Monthly Archives: January 2023

by

Daily Broadside | Another Letter to the Corinthians

One of the things I mentioned yesterday is that I have spent a lot of time, especially in the last couple of weeks, preparing for a class that I’m teaching at my church. The class is Bible Basics.

For some people the Bible can be an intimidating book. It’s big, it’s old, and it claims to be God’s Holy Word. That leads some to think they have to have an advanced degree to understand it. But the Bible was written in the common language of the times it records, so that the average person could read and understand it.

The idea is to give participants an overview of what the Bible is, how it was put together, the types of literature it contains, and how to read, understand and navigate it for themselves.

During my research I learned something that I don’t think was ever covered in my MDiv. classes. What is particularly amazing is that in this digital age, you don’t necessarily need to depend on an assigned book or a seminary class — it’s easy to discover resources about almost anything you want to know with the click of a mouse.

I was researching how the biblical canon came to be and learned that in about AD 95, Clement, the bishop of Rome, wrote what we know as the Letter to the Corinthians, or the First Epistle of Clement, to the church at Corinth. Although his name does not appear in the letter, long-standing tradition attributes the work to him, and the letter is one of the earliest extant writings we have of the attitude and structure of the very early church.

Clement was a disciple of the apostle Peter and most likely knew Paul, as both apostles are credited with establishing the church at Rome. He was the first “Apostolic Father” of the church—a title given to Christian leaders who personally knew the apostles.

In his letter, Clement is addressing an event in which younger members of the congregation had deposed certain elders from the ministry. Clement references at least 150 scriptural passages, both from the Old Testament and from the New Testament, and early on focuses on Peter’s and Paul’s martyrdoms as apostles.

But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours; and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience.

He also makes a pointed reference to Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.

Take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul. What did he write to you at the time when the gospel first began to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you. But that inclination for one above another entailed less guilt upon you, inasmuch as your partialities were then shown towards apostles, already of high reputation, and towards a man whom they had approved. But now reflect who those are that have perverted you, and lessened the renown of your far-famed brotherly love. It is disgraceful, beloved, yea, highly disgraceful, and unworthy of your Christian profession, that such a thing should be heard of as that the most steadfast and ancient church of the Corinthians should, on account of one or two persons, engage in sedition against its presbyters. And this rumour has reached not only us, but those also who are unconnected with us; so that, through your infatuation, the name of the Lord is blasphemed, while danger is also brought upon yourselves.

The reason I referenced Clement in my class is that even before the end of the first century, many of the letters that make up our New Testament were already recognized as authoritative and scriptural. Many of the books we read in our Bibles today were already being read regularly in the churches around the Mediterranean region.

Even more intriguing is that Paul mentions a Clement in his letter to the Philippians.

I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. (Philippians 4:2-3)

There is no way to know conclusively if the Clement mentioned by Paul is the same Clement who eventually became the overseer of the church at Rome. But it’s intriguing to think that we might actually have extant writings of a figure mentioned in scripture, who otherwise would simply be a name on a page. It would be like finding the work of Apollos or Nicodemus.

I really wish sometimes that I could spend my days studying and learning things that I never got to in my formal education.

by

Daily Broadside | Where Have I Been?

No deep analysis today, just a note to say that I’ve been absent with cause. A combination of a surge in my day job responsibilities, required prep for a class I’m teaching at my church, a whiff of fatigue, and problems with my PC, all conspired to make last week a non-starter for consistent blogging.

However, I’m through the toughest part of it and should be able to get back in the swing of things starting tomorrow, so look for a new post on Tuesday.

And, as always, thanks for reading — especially when I actually post something.

by

Daily Broadside | The Progressive Left Lives for Lies

Start of a new week but the same old predictable knee-jerk reactions from the progressive Left over another mass shooting, this time in Monterey Park, California on Saturday.

A gunman killed 10 people and injured 10 others at a Southern California ballroom dance studio Saturday amid Lunar New Year celebrations. 

Twenty to 30 minutes later, a man with a gun entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in nearby Alhambra but patrons wrestled the gun away from him, and he fled, authorities said.

Despite police not releasing the suspect’s identity or race, some liberals on Twitter were quick to pin the horror on white supremacy and anti-Asian hate before all the facts were known.

The usual suspects of course, including Chuckie Schumer and Adam Schiff-for-Brains, two of the most morally corrupt politicians in our government. They immediately pinned the blame on “bigotry” without knowing the identity or race of the suspect.

