HERE’S THE SOROS LINK TO THE IMPEACHMENT: Rudy Giuliani tells Glenn Beck all about it.  

BURISMA FOUNDER ACCUSED OF STEALING UKRAINIAN STATE FUNDS: Reuters report is sure to spark reappraisal of the impeachment effort by Adam Schiff. Not.

CHINA PAYS TOP DOLLAR TO US-BASED SCIENTISTS FOR THEIR WORK: U.S. taxpayers are unwittingly funding a significant part of the R&D costs for the Peoples’ Liberation Army in China. They do it through an innocuous sounding program, the Thousand Talents Program that pays (bribes?) scientists and other experts, including both foreign nationals working here in the states and U.S. citizens to transfer their work to China.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s permanent investigations subcommittee, is hearing from the FBI and other federal agencies at a hearing this morning. They will be grilled about why China has been able to do this right under their noses, essentially without interference until last year, despite the fact TTP violates multiples U.S. laws, regulations and policies.

MAYBE LOUISIANA GUV WAS MORE PRO-LIFE WIN, LESS TRUMP LOSS: Rod Dreher, who knows a thing or seven about Louisiana politics, offers a number of observations about why Gov. John Bel Edwards won re-election, including the fact his GOP opponent had no platform. That’s right, no platform.

IS IT TIME FOR ‘RESTITUTION-BASED IMMIGRATION REFORM’? Bruce Ashford is Provost of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his proposal comes out of a resolution approved by the Southern Baptist Convention. Step one is no amnesty.

CAN YOU SOLVE THIS ‘CHICKEN-AND-EGG DILEMMA’ ON THE ORIGIN OF LIFE? NBC “Dateline” cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace claims there is no solution: Which came first, the machine that makes the protein required for life or the protein required to make the machine that makes the protein that’s required for life?

REP. ELISE STEFANIK, HERE’S THE LEFT’S REWARD FOR YOUR COURAGE: Geez, why does it appear that being a smart, courageous, tough young woman only counts if you are part of the Resistance, not one of those mean, bigoted, unsophisticated bumpkin Republicans who are shredding it?

SURPRISE! MARRIAGE WORKS BETTER THAN SHACKING UP: New survey of 9,000 couples turns up, among much else, the interesting conclusion that “married adults are more satisfied with their relationship and more trusting of their partners than those who are cohabiting.” Who knew?

UKRAINE 2014 IS BEING REPEATED HERE IN 2019: Mickey Kaus’s observations about the parallels between Ukraine 2014 and the U.S. 2019 ought to open some eyes. Remember John McCain speaking in the square and Victoria Nuland passing out cookies to the protesters who ultimately overthrew a corrupt, but democratically elected government?

Look close enough and you just might see McCain’s face transform into that of Adam Schiff and Nuland’s into Marie Yovanovitch. As Kaus observes: “It’s not the job of the State Department to observe every jot and tittle of another country’s election laws. It’s the job of the State Department to pursue U.S. interests. If that also involves meddling in another country’s politics to a degree that would send Robert Mueller into permanent state of shock if Russia did it to us — well, welcome to the world.”

Worth thinking about.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE THIS WEEKEND, MAKE IT THIS: Glenn highlighted it earlier today and for good reason. Attorney General William Barr’s Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society is a deeply thoughtful assessment of how unbalanced our three “equal and separate” branches of the federal government have become since the 1960s.

Consider this graph on the growing intrusions of the courts into the everyday decisions of living:

“In recent years, we have lost sight of the fact that many critical decisions in life are not amenable to the model of judicial decision-making. They cannot be reduced to tidy evidentiary standards and specific quantums of proof in an adversarial process. They require what we used to call prudential judgment. They are decisions that frequently have to be made promptly, on incomplete and uncertain information and necessarily involve weighing a wide range of competing risks and making predictions about the future. Such decisions frequently call into play the “precautionary principle.” This is the principle that when a decision maker is accountable for discharging a certain obligation – such as protecting the public’s safety – it is better, when assessing imperfect information, to be wrong and safe, than wrong and sorry.”

Barr may be President Donald Trump’s best appointment. If you doubt that, just keep scrolling through his lecture.

KANYE WEST GOES TO JAIL: No, not like that! He made a surprise visit to the county jail in Houston, Texas, Friday and brought his choir with him to give the inmates and officers a worship experience they will remember for a long time.

IMPEACHMENT COUNSELS ARE POLAR OPPOSITES: It’s like Daniel Goldman for the Democrats and Stephen Castor for the Republicans are from two different planets. Or perhaps two different galaxies. Wonder what they talk about if they happen to step onto the same elevator?

