ANOTHER VICTIM OF AMERICAN ISLAMOPHOBIA: Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is clearly suffering from Islamophobia. Why else would he charge state Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell (D), who is Muslim, with multiple counts of theft, perjury and tampering in connection with a charity she founded?

OK, WHEN DID THE GUYS IN THE WHITE HOODS DRAW NADLER’S DISTRICT? It’s 70 percent white in a metropolis in which one of every four residents is Black.  Just asking, OK?

WHY DO THE CLINTONS ATTRACT ALLEGED SEX OFFENDERS, ILLEGAL DONORS? The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross reports on the indictment of a key Mueller witness on pedophilia charges and how he funneled millions to the 2016 Hillary campaign. Investigating the Clintons is like what digging in an old graveyard must be – everywhere you shovel, you turn up something rotten.

NO, GETTING DEVIN NUNES’ PHONE LOGS IS NOT A SMOKING GUN FOR DEMS: Margot Cleveland at The Federalist lays out why it might be for the California congressman, though.

AN ELOQUENT, CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF TODAY’S IMPEACHMENT HEARING: It’s not merely a fraud, according to Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.).

HARVARD LAW PROF TELLS A BIG FAT ONE: House Judiciary Committee Democrats led their hearing this morning with Harvard’s Noah Feldman. Later in the day under intense questioning by Rep. Matthew Gaetz (R-Flor.), Feldman claimed he “was an impeachment skeptic before July 25.”

That’s a flat-out misrepresentation by Feldman of his views because he was among the early advocates of impeachment, beginning March 7, 2017, barely six weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. See three more examples in 2017 and 2018 of Feldman clearly pushing impeachment of Trump: here, here and here.

MAYBE DEMOCRATS LIKE BUDGET DEADLOCKS: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took to the Senate floor to lay out the many ways Democrats’ broken promises and their impeachment mania are pushing Congress toward a virtually complete inability to get anything done. But what if Democrats consider that a feature, not a bug?

WHY AREN’T REPORTERS HARASSING JOHN DURHAM ON HIS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION? Great question posed by Sundance earlier today: “You know what it looks like, you’ve seen it a thousand times on television … The U.S. attorney is walking into the office from his car and a half dozen cameras and reporters are rushing alongside and asking questions. Have you seen that customary media effort even once since U.S. Attorney Durham was announced as investigating the origins of the Trump campaign surveillance? No, why not?”

Perhaps the answer to that question is that journalists who detest Trump don’t want to know the answers that Durham is uncovering about why the FBI launched its original investigation of allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. The legitimacy of the investigation rests on this narrative, courtesy of the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump:

“The FBI had been informed by the Australian government that a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had months earlier informed one of their diplomats, Alexander Downer, that he had heard Russia possessed emails incriminating Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent. Papadopoulos came by that knowledge in April, having been informed by a professor named Joseph Mifsud about the emails.”

Odds are Durham is confirming facts related to what I reported in 2018 concerning Downer’s long-standing connections to U.S., British and Chinese intelligence. Downer’s “tip” to the FBI was NOT the origin of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

UH OH, KANYE WEST HAS DONE IT NOW: His latest video — “Closed On Sunday” — makes the case for traditional families and faith, as well as for raising boys to be men and girls to be protected. But then he has the audacity to say this: “No more livin’ for the culture, we nobody’s slave.” The PC Nazis and SJWers will not take this one lying down.

DEMOCRAT STRATEGIST SEES THREAT IN POLLS SHOWING BLACK SUPPORT FOR TRUMP: There’s one anyway.

LOSING THEIR FAITH? NOT REALLY: So says President Ronald Reagan’s  *“terrible, swift sword” over the federal bureaucracy, former Office of Personnel Management Director Donald Devine, writing in today’s edition of The American Conservative. (Full Disclosure: I spent 2.5 great years working for Devine as a Reagan political appointee).

Devine, a political scientist and data wonk by profession, took a look at the recent Pew and other polls reported by the Mainstream Media as heralding the accelerating decline of Christianity in the U.S. Not quite what the data show, according to Devine, who summarized it all thusly:

“Pew calculates worldwide that—mainly due to higher death rates and lower number of children—people with no religion will decline relative to those who are religious by the year 2060 and that Christianity will remain the world’s largest religion.

