IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Nikole Hannah Jones lecturing others that propaganda is not history after making crazy claim about America bombing Japan backfires.

(Classical reference in headline.)

PATRIOTS NOT WANTED: Rittenhouse Judge Apparently Loves the USA and the Left Wants Him ‘Removed.’

NOT QUITE MAN BITES DOG: More like Philosopher Bites Conventional Wisdom. William Lane Craig is one of the “50 most influential philosophers” in the world, and he says it is indeed quite possible to know God. Something to think about as the holiday season approaches.

VOTER PRIORITIES: 61% SAY POLICY SHOULD FOCUS ON ENCOURAGING ECONOMIC GROWTH; 27% SAY FIGHTING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY.

Yeah, but there’s a lot more graft in redistributing wealth than in creating it.

ROGER SIMON: Why ‘The Party of Science’ Disdains ‘Natural Immunity.’

As it happens, Wednesday morning I had the pleasure of talking for 20 minutes or so with an especially sane voice and a newfound hero of mine—Rep. Diana Harshbarger, who is the congresswoman from Tennessee’s 1st District (East Tennessee).

A newcomer to Congress, Ms. Harshbarger spent decades as a pharmacist—indeed a compounding pharmacist, which requires extensive training and licensing—and is a member of the House doctors’ caucus, so she knows whereof she speaks on matters of drug treatment.

She has been leading the charge via legislation to fight the Biden administration’s biased (against red states) distribution of monoclonal antibodies, which are one of the most successful treatments for the disease.

In October, she also introduced a bill in the House to require federal agencies to acknowledge natural immunity to COVID-19, the aptly named Natural Immunity Is Real Act.

So she was a perfect person to ask why she thought the Democrats—aka “The Party of Science,” or so our learned president tells us—ignores natural immunity in favor of taking a militant stand on mandates.

Rep. Harshbarger’s reply: “When it comes to people’s individual rights to control what they put in their body, nobody should say you have to do that. That’s your individual freedom they are trying to take. It’s what’s happening to our country in the loss of our rights over the last nine months, not to mention this month, that we never thought we would ever see.

“They’re trying to dominate us, to take our energy access away. We’re not energy independent anymore. We rely on foreign countries. We’re letting illegals in by the truckload. And now things are going to be rationed.”

And then the congresswoman got to the crux of my question: “I attribute everything to control. The mandate is just part of the process of controlling the narrative of the way our country is going. It’s all about control.”

Indeed, it is. I told Rep. Harshbarger that I couldn’t agree more. It is all about the “c.” It has little or nothing to do to with medicine or health, although those people standing in line on the Upper West Side don’t realize it.

And speaking of the “c” word, the manipulation of science for political ends is hardly new. Most notably, Stalin did it, calling Western genetics a “bourgeois pseudoscience” and imprisoning 3,000 scientists for questioning the work of his loyal communist scientist Trofim Lysenko.

Speaking of whom: Introducing the Minding the Campus Lysenko Award.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Michigan AG Nessel Gets Drunk at College Football Game, Wheeled Out of Stadium. “Before the big game, I attended a tailgate on an empty stomach. Much to my surprise, MSU tailgate’s tend to have more alcohol than food, so I thought it seemed like a good idea to eat 2 Bloody Mary’s, since as long as you put enough vegetables in them, it’s practically a salad. As it turned out, this was not a brilliant idea. Also, I might be a terrible bartender.”

THE FBI IS NOT A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY, BUT THE ESTABLISHMENT’S PARAMILITARY FORCE: The FBI Raid of Project Veritas Turns Into a Massive Scandal After Privileged Communications Are Leaked.

FRENCH KISS-OFF: Macron Leaves Harris Hanging, but Even Trump Got a Peck!

I’m old enough to remember when Joe Biden was going to repair our tattered alliances, so he sent… Kamala Harris?

OUT SOON: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. #CommissionEarned

WELL, IT IS: Poll: 57% say inflation is a tax on the poor.

I’VE BEEN WARNING ABOUT THIS SCENARIO FOR TWO DECADES BUT NOBODY CARED UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE: Inflation Will Make Government Budget Problems Worse.

Now consider the public debt—especially the federal debt that ballooned from large deficits in recent years. (In 2020, federal revenues were $3.4 trillion and spending was $6.6 trillion.) The interest cost of the national debt in 2008 was $253 billion and remained at about that level through 2015. Even though the debt doubled in those years, sharply falling interest rates and low inflation worked to contain costs.