THEY NEVER LEARNED ABOUT LENIN, CAPITALISTS AND THE ROPE: Officials with the federal Thrift Savings Board said no to the request from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) that they not invest upwards of $50 billion saved by members of the U.S. military and civil service in Chinese firms supplying the People’s Liberation Army. The senators are not happy.

SOMETHING ODD ABOUT THAT WHISTLEBLOWER: Charlie Martin wonders how you get fired for leaking in the White House but still be able to return to your former agency, the CIA? Very good question, that!

THREE KEY QUESTIONS DEMOCRATS WILL NEVER ANSWER ON IMPEACHMENT: In his opening statement today, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top GOPer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), laid down a three-cornered challenge to impeachment-crazed Democrats.

EVEN THE DEMS’ WITNESSES SAID TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT UKRAINE CORRUPTION: That 18-page, single-spaced memorandum circulated late Monday by the GOP staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) provides a devastating look at how many of the witnesses who have testified behind closed-doors supported Trump’s view on Ukraine.

Given how HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has acted the part of the petty tyrant, including rejecting Republican witnesses and instructing those who have already testified not to answer specific questions put to them by GOPers, don’t be surprised if next El Jefe takes away GOP staff office space, orders their computers permanently unplugged or some other similarly spiteful action.

PC CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM, THIS TIME AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Andrei Serban, an award-winning film director and a professor at Columbia University, left his tenured position because he can no longer abide the multiplying signs of the school’s swing to communism.

Serban fled his Romanian homeland when it was under the Soviet version of communism, so the man knows evil when he sees it. Matthew Vadum has the details at The Epoch Times. When was the last time you recall a tenured professor leaving for any reason other than moving to a more prestigious campus or going to that great lecture hall in the sky?

A REMARKABLE VETERANS DAY MIRACLE: My friend and colleague Bret Bernhardt shares for the first time ever beyond his immediate family an amazing moment on the Mall at the Vietnam Memorial that united him with a Vietnam veteran he had before only seen once and then only on TV.

WHAT’S UP WITH WITTES AND PAGE? Lisa Page has only secondarily been in the news of late, but she certainly needs no introduction to those who have been following Spygate for the past nearly three years. Public release of her text messages with Peter Strzok was a huge turning point in the scandal.

So why is Benjamin Wittes — lawfareblog editor-in-chief/Brookings Institution senior fellow/MSNBC analyst — posting this “introduction” to Page on Twitter? Has Page flipped? Or is about to be indicted? Or what. You can’t get more Liberal Establishment than Wittes, so he must know something.

IS THIS WHY HOROWITZ FISA REPORT IS DELAYED AND DELAYED AND … Understanding why things happen (or don’t happen) in government begins with knowing the bureaucratic regulations and processes that entangle and strangle straightforward laws. Sundance points to an explanation for the Horowitz FISA report’s increasingly suspicious delays in the approaching expiration of the USA Freedom Act?

That’s the law that birthed the NSA database in the Obama administration’s extensive unmasking of dozens of U.S. citizens for political purposes. And it’s the authority for the 702 surveillance program through the FISA court used by the FBI to get the ok to spy on Carter Page, George Papadapoulos and perhaps others connected to the 2016 Trump campaign.

‘MIRROR TELEXING’ TO EXPLAIN WHISTLEBLOWER: Washington Examiner editorial chief Hugo Gurdon once worked in Jersey (No, not that one, the one that is a Brit tax haven). There is a lesson concerning paper trails to be learned from his experience there that applies in the impeachment whistleblower.

SIDNEY POWELL IS THE DEEP STATE’S WORST ENEMY: There is a long list of candidates for the honor but watch this interview last night of Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell by Fox Late Night’s Shannon Bream and it should be clear why Powell deserves the top spot.

READ’EM AND WEEP, LIBS: Institute for Family Studies demonstrates that multiple research studies find conservatives are consistently, measurably happier than non-conservatives. And it gets even better (or worse, depending on your POV), according to Glenn Stanton.

A TRILLION HERE, A TRILLION THERE, PRETTY SOON YOU’RE BANKRUPT: Issues & Insights provides an authoritative dissection of the monstrosity that is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All plan.

LEFT WON’T TALK ABOUT ROLE OF CRONYISM IN INEQUALITY. CATO WILL: The more government regulation there is, the more opportunities there are for cronyism, influence-peddling and insider lobbying. Lefties wailing about growing inequality of wealth won’t talk about that. Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards and Ryan Bourne have no such qualms.