frustrated, but according to Eastman, “the President needs to redirect that frustration away from Twitter tweets in particular cases.”

In other words, if the President’s running commentary really is causing problems for Barr, he’s got to rein himself in a bit. There's too much at stake, and Barr needs some space to do his job. On the other hand, the media are surely blowing this up into much more than it might actually be. President Trump has acknowledged that his commentary has made Barr’s job harder, and he seems to support Barr one hundred percent.

But the Swamp and its accomplices would like nothing more than for the rumors that Barr might leave his job to be true. That’s the story they want to tell, so it’s the story they WILL tell. Barr is their worst nightmare. We don’t know if there will be accountability for those who abused their power, but if Barr goes, chances of that are slim-to-none.

Just look at what we have going on at the moment. In the Roger Stone case, even though the jury foreman at his trial has revealed herself as an outspoken anti-Trump zealot, presiding Judge Amy Berman Jackson has announced that he will still be sentenced on Thursday as scheduled. That is stunning; Roger Stone absolutely deserves a new trial, as there is just no valid argument that his conviction resulted from a fair trial. It’s hard to believe the judge didn't dismiss the case entirely or at least order a new trial for Stone. Unless she’s planning to offer him probation --- which seems very unlikely --- this is a travesty of justice that Stone’s lawyers surely will appeal.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-to-move-forward-with-roger-stone-sentencing-amid-controversy

Then there’s the Michael Flynn case. As we reported yesterday, Barr has appointed federal prosecutor Jeffrey Jensen to review it, and on the heels of that, Flynn attorney Sidney Powell has just filed a new brief to dismiss the case “for egregious government misconduct.” Here are the details of this breaking story.

https://saraacarter.com/flynns-attorney-files-brief-to-dismiss-case-for-egregious-government-misconduct/

We also had the story yesterday about Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz’ claim that he has evidence President Obama personally directed the FBI to open an investigation at the request of leftist/globalist billionaire megadonor George Soros. (In his Tuesday podcast, Dan Bongino speculated that the “someone” was a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash, a business rival of Soros.) So it seems some investigators are finally sniffing around the Top Dog (Obama, of course --- or is that Soros?).

Barr has noted that the intelligence agencies have come to identify “the national interest with their own political preferences.” No kidding. We knew that for years they were wary of Michael Flynn because he wanted to limit and downsize them (and we’ve seen what happened to HIM). The problems are bad enough that some are even recommending abolishing the CIA and the FISA court entirely. Here’s one very detailed article about that, for when you have some time…

Abolish CIA & FISA

Going through the letters I get, it’s dismaying to see readers giving up on ever seeing accountability. I think we’re going to see it eventually, and possibly some tremendous changes in the system. YES, it takes a long time; the wheels of justice have to slog through vat after vat of molasses. Resistance will never let up. And along the way, it’s hard to see things like Judge Jackson’s latest decision on Roger Stone and the ruthless pursuit of Michael Flynn when serious liars and abusers of power go unpunished. It’s maddening and discouraging.

But as responsible citizens of a republic, we have to make ourselves look. The biggest take-away for all of us has to be this: “Elections have consequences.” The judge in Stone’s case was appointed by Obama. Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder were appointed by...Obama. Most of the State Department holdovers worked under Hillary. Congress is majority Democrat and will NEVER stop its insanity and compulsive impeaching until they are drop-kicked out of the Capitol building and down all those steps. Most importantly, if President Trump doesn’t get a second term, things will go right back to the way they were in the summer of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was the “anointed one.” Business as usual.

We can’t let that happen.

Mike Huckabee

From the “If It Weren’t For Double Standards, They’d Have No Standards at All” Dept: Byron York at Townhall.com writes about all the people who demanded, promoted, cheered on and participated in constant investigations of Donald Trump and all his associates, claiming that was a vital function of protecting our precious democracy. But now that those investigations have been exposed as politically-motivated, illegally-conducted and shadily-sourced, and the people who launched them are themselves under investigation, suddenly, investigations are a horrible partisan assault on our precious democracy.

The very same people who put other people and their families through an expensive ordeal are also now complaining about how unfair it is that they’re being put through an expensive ordeal. As Rhett told Scarlett in “Gone With The Wind,” “You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but he’s terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail."

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2020/02/19/whos-complaining-about-investigations-now-n2561502

The Potomac River is in danger of being flooded with crocodile tears over AG Barr’s legitimate and justified investigations, but as York points out, none of the people doing the crying were the least bit concerned when the DOJ was targeting their political opponents with frivolous, partisan and unfounded investigations for the past three years.

And why go back only three years? Does anyone seriously think that the political weaponizing of the federal bureaucracies only started when Trump was nominated? At The Federalist, House Oversight Committee member Rep. Chip Roy gives us a little history lesson on the politicizing of the Justice Department, and reminds us of eight major examples of it under Obama alone.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/18/left-goes-bananas-on-barrs-doj-after-ignoring-far-worse-under-obama/

Joining the transparently self-serving calls for Attorney General Barr to resign was Joe Biden, who calls Barr’s recommendation (not an order, just a recommendation that the judge is apparently going to ignore) for a lighter sentence for Roger Stone “the greatest abuse of power I have ever seen.”

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/02/18/biden-with-a-straight-face-calls-on-ag-bill-barr-to-resign-over-greatest-abuse-of-power-he-has-ever-seen-888372

I think we’ve all noticed that Joe has a very hard time keeping historical events straight in his memory, so maybe he should read the article by Chip Roy for a refresher course on what real abuse of power looks like, as exercised by the Administration he was recently a part of.

It’s also recommended reading for the editorial board of the Washington Post, which recently denounced Barr by describing him as Trump’s “wing man,” apparently forgetting that former Attorney General Eric Holder once proudly described himself as Obama’s “wing man,” and they apparently thought that was pretty cool.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/hilarious-washington-post-accuses-ag-barr-of-being-trumps-wingman/

Since Holder has also recently been denouncing Barr over false accusations that he’s doing what Holder bragged about actually doing himself, maybe he should read that Chip Roy article, too.

I think we need an investigation to see if someone dumped some sort of amnesia tonic in the DC water supply.

Mike Huckabee

“I’m gonna try to make sure that the public knows that ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ was not designed to help protect the Trump campaign, as it should have been. It was designed to destroy it.”

So said Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Sean Hannity’s Monday night show. “It reeked of political bias,” he added.

“[As for] the four front-line Mueller prosecutors who are asking for a seven-to-nine-year sentence [on Roger Stone] that was totally unjustified, there was no threat to a witness that would justify increasing the three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half-year recommendation from the guidelines. So the four prosecutors were the ones who were overzealous, and [Attorney General] Bill Barr rightly corrected that.” He said Barr stepped in and stopped what he thought was “unjust sentence enhancement.” (So that’s what it’s called!)

Graham noted that Barr also has a separate outside person looking at Trump’s original national security adviser Michael Flynn, who “was abused here.” (We’ve followed his case from the start and agree wholeheartedly.) Graham hopes the judge will void Flynn’s guilty plea. But now Andrew Weissmann, former lead investigator on the Mueller special counsel team, is muddying the waters, reportedly claiming that the Flynn review being undertaken by Barr is really a cover to look into Comey, McCabe and Strzok as well. Of course, this was blown up into a big negative story on MSNBC, but if it’s true it’s fine with me –- the review SHOULD cover them. These people are all part of Flynn’s story.

“I want to find out how far up the chain it went,” Graham said. “I want to make sure that no FISA warrant is ever issued again like it was against Carter Page. That system will have more checks and balances.” He considers “Crossfire Hurricane” to have been a danger to democracy and said Weissmann needs to explain why it took two years to complete the Mueller investigation when “he should have figured it out in the first week. There was nothing there.”

“To the people who want Barr to resign,” he said, “we know your agenda. You’re not trying to uphold the rule of law. You’re trying to take a good man down because you hate Trump.”

Precisely. Sen. Graham has started the probe he promised into the “Russia” investigation, requesting interviews with pertinent DOJ and FBI officials. He says he trusts Barr “as much as anybody I’ve ever met” to get to the bottom of what was done, and he doesn’t want to interfere with the process. And Graham knows enough about “Crossfire Hurricane” to want to make sure nothing like it ever occurs again.

The outside attorney Barr has named to look into the Flynn case is Jeffrey Jensen, the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis --- ah, good to get out of the DC swamp --- and he’ll be working alongside the lead prosecutor in the case, Brandon Van Grack. According to an official at the Justice Department, Jensen has been brought in “to get a complete and thorough understanding of the facts and the record in a complicated case.” It was just one month ago that Flynn, through his powerhouse attorney Sidney Powell, told the judge he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, and if anyone had good reason to do that, it’s Flynn.

