It’s Friday, December 27th, 2019…but before we begin, an unrepentant practicing homosexual who condones the unrestricted slaughter of the unborn presumes to lecture the Christian community on the “immigration status” of our Savior:

Buttigieg Blasted for Christmas Tweet Claiming Jesus Was a Refugee

As one Matt Walsh observed, there are two glaring errors in Buttgag’s claim:

Walsh goes on to note at the bottom of his tweet, neither was Christ a refugee when his parents fled to Egypt.

Meanwhile, the equally-pontifical spouse of another Progressive presidential wanna-be spent last Sunday south of the border, as…

Jill Biden Helps Distribute Food for the Holiday…To People in Mexico

“Jill Biden, the wife of former Vice President Joe Biden who is presently running for the Democratic nomination for president, was busy on Sunday with a photo op helping to pass out food for the holiday.

But she wasn’t helping to distribute food to American homeless. She was in Matamoros, Mexico helping to distribute food at an event for migrants who are waiting there, seeking asylum, most of whom will likely not qualify, if history is any judge. (Nor, then, do they deserve it!)

Now, it’s a good thing to feed anyone who might need it. According to Hot Air, they distributed about 1500 meals which only fed about half the people there. Biden called it “heartbreaking” and said “it’s not who we are as Americans.”

But the folks waiting there are there voluntarily, they can leave and go home. And it’s because of the policies of President Donald Trump that there now are fewer people crossing, leading to fewer people waiting, crossing dangerously or being detained. That’s far more effective as a policy than handing out food for a couple of hours or seemingly agitating for open borders.

Shall we note the policies in place when her husband was in office in the Obama administration? When they built what they now decry as “cages,” were responsible for a lot of hardship because their policies incited the overwhelming influx and actually turned children over to human traffickers because they didn’t check sufficiently on to whom they were turning them over? And didn’t resolve any of the appreciable problems?

It’s hard to look at it as much more than a political photo op to try to take a whack at Trump, especially when there are Americans in need in so many Democratic cities, for example San Francisco and Los Angeles, literally because of Democratic policies…”

Not to mention Dimocratic states…like Delaware:

We seem to recall something about charity beginning at home; but then, dreary old Dimocratic-controlled Delaware doesn’t make nearly as effective a photo-op as connecting in Matamoros with the future of the party.

It’s also worth noting, the expressions of support from Jill and Joe for their disgraced son notwithstanding, Hunter was curiously missing…

…from the family Christmas photo.  Reports he was either (a) out back snorting a line, (b) upstairs banging his brother’s widow, or (c) on the phone hitting up Burisma for more cash remain unconfirmed.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up on the last edition of the year, courtesy of FOX News, Liz Peek details how and why…

Queen Pelosi wants to rule the Senate and nation but voters will revolt

“Queen Nancy Pelosi is not amused. Having just demanded her subjects in the House impeach the president in a historic and unprecedented party-line vote, jeopardizing the reelection of many and even threatening her own reign, Her Royal Highness, aka the House Speaker, grew testy recently with inquisitive reporters.

Pelosi scolded the pesky press for wanting to know why, for the first time in the nation’s history, she did not follow the accustomed path of handing the articles of impeachment over to the Senate for an expected trial. Having to explain her bizarre decision was apparently beneath her; she cut off inquiries abruptly saying, “Any other questions because I’m not going to answer any more questions on this…I’m not going to go there anymore.”

She stopped short of demanding “Off with their heads!” but from the look in her eye, it was only the cameras that restrained her.

It’s no wonder Queen Nancy didn’t want to answer questions about her refusal to forward the articles of impeachment. There are no good explanations except one: she wants to extend her rule to the Senate as well as the House. She wants, she says, to determine how the GOP-led Senate will conduct the trial, ostensibly to make sure it’s “fair.”

