IS TRUMP SERIOUS ABOUT CUTTING BUREAUCRATS? Those seven Executive Orders (EOs) the new/old President signed on Day One suggest that he is indeed serious about cutting the size and costs of the federal career civil service workforce.

TRUMP EO EASES FIRING FED MANAGERS: They called it Schedule F the first time around, but President Donald Trump has a tougher version of an Executive Order that makes it considerably simpler and quicker to fire incompetent senior managers in the federal workforce.

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THIS ABOUT MLK JR: This might be the most unexpected 1:18 video watch of this day, which President Donald Trump declared as Liberation Day for America. And it’s also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which makes this video on HillFaith of particular interest.

TIME TO EXPAND THE HATCH ACT TO COVER CONTRIBUTIONS? Ever since FDR was in the White House, the Hatch Act has barred federal workers from partisan activities while on duty.

Now that there are so many of them, making an average $101,000+ annually, they provide millions of dollars to Democrats and Republicans who protect their jobs and programs. And nearly half of the managers in the nation’s capital openly declare in a recent survey they will actively oppose President Donald Trump’s policies and programs.

All of which raises a logical question that I cover in my latest PJMedia column: Should feds also be barred from contributing to partisan political campaigns?

DARK DAY OR JOYOUS CELEBRATION; Richard Pollock surveys the multiple groups on the Left planning demonstrations and disruptions for the Trump inaugural. Even before the weather went south, Pollock found evidence that the organizers of the protests knew turnout could be a problem.

But hanging over the whole event is the question of national security, as Pollock explains:

“The question dogging national security officials is the fear there are sleeper cells inside the city designed to assassinate Trump. As was reported by CNN in mid-November, ‘According to court documents, Iranian officials asked Farhad Shakeri, 51, in September to focus on surveilling and ultimately assassinating Trump. Shakeri is still at large in Iran, the Justice Department said.’

“Officials are concerned there could be a New Orleans copycat where a convert to Islam drove a car into revelers on New Year’s eve, killing 15 and wounding more than 30. This could be a celebratory weekend or a dark one. Stay tuned.”

Pollock’s column was filed before Trump announced the swearing-in will be inside the Capitol rather than outside due to weather. Even so, Pollock shows the national security concerns are immense and immediate.

LEFT TURNS FEDS INTO NEW SPOILS SYSTEM: Progressives promised a non-partisan, Merit-based federal career civil service will deliver public services in a vastly more efficient and professional manner than the hated Spoils System being replaced.

Well, here we are 142 years later and what do we have? A government workforce that functions on pretty much exactly the same basic premise as the old Spoils System. Check out how it happened in my latest PJ Media column.

NEWSOM LAUGHS AS CALIFORNIA BURNS: As is so often the case, the Issues & Insights (I&I) team is spot on in this evaluation of the California politico has gone about his business during those historic and catastrophic wildfires in the Los Angeles area:

“We can’t read his thoughts. But from his expressions, it’s as if this is all great news to Newsom because it gives him more time in the spotlight. He can’t seem to help himself but smile as the news media descend on Los Angeles, follow him around with cameras, let him bloviate, and make him the center of attention. The only time Newsom genuinely expressed anger and frustration was when responding to President-elect Trump’s criticism of his failed leadership during this crisis,” I&I observes this morning.

There’s much more, none of which is flattering to the Hair Gel champion.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Matthew Thornton for pointing out my Jell/Gel miscue.

CRIMINAL INCOMPETENCE IN CALIFORNIA: Remember back in 2020 when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said “All these things are connected. This is a challenging time. But we’re up to this challenge.” He was referring to the impact of Climate Change on California, including the increased risk of wildfires.

Soooooo ….. according to Issues & Insights (I&I), that raises an interesting question, namely: “Four years later, Newsom is again blaming ‘climate change’ for the fires ravaging Los Angeles. But wait. If climate change really is to blame, why was California so obviously, so woefully, so inexcusably unprepared?”

There is no good ending in this one for Newsom or, for that matter, the Liberal-Left Establishment Elite that has ruled California in a one-party catastrophe for the Golden State’s 40 million residents.

HIGH-PAID CALIFORNIA INCOMPETENCE: While the Santa Ana Winds-driven flames continue to spread the flames across Los Angeles city and county, Open the Books exposes the high salaries taxpayers fund for so much official incompetence. Check out my latest PJMedia column.

AREN’T ALL WORLD RELIGIONS THE SAME? Well, there are those five blind guys touching the elephant and the Rajah above them who sets them straight. But that familiar fable may not prove what some of its favorite adherents claim. Check out this new “Myth-Busters” feature on HillFaith.

