Politics

• Big Guy thinks “running for reelection” caused Hunter’s conviction: It takes a special brand of narcissism to deny the open-and-shut nature of the gun charges that resulted in Hunter Biden’s three-count felony conviction on Tuesday. Indeed, the case that federal prosecutors put before a Delaware jury required only three hours of deliberation. And yet Joe Biden thinks that his son’s travails have everything to do with his own presidential campaign and not the irrefutable facts of the case. But that’s Joe Biden, and now that “the smartest guy” he knows is a convicted felon, we’re learning that it should never have come to this. “If I weren’t running for reelection, he would have gotten the plea deal,” said the Big Guy earlier this month to one of his cronies. As the New York Post reports, “The reported remark recalls former President Donald Trump’s claim that prosecutors have engaged in ‘election interference’ by pursuing criminal cases against him. Biden, in response, has called such claims by his great rival ‘reckless,’ ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible.’” In fact, U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss was forced to prosecute Joe’s boy when Judge Maryellen Noreika blew up that deal and revealed just how far Weiss had gone not to prosecute him — because Joe Biden is running for reelection.

• KJP won’t say whether president will consider commuting Hunter's sentence (Daily Wire)

• Hunter’s court-verified laptop files will be at the center of his upcoming tax trial (Just the News)

• Senate GOP blocks SCOTUS “ethics” bill: Democrats have been going full-bore in their effort to delegitimize the Supreme Court. They’ve been doing it for decades, of course, since “Borking” became a verb. But the flaps over Clarence Thomas’s vacations and Samuel Alito’s flags inspired Democrats to introduce legislation putting new “ethics” requirements on the justices. We put “ethics” in scare quotes because Democrats so grossly redefine their terms. “The highest court in the land cannot and should not have the lowest ethical standards,” opined Senator Dick Durbin, a sponsor of the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act. Senator Richard “Stolen Valor” Blumenthal added, “The Supreme Court has squandered its almost mystical authority, its unique power in the federal government.” Fortunately, a few Republicans banded together and blocked the bill, with Senator Lindsey Graham calling it “unconstitutional overreach.” SCOTUS adopted its own updated code of ethics in November.

• Protesters run on the field while GOP runs roughshod over Dems at Congressional Baseball Game (Roll Call)

• Trump to meet with Mitch McConnell for the first time in four years (Townhall)

Judicial Benchmarks

• SCOTUS preserves birth control access: Democrats desperately want women voters to think they’re living in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” forced into subservient pregnancy by their patriarchal overlords. The latest attempt to make everything about abortion was the Supreme Court case dealing with access to the widely used abortifacient mifepristone, which is responsible for 60% of abortions in America. Much of the debate revolved around leftists’ insistence that the drug is safe, but the pill intentionally kills one of the two people affected by it, which doesn’t seem all that safe. Yet even the supposedly religious radicals running the Supreme Court did not find a legal reason to limit access to or ban the pill. In a 9-0 ruling, the justices overturned a Fifth Circuit Court ruling that the FDA had failed to follow proper procedures. That means the pills can be sent by mail, even to states that have limited or banned abortion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the Court, acknowledged the plaintiffs’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” but he concluded that “the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”

National Security

• Biden backs Ukraine for a decade: As the bar tab for our spending in Ukraine has reached $175 billion, Joe Biden is hailing the waitress for another round. And another round after that. And another round after that. In fact, he wants to park our nation’s foreign policy future in the Cafe Kyiv for the next decade. As The Washington Post reports, “President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky plan Thursday to sign a 10-year security agreement that will commit Washington to supply Kyiv with a wide range of military assistance, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, in a bid to bolster Ukraine’s fight with Russia.” The proposed deal, of course, is a naked effort to shackle future administrations to the Ukrainian regime, but any future president could simply withdraw from the agreement, as it doesn’t carry the weight of a treaty ratified by Congress. In any case, it’s worth remembering: We wouldn’t be in any such predicament if Donald Trump were still president. Instead, Joe Biden’s weakness continues to provoke our geopolitical foes.

• Russian fleet arrives in Havana: In yet another example of Joe Biden’s provocative weakness, a sizable share of Vladimir Putin’s Russian fleet has parked itself in Cuban waters, ostensibly to conduct military drills with the America-hating commie regime just off our southern shore, but more accurately to poke a finger in Biden’s eye. “The deployment,” as Fox News reports, “is likely a warning to President Biden after he gave approval for Ukrainian forces to strike some targets within Russia using U.S. weaponry, according to Rebekah Koffler, strategic intelligence analyst and author of Putin’s Playbook.” Indeed, Putin tends to take what his opponent will give him. This isn’t the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the strategic implications are no less chilling. “Putin wants to be close to the U.S. homeland at this time when the Russia-Ukraine crisis is on a highly escalatory trajectory,” Koffler notes. “If something goes wrong and Ukraine strikes critical targets in Russia close to major cities, the Russian military can enable the Cubans to strike targets inside the U.S. or strike U.S. interests.” Here, it’s worth recalling that there was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when our geopolitical foes respected us.

