INTERESTING: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan for Senate?

THEY HATE US. They really, really hate us.

YET ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION of why the GOP Establishment so richly deserves its label as the “stupid party.”

DEMOCRATS SHOWED ME THE DOOR: Former Ohio sheriff switches parties to join Republicans.

There seems to be a lot of that going around.

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: Bernie’s takeover is coming soon.

MORE FROM AMERICA'S NEWS OF RECORD: Ten upcoming fabricated media narratives for 2022.

I'm not sure, but I think two of them have already come to pass.

HEH: "Moonbat-on-moonbat attacks! Pass the popcorn. It’s like the Iran-Iraq War — isn’t there some way they can all lose?"

Read it all.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS is going to make a helluva good Governor of Arkansas.

MEMO FROM MY REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: The truth that deserves to be told.

What started as a day to contest the 2020 election results due to troubling irregularities quickly spiraled into an infamous riot that has filled our airwaves and TVs for the last year – leaving little room to report on President Biden’s self-inflicted crises that continue to plague the American people. Those irregularities continue to this day, with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s announcement of pending subpoenas over strong evidence of illegal ballot harvesting.

Yet as we reflect on the last year, I’m concerned by the lack of sufficient reporting and information surrounding the truth behind January 6th – the truth that deserves to be told.

January 6, 2021 was a very troubling day in our nation’s history – I know because I was there. Determined to protect the chamber from rioters, I stayed on the House floor with several of my Republican colleagues and helped Capitol Police barricade the doors. I also heard the shot when an officer discharged his pistol that killed Ashli Babbitt.

Throughout my service as a three tour Navy combat veteran, I’ve seen the results of violence up close, and I do not believe it should be used as a form of political protest. But we must also have honest conversations about what truly transpired and what can be done to prevent another January 6th from ever happening again.

Unfortunately, this has been all but impossible in the current political climate, as our mainstream media lies about and berates any discussion that does not fit the Democrats’ narrative.

Due to their bias and intolerance, I quickly became a favorite target.

For the last seven months, the D.C. media machine has falsely claimed I was attempting to “whitewash” January 6th by simply pointing out in an Oversight hearing that video evidence of individuals walking through the Capitol in an orderly fashion – in contrast to violent protestors – indicated the event was a riot and not a planned insurrection. In that same statement, I condemned the violence of that day, which made their attacks even more insidious – yet totally unsurprising.

Moreover, according to both current and former law enforcement officials, the FBI agreed with this position, noting back in August that after the arrests of over 570 individuals (over 700 to date), that “…there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.” But again, this information doesn’t fit the Left’s “Republicans are the enemy” narrative.

Americans deserve answers, but Democrats have subverted the truth at every turn.

My Republican colleagues and I warned that if a Congressional investigation was not carefully structured in a fully bipartisan manner, that there would be dire consequences. That is exactly what has happened. First, the Democrats removed Republican members from the House Select Committee on January 6th that they did not like, leading Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to remove all Republicans from the now sham committee. Since then, all nine Democrats on the Committee have continued to abuse their power to harass both members of Congress and private citizens, as well as gain access to communications records dating back as far as April 2020 that have nothing to do with that day’s events.

The Select Committee has had very little time, it seems, to gain access to the Department of Justice’s trove of 14,000 hours of video footage, investigate who planted pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic party headquarters, determine who directed Capitol Police to remove barricades and thereby allow hundreds of protestors through the doors of the Capitol, or conduct a review of the egregious failures by senior leadership of the Capitol Police to pass on intelligence that left rank and file officers stranded without any direction or communication. It is further puzzling, why after a year, no clear adjustments have been made to security protocols at the U.S. Capitol, except for useless magnetometers positioned around the House floor, and why the police force remains roughly 400 officers below authorized staffing levels – especially with the President and Vice President scheduled to be at the Capitol complex later this week.

These questions and others will likely never be answered in the short term, as Speaker Pelosi continues to block investigations into specific concerns, including why she refused six requests by Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irvine to deploy the National Guard in the early hours of the siege.

