HERE’S THE SIX PRESUPPOSITIONS THAT PRODUCE IDENTITY POLITICS: If the lunacy that is rampant in the media, on the campuses, entertainment and Fortune 500 corporations seems beyond rationality, read this on the six key premises behind Critical Theory. Won’t make it go away but it helps make sense of senselessness like snowflakes,”triggers,” Chris Cuomo, white privilege, AOC, “safe spaces” and, sadly, so much more.

ARE EL CHAPO AND THE DRUG LORDS THE MEXICANS TRUMP MEANT WOULD PAY FOR THE WALL? Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and 14 other House GOPers are pushing a bill entitled the “Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order Act,” EL CHAPO Act for short.

“It takes the money, the billions that El Chapo made crossing the border illegally, and it takes that $14 billion and uses it to pay for the wall,” according to Cruz. Brooks says “it kills two birds with one stone” by paying for the wall without tax dollars and ends the partial government shutdown.

The idea of some portion of the drug lords’ ill-gotten gains going to fund a wall that helps put their enterprises out of business has its appeal, but there are problems. Go here for more.

And then there’s this from The Daily Caller’s fine investigative reporter, Luke Rosiak. He obtained a copy of an internal report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) that says “President Donald Trump may have the authority to use Department of Defense resources to build a wall without obtaining congressional approval or declaring a state of emergency.” Does Pelosi know about this?

MYSTERY SOLVED! NBC ‘DATELINE’S’ TOP COLD-CASE DETECTIVE TALKS: J. Warner Wallace is known as that program’s “evidence whisperer” because of his phenomenal success in applying sleuthing skills to the toughest cold cases, those involving homicides that have gone unsolved for decades.

If anybody knows a fraud, a fake or a liar when he sees it, Wallace does. So why is the guy a fervent Christian? Does NBC know about this?

SENATORS TELL TRUMP TO SEND ISIS POWS TO GUANTANAMO: Why not use the perfectly good terrorist detainment center for its intended purpose?

KAMALA HARRIS NABS HEAVY HITTER WITH BAGGAGE FOR 2020 CAMPAIGN: Big names bring big opportunities, but they can also bring big problems. That may be the lesson Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will have to learn from her success in luring Democratic Superlawyer Marc Elias as her campaign’s general counsel.

BUZZFEED MEETS BUZZSAW: Reagan veteran Daniel Oliver on the “real significance” of the Special Counsel’s correction of the now-infamous story about Trump telling Cohen to lie.

DEMS FEAR MONEY CORRUPTING POLITICS. THIS WILL SCARE’EM TO DEATH: The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) invested more than $335,000 in 25 of the 27 Democrats serving in the 116th Congress on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Why? Because that’s the committee that will soon pass the “Raise the Wage Act of 2019,” which will mandate a federal “living wage” of $15 per hour by 2024. The proposal will do some other stuff that SEIU likes, too, so the union’s strategists apparently think it’s in their interest to get it through the House this year in anticipation of a Democratic landslide in 2020 that puts the Senate and the White House back in their hands.

See, money does buy influence. So any minute now Democrats will start raising you know what about this blatant special interest abuse of democracy. Right?

FOR DEMS – KAVANAUGH BAD, CARDENAS OK: Rep. Leo Cardenas (D-Calif.) is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC, which hosted that gathering of Democrats in Puerto Rico last week. He’s the same Cardenas who is accused by a woman of drugging and molesting her when she was 16.

And, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Susan Crabtree, the same Cardenas of whom then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called in 2018 for an ethics investigation to determine the credibility of the woman’s charge. No ethics probe of Cardenas is known to have been convened.

“Cardenas has vigorously denied the allegations, accusing the woman of seeking revenge for her father, a disgruntled former Cardenas staffer,” Crabtree reports this morning. “His lawyer issued a statement arguing that the request for a House ethics investigation shows that she has a ‘meritless and weak case.’ A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has determined there is enough merit to charges to move forward and has set a trial to begin in August.”

Now that Pelosi is Speaker of the House, how long before an ethics probe of Kavanaugh, uh, excuse me, Cardenas is convened?

WHY STENY HOYER AND RAND PAUL COULD BECOME SHUTDOWN HEROES: Unlikely? Yes. Far from an ideal solution? To be sure. Is it the best possible outcome, given the givens? That remains to be seen, but go here for the factors I see as making such a scenario at least conceivable.

GABBARD, CASTRO FACE THE LONGEST ODDS IN 2020 WHITE HOUSE BIDS: There was a time when some folks thought Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) brought hope of a revived moderate, independent-minded wing of the donkey party. But then she decided to run for president.

Then there’s former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who like Gabbard last week announced a loooonnnnnnggggg shot bid for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. He was a young, rising-star Texas Democrat. Then Beto happened.

Much more here about both Democrats (much of which you may not know). They have virtually no hope of actually being nominated, but keep an eye on both as potential veep nominees or cabinet members should whoever does get the Democratic nomination defeat President Donald Trump in November 2020.

STUDY SHOWS IMPOTENCE OF FAKE NEWS: Yes, there is such a thing as “Fake News,” as anybody knows who even occasionally watches cable news channels or reads newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post. But what about Fake News that was planted by non-media sources?

Turns out, according to a new study reported by Science Advances, that prolific social media posters are smarter than generally thought:

“If anything, those who share the most content in general were less likely to share articles from fake news–spreading domains to their friends. Thus, it is not the case that what explains fake news sharing is simply that some respondents ‘will share anything.’ These data are consistent with the hypothesis that people who share many links are more familiar with what they are seeing and are able to distinguish fake news from real news.”

So where does that leave all that Fake News the Russians planted and thus swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump? Go here for the study.