They are “heartbroken” and “sickened.” I’d believe that if they actually had a heart.

This is the Left: move immediately to “take the high ground” of condemnation by being the first out with a comment and imply that some kind of “hate crime” (is there any other kind?) has taken place. “With bigotry toward AAPI individuals as a possible motive” hedges Schiffty-Schiff, while Schumer goes full frontal with his assertion that, “We must stand up to bigotry and hate wherever they rear their ugly heads.”

Let me ask you something: if both of them raise the specter of “bigotry” and “hate,” who do you think they are implying does the bigotry and hating?

Here’s Francesca Hong to tell us:

Ah, yes, the bogeyman of “white supremacy” who “reign terror” or something.

Is this really so surprising when you think about the FBI, DOJ and what’s left of Brandon’s brain constantly telling us that the greatest threat in the United States is domestic terror and white supremacy?

No. No, it doesn’t.

But the joke’s on them. The suspected shooter turns out to be an elderly Asian man.

The driver of a white van who is the suspected shooter in Saturday’s Monterey Park mass shooting has been found dead from an alleged self-inflicted gunshot wound after being cornered by authorities in Torrance on Sunday.

Police sandwiched the driver and van with tactical vehicles and bomb squad trucks after pursuing the driver into a shopping center and hearing a gunshot from inside the van, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said in an update on Sunday evening.

After awaiting further support from SWAT, officers then moved in on the van to find one driver deceased, slumped over the steering wheel.

Authorities identified the suspect as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran.

So why do Schumer and Schiff jump to conclusions that make them look like the idiots they are? Because they are committed to a narrative that informs how they see the world, and they make their assumptions accordingly. Unfortunately, the narrative they love isn’t supported by the evidence.

Black on Asian violence has long been a problem. After listing several examples in an article about this pattern of violence, Heather MacDonald writes,

In fact, the suspects in all of these cases were black; the news reports rarely mentioned that detail. Had the suspects been white, their race would have led each news report, as it did for Robert Aaron Long. A former member of the Oakland police department’s robbery undercover suppression team tells me that this racial pattern of attack and its lack of coverage is longstanding. No one cares about Asian robbery victims, he says, “We used to follow around elderly Asians, waiting for the bad guys to start circling. This has been one of my long-term frustrations. They are pretending to care now but ironically blaming it on white supremacy”—even though the suspects in Asian robbery attacks are almost exclusively, in this cop’s experience, black.

It’s unreasonable to think that whites never commit any crimes against blacks or Asians. But it’s just as unreasonable to think that whites are the majority of perpetrators of such crimes. There’s just no evidence of it.

But that doesn’t stop the likes of Schumer, Schiff or any other Leftist from immediately pivoting to such lies when an opportunity presents itself.

by

Daily Broadside | Will Silent Prayer Become a Thought Crime Here?

Because our politics is so out of control, I spend a lot of time beating on politicians, particularly progressives. There’s never enough time to examine all of the lies, hypocrisy and general foolishness of the Left. Every time I turn around there’s another story that illustrates their complete disconnect with reality.

But there’s also stories from the world of faith, and I don’t spend enough time examining what they reveal about us. Here is this story from back in December, when a British woman was arrested for praying outside of an abortion clinic.

Mind you, she wasn’t praying out loud, or pacing, or leading others in a prayer. She wasn’t chanting, holding signs, or making the sign of the cross.

She was standing, by herself, in silence.

A pro-life woman was arrested earlier this month for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham, U.K. on the grounds that she had breached a speech buffer zone established by the local city council.

Police told Isabel Vaughan-Spruce that she would be taken into custody for violating a Public Space Protection Order. Video footage of the arrest was captured by AllThingsProLife and circulated by Alliance Defending Freedom, which is hosting a fundraiser for Vaughan-Spruce’s legal defense.

When officers asked whether she was part of a protest, she replied “no.” They then asked if she was praying, to which she said she could be doing so “in my head.” Police then searched her, and patted down her hair, before handcuffing her and escorting her to the station.

This is totalitarian-level harassment. You can watch her arrest here:

Vaughan-Spruce issued a statement through Alliance Defending Freedom UK.