Additional questions and frustrations surround the number of individuals that have been arrested for committing non-violent crimes on January 6th, such as parading or trespassing. All Americans should be infuriated that many of these crimes carry sentences far lower than the year many detainees have already spent in pretrial confinement in the D.C. jail.

While the liberal media has turned a blind eye to reports of neglect, nothing can hide the Left’s desire to persecute their political dissidents through solitary confinement, insufficient medical care, and other inhumane conditions. Congress must swiftly investigate these atrocious allegations – failing to do so signals to the American people that House Democrats condone this egregious abuse of power and violation of civil liberties.

President Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

I have always supported an honest and thorough investigation of the events that transpired on January 6th, but I stand against all theatrics that slander Republicans as domestic terrorists in order to use the heavy hand of government to castigate and silence the Democrats’ political rivals. Furthermore, I refuse to allow the Left to vilify President Donald Trump’s voters, as well as use the events of January 6th as a distraction from the dangerous policies of the Biden Administration, including the border crisis, energy crisis, crime wave crisis, and hyper-inflation, that have destroyed our economy and thrown our nation into turmoil in just the first year of President Biden’s tenure.

Now is the time for all Americans to be unified in rejecting Big Government Socialist authoritarianism and partisan gamesmanship and to stand strong in defense of our great Republic, our Constitution, Civil Liberties, and Freedoms.

Well said.

D-WORDS that need to be banned.

I would add one more -- Democrat.

YES, THE CRASH is arriving: "I don't care how many candlelight vigils and musical performances you have from the cast of Hamilton, you're not going to convince most normal and sane people that our government last year was almost overthrown by a guy wearing a Viking hat and speedos."

SARAH HOYT: Right for all the wrong reasons.

RANDOM THOUGHT: As the progressives continue their takeover, the Democrat party should rename itself the Baizuo party.

It's a fitting description.

HEH: It's beginning to look like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema aren't the only Democrats against killing the filibuster.

I'm almost interested in forcing a vote to see how many Democrats will join Schumer in going over the cliff....

MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS: explaining the Left’s inability to think rationally about coronavirus.

The idea behind mass formation psychosis is not that people are literally hypnotized.... Rather, it’s a way to express the collective irrationality being shown by millions of people who will literally do anything to try to “stop the spread,” no matter how ineffective the measures being promoted are.

And it's not just COVID; all the Left's favorite bugbears -- Trump derangement, systemic racism, critical race theory, election fraud, etc., etc. -- are examples of their collective irrationality.

POWERLINE'S GEEK IN PICTURES: disapproval edition. Lots of interesting statistics.

My personal favorite is 'The Immutable Law of Multiplicative Idiocy'. Over my working lifetime I've been in enough committee meetings to verify its validity many times over.

BARE SHELVES BIDEN SAVED CHRISTMAS -- but not the new year.

SUPPLY CHAIN WOES CONTINUE: Shelves are empty again. Why?

AMERICANS WAVE GOODBYE to blue cities and states.

I recommend that real America put 'hazardous waste' signs on all roads entering the blue-bubble zones.

SAVE THE CHILDREN: Fire the teachers unions.

It is time for a Ronald Reagan moment. In the first year of his presidency, in 1981, he fired thousands of illegally striking air traffic controllers. He broke the back of a militant union that put public safety at risk by refusing to show up to work.

And while you're at it, cancel all government unions.

AMERICA'S NEWS OF RECORD: Legal experts ask Justice Sotomayor to recuse herself from case due to her being an idiot.

If this hasn't happened already, it should.

NOW THEY TELL US: The CDC and other government agencies grossly overhyped the covid epidemic. Well, they didn't tell us, exactly, but the data does:

If you follow this simple procedure [look at the death certificates], you immediately realize two things: 1) most “covid deaths” involve people who have already lived longer than the average life expectancy in our state, and 2) when you look at the various maladies listed on the death certificates, in a large majority of cases covid was the least of the decedent’s problems.

Allahpundit at Hot Air claims CDC Director Rachelle Walensky's 75% comment in the above linked post was limited to breakthrough cases in the previously vaccinated elderly. Technically he/she may be correct, but there is no disputing that the vast majority of COVID-related deaths have been in the elderly with comorbidities population.