HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Capital Research Center’s Michael Watson goes beyond the unexpected New York Times expose earlier this week to shine additional light on the abortion mill’s “un-progressive labor practices.”

TRUMP’S MANAGEMENT STYLE NO SURPRISE IF YOU GREW UP RUNNING HOTELS: Like Robert Weissberg, whose father owned major hotels in multiple big cities across the country.

Writing in American Thinker, Weissberg says “overseeing a hotel empire is comparable to managing a fire or police department in a Detroit-like city. Hotels operate 24/7, 365 days a year and exist in near perpetual crisis. I grew up hearing about electricity or hot water suddenly going kaput, reservation systems gone awry, unions threatening picket lines, or health inspectors warning about closing restaurants while an awaiting mass transit strike meant that hotel workers could not show up for their jobs.”

And that’s not the half of it! Go here for the rest. Doesn’t answer the question of whether running the country like a hotel chain is the best way, but it sure beats running it like a social justice experiment on campus.

WASHINGTON POST ‘JOURNALIST’ LAUNCHES PC ATTACK ON TRUMP WALL FUND: Jeff Bezos’ party-line daily displays this slogan on its logo: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That should be “Journalism Dies Here,” thanks to newsroom activism such as this latest example described by Jeff Dunetz at The Lid. 

WHAT A TANGLED PATH THE LEFT WEAVES WHEN IT PRACTICES TO DECEIVE: It’s Thursday and the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Andrew Kerr has new details on how a lefty non-profit sought to cover its tracks regarding the Antifa activities and advocacy of its employee, Joseph Alcoff AKA “Chepe” and “Jose Martin.”

HE WAS SCREAMING ‘ALlAHU AKBAR’ AS HE SWUNG THE SWORD: But Mohiussunnath Chowdhury claimed he was just kidding about being an ISIS supporter and what he really wanted was for the British police he was attacking to kill him. So the UK jury found him not guilty of attempted terrorism. Robert Spencer has the details.

RIPPING OFF THE MASK OF ANTIFA ANONYMITY: Andrew Kerr of the Daily Caller News Foundation’s (DCNF) Investigative Group has done a remarkable piece of deep-dive journalism that went live this morning: “Revealed: Antifa Leader Relied on Anonymity to Push Radical, Violent Communist Agenda.”

The Antifa leader in question is known on Twitter as “#Sabokitty.” But that’s just the beginning, according to DCNF’s Kerr:

• “The Daily Caller News Foundation has determined that an influential Antifa leader uses aliases to spread radical and often violent rhetoric while concealing his actual identity.
• “Joseph ‘Jose’ Alcoff works with congressional Democrats as part of his day job as a manager with a DC-based advocacy group. But he spreads socialist and communist propaganda when going by the name ‘Jose Martin.’
• “Identifying as ‘Chepe,’ Alcoff advocates for the violent overthrow of the government and for the murder of the rich. He has relished the mainstreaming of Antifa’s militant tactics in the Trump era.
• “A 2017 book identified Chepe as an organizer behind Smash Racism DC, the Antifa group that mobbed Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s home in November and ran Ted Cruz out of a restaurant in September.”

So how many more liberal non-profit activists are leading double or triple lives? One hopes DCNF and Kerr are prepared for the reaction because the Left will not take having this kind of light shone on its dark corners lying down.

SOROS HELPED FUND LEFTY THUGS WHO HARASSED FLORIDA AG: Remember in June when Florida Attorney General Pam Biondi and her boyfriend were hounded away from a movie theatre by left-wing “protestors”? Turn out the protestors were with a group that calls itself Organize Florida.

Just happens, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Luke Rosiak, that Organize Florida received a $500,000 grant from George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center in 2017. No, I’m not surprised either. Rosiak has more details here.

SEE, QUANTUM MECHANICS CAN EXPLAIN HOW SOMETHING COMES FROM NOTHING: This fascinating experiment by a team led by a Spanish researcher is sure to spark new debate in the media, academia and various public policymaking bodies about origins, intelligent design and creation. I’m skeptical (scroll all the way to the end, please) but am very much interested in what folks here think.

