NEVER-TRUMPER CHRISTIANS GET WHAT THEY VOTED FOR: Focus on the Family chief Jim Daly asks some uncomfortable questions of those who refused to vote for Trump.

REALITY OF TWITTER: The Federalist’s David Marcus puts it about as succinctly as it can be said:

“For all its talk about safety, community, and the health of discourse, we see today that Twitter acts in favor of one interest and one interest alone: its own, even when it means destabilizing the American people. On Friday, the company permanently banned Trump from its platform and began a purge of conservative voices.

“They claim this is needed to protect America from a coup. That is a farcical lie. They did it because their political enemies such as Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley are now out of power, and they mean to keep it way.”

And like Trump said, he’s just standing in the way of the Left’s actual targets, us.

LEFT’S RIOT HYPOCRISY EXPLAINED: Andy Ngo knows Antifa up close and personal as few, if any, other Americans do.

DON’T THINK PROGDEMS AREN’T BEHIND TECH GIANT CENSORSHIP: Hans Bader points to “hate speech” as the enabling concept behind the unprecedented censorship unleashed by Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon. My view is nobody should be surprised when it intensifies after His Fraudulency is sworn-in as President.

HERE COMES PERSECUTION: The Left is moving into position to suppress all dissident voices.

PENCE ISSUE IS A DISTRACTION FROM THE REAL ISSUE OF DOES CONGRESS HAVE A BACKBONE: Lots of snarky back and forth among commenters here on Instapundit and elsewhere in the Right media in recent days regarding whether Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to exclude Electoral College votes for Biden in Wednesday’s Joint Session of Congress.

I suggest to folks on both sides of that issue that the more fundamental question is whether Congress has the authority to set aside a state’s Electoral College votes. In my view, there are two key aspects of the question:

First, is there sufficient evidence of fraud in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and others to justify the decisions of Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri to register objections to the acceptance of their Electoral College votes? I haven’t had the opportunity to review all of the evidence for all of the allegations, but, as explained, for example, in this “American Thought Leaders” interview on The Epoch Times with the Data Integrity Group, the evidence of vote manipulation in multiple states is substantial and cries out for a critical investigation.

Second, Congress has an absolute right to set aside the Electoral College votes, according to President Abraham Lincoln, who told Congress on February 9, 1865, that “the two Houses of Congress, convened under the twelfth article of the Constitution, have complete power to exclude from counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal, and it is not competent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct that power by a veto …”

The process seen in Wednesday’s Joint Session, interrupted as it was by the riot around and within the Capitol, was conducted as prescribed in the Constitution. Each properly framed and submitted objection to the acceptance of a state’s certified Electoral College votes gets two hours of debate in the Senate and the House, at the end of which members of both chambers vote on whether to accept or reject the objection.

Congress considered objections in 1969 (the “faithless elector” of North Carolina) and 2005 (Democrat objection to awarding Ohio’s votes to President George W. Bush) under this process and rejected the propositions. But Congress could have accepted the objections, which would have left Electoral College votes on the floor.

This reality should not surprise anybody who is familiar with the manner in which the Founders wrote the Constitution as a “legislative supremacy” document. So long as the Senate and House are of one will, Congress has, as Willmoore Kendal and George Carey wrote, “all of the ultimate weapons in any showdown with either of the other two branches.”

Congress doesn’t like a program or action favored by the President? Congress can defund it. To cite but two examples: Congress doesn’t like how the Supreme Court is ruling? Congress can change the composition of the Court. If Congress has the will, the Founders gave it the power to do pretty much as it pleases so long as it respects the Bill of Rights.

Bottom Line: There is substantial evidence that Congress could have relied upon, had it chosen to do so, in deciding to exclude the Electoral College votes of any of the challenged states Wednesday and thereby made either Joe Biden or Donald Trump our next Chief Executive.

Had I been a senator or representative Wednesday, I would have voted to uphold the challenges presented for Arizona and Pennsylvania (as well as those planned prior to the riot for Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada), on the basis of the Data Integrity Group’s statistical analysis, not because doing so would have given Trump another four years in office, but because somebody ought to go to jail after pulling off what is likely the biggest election theft in American history.

Either we have honest elections or we don’t.

UPDATE: Thanks to reader CptNerd for this link to much easier to read version of the full Lincoln quote. I used the Congressional Globe link because the whole page makes interesting, though difficult to decipher in places, reading.

WHY THIS TRUMP SUPPORTER BACKS PENCE: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains his view that Vice President Mike Pence was right on the issue of his authority to accept or reject states’ electoral votes.

POLITICO REPORTS BIDEN, DEMS EXPECT GEORGIA LOSS TODAY: If Politico is reporting it on election day, the Dems must know something.

CHINA CENSORS JOURNALISTS, SO DOES THE WEST: Kurt Mahlburg is an Aussie journalist, book author and Christian blogger who details in this piece for the Canberra Declaration just how deep mainstream media censorship of its own dissenting voices has become in recent years. A bit lengthy but well-worth the reading time.

COMPARE 2021 CLEAVER OPENING PRAYER WITH 1774 FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS: Unfortunately, there is no video, but here’s the full text. It’s also in Victory Girls post Sarah linked (Love the vintage photos and artwork). And if you are really into this kind of thing, here’s the House Chaplin’s prayer archive. Somebody ought to do a study.