But now, the ruthless Weissmann, who is almost certainly the real author of the “Mueller” report, is using his current position of (surprise) NBC legal analyst to defend the FBI and raise concerns about the appointment of Jensen as a “ploy” by Barr. This appears to be part of a concerted effort to discredit Jensen –- and continue the push to get rid of Barr –- before they get too close to proving what actually happened with Flynn and others who were spied on.

Weissmann noted that the judge in the Flynn case rejected claims that Flynn was set up by the FBI after seeing the facts in the underlying investigation. Judging from what we know about the underlying investigation, which certainly does seem set up, I think there must be much more to it than that.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/top-mueller-prosecutor-says-doj-starting-new-investigation-into-comey-mccabe-and-strzok/

As for Andrew McCabe, being part of The Swamp, he’s been notified through his attorney that he won’t face charges on the leaking and related lying we all know he did. Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Tucker Carlson on Monday night that the IG’s report “lays out the factual basis” for a case against McCabe; in fact, the IG even referred him for criminal prosecution to the U.S. attorney in Washington, DC.

But that was then and this is now. Roger Stone and Andrew McCabe represent the two tiers of the justice system. While McCabe avoided prosecution for clear violations, Barr had to step in (before the President tweeted, I should add) and modify the DOJ’s ungodly recommended sentence for Stone.

Knowing how hard it is to bring cases and charge people with crimes, Whitaker trusts Barr and knows “that these difficult decisions are being well considered and being made for the right reasons.” Still, while he doesn’t want to second-guess Barr, he finds it difficult to understand why McCabe hasn’t been charged.

And he hears the same thing from Americans wherever he goes. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s getting hard for Americans to have confidence in the system, which I would add is a side benefit for “progressives” who want to tear that down along with Trump and those who support him.

Speaking of Trump supporters, Alan Dershowitz isn’t exactly one of those, but he’s objective enough and loves the Constitution enough that he can see the horrendous damage being done by “his” side, the Democrats. He gives Trump credit for being out-in-the-open about any contact he makes with the Justice Department. And, in a move that will absolutely get him banned from the guest list for every high-tone cocktail party on the Upper West Side, he gets to the subject of Obama, contrasting him negatively with Trump. (Oh, my.)  To paraphrase: “Trump tweets about the DOJ; Obama whispers about it.”

And now, Dershowitz claims that he’s in possession of documents that will show President Obama asked the FBI to investigate an unnamed person on behalf of --- yikes --- George Soros. He’s planning to disclose it down the road as part of a lawsuit. The material is “about how President Obama personally asked the FBI to investigate somebody on behalf of George Soros, who was a close ally of his.”

I’m reminded that Barr has reportedly set up a process for vetting information from Rudy Giuliani; perhaps he’s doing the same for Alan Dershowitz. Neither of them get invited to those cocktail parties, anyway –- not anymore –- but something tells me they don’t much care.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-personally-asked-the-fbi-to-investigate-someone-on-behalf-of-george-soros-says-alan-dershowitz/

Mike Huckabee

Happy Presidents’ Day! This is a day when Americans celebrate all Presidents, but in a larger sense, we celebrate the system by which we pick our national leader. The Founders devised a brilliant system that gave a say to all the individual states, with their vastly different cultures and interests. We also celebrate our unprecedented history of respecting the vote of the people and the peaceful transfer of power. It’s too bad that many people now are so eager to trash the Electoral system, disrespect the voters’ choice and resist the peaceful transfer of power in the name of preserving their own political power. But they can at least pretend to respect those traditions for one day, then go back to observing “NOT My President Day” the other 364 days of the year (or 365 in leap years like this.)

I wrote an essay about Presidents’ Day in 2018, and I think it bears repeating, since nothing really has changed since it first appeared…

Monday was Presidents Day, and this year brought sobering new evidence that not only are Americans sadly ignorant of US history, but our historians aren’t exactly setting the woods on fire in that department, either.

A number of polls were released, asking the public to rank the greatest Presidents of all time. Overall, the highest vote-getters were John Kennedy, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. JFK had some major accomplishments, like the space program, but his term was tragically cut short after less than three years. Obama’s #1 ranking is similar to those Internet lists of the “all-time greatest movies” that include nothing made before 1995 (“Wow, ‘The Last Jedi’ is #1!”) They’re more a testament to the youthful ignorance of the rankers than the quality of the films. And while I take a back seat to nobody in my admiration for Reagan’s accomplishments, even he would likely protest that Washington and Lincoln should have been on top.

I don’t think most people these days appreciate the unprecedented service Washington performed by refusing to rule as a king and voluntarily stepping down from power to rejoin the people. Without his example, the presidency might not even be recognizable today. Well, at least George and Abe made the top 10 in most polls, but I suspect it’s less because of their historical significance than the fact that young people know them from the money. We’re lucky they didn’t name Alexander Hamilton as the best President, because he’s on the $10 bill and he starred in that rap musical.

But it’s easy to pick on the choices of the general public, who will naturally name things that are most recent and fresh in their minds. But what excuses do alleged experts have for their biased and uninformed choices? For instance, the 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey is based on responses from current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. They ranked Lincoln #1 and Washington #2. Their top 10 also includes Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR. But LBJ at #10? (I get it: they love big government). Reagan only made it to #9, and at #8: Barack Obama (it goes without saying that they ranked Trump dead last, despite him presiding over the destruction of ISIS, a tax cut that’s firing up the economy and the rollback of executive overreach, all in his first year -- yet he’s ranked lower than William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia 31 days after being sworn in. He must’ve had one heck of a month.)

I think all you need to know about the “expertise” (or the bias) of these particular Presidential experts is that their top 10 includes Obama but not, say, James K. Polk. Polk oversaw the winning of the Mexican-American War; the reestablishing of the independent Treasury system; the annexation of Texas; the Oregon Treaty that set the border with Canada and won more of Oregon from the British than anyone expected; and the Mexican Cession, which added territory that included the current states of California, Nevada and Utah, most of Arizona, half of New Mexico, and some pretty sizable chunks of Colorado and Wyoming. He even tried to buy Cuba, which would have prevented a lot of grief down the road, but Spain wouldn’t sell. And Polk did all that and more in just four years because he kept his promise to serve only one term. For that alone, he deserves to be in the top 10 (They rank Polk at #20, seven places below Bill Clinton).

In comparison, Obama’s eight years gave us…Obamacare? A record stretch of low GDP growth? The spread of ISIS? Michelle’s school lunch program?

I can’t help wondering how many of these alleged “presidential history experts” who lionize Obama live in states that wouldn’t even be part of America if it weren’t for James K. Polk.

Mike Huckabee

If you thought that Mike Bloomberg’s old comments about minorities and crime were bad news for his presidential campaign, then these resurfaced comments could explain why he opted to skip the Iowa Caucuses.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bloomberg-implied-farming-is-easy-in-2016-comments

Speaking at Oxford University’s business school in 2016, Bloomberg described the job of farming like this: “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.” In contrast, he said today’s information era jobs require people to learn “how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”

(FYI: his comment about the low mental difficulty of factory workers’ jobs was hardly any less dismissive.)

Naturally, this is not going over too well with the agricultural community, who, surprisingly, know how to access information on the Internet and how to read. As one commenter put it, you couldn’t ask for a better example of a clueless New York bubble dweller quote – short of saying that ranching is easy because meat comes on little Styrofoam trays so you just have to put plastic wrap over it. I could just as well reply that it’s easy to learn to code because all you have to do is “learn to code.”

There’s an entire literature of jokes built on farmers outsmarting arrogant city slickers, and those stretch back to long before farmers were using advanced technology to plan and time crop rotations, calculate yields, track weather patterns and run giant, Internet-connected farming equipment like this:

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/358512

I’ve said before that running for President these days is like undergoing a particularly thorough colonoscopy without anesthetic. Bloomberg’s billions can’t insulate him from having all his past statements dug up and parsed. And apparently, there are a lot more to come. His own employees even compiled a book of them, which shows that minorities and farmers aren’t the only people he doesn’t have much respect for (warning: some rough language at the link):

https://lidblog.com/the-portable-bloomberg/

And his reported comments to female employees, particularly about pregnant employees, aren’t likely to endear him to women voters.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bloomberg-camp-rocked-complaint-lists-mikes-shockingly-racist-sexist-remarks/

Maybe Bloomberg mistakenly thought running for President is easy: you just buy billions of dollars’ worth of ads and order your reporters not to say anything bad about you, only about the other guy. If so, he should’ve had more gray matter than to think that.