“So sorry to rain on the media parade, but while there has been a recent decrease in formal religious affiliation and participation in the U.S., mostly among the youngest, it has pretty much been within a narrow band that’s fluctuated over the last half century but maintained a participation and membership total surpassing any other type of social organization. That even includes watching the Super Bowl!”

* The inside story of Reagan and Devine made monumental reforms in the civil service.

YOU KNOW SOMETHING BIG IS STIRRING WHEN CHINA CAN’T STOP LEAKS: It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Beijing, thanks to leaks of classified documents detailing how to impose mass incarceration on the Uyghur Muslim minority, speeches by high-ranking government officials and the claims of an apparently defecting Chinese spy. Helen Raleigh of The Federalist adds up the damages and offers a warning to the U.S.

IS CASTRO ABOUT TO CALL IT QUITS? Former Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro laments of the Republicans that “there’s a certain element within that base that seems to love it when people are cruel to one another. And I don’t know why that is.” Where does that come from?

Most likely from the fact Castro is doubtful to qualify for the December 19 Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles after missing the previous one. He’s nowhere in the polls and he’s failed to make any real difference in the flow of the campaign. So …

Remember Beto’s parting shots before he withdrew? Six weeks from his withdrawal, he said “Hell yes, we’re going to take away your AR-15.” Then a couple of weeks before the end, he threatened to jerk tax exemptions from churches that don’t support same-sex marriage. Saying something really radical in a last-ditch attempt to gain some saving traction didn’t work for Beto and isn’t likely to for Castro, either.

THIS IS BAD NEWS FOR THOSE SEEKING TO REWRITE THE FIRST AMENDMENT: A new annual Index of Religious Freedom from the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty finds massive, bipartisan support for an America in which the right to believe or not believe is protected in public and private.

Three-fourths, or 74 percent, of the respondents support religious freedom “when that practice takes place at work.” In fact, 63 percent of the respondents “supported the freedom to practice religion in daily life and at work, even when it creates an imposition or inconvenience for others.”

In other words, evangelical bakers and florists who wish only to support traditional marriage are entirely within their constitutional rights to suggest to homosexual couples planning weddings to seek cakes and floral arrangements at other establishments.

The index results demonstrate just how out of touch with most Americans are those like the Freedom From Religion Foundation who are trying to redefine the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom as applying only to the private realm.

LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT’S $600 MILLION SECRET FUNDING NETWORK: How many times have we heard from liberals about the evils of “dark money” — anonymous contributions — poured into conservative campaigns and advocacy by the likes of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Phil Anschutz? But guess what, the liberals are even better at it, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s indispensable Joe Schoffstall, who exposes yet another massive secret funding network on the Left:

“The massive cash flow came from Arabella Advisors, a D.C.-based organization that says it provides ‘strategic guidance for effective philanthropy.’ In reality, the group does far more, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous donations to some of the most influential advocacy groups on the left,” Schoffstall reports today. If you are familiar with the Tides Foundation and the Democracy Alliance, you know Arabella isn’t entirely original.

But one unique way Arabella — established by former Obama appointee and Clinton Global Initiative operative Eric Kessler — is stepping beyond conventional dark money maneuvering , however, is how it provides rich liberals a way to conceal their identities as they fund left-wing activism: Arabella is behind a couple of groups that lend their tax-exempt status to newly organized lefty outfits that have not yet been recognized by the IRS, a neat trick that somehow sounds like a too-clever-by-half way to evade tax compliance that somebody among the Right’s many activist lawyers ought to challenge.

HOW TO DEAL WITH FAMILY LIBERALS ON THANKSGIVING: You’ve likely heard retreating described as “advancing to the rear.” Understand that your relatives and friends from the other side have entered into just such a movement, even if they don’t realize that is what is happening.

