HEY, JOE, CAESAR CHAVEZ WAS A VIRULENT FOE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Maybe our 46th chief executive should spend more time reading journalists like The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson.

GHOSTS OF MILLIONS OF ABORTED BABIES HAUNT U.S.: Indeed they do. Nathaniel Blake, writing in The Federalist, observes:

“Most people’s consciousnesses are not as seared as those of the zealots of ‘Shout Your Abortion’ and similar campaigns, so, for the majority of abortion supporters, any rhetorical dodge will do if it avoids invoking the violent reality of abortion. They prefer to cover abortion in the moral haze of a necessary evil in an imperfect world, and then not think about it.

“They justify abortion as the distasteful protector of the individual autonomy, personal achievement, material riches, and sexual satisfaction that our culture glorifies. But the effects of abortion are not so easily ignored. It is, of course, obvious how abortion has broken our politics.”

HOUSE DEM FRESHMAN WANTS TO ABOLISH ‘AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM:’ Looks like Critical Race Theory has another proponent in the Democratic House of Representatives. We just don’t understand how evil we are until we listen to our betters like Rep. Jamaal Bowman. But The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz is not impressed.

IS SEX BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS A PRIVATE ACT: Of course it is. But as the Colson Center’s Brook McIntire explains, it’s all but impossible to avoid the reality that there can be public consequences for all of us.

CHINA’S NORTHEAST BEING RAVAGED BY COVID: If you think our lockdowns are draconian …

HOUSE GOPERS SAY ‘STOP TRASHING COVID VACCINES:’ Republicans Ted Budd of North Carolina and Mike Garcia of California want the CDC to tell New York, Washington and other states to get the red tape out of the vaccination process.

COMEY WANTS TO ‘BURN DOWN’ THE GOP: Well, that sounds like incitement to insurrection, does it not? And now he thinks maybe the Pee Tape was for real? As His Fraudulency might say, “c’mon man, that was just for the rubes.” The former FBI Director is not wearing irrelevance well.

WHY MLK TODAY WOULD BE A MAN OF THE RIGHT: Re-reading Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 makes it crystal clear there was no room in his vision for the poisonous hate of Critical Race Theory. In fact, had he lived to the present day, I am convinced King would be the sort of American who reads Instapundit!

INSIDE THE LEFT’S ‘HOGWARTS FOR DIGITAL WIZARDRY:’ Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Hayden Ludwig does a deep dive on the Center for Technology and Civic Life, the far-Left voter registration colossus. The result is a detailed description of what may be the most effective GOTV ever and why 2020 may have been merely the first act of a long-running play.

NO, THE ALAMO IS NOT A SYMBOL OF ‘WHITENESS:’ Do not miss Bryan Preston’s superb deconstruction of the claims that those famous 13 days at the Alamo were not a “tactically significant battle” and that the siege was later turned into a racist symbol. In case you wonder why I care, and deeply, about this issue, it’s because I was born an Okie of Texas blood and am immensely proud of both.

MLK WOULD BE REPULSED BY CRT: Honest celebration of the man requires recognition of the truths he proclaimed, including the one that black and white Americans “cannot walk alone.”

And that means also recognizing, as retired Vanderbilt Professor Carol Swain explains, that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a poison. So today would be a good day to give King’s “I Have a Dream” speech a good, close reading.

GOPERS TALK THE MOST IN CONGRESS: That’s according to C-SPAN, which compiled the data for the House and Senate in 2020. Six of the top 10 in the House are Republicans.

A POST-PRESIDENCY PERKS INVENTORY: Being a former President is one of the cushiest retirements anybody could hope for, but Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) may well result in the withdrawal or reduction of such benefits. This Roll Call post does a good job of listing the present perks and where the reform urge is heading. But be prepared for the predictable TDS bias.

NUKE POWER, NOT WHAT IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO: Remember nuclear power? It may be set for a huge comeback, argues Jonah Gottschalk, thanks in significant part to the Trump years.

THEY FOLLOW CHINA’S MODEL, NOT SWEDEN’S: Issues & Insights points out that for decades it was thought the Left sought to implement in the U.S. a government modeled on that of Sweden. But if 2020 made nothing else clear, it showed what the Left really wants is to implement the China model.

