REAGAN WARNED ABOUT COVID TYRANNY: Ronald Reagan’s 1964 national television address on behalf of Barry Goldwater for President is commonly known as “The Speech” that launched the actor’s political career. In fact, there was another Reagan speech three years prior that raised a lot of VIP eyebrows.

As Issues & Insights (I&I) notes, Reagan delivered an impassioned address denouncing socialized medicine at the outset of the ultimately successful Democratic drive to create Medicare. One of Reagan’s comments in that speech was this: “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism in a people has been by way of medicine.”

Were RR here today, he would be entirely justified in saying he told us but we didn’t listen. As evidence, I&I points out:

“Rather than focus on policies that would protect the most vulnerable from COVID, the Left seized on public fear of the disease to impose draconian controls nationwide. Previously unthinkable lockdowns became the norm.

“Mandates that people wear masks and get experimental vaccines became routine. The size of the federal government exploded — going from 21% of GDP in 2019 to 30% in the two years following the outbreak.

“Even now, more than three years after COVID hit these shores and long after it has mutated into little more than a severe cold, the Biden administration refuses to lift its ’emergency’ declaration.”

MCCARTHY WILL BACK MOTION TO VACATE THE CHAIR: It sounds like a boring parliamentary procedure, but in fact it’s analogous to the “No Confidence” vote in the British House of Commons. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is either closing in on the 218 votes he needs to be the next Speaker of the House, or this is a Hail Mary pass at the last minute.

WHALE OF A WAY TO START 2023: What prompts a wolf-sized land mammal to take a swim that lasts hundreds of millions of years and ends up transforming it into the biggest aquatic creature in the ocean, without losing its basic mammalian nature?

An evolutionary biologist and a philosopher of biology argue on HillFaith that there are too many questions conventional biological wisdom can’t answer for it to be solely the Darwinian explanation. The problems are particularly acute in the realm of DNA and the utter complexity of required system changes.

I am increasingly seeing strong parallels between the responses of the science establishment to Covid vaccine/policy critics — censorship, ridicule — and the reaction of the science establishment to evolutionary critics — censorship, ridicule. Somebody should write about that!

MOST WANT FBI INVESTIGATED: Here’s a positive note on which to end 2022 – a new Rasmussen survey finds that 63 percent of likely voters asked agree the FBI should be investigated for conspiring with social media to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.

HHS RULE RESTRICTS HEALTHCARE WORKERS’ RELIGIOUS, CONSCIENCE FREEDOMS: You’re a healthcare worker who doesn’t want to facilitate abortions, assisted-suicide, euthanasia, or trans-genderism, no problem, according to HHS, but you still have to assist in making it happen. Just a little compromise, so quit complaining!

JORDAN MOVING FORWARD DESPITE BIDEN OVERSIGHT REBUFF: People seem to forget that Rep. Jim Jordan was an outstanding high school and college wrestling champion, including two NCAA national titles. His college record at the University of Wisconsin was 156-28-1, for an 84 percent winning percentage.

So it should come as no surprise that Jordan, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is promising a massive oversight effort on the Biden administration, appears totally unfazed by the brazen White House rebuff yesterday. The Biden folks might want to consider that when Jordan puts a hold on something, he really knows what he’s talking about.

WE FREEZE AS BIDEN FIDDLES IN THE SUN: The Lid’s Andrew West is not happy that, while much of the U.S. is still digging out from a lethal winter storm that killed dozens of Americans, our chief executive is snapping selfies in the Caribbean.

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW: The USPS is getting seriously into Artificial Intelligence (AI) to upgrade its services and, hopefully, improve its bottom line. Today at Issues & Insights, Ross Marchand reports:

“Over the past few years, the USPS has been busily building AI-powered solutions to keep the consumer experience as smooth and efficient as possible. In 2021, ZDNet senior writer Stephanie Condon reported, ‘[w]ith a new, Nvidia-powered AI program, the USPS has built a way to dramatically reduce the time it takes to find lost packages, down from several days to just two hours.’

“Additionally, the USPS has experimented with using AI to help consumers troubleshoot through their many issues with the agency. A website chatbot launched in 2017 gave consumers a status update on their packages along with a customized greeting.”

It has been far from smooth-going as the USPS put its toes in the AI waters, but there are encouraging signs of progress. Even so, Marchand also warns that the USPS could easily become a threat to civil liberties, much as has the FBI. Therein lies a huge, but mostly overlooked, challenge for the incoming Republican House majority.

“It’s up to the new Congress to insist that any new AI technologies advance the USPS’ mission and aren’t redirected toward nefarious purposes. As a helpful first step, lawmakers can ensure that the inspector general’s office is adequately funded and equipped to investigate any agency abuses,” Marchand writes.

“Postal leadership and Congress must also work together to overhaul the USPS’ parcel pricing system and include AI-related costs in any pricing methodology. AI applications appear to overwhelmingly focus on package deliveries, and development and cybersecurity costs must be factored into parcel prices.”

MCCARTHY SAYS CAPITOL TO REOPEN JAN 3: GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), sounding confident about next week’s vote for a new Speaker of the House, says the U.S. Capitol Complex will reopen next Tuesday.

FIRST LIBERTY AND JEFFERSON’S WALL OF SEPARATION: That phrase from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists is among the most often quoted and misunderstood from the founding era.