A TRUMP MALPRACTICE SUIT AGAINST LIN WOOD? This is getting weirder by the day.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JANUARY 6: Constitutional lawyer Rick Green describes in layman’s terms the essential issues at stake come Wednesday when the Senate and House meet in a joint session to count electoral votes for president.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR CHALLENGE: Thank God, it’s 2021 and 2020 is now behind us. Speaking of new beginnings, HillFaith has a New Year’s Challenge about the first beginning. Are you up for it?

HOUSING ACTIVISTS CHECK IN, REFUSE TO LEAVE OR PAY: Jeff Dunetz and The Lid report they paid for 16 rooms the first night, which was Christmas Eve, then refused to leave. They are still in the Fife, Washington, Travelodge, and they aren’t paying for the rooms or damages. The activists are with the Tacoma Housing Now group and are demanding that local government pay all of their expenses.

BIDEN’S ECONOMICS WILL CAUSE THE COMING ‘DARK WINTER,’ NOT COVID: As is so frequently the case these days, the Issues & Insights gang puts it best.

“Apparently it never occurred to Biden and his handlers that government intervention, not the virus, caused 2020’s downturn. Nor have they even begun to understand that Democrats’ economic policies, filled with steep, punitive taxes, and impossible-to-jump regulatory hurdles, are a slow-motion march of the economic lockdowns that almost instantly paralyzed the economy this year.”

WILL MCCARTHY, HOUSE GOP GO FOR A COALITION TO OUST PELOSI? There are 10 Democrats in the 117th Congress that convenes next week who voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House in the 116th Congress.

With Republicans picking up the same number of seats in the new Congress, nominating one of those 10 Democrats as part of a coalition could end the Pelosi era. But are Republicans making the necessary moves to assemble such a coalition? Not holding my breath.

ASSEMBLY LINE SWALWELLS: A finely thought-provoking contemplation by UncoverDC’s Richard Gagnier on G2 honeypots, small-time Mafia set-ups and the frailty of the human condition.

NOW PORTRAITS OF WHITE JUDGES DENY BLACK DEFENDANTS’ FAIR TRIAL: No, you don’t need to re-read that headline, it said just what you read. Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader links the text of a Virginia judge’s preposterous ruling, and much more.

ARROGANT BLINDNESS IN ATTACKS ON WHITE EVANGELICALS: Writing for The Federalist, Nathaniel Blake points out that, as has become tiresomely typical in the holiday season, Christmas 2020 occasioned an outpouring of elitist attacks on the quarter of the American population who identify as evangelicals, especially those who are also white.

The only new element in these assaults this time around was inclusion of criticism of white evangelicals for being less than cooperative in the Covid lockdown madness since March.  But Blake, who has a PhD. in political theory (Strauss?), shines an especially illuminating light on former National Review staff writer David French.

French, like Nicolas Kristof at the New York Times and Michael Luo at the New Yorker, based his analysis, according to Blake, on two flawed assumptions. First, that denominational and other differences within evangelicalism are of no importance.

“Lumping Pentecostals, Presbyterians, and prosperity-gospel preachers together is sloppy, as is neglecting to distinguish between those who are committed churchgoers and those who are only nominally evangelical,” Blake writes.

Second is the common assumption among Never-Trumpers and the Left that voting for Orange Man Bad is evidence of an irretrievably immoral character.

“It is easy to pick out Trumpian words and deeds that are not compatible with the gospel. It is also easy to do the same with his Democratic opponents and their policies. Asserting that voting for Trump is a moral stain on evangelicals, without weighing the alternatives, presumes what is in question,” Blake contends.

How long before French’s name appears on a masthead somewhere in the progressive media?

CHRISTMAS RACE AROUND THE WORLD AT THE SOUTH POLE: Winner gets a 10-minute hot shower! That’s one of the eight Christmas traditions on seven continents described by the Christian Post, including the Peace Apples in China.

NO, CHRISTMAS ISN’T A WARMED OVER PAGAN HOLIDAY: If you’ve heard it once, you’ve likely heard it a thousand times – Christmas is nothing more than a pagan holiday taken over by the Catholic Church and turned into something completely different. As The Incarnate Investigation host Jimmy Wallace makes clear, there’s more to the story the critics never tell you.

But wait, there’s more! Philosophy Professor Travis Dickinson asks if Christmas is based on a wildly crazy claim (Hint: Yes, it is). And, as the ever-thoughtful Sarah Hoyt uniquely reminds us this morning: We Americans have put our own unique spin on the appropriate celebrations. It’s part of how we got to be the “land of the Free and the home of the Brave.”

A TRULY JOYOUS RENDITION OF IN EXCELSIS DEO: A beautiful and stirring performance by more than 1,000 participants. It was first performed in 2014 and is well-worth repeating in 2020:

EVERYBODY KNOWS ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS:’ But there are lots of facts about the most widely celebrated holiday on the planet that many folks don’t know. It’s actually quite an interesting story about how Christmas became “Christmas” and this video from Prager U puts it all together. And speaking of Christmas, Merry Christmas to all here on Instapundit.

JOE BIDEN’S ‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL:’ Dickens was a bleeding heart liberal but I suspect even he would roar with laughter at this adaption of his Christmas classic. Somebody at Richard Viguerie’s Conservative Headquarters deserves a huge Christmas bonus!

SOME FOLKS JUST DON’T GET THE FIRST AMENDMENT: Among them is federal District Court Judge Jesus Bernal, who defied a direct order from the U.S. Supreme Court in order to protect Gov. Gavin Newsom’s assault on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious worship and practice. It’s all in my latest piece for PJ Media Culture.