Mike Huckabee

Last week, three female high school runners filed a federal lawsuit to overturn Connecticut’s policy of allowing biological males who “identify” as girls to compete in girls’ school sports. As the story notes, “since 2017, two males have been allowed to compete in girls’ high-school track events in Connecticut. They have collectively taken 15 women’s state championship titles, all of which were previously held by females. ADF reported that these males have taken 85 advancement opportunities from female athletes in the last three seasons.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/female-athletes-file-federal-lawsuit-transgenders-repeatedly-shatter-hs-sports-records/

It’s ironic that the “social justice” crowd demand an “equal playing field” while they are literally denying that right to female athletes and turning Title IX protections for girls on their head.

In a very related story, two extremely brave university biologists have written a lengthy piece for the Wall Street Journal urging biologists and medical professionals to stop knuckling under to political correctness and stand up for the empirical fact that there are two sexes, male and female, that sex is binary (truly intersex people are extremely rare and “are neither a third sex nor proof that sex is a 'spectrum' or a 'social construct'"), and there is no such thing as a sex “spectrum.”

The biologists write that the notion that people can choose "to identify as male or female," regardless of their anatomy, is irrational and has "no basis in reality…It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution." They argue that the time for politely pretending it’s true has passed because this is harming women, gay people and children, declaring, “When authoritative scientific institutions ignore or deny empirical fact in the name of social accommodation, it is an egregious betrayal to the scientific community they represent. It undermines public trust in science, and it is dangerously harmful to those most vulnerable."

The full article is behind the WSJ’s paywall, but here’s a link to a story about it on PJ Media with another link to more included in it. This may be the latest indication that Americans are finally fed up and starting to fight back against the PC/group think/mass delusion/cancel culture mob. I think we owe President Trump a lot of the credit for showing people that you can speak your mind, stand up to all the phony outrage, fight back and win.

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/science-says-there-are-only-two-genders-no-gender-spectrum/

Mike Huckabee

Friday in Manhattan, sleazy lawyer and former liberal media darling Michael Avenatti was convicted of attempted extortion and honest services fraud for threatening to harm the company if it didn’t pay him $25 million to conduct a probe of their alleged corporate corruption. There’s some irony for you! The charges carry a combined penalty of up to 42 years in prison, but the court system is far from finished with Avenatti. He’s still facing trials in April and May for allegedly defrauding clients out of millions, including porn star Stormy Daniels. And with multiple accusations that he was living his high-flying lifestyle by stealing from clients, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see even more trials in his future.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-michael-avenatti-convicted-attempted-extortion-fraud-faces-42-years-prison/

I can almost feel sorry for Stormy Daniels. Avenatti was so sleazy, he actually managed to lead a porn star astray, convincing her to sue President Trump in a case that she not only lost but was ordered to pay $300,000 in Trump’s legal fee after having her lawyer allegedly steal $300,000 from her. I can also see how a woman desperate for cash might fall for Avenatti’s banana oil, but what is the media’s excuse?

For months, they elevated Avenatti to news channel stardom, giving him a fortune in free publicity and even seriously promoting him as a Democratic presidential contender (why do I get a feeling of déjà vu when I hear people talking about Adam Schiff in the same way?) How hard did they shove Avenatti down the public’s throat? Beckett Adams at the Washington Examiner reminds us:

“CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC featured him for a combined 147 television interviews between March 7 and 15, 2018. That is an average of nearly four interviews on each network per day. This is to say nothing of Avenatti’s many other appearances at the height of his news media-promoted stardom, including at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Association dinner and the MTV Video Music Awards.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-media-elevated-michael-avenatti-to-stardom-his-felony-conviction-reflects-on-them

I often get comments of the “how can you defend Trump?” variety. Well, when I disagree with something he says or does, I don’t defend it. But I do defend him when I think he’s the victim of unfair or unfounded attacks. If it seems I’m always defending him, it’s not because I’m a rabid Trump partisan, it’s because his enemies are constantly making unfair and unfounded attacks on him. If I’m going to write about the news, that’s what I have to do constantly!

I’ve been around the block in politics and can spot the tactics (which tend to repeat – remember when George W. Bush was the “war criminal” and “literally Hitler”?) I also am well-connected to primary sources, do a lot of reading and have an excellent research staff. And I like to think I have fairly good judgement about people, which is why I spotted what Avenatti was from day one. Believe me, that’s not any special skill worth bragging about. As Adams writes:

“Anyone could have told you, back when Avenatti first appeared on the ‘resistance’ scene, that he was a sleazy tangle of lies, corruption, and faux bravado. Anyone, that is, except for journalists, always credulous where those hostile toward Trump are involved.”

And that’s the key: all it took was for Avenatti to be vociferously anti-Trump, and claim to possess a weapon (his client’s lawsuit) that might bring down Trump, and he was automatically elevated to hero status. The media, who flatter themselves as the guardians at the portal of truth, will throw due diligence on the trash heap and celebrate anyone who shows potential to harm Trump, regardless of their credibility, from Avenatti to Schiff, from James Comey to Ambassador Sondland to Julie Swetnick (the woman who claimed without evidence that Trump SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavenaugh organized rape gangs in high school, and who was – surprise! – a client of Michael Avenatti.)

When the media complain about Trump “attacking” their credibility, they forget that they long ago flushed away their own credibility by giving a massive platform to any liar or con artist who’s willing to badmouth Trump. It’s funny that they often smear Trump as a “liar” and “con artist,” but when they report on Avenatti’s actual felony convictions, I wonder how many of them will remind us that not that long ago, they were all-in for making him President?

Mike Huckabee

Sen. Elizabeth Warren told MSNBC (of course!) what she thought was a moving and inspirational anecdote. Warren choked up a little as she related that a young woman came up to her and said she was a broke college student with a ton of loan debt and only six dollars in the bank, but she just donated three dollars to Warren’s presidential campaign to keep her going.

https://www.westernjournal.com/millionaire-warren-brags-taking-half-broke-students-money/

But it backfired when critics online slammed Warren for taking half of that poor girl’s entire pitiful savings of six dollars when she’s worth an estimated $12 million. They suggested that she should have instead given the student her three bucks back, or shown real generosity and doubled it to six dollars.

I don’t think they understand that Warren hopes to use that $3 to become President, so she can erase that girl’s student loan debt and let her go to college free by confiscating and redistributing the wealth of greedy millionaires like…well, her. Using the iron hand of government to take people’s money away and give it to other people is the “progressive” version of charity. They see it as much more efficient than putting their own hands in their pockets and giving away their own money.

Speaking of Elizabeth Warren, she’s already proposed a wealth tax, and then proposed multiple new big spending programs, each of which would cost far more than her tax would generate. When economists protested that she couldn’t afford to pay for all that, she brushed them off as not knowing what they’re talking about. So as long as she’s just shoveling money into the ocean, why not do it literally? This week, she proposed a “blue new deal” to “save the oceans,” to go along with the “green new deal” to save the planet (I kind of assumed that the $90 trillion to save the planet would include the oceans, but apparently, they’re an optional extra.)

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/warren-proposes-blue-new-deal-to-save-our-oceans

Mike Huckabee

Considering that Joe Biden’s hopes for staying alive in the Presidential race rest on turning out black voters for him in South Carolina, I can’t help thinking that his strategy for appealing to them wasn’t very well thought out. He’s running an ad that’s mostly positive until it suddenly takes a negative turn and tries to paint President Trump as a racist and America as a nation where black people are struggling to survive. He also repeats the same quote from the Rev. James Cleveland (“I ain’t no ways tired”) that Hillary Clinton famously used in 2007 and that caused her to be roundly mocked and accused of racist pandering (as Joe now is, by Deroy Murdock.)

https://www.foxnews.com/media/deroy-murdock-responds-to-bidens

And who thought it was a good idea to include that photo of the so-called “cages” at the border? I know Democrats love to blame Trump for those (actually, they are detention facilities, not “cages”), but did nobody on Joe’s staff think anyone would point out the fact that they were actually built under the Obama/Biden Administration?

If Biden wants to appeal to black voters, I’d think the last thing he’d want to do is ask them to think about how things are going for them now (wages rising, black and black youth unemployment and black poverty rates all at record lows) and vote to go back to the way things were when Obama was President. Here’s a thought: try appealing to black voters by telling them how he’s going to improve things for Americans of all races, instead of trying to frighten them by saying the other guy is a racist and wants to “put y’all back in chains” (one of his previous unfortunately quotes.) Except that would require policies that would actually improve on what’s already working. This is why we get demagoguery, pandering and race-baiting: because that’s easy and actually improving people’s lives is hard.

Mike Huckabee

As we head into the weekend, the focus is once again on the Department of Justice, with multiple breaking news stories. First, in a dismaying development, they’ve decided after two years not to press charges against former deputy FBI Director Andrew “Andy’s office” McCabe for his “lack of candor” with FBI investigators concerning a media leak he approved.

