FREEDOM MEANS WHAT TO YOU: Lots of competing definitions of this crucial word running around these days. Colson Center’s Sarah Stonestreet suggests defining terms is always a good idea when talking about freedom.

BIG LABOR LOSES A BIG ONE: Capital Research Center’s (CRC) Michael Watson assesses the ins and outs of the Supreme Court rejection last week of a California regulation that forced farmers to hand over their properties to union organizers for three hours a day a third of the year.

YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING: Next, House Democrats want to raise their own pay.

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: That’s exactly what the Leftist revisionists are doing with their blatant misrepresentations of the facts about the 13 days at the Siege of the Alamo, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Dr. Tom Lindsay says the latest illustration of this advancing rotteness in the American public square is found in Time magazine.

TUCKER CARLSON SAYS NSA IS SPYING ON HIM: The top-rated Fox News evening host says he has proof that what he was told by a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower is true.

RIGHT NON-PROFITS AIDED BY THE ‘GREAT RESIGNATION:’ Lots of private sector workers are leaving their jobs in search of better ones, but guess what, lots of them are taking positions with conservative non-profits. Claire Kittle Dixon of Talent Market, which specializes in placing for such foundations, explains this unexpected development from the pandemic

EXPLAIN THIS: Here’s a fact about Paul the Apostle that is not often discussed. For decades during his four missionary trips around the ancient world, he was in constant danger, often impoverished, whipped several times, run out of town at least twice, sick, trapped and nearly killed by rioters, scorned by the intellectual and political elite of his day, and often hungry.

Despite it all, he never stopped claiming that he had seen and talked to the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, or that the encounter changed him from determined persecutor of Christians into their greatest missionary.

If he was a liar, he was one of the most determined in history. To dismiss him as deluded is speculative. What we cannot do is ignore him or his message because without him, it’s difficult to see the development of western civilization generally and the American constitutional perspective on government and individual liberty specifically.

HERE’S THE LEFT’S ROTTEN HEART: Peter Berkowitz ably assesses “After the Fall,” Ben Rhodes’ latest attempt to justify eight years of artful manipulation of the American public and the mainstream media on behalf of then-President Barack Obama.

But Berkowitz could have done it for The Washington Free Beacon in just two paragraphs, the first to remind readers of who Rhodes was and remains, and then this one, which appears in the review he did write:

“From ‘the lived reality’ of his White House years, Rhodes acquired ‘the feeling that a cancer was metastasizing everywhere despite our efforts to treat it.’ He traces the cancer to ‘the ways in which decades of American capitalism, technology, and the politicized pursuit of national security had ripened so many people in the United States and around the world for crude nationalist appeals.'”

You know, like “America First.”

WARNING AGAINST LIBERTARIANS BEARING GIFTS (FOR THE LEFT): No, argues The Federalist’s Gabe Kaminsky, the GOP need not cave to the Left on social or environmental issues in order to appeal to Gen Z.

WHY MILLEY READ MARX: A perceptive analysis by journalist Lee Smith of the recent congressional appearance by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“Milley said he reads to understand what other people think, but people who boast of having read Marx are trying to shape what other people think about them. He is addressing the kind of people who think reading Marx is part of the foundation of a well-rounded education.

“In America, these are the men and women of the establishment left who not coincidentally sit on the boards of big corporations and decide who gets to earn a million-dollar paycheck simply by occupying the board seat next to them. Saying you’ve read Marx shows that you’re ok, even if you’ve spent your career with an American flag on your shoulder.”

This is the guy His Fraudulency will depend upon for strategic military advice when China invades Taiwan. And Russia completes its re-conquest of the Ukraine.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Also: All the Lovely People.

SOMETHING POSITIVE FROM FASHION: Femininity makes a comeback? Kind of unexpected but encouraging, no?

WHEN YOU CAN’T KEEP ADVANCE STAFFERS: Monica Showalter looks at Vice-President Kamala Harris’ constant challenge to find staffers who will stay around and take the temper tantrums. This is an especially serious problem when it’s your director of advance and deputy director of advance who head for the exits just as your travel schedule gets hectic.

IT’S FRIDAY, SO EXPLAIN THIS: If Jesus’ disciples made up all that stuff about Him being God, and resurrected and all, why’d they make themselves look so dense in the process?

PS: Like Sarah says, Sursum Corda. Be Not Afraid.

RADICAL LEFT, NOT THE RIGHT, IS THE MAJOR THREAT: Amazing, is it not, how His Fraudulency and his loyal mouthpieces in the Mainstream Media constantly talk about the national security threat allegedly posed by the Proud Boys, “White Supremacists,” and other elements of the “Radical Right.”

