WHY ‘HE’S THE REASON FOR THE SEASON,’ A REFRESHER: What Christmas is really all about. You know, in case the kids ask. Or a liberal acquaintance. Also useful for correcting your know-it-all brother-in-law. Perhaps you’ve even forgotten.

HERE’S WALKING, TALKING, CRIMINAL-RELEASING INSANITY: Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader assesses the many ways the newly elected Los Angeles prosecutor plans to set in motion what could become the worst crime wave in that city’s history. That this could involve releasing up to 20,000 convicted criminals, including murderers, rapists and burglars is only the most obvious indicators of leftist insanity at work.

EVERYTHING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SCHEDULE F: What is Schedule F? The Lid describes the new classification for senior career federal employees defined by a recent executive order from President Donald Trump. The order makes it easier to fire such employees.

Civil service reform is one of those boring but absolutely essential issues that conservatives too often ignore when thinking of how to restrain Leviathan. Trump is late to the game in creating Schedule F, but at least he, finally, took action against rogue bureaucrats.

MEET THE PLATYPUS, THE ALA CARTE MAMMAL: I’m betting you, like me, had no idea just how unique this odd looking creature really is. Is its assortment of features that seem borrowed from other animals a result of chance or purposeful design?

And why should you care? Because ultimately, freedom is just nothing left to lose when existence is all shaped by chance or materialistic determinism. Like they say, faith, philosophy and science are all three upstream from politics.

SEASON TWO OF ‘THE CHOSEN’ IS COMING: Season one was a crowd-funded miracle. Instapundit readers will be cheered to know one of the geniuses behind it is Matthew Faraci of Inspire Buzz.

Little-Known Fact: Matt is a veteran of the Bush II administration at the Department of Labor where he labored (get it?!) to make unions fess up about their finances. Check out the trailer:

WHO’S YOUR DADDY? A lot of Americans seem to think the President of the United States is supposed to keep us all healthy. Not so, says the Issues & Insights crew.

SPEAKING OF BULLIES AND VOTE THEFT: Could it be true that a Georgia CPA has cracked the code of the Dominion algorithm?

BULLIES STEAL ELECTIONS, BY FORCE AND FRAUD: “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams rolls the video that shows Republican election observers being forcibly thrown out or otherwise barred from accessing counting stations in multiple locations.

And while we’re on the subject, The Lid has video of witnesses nailing an out-of-control Democratic state legislator during a hearing on Michigan voting abuses.

STRAIGHT TALK ON FIRST AMENDMENT: Family Research Council chief Tony Perkins puts it as succinctly as I have seen it anywhere other than the Bill of Rights itself:

“If 150 people can keep packing out planes, elbow to elbow for hours, then there’s no reason we can’t sit in a pew on Sunday morning. Religious liberty is a fundamental freedom. Flying on a plane isn’t.”

NOT HOLDING MY BREATH: Former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen tells the New York Post Democrats will lose the House and Senate in 2022 if they follow the “socialism/Defund the Police” madness.

A PANDEMIC-INSPIRED BABY BUST? Experts are predicting ghost-town maternity wards for at least the next year, thanks to the Pandemic. But Breakpoint’s John Stonestreet and Shane Morris say hold on, there’s more to it than Covid.

NO, WE’RE NOT MORALLY SUPERIOR TO OUR ANCESTORS: Ever been told you “are on the wrong side of history?” There is a pernicious assumption of moral superiority behind such claims. The Colson Center’s Shane Morris offers three responses that expose just how pernicious, especially on this side of the 20th century.

DEEP MIND IN THE FOLD: The folding of protein structures that are key to understanding how diseases develop, spread and can be countered, among much, much else. Deep Mind, by the way, is owned by Alphabet, which owns Google, which owns the world.

Tech Crunch says “DeepMind’s technological leap could make accurately predicting these folds a much less time and resource-consuming process, which could dramatically change the pace at which our understanding of diseases and therapeutics progresses.”

As with so many technological advances, it’s not hard to envision good and bad consequences with this one. New challenges to civil liberties come to mind as well. And I have a hunch this just might also be a step forward in understanding the origin of life. But what do I know?

BIDEN GETTING THE OLD ANTI-ISRAEL BAND BACK TOGETHER: Jeff Dunetz at The Lid digs into the Israel views of Biden’s foreign policy team and finds it “is as anti-Israel as is much of his track record and the sentiments of the Democratic Party base.”

For example, Reema Dodin, slated to be deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative affairs, for example, “joined with Palestinians and their supporters who used to routinely and openly justify the most heinous terror attacks, blowing up buses and pizza shops, and Passover seders,” Dunetz writes.

Dunetz has more, much more, and, while it doesn’t surprise,  it still ought to give pause to anybody who cares about defending and preserving America’s most loyal and dependable ally in the Middle East.

HOW TO EXPLAIN TAIWAN, FEWEST COVID DEATHS AND LEAST RESTRICTIONS: Taiwan has one of the world’s densest populations, has tested only those with symptoms, yet has suffered the fewest Covid deaths (per capita), while imposing the least restrictive public health measures.

CHINA MOVES TO BAN FOREIGN MISSIONARIES: A government agency controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — but I repeat myself — has issued a 40-article regulation that extends the government’s suppression of Christian congregations in China to foreign missionaries coming into the country. It’s Mao’s Cultural Revolution all over again but this time the Red Guards are government bureaucrats and secret police armed with digital weapons.

