AND JOURNALISTS WONDER WHY NOBODY BELIEVES THEM NOW? Journalists lauded former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from all matters involving the investigation of allegations of collusion between 2016 Trump campaign aides and Russian interests in order to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest.

But what about the mainstream media’s conflicts of interests? Journalism ethics dictate that journalists never make themselves part of the story, but, as the Last Refuge’s Sundance makes clear, there have been more than a few reporters who made themselves part of “The Resistance” to President Donald Trump, via the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his staff.

Virtually all of the major mainstream media players are involved in this kind of ethical corruption, but Exhibit A is the meeting first reported by Sara Carter of federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman with four AP reporters to discuss the investigation of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

As Sundance writes, “later it was revealed that Andrew Weissman, Robert Mueller’s #1 special counsel prosecutor, was coordinating investigative efforts with the full support of four AP reporters who were giving Weissman tips.  That’s information from journalists to use in his court filings and submitted search warrants.  Make sure you grasp this: The AP journalists were feeding information to their ideological allies within the special counsel.”

Put another way, instead of getting information from their sources to be reported to the public, it appears that these AP operatives effectively made themselves researchers for Mueller’s operation, via a federal prosecutor long known to have committed serious violations of judicial ethics.

They joined the team they were supposedly covering.

No wonder Sundance asks:

“Think about a New York Times, CNN, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Yahoo News or Washington Post journalist now having to write an article deconstructing a foundation of two-years worth of lies they participated in creating. Do we really think such a catastrophic level of corrupted journalism could reconstitute into genuine reporting of fact-based information?”

Not gonna happen.

PINK FLOYD AS A PATH TO CHRISTIANITY? It sounds unlikely in the extreme and for most folks, it is. But not for The Poached Egg’s Greg West, who explains how a cut on the psychedelic English rock group’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album put him on the road to becoming an influential apologist for the former Jewish carpenter.

DID REPUBLICANS BLOW IT BY EMPHASIZING THE CARAVAN? Pollster Dave Winston dug deep into the 2018 midterm election results data and came away thinking things could have turned it quite differently.

“Here are the takeaways. The Friday before the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans were handed a gift in the form of the November monthly jobs report. Described by a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden as ‘pretty much everything you could want in a monthly jobs report,’ it was a clear sign that Republicans’ center-right economic policies were moving the economy forward, affecting not just job growth, but finally wage growth as well. And the timing couldn’t have been better, coming just four days before the election,” Winston writes in Roll Call.

But instead of making that great economic news the GOP’s closing argument, the migrant caravan heading north through Mexico to the U.S. border took center stage. Independents, who decided the election broke for Democrats by 12 points, according to Winston. I’m not sure I entirely agree with Winston’s analysis but years ago I worked with him at the RNC and have no doubt his analysis should get a close look.

BERNIE CAMPAIGN MADE GLOBAL WARMING EVEN WORSE: Yes, Vermont Socialist and likely 2020 Democratic presidential nomination aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders believes the global warming/climate change/greenhouse gasses problem “poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet. The transportation sector accounts for about 26 percent of carbon pollution emissions.”

But campaigning for nine Democrats in nine states during the 2018 midterm election was even more important to Bernie than saving the planet, so he rented a private jet to fly to those nine campaign stops, at a cost of more than a quarter of a million dollars., reports Washington Free Beacon’s Brent Scher.

And oh by the way, according to Scher, commercial aviation is a huge source of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Private jets like the one Bernie leased are even worse than airliners because they carry far fewer passengers. No hypocrisy to see here folks, move along.

ORGANIZERS DISAPPEAR AS CHAOS ENGULFS CARAVAN: Actions, especially ill-advised attempts to rush a U.S. border port of entry, have consequences. Monica Showalter notes this morning on The American Thinker that Puebla Sin Fronteras hasn’t updated its web site “since advertising for last week’s border confrontation. And the mayor of Tijuana says he wants them arrested.” Maybe there’s a relationship between those two facts?

WHAT IS “CITIZENS FOR TRANSPARENCY” HIDING ABOUT ITSELF? If you’ve never heard of this group, that’s probably because it appears to be another left-wing hit-and-run smear machine. This one is aimed at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the evangelical legal defense group that has won nine Supreme Court cases in its work on behalf of the First Amendment.

The most recent of those nine wins was on behalf of Masterpiece cake shop owner Jack Phillips upholding his right not to be forced by the Colorado PC police to use his artistic skills to advocate for gay marriage, a view that conflicts with his faith.