BIPARTISAN EFFORTS NOT ENTIRELY DEAD: Three Republicans and a Democrat get together on a bill to give the federal government’s housekeeping agency flexibility to negotiate seriously for space leases with options-to-buy at bargain prices. It’s a boring issue, to be sure, but saving billions of tax dollars would be nice.

DEMS WORRY ABOUT RECESS SLOWING IMPEACHMENT DRIVE: The data is accumulating rapidly that Democrats’ impeachment hearings seriously backfired among independents. Some Democratic campaign advisers see it, others not so much. Now the recess is here and don’t be surprised if the downward slope in the data continues.

‘AMERICA’S MAYOR’ RESPONDS TO BIDEN, BOLTON: Rudy Giuliani responds to, well, pretty much everything that’s been said about him lately, including the former Vice President and the claim he expected to profit on a Ukrainian energy firm. Things got a little testy between Giuliani and Fox News’ Ed Henry, something that seems to be happening a little more frequently between Fox anchors and Trumpers.

TWO ALIENS WALK INTO A BAR IN AMSTERDAM: Okay, it’s an argument about intelligent design and Rembrandt. And it includes J. Warner Wallace, NBC “Dateline” cold-case detective offering eight reasons one of the aliens is right. Come on, go ahead and click it! When’s the last time you read about two aliens arguing in a bar in Amsterdam???

WILL THE HOROWITZ FISA REPORT SHAKE THINGS UP? Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker seems to think it will. Sundance at The Last Refuge is not so sure.

IMPEACHMENT CHARADE EXPOSES CAREER BUREAUCRATS AS DEVOUT LEFTIES: Conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell writes today on The Federalist that “what we’ve seen during the Rep. Adam Schiff hearings is that ‘experts’ in federal agencies exhibit bias and political philosophies of their own. They are not neutral.”

That shouldn’t have to be pointed out because, as Mitchell notes, “none of the precincts in and around Washington, D.C. are red. When the votes are cast, 100 percent of the precincts populated by large numbers of federal workers are blue. Every review of political contributions by federal employees reveals that federal employees give virtually no campaign contributions to Republican candidates.”

This is why the Reaganaut maxim “Personnel is Policy” points to what may well be Trump’s biggest tactical mistake — failing to install as many Trump loyalists as possible as political appointees in the highest reaches of the federal bureaucracy. At the very least, such appointees can recognize and disarm many of the bureaucratic IEDs set by careerists.

Careerists scream and yell endlessly that such appointees mean “politicalization” and “a return to the spoils system.” The reality is political appointees are a crucial tool for implementing the programs and policies voters endorse when they elect a president. The money saved by not having the maximum number of political appointees is utterly inconsequential compared to the costs of being constantly subverted by the entrenched bureaucracy.

OF SYCOPHANTS AND CHILDREN: One of the many reasons to love Issues & Insights is its no-nonsense refusal to go with the flow of mainstream media adulation of Greta Thunberg and similar teen scolds telling the rest of us how evil we are for not heeding AOC’s prophesy of ecological doom in 12 years. Here’s a sample from today’s offerings:

“The world can’t help but know about Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish scold who seems to have dropped out of school to travel the world and impudently lecture her elders about how they have let her down. Though this girl knows nothing about climate other than it exists around her, and less about the world, adults nod in agreement as she rants, hand her multiple honors and awards, and have sworn they have been inspired as well as properly chastised by her.”

HUNTER BIDEN’S FIRM GOT $130M IN FEDERAL BAILOUT LOANS: It was purely coincidental that Daddy just happened to be Vice President.

DID YOU SEE THE FOUR THUGS TRY TO BURN DOWN THE EPOCH TIMES’ PRESS? Freedom of their press only? The Washington Post and the New York Times have yet to report it, but four thugs busted into The Epoch Times’ printing facility in Hong Kong earlier this week and tried to burn the place to the ground. They failed, but the intended message from the totalitarians in Beijing was clear enough.

The Epoch Times vows to continue publishing the truth about Hong Kong, China and everything else. Yes, I’m biased, but not because I string for The Epoch Times covering Congress. I’m biased because I love the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free and independent press, which the Post and NYT once proudly illustrated. And could again if they were more like The Epoch Times.