Between the fraud, the illegal immigrants, and the outright defiance of federal law, Minneapolis, Minnesota, now amounts to occupied territory.
To all of these republic-killing cancers, we might now add a state official’s disqualifying ignorance, or at least the appearance of it.
Monday on his YouTube podcast, “The Don Lemon Show,” insufferable former CNN anchor Don Lemon hosted veteran comedian D.L. Hughley and Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the latter of whom assured Lemon that the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act did not apply to Lemon’s own brazen interruption of Sunday services at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
One could excuse readers who might confuse Ellison’s comments with one of Hughley’s jokes.
“Yeah, I’m familiar with the FACE Act,” Ellison said in a video posted to YouTube. “You know, in Minnesota, we uphold the right of a woman to choose. And some of the activists, you know, will — .”
The attorney general then stumbled over his words for several seconds. In fact, he sounded like a man searching for the best way to deceive his listeners.
“The law has to do with whether or not people’s freedom to protest generally, regarding reproductive clinics and things like that,” Ellison finally said. “So that’s the FACE Act. And then, you know, you have — but how are they tying you into it? That is escaping me.”
Several minutes later, Ellison returned to the FACE Act.
“The FACE Act, by the way, is designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights to be protected, and so that people, for religious reasons, cannot just use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers,” the attorney general said, adding that applying this law to people who protested in a church would be “stretching” it.
Readers with a masochistic streak may view Lemon’s entire 72-minute podcast episode in the YouTube video below. The relevant segments began around the 10:45 and 15:30 marks.
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Did Ellison have it right? Would charging Lemon and the members of the Racial Justice Network who stormed into a church, intimidated churchgoers, and interfered with their right to worship under the FACE Act qualify as a stretch?
The precise language of the FACE Act reads as follows:
“Whoever … (2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship … shall … in the case of a first offense, be fined in accordance with this title, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
In short, Ellison either understood the FACE Act and lied about it, or he genuinely did not understand it. Either way, it should disqualify him from serving as a lawyer, let alone a state attorney general.
Lemon seemed to believe that his role as a self-described “journalist” should shield him from federal charges. It will not.
In fact, Harmeet Dhillon, U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, said Monday that the Department of Justice has numerous tools at its disposal and thus will charge Lemon and others under whatever statutes they deem applicable, including the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act.
How delicious would it be if Lemon and other Democrat shock troops went to prison for violating an act originally designed to enforce the 14th Amendment? Remember that in 2023-24, Democrats tried using that amendment to remove President Donald Trump’s name from state ballots.
In any event, Trump posted about the church incursion on his social media platform, TruthSocial. The president demanded jail time or even deportation for the “insurrectionists.”
Does that mean that Trump plans to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he should?
We continue to hold out hope that he will. After all, the lawlessness, fraud, and open defiance of federal law by elected officials such as Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis have reached intolerable proportions.
Meanwhile, it remains an open question whether Ellison displayed pathological dishonesty or merely staggering ignorance.
If you doubt the possibility of the latter, remember that former Vice President Kamala Harris also served as a state attorney general, and no sane person has ever confused her with a competent expositor of anything besides yellow buses.
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