Never mind that she has no constitutional authority for influencing the Senate’s procedures. Never mind that her insistence violates the very nature of a bicameral legislature. The Founding Fathers, who have been much quoted in recent days by Democrats attempting to justify their impeachment push, respected the separate duties and responsibilities – the checks and balances – of the House and the Senate. They created our system explicitly to prevent mob rule. In short, they envisioned exactly what is transpiring today…”

In a related item, courtesy of Frontpage Mag via Jeff Foutch, Joe Klein explains…

“…The House Democrats most likely got their idea to delay sending their articles of impeachment over to the Senate from Harvard Law School’s Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe. Professor Tribe has been a strong advocate for impeaching President Trump. Nevertheless, in an op-ed column he wrote for the Washington Post, Professor Tribe recommended delay in sending the impeachment articles to the Senate until there is clarification of the Senate trial rules. “This option needs to be taken seriously now that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has announced his intention to conduct not a real trial but a whitewash, letting the president and his legal team call the shots,” Professor Tribe wrote. He then disputed any constitutional objections to such a delay strategy. He opined that “the House, whose historical role is to prosecute articles of impeachment in the Senate after exercising its ‘sole’ power to impeach, is under no affirmative constitutional obligation to do so instantly.”

Professor Tribe’s partisanship has clouded his judgment on the Constitution’s delegation of impeachment and trial powers to the House of Representatives and the Senate respectively. So, let’s educate him on some elementary points.

Article I, Section 2 does indeed say that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” The House exercised its sole power of impeachment Wednesday night. It’s constitutional role in the process is done. Now it’s the Senate’s turn. But Professor Tribe says not so fast.

Relying on Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution that says each legislative chamber sets its own rules, Professor Tribe tweeted that “It’s up to the House when and how to prosecute its case in the Senate.”

Yes, the Democrat-controlled House was free to set its own one-sided rules governing its own impeachment process. That was its constitutional right, despite having exercised that right so irresponsibly in this case. But Professor Tribe neglected to mention the power of the Senate to decide when and how it will try impeachment cases. Article I, Section 3 provides that “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.”

The current Senate Rules of Procedure and Practice regarding impeachment trials set out an order of proceedings. The process in the Senate would begin currently under these rules with notice received from the House that it has selected its managers to conduct the impeachment against the president, who are directed to carry the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Speaker Pelosi and her cohorts are trying to exploit these Senate rules by delaying the rules’ trigger for Senate trial action. However, there is no constitutional requirement that the Senate must wait to act until the House formally names its prosecution managers and presents its articles of impeachment to the Senate. The Senate alone has the power to set and to change its own rules.

…The House Democrats were already witnessing a decline in public support for their rush to impeachment. Delaying the final resolution of the impeachment charges they rushed through the House will leave the House Democrats even more exposed as rabid, hypocritical partisans. The voters will render their verdict on November 3, 2020.“

Meanwhile, while writing at Best of the Web, Jim Freeman quotes one Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale law professor writing in during the Clinton impeachment:

“Once again, it will be argued that the Senate has a legal and constitutional duty to put the country through a grueling, expensive, disruptive, and salacious trial, if this is what a House majority demands. And once again, this view reflects constitutional confusion. Article I, Section 3 gives the Senate the “Power to try all Impeachments” but says nothing about the duty to do so. Procedurally, the Senate may vote to end proceedings at any time if a majority of Senators agree to a motion to adjourn the trial.“

Based on the preponderance of other legal wizards who’ve weighed in against the the constitutionality of Madamn Speaker’s delaying tactics, we suggest, like Lieawatha, in this case, Lawrence is a “Tribe” of 1!

Next up, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins offers his informed opinion as to how the…

Pilots, Not the Plane, Keep the Boeing MAX Grounded

After the tragedies, pilots will be expected to know less and religiously follow checklists more.

