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.

WAIT, IF RICH GUYS USE THEIR MONEY TO CONTROL POLITICS, WHY DO THEY LOSE SO OFTEN? Good question. And Capital Research Center has the answer, based on the biggest spenders being the biggest losers in every national election since 2004. Great history and a great video.

WAS COMEY’S CLINTON EMAIL DECISION SELF-INTERESTED? Turns out former FBI Director James Comey talked about sensitive government business on his personal email routinely, according to new documents turned up by the Cause of Action Institute (COAI) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Here’s the key: “The FBI reviewed 526 pages, released only 156 pages, and withheld 370 pages in full. Notably, the FBI withheld seven emails under the FOIA’s law enforcement exemption, which applies only where the government can show that (1) a law enforcement proceeding is pending or prospective, and (2) release of information about that proceeding could reasonably be expected to cause some articulable harm,” COAI said.

So in July 2016 when Comey told the nation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her key aides had acted “extremely carelessly” but without the intent of harming U.S. national security,  he not only was mis-representing the law, which doesn’t consider intent, but he also appears now to have been setting an agency precedent that might well have been beneficial to himself.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we lie to the American people to protect our own behinds.

FEDERAL COURT RULES AGAINST MARYLAND GERRYMANDERING GOP VOTERS INTO OBLIVION: It got lost in the election news this week, but Walter Olson points it out in a tweet late yesterday. The Federal District Court for the District of Maryland ruled that when Maryland’s Democratic establishment redrew congressional districts in 2011, they:

•  “The state specifically targeted voters in the sixth congressional district who were registered as Republicans and who had historically voted for Republican candidates.

•  “The state specifically intended to diminish the value of those targeted citizens’ votes by removing a substantial number of them from the sixth district and replacing them with Democratic voters for the purpose of denying, as a practical matter, the targeted voters the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.

•  “The state gave effect to its intent by, on net, removing about 66,000 Republican voters from the sixth district and adding 24,000 Democratic voters in their place.

•  “The state meaningfully burdened the targeted Republican voters’ representational rights by substantially diminishing their ability to elect their candidate of choice.

•  “The state also burdened the Republican voters’ right of association, as demonstrated by voter confusion, diminished participation in Republican organizational efforts in the sixth district, and diminished Republican participation in voting, as well as decreased Republican fundraising.

•  “These injuries were the direct result of the state’s purpose to convert the sixth district from a solid Republican district to a Democratic district.”

As a result, the court ordered Maryland officials “promptly to adopt a new plan in conformance with this Memorandum Opinion for use in the 2020 congressional elections.”

I live in this district, so this decision is great news, especially because the 2011 gerrymandering resulted in my part of Maryland being “represented” by the insufferable radical left-winger, Rep. Jaime Raskin.(Correction: Make that “the insufferable Democratic Rep.-elect David Trone,” replacing Rep. John Delaney, who, for reasons understood only by him, is preparing to run for president in 2020).

Now the focus is on Maryland’s Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. The Democrat-dominated legislature will have to get the new plan past him. There are a bunch of us in Maryland who will be watching him very carefully on this issue.

IF YOU STILL HAVEN’T EXPLAINED TUESDAY’S RESULTS TO YOUR KIDS: “Uncle Strickland” at the Washington Free Beacon has it all laid out for you. Here’s a sample:

“I’m certainly no stranger when it comes to discussing politics with children. My nephews, Brayden and Attechus, are a pair of pompous, pampered hipsters who embody everything wrong with their generation — lazy cynics masquerading as intellectuals who trust Amazon to pack their orders of neckbeard oil and ironic tank tops, but don’t trust Arby’s to pack a sandwich full of succulent, slow-roasted American beef. I’ve had to set them straight a time or two at holiday gatherings. But when it comes to my own offspring, and other patriotic children, the conversations aren’t always so much fun.”

NOW THE IMMIGRATION COURTS ARE REALLY JAMMED: The backlog of immigration cases suddenly jumped to the highest level ever, 1,098,468 cases, according to data tracked by the Transactional Records Analysis Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. This news comes just as three large groups of new potential cases are making their way north from Central America via Mexico toward the southern U.S. border.

Don’t miss the neat map of the states that lets you click on one to get the number of immigration cases there. If you aren’t familiar with TRAC, you should be, especially if, like me, you can never get enough data about government operations and mis-operations.

YES, JOY BEHAR ACTUALLY SAID THIS: The Federalist’s Bre Payton has the sad details.

GUESS WHO EARMARKED $500 MILLION FOR REFUGEES IN 2016: Wasn’t the evil Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson or Phil Anschutz or Robert Mercer. It was … well, Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller has the details. So much for the New York Times’ dismissal of conservative claims about who is helping fund those caravans coming north from Central America and through Mexico to the U.S. border.

HAS MANCHIN GIVEN UP? He says he will vote against a proposed amendment to the West Virginia constitution that would make it illegal to use state tax dollars to support abortion, according to Washington Free Beacon’s Bill McMorris.

Either Manchin thinks he’s so far ahead of his Republican opponent, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morissey, that opposing the amendment won’t prevent his re-election. Or Manchin’s internal polls have picked up the Trump effect and he knows Tuesday is not going to be a good day for him.

FOUR ‘BIG BANGS’ MAKE FOR ONE HUGE QUESTION: It’s Sunday morning, so here’s a question for you — Why is there “something” rather than “nothing?” It’s today’s question on the HillFaith blog. It’s something a lot of smart people on both sides of the science/faith divide have considered over the years. And it’s much more significant than the one about whether a problem is solved if a congressman offers a solution but nobody hears it on C-SPAN.

FACEBOOK IS SOOO SORRY IT MISTAKENLY CENSORED PRO-LIFE ADS: Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman lays out how the social media giant keeps censoring certain kinds of political ads, then bowing and scraping with apologies.

Freeman quotes Susan B. Anthony List spokesman Mallory Quigley saying, “’At this point all of the ads are back up and running,’ reports Mallory Quigley of SBA List via email. She adds that four different ads created by her organization ‘have been suspended and then approved multiple times in the last month or so.’”

But the fact remains that Facebook’s apologies don’t change the reality that Facebook shut down political speech of one side during an election campaign in which every minute of advocacy could change the outcome of voting.