YOU CAN’T SAY THAT ON YOUTUBE: LifeSite has had its YouTube channel turned off for a week because it posted a video of a Canadian doctor explaining why he believes the Coronavirus Pandemic is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated.”

This action is a “first strike” against LifeSite. Get three strikes on YouTube and you are banned permanently. That is known as “de-platforming.” Which should also be known as YouTube cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Or to put it another way, the first strike is a hard slap up the side of your face. A second strike is a gut punch to the belly. Third strike is the bullet in the back of the head. You do what you are told, to quote Dr. Faux Chi.

2020 ISN’T ALL BAD NEWS: Thomas More Society Founder Thomas Brejcha tells HillFaith 31 of the 50 state capitols will have Nativity Scene displays this Christmas season and he is optimistic that all 50 states will have them in the near future.

Considering the flood of anti-faith harassment spawned by the Covid Pandemic in places like California and New York, the long-running success of the Thomas More Society’s defense of the First Amendment’s protection of religious expression in the public square is a good news story that deserves recognition.

BIDEN’S OPEN BORDERS PLAN SUBVERTS HIS COVID PLAN: Issues & Insights points out a serious flaw in the Biden approach: Why put Americans behind masks while inviting mass migration from Mexico, Central America and elsewhere?

TRUMP DEPROGRAMMING BEGINS: Faye Higbee, writing for The Lid, suggests we should take the Unhinged Left seriously when they talk about how to “deprogram” 70+ million Americans who voted for Trump.

THIS COP WON’T ARREST YOU ON THANKSGIVING: Name withheld to protect the innocent.

AOC, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED: Reagan biographer Craig Shirley has a message for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — aka “AOC”— and her comrades in “The Squad:” Don’t!

Don’t think, that is, that there won’t be massively unpleasant legal consequences if they or anybody else on the Left tries to deny a Trump appointee or supporter a future job, promotion, peaceful dinner, media appearance, etc. etc.

“If she is responsible for even one person in the United States not getting a job or getting fired and the boss says, ‘I’m not hiring you because of what AOC said,’ or ‘I’m not hiring you because of your politics,’ she has committed tortious interference and has opened herself up to massive litigation,” Shirley tells The Epoch Times.

The litigation will be launched by Citizens for the Republic (CFTR). If that name sounds familiar, it should because it’s the advocacy group Reagan formed after losing the 1976 GOP presidential nomination battle to Gerald Ford, and which was instrumental in Reagan’s 1980 win.

Shirley recently revived CFTR after it had lain dormant for years. Among the Reagan-era stars on the resurrected CFTR board are former Attorney General Ed Meese, former Reagan White House Communications Director Mari Maseng Will, and former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Dan Oliver.

CALIFORNIA CHURCHES IN COURT TODAY ON ABORTION MANDATE: A trio of California congregations represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) present oral arguments today in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. They will ask the court to declare unconstitutional the state’s regulation requiring their employee health insurance to pay for abortions.

Included in the evidence to be discussed are a series of 2014 emails in which Planned Parenthood specifically lobbied state regulators not to exempt churches from the abortion coverage mandate.

“We are asking the 9th Circuit to invalidate this unconstitutional mandate because California officials are required to follow the law and legal precedent, not the dictates of groups that have an axe to grind against religious organizations that don’t share their views on abortion,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus.

WHAT’S THIS, GEN ZERS MOST LIKELY TO VIEW FAITH AS VIP IN PANDEMIC? By quite a significant margin over the next most likely generation, Gen Zers are more likely to view religious faith as somewhat or extremely important to their ability to deal with the Covid Pandemic, according to the results of the annual Religious Freedom Index survey by the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty.

NUNES SUES WASHINGTON POST FOR DEFAMATION: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has had it with the Post, filing a second lawsuit against the newspaper in regard to its mis-reporting on the infamous “Midnight Run” in 2017.

Reminds me of a bumper sticker supporting former West Virginia Gov. Arch Moore’s unsuccessful run against Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller: “Make Him Spend It All, Arch!”

PLEASE, DON’T CALIFORNICATE THE REST OF AMERICA: One might think people fleeing a disaster would avoid at all costs doing things that could repeat the calamity in their new home.

Sadly, as Issues & Insights notes in today’s editorial, that’s not always the case: “Here’s the problem. It’s one thing to move from a state because it’s going in the wrong direction. It’s quite another to move and not understand that you had something to do with it.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Time for my Welcome Wagon Project to educate voters who move on why they should’t replicate the environment they’re fleeing:

If I were one of those conservative billionaires (hello, Koch brothers! hi, Sheldon Adelson!) who are always donating tens of millions to support Republican candidates, I think I might try spending some of the money on something more useful: A sort of welcome wagon for blue state migrants to red states. Something that would explain to them why the place they’re moving to is doing better than the place they left, and suggesting that they might not want to vote for the same policies that are driving their old home states into bankruptcy.

Would it work? I don’t know. But it’s likely to be more useful than money thrown down the political-consultant rat hole. And if nothing else, it might spread a bit of economic literacy, which is always in short supply.

It’s time.

WHERE CANCEL CULTURE IS HEADING: The Federalist Senior Editor Christopher Bedford lines up the dominoes to show where the free thought and speech killers of the Left seek to take the rest of us next.