WHY NOT MORE FIRES IF GLOBE IS WARMING? Good question, especially in light of the many “experts” attributing the recent increase in California wildfires in part to the drought in the area.

In fact, according to Just Facts Daily, (check out the “Global Rainfall Trends” question) there is no record of more or fewer droughts or floods in the past 150 years. One might expect that a correlation of wildfires and droughts would be evident going back centuries, but that just doesn’t appear to be the case.

“Contrary to predictions that global warming would cause more droughts and floods, studies published by the International Journal of Climatology, the Hydrological Sciences Journal, the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, and the Journal of Hydrology all found no significant trends in rainfall or droughts over periods that extend back to as far as 150 years ago,” Just Facts explains.

“Previous studies had examined shorter timeframes and found changes that were blamed on global warming, but the results were generally not statistically significant and ‘not entirely surprising given that precipitation varies considerably over time scales of decades.’ These facts drive home the importance of examining the broadest possible range of evidence instead of cherry picking data, time periods, or geographic areas,” Just Facts continued.

LITTLE SUPPORT AMONG HILL AIDES FOR ADDING CANADA: More than two-thirds of congressional aides who gave their opinions anonymously in a recent Capitol Pulse survey said they oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s trial balloon regarding Canada becoming our 51st state.

GENDER DYSPHORIA A SOCIAL CONTAGION? Radical Leftists claim the recent explosion of gender dysphoria cases is simply people discovering something that was always true, for them. But on HillFaith this morning, in the Colson Center’s latest “What Would You Say,” the data convincingly demonstrates the explosion is of a social contagion, not biology.

HOUSE “SECRET WEAPON” MEDIA COMPLETELY MISSES: What if House Republicans can’t elect a Speaker by Monday, the day Congress counts the Electoral College votes for president? According to numerous “experts” in the Mainstream Media, the House can’t function without a Speaker, so the Electoral College votes can’t be counted, and chaos will ensue.

No, that’s just not right, as I report on the Epoch Times this morning, contrary to the Washington Post, USA Today, etc., etc.

HOW ABOUT THIS INSTEAD OF A CONGRESSIONAL PAY RAISE: Common sense is a rare commodity in the nation’s capital, but check out my latest PJMedia column for an application of it to the congressional pay raise issue.

UNEXPECTED HAPPY NEW YEAR RESOLUTION: Here’s one on HillFaith that focuses on the biggest life improvement anybody can ever make. But it takes a bit of reading and thinking, so if you’ve still got that bleary-eyed, pounding headache from last night …

OPEN THE BOOKS EXPOSES BUCKEYE DEI: For three decades, I’ve called transparency Big Government’s most dangerous foe. It’s also the worst enemy of radical Leftist ideologues. If you doubt that, just ask one of them at Ohio State University (OSU) what they think these days about Open The Books (OTB).

The auditors and investigators at OTB have compiled history’s most comprehensive ever database of spending by the federal, state and municipal government spending. But compiling government spending also leads to exposing all kinds of things going on in the entities that receive tax dollars.

Entities like OSU, the Big 10 college football powerhouse that has become home to a multi-million dollar Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) radical Leftist agit-prop masquerading as higher education. It’s all in my latest PJ Media column.

YOU WANT FAKE NEWS STORIES? Yes? Well then, check out Just Facts Daily’s compilation of 50 fake news stories of 2024. Here’s number four on the list, which concerns President Joe Biden’s impact on employment and job creation:

“The New York Times reported that ‘President Biden is presiding over a job-creation boom that would have gotten almost any of his predecessors re-elected in the postwar era.’

“In fact, all real job growth under Biden went to immigrants, while jobs held by people born in the USA barely recovered from Covid lockdowns, are drastically below their pre-Covid trajectory, and flatlined over the past year:

THIS YEAR’S CHRISTMAS DEBUNKING: The Christmas season always seems to induce an irresistible urge among Lefty “scholars” and “journalists,” with a result that one of the latter interviews one of the former and publishes something like the New York Times’ December 21 “A Conversation About the Virgin Birth that Maybe Wasn’t” by columnist Nicholas Kristoff.

“Hate to barge in on your Christmas joy as you reflect on the miracle of the Incarnation, but The New York Times has delivered its annual dose of skepticism wrapped in tinsel. This time, it’s an interview with Elaine Pagels, a famed Ivy League biblical scholar. You’d expect some highbrow insights from the hoity toity Times, but instead, it’s a predictable grab bag of speculation and lazy thinking,” Is Jesus Alive proprietor Erik Manning writes in a lengthy dismemberment of this comedy of factual errors, fallacious logic and uninformed analyses.

