TALK ABOUT GOOD LUCK: The photographer saw a Cheetah walking toward him. And then they hugged?

WE SHOWED YOU OURS, NOW IT’S YOUR TURN: House Republicans want the White House to make public the full transcript of Biden’s telephone conversation earlier this week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

TWO LOOKS AT THE EYE: Eyes are amazing organs that bring the world into our minds (especially if you happen to be David Hume!), but are they products of an intelligent design or of an evolutionary process? That’s the question posed this morning on HillFaith. 

Professor Cornelius Hunter says the former. He has a PhD in Biophysics and Computational Biology. Professor Nathan Lents says the latter. He has a PhD in Molecular Biology.

These are two smart guys. Read both of them and I guarantee you will come away with a deeper appreciation for the miracle of sight, regardless of how you come down on the origins issue. I should tell you, too, both cases are a bit lengthy, but well worth the time.

EVANGELINE LILLY – NEXT WOKE VICTIM: The Marvel actress comes out against vaccine mandates. You know what that means for her career.

DEEP-DIVE ON THE ABOLISH FILIBUSTER FRAUD: No, it was not a grassroots movement seeking to “protect democracy,” claim Jason Snead and Scott Walter. The drive to abolish the Senate filibuster and enact measures to federalize election law in America was the carefully calculated and richly funded product of a small group of rich progressives and their legions of activist dependencies.

DON’T ASSUME BIDEN’S SUPREME COURT NOMINEE’S CONFIRMATION: Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), writing in The Federalist, points to a Senate rule that could, given the chamber’s 50-50 partisan split, make the confirmation of His Fraudulency’s upcoming Supreme Court nominee anything but certain.

PITTSBURGH BRIDGE COLLAPSES BEFORE BIDEN INFRASTRUCTURE SPEECH: Fortunately, no fatalities and only 10 minor injuries.

PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE? U.S. District Court Judge David Carter rejected Chapman University Professor John Eastman’s request to stop the House January 6 inquisitors from gaining access to more than 11,000 documents via the school.

In his ruling, according to Politico, Carter said he rejected the request because “Dr. Eastman’s actions clearly fall within the bounds of an investigation into ‘the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy.’”

I’m from out of town and all, and I’m not a lawyer, but Carter’s reasoning seems to presuppose Eastman’s guilt. Am I mis-reading it? Asking for a friend.

IS THE MULTIVERSE THEORY JUST A DODGE? If you follow the Design versus Atheism debates (and who doesn’t, right?), you know about the Multiverse Theory. Dr. Frank Turek points out that not everybody in Atheism camp is convinced about the Multiverse.

PUTIN BUDDIES CONTRIBUTED TO SCHUMER: Wait, there must be some mistake, Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon. Don’t you mean Putin’s buddies contributed to Trump? Surely the esteemed Senate Majority Leader would never accept funds from people connected to Russia’s strong man.

CHINESE INTEL GAVE HIS FRAUDULENCY’S FAMILY $31 MILLION: Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer lays out for Mark Levin some of the details of how Chinese individuals linked to Beijing’s intelligence establishment channeled $31 million to the Biden family. Must-watch, and Schweizer’s new book, “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win,” is a must-read.

“There’s no question in my mind that they were targeted by the Chinese … This is unprecedented. I don’t know of a time in American history where the American first family has had this kind of a financial bond with a foreign intelligence service —particularly a foreign intelligence service that wants to defeat the United States in global competition,” Schweizer notes in the interview.

Levin points out in response that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause was included by the Founders precisely to prevent this kind of foreign influence inside American government.

MORE BAD 2022 NEWS FOR DEMS: The polls keep showing Democrats have gotten themselves profoundly out of sync with the American public, as NBC finds three-fourths of its respondents think the country is going “downhill,” while a Fox survey’s respondents ranked Republicans as better able by 15 or more points to handle national security, border security, immigration, the economy and crime.

Meanwhile, over at The Lid, Jeff Dunetz is wisely warning against counting chickens that ain’t yet hatched: “In 2016 and 2020, Republicans didn’t believe the polls because they are usually wrong and have favored the Democrats. So now that the polls predict a good year for Republicans, are we supposed to believe them now? Many Congressional Republicans believe them and are counting their chickens before they are hatched.”

And I’m old enough to remember what happened to the GOP in 1998, as seen on this from C-SPAN. 

MASS TRANSIT CANNOT COMPETE WITH PRIVATE AUTOS: There is a reason and it is spelled f-r-e-e-d-o-m.

AS CROMWELL TOLD THE LONG PARLIAMENT: That select committee House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol has issued 84 subpoenas, only eight of which actually relate to the events of that day, according to The Federalist’s Tristan Justice.

“Born in the ashes of a 9/11-style commission blocked by Republicans when Democrats refused a genuine investigation of violence on Capitol Hill, Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6 has remained faithful to its central purpose. That purpose is seeking retribution against political dissidents while offering a smokescreen to Pelosi’s own culpability in her failures to reinforce Capitol security,” Justice explains.

Were he around to witness these events today, Cromwell might well voice something along this line: “You are no investigators; I say you are no legitimate inquiry; begone, and give place to honest men.”

CDC CONFIRM BIDEN COVID DEATHS EXCEED TRUMP TOTAL:  Issues & Insights editorial board lays it all out, based on the latest government data. Didn’t some guy named Booden or Bobbin, or something like that, say this back in 2020 when the deaths total was around 220,000:

“Anyone who is not responsible for taking control, in fact not saying I take no responsibility initially, anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”

BABBIT WAS TRYING TO STOP THE VIOLENCE WHEN SHE WAS KILLED: New January 6 video footage analyzed by The Epoch Times shows Air Force veteran Ashli Babbit pleading with demonstrators to stop breaking windows and vandalizing property in the moments immediately prior to being shot dead.