McCabe was asked about this on CNN, where he now works as a paid contributor (surprise), and he lamented having to wait so long to find out he wouldn’t be charged. Former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman commented on FOX NEWS Friday afternoon, saying to those who see “inconsistency” that we should “appreciate a Justice Department that takes its time to thoroughly investigate, makes the tough decisions. It illustrates that Barr is independent, that the Justice Department is looking at the merits. And...I’m okay with the Justice Department when they decide not to bring a case. And, let’s face it, we’re all hoping that we can de-politicize the Justice Department.”

Well, that’s putting a positive face on it. He seems to be saying that what we see as “inconsistency” is actually a good thing: a sign the DOJ acting objectively, without regard to politics. Okay, but, it still looks like yet another example of the two-tier justice system. Members of Team Trump are investigated to within an inch of their lives, convicted on process crimes and given long prison sentences, while members of Team Hillary skate away to big-money book deals and contracts as contributors for CNN and MSNBC. As that is incongruous with our view of the “new” DOJ as run by Bill Barr, I have to postulate that there’s something more to this that we don’t know. (There better be.) It’s a developing story, having just been announced, and we’ll learn more soon.

In the meantime, the media will run with the headline and paint McCabe as the straight arrow in this story, the intended victim of Trump’s retribution. Never mind that he really did oversee media leaks and mislead investigators and also that he was apparently in on the “insurance policy” scheme with Comey, Strzok and Page --- none of whom have been charged, either.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-wont-pursue-criminal-charges-against-mccabe

This news sparked a rant from Becket Adams at the WASHINGTON EXAMINER that I think you’ll appreciate.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/andrew-mccabe-shows-that-only-an-fbi-man-can-get-away-with-lying-to-the-fbi

Also, it was announced Friday that the DOJ is hiring an outside prosecutor to review former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s case. As you know, Flynn is now mounting a vigorous defense through powerhouse attorney Sidney Powell and is trying to change his “guilty” plea. Tolman commented on this story as well, saying, “The entire Flynn chapter screams of politics. And then you start to see what’s been uncovered during the investigation –- that there was doubt in the investigators’ minds as to whether or not he was actually lying...Then you have the 302 reports, and that there were some mistakes made in there. So I LIKE that he’s doing this. Look [the attorney general’s] been around, he is bright, he is strong, and he works hard, and I hope this starts to squash all the discussion that the attorney general is just going to do what is politically expedient. He is not.”

“It’s a good move to get to the bottom of what happened in that prosecution,” he concluded.

It does seem to be a positive move. A hard look at what was obviously done to railroad Mike Flynn is just what he needs now. Let’s hope that’s what he gets.

Justice Department taps outside prosecutor to review handling of Michael Flynn case

Mike Huckabee

Interesting turn of events: Nevada’s powerful Culinary Workers’ Union announced that it will not endorse a candidate in the upcoming Democratic Primary. Joe Biden was counting on that endorsement. The union issued some boilerplate comments about how all the candidates are great, but it’s no secret that they don’t like Bernie Sanders’ idea of trading in their high quality, hard-won union worker health care benefits for “Medicare For All.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/powerhouse-nevada-union-declines-to-endorse-democratic-candidate

Since this is from Bloomberg.com, it naturally doesn’t mention that some political analysts wonder if Trump’s success in bringing back blue collar jobs, creating a booming economy (which is the lifeblood of a tourism town like Las Vegas), and presiding over rising wages might be forcing union bosses who reflexively back Democrats to listen to their members, who like what Trump is doing and don’t want to go back to the Democrats’ stagnation and war on free enterprise.

Mike Huckabee

After a few days of public name-calling, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo actually met with President Trump on Thursday to talk about the Administration’s decision to remove New Yorkers from Global Entry and several other Trusted Traveler Programs that let people avoid long lines when returning from abroad.

Cuomo has been railing that it was political retribution and trying to paint it as a personal attack by Trump on New York with nefarious racist intentions. In fact, it was done because the databases to insure travelers are allowed in the US legally and don’t have criminal records are based on state drivers’ license records – and New York recently started giving licenses to undocumented immigrants and blocking the feds from seeing their state motor vehicle database with the necessary background information.

In short, the state expects federal agencies entrusted with guarding national security to have as little regard for who someone is and whether they’re in America legally or not as New York liberal Democrats do.

Not unexpectedly, there were no breakthroughs in the meeting, although Cuomo signaled a willingness to compromise a little by restoring federal access to driving records “on a limited basis.” Which is useless, not just because it’s limited but because having a New York drivers’ licenses will still be no guarantee that someone has the legal right to be in America at all. And he’s still vowing that “If they think they're going to extort New York into giving them a database of undocumented people, they're wrong. I will never do that."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-cuomo-fail-to-reach-agreement-global-entry-suspension-sanctuary-state

It’s a welcome development to see Cuomo at least putting aside the overheated rhetoric for an hour and having a White House meeting with Trump “as if he’s the President.” But if he expects Trump to compromise on national security, I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. Gov. Cuomo needs to realize that as chief executive of his state, it’s his sworn duty to faithfully execute the laws, not to aid and abet people who violate them. His government’s indulgence for lawbreakers is already causing a spike in crime in New York, and President Trump is absolutely correct to hold firm in refusing to allow the contagion to spread to the federal level.

It's too bad all New Yorkers have to pay for the stubbornness and bad policies of their politicians. But if you elect people who refuse to take their jobs seriously and respect federal law, then go stand in the back of the line.

Mike Huckabee

The Washington Free Beacon reports that liberal groups and New York attorneys are rushing to Detroit to help the city fight a lawsuit that seeks to force Detroit to clean up its voter roll irregularities.

https://freebeacon.com/issues/liberal-groups-and-high-powered-lawyers-swarm-detroit-to-keep-dead-voters-on-rolls/

A recent study found that Detroit has 479,267 individuals eligible to vote and 511,786 registered voters. Those include about 500 duplicate registrations and 2500 dead people. The leftist groups are fighting the effort to purge dead, fake and ineligible voter registrations. As the article notes:

“Democrats have built a massive network of nonprofit groups, funded by George Soros and other liberal donors, to oppose Republican-backed voting initiatives such as voter identification laws. Michigan is a significant target for such efforts given its 'swing state' status; Trump won the state by just 10,000 votes in the 2016 election.”

Far be it from me to deny dead people representation, but I get tired of hearing the claim that every attempt to stop voter fraud or clean up registration rolls is an attempt to “disenfranchise” Democratic voters. The reason this so angers me is because, in fact, every fraudulent vote cast is a real case of disenfranchising a voter.

The right to vote is one of our most fundamental rights. Whenever anyone who has no legal right to vote does so anyway (or a vote is cast in someone else’s name, or someone votes more than once), that vote cancels out a legitimate vote. Some American citizen was deprived of their sacred right to have a say in their own government.

I will start believing the people fighting attempts to clean up voter rolls really care about disenfranchising voters when I see them express equal outrage over citizens’ legitimate votes being rendered nil by fraudulent ballots.

Mike Huckabee

If you’re wondering why Democrats are trying to resurrect the ERA (“Equal Rights Amendment”), a 1970s relic that’s as unlamented as the polyester leisure suit, it’s not nostalgia or the “progressive” urge to revive all the terrible ideas of the past, like segregation and socialism. There is a stealth reason why three blue states (Nevada, Illinois and Virginia) have voted to ratify it even though the deadline expired 40 years ago, and why House Democrats are pushing a resolution to overturn the deadline, despite a DOJ ruling that that’s unconstitutional (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed that any ratification would have to start from scratch.)

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/12/ruth-bader-ginsburg-goes-from-leftist-hero-to-has-been-in-one-interview/

As Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler and Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser write at this link…

https://www.westernjournal.com/congress-vote-serious-threat-women-unborn/

…the attempt to resuscitate the corpse of the ERA is backed by radical pro-abortion groups who see it as a backdoor way to guarantee taxpayer-paid abortion on demand. For instance, New Mexico passed a state-level version of the ERA, and its state Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it means the state government (i.e., the taxpayers, including pro-life taxpayers) is required to fund abortion services.

As the writers note, this is a perversion of the original intent of the ERA, whose author, feminist Alice Paul, was pro-life, and who complained that ratification was made harder by supporters who advocated abortion, saying, “As far as I can see, ERA has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion.”

Most Americans also can’t see that it has anything connection with abortion, which is why radical abortion advocates have seized on it as the perfect Trojan horse to use to sneak an agenda past the public that the vast majority of Americans would find abhorrent. But now, you have been warned: the return of the ERA isn’t a harmless anachronism, like “Disco Night.” It’s not an attempt to revive the past, it’s an attempt to erase a lot of unborn children’s futures at your expense.

Mike Huckabee

There seems to be widespread agreement in liberal circles that 18-year-olds are too immature to be trusted with anything dangerous. They want 21 to be the legal age to smoke cigarettes, vape, drunk alcohol or buy a gun.