Fortunately, First Liberty Institute President, CEO and Chief Counsel Kelly Shackelford and his rowdy crew based in Plano, Texas, put together a great animated video that clarifies what Jefferson actually wrote and meant. The video works well for adults and kids, so watch it and share it far and wide.

MAN OF THE YEAR 2022: The Washington Free Beacon has multiple awards in the category but this particular one seems to capture the essence of 2022 Newsroom Wokeism.

BIOGENESIS, CONSCIOUSNESS AND ORIGINS: Some questions that seem reasonable to me. But that’s just me. And HillFaith. Play nice, please.

FREE SPEECH, REALLY? Excellent roundup by Nick Givas of Just the News of the recent revelations from the Twitter Files of the multiple ways in which Big Government and Big Tech cooperated in suppressing unapproved speech.

And Givas quotes this from former New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli:

“We’ve entered into this period of American history where the range of permissible thought and speech has so narrowed that if you depart from it at all you are, you’re labeled, you are censored, and you are silenced. It’s incredibly dangerous.

“And the odd thing about it is the very institutions which have been the safeguard of American free thought and speech — American universities, think tanks, the media — are the worst offenders.”

Instapunditeers will recall that Torricelli’s departure from the Senate was not a happy one, dropping his re-election bid in 2002 amid accusations of corruption. Perhaps with time has come new wisdom?

THE MOST HONEST MAN IN CONGRESS: His name is Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and every word of this impassioned speech on the floor of the House of Representatives is true, especially these – “There are consequences to this”:

AND THEY ARE SURPRISED? Turns out the state of Connecticut used disaster relief funds following Hurricane Sandy to pay for repairs and rebuilding of dozens of $1 million+ homes, according to Politico.

NO, DO NOT MAKE JOHN BROWN AN EVANGELICAL HERO: Yes, unfortunately, there is a Woke movement among evangelicals and in my latest PJ Media column, I explain why it appears from a Christianity Today post in June that the magazine founded by the Rev. Billy Graham has been seduced.

ICE UNABLE TO ‘LOCATE’ 378K IMMIGRATION DETAINEE RECORDS: Perhaps somebody should check out the digital version of that warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones. This news story is what kept me occupied much of today.

AND IF YOU WONDER WHETHER TO CELEBRATE KWANZA: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz has a succinct description of it as “a fake holiday with a racist goal, created by a criminal madman.”

IS THIS A TREND? Vandals attacked power facilities in Pierce County, Washington state, and left thousands without power, according to the Blaze. These kinds of attacks seem to be happening more frequently. Oh well, I’m sure the Department of Justice (DOJ) is taking care of the problem, right? Right??

ON BIDEN’S ILLUSORY JOBS CREATION: Remember when Biden claimed to have created more new jobs — 1.1 million in the second quarter of 2022 —  than previous chief executive of the past four decades?

Well, according to the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve, that number was off just a bit. Okay, actually the Philly Fed claims barely more than 10,000 net new jobs, not 1.1 million, were created from April through June.

And Issues & Insights remarks that “Biden has also discouraged work by paying Americans to stay home. Why bother climbing off the couch and finding a job when doing nothing is just as lucrative if not more so? What Biden’s policies do encourage is dependence on government, the absolute opposite of job creation.”

As usual, the I&I crew is right on the mark and well worth reading.

KEEP THOSE MICRO-AGGRESSIONS OUT OF SIGHT: Washington Free Beacon’s Phillip Caldwell reports Biden is devoting more than $550,000 to an effort to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) that detects micro-aggressions in social media. Imagine what fun Don Rickles would have had with such software.

YES, MALES CAN HAVE BABIES: If they are Seahorses (or Sea Dragons) , that is. But that’s actually not the most interesting thing about them, according to Eric Lyons of the Apologetics Press.

They also use a gas bladder to swim vertically, not unlike submarines that change their depth of submersion in a similar manner. That bladder always has exactly the right amount of gas to move as the Seahorse chooses. If the bladder didn’t, the Seahorse would die. Hmmm, what about evolutionary prototyping?

IT CAN BE DONE: Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters is moving to ensure every public school district in the state complies with the law barring shared bathrooms for boys and girls.

Walters’ action follows coverage of a male student beating up two females in a girls bathroom in Edumund, Oklahoma. Edmund is an affluent suburban neighbor just north of Oklahoma City.

Earlier this year, Walters tore into administrators of the Stillwater, Oklahoma, public schools who had allowed mixed-gender bathrooms, according to The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson:

“You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety. Today, I am asking you to work with your fellow board members to make it so that your students only use the bathroom of their God-given natural sex. Biological males should not receive unrestricted access to women’s restrooms, leaving our young girls uncomfortable and afraid to enter them during school.”

Stillwater, by the way, is the home of my undergraduate alma mater, Oklahoma State University. Here’s three cheers for common sense and Ryan Walters, who was appointed by Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.

BIG FIGHT COMING IN 2023 ON BIDEN’S WOKE BUREAUCRACY: Two obscure bills introduced during the Lame Duck session should not be ignored. Here’s why they aren’t going away any time soon.

WANT YOUR MOUTH WASHED OUT WITH SOAP? Then just say that hateful phrase — “brown bag lunch — one more time. That’s the message from Stanford’s IT department to the student body, via its “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.” What won’t they think of next?