WILL JUDGE SULLIVAN ACCEPT BEING GIVEN THE IDIOT’S TREATMENT? U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan recently ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller to produce to him the 302 form and related notes from that infamous “interview” with former Trump national security adviser, Gen.(Ret.) Michael Flynn in the White House.

Mueller replied, but as Powerline’s Scott Johnson points out today, “the attachments to the reply memorandum include neither. Where are they?” Either Director Christopher Wray is in control of the bureau or he’s not. At this point, the latter seems to be most likely. And a vacating of Flynn’s conviction warranted.

See also Johnson’s Friday comments here.

WE WERE SIDE-BURNED ONCE AND YOUNG: Stumbled across this photo from my first job on Capitol Hill. Back when there were still real journalists covering Congress. Brought back a lot of memories. And a good many Sunday evening chuckles, too.

MEET MARC ELIAS, QUITE POSSIBLY THE MOST DANGEROUS DEMOCRAT IN D.C.: Political junkies Left and Right have heard of him but even folks with an above-average interest in public affairs could rarely pick Marc Elias out of a lineup of D.C. VIPs.

Name a major national Democratic figure, issue, donor or campaign entity, however, and odds are Elias is an advisor, counsel or otherwise involved at the highest level, and that creates something akin to a political MOAB.

The reason, as Capital Research Center’s Christine Ravold explains, is “this constellation of left-leaning interests shows a unique concentration of Democrat strategic intelligence—all protected by attorney-client privilege.” Go here for the first of Ravold’s two-parter on Elias. Part two will be worth the short wait.

OCASIO-CORTEZ IS WORSE THAN YOU OR PELOSI THOUGHT: The American Spectator’s David Catron lays out the several fronts on which the It Girl from New York can be a real pain in the — for the presumptive Speaker of the House.

But he also offers this warning for the freshman who breathlessly told her supporters recently that her office is a mere two doors down the hall from the California Democrat: “Pelosi has been a member of the House since June of 1987, more than two years before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born. Nancy Pelosi has seen a lot of ambitious young fire breathers immolated by their own hubris.”

Read Catron now, then store it away to re-read in six months. It should be clear by then whether or not AOC figured it out.

UPDATE: Yes, I know, AOC represents a district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens instead of Brooklyn, as I originally wrote above. Hey, I’m from the South and you know how confusing all those big Northern cities can be for us.

ANY MINUTE NOW, MSM WILL DEMAND CONGRESS REVEAL HUSH FUND USERS: I mean, mainstream media journalists believe in transparency and accountability in government, right? And such journalists don’t have any partisan axes to grind, right? Journalists like these always report without fear or favor, right?

So I’m willing to bet reporters from CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Times, Vox, USAToday, TPM, etc. etc. are at this very moment screaming into their cell phones at recalcitrant Democratic flaks demanding to know if their bosses ever used the tax-funded hush fund to pay off sexual harassment accusers.

Why are you laughing so hard? What’s that you say, I should read The American Thinker’s  Daniel John Sobieski’s “Reveal the Hush-Fund Hypocrites.”

YES, POLITICAL BIAS HAS MEASURABLE EFFECTS ON HOW WE SEE ‘NEWSWORTHINESS:’ That’s the conclusion of Instapundit contributor Gail Heriot of the University of San Diego School of Law and Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego.

I think this is a significant study of how readers assess the significance of news stories and explain why on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) web site. And I hope Heriot and Pashler do a similar analysis of the attitudes of journalists who decide what is and is not news.

HERE’S THE JAMAL KHASHOGGI YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW ABOUT: Writing in The American Spectator, Joseph P. Duggan describes a fascinating lunch conversation he had in 2012 with the recently murdered Saudi “journalist.” There is so much more to Khashoggi than the mainstream U.S. media has reported. Read the whole thing.

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.)