WE’VE BEEN ZUCKED. OR XI’D? China wants the world to adopt its QR-code system for assigning every individual a color denoting his or her current Covid status. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe some people should read Revelation 13?

SUPREMES STRIKE DOWN CUOMO’S ANTI-RELIGIOUS COVID LIMITS: In a 5-4 decision that is full of positive implications for First Amendment litigation regarding religious freedom and practice, the Supreme Court late yesterday slapped down New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions on worship gatherings in targeted areas hit hard by Covid.

The decision acknowledged that the nine Justices on the nation’s highest court “are not public health experts,” but it went on to explain that “even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. Before allowing this to occur, we have a duty to conduct a serious examination of the need for such a drastic measure.”

This is big and potentially huuuuge, as a certain prominent American Socialist who likely will not be pleased by it might say. But what is certain is that for those who love the First Amendment as a whole, and especially its guarantees of religious freedom and practice, this decision is something to indeed be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day 2020.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The full opinion is here. Excerpt:

At the same time, the Governor has chosen to impose no capacity restrictions on certain businesses he considers “essential.” And it turns out the businesses the Governor considers essential include hardware stores, acupuncturists, and liquor stores. Bicycle repair shops, certain signage companies, accountants, lawyers, and insurance agents are all essential too. So, at least according to the Governor, it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine, shop for a new bike, or spend the afternoon exploring your distal points and meridians. Who knew public health would so perfectly align with secular convenience? As almost everyone on the Court today recognizes, squaring the Governor’s edicts with our traditional First Amendment rules is no easy task. People may gather inside for extended periods in bus stations and airports, in laundromats and banks, in hardware stores and liquor shops. No apparent reason exists why people may not gather, subject to identical restrictions, in churches or synagogues, especially when religious institutions have made plain that they stand ready, able, and willing to follow all the safety precautions required of “essential” businesses and perhaps more besides. The only explanation for treating religious places differently seems to be a judgment that what happens there just isn’t as “essential” as what happens in secular spaces. Indeed, the Governor is remarkably frank about this: In his judgment laundry and liquor, travel and tools, are all “essential” while traditional religious exercises are not. That is exactly the kind of discrimination the First Amendment forbids.

Yep.

BLM, ANTIFA, ETC. ARE JUST TODAY’S WAYS OF SAYING YESTERDAY’S ‘NEW LEFT:’ Capital Research Center (CRC) President Scott Walter offers a detailed illustration of the decades-long line of development that goes straight from bomb-throwing, cop-killing SDSers and Black Panthers to today’s Black Lives Matter and Antifa. And even more:

“In short, the radical ideas and violence associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are simply the latest eruptions of a type of left-wing politics that goes back decades, at least.

“Indeed, current movement leaders are tied directly to radical leaders and groups from a half-century of failed movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Liberation, the Weathermen, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panther Party.

“This unsavory political current also encompasses still more disturbing cases of extremism, including the Charles Manson cult and the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones, notorious for a mass suicide in Guyana that took over 900 lives with poisoned Kool-Aid.”

Be thankful today that these criminals, nutcases, thugs, ideological fanatics and murderers are not even more powerful than they are.

MEMO TO THE LEFT: What goes around, comes around. 

STRIP CLUB PASTOR’S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: ‘This is Insane … Take Off The Masks!” No, this is not about getting nekkid in public. This guy is talking about individual liberty and resistance to unaccountable government decrees. More evidence of a gathering spirit that recalls how the American Revolution was birthed in hundreds of pulpits across the colonies.

A BEAUTIFUL BLESSING FOR TOUGH TIMES: OneHeartDC is a coalition of Washington, D.C. region congregations that came together to, among much else, produce this remarkable video version of a song based on Numbers 6:22-26.

No, it’s not political, but it is something hopeful and beautiful during this week when millions of Americans will not be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. Whether or not you happen to be a person of faith, I’m confident this will be a blessing to you.

FIVE REASONS WHY BIDEN IS THE MOST AMAZING POLITICO EVER: Among other things, Biden, who spent most of the campaign in his basement, got more votes than Barack Obama in 2008 despite losing the 20 “bell-wether counties” that no winning president ever previously lost. The Federalist’ J.B. Shurk has more. Please note my tongue was firmly lodged in my cheek as I composed the headline to this post.

GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE CAN KILL YOU: That’s the point of a recent “news” story cited by American Institute for Economic Research’s (AIER) Jeffrey Tucker to illustrate what he calls “the blizzard of bogus journalism on Covid.”

NEW ELITE PRESSURE TO SAVE PARIS AGREEMENT: Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Robert Stilson pulls back the curtains on BankFWD, a new effort among rich donors on the Left “to pressure major banks to commit to phasing out financing for (and investment in) oil and gas companies unless those companies have a ‘credible strategy to transition in line with limiting global warming to 1.5° [Celsius].'”

Just in case you don’t know, Stilson explains, “that is the aspirational global warming cap envisioned in the Paris Agreement. It’s worth noting that few countries ‘have come anywhere close to meeting the Agreement’s goals.’”

If you worry about freezing to death in the first winter after the oil and gas industry is finally throttled into its grave, don’t, as we can all be assured that we’ll get a couple of hours of warmth each day from all those solar panels and wind turbines.