CHEERS FOR VIRGINIA JUDGE PLOWMAN: Focus on the Family President Jim Daly lauds Loudoun County (VA) teacher Tanner Cross for standing up against Cancel Culture by refusing to call boys girls and girls boys. But Daly also points out the judge who just ruled for Cross and against the local Cancelista brigade running the public school system deserves praise. Expect an unflattering profile of Plowman in the Washington Post any day now.

UH, NO, SEX IS NOT ‘ASSIGNED:’ It shouldn’t have to be said, but in the present age many things that ought not have to be said, must be, over and over and over. The Colson Center’s Joseph Backholm offers three solid reasons to reject the myth at the heart of the transgendering madness.

BIDEN IS REFILLING THE BUREAUCRATIC SWAMP: President Donald Trump’s executive order making it easier to fire incompetent bureaucrats was a major step toward accountability in the federal career civil service.

Now, according to James Sherk of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), His Fraudulency, by repealing Trump’s order, is putting the bureaucrats back in charge. Is this significant for everyday Americans? You bet it is and Sherk aptly explains why:

“With a protected bureaucracy, Americans can vote for whatever policies they want — but they only get them if the bureaucracy agrees. Trump ran on draining the swamp. Biden is now refilling it.”

Sherk is exactly right. I saw this up close and personal during my years in Reagan era serving as a political appointee at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) under Director Donald Devine.

Devine’s “Political Management of the Bureaucracy: A Guide to Reform and Control” ought to be required reading for every individual in the next Republican presidency. Trump might still be in the Oval Office if he had understood the absolute necessity for a GOP chief executive to control the bureaucrats.

CRT WAS BORN AT HARVARD: That probably comes as no shocker to many Instapundit readers, but Kenny Xu provides the details of how Critical Race Theory (CRT) was born in Cambridge as “Critical Legal Studies.”

And, oh by the way, if you are puzzled by how CRT has swept through corporate boardrooms, Xu has the explanation: “Critical race theory gained steam at Harvard Law, and married into the managerial attitudes of its neighbor Harvard Business School, which sought to eliminate inefficiencies in human relations by grouping and managing.”

BILLIONAIRE BEHIND ‘BILLIONAIRES BUYING ELECTIONS’ SPOTS: His name is Hans Wyss, he’s a Swiss national who made a fortune in the U.S. and he is likely second only to George Soros in the funding he has provided to those tearing down this country. Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon shines some much-needed light in a very dark corner of American politics.

DISNEY TURNS FAIRY TALE ON ITS HEAD: Libby Emmons, writing for The Federalist, takes apart the latest illustration of why the company bearing Walt Disney’s name would make him retch were he around to see it.

UPDATE: For all you aspiring copy-desk tyrants (old-school newsroomese), please note that “retch” is now in place. You guys are a tough room! :-)

‘THEY WILL BEHEAD US:’ There are an estimated 18,000 Afghans who helped the U.S. military, mostly as translators, but also in providing intelligence about Taliban movements and plans, who know they will be killed if they remain there after American forces are gone, according to Just The News’ Susan Katz Keating. The clock is ticking, much faster than the State Department bureaucrats are working to get these people and their dependents out.

BABYLON BEE’S DEMAND LETTER TO NEW YORK TIMES: This one is a beaut!

CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS OPPOSITE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: Writing in Quillette, Kenny Xu and Christian Watson decisively shut down the claim of Critical Race Theory proponents like the ABA that the ideology is the next logical development from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Quite the opposite, they argue for starters, because:

“The civil rights movement was based on a hopeful and optimistic vision of modern Americans turning the country’s ideals into reality. CRT, on the other hand, presents a dystopian vision in which ubiquitous bigotry and oppression defines America’s national soul. Far from being heir to the civil rights legacy, Critical Race Theory is in many ways its opposite.”

Definitely worth a close read.

AOC PREFERS HER GRANNY TO BE POOR: You may have heard Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) bewailing her grandmother’s squalid living conditions in Puerto Rico. Conservative journalist Matt Walsh did and he organized a fund-raising appeal that generated $100,000 to help AOC’s granny. Can you guess why she rejected it?

Nothing is more important than the narrative. Nothing. Nothing at all.

(Bumped.)

BLACK PASTOR/ACADEMIC DEAN DISSECTS CRT: Voddie Baucham sees a looming catastrophe for evangelicals specifically (and America more generally) due to the pervasive and poisonous influence of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

This short video lays out the four basic CRT tenets, and Baucham does a devastating deep dive on the ideology in a new book, “Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism Looming Catastrophe.” Baucham and Christopher Rufo are the Alpha and Omega of the case against CRT.

AUTHOR NOTE: My mis-spelling of Baucham’s last name has been corrected. Thanks to the several folks who, kindly, pointed it out to me.

BOOKMARK THIS ONE: You may not be familiar with Kash Patel, but much of what is known today about the origins and motives of Russiagate are known because of his investigative efforts working for then-House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).

Patel is also a former federal prosecutor, chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense and a National Security Council counter-terrorism expert. He’s even been the guy with the nuclear football accompanying the President.

Now Patel sits down each week for “Kash’s Corner” on Epoch Times TV to talk with host Jan Jekielek about what’s happening and why on the national and world scenes. The first edition is full of Patel’s fascinating and informed insights about the Israel-Hamas conflict and the politicalization of the national security community.