“It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind. Censorship zones purport to ban harassment, which is already illegal. Nobody should ever be subject to harassment. But what I did was the furthest thing from harmful – I was exercising my freedom of thought, my freedom of religion, inside the privacy of my own mind. Nobody should be criminalised for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK,” said Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, following her arrest for silent prayer.   

This is literally arresting someone for a thought-crime. Note that the only indication the police had that she was praying was that “she could be doing so ‘in my head.'” Nothing was heard. Yet she was arrested for praying silently.

I know that we don’t see this in the United States. Not yet. But who would’ve thought that such oppression would be tolerated in the UK?

by

Daily Broadside | 80 Illinois Sheriffs Won’t Enforce New Gun Ban

About a week ago or so I wrote about the new Illinois law that bans the sale of military-style firearms, despite it being clearly unconstitutional. At the end of the column, I said that Democrats use lawfare to make citizens sue for their rights.

Legal challenges have already been filed against the law, which we thought might be our only recourse, but lo and behold, sheriffs in 80 Illinois counties have vowed to not enforce the law. They have all issued similar statements in explaining their decisions. For example, here is the statement that Monroe County, Ill., Sheriff Neal Rohlfing issued.

Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution. One of those enumerated rights is the right of the people to keep and bear arms provided under the 2nd Amendment.

The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people.

I, among many others, believe that HB 5471 is a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution.

Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for Monroe County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been arrested solely with non-compliance of this Act.

These sheriffs have obviously banded together to defy Pritzker and are turning it into a conflict between enforcing state law and protecting the Constitution of the United States. The state may not infringe on the rights of the people through the law, and the police may not infringe on them through enforcement.

Here’s a map of the counties declining to enforce the gun ban law, effectively making themselves sanctuary counties.

Map of counties of Illinois which will and will not be enforcing Illinois’s new Assault Weapon Ban from MapPorn

This of course did not sit well with the hard-left, anti-Constitutional Pritzker, one of the many governors who shut down their states during COVID and kept renewing their emergency powers.

Gov. JB Pritzker warned that law enforcement “will in fact do their job” on enforcing Illinois’ new gun ban or else they “won’t be in their job” as some sheriffs have announced they will not enforce it.

The Illinois sheriffs are showing us one way through the constant barrage of anti-constitutional overreach by government at all levels, whether local, state or federal. Just like certain cities and states declared they were “sanctuary cities” where they would not enforce federal law concerning illegal aliens and turning them over to ICE, so the same tactic can be used by those who respect the Constitution of the United States.

How this plays out over the next year will be a good test of this strategy.

by

Daily Broadside | Distorting History Will Never Bring the Offended Justice

As I mentioned on Friday, I was traveling this weekend. I was in Washington, D.C., where the world, the flesh and the devil meet in a swirling vortex of power and greed.

While I was there I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where plots against Trump were hatched and dirty information on Joe and Hunter Biden was suppressed. I walked down Constitution Avenue past the Department of Justice where Merrick Garland had the audacity to green light a raid on Donald J. Trump’s personal home, a first in American history, over nothing more than “classified” documents that he had the inherent power to declassify as he wished.

I wasn’t filled with pride when I saw these buildings; I was filled with revulsion at the sickening abuse of power that they represent.

There were some good experiences that offset the grim reminders those granite buildings represented. I walked through the National Archives (right next door to the DOJ) and saw the originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those made my heart swell with pride over the foresight and wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who created the freest country the world has ever known.

But even they, in all their earthly wisdom, couldn’t make something that would outlast the evil in the human heart. I’ve quoted it before and will quote it a hundred more times before I die, but John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Generally speaking, we are no longer a “moral and religious People.” The people currently in the government “of, by and for the People” are drawn out of that no-longer-religious community. They are, with few exceptions, of, by and for themselves.

A good example of how this plays out was in the National Archives’ gift shop. As I walked through it something felt “off” to me. I couldn’t place my finger on it until it occurred to me that while there were facsimiles of our founding documents and pocket Constitutions and stickers and magnets and pencils and coffee cups and T-shirts, there were very few representations of the MEN who wrote these documents. Instead, what I saw were sections devoted to women and minorities.

I have no problem with acknowledging that women played a role in our founding, or that minorities also contributed. But the degree to which they were represented in the gift shop was all out of proportion to the contributions they made. Again, not to disparage any group, but it wasn’t women and minorities who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

It doesn’t matter that it was a patriarchal society — you can’t make that “right” by somehow downplaying or demonizing men and increasing the presence of women in a gift shop.