Citizens for Transparency bought an electronic billboard in Times Square and has used it for weeks to libel ADF as a “hate group” because of its position on gay rights issues. Following the billboard to the group’s two websites brings you to a host of wholesale misrepresentations that seem taken from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

When Hayden Ludwig of the Capital Research Center (CRC) asked Caleb Cade, the group’s spokesman, who funds it and related questions, Cade refused to answer. But Ludwig kept digging and discovered some very interesting stuff that sheds light on why Citizens for Transparency doesn’t want you to know who it is.

NO VIOLENT CRIMINALS IN THE MIGRANT CARAVAN? GUESS AGAIN: Critics continually scoff at President Donald Trump’s claim that hundreds of violent criminals are among the estimated 8,500 migrants in the latest caravan, the advance elements of which are in Tijuana, Mexico.

Well, Trump critics, meet 46-year-old Miguel Angel Ramirez, fresh out of a Honduran prison where he served 10 years for homicide and three for robbery. Ramirez was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents late in the evening of November 24, along with two other younger men, after the trio illegally crossed the border from Tijuana, according to LifeZette.

“For those of you who criticized DHS warnings and have inaccurately portrayed the caravan as only innocent asylum seekers, we hope that your reporting reflects these facts moving forward,” Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Tyler Houlton told journalists in announcing Ramirez’ arrest Friday. I hope he’s not holding his breath.

NEW TEXAS DEMOCRAT TO HIRE UNIQUE CHIEF OF STAFF: LegiStorm reports that newly elected Colin Allred (D-Texas) has hired Paige Hutchinson, his campaign manager, to be his chief of staff (COS) when he takes office in January.

It’s not at all unusual for senators and representatives to give their campaign managers the COS job. Having been a Hill COS long, long ago in a Congress far, far away, I can appreciate the challenges now awaiting Hutchinson. But what makes Hutchinson’s hire newsworthy is this.

(Note to commenters: Geez, you guys are a tough crowd! Just think of how much you learned between the ages of 23 and 41 and the “is this newsworthy” issue should be resolved.)

SOMETHING ODD GOING ON IN MARYLAND’S EMOLUMENTS SUIT AGAINST TRUMP: Earlier this year, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh found a federal judge willing to give the green light to his suit claiming the chief executive violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting foreign gifts.

The New Reform Club’s Seth Barrett Tillman says what isn’t happening in the litigation is more significant than what is. The District of Columbia government has also joined in the suit. Frosh is from deepest blue Montgomery County and is a hyper-partisan liberal Democrat who has also joined in suits challenging Trump’s immigration executive orders, 2017 tax cuts, Obamacare repeal and replace, and much, much more.

CRITICS HAVING FIELD DAY BLASTING LATEST ‘CLIMATE ASSESSMENT:’ It was produced by an estimated 1,000 government employees from 13 federal departments and agencies in a sort of consortium led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The report predicts all the usual scary climate change horrors if the world doesn’t give up fossil fuels.

Inconveniently for Al Gore and the rest of the global warming crowd, however, a growing chorus of critics, including more than a few eminently qualified science types, are pointing out a host of statistical flaws and errors of logic in the models used by the report’s authors, according to LifeZette.

Even more inconveniently, Andrew Wheeler, the guy presently running the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on an acting basis, says it’s time to take a serious look at the models. Doing that might actually inject some semblance of credibility into the climate assessment field. That will send Gore and company absolutely, totally and irretrievably around the bend.

(Note: My thanks to Eugene Volokh and Seth Tillman for pointing out the significant  difference between imminent and eminent. I’m an editor, so I appreciate good edits.)

HEY, YOU’RE THAT (PRO-LIFE) ‘MY PILLOW’ GUY! If you watch Fox News, you’ve probably seen the commercial from which that line is drawn over and over, but here’s a piece of news about Mike Lindell, the My Pillow CEO, that might surprise you.

Lindell is funding “Unplanned,” a movie about “Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director, who is now an outspoken pro-life advocate,” according to LifeZette’s Zachary Leeman. “She runs the ‘And Then There Were None’ organization, a ministry that helps abortion workers leave their industry.”

Did you know Lindell is a recovering crack and alcohol addict and born-again Christian? Me, neither, but, as a sober boozehound (27 years, but who’s counting?) and believer myself, I plan to read his forthcoming book, “What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO.”

By the way, Lindell has sold more than 40 million pillows. That’s got to be some kind of record.