Yet they will fight to the death to make sure children 16 and younger can decide for themselves whether to have doctors shoot them full of puberty-blocking drugs with unknown potential side-effects on their bodies, if they believe they’re transgender. We can’t test cosmetics on animals, but we can use our children as guinea pigs for testing unproven puberty blocking chemicals.

In South Dakota, there was an attempt to change the law to stop what would, in previous years, have been immediately recognized as dangerous quackery and child abuse. And despite the fact that the South Dakota government is entirely run by Republicans, with staggering majorities in both Houses, the attempt failed when the House passed it but the Senate did not.

https://www.westernjournal.com/south-dakota-senate-bows-lgbt-outrage-mob-kills-child-sex-change-bill/

And here’s an article from last week, before the bill was defeated, that includes more background about how giving dangerous chemicals to children has become a trendy political crusade, and what it can do to their bodies. Also, what the advocates for this don’t want you to know. Like how Jazz Jennings has been touted as the public face of a healthy transgender child for years, but we’re only now learning that she suffered severe complications and went through four painful surgeries because years of hormone blockers while still growing caused her sexual organs to develop in ways that the surgeons weren’t sure how to deal with.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/south-dakota-house-passes-bill-to-protect-kids-from-chemical-castration/

Mike Huckabee

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a Cook County, Illinois, grand jury has just indicted actor Jussie Smollett on charges related to filing a false police report about a staged hate crime. And yes, it’s the same staged hate crime, not a new one. The one where he claimed that two white racists in MAGA caps who just happened to be carrying rope in subzero Chicago temperatures at 2 a.m. recognized him and launched a homophobic attack. Police later determined the “attackers” were two Nigerian brothers associated with Smollett. They believe the motive was to attain publicity and sympathy that would get him a raise from his TV series “Empire,” at the expense of tarring Trump voters as racist thugs and risking possible violent retribution and racial animosity.

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/02/11/jussie-smollett-new-charges-special-prosecutor-dan-webb-cook-county-states-attorney-kim-foxx/

Smollett’s attorneys called the indictment “political” and an affront to justice, but many Americans thought the real affront to justice was when the Cook County prosecutor simply dropped the 16 charges against Smollett, claiming that was standard procedure for a first time offender. The case was assigned to special prosecutor Dan Webb, a former federal prosecutor, who conducted a six month investigation. He said, “The grand jury’s investigation revealed that Jussie Smollett planned and participated in a staged hate crime attack, and thereafter made numerous false statements to Chicago Police Department officers on multiple occasions, reporting a heinous hate crime that he, in fact, knew had not occurred.” Webb also said the county prosecutors were unable to provide any evidence that the previous dismissal was in line with similar cases.

In their defense, I would hope it would be impossible to point to any cases similar to the Jussie Smollett case.

Mike Huckabee

Must-Read Essay! Karlyn Borysenko was a longtime Democrat, MSNBC viewer, and believer in all the horrible things she had been told about Donald Trump and his racist, deplorable followers. She even unfriended and blocked people on her social media pages who said anything positive about Trump. But she was also a member of an online knitting community. She noticed how leftwing “social justice warrior” types took over even something that apolitical and started bullying anyone who didn’t agree with them 100%.

So she stated listening to people on the “other side.” She discovered they actually weren’t mean, evil, racist white supremacists. That led her to the Walkaway movement, which the left had told her was just Russian bots (no, they were real people fed up with leftist hate and intolerance.) It culminated in her doing the once unthinkable: she attended a Trump rally in Manchester, and was treated…nicely! And she learned that Trump supporters aren’t a mindless cult that think he's a god (in fact, most wish he’d quit Twitter), but they appreciate that he’s keeping his promises and has a positive vision for America’s future -- unlike the unrelenting gloom-and-doom of the Democrats, who can see nothing good in our horrible, racist, climate-destroying country.

https://medium.com/@karlyn/ive-been-a-democrat-for-20-years-here-s-what-i-experienced-at-trump-s-rally-in-new-hampshire-c69ddaaf6d07

Read the entire article and follow her journey of discovery as her mind and her eyes are slowly opened. She’s not entirely there yet (she still backs Pete Buttigieg and believes some negative Trump tropes.) But she’s now an Independent, so there’s a good first step.

She’s also learned something I’ve been preaching for years: that most people are not radical political caricatures; most people want the best for their families and their country; they might just disagree on what that is or how to get there. That’s why it’s important to talk civilly to each other and listen to each other. It’s why I have an open invitation to all the Democratic Presidential candidates to come on my show, where I guarantee they will get a friendly greeting, a fair hearing and a civil discussion (so far, only Tulsi Gabbard and John Delaney have taken me up on it.)

Reading through the comments, I see that most are very supportive, which is heartening, but there are still a couple from people who have yet to break out of the bubble. They think she’s been deluded or tricked by us evil, racist Trump supporters, hiding our white supremacist intentions. One insists that most of the political violence today comes from the right. I have to assume that she lives in a bubble that formed on another planet.

When was the last time you heard of riots, violence and threats on campus from some Young Republican group trying to keep a liberal from speaking? On the other hand, here’s an entire documentary about leftist fascist thuggery, on campus and elsewhere:

https://nosafespaces.com/

I also haven’t heard about a lot of Democratic headquarters being vandalized, or any Republicans driving a van through a tent full of elderly Bernie Sanders volunteers. And yes, the jerk who did that to the Trump people was politically motivated.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-man-arrested-republican-tent-trump

Nor can I find too many instances of Republicans physically assaulting people for wearing pro-Democratic apparel – or something that sort of looks like it, if your Trump Derangement Syndrome has rendered you functionally illiterate.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/retired-nypd-cop-says-he-was-assaulted-in-nashville-bar-over-make-50-great-again-birthday-hat-report

Finally, as long as I’m pointing out that it’s a lot more fruitful to look for the good in people than to blindly assume anyone who disagrees with you is 100% EEEEEEVIL, here’s a Throwback Thursday link for you. It' from 2016, and I first wrote about it back then and have referred to it occasionally since. But this is a good time for a refresher reading, in light of the Democratic Presidential candidates once against painting Donald Trump as a mean, selfish, bullying liar who is without a shred of decency and who never did anything for anyone other than himself (yes, those are actual descriptions.)

This is an article by an entertainment reporter whose job was to cover Trump long before he went into politics. She was paid to dig up dirt, but just couldn’t find any. But she did uncover a lot of stories of him reaching out to help people in need, some of which she recounted here:

https://townhall.com/columnists/lizcrokin/2016/07/10/trump-does-the-unthinkable-n2190160

The whole article is a great antidote to all the partisan hatred and slander, but this line might be the most telling of all: “…in all my years covering him, I’ve never heard anything negative about the man until he announced he was running for President.”

Gee, I wonder why that is?

Mike Huckabee

Only in today’s Democratic Party could someone like former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg be considered a "moderate."

The prevailing narrative of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has been shaped by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his unrepentant socialism, which has bifurcated the party between outspoken extremists and radicals masquerading as moderates.

On the one hand, there is Bernie himself and the similarly extremist candidacy of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. On the other hand are the candidates who have been assigned the misleading appellation “moderates” simply because they stop short of preaching outright revolution.

The alternatives to Sanders are handed the moderate label more as a matter of convenience than because their policies actually conform to the American mainstream.

Until recently, the standard-bearer for this group was former Vice President Joe Biden. But Biden’s spectacular demise – a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses and a truly embarrassing failure to even hit the 10 percent mark in the New Hampshire primary – has sent the Democratic establishment scrambling for someone to fill the role of the putative “moderate” in the race.

Many are gravitating toward Buttigieg, whose seldom-examined policy agenda is, in fact, so far to the left that it would have been unimaginable in the Democratic Party of President Barack Obama, let alone that of President Bill Clinton.

Clinton, for instance, won the White House in 1992 while calling for abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare” – a strategy that also worked for Obama 16 years later. That constitutes a moderate position, at least within the Democratic Party.

So-called “moderate” Pete Buttigieg, however, has taken a much more aggressively pro-abortion approach, opposing restrictions on abortion right up to the moment of birth. If that makes Mayor Pete a “moderate” then let’s call Col. Sanders a vegan!

A 2018 Gallup poll found that only a truly tiny minority of Americans – 13 percent – believe abortion should generally be legal in the third trimester. Even among Democrats, only 18 percent think abortion should generally be legal in the third trimester, making Mayor Pete’s position truly extreme.

Buttigieg is even more radical when it comes to criminal justice reform, pledging to “Ensure more people are free by significantly reducing the number of people incarcerated in the United States at both the federal and state level by 50%.”