“…After the first MAX crash took place in Indonesia in late 2018, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration decided to keep the plane flying. Consternation followed a Journal report last week showing that at the time the agency anticipated a MAX crash rate three times that of comparable airplanes. In the FAA’s defense, it also presumed that Boeing would fix the MAX’s faulty flight-control software well before another crash occurred. In the meantime, impressed upon pilots would be that any glitch could be quickly neutralized by throwing a couple of prominent switches.

Which makes all the more urgent understanding why the next crash, involving Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, happened just months later. For the last three minutes of what was a six-minute flight, the offending software system, as per Boeing’s instructions after the Indonesia crash, was disabled. Yet the pilots never cut takeoff thrust despite a loud clacker warning that their airspeed was exceeding the plane’s design limit. With so much force acting on the plane’s control surfaces, they were unable, as Boeing’s new checklist also specified, to move the trim wheel manually to correct the nose-down trim imposed by the faulty software.

They didn’t use the three minutes to heed the clacker and reduce their speed or briefly to relax pressure on the control yoke, which also would have helped free up the trim wheel. Instead, against all advice, they turned the software back on, which promptly put the plane into an unrecoverable dive. How much the Ethiopian crash even belongs in the same category as the Indonesia crash is debatable when all the facts are considered, albeit depending on whether you are more interested in focusing on aircraft design or on crew training.

To pilots who came up with lots of hand-flying through the military or even the way hobbyist pilots do, it seems possible that understanding the impact of excessive aerodynamic forces on the trim wheel would have been second nature. Perhaps not so…

…with the tens of thousands of classroom- and simulator-trained pilots who staff today’s fast-growing airlines in the developing world.

A misplaced sensitivity has been working overtime to suppress discussion of this issue. The goal is not to excuse Boeing’s appalling original software implementation or rush the 737 MAX back into service.

The discussion is unwelcome in aviation circles partly because the corollaries are unwelcome. If airplanes today must be designed so mass-produced, classroom-trained pilots can’t crash them, planes tomorrow will be designed to eliminate the pilot completely…

…Whether or not this has much to do with the MAX anymore, it certainly has to do with the future of flying until robots finally push the pilot out of the cockpit altogether.“

Sorry, call us old school, but if it ever comes to flying on a fully-automated airliner without experienced, well-trained pilots in the cockpit able to correct and/or override any computer malfunctions…

To borrow a phrase our old pal Eddie Cassity used to utter after watching someone snap a low, screaming tee shot, “We wouldn’t want a ticket on that airplane!”

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter, and this just in from the Sunshine State:

Israeli national, 26, arrested after trying to cash $1M check from husband, 77, of just four months

“…Lin Helena Halfon walked into a Tampa Amscot Branch with the $1 million cashier’s check Nov. 7, telling employees that she intended to use the money to buy a yacht in Miami but, because Rappaport’s name was also on the check, the bank refused, court records showed.

A short time later, Halfon reappeared — with the same request — only this time she had three separate checks each for $333,333. Amscot employees refused but made copies of her Israeli passport, her U.S. visa and the questionable checks. They contacted law enforcement immediately.

According to the Times, when authorities contacted Rappaport about the incident, he said he wanted to give his wife the benefit of the doubt to avoid having her deported. But weeks later, investigators learned that Halfon eventually had two of the checks cashed more than a thousand miles away by an Orlando business. On Dec. 10, Rappaport told authorities he did feel that he was now the victim of fraud.

Rappaport and Halfon applied for a marriage license on June 24, listing the date and location of the marriage as Aug. 21 in Sarasota, according to the Times. His daughter, Dayna Titus, told investigators that she “believed that Halfon was ‘conning’ Rappaport due to his age,” (Ya THINK?!?)…

…Halfon has since been charged with money laundering, organized fraud and exploitation of an elderly person. Her bail has been set at $1 million.“

Rumors the larcenous young lady asked the court if they’d take a check…

…remain unsubstantiated.

Here’s wishing all of you a safe and blessed 2020.

Magoo