Here are my observations and opinions on my selected news of the day.

EVEN RETIRED JUDGES feel that they have to comment. During an interview with Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney Tuesday, Fox News Channel’s legal analyst Andrew Napolitano said President Trump was out of line with his comments on General Motors over its plan to close plants and to lay off employees; arguing that GM answers only to its stockholders. While the media saw the president’s comment as a threat, it was more of a statement of disappointment.

I understand Napolitano’s position that the government has no business telling a company how to run its business, but he conveniently forgets our history with General Motors and other firms.

We can argue if it was the right thing to do, but in 2008, the U.S. government (Obama) coughed-up $80.5 billion (yes, billion) to bailout the auto industry, of which about $50 billion went to GM.

The Treasury Department took shares of GM stock, making you and I stockholders. They eventually sold that stock, but we taxpayers lost $11 billion in the end.

Then there’s the government’s interference in auto and manufacturing with its Café Standards, dictating how many miles per gallon they must attain; and the offering of thousands of dollars in tax incentives on the purchase of electric cars.

President Trump’s effort to replace NAFTA to provide GM and other companies a level playing field in trade certainly cannot be ignored.

And didn’t President Trump, with his tax cut and jobs act, aid GM and other corporations by lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, eliminating the corporate alternative tax minimum tax, and providing a number of deductions for expensing investments?

Sorry, Judge. You simply cannot pick and choose when our relationship with any corporation is proper.

THREE BLACKS LOSE IN MIDTERMS, and here’s a brief overview. In Florida, Democrat Andrew Gillum, billed as the new Obama and a rock star, lost the race for governor to Republican Rick DeSantis. Of note is the fact that 18 percent of black women voted for DeSantis, while 47 percent of white women voted for Gillum.

Gillum received a lower percentage of the black vote than did Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson, who lost to Republican Rick Scott in the Senate Race. You may recall that Nelson was the butt of jokes as he latched onto Gillum at his rallies.

In Georgia, a higher-than-expected number of black men (eight percent) voted for Republican Brian Kemp than Democrat Stacey Abrams in the gubernatorial race. Kemp captured 75 percent of the votes of white women, while 97 percent of black women voted for Abrams.

As I have often written, women are just as interested in the issues as men. “The lesson here,” wrote Star Parker for The Daily Signal, “is that blacks care about issues more than they care about skin color.

In Nevada, Republican Mia Love, a black of Haitian descent, lost to Democrat Ben McAdams, as Love chose to distance herself from President Trump over trade and immigration issues.

Both Abrams and Love were antagonistic following their losses. Abrams continued to charge her opponent with suppressing the black vote, while secretary of state. Love blamed her loss on a party that “never take(s) the minority community into their home and into their hearts.”

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, Democrat of California, could lose her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee due to Democrat senatorial losses in the midterms, according to Fox’s Chris Stirewalt. Many of you will recall here embarrassing performance during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Senator Chuck Schumer could agree to expand the number of Republicans on the committee so that no Democrat is forced off. Let’s hope Mitch McConnell says, ‘no deal.’

DISGRACED FORMER FBI DIRECTOR James Comey has been subpoenaed to appear for a closed-door hearing on December 3, 2018, but he’s demanding that it be done in public. Republican leadership – yes, it still exists – believe the closed-door approach will eliminate the on-camera showboating by Democrats.

“Comey will not decide the format of the testimony,” remarked Rep. Trey Gowdy, who added, “the FBI has never conducted an interview in public. Never.”

The closed-door sessions should also prevent Comey from using his familiar response – ‘I cannot comment on that in this setting.’

“WELL, ONE THING WE KNOW about Chief Justice Roberts: he’s not a ‘Trump judge’,” writes the author of the blog NEO. Referring the Roberts-Trump dispute to that of the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, “Roberts is stating an ideal that does not exist – ‘we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges’ – and what’s more, just about everybody knows that Trump is stating something that seems very very real,” says NEO.

Most of us recognize that judges appointed by Democrat presidents view the Constitution as a “living document” that can be changed or reshaped to suit a worthy cause – legislating from the bench.

Republican presidents seek out appointees who view the Constitution as the intent of the Founders, while considering case law.

THE TALE OF TWO REPORTS – There were two climate-related reports issued last Friday. The U.S. National Climate Assessment reports that efforts to counteract the effects of rising temperatures have so far fallen short.

Of course, the media latched onto the quote from the report “that the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans’ physical, social and economic well-being are rising.”

Taken at face value, human-induced climate change isn’t an existential threat – or even a significant one – to the overall U.S. economy through the end of this century, according to Steven Koonin, a professor at NY University writing in the Wall Street Journal

The second report, largely ignored by media, concluded that fossil-fuel emissions in North America have been declining steadily for the past decade.”

AMERICAN THINKER recently published an interesting list of global warming and cooling scares beginning in 1895, which supports my belief that climate change is cyclic. CLICK HERE to check it out.

            May God bless the United States of America.