MORE THAN 200K SIGN PETITION CALLING FOR TLAIB IMPEACHMENT: In case the name sounds unfamiliar, it’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), she of the “we’re going to impeach the m—–f—–” infamy. The petition on Change.org has only been up a week but already has nearly 210,000 signatures. There are questions about Change.org, too.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): You can’t “impeach” a member of the House or Senate, though you can remove them with a 2/3 vote of their house. I doubt that will happen, but that’s not really the point of petitions like this, is it?

HERE’S WHY PEOPLE, JOBS ARE FLEEING BLUE STATES TO LIVE IN RED ONES: Yes, it just makes common sense that people who can leave states with high taxes, onerous regulations and high unemployment.

But Antonio Chaves, writing in American Thinker, provides an absolutely devastating presentation of the data showing the sources and depths of distress for middle and lower-middle class people living in places like California and Maryland.

It’s a data-intensive read, but well worth it. And Chaves offers some interesting thoughts on how red-state leaders should respond to the droves of former blue-staters crossing into the jurisdictions.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN:) My Welcome Wagon idea is more urgently needed than ever.

OH THE MANY WAYS DEMOCRATS SCHEME TO LIMIT POLITICAL SPEECH: Just for starters, the Institute for Free Speech’s David Keating says he and colleagues say the official name of House Democrats first official bill should be changed from “For The People Act” to “For The Politicians Act.” It gets worse from there.

SO YOU THINK THE MULTIVERSE THEORY EXPLAINS IT ALL: Neil deGrasse Tyson has other more immediate problems with which to deal, but there are also some significant questions to be asked about a widely held explanation for the existence of us all that he often pushes. (And if you wonder what this has to do with politics, Pelosi, freedom, federalism, Trump, etc. etc., just remember what Dostoevsky said when everything would be permitted.)

LIBS WOULDN’T DO FACEBOOK ADS DESIGNED TO REDUCE RIGHT TURNOUT IN 2018, WOULD THEY? Of course they wouldn’t, we all know that. This Peter Hasson fellow at the Daily Caller News Foundation is probably just making it all up. Wait, what is this “American Engagement Technologies” stuff?

NASTY SENATE FIGHT ON ANTI-ISRAEL BDS MOVEMENT: A vote is scheduled for 5:30 PM today in the Senate in Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s first test of 2019. He wants the Senate to vote on a package of proposals, including one that protects state and local officials who boycott the Israel boycotters of the BDS Movement.

But Senate Democrats want to vote first on re-opening the government. One need not agree with them on that point to recognize it’s a legitimate strategy. But they ran into a totally unexpected obstacle, thanks Bernie Sanders and that angry Muslim woman who wants to impeach President Trump. Details here. Updates to come later this evening.

WHY WON’T NANCY PELOSI ANSWER THESE THREE QUESTIONS? You know, those pesky journalists like Peter Hasson can be real pains-in-the-tush. What would happen if every time Pelosi has a presser she is asked these three questions?

OBAMA-ERA OPERATIVES BEHIND FALSE-FLAG CAMPAIGN AGAINST ROY MOORE: Slowly but surely facts are emerging about the extent to which Obama-era activists in and out of government disingenuously campaigned against Republicans.

The Daily Caller News’ Foundation’s Chris White details how two such activists were involved in the creation of a web page designed to make it appear that Alabama Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore favored prohibition. Moore lost the 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones, who has since called for an investigation of activities.

AND THEN THERE’S THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COVER-UP EVER: Former Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense Jed Babbin lays out a highly persuasive case for the view the Department of Justice and FBI under President Barack Obama and continuing to the present have pulled off the most successful cover-up of a host of serious crimes in American history. All for the twin purposes of protecting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and preventing Donald Trump from occupying the Oval Office.

NEW SPECIAL REPORT ON HUAWEI, CHINA’S POLICE-STATE TROJAN HORSE: The Dec. 1, 2018, arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada has sparked huge interest in the Chinese tech giant’s world-wide activities.

Editors at The Epoch Times, which is uniquely well-sourced in China,  recently assigned a crack team of journalists to dig into Huawei, get beyond its official facades and expose the ugly facts about the firm’s role as one of Beijing’s most effective espionage tools. You will want to, as Glenn says, keep scrolling in this special report. And go here for daily updates on Huawei developments.

And Stephen Green’s Dec. 13, 2018, post is well worth revisiting as well.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CHECK THE SNOWFALL IN HELL? It must be snowing; otherwise how to explain that a senior NBC reporter resigned because, according to Wayne Dupree, the network is “not informing the American people of the ‘the failures of the generals and national security leaders,’ essentially becoming ‘a defender of the government against Trump’ and a ‘cheerleader for open and subtle threat-mongering.’”

WHICH SIDE KNOWS ITS OPPOSITION’S VIEWS BETTER, LEFT OR RIGHT: The answer  to that question and many more comparing Left and Right, courtesy of Capital Research Center’s Dr. Steven J. Allen.

WILL PELOSI LEGISLATE OR INVESTIGATE? WHY NOT BOTH? She picked the perfect guy to be House General Counsel, no matter which direction she chooses. LINK FIXED.

THESE FIVE HOUSE DEMS WILL LIKELY BE TRUMP’S BIGGEST HEADACHES: Tomorrow, they become chairmen of five House committees with virtually endless opportunities to cause genuine problems for the president.

But check out their biggest donor groups. There, we find some surprises and several big hints about which of the five incoming House powers Trump should most worry about. Everybody has heard of “Mad Maxine” Waters.

But can you name Richard Neal’s home state? No cheating! My analysis is here, on The Epoch Times where I hope you will be seeing my byline early and often, as they say in Chicago.