Just to cite one of the many examples Manning addresses, Pagels makes a big deal out of the fact that the Gospel of Mark, which is commonly thought to be the earliest written of the four Gospels, makes no mention of the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

“There’s also a whopper of an argument from silence here that needs addressing. Just because Mark doesn’t mention the virgin birth, it doesn’t mean he’s unaware of it. Omitting a detail isn’t the same as denying it, and history is full of examples where major events go unmentioned.

“Take Pliny the Younger, for instance. In two detailed letters to Tacitus, he describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius but says nothing about the destruction of Pompeii or Herculaneum—two of the biggest stories from that disaster. Or consider Henry Oldenburg, who wrote extensively during the Great Plague of 1665-1666 but barely mentioned the plague itself. Paul doesn’t mention Jesus’ miracles, but I’m guessing Pagels still believes Jesus was known as a wonder-worker. If these omissions don’t equal denial, why assume Mark’s silence does,” Manning writes.

Manning’s is a lengthy piece and it requires an attentive reader to follow the Pagels arguments and Manning’s critique. But it’s well-worth your time to have such a chronicle of the weaknesses in so much of the popular skepticism about Jesus, the Gospels and the miracle at the heart of Christmas.

WHERE ARE THESE CHILDREN? Do you know that at least 500,000 children, many of them toddlers, have been brought illegally into this country and then they disappeared? Most likely, they were sold by the Mexican drug cartels into hellish lives of sex trafficking or child slavery.

“Where Are the Children: Crisis at the Border” is a new two-part documentary by Epoch TV that digs deep into how something so horrible could happen in America, based on the testimony of whistleblowers from within the federal government. You will want to share this once you’ve seen it because evil like this cannot be allowed to happen in our America.

WHY TRUMP’S ‘UNQUALIFIED’ NOMINEES ARE GREAT: They should be confirmed precisely because the Washington Establishment in both political parties, as well as the mainstream media, think President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees are ‘unqualified,’ according to former Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Donald Devine, writing in the The American Spectator.

“Knowing how government really works, the Washington Establishment types know that the secret to political success is to understand that any change from the bureaucracy’s status quo will be reported immediately to the media, with complaints that it will destroy the essential health, education, welfare and national security of the U.S. in some way or another,” writes Devine, who is among the nation’s top outsider experts on managing and reforming public bureaucracies.

“The story will begin in the Washington Post and be picked up nationally and beyond. And the targets seeking change will look foolish with no supporters beyond family. That is why the secret to political ascendancy in government is not to do anything but to follow the herd and be considered a success by all,” he continues.

The nation’s capital is entering a period of radical political reform flowing down from the ongoing radical cultural conflict. This confrontation will spark trench and guerrilla warfare, plus every other kind of resistance the Washington Establishment can summon, producing continuous uproar, controversy, mis-representation, and endless predictions of catastrophic national and world consequences.

But at some point, possibly at about the third year of Trump’s second term, it could become clear to the American people that the country is being reformed, reinvigorated and restored. That is when the Washington Establishment will finally have to concede they no longer are.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND THANK YOU: It has been my great privilege for a number of years to post on my friend Glenn Reynolds’ amazing Instapundit. The variety of voices Glenn opens Instapundit to is a perfect illustration of how the First Amendment is supposed to work, for all of us.

During the past year, I’ve posted a great many links to events and reports that in my judgement bear great importance to the struggle to preserve individual liberty and restore the blessings of the limited government America’s Founders gave us.

I’ve also posted many links to material on HillFaith that, judging from the comments, many found interesting, some even uplifting, while others, well, as Glenn so often puts it, not so much.

To the former, I thank God for the opportunity to add something positive to your day, and to the latter, may we both always be open to understanding how and why others think and believe as they do. I mean that for myself as much as for anybody else.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and God “bless us all and everyone” in the New Year.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Love having you here, Mark! Right back atcha.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: Lee Edwards was my first boss in the nation’s capital way back in 1975, a mentor in the decades thereafter and an admired friend through it all. My tribute in PJMedia.

THE FACTS ON BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP: James Agresti of Just Facts Daily explains how totally wrong is the media narrative that birthright citizenship protects the children born to illegals in this country:

“In reality, the legislative history of the 14th Amendment is clear that it only grants birthright citizenship to the children of people who are legally and permanently living in the United States. This does not apply to the children of illegal immigrants, temporary residents, visitors, or tourists,” Agresti writes.

TERRIFYING QUESTION ABOUT THOSE DRONES: How many of the 36K+ young Chinese men who have entered the U.S. illegally under President Joe Biden are drone operators? Check out my latest PJMedia column.

UPDATE: Everything you ever wanted to know about drones, quad-copters and other UAVs.