CAN U.S. MILITARY DEFEND US? For decades, there was no doubt about the answer to that question, in our minds or those of our adversaries. Not so today, according to Paul Gilbert.

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW: He “has been the topic of more songs, hymns and symphonies than any other figure in history. [His] followers innovated and changed the nature of music forever, and musicians and singers in every musical style continue to sing about him.”

And that’s just one of dozens of amazing facts about Jesus documented and compiled by J. Warner Wallace in his “Person of Interest.” It’s doubly amazing because, even in this most secular age ever, and no matter your particular opinion of Him, Jesus remains the single most influential individual who ever lived.

Just think: If you were writing a story about a guy you wanted to be remembered 2,000 years later, would you have his birth be to a couple of poor peasants in a backwater land of the greatest empire the world had ever seen and in a stall with a bunch of horses and cows? Merry Christmas to all of my Instapundit friends, critics, and skeptics. I treasure all of you.

BIDEN SHOVING CRT INTO HEALTHCARE: Hans Bader of Liberty Unyielding brings news  that doctors who agree to conduct a “clinic-wide review” of their “commitment to anti-racism will receive higher reimbursements from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under a new proposed regulation by His Fraudulency’s minions.

“The Biden administration is essentially applying critical race theory to medicine, by treating racial disparities as having political causes — namely, being due to racism. The more extreme brands of critical race theory argue that all racial disparities are due to racism,” Bader points out.

ABOUT THOSE ROMAN ROADS: J. Warner Wallace explains how the roads Rome built to connect the far-flung corners of its empire paved the way for the birth of Jesus Christ and the spread of Christianity. Sometimes the unintended consequences of government policy can be positively world-changing.

DR. FAUX CHI HAS A WOMAN PROBLEM: To put it as precisely as possible, loads of women don’t trust him. Neither do a lot of other Americans, according to the latest Issues & Insights/TIPP Survey. Among much else, the survey found that 37 percent of women trust Faux Chi, while 45 percent don’t, a key portion of the overall responses that prompted the following observation:

“The data clearly indicate that Fauci has become a lightning rod of sorts for partisan public opinion. The high degree of distrust suggests public disappointment with the handling of the pandemic, which has created economic and social uncertainty and further widened America’s already-wide political divide.”

WILL COURTS SHUTTER PELOSI’S J6 SELECT COMMITTEE? Suits by Meadows, Eastman and four White House rally staffers all point to multiple ways House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol is violating its legislative authorization.

XFINITY BLOCKING CUSTOMER ACCESS TO EPOCH TIMES WEB SITE: The Epoch Times techies are telling the newsroom that Xfinity is blocking customers from opening the news web site, as well as the backend editing functions. Any Instapundit readers encountering this problem? If you are, please call Xfinity and RAISE HOLY HELL!

Update (from Steve): For what it’s worth, I’m on Xfinity and can’t get Epoch Times to load. But it loads just fine on cellular when I turn my phone’s wifi off.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s working fine for me, on both Xfinity and Starlink.

UPDATE: Works for me if I go through Verizon via Hotspot.

UPDATE: Turns out it really does appear to be a Stackpath connectivity problem. Thanks to Instapundit reader Ron. I shared that info with Xfinity customer service and they then confirmed it. Stackpath doesn’t at this moment know the root cause.

UPDATE: Xfinity is again accessing the Epoch Times web site. Still no official word on what happened to block access for much of the afternoon and into the late evening.

YES, THERE IS ACTUAL EVIDENCE FOR THE VIRGIN BIRTH: Erik Manning lays it all out here on HillFaith today. Odds are, before the Christmas/New Year season is behind us, you will hear or read a skeptic deriding the Gospel of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, so, if you aren’t sure, check it out, then make up your own mind after you hear both sides.

MASTER CLASS ON HILLARY IN ONE GRAPH: She, of all people, is teaching a “Master Class” on “the Power of Resilience.” Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon tells us what he learned under Hillary’s tutelage:

“You almost have to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. Not really, but for the sake of argument. As recently as 2016, she was a multimillionaire feminist icon on the verge of making history. Now she’s just an irrelevant failure and ‘toxic white liberal’ who is despised or ignored by everyone outside the Acela corridor cocktail circuit. Her days of charging $225,500 to give a speech at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries are long gone, yet she is either unable or unwilling to bow out gracefully. The Master Class gig seems like another step in Hillary’s inevitable evolution from failed politician to moderately successful self-help guru to extremely successful multilevel marketing executive to federal inmate.”

Pretty much captures it, don’t you think?

ARE RIGHT DONORS BEING FLEECED? American Majority’s Ned Ryun thinks so and he makes his case in this two-part sit-down with Michael Hartman, published by Capital Research Center.

NEW FILINGS CONFIRM ZUCK BUCKS FLOOD FOR BIDEN IN 2020: Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer and Hayden Ludwig find more IRS 990 returns showing Mark Zuckerberg’s immense spending on campaigns to get out the vote in heavily Democratic areas.