“Video shot by John Sullivan, also known as Jayden X, shows that Babbitt tried to stop the violence against the Speaker’s Lobby at least four times before she climbed into a broken window and was shot by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. At one point, she was so distressed at the violence, she was jumping up and down in frustration,” Epoch’s Joseph Hanneman reports.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Reminder: Cop Who Killed Ashli Babbitt Was Cleared of Criminal Wrongdoing Without Interview.

AN MLK DAY DAILY GOUGE SPECIAL: The usual no-nonsense/cut the BS analysis of issues and idiots of the day is there in today’s Daily Gouge, but the Lighter Side has a double/triple helping of great political cartoons. Considering what’s been happening of late at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capitol, we can all use a heaping helping of humor.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Thom McKee, the wit behind the Daily Gouge, flew F-14s off U.S. Navy carriers and won a bunch of money on Tic-Tac-Dough back in the day. He also saved me from serious injury in falling from a scaffold during a church mission trip in Puebla, Mexico, a few years ago. The man is a gentleman and a scholar, who also happens to be one of the world’s great jokesters.

GOT YOUR VETO PEN READY, GOV. YOUNGKIN? Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader concedes that the chances of it ever arriving on the new Virginia governor’s desk are likely remote. Even so, there is a bipartisan proposal in the state legislature to allow a ‘second look” by judges in the Commonwealth and possible early release convicted violent offenders serving long sentences.

“The Virginia bill would let inmates who have committed even the most violent crimes such as murder seek release after ten years in prison if they committed the crime before age 25, or after 15 years in prison if they committed their crime after turning 25. By contrast, Washington, DC’s law only allows people who committed their crimes at under age 25 to seek release, after they have served 15 years in prison,” Bader writes.

“In short, the Virginia bill would allow most criminals serving life sentences to seek release; the DC law lets only a minority of criminals serving life sentences seek release. Even so, DC’s law made 583 violent criminals (including many murderers and rapists) eligible for an earlier release. And its backers want to expand the law to cover crimes committed at all ages,” he adds.

You know, it’s like the sponsors of such proposals are mad at law-abiding Americans and want to see us suffer.

MOST SAY RELIGION UNDER ATTACK IN THE U.S.: The results aren’t surprising to anybody who has been paying attention in recent decades, but the latest Issues & Insights/TIPP Survey digs deep into the details.

Majorities of evangelicals, Catholics and Protestants agree the faith faces growing official and cultural hostility, but only minorities of the Orthodox and Jewish  as well as those of “Another Religion” or “No Religion”  share that view.

Similarly, majorities of those interviewed living in the Midwest and South see the hostility but only minorities of those living in the Northeast and West. Only one age group — 18-24 — has less than a majority.

DOJ CHARGES OATH KEEPERS WITH ‘SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY:’ Interestingly, the DOJ announcement describes the charges with reference to the statute’s inclusion of efforts to oppose or delay execution of a law, not its reference “to conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them …” But watch, the MSM and the Schumer/Pelosi crowd will frame it rhetorically as if the defendants are being charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government.

SINEMA PUTS FILIBUSTER REFORM OUT OF ITS MISERY: The Arizona Democrat delivers a heartfelt explanation of her vote. She’s wrong on so much else, but not on this one.

WHICH WAY, KEVIN MCCARTHY? Like handing a starving man half a Whopper is one way of describing House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s four-point platform for 2022. But Rachel Bovard’s analysis of the California Republican is much more bracing, including this (emphasis added):

“If you’re sensing shades of elections ranging from 1984 to 2012, you’re not alone. Minus the aberration that was Trump, the Republican Party has been promising the exact same set of goals for my entire lifetime, regardless of what is actually happening in the country. One suspects that a nuclear winter could befall the entire North American continent and Republicans would struggle mightily through the fallout to declare they have the solution to the problem: the reauthorization of the Keystone Pipeline.

“It’s not that these policies are wrong or even misplaced. They’re simply mis-prioritized. Yes, more enforcement at the border, making life better for small businesses, securing American energy independence, and enforcing parental choice are good and absolutely necessary policy goals. But they also represent the absolute baseline expectations that voters should have from an even marginally competent Republican party.”

OLD GUARD GOP’S INSANE STRATEGY ON VOTING RIGHTS REFORM: Democrats claim democracy will die if elections aren’t federalized to keep those racist Republicans from making a repeat of 2020 impossible. Old Guard Republicans, according to Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist, are totally out to lunch on the issue.

“The Washington Post this month reported that at least 69 percent of Republicans are seriously concerned about the 2020 election. Perhaps the worst thing a party could do if it cared about serious political power would be to signal that the issue means so little to them. This pathetic cowardice and incompetent weakness are exactly what Republican voters are sick to death of,” Hemingway writes.

This is yet another illustration of why the GOP Establishment so richly deserves its label as the “stupid party.”

ABOUT THAT BRAIN CELL THAT ‘LEARNED TO PLAY PONG:’ It’s an amazing development, to be sure, but there’s a lot more to the story than is being reported.

GUY IN A CANADIAN LAB CREATES A DNA ANTENNA: Wow, what will they think of next after using DNA to build a tiny antenna that tracks the movements of proteins. Next comes a new and improved! version of God’s nanotechnology Bacterial Flagellum?