SPEAKING OF BORDER GASSING, THEY GAS YOU IN THE ARMY, TOO: The Daily Caller’s Virginia Kruter explains in vivid detail what it was like.

FROM TWITTER’S ‘THINGS YOU CANNOT SAY’ DEPARTMENT: Megan Murphy is a Canadian feminist who has the audacity to make such outrageous claims as “men aren’t women.” Can you believe anybody would say such a thing? Well, Murphy won’t be saying it on Twitter any more because the SJWs banned her.

Which prompts this from Murphy:

“What is insane to me, though, is that while Twitter knowingly permits graphic pornography and death threats on the platform (I have reported countless violent threats, the vast majority of which have gone unaddressed), they won’t allow me to state very basic facts, such as ‘men aren’t women.’”

Over at The Federalist, Nicole Russell strips Twitter’s argument down to its bare essentials in the course of explaining why Jack Dorsey’s nose is as long, or maybe even longer, than Mark Zuckerberg’s.

WHAT IF THIS RESURRECTION STUFF ABOUT JESUS WAS JUST FAKE NEWS? I hear it in D.C. often, from people on the Right and Left — “Oh, what do you expect Fox/CNN/MSNBC to say.”

The Poached Egg’s Erik Manning and J. Warner Wallace, NBC Dateline’s “cold-case detective,” consider whether the bias of an argument’s source or advocate is sufficient ground, irrespective of the particular evidence offered, to reject an opposition claim. I offer my own humble contribution to the discussion, too!

CALIFORNIA BURNS AS GOV. MOONBEAM’S ‘REGULATORY CAPTURE’ DAWDLES: Look no further than the Golden State for a perfect illustration of the dire effects of special interests and government insiders controlling oversight of a vital public service like wildfire management and the utility companies that supply power throughout the state.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Susan Crabtree explains why it’s taken nine years for state officials and utility industry experts to come up with a desperately needed map of fire-prevention measures in California’s many areas that are prone to conflagrations sparked by powerline and equipment failures. The recent Camp Fire that is now the worst-ever in California history was reportedly caused by failure of a PG&E powerline.

Outgoing Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown’s 12-year tenure overlapped with much of the growing wildfire problem, which he now ridiculously attributes to “climate change.” Between Brown’s incompetence and that of federal land managers driven by ludicrous environmentalist notions of forestry non-intervention, will California literally burn to the ground?

CHINA’S XI HAS NEVER BEFORE FACED SUCH AN OPPONENT: When Chinese Communist Party officials allowed an unprecedented level of economic freedom beginning in 1978, they likely had no idea that four decades later it would produce somebody like billionaire Guo Wengui.

Worth an estimated $28 billion, the exiled Guo announced he is creating the Rule of Law Fund and establishing it with an initial budget of $100 million.

“Guo announced the creation of the fund, which will also be used to finance investigations into Chinese government financial activities and those of its supporters in the West, at press conference in New York City on Tuesday,” according to Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz.

“The former Chinese insider also revealed in a presentation for reporters details on the disappearance, imprisonment, or death of 56 prominent Chinese nationals, including the mysterious death in July of Wang Jian, one of China’s wealthiest business leaders.”

Guo also promised the fund will investigate and expose Chinese spies operating in the U.S. and their corporate enablers. The Left’s George Soros may have finally met a Right match.

MAXINE WATERS TO CHAIR HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES PANEL. SERIOUSLY? Yes, it appears all but certain the California “Impeach 45” Democrat is moving to the chairmanship.

If you have a bank account, might want to consider a safer alternative, like under the mattress. Or in a piggy bank. Maybe dig a hole in the backyard. Anything not within reach of Mendacious Maxine.

DID YOU NOTICE IT SNOWED IN HOUSTON? Yes, Houston, as in Texas. According to the National Weather Service, the home of the NFL Texans got it’s earliest-ever recorded snowfall on November 13. Naturally, the weather pundits there dubbed it “Snow-vember.”

But there’s far more significance to the Houston snowflakes than a mere interesting fact, according to American Thinker’s Brian Joondeph. He cites multiple other instances of unexpectedly early cold in the U.S. and points out that “perhaps the closed-minded climate warriors should entertain another possibility, that the climate is indeed changing, but not in the way they are assuming. Data from NASA suggests it’s global cooling, not warming that we should be concerned about.”

Why, it’s enough to freeze Al Gore at an inconvenient time!

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Are we living in Fallen Angels?

