SIX WAYS BUBBA LIES ABOUT HIS ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN: No doubt this will come as a shock to many but the man from Hope has recently been telling half a dozen whoppers about that assault weapon “ban” from his days in the Oval Office. For one thing, it wasn’t really a ban, according to Mark Overstreet in The Federalist.

NO COINCIDENCE THAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION PRODUCED THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: Scan a who’s who of Europe’s explosion of scientific inquiry and it becomes clear that two factors united them: Their location and their faith.

So, if Western Civ and Christianity are lost, can science be far behind? Or, to put it another way, can science survive multiculturalism and identity politics, which are antithetical to Christianity’s enduring emphasis on the individual?

MARYLAND SHERIFF LAYS INTO WAL-MART FOR LOUSY STORE SECURITY: Carroll County Sheriff Jim Dewees wasn’t worried about being PC when asked about Wal-Mart store security after a gun man robbed one in the suburban area of his mostly rural jurisdiction:

“Find me a Walmart that isn’t a burden on law enforcement resources and I will kiss your a–,” he said, according to The Carroll County Times. “Their corporate policies are pitiful when it comes to securing their stores and protecting their employees and the customers that are there.”

TRUMP ORDER LETS BARR DECLASSIFY CLINTON EMAIL DOCS. WILL HE? That’s the question posed by Paul Sperry, writing today on Issues & Insights.

MEET THE ‘FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR FOREIGN POLICY:’ Check out the Quincy Institute, which is helping form a braintrust for the post-Trump world” in the foreign policy arena.

NOT SURE IT CAN BE PUT MORE PRECISELY THAN THIS: “Pursuing Comey on the memo-leaking offense would be like charging Comey for jaywalking after he crossed the street to fire a close-range kill shot at our Constitution.” That’s according to “Adam Mill,” writing this morning in The Federalist. I’m waiting and seeing.

Mill makes the point enroute to his conclusion that there has been a succession of intelligence community scandals since 2013, one of which was the revelation in 2014 of NSA’s “Bumblehive.” If that doesn’t jar your memory, remember Admiral John Poindexter and “Total Information Awareness?” Go here.

IF SUNDANCE SAYS THIS IS A MUST-WATCH, YOU CAN BE SURE IT IS: “It” being Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday conversation on Fox News with former Rep. Trey Gowdy, who drops a bombshell regarding why the public has not seen the FBI transcript of George Papadopoulos and informant Stefan Halper.

I must admit that, having met Halper, briefly, during the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign, I never would have guessed at the time where he was then headed. Just another one of the Bushies. Maybe that should have told me something???

WHOSE MORALITY ARE YOU IMPOSING TODAY? It’s the response everybody who has ever debated social issues with lefties hears, sooner or later: “Don’t impose your morality on me!”

Listen to cross-examined.org’s Dr. Frank Turek for two minutes on HillFaith this morning and it becomes abundantly clear just how shallow, evasive and projectionist is that familiar warning.

HERE’S HOW TO ACTUALLY DRAIN THE SWAMP: President Donald Trump has made a small start on relocating federal agencies out of the nation’s capital and Sen. Joni Ernst has a bill that would remove some significant obstacles to expanding the initiative in a big way.

MORE ON JOSH HARRIS: Here’s my two cents worth. Ed Driscoll linked to some important observations by others about the announcement of the “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” author that he is no longer a Christian. Harris also apologized to the LGBQT community.

It’s a significant turn of events for Instapundit readers, many of whom are on the evangelical side of the spectrum, and because many Instapundit readers are products of or proponents for the home-schooling movement of which Harris’ parents were early leaders.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I have long been a homeschooling supporter and view it as one of the major reasons for hope that this country is going to make it.

Also, PJM’s Paula Bolyard made some of the same points as I did, plus several others I didn’t but wish I had. Interesting that two of the best analyses of Harris come from two women (Bolyard and Pullmann) who are Christians, conservatives and extremely talented writers and editors. If you aren’t following both of them, you should be.

HOUSE OFFICIALS MUM ON NEW CYBERSECURITY MEASURES: Remember Jackson Cosko and Imran Awan, the congressional Information Technology (IT) aides who committed serious abuses of the Senate and House computer systems? Select Committee on Modernization of Congress recommends half a dozen IT reforms but won’t say if they will prevent future such abuses.

DEMOCRATS TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER. YOU GOTTA PROBLEM WITH THAT? Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is chairman of the Democratic Governors’ Association (DGA). Lobbyist Donald Schweitzer is the DGA’s treasurer and represents IGT, a Brit gambling company. Guess who just got a $1 billion contract to manage Rhode Island’s lottery? Where I’m from in the South (Oklahoma and Texas), that’s called the Good Ole Boys network in action.

WASHINGTON POST SHOULD PREPARE TO LOSE THE COVINGTON APPEAL: A federal judge dismissed Nicholas Sandman’s defamation suit Friday, but don’t assume that’s the end of the case. It’s not and the once-respected newspaper’s attorneys and editors better prepare to lose on appeal.