Yet, that’s what I saw. And that is a direct result of a grievance, which comes from feeling a dissatisfaction or perceiving an injustice, which is believing you have been wronged — and that is exacerbated by not getting the justice or revenge you think you deserve.

Somehow, those in charge think they are getting “justice” by replacing our history or emphasizing minor actors out of proportion to their contributions. Unfortunately, all they’re doing is distorting history.

True justice for things done a hundred or two hundred years ago can’t be had. But, someday, the True Judge of all mankind will bring justice to bear and make all things right across all time.

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
    therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
    Blessed are all who wait for him!
— Isaiah 30:18

by

Daily Broadside | The Rank Hypocrisy of the Left on Full Display in New Document Revelations

Friday the 13th. Black cats and bad luck, apparently. Meh.

So, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Resident, who was found to have two different stashes of classified government documents; one at Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center (his “think” tank … *snort* *giggle* *LOL*), and one at home in his garage alongside his, get this, Sting Ray Corvette.

The Washington Post:

Robert K. Hur is a former U.S. attorney from Maryland who served as a senior official in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department. His appointment comes after lawyers for President Biden said additional classified material was found during a search of his home in Wilmington, Del. Garland’s decision means special counsels are reviewing the handling of classified material found at the homes and offices of both the current and most recent U.S. presidents.

Why is this important? Because it’s EXACTLY what Garland’s GestapoTM and the haters in Washington have been all over Trump about, but it’s arguably worse.

The documents are from when he was vice-president, not president. Only the president, as chief executive, has the power to declassify any document he so chooses. Biden was not vested with that power over these documents.

The Trump documents were kept under lock and key in an inner room in his estate. Biden’s were in two different places with minimal security — especially the set in his garage with his Sting Ray Corvette.

Trump knew what documents he had. Biden didn’t know what he had or how the documents got there.

They media is treating this as a nothing burger whereas with Trump it akin to treason. As Ace says, “Tucker Carlson pointed out that MSNBC’s pet pop historian Michael Bechsloss suggested that Trump should be put to death like the Rosenbergs, and former CIA director Michael Hayden agreed.” Think he’ll suggest the same for Biden?

With Trump, they conducted the first-in-history DOJ raid on a former president’s home, even though the documents were known. You think a SWAT team will be breaking down Biden’s door at his personal residence or nah?

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, meanwhile, wrote directly to Garland on Wednesday saying “[i]n President Trump’s case, that retention [of documents] triggered an unprecedented raid on the home of a former president, rationalized with a thicket of partisan doublespeak. President Biden has not experienced anything remotely similar.”

“Every conservative out there is completely disgusted with the standard that exists in America when it comes to conservatives and everybody else,” he further asserted, per The Hill.

Just like Trump had classified documents at his home, so did Biden. The difference in how the media whores and the politicians are treating the two instances is all you need to know about our rulers.

I’ll be traveling this weekend so there will be no Broadside on Monday. Have a good weekend.

by

Daily Broadside | Tit for Tat is No Way to Go Through Life, Kevin — But It’ll Do For Now

Middle of the week and there’s a flurry of activity in the House as Kevin McLuntz (LOL thanks to J.J. Sefton over at Ace of Spades) works the list of promises he made to get and keep the gavel. Unlike the IRS defunding bill that doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance of surviving Daytona Beach at noon in the middle of July of being passed by the Senate, much less signed by the Resident, his promised next move is entirely within his control and will produce immediate results.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confirmed late Monday that he will make good on his pre-midterm pledge to remove three high-profile Democrats — Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar — from their House committees.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) told the Associated Press that he would move to strip the trio of their assignments, following through on a vow of payback for Democrats ousting Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from their panels during the last Congress.

Schiff and Swalwell, both from California, would be removed from the House Intelligence Committee while Minnesota’s Omar would be kicked off the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

McCarthy vowed almost exactly a year ago that he would remove the three Democrats if Republicans won back the House in the 2022 midterm elections, and repeated that promise last November after his prediction was realized.

They call it “payback” and it’ll be spun as revenge, but the truth is that the Democrats — especially San Fran Nan — started this tactic in the last Congress. Omar was quick to denounce his plan to demote her. “I think it would be hypocritic [sic] for him to remove, you know, the first African born on subcommittee on Africa on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where I’ve had the opportunity to not only represent my constituents but the voice of so many people who have never had a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

It’s so sad all those people on the African continent have never had a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

McCarthy offered his reasoning for revoking their committee assignments.

“Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the public sector,” McCarthy told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo at the time. “Why would we ever give him a security clearance and the secrets to America? So, I will not allow him to be on Intel.”

Schiff, meanwhile, “lied to the American public time and again,” McCarthy said, while Omar has made “anti-Semitic comments.”

Not to mention that Swalwell slept with Chinese spy “Fang Fang” and threatened to nuke a fellow American, while Adam Schiff lied through is teeth about Trump and took part in sandbagging the former president through a sham impeachment process, twice. And Ilhan Omar is credibly accused of marrying her own brother in order to help him get a green card to stay in the U.S.

I’m totally in favor of stripping these three compromised anti-Americans from their posts.

See, when Democrats break precedent, it’s to protect our precious democracy (*ptooie*) from white supremacist domestic terrorists; when Republicans do it, they’re destroying our precious norms and institutions (*ptooie*). We can’t go on like this. Like Trump said, we have to punch back twice as hard and make life as miserable for the hard left as we can while we take back political territory that we’ve conceded. It is, as Andrew Breitbart said, “War!”

by

Daily Broadside | The First Power Move of the 118th Congress

Sorry to have missed posting on Tuesday. I’m balancing a number of after-hours involvements and sometimes I’ve had to deprioritize my blog — something I’m loathe to do, but when you’ve got competing priorities, sometimes you don’t have a choice.

Back to the rat’s nest that is our ruling class in Washington, D.C. The kerfluffle over Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become House speaker ended in him getting the gavel and seems to be paying dividends that most conservatives should welcome as signs of life.

The first order of business was revoking the $72 billion in funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.

House Republicans fulfilled a key campaign promise on Monday, passing legislation to rescind the bulk of an IRS funding boost signed into law last year, marking the first bill passed by the GOP-controlled House this Congress.

The bill, which is unlikely to see action in the Democratic-controlled Senate, passed in a party-line 221-210 vote on Monday evening.

[…]

The Republican bill, formally titled the “Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act,” is barely longer than one page. It directs any “unobligated balances of amounts appropriated or otherwise made available” to the IRS from the Inflation Reduction Act to be rescinded.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated Monday that the legislation would eliminate about $71 billion of the total $80 billion that was allocated for the IRS but would reduce tax revenue by about $186 billion, translating to a $114 billion increase in deficits over the next decade.

It rescinds the funding for the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year but it won’t pass the Senate, and Brandon wouldn’t sign it if it did.

So is this just virtue-signaling message votes meant to impress voters? “Hey, we tried …” That’s what we got when we handed the presidency, the House and the Senate to Republicans during Trump’s first term and they promised to repeal Obamacare.

On the other hand, they at least exercised their majority and passed the bill along party lines, so at least they know that it’s a priority for the average American. Maybe they should introduce legislation that would dissolve the IRS altogether. That would be super impressive.

Meanwhile, the Illinois House passed one of the most restrictive laws regarding so-called “assault weapons.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he will sign into law Tuesday evening a comprehensive measure that would immediately ban the sale of military-style firearms, despite warnings from gun rights advocates who contend it is unconstitutional and vow a legal challenge.

“For a long time now, I and many other leaders in the Illinois General Assembly have prioritized getting the most dangerous weapons off our state’s streets. Today, honoring the commitment we made, we passed one of the strongest assault weapons bans in the nation, one I will be proud to sign,” the governor said after Democrats in the Illinois House led its final approval earlier Tuesday.

The 68-41 House vote came on the final scheduled day of action for the lame-duck 102nd General Assembly, a day after Senate Democrats passed the measure 34-20 with no Republican support.

Passing this bill became a priority after a shooting in Highland Park last July fourth that killed seven people and wounded about 30 others. It was sponsored by Rep. Bob Morgan, who was at the fourth of July parade.

The shooting was of course tragic, but this bill, besides being unconstitutional, will do exactly nothing to stop mass shootings. Instead, it will be used to document who has the so-called “military-style” guns so that they can easily confiscate them in their next round of Second Amendment abuses.

Upon becoming law, the measure would immediately ban the delivery, sale, import and purchase of so-called assault weapons. Current owners of such firearms would have until Jan. 1 to register gun serial numbers with the Illinois State Police. After that date, people who possess an unregistered firearm covered by the ban face a misdemeanor for a first offense and a felony for subsequent offenses.