Between jails and prisons, that would mean about 1.1 million convicted criminals released into American communities. They wouldn’t all be “non-violent drug offenders,” either – though Buttigieg is saying that as president he would decriminalize possession of all drugs, including meth and heroin.

President Trump has gotten behind historic federal sentencing reform, too, but he took a much more responsible approach. Recognizing the excesses of the so-called “War on Drugs” and its devastating impact on some poor and minority communities, he signed the First Step Act into law.

The First Step Act offers certain nonviolent offenders opportunities to reduce their sentences by participating in programs designed to help them become productive members of society. That is a moderate position, and the broad bipartisan support for the First Step Act is proof.

Casually releasing more than 1 million criminals onto the streets is decidedly not a moderate position.

Supporting open borders is also a far cry from what any reasonable person would call “moderate” – so it should come as no surprise that Mayor Pete not only embraces unfettered illegal immigration, but actually wants to encourage more of it.

Mike Huckabee

After the impeachment trial fizzled, Democrats needed something else right away to go after President Trump for. Fortunately for them, they’re gifted with being able to turn on a dime and quickly “find” something else to turn into a federal case (literally). They will stop at nothing. Between now and the election –- and afterwards –- they'll keep him in their sights, demanding investigation after investigation. So, what is it this time?

It’s his tweets about the Roger Stone sentencing.

President Trump tweets about everything. Sick of the media distorting everything he says and does, he takes it directly to his audience. But the media work overtime to use the tweets against him, too. The folks at MSNBC and CNN have lost their minds once again, over the Stone case and also his suggestion that the Pentagon might look into Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman; they’re likening Trump to the “dictator” of a “banana republic.” On the contrary, it’s in a banana republic that we see egregious prosecutorial abuse, people getting prison sentences way out of proportion to their crimes simply for getting caught up in a fight for political power.

Devin Nunes and some other House Republicans suspect that the Mueller prosecutors set up Stone and some others, to be able to “put the squeeze” on them to get damaging information on Trump. “We believe that this is not gonna be the only example,” Nunes said on FBC’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” “We think there’s other examples of things that they did during the Mueller investigation that...the American people will be very interested to learn in the coming weeks, as we start to [peel] the onion of what the Mueller team was really doing.”

I told you yesterday about the reaction from Sen. Chuck Schumer and Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler to the President’s tweets about the outrageous sentence recommended by prosecutors for Stone, who had the misfortune to be caught up in the effort to “get” the President. Their investigation tried unsuccessfully to tie him to WikiLeaks and an attempt to use Russian-hacked (so they said) emails to hurt the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton, but they got him on a process crime. Now Democrats accuse Trump of trying to interfere with a criminal prosecution. With tweets.

No doubt Trump feels bad for Stone, as he does for his original national security adviser Michael Flynn and others who are collateral damage in the Democrats’ strategy to oust him. Former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort, 70, spent long months in solitary confinement and is now serving a sentence that could keep him behind bars for life. Now prosecutors are recommending a sentence for the 67-year-old Stone of seven to nine years –- also a possible life sentence –- on charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

Trump has said he didn’t talk to anyone in the DOJ about Stone’s case but that it would’ve been all right to do so. Contacts within the bureaucracy who know how things are done say this sentencing controversy must have been going on for weeks, certainly before Trump tweeted anything about it. Doesn’t matter. Ha, don’t be surprised if an anonymous “whistleblower” (or two or three) come forward to claim they overheard Trump say to the AG that he expects the prosecution to go easy on Roger Stone, or else the DOJ’s funding will be withheld. To add even more drama, perhaps Schiff could go on the floor of Congress to recite for the record a “parody” of what he alleges Trump said to Barr behind closed doors.

Already they’re calling for Barr to...(yes) resign as attorney general. And some of them are threatening Trump with Impeachment 2.0. California Rep. Eric Swallwell let this one rip on Wednesday with Jake Tapper on CNN: “...We’re not going to just let him torch this democracy because he thinks that he’s been let off once and we’re not going to do something about it.” I think we know who’s been trying to torch the democracy for the past few several years, and it ain’t Trump.

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/02/12/swalwell-impeaching-trump-over-roger-stone-is-not-off-the-table/

Former South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy defended Barr for deciding to review the harsh sentence recommended for Stone. “There are child pornographers who don’t get nine years,” he said. “There are people who rob banks who don’t get nine years. So let the judge decide. I think two or three years is about right.” Gowdy said it would have been inappropriate for Trump to weigh in before the decision was made, but he contended that Barr was aware of the recommendation long before “Trump ever tweeted a single syllable.”

https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/12/trey-gowdy-roger-stone-bill-barr/

The DOJ didn’t need Trump to call their attention to this extraordinarily punitive sentence. According to Chuck Ross at the DAILY CALLER, “Justice Department officials were reportedly ‘shocked’ by federal prosecutors’ recommendation that longtime Trump associate Roger Stone serve up to nine years in prison...”

https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/11/doj-shocked-roger-stone-sentence/

So, if Trump had nothing to do with Barr’s involvement in the case...well, then he must have been trying to bully this judge with his tweets. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It could be argued, though, that the judge might be even harder on Stone now, just to show she isn’t intimidated by the President. The judge determines the sentence, and after what Stone has already been through, it would be sad if he were now caught in the crossfire between her and the President. The latest news at this writing is that the judge has denied Stone’s attorneys’ request for a new trial.

If you missed what Tucker Carlson had to say about this Tuesday night, he noted the same thing I have about the comparative harshness of this sentence and gave some specific examples. The average sentence for a rapist is four years. The average sentence for an armed robber is three-and-a-half years. For violent assault, it’s a year and a half. He calls for Trump to pardon Stone rather than let him die in prison as CNN would like. Here’s the link to his must-see rant.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/11/tucker-carlson-roger-stone-pardon-sentencing/

Predictably, Democrats are pulling out all the stops to silence Barr and those who offer evidence that supports the President and reveals their own wrongdoing. They have a big problem with him getting information on Ukraine from Rudy Giuliani, since Giuliani is Trump's attorney. (My answer: If it’s true, so what?) Watch what Democrats do now to try to damage both of them, for sniffing too close to the corruption.

Barr has agreed to go before the House Judiciary Committee on March 31 –- wish it were sooner.

As for Trump, he will not be silenced. He’s been on a justifiable tweet-rant on the two-tier justice system. And on Wednesday, the day before her Senate hearing, he withdrew U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu’s nomination as undersecretary in the Treasury Department. Until her nomination, she’d overseen the prosecutions of both Stone and Flynn. For a lively read on the newly emboldened post-impeachment President, here’s Kurt Schlichter…

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/02/10/time-for-trump-to-get-his-godfather-on-n2561014

And here’s a hot-and-fresh one, specific to the Stone case…

Trump Charges the Liberal Hacks’ Latest Ambush

Mike Huckabee

In the Trump administration’s war against the ‘deep state,’ there’s news on multiple fronts. Here’s the rundown for today…

While we’ve been looking at Manafort and the Ukraine, there have been some big developments in the ongoing Roger Stone case, as he’s scheduled to be sentenced on February 20. (Recall that his home was invaded by an FBI S.W.A.T. team in full combat gear while CNN had cameras rolling.) President Trump tweeted explosively about the recommended sentence, saying, “Who are the four prosecutors (Mueller people??) who cut and ran after being exposed for recommending a ridiculous 9 year prison sentence for a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started? 13 Angry Democrats?”

One of the prosecutors in question, Aaron Zelinsky, did indeed work on Mueller’s special counsel team. All four prosecutors resigned from the case after the DOJ asked a federal court to reduce the seven-to-nine-year prison sentence they had recommended for the 67-year-old Stone, who was found guilty of seven counts of lying to Congress and witness tampering when the feds were investigating his possible involvement with WikiLeaks and information purportedly hacked by Russia. (Nothing came of that, incidentally.) The DOJ said some prison time would be appropriate, but not such a long sentence, which they termed “extreme and excessive and grossly disproportionate to Stone’s offenses.”

These prosecutors must have really wanted to clap Stone in jail and throw away the key. One of them, Jonathan Kravis, announced his resignation as an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving his job entirely.

Trump’s critics expressed alarm –- stop the presses –- at what they theorize is his interference with what certainly would be a severe punishment, possibly even a life sentence for a man of his age. In fact, many killers and rapists get less prison time than they are recommending for Stone. (And Democrats who lie to Congress get to walk free, ha.) Trump told reporters he had not spoken with DOJ officials about the case but maintained he had the right to do that. He didn’t say whether he might commute Stone’s sentence. I would add he has the right to do that, too.

"I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous,” Trump said. “I thought it was an insult to our country.”