MEADOWS SUIT CHALLENGES JANUARY 6 PANEL’S LEGALITY: Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows poses some very tough questions about the legislative authority and legitimacy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 Star Chamber.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Helping support illegal aliens waiting in Mexico to cross into the U.S.

PELOSI IS THE ELEPHANT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JANUARY 6 ROOM: That select House committee that cited Mark Meadows for contempt is operating illegally, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has never answered key questions about what she decided and when on January 6 about the National Guard.

TDS STILL RAMPANT IN HOUSE: Some folks on both sides of the aisle in the Senate have been doing serious thinking about why the U.S. Capitol Police were unprepared for January 6. Not so, the House select committee, a fact made abundantly clear during the debate on the Mark Meadows contempt citation.

JUSSIE SMOLLETT AIN’T THE HALF OF IT: Armando Simon, writing for Issues & Insights, has a compendium of Hate Crime Hoaxes that likely includes several. you missed. Or were never told about by the Mainstream Media.

DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT BUYING TOY GUNS IN CHINA: Cheng San, a Taiwanese-American game designer, made that mistake and got three years in prison as his reward. He’s back in the states now after serving his time and he’s not a happy camper.

NOPE, ZENOROBOTS AREN’T NEW FORM OF SELF-REPLICATION: It would be a big deal if they were, but Dr. Brian Miller of the Center for Science and Culture, writing for Evolution News, says this isn’t it.

ABOUT THAT SCHOOL BOARD LETTER DISASTER: Boy, the National School Boards Association (NASB) “messed up big time,” according to Capital Research Center’s Michael Watson. Just how big?

The explosion of protests prompted by that letter “exacerbated existing internal disputes over [NASB’s] internal governance, some of which we discussed with the Ohio School Boards Association on the InfluenceWatch Podcast. At the same time, it drew unprecedented scrutiny from opponents of totalitarian COVID restrictions on low-risk children, opponents of left-progressive gender ideology, and opponents of ideologically charged teaching inspired by critical race theory.”

According to Watson’s latest count, 18 state school board associations have left NASB, taking with them millions of dollars in dues revenue. Another nine have unofficially cut ties with NASB. The big question now, Watson points out, is how can the Right encourage what happened to NASB to be repeated by other groups and institutions co-opted by the Left?

WATCH WHAT THEY DO, NOT WHAT THEY SAY: It’s true, if you want to know what the Left is up to, just listen to what they are accusing the Right of doing. How long have we been hearing about that evil “dark money” on the Right? Well, there’s at least $1.7 billion of it on the Left, according to Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig and Parker Thayer.

FREEDOM ENABLES CREATIVITY: Imagine that, when you liberate the human spirit to create without guardrails, you can get more quality, independence, all kinds of good things. Darrel Eves, executive producer of the record-setting series”The Chosen,” explains how it works.

DEMS SILENT ABOUT NEW DATA ON TRUMP TAX CUTS: Heartland Institute’s Justin Haskins took a look at the IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data for 2017 and 2018 and found — surprise! — the Trump tax cuts helped middle class taxpayers far more than “the rich.”

Funny thing, though, neither His Fraudulency, nor Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or any of the other leading Democrats asked yesterday for comment responded, even though the data demonstrates they were all wrong on the issue in 2017 and since. Why you suppose that is?

WHAT ABOUT THE EVIDENCE? When I was in a public elementary school in Oklahoma City back when Ike was in the White House, I vividly recall being in a Christmas play in which we read aloud Luke 2, the “Christmas story” about the birth of Jesus for an auditorium full of adoring parents.

No, I am not making that up. How times have changed, though, as we all know that any public school that tried to do the same today would soon be burned to the ground by a mob of “progressives” led by Antifa, the NEA/AFT, ACLU, and the U.S. Department of Education.

Even so, the Christmas story remains a prominent part of American culture today, even though prominent skeptics in the entertainment, academic and media worlds delight every year in trashing it during the holiday season, especially the part about the virgin birth.

But Dr. Frank Turek, with an assist from Harvard Law Professor Simon Greenleaf, offers six Es of testimony — “ETs,” if you will — concerning the evidence for the credibility of Luke and the other three Gospel authors, Matthew, Mark and John.

For example: the Gospels include “Embarrassing Testimony” about the authors themselves that they likely would not have included were they simply making up a fairy tale religion. Something to think about as you imagine those shepherds lying in the fields keeping watching over their flocks by night.

IT’S TRUMP’S PARTY: Looks like the former Chief Executive is the key figure in the GOP in 2024 regardless if he seeks the presidential nomination for a third time (actually, it would be his fourth, but the 2012 bid ended in just five weeks).

Odds are, a Republican will succeed His Fraudulency and whatever the name, restoring Trump’s policies will be the first order of business. The Liz Cheney/Never-Trumper faction is all but irrelevant. But the social issues could be a big problem again.

SPEAKING OF THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Erik Manning takes on the 12 typical objections to the Christmas story, as put forth by talented skeptic Holy Koolaid, and demolishes each in turn. It’s lengthy, but comprehensive, and does a solid job of presenting the dozen objections fairly and the responses with a certain, shall we say, firm grace.