House Speaker Michael Johnson joined me this morning: Audio: 04-24hhs-johnson Transcript: HH: Honored to have Speaker Mike Johnson back with me. Good morning, Mr. Speaker. Welcome back. MJ: Hugh, thanks so much. It’s really great to be with you, my friend. HH: You are now doing a syndicated show with Salem every Saturday with Tony Perkins. How do you like being a radio guy? MJ: (laughing) I’m going back to my roots. Many years ago, I was a small-time radio host, and I miss that work, actually. HH: It’s kind of, it’s much better than doing TV, because the talent are actually the producers, alth ..read more

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined me this AM to discuss among other things the leak that his successor Tony Blinken is considering sanctioning a unit in the IDF: Audio: 04-24hhs-pompeo Transcript: HH: Joined by former Secretary of State, former Director of Central Intelligence, Mike Pompeo. Secretary Pompeo, welcome back. Good to talk to you. MP: Good morning. It’s great to be with you, Hugh. It’s great to be back on the show again. HH: Now I assume you approve of the Senate approving the $95 billion dollar security budget last night. Do you approve of how much it was? Did we spend ..read more

So, this morning the host played a clip in the first hour of Trump carrying on at length about the unconstitutional gag order under which he finds himself at the moment.  It occurred to me that if, as so many have contended over the years now, he really wants to set himself up as a dictator do you think he would care about a gag order from a minor judge in New York?  He was POTUS and this is a small local judge telling him what to do.  Seems to me he is at least trying to abide by normal governmental restraints.  Meanwhile… United States Democratic legislators are trying t ..read more

Yesterday was “Earth Day.”  I remember the very first one – I was a freshman in high school, then known as 9th grade at middle school, and we organized a field trip in our science classes and went out and picked up litter.  I was a bit disappointed because just a few years earlier I had lived in Cleveland, Ohio when the river burned and litter seemed to my young mind, trivial.  I was far more interested in the actual science of cleaning the water and air than trash by the highway, but then I am a nerd.  What I never dreamed was what Earth Day would become by my retirement ..read more

There is an ugly picture developing, and I am not at all sure anyone is seeing it.  Let’s start with the host’s interview of DJT on April 4.  Far and away the most interesting thing Former President Trump said, even if the media largely ignored it was, concerning uncontrolled immigration: HH: What do you think the Chinese nationals are doing? You don’t get out of China without permissions, according to Secretary Pompeo. And there might be one or two can slip… DJT: No, they’re probably building an army. They’re probably building an army from within. I mean, you look at what’s happeni ..read more

For a few days now the alarm panel in my home has been telling me the smoke detector had a low battery, only problem was I did not know which smoke alarm.  Well, the smoke alarm in question decided to tell me about 4 this morning.  Changing the battery turned out to be a far more complicated operation than one might anticipate, involving special resets at the sensor and the panel – a most difficult task when 1) you’d never done it before and 2) you are very groggy because it is 4AM.  But then who can sleep with that incessant chirping from the sensor?  It was easy to curse ..read more

California is bleeding.  The sea of red ink that is the state budget nearly matches the size of the Pacific Ocean that is the state’s western border.  There is a constitutional mandate for a balanced budget, but so many people suck at the state government teat there that googling stories about efforts to balance it are almost comical.  Nearly everyone is lobbying to make sure they do not get cut, but the deficit is so bad that everyone will have to take a cut while their taxes are being raised.  The situation is truly awful. You will recall that earlier this week many major ..read more

Senator Joni Ernst joined me this morning: Audio: 04-19hhs-ernst Transcript: HH: Joined now by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. I think I’ll call her Col. Ernst, retired Iowa National Guard Army Reserve this morning, because we begin, good morning, Senator, welcome back, good to talk to you. JE: Hey, great to be with you, Hugh. Thank you. HH: What do you know about, what’s your response to what Israel did overnight? JE: Well, at this point, Hugh, I only know what is publicly available. I should learn more today as I go into work at our beautiful nation’s capital. But it is in response, of course, t ..read more

The kerfuffle that has erupted since Uri Berliner’s revelations concerning ideological bias in NPR is both amazing and sad to watch.  There is very little real new involved to anybody that pays attention to NPR at all.  But that said news came for inside the organization and the organization’s response to that fact is where it becomes spectacle.  The commentary has been immense.  NPR tried to report on itself, which is somehow weird.  City Journal looked at the tweets of the new, current NPR CEO – and frankly something is broken that any purported news organization hir ..read more

So on Monday this article appears that is a bit jaw dropping.  The articles is about trying to make the current wave of weight loss drugs, which are very, very expensive, available to people that cannot afford them.  Because obesity is a health issue disproportionately affecting the poor.  There is the first jaw-drop – the poor are fatter than the rich.  The less money you have the more likely you are to eat too much.  Which makes me wonder, “How poor are they really?”  What if they saved all that money they spend on excess food?  Would they still be poor? So ..read more