As if on cue, Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler and Chuck Schumer had a collective fit about Trump’s comments, with Schumer calling for the DOJ inspector general to begin a formal investigation into the reduced sentencing recommendation. “This situation has all the indicia of improper political interference in a criminal prosecution,” he wrote to IG Michael Horowitz. “I therefore request that you immediately investigate this matter to determine how and why the Stone sentencing recommendations were countermanded, which Justice Department officials made this decision, and which White House officials were involved.”

Good grief. These three lowlifes have all the indicia of Trump-deranged prosecutors who failed to get their nemesis tossed out of office. If they got even a week in prison for every whopper they’ve told in the House and Senate, they’d never see the light of day again. Even better, we’d never have to see them.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/482655-doj-lawyers-resign-en-masse-over-roger-stone-sentencing

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/482694-trump-swipes-at-resigned-prosecutors-judge-in-roger-stone-case

On another front, Rudy Giuliani, who has said he has the goods on the DNC and Ukraine, is indeed being vetted by Attorney General Barr’s Justice Department, as Barr announced on Monday. In other words, Giuliani wasn’t just blowing smoke on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday show. According to Barr, they have “established an intake process in the field so that any information coming in about Ukraine could be carefully scrutinized by the Department and its intelligence community partners so that we could assess its provenance and its credibility. And that is true of all information that comes to the Department relative to Ukraine, including anything Mr. Giuliani might provide.”

Giuliani claims there are three Ukrainian officials willing to testify about a meeting at the White House in January of 2016 involving a secret bid to interfere in the November election in which Donald Trump was a candidate. “The three of them will say that they were at the National Security Council and two members of the [NSC] who represented Biden asked them basically to dig up dirt on the Party of Regions and any of their consultants, and their consultant was Manafort. It was later clarified they wanted Manafort. And one of the key people at the meeting making the request is one of the people suspected of being the whistleblower.”

Giuliani doesn’t say it here, but I will: he’s talking about ERIC CIARAMELLA, the NSA official that everyone knows (unofficially) is the “whistleblower” but that hardly anyone will dare to name. I do, of course, because he's not a real whistleblower at all but part of a plot to target Trump for his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, and he is not entitled to anonymity. His NSA colleagues Sean Misko and Abigail Grace went to work on Adam Schiff’s staff. Recall that two weeks after Trump was sworn in, CIARAMELLA and Misko, who had some foreign policy disagreements with the new President, were overheard in the White House proclaiming they were going to take Trump down. This is the guy; he’d been working in the White House since 2015 and was one of hundreds of Obama “holdovers.”

As Giuliani describes the witnesses’ accounts of the January 2016 meeting, “Obama’s people are asking political operatives of Ukraine to get information on the Trump campaign. It’s as simple as that.”

I've been saying that the Democrat Party and the media (sorry for the redundancy) are desperate to bring down John Solomon and Rudy Giuliani, and this is why. The Swamp is out to destroy them both. In the case of Giuliani, his effort is no longer just about protecting his client from the slings and arrows of outrageous Democrats. And it’s certainly not to take Joe Biden down as a candidate; Biden will certainly not be the Democrat nominee and Trump likely never thought he would be a political threat. J. D. Rucker of the NOQ REPORT is correct when he says this of Giuliani and The Swamp:

"They’re going after him for the sake of vengeance over what he has uncovered so far. They’re going after him out of a sense of self-preservation to stop what he might find next. They’re firing every political and media weapon they have at their disposal at him in an effort to slow him down if not dissuade him from pushing forward. They’re scared. They fear his courage and his resolution. And they should. Whatever they’re hiding, Giuliani is digging until he finds it. All of it.”

The same, of course, can be said of The Swamp's reaction to Solomon and any other reporters who have refused to be deterred. Also Devin Nunes and a few others in the House and Senate. And Barr, of course.

The Democrats’ narrative is that Giuliani is a “loose cannon,” but what that really means is that he is a patriot who isn’t held in check by congressional oversight or the bureaucracy. He’ll do what he thinks is right.

https://noqreport.com/2020/02/11/why-rudy-giulianis-ongoing-battle-with-the-bidens-is-more-significant-than-most-realize/

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

Dear Rush,

I’ve had a couple of days now to process your news, and have decided it would be a good thing to write to you. As a writer/researcher for Gov. Mike Huckabee, I thought I’d also post it on the Huckabee website (with his blessing) and share it with many others who have listened to you and loved you for years. Certainly a lot of your fans are the Gov’s fans, and vice versa.

President Trump’s triumphant State Of The Union Address has just ended, and I was so happy to see you sitting there with Melania, as were many millions of others who had tuned in. This was the most powerful, confident and upbeat SOTU speech I’ve ever watched, and actually being there in that room amidst all that unspoken seething drama must have been an amazing experience. The news that you would be receiving the Presidential Medal Of Freedom had come out earlier in the evening, but who knew that you would be sitting there in the box tonight, that the honor would apparently be a surprise to you, and that it would be bestowed on you right then, on the spot! I guess they must have somehow kept you away from news reports for just long enough.

How appropriate that you would be presented this honor. I had the tissues out, to be sure. Your life cannot be separated from the American history of the past few decades, as they are so closely interwoven. You’ve been instrumental in shaping the radio industry and modern politics, and in touching lives. I’ve been listening to you for a long time and have seen all those changes.

When my then-boyfriend-later-husband (Pat Reeder, who also writes for Gov. Huckabee) first turned on your show for me while we out driving around, I have to admit I groaned. You were in the middle of talking about feminism, and you happened to bring up one of your Undeniable Truths Of Life: that feminism existed to give unattractive women easier access to mainstream society. To me, that seemed more like a defense of feminism, though I couldn’t tell if you meant it that way. Unattractive women SHOULD have access to mainstream society, I reasoned, and if they don’t have it without feminism, then feminism is a good thing. But if you were going to be critical of feminism, did that mean you thought unattractive women should NOT have access? You see my quandry. So my introduction to you was not altogether positive.

But I kept listening and gradually learned that you had an amazing view of the political landscape. So much insight. As for feminism, I’ve always thought of myself as a feminist in the classical sense, believing I should just move forward in the world as it is, as a man would do, and live the life I want to pursue rather than be pressured into something that’s wrong for me. But I came to understand that you were talking mostly about the feminist MOVEMENT, and the feminist movement did betray me, with its laser-beam focus on “reproductive rights” (abortion on demand) and its insistence on having a lot of things both ways. (The inconsistency is even worse today, as can be seen when you juxtapose the “principles” of the #MeToo movement with J-Lo’s sexed-up “empowering” pole dance at the Super Bowl.)

Anyway, the point is, I haven’t always agreed with you, but most of the time, certainly on politics, you were spot-on. It was obvious that critics of your show either didn’t listen at all or didn’t listen enough to understand what you meant, to know when you were being tongue-in-cheek. So often, they didn’t get the joke. Leftists hardly ever get the joke.

Since my husband and I are comedy writers, we have especially appreciated the humor in your show. Looking back, it seems there used to be more of that than there has been in recent years. Maybe that’s just a reflection of the times we’re in right now. (Humor today is not for the faint of heart!) Still, over the years, the many fall-down-funny song parodies you featured inspired me to write more of them myself. Thank you so much for that!

I’m indebted to you in another way, Rush. About 15 years ago, I lost the hearing in my left ear after surgery for Meniere’s Disease. The vertigo attacks were gone, but I was deaf on that side, with loud tinnitus. As I am a singer, this has been extremely challenging to deal with. But when you became totally deaf in BOTH ears, you still managed to continue your career in RADIO, no less! I was stunned at your determination to keep at it and find a way not to give up the work that so many of us value and count on. If you could do that with total hearing loss, then maybe I could find ways to keep going with music, recording and even live performances. You have been such an inspiration to me in that way, and I did eventually find help. Thank you so much.

I also admire you for sticking to your guns when you were savaged, not just by leftists but by some conservatives, for supporting Trump in 2016. As President, he has proved his conservative critics wrong --- wow, he truly has governed as a conservative --- but you seemed to really understand his potential as a conservative leader before many others on the right did.

I hope you’ll be able to be at the Golden EIB Microphone most of the time during this crazy political year. When you need some time away, we’ll understand, wishing the very best for you and hoping you’ll be recovered from treatment and back soon. I think this year will pretty much determine the future of America, so please be here for us when you can, Rush.

You’ve always said you were “having more fun than any human being should be allowed to have.” How wonderful to lead such a rich life, doing exactly what you want, and create an amazing legacy while you’re at it.

Well, I guess that’s about all. I just wanted to say how much you mean to me and to so many, but in the process I realized that mere words don’t quite get there. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to meet you personally and shake your hand, so I’ll just imagine I’m shaking your hand now. (Pause for imaginary hand-shaking. Sorry, my hand is sweating a little.) Thanks for everything, Rush. Much love to you and yours.