But that was yesterday. With today’s higher inflation and rising interest rates (perhaps with more to come), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the interest cost of public debt to be $413 billion in 2021. Obviously, any dollar spent on interest cannot be spent on government benefits and services to taxpayers.

Washington has financed a lot of its bad spending habits with short-term debt that will have to be refinanced just as rates are rising.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Harvard hosts ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ BDSM tutorial, ‘Orgies 101,’ anal sex workshop. Bah. When I was in college, we learned things on our own.

ATHENA THORNE: As October Shatters Yet Another Border Arrests Record, Guess Which Judge Tried to Block Illegal Immigrant Expulsions?

THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO IS A DUMPSTER FIRE: UIC tells students they cannot speak ‘freely like this’ while tabling for conservative group.

VIDEO: How NASA doesn’t understand the potential of SpaceX’s HLS Starship moon lander.

OOF: Joe Biden Refers to Satchel Paige as ‘The Great Negro.’

Previously: Biden Meets Pope, Rambles On About…Satchel Paige.

THE MEDIA WANT VIOLENCE: “The media are not going to help preserve the peace if Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted.”

They’ve been inciting riots for several years now.

BOB MCMANUS: NYC finally takes a stand: End this surrender to crime.

New York’s mayor-elect got a credibility test Wednesday, and passed handsomely. Here’s hoping Manhattan’s next district attorney was paying attention.

In normal times, Black Lives Matter bigmouth Hawk Newsome’s promise to bring rack and ruin on the city if Eric Adams doesn’t cede the streets to gangbangers on Jan. 1 could be dismissed as ugly street theater.

“If they think they are going back to the old ways of policing then we’re going to take to the streets again,” Newsome declared after Adams promised to aggressively combat gun crime. “There will be riots. There will be fire. There will be bloodshed.”

But we live in stupid times, in a city that stood supinely as a landmark department store, Macy’s Herald Square, was looted the last time BLM got a mad on. And in which Alvin Bragg. the candidate for district attorney who promised to be even softer on crime than the marshmallow Cyrus Vance Jr., will take office alongside Adams.

And so Newsome’s ugly threats must be taken seriously. . . .

Adams has drawn a line: “I’m going to put in place a plainclothes gun unit,” he responded Thursday.

Newsome has promised to cross it.

Assuming each man is as good as his word, and given the uncertainties of effective police work, a collision is inevitable — the date, location and circumstances to be determined.

Sounds to me like there’s a better claim that Newsome is waging an insurrection than there is against any of the J6 protesters.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Black Lives Matter Is the Real Domestic Terrorist Threat. “While the Department of Justice has been demonizing soccer moms and dads real terror threats have been operating freely in America. One — Black Lives Matter — has been getting away with whatever it wants to, often with the blessing of prominent Democrats.”

DEMOCRATS: STUPID LIBERTARIANS! WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, WHO WOULD BUILD THE ROADS?

Also Democrats: Roads are racist!

Hannah Cox: If libertarians built the roads, maybe they wouldn’t be racist.

As Cox notes, there was in fact a lot of racism in how highways were laid out. And — like redlining in residential mortgages, or gun control, or eugenics — it was boosted by Democrats. Just sayin’.

KATIE PAVLICH: Biden’s self-inflicted energy crisis. “Just hours after his inauguration, President Biden walked into the Oval Office and issued an executive order stopping construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. One week later, he followed through on promises made to halt new oil and gas leasing on federal land. The White House justified the moves as crucial to combating climate change. Currently, the administration is considering the shutdown of the L5 pipeline that runs from Canada to Michigan, which would further limit energy transport and supply.”

Only in politics can you self-inflict a wound and make everyone else feel the pain.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: For some Democrats, even Reagan is better than Biden.

TOP SELLER: Timex Men’s T5H591 Ironman Classic 30 Full-Size Black/Blue Resin Strap Watch. #CommissionEarned

IT COMES TO THIS: Dems Gone Wild: Michigan AG Behaves Like Sloppy Freshman at College Football Tailgate. “After being escorted up the stairs, a wheelchair was commandeered to ensure Nessel’s safe passage to the parking lot, where a driver was waiting to take her home. She described the hangover she experienced the following day as ‘skull-crushing’ and vowed to ‘never to drink on an empty stomach, and definitely never to have another Bloody Mary,’ which is about as convincing as Joe Biden’s pledge to stop petting little girls.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The U.S. Army Has Big Plans For Laser Weapons To Kill Everything.