NO AGITATORS/PROVOCATEURS JANUARY 6? He saw four distinct groups of them and J. Michael Waller knows professional agitators when he sees them, having been trained to be one and observing hundreds of demonstrations and protests since the 1970s. Just a sample:

“Then, from the north, a column of uniformed, agile younger men walked briskly, single-file, toward the inaugural stand. They came within two feet of me. Their camouflage uniforms were clean, neat, and with a pattern I couldn’t identify.

“Some had helmets and GoPro cameras. Some uniforms bore subdued insignia, including the Punisher skull. These were the disciplined, uniformed column of attackers. I had seen them in groups of two or three among the marchers on Connecticut Avenue from the Ellipse.

“Now there were a good three dozen of them, moving in a single, snakelike formation. They were organized. They were disciplined. They were prepared. ‘We’re taking the Capitol!’ the first or second announced.”

NEXT UP FOR CENSORSHIP WILL BE RIGHT MEDIA: But, as with AOC’s comments quoted by Just the News, it will be called “media literacy.” That’s another term for what I believe Orwell called enforcing RightThink.

THE ESTABLISHMENT WON, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LOST: That’s The Lid’s elegant summary of the second Trump impeachment. Few words, many implications.

GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED ON WHERE WE’RE HEADED: Ben Weingarten explains in The Federalist that, while President Donald Trump is the Left’s immediate target, the ultimate targets are anybody who opposes the Left:

“Trump has personified this dissent, but the effort to delegitimize, de-platform, and ultimately destroy him and anyone around him is merely the opening scene of the ‘Godfather’-like settling of scores with all who threaten the ruling class’s power and privilege. This effort will directly harm not just the thousands of peaceful patriots who had descended on Washington D.C., and their tens of millions of like-minded neighbors across the country, but all Americans.”

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? An excellent primer for pro-lifers on dealing with the three major claims of pro-abortionists.

WERE THOSE PIPEBOMBS MEANT AS DIVERSIONS? Catherine Herridge, formerly of Fox News and more recently with CBS News, reports investigators think those pipebombs found at the RNC and DNC on January 6 may have been intended to divert law enforcement away from the Capitol itself at a crucial moment. That would also suggest somebody with a command and control structure for the planned riot.

Herridge also notes that the crucial window for understanding the timeline of January 6 events is between 12:45 and 1:15, before President Donald Trump finished his speech to the gathered protestors. If that is true, and there are abundant reasons to think it is, then it’s difficult to ascribe to Trump responsibility for inciting the riot.

Law enforcement documents obtained by CBS News reveal pipe bombs were planted at both the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters before the U.S. Capitol. @CBS_Herridge reports on the questions remaining about the intent and coordination of the bombs pic.twitter.com/urvl2qRfGB

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 13, 2021

DEATH PENALTY ON VIRGINIA’S GREEN MILE: Hans Bader predicts Virginia Democrats will go after life sentences once they do away with the death penalty. And then after they abolish life sentences, they will abolish ….

DOES JAN. 6 TIMELINE VINDICATE TRUMP? Jeff Dunetz takes a look at the analysis of the timeline of events on Capitol Hill in the early stages of the riot and the speech delivered by President Donald Trump to a huge crowd of protestors.

If the timeline plotted by Raheem Kassam and quoted by Dunetz is accurate, then the drive either to impeach Trump (Democrats in Congress) or censure him (Republicans in Congress) for inciting the riot are going to be tough to sustain in any context other than revenge/face-saving.

CHRISTIANS AGAINST CHRISTIANS: Natasha Crain lays out three strawmen being used by anti-Trumper Christians to libel fellow believers who supported President Donald Trump.

CERTAIN EVANGELICAL ‘MEN WITHOUT CHESTS’ GET A WORD POUNDING: There’s just no other way to describe Larry Alex Taunton’s fine deconstruction in the American Spectator of social justice evangelicals Tim Keller, John and Barnabas Piper and others. Here’s a small sample:

“This is because evangelicals in the English-speaking world have confused Christ’s command to love others with being civil as if that were an attribute of God. (It isn’t.) As a consequence, a superficial, self-righteous, good-for-nothing pietism that prefers tone to truth and style to substance has displaced authentic Christianity in many of the roughly four hundred thousand churches in America. This doctrinal malpractice has given us a generation of men, Christian and otherwise, who are what Lewis called ‘men without chests.’”