Sincerely,

Laura Ainsworth

Mike Huckabee

Give Sen. Mitt Romney credit for one thing: he’s certainly sparked a renewed interest in politics back in his “home state” of Utah. By voting with the Democrats to convict President Trump on their first Article of Impeachment (abusing his power by using it pretty much the same way every President in history has), Romney has spurred a flurry of citizen activism. Some Trump critics have turned out to rally, declaring him a hero and the conscience of DC (I suspect they're the same people who called Romney a racist, elitist, bullying, dog-torturing, corporate raider who gave his employees cancer and kept women in binders, back when he was on the other side – and who will again, the minute he inevitably flip-flops).

Meanwhile, a bill to allow voters to recall errant Senators that has been languishing in the Utah state House since before impeachment even became an issue suddenly has half a dozen new co-sponsors. Its author, Rep. Tim Quinn, says he got over a hundred phone calls and 250 emails in just over an hour that were “100% positive.”

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/2/5/21125200/mitt-romney-trump-impeachment-acquit-senate-vote-convict-utah-legislature-recall

Romney supporters say he shouldn’t be recalled for displaying “character.” Why, exactly, it shows “character” to violate your sworn oath to “support and defend the Constitution” by ratifying the House’s unprecedented, partisan and unconstitutional impeachment process, or to find someone guilty on evidence that one week before he’d proclaimed to be insufficient to determine guilt, I cannot say. I do think the vote showed Romney’s predictable character, which I predicted here before he even announced it by referencing the fable about the scorpion that stung the friendly frog that was giving it a ride across the river. The scorpion explained, “It’s in my nature.”

Romney obviously believes he was taking the moral, Biblical high ground (aside from ignoring the “Thou shalt not bear false witness” part.) But for those in Utah who believe he should be recalled and are looking for grounds that Romney cannot argue with without looking like a hypocrite, try this:

“The great state of Utah deserves a Senator who didn’t win his election largely because of the endorsement of a President whom he himself has officially declared to be guilty of a ‘severe,’ ‘egregious’ and ‘abusive’ attack on the Constitution.”

In fact, if he really is as morally superior as he claims to be, shouldn’t he save the public the trouble of changing the law and recalling him by resigning for his own egregious sin of accepting the Senate endorsement of such a terrible, lawless President? He even unsuccessfully angled for a job as his Secretary of State. Just think, if he’d actually gotten that job, the Democrats would have subpoenaed him to reveal classified, personal conversations with the President…and when Trump cited executive privilege, imagine what his new pals would be calling Romney now!

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-voices-support-mitt-romney-campaign-senate/story?id=53208232

Mike Huckabee

(Note to Alexa from the Gov: I assume you mean Mike Bloomberg IDENTIFIES as a 5'8" man. Or maybe that's his height if you include the box he's standing on.)

From Betty:

Last evening, my husband and I were talking about the possibility that Mike Bloomberg requested a box to stand on for the debate. I asked Alexa how tall Bloomberg was, and she immediately replied 5'8". I then asked how tall President Trump was, and she replied 6'2". A few seconds later, Alexa said she found another item that I might like. She then started repeating the news item about Trump saying "the great state of Kansas" when congratulating the Chiefs on their Super Bowl win. I interrupted her and asked why she was quoting stories to trash President Trump. She said something like "I'll take note of that." We were stunned that Jeff Bezo's Alexa is providing unsolicited commentary on President Trump.

From the Gov:

Thanks, Betty. I'll take note of that! It doesn't surprise me at all. I wonder if Alexa ever volunteers news about the record-low unemployment rate or the latest lie from James Comey or Adam Schiff. I also wonder if Alexa will fit down the garbage disposal if you shove really hard.

Mike Huckabee

Okay, I admit it: I was wrong. I thought nothing could make the Democrats look worse than their disastrously incompetent Iowa Caucus debacle on Monday (it’s Wednesday, and we still don’t have final results.) But then came their behavior Tuesday in front of the entire world during President Trump’s State of the Union Address. I stand corrected.

Any independent voters who might still have been remotely considering putting them in charge of anything more complicated than a snowcone machine had to be shocked and repelled by their ugly, divisive, nasty, childish behavior that not only expressed visceral hatred of the President but of everything he does, no matter how much it helps America or the people or causes they claim to support.

But before we get into the reaction, a few words about the speech itself, which I thought was magnificent. (If you missed it, you can watch it here in its entirety, and you definitely should):

https://youtu.be/4pYaBf15xa4?t=1854

Many conservative pundits are calling it the best defense of conservatism since Ronald Reagan, but that’s not accurate. It’s the best speech since Reagan, but unlike many conservative speeches, it wasn’t a defense. Why should a system that works everywhere it’s tried need to be defended, especially when the alternative is a system that’s brought nothing but poverty, misery, starvation, oppression, corruption and death everywhere it’s been tried? Too many conservatives approach the subject from a defensive posture, thinking they have to respond to the blatant distortions of conservative beliefs (“Sexist! Racist! Hater!,” etc.) that the left hurls because they have no other arguments to stand on.

No, in addition to the inspiring language of Trump’s speech, it was so effective because he went full-tilt on offense. He didn’t enter the Chamber showing any weakness or understandable exhaustion after the three-year failed “impeachment” jihad against him that should meet its long-overdue demise today. Instead, he launched a forceful, unapologetic case for conservative principles because they WORK. He backed that up with one undeniable fact after another, from the booming economy and job creation that’s helping every demographic group to the drop in illegal immigration to the rout of terrorists and the reclaiming of American leadership in the world. To make it even more explicit, he called out the failed philosophy of socialism to the faces of those who seek to make it chic, and even introduced the man who’s trying to save Venezuela from its deprivations, that nation’s legitimate elected President, Juan Guiado.

And on the subject of guests, that recent tradition has never seen a more moving and inspiring selection of guests, including 100-year-old military hero and Tuskegee Airman Brig. Gen. Charles McGee and his great-grandson who wants to join the new Space Force; a military family being surprised by the return of their dad from deployment; and an emotional Rush Limbaugh, fighting stage 4 lung cancer, being presented with (and apparently very surprised by) the Presidential Medal of Freedom from First Lady Melania Trump.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-brings-rush-limbaugh-tears-awards-highest-civilian-honor-sotu/

Best of all, Trump made his speech about America more than about himself (when one commentator said Trump never used the "I" word, referring to "impeachment," I assumed he meant Trump didn't say "I" repeatedly, like Obama) He made it clear that while he cares about the world, he sees America as the exceptional nation it is (the “shining city on a hill,” to quote Reagan), he loves America and will always put American interests and the American people first. Trump sees himself as a proud American, not a “citizen of the world.” It’s something we used to expect of every President, but after years of American politicians badmouthing their own country and bowing to the UN or some other global governance movement, it now appears downright revolutionary. And incredibly refreshing.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

We’ve followed the Michael Flynn story from the beginning and have been hoping the best for him, praying for him and his family after he was swept up in the effort to take down President Trump and pressured to plead guilty to lying to the FBI when he (and even his questioners) knew he hadn’t.

Flynn needed a fighter and he finally got one. His fortunes started to turn when he replaced his original legal counsel with firebrand attorney Sidney Powell. I tell you, if you ever need someone in your corner, she’s the one to have. And she’s got a lot more to work with now that the IG report on FISA abuse in the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign, “Crossfire Hurricane,” has shown horrific misconduct that stomped all over the rights of Americans such as Flynn.

Powell has just submitted a white-hot 27-page addendum to her previous motions, in which Flynn formally asks Judge Emmet Sullivan to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea. Powell is talking tougher than ever, and her demand that the charges against her client be dropped is now based on previously withheld government documents and, importantly, the IG report on FISA abuse. In response, prosecutors have said they will consider no jail time for Flynn (mighty nice of them) and would offer probation instead.

Um, I don’t think they quite heard her. And when they don’t hear her, she gets louder. Powell is telling them Flynn is INNOCENT. She says, “The IG report is replete with exculpatory information that, had it been known to Flynn, he never would have pled guilty.” She wants the charges DROPPED, citing “government conduct dishonestly wielded to destroy the National Security Adviser to President Trump as part of their larger anti-Trump scheme.”

Flynn himself is speaking up, too. He has connected the dots and can see, looking back, what was done to him and why. In the supplemental motion, he wrote, “In truth, I never lied. My guilty plea rankled me throughout this process, and while I allowed myself to succumb to the threats from the government to save my family, I believe I was grossly misled about what really happened.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michael-flynn-motion-to-withdraw-guilty-plea-egregious-fbi-misconduct

Victoria Taft at PJMedia.com has more on the story, including some background for those who haven’t been keeping up:

https://pjmedia.com/trending/feds-back-off-jailing-michael-flynn-after-stunning-new-evidence-that-govt-lied-and-framed-him/