• Armed man arrested in NYC traffic stop found with weapons, armor, threatening notes (NBC New York)

• Immigration advocacy groups sue Biden administration over border directive (The Hill)

Economy

• Billionaire explains why Wall Street is moving toward Trump: It’s been a while since a Republican could count on a fair shake from Wall Street. Ever since Barack Obama rolled them, the major financial institutions have aligned themselves with the Democrats. But as businesses see and feel the economic malaise of Joe Biden’s maladministration, some big names in finance are taking another look at Donald Trump and his decidedly pro-business, anti-inflation policies. “Historically, some of the way Trump treats people doesn’t sit well with them when you have choices, but there’s really not many choices anymore,” said Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon. “Some of the things have gotten to where it’s hard to support nonsense.” Dundon didn’t name any specific names, but he said that Biden’s cascading failures are contributing to growing Trump support among not only the Wall Street elite but also everyday Americans.

• EU to put tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese electric vehicles as trade war looms (The Guardian)

• Biden blocked solar panel tariffs to “accelerate domestic production.” Two years later, China is even more dominant. (Washington Free Beacon)

• Port of Baltimore reopens after $100M cleanup of collapsed Key Bridge (CBS News)

• Fed holds rates steady, sees just one cut in 2024 despite inflation progress (NY Post)

• Homeowners in the South and Midwest are really underwater on their mortgage loans (Not the Bee)

• Most employment growth since pandemic has gone to immigrants (CIS)

Culture

• Rainbow Mafia justice: The gender-confused are extremely proud of how they misuse their private parts, which they want to make very public. Hence, rainbow murals on intersections serve as monuments to genital usage. In Spokane, Washington, some folks didn’t take too kindly to one of those murals, defacing it with skid marks and other paint multiple times. Now, three teens — one age 19 and two minors — who left skid marks with e-scooters face 10 years in prison for the offense. Also, according to the UK’s Daily Mail, “Prosecutors requested a $15,000 bond that would cover the approximate cost of re-painting the mural.” You mean taxpayers were extorted for $15,000 to paint this garbage in the first place? That is the real crime of vandalism. Meanwhile, San Francisco has become the first “sanctuary” city for “transgender” people. “We have seen an influx of refugees, not just from other countries, but from other states who are seeking care and seeking sanctuary,” said San Francisco’s director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives, Honey Mahogany. Good grief. Now people who are obsessed with their private parts are “refugees” if everyone else doesn’t indulge their delusions. Clown world.

• Humor: Man arrested for urinating on new pride urinals (Babylon Bee)

• Dude can’t swim with the ladies: It sure took long enough, but The Great Walk-Back is continuing apace, and fair-minded folks are finally winning the day when it comes to boys and men competing in sports against girls and women. Sometimes, all it takes is some gritty leadership, like the kind we’ve seen from Riley Gaines. National Review’s intrepid Madeleine Kearns has the latest good news on this front: “Lia Thomas, the male swimmer who dominated at the 2022 NCAA women’s swim championships, has lost his lawsuit against World Aquatics. In 2022, the international swimming federation updated its policies to better protect women’s sports, disallowing the participation of trans-identifying males who have advanced through puberty. Thomas sued to overturn the ban, arguing it was discriminatory. But this week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) dismissed Thomas’s lawsuit on the basis that he did not have standing.” This is a big win for women and a resounding loss for all who would impersonate them.

Crime

• The FBI’s dubious crime stats: Just in time for election season, Joe Biden’s FBI is dutifully telling us that crime is way down, but the bureau wants us to ignore all the cities that have stopped reporting their crime statistics. The newly released numbers say that the rates of violent and property crimes have significantly dropped within the first three months of 2024 compared to the same time last year. But have they really? Um, no, says retired NYPD inspector Paul Mauro: “40% of the nation’s police departments don’t report up to the FBI with their crime numbers. What a coincidence. Let’s do the roll call — New York, LA, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. which is federal itself — they don’t report to the FBI. So consequently, what do they all have in common? [They] are all big blue cities that have high crime rates and those numbers are not going into the UCR.” So what we have here is a case of lies, damned lies, and statistics.

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