HERE’S HOW THE FORD FAMILY LOST CONTROL OF THE FOUNDATION BEARING ITS NAME: Can you guess which member of the Ford family said this? “I was young, inexperienced, and stupid. I just muffed it. It got out of control and stayed out of control. And now it’s gone, of course.”

Those words were spoken by Henry Ford II in the 1980s, according to Ken Braun, writing in an excellent analysis of the Ford Foundation recently published by the Capital Research Center.

Old Henry Ford put middle America on affordable, versatile wheels. Sadly, the foundation he began as a hospital has in the decades since devoted hundreds of millions of dollars from his enterprise’s profits to putting Middle America into the poor house. Braun’s analysis is part of the essential background for knowing why we are where are as a nation.

FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS HILLARY TO COUGH UP SOME ANSWERS: U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan is giving Hillary Clinton 30 days to answer key questions about her formerly secret email server while she was Secretary of State. This could be a milestone on her road to the inside of a federal prison.

CROWDFUNDING IS THE LEFT’S NEWEST POLITICAL WEAPON: It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody but have you noticed how lefties have recently turned to sites like GoFundMe on the Internet to raise millions of dollars for their causes?

“Online platforms such as CrowdJustice, GoFundMe, and CrowdPAC, among others, have drawn in millions for political activism and progressive causes. Funds have been raised for purposes as varied as supporting the federal bureaucrat who lost her job for flipping off Trump’s motorcade to covering the security costs for Christine Blasey Ford, and even underwritingStormy Daniels’s legal bills,” according to Washington Free Beacon’s Haris Alic.

Leftist advocates and their buddies in the mainstream media often portray these crowdfunding efforts as spontaneous efforts by the populace outraged by President Donald Trump’s latest tweet but Alic provides evidence that, as so often proves to be the case, they are anything but unorganized.

A RIGHT SMART WONK TO RUN HOUSE GOP POLICY? Quin Hillyer, who, like the insurance commercial, knows a thing or three about what makes effective congressmen, has a solid piece this morning in the American Spectator on why Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) should be the next chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee.

“In the political world that congressmen inhabit, the head of the policy committee must be able to promote policy that works both in action and in the court of popular opinion. Palmer understands this,” according to Hillyer. Exactly.

NEW HILL REPORT TO SAY XI, COMMUNIST PARTY STRONGER THAN EVER: When veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz leads a story like this, pay close attention:

“China’s Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping is expanding control over the Chinese government while increasing the use of covert action influence operations, according to a forthcoming congressional report,” Gertz writes today on Washington Free Beacon.

The forthcoming report, which Gertz obtained under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, is being prepared by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Among much else, Xi is also cracking down on China’s growing Christian population, forcing church leaders to submit to state supervision and censorship, just as the Soviet Communist Party did in Soviet Union.

“The expanded party controls also have led to an increase in Chinese influence operations conducted through a party organ known as the United Front Work Department,” according to Gertz.

The report will say the “‘As the CCP has consolidated power over many aspects of Chinese society, President Xi has expanded the role of the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a powerful party entity responsible for securing the political support of or otherwise co-opting non-CCP entities within China and among the Chinese diaspora in foreign countries, including the United States,'” Gertz reports.

“Xi elevated the department by declaring its covert and overt operations as important for the party and to be used as a ‘magic weapon’ in advancing Chinese strategic objectives,” Gertz continued. Somehow I doubt Xi had disappearing bunny rabbits in mind.

WOULD THERE BE AN AMERICA IF ROME NEVER FELL? Thinking about history in its potential alternative outcomes is not a common topic of discourse these days, but doing so remains a superb tool for eliciting a deeper understanding of what did happen and why. Think — What if the South had won the Civil War?

So consider the Brit popular historian Tom Holland:

Holland is an immensely popular public historian who has attracted great controversy for speaking with brutal candor about Islam, Western liberals and sundry other topics. More recently, he offered some arresting thoughts in this “Unbelievable” interview about the true character of the ancients and how Christianity changed the course of history, philosophy, politics, economics and, perhaps most significantly, what we today understand to be moral.

Holland is no Bible-thumping Fundamentalist, yet he declares “I was wrong about Christianity” and the ancients. That declaration alone ought to be sufficiently tempting to check out this HillFaith post.

DID TRUMP JUST APPOINT DEEP THROAT TO RUN DOJ? Oh man, this is giving “Byzantine” new meaning. If you aren’t reading The Last Refuge regularly, you aren’t keeping up, my friends.