ATHEIST GROUP GOES FULL GRINCH, BLOCKS CHRISTMAS SHOE BOXES: Students at Liberty Middle School in Pratt, Kansas, will no longer be able to fill Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes following a Cancel Culture complaint by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). The students fill the boxes with gifts such as toys and personal hygiene items, which are then shipped to poor kids in countries around the world.

The FFRF threatened the small Kansas public school district with expensive litigation if it continued allowing students to participate in the Samaritan’s Purse program, but Jeremy Dys of First Liberty tells HillFaith that such activities are protected by the First Amendment and do not constitute an establishment of an official religion. Operation Christmas Child has been sponsored by Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse for more than 20 years.

NUMBERS DON’T LIE: Doug Ross charts the Smartmatic vote flips that he claims moved Pennsylvania and Georgia from Trump leads to Biden wins, all accomplished in increments of 6,000 and 4,800 votes, respectively.

AND WHILE WE’RE AT IT: Remember The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, the 2004 book of statistical prophecy that foresaw massive infusions of Hispanics, Blacks, women and enlightened professionals giving the Donkeys permanent power?

If that book was on target, Christopher Chantrill asks at The American Thinker, why do Democrats in 2020 “need bushels of Dominion votes in four Democrat cities — Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta — to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia? Why the thirty-year effort of the Dems to relax the rules on voting, from Motor Voter to the present vote-by-mail?”

And that’s just the start of Chantrill’s questions.

ON THE OTHER HAND: There’s also this: “How to Lie With Statistics“ from 1993.

WAY TO GO SCOTT JOHNSON: Powerliner wins significant access victory in Minnesota.

JUSTICE ALITO ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito told the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society Thursday that “religious liberty is in danger of becoming a second-class right.” He said much, more about that issue, freedom of speech, the dangers of the administrative state and related issues.

This address is worth spending quality time listening to and thinking about his observations. And don’t miss his wonderfully tongue-in-cheek explanation for why he believes “it would be good if what originates in Cambridge, stays in Cambridge.”

BIDEN TELLS JESUITS HE’LL RAISE REFUGEE CEILING TO 125K ANNUALLY: Christian Post reports Joe Biden told a Jesuit charity group he plans to increase the annual ceiling on refugees to be admitted to the U.S. to 125,000 annually.

MORE ON WHY A 4-6-WEEK NATIONAL LOCKDOWN WOULD BE DISASTROUS: Ethan Yang’s analysis for the American Institute for Economic Research leaves little doubt about the ludicrousness of what the Biden people are preparing for the rest of us.

MAINE WEDDING BLAMED FOR SEVEN COVID DEATHS BUT THERE’S A CATCH: Boy, is there. Turns out the seven people who the Los Angeles Times implied died after contracting Covid at the wedding didn’t actually attend the ceremony.

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY CONVERTING CHRISTIAN CHURCHES TO FACTORIES, RE-EDUCATION CENTERS: Don’t be surprised if the pace and ferocity of the Chinese regime’s campaign against Christianity, other faiths, increases if Joe Biden is sworn-in as the next president.

COVID SPREADING IN BLUE STATES WITH MASK MANDATES: Issues & Insights should be mandatory reading for Joe Biden, so he’ll know things like this:

“And, of course, studies show that wearing masks – properly – can cut down on the spread, particularly from those who have the disease but don’t know it. The CDC now claims that mask-wearing can reduce the risk of contracting the disease.

“But, even if every state did adopt a statewide mandate, the impact on the spread of the disease would likely be negligible. Our analysis of the data shows that if the rate of spread in the non-mandating states were the same as the mandating states, the total number of new cases in the past week would have been reduced by just 6 percent.”

AND SINCE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT MASK MANDATES: It’s apparently OK for third graders in Mississippi to wear masks with political messages on them such as “Black Lives Matter,” but nope, can’t wear it if it says “Jesus Loves You.”

12 LANDMINES TRUMPERS SHOULD LEAVE BEHIND: Joy Pullman has a dozen landmines Trump administration loyalists should embed in the government before their departure, assuming legal challenges do not reverse His Fraudulency’s claimed victory.

WOULD THE PARTY OF MORAL AUTHORITARIANISM CHEAT? Of course they would, all day, any day. And don’t think they aren’t deadly serious about their Trump Accountability Projects and “reconciliation” commissions.

As Issues & Insights puts it in an excellent editorial: “The belief in one’s own moral superiority eventually erases the conscience. After all, if one is morally superior to others, then no conscience is needed. All actions and behaviors are acceptable because they’re done in an effort to make the world a better place.”

MEET ‘HIS FRAUDULENCY,’ JOE BIDEN: Presidents sometimes get unflattering nicknames. John Adams was known to some as “His Rotundity” and John Tyler, who only succeeded to the presidency upon the death of William Henry Harrison, inevitably became “His Accidency.” I just heard “His Fraudulency” suggested for Joe Biden.

THIS COULD BE THE MOST VIP SUPREME COURT CASE TO WATCH THIS TERM: Attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom representing a Nevada congregation have petitioned the Supreme Court to decide whether officials can explicitly discriminate against Christians (and, by extension, any other form of religious expression) while using public health as a justification for throwing aside the First Amendment.

SHOULD WE END ECONOMIC INEQUALITY? The Colson Center’s Brook McIntire offers three solid reasons why the answer to that query is a resounding No! Instapundit readers already know why that’s the answer, but Colson’s “What Would You Say” series makes it simple and compelling, enough even for journalists, recent college graduates, and Members of Congress to understand and remember.