UPDATE: Charles Glasser, than whom there is no better when it comes to Jags and media law, doesn’t think there will be an appeal.

SEVEN TIMES MUELLER PLAYED DUMB: Margot Cleveland of The Federalist demonstrates with crushing clarity that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller was using feigned ignorance to avoid responding to seven key questions he was asked by Republicans on the House judiciary and intelligence panels.

CONGRATS TO THE FILMMAKERS AT CAPITAL RESEARCH CENTER: “No Safe Spaces,” directed by Justin Folk and produced by Mark Joseph, won the Grand Prize at the Anthem Film Festival in Las Vegas. The event is held in conjunction with FreedomFest.

The film is one of the growing list of high-quality productions from Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Dangerous Documentaries, led by Joseph Klein. The CRC has an ambitious agenda for its filmmaking group, but then what’s the point of not doing so if the preservation of liberty is the aim?

MAYBE THE ATMOSPHERE IN CONGRESS ISN’T SO UNCIVIL AFTER ALL: They don’t call it the “lower chamber” for nothing, but maybe Members of the House of Representatives are more civil than the MSM claims. On the other hand, they don’t make two-day long speeches these days, either

THE MOST VIP QUESTION REPUBLICANS MUST ASK MUELLER: When former Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears before the House judiciary and intelligence committees Wednesday, Democrats have made sure to make it as difficult as possible for Republicans to ask probing questions.

Even so, there is one question at the heart of Mueller’s two-year investigation that GOP congressmen must ask, according to Margot Cleveland, writing today on The Federalist. It has to do with whether Michael Flynn’s original lawyers and Mueller were given all of the evidence possessed by the U.S. intelligence community. It’s complicated but well worth following.

RANK RUDENESS, HYPOCRISY ON DISPLAY BY CBS “NEWS:” Check out the contrast between how often CBS Host Margaret Brennan interrupts Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) and the way she lets Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) drone on and on. I’m old enough to remember when CBS News actually knew what the word “journalism” meant and even practiced it on occasion.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS (DIVERSE) PICTURE? America’s colleges and universities are dumping hundreds of millions of tax dollars into staffs and programs designed to make them more diverse. Is it working?

“Colleges and universities have not realized much progress toward ethno-racial and gender faculty diversity in recent years — the exception being a modest increase (between 1-2%) in tenured Asians across institutional types,” claims a study published by the Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy and analyzed this morning by Issues & Insights.

That likely doesn’t surprise you, but Issues & Insights piles up the illustrations that make clear the situation is so much worse: “The University of Texas at Austin has eight vice presidents in its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, at an annual cost of $9.5 million. UC Berkeley has 175 diversity bureaucrats.” Unfortunately, there are many, many more.

HOW TO GET A JOB ON CAPITOL HILL: Here’s where to look for openings, how to get a foot in the door, what your resume should include, and why the “golden reference” is key.

Bret Bernhardt was chief of staff for Senators Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), so he knows the Hill. And wouldn’t Congress be improved if more Instapundit readers or Instapundit reader-approved folks were advising the senators and representatives?

THIS IS HOW THEY TOOK OVER PORTLAND: John Glynn, writing at The American Thinker, lays out the process by which the “City of Roses” (which also used to have a great Indy car race) became Antifa’s favorite American city. Coming soon to your city?

WERE HILL DEMS (MAYBE SOME REPS, TOO) BEING BLACKMAILED? By Imran Awan, the former House IT aide who worked for a fifth of the Democratic House Caucus and used his position to hack Congress, the Democratic National Committee and who knows what else?

Luke Rosiak, the investigative reporter who broke the Awan scandal, tells The Epoch Times he is convinced that Awan blackmailed Members of Congress before his arrest and may yet be blackmailing it today. But House Democrats don’t want to talk about it? Guess what, neither does former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who looked the other way for months despite abundant evidence of what was going on under his nose.

Listen to Rosiak lay it out in stark, documented detail and you will find yourself nodding agreement with him that this is the biggest scandal in the entire history of Congress. It is an extraordinary story and Rosiak is the only Washington journalist who cared enough to dig out the details. It’s all in his book, too — “Obstruction of Justice.”

SIR DARROCH WAS A LEAKER: And now the rest of the story is told on why Sir Kim Darroch is leaving as Britain’s Ambassador to the U.S. According to the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan, Sir Darroch leaked U.S. intelligence like a sieve. Betcha there’s more to come, too.

AMERICA’S FIVE MOST-STRESSED CITIES: Detroit tops the list compiled by WalletHub, followed by Cleveland, Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Next five are St. Louis, Cincinnati, Birmingham, Wilmington and Shreveport. Maybe that’s why four of top five are also top five for divorces?

INCOMING! That’s the message from Sundance at The Last Refuge, after sorting through the tea leaves following China’s decision to re-start those trade talks with the U.S. Beijing’s chief negotiator is back but this time there’s a handler to stiffen his spine for full-on, all-out trade war with the Trump team.