They’re not the perpetually rioting mobs burning down Portland, or causing billions of dollars in destruction across dozens of major cities. No, the guys lighting the fires, killing policemen and making American cities unlivable are all from the Radical Left. Issues & Insights has more, much more.

NEXT, BIDEN CONTRACTS-OUT CIA/NSA TO HUAWEI: Unbelievable that five GOP senators would vote to confirm this guy to be general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The five are: Blunt of Missouri, Burr of North Carolina, Cornyn of Texas, Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska. The first two are retiring. Why not the other three as well?

INDY CAR’S SAM SCHMIDT WALKS FOR FIRST TIME IN 21 YEARS: Thanks to an exoskeleton, the Indy car owner and former driver was able to dance with his daughter at her wedding. More stories like this, please.

CORPORATE MANAGEMENT IN ACADEMIC FOG: Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon spent some precious time attending the “Bloomberg Equality Briefing titled ‘Corporate Mandate for Change’ and sponsored by Cisco. To the extent we learned anything at all, it’s that conversations about corporate diversity initiatives are comprised almost entirely of meaningless jargon that is terrifying nonetheless.”

And if that meaningless jargon sounds vaguely familiar, then you must recently have spent some time on campus listening to professors, administrators and students discussing why you are a racist, America is racist, all white people are racist, capitalism is racist, etc. etc. etc.

How long before stockholders wake up to the fact the coming management generation views words like “profit,” “return-on-investment” and “revenue streams” as racist terms that must be forever buried? Like Glenn says, that which can’t go on, won’t.

NEW HILL STAFF PROGRESSIVES GROUP LAUNCHED: Roll Call reports new group seeking Lefty activists to work on Hill staffs has been launched and already has more than 250 members, including at least 100 senior staffers.

Funny, I thought there was already a group attracting left-wing organizers and agitators, the House Democratic Caucus. Don’t laugh, though, as Hill staffers on both sides of the aisle have immense, though mostly unseen, influence on the course of things in Congress.

Historical Footnote: The Republican Study Committee (RSC) was organized in 1973 as a counter to the original group for left-wing staff types, the Democratic Study Group (DSG), which was launched in 1959 and went kaput in the wake of the Contract with America.

IT’S MONDAY, SO EXPLAIN THIS: Critics claim Jesus was just a regular Joe Blow who happened to be a great teacher who got in trouble with the authorities and got himself executed. Then the disciples and church leaders over the next many decades created the myth of the resurrection and that Jesus was God Incarnate. But if that were the case, explain this. 

NO, PHILLY DECISION WAS NOT A WIN FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Margot Cleveland, writing for The Federalist, makes the argument that the Supreme Court’s Fulton v. City of Philadelphia decision doesn’t protect religious freedom because it does nothing to repeal or substantially revise the controlling precedent, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith.

REMEMBER THE NAME ‘CARTER JONES:’ His 29-page memo, as reported by Just the News, about “massive” election integrity and mis-management problems in George during the November 2020 election just may be the end of any doubt that Biden really deserves the moniker, His Fraudulency.

FEDS NOW GET 44 DAYS OFF EVERY YEAR: Lost amid the Left’s Juneteenth celebration is the fact turned up by Open the Books. As a result, the average career bureaucrat gets nine weeks of fully paid time off.

NO, THE KIDS WON’T BE FINE: It’s been a truism since the No-Fault Divorce era whenever the welfare of the little ones involved is mentioned. Now we have 50 years and more of data and it’s clear the kid’s weren’t and aren’t going to be fine as the traditional one man/one woman/staying together come Hell or high water marital model fades. And yes, I was as guilty of saying it as anybody reading this post, so being judgmental isn’t my purpose here.

ABOUT THAT ‘MAGICAL SKY DADDY:’ Erik Manning explains why calling belief in the Christian God a resort to magical thinking is merely a rhetorical device, not a logical argument. This guy is really good on the white-board, too.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW EXTENSIVE IS CHINESE PROPAGANDA IN THE U.S.: Capital Research Center’s Sarah Lee puts it into a fact-based context for The American Conservative that ought to be sobering for all of us. Consider this graph:

In Alaska, [Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Foreign Affairs Chief Yang Jiechi told a stunned [newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken, “Many people in the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” He was merely echoing what China has already trained many young Americans to think by directly or indirectly funding American nonprofits. Younger Americans had already heard this message on their college campuses and in some cases even earlier, in primary and secondary school. Given the state of political discourse leading up to the 2020 election, there’s evidence to suggest they were dutifully spreading the word as China no doubt intended.”

One of the most important but unheralded consequences of Trump’s attempt to negotiate a new economic relationship with China was the discovery of just how deeply ingrained the CCP’s messaging apparatus had become here in the U.S.