Does anyone really believe that creating a registry of guns and who owns them is totally okay because the big, friendly government never abuses their power? And I can’t wait to see how many criminals declare their “assault weapons.”

Besides being unconstitutional, this law will be immediately challenged in court. That’s what the Democrats do—pass a clearly unconstitutional law, collect the information and any fines imposed under the law, and make the people sue for their rights.

It’s called lawfare.

by - 1 Comment

Daily Broadside | Some Good News Out of the Fight for Speaker

A new week and a new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. As I wrote on Friday, I wasn’t too bothered by it and surmised that we would eventually wind up with McCarthy as speaker. I also thought it was a good thing that there was a scrappy group of conservatives who were gumming up the works, primarily because they were disrupting any sense of business as usual (or BAU as they call it in the business world).

Turns out there were even more reasons to be glad it happened. Did you see the list of concessions that McCarthy and his allies made to the Freedom Caucus, led by Matt Gaetz, in order to secure the gavel?

McCarthy’s deal with Freedom Caucus members will give them several seats on the crucial House Rules Committee and House Appropriations Committee — a “very important” concession, Gaetz said. He declined to say who he was pushing for those roles.

The low-profile Rules Committee determines how new bills can be introduced into the House. Its members — often some of the body’s most senior lawmakers — can effectively stall bills of their choosing, making them some of the most powerful in the chamber.

Meanwhile, the Appropriations Committee is tasked with passing the all-important appropriations bills that fund the government. Seats on that committee have long been a target of House fiscal hawks.

This is good. Many of the Freedom Caucus members don’t have the seniority that other House members have, but nowhere in the constitution is “seniority” a requirement to chair a committee — it’s just a tradition that has developed over the centuries and keeps otherwise capable members of Congress out of key positions.

A list of the concessions from CNN:

  • Any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair
  • A McCarthy-aligned super-PAC (the Congressional Leadership Fund) agreed to not spend in open Republican primaries in safe seats
  • The House will hold votes on key conservative bills, including a balanced budget amendment, congressional term limits, and border security
  • Efforts to raise the nation’s debt ceiling must be paired with spending cuts
  • Move 12 appropriations bills individually, instead of passing separate bills to fund government operations
  • More Freedom Caucus representation on committees, including the influential House Rules Committee
  • Cap discretionary spending at fiscal year 2022 levels, which would amount to lower levels for defense and domestic programs
  • 72 hours to review bills before they come to floor
  • Give members the ability to offer more amendments on the House floor
  • Create an investigative committee to probe the “weaponization” of the federal government
  • Restore the Holman rule, which can be used to reduce the salary of government officials

The first one, “Any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair” is a big win for the members of the House. It used to take a group of five to do that. Now it only takes one. Good. Nobody should take it for granted that he keeps the gavel.

Apart from that, here’s what absolutely floors me about this list: these are concessions. Think about that when it comes to this one: “72 hours to review bills before they come to the floor.”

Isn’t that just common sense? Actually, a full week would be common sense, but that’s not how massive bills were being introduced for a vote. They were being voted on at the last minute with no advance time to consider or debate. A concession means that McCarthy and his allies wanted to keep it that way.

Or how about this one: “cap discretionary spending at 2022 levels.” Again, a concession implies that they wanted the option of increasing spending — on top of the monstrosities they passed last year.

And what’s with creating an investigative committee to probe the “weaponization” of the federal government as a concession? I would’ve thought that would go without saying. We want our representatives to get in there and knock down doors and kick over tables.

Bring Nancy Pelosi in front of a committee to answer questions about January 6 and two sham impeachments. Put Adam Schiffty-Shiff in front of a committee and make him answer for years of outright lying about Trump and Republicans. Make Tony “The Science” Fauci answer for his funding of the Wuhan Institute. Get Christopher Wray in front of Jim Jordan to answer for his FBI and Merrick Garland to answer for his DOJ and the fake domestic terrorism made up of concerned parents and patriotic Americans.

Unfortunately, the fact that these are “concessions” means that we’ve got a uniparty member as Speaker of the House and many uniparty members who outnumber the Freedom Caucus — my guess is that they will find ways to appease the Democrats in spite of their concessions. That’s how it always goes.

But we’ll see.