Just to cite one enticing example, did you know two days before January 6, President Donald Trump authorized the deployment of 20,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol if requested by the Secretary of Defense? Or that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser sent a letter to DOD refusing to request such troops?

STARTING SOMETHING NEW ON HILLFAITH: It’s called “Explain This:” and it will be regular quick-hits on major issues in the debate on Christianity. All comments appreciated, positive and critical alike, here and on HillFaith. Snark and insults, not so much.

For those wondering why I post these items here, it’s because politics is downstream from culture, which in turn is downstream from science, which is itself downstream from metaphysics and religion.  But it’s all finally of a piece and all of these elements deserve deep discussion, conflicting opinions and reasoned analyses.

NOW THAT THE TRUTH ABOUT FAUCI IS COMING OUT: Issues & Insights provides a handy roundup of the recent revelations that both demonstrate the federal government’s highest paid employee has a tenuous relationship with truth-telling and that his former commander-in-chief was right-on about him.

VANITY FAIR (OF ALL PLACES!) JUST BLEW UP THE COVID COVERUP: And this is just the summary:

“A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.”

ANGRY ABOUT BIG TECH CENSORSHIP: Real Clear Politics’ Susan Crabtree reports on a group of Big Tech execs who share your anger. (BTW, I’ve worked with Susan over the years and she is a great journalist).

WHY NOT DEPORT CHILD RAPISTS??? Good question for His Fraudulency, whose minions recently abolished a successful 287(g) program that enabled local police in Bristol County, Massachusetts, to work with the feds to identify felons, including child rapists, arsonists and carjackers, to be deported, according to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

“The program has led to the arrest and removal of thousands of dangerous criminal aliens. In fiscal year 2020, state and local law enforcement trained under 287(g) encountered approximately 920 aliens convicted for assault, 1,261 convicted for dangerous drugs, 104 convicted for sex offenses/assaults, 377 convicted for obstructing police, 190 convicted for weapon offenses, and 37 convicted for homicide, to name a few crimes.

“As of May 2021, ICE has 287(g) agreements with 71 law enforcement agencies in 21 states. ICE has an additional 76 agreements in 11 states based on a more narrowly-focused version of the program,” CIS’s Jon Feere reports.

No doubt, this will be the first question the White House press corps nails Jenn Psaki with later today.

HERE’S WHERE I WAS OVER THE WEEKEND: That’s my incredible son, Marcus, on the right, who gifted me the Indy 500 last year, but it turned out to be a non-spectator event, so we came this year. Am I still excited? You bet I am.

We were in the grandstand in the middle of turn two, saw a tremendously fast, exciting and safe race. Speaking as someone who pushed a Formula Ford around SCCA tracks for three years, I still marvel at the skill level of these guys (and one woman, not named “Danica”) doing 230 mph laps on a slightly banked, four-turn, two-and-a-half-mile rectangle.

NOTHING BUT RED INK AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE: That’s Hans Bader’s assessment of Biden’s $6 Trillion federal budget proposal. I would add to the red ink, inflation, poverty, economic stagnation …

NEW EVIDENCE FOR THE GOSPELS: Erik Manning points to Richard Baucham’s analysis of the significance of the named eyewitnesses rendering problematic the argument of critics like Bart Ehrman that it’s all based on legends.

BEZOS BUYS BOND: And Rachel Bovard sees all kinds of problems if the sale is allowed.

‘THEIR INTEL IS BETTER THAN OURS:’ That’s how a South Texas County Sheriff describes the strategies and tactics being used by those organizing the continuing flood of illegals crossing from Mexico into the U.S. And did you know there are feral pigs roaming the borderlands that eat human flesh?

CHRISTIANS SHOULD STAY OUT OF POLITICS! Colson Center’s Brook McIntire argues that religious liberty for everybody has been a cornerstone of the faith from the beginning and it benefits believers and non-believers alike.

BIG LABOR, THE WOKE LEFT AND HIS FRAUDULENCY: There was a time not that long ago when Big Labor and Big Woke didn’t get along so well because leaders of the former recognized the latter’s policies would destroy jobs in the U.S. But things have changed in a way graphically illustrated by President Joe Biden’s appointments, according to the Capital Research Center’s Michael Watson.

Watson, writing in the Washington Examiner, details the many Big Labor veterans with solid progressive credentials who have been appointed by Biden to major posts in the federal government, most prominently Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, Celeste Drake in the White House and Alethea Predeoux at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Watson observes that “the interconnectedness among the Democratic Party, the ‘woke’ social-justice left, and Big Labor explains both the radicalism of the PRO Act and the petty corruption of the Biden administration’s ethics waivers.” The transformation of Big Labor from economic special interest to far-Left ideological zealotry is almost complete. Devout Socialist Walter Reuther would be proud.

SHUT UP AND KEEP DIGGING, KID: Has anybody in His Fraudulency’s administration noted the vital importance of cobalt to Electric Vehicles (EVs) that are to replace gasoline-powered cars and trucks?

No? Well maybe they should, according to Issues & Insights, which points out that half of the world’s known Cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo and that children are being used as slaves to extract the resource for Western companies building EVs.