YOU LIVE IN A ‘SUNSHINE’ OR A ‘SINKHOLE’ STATE? Truth-in-Accounting, the invaluable Chicago-based non-profit accounting watchdog, digs into the debt status of each of the 50 states and finds an even 25-25 split. And I’m betting you can guess which class of states are red and which are deep, deep blue.

ON JOHN BROWN, THEN AND NOW: The old abolitionist fanatic who raided the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 in hopes of inciting a slave rebellion across the South is enjoying something of a revival amid reports of the “John Brown Club” becoming active at Georgetown University and other campuses, according to The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson.

Davidson’s excellent essay provides a useful introduction to John Brown as analogy to the Tyler Robinsons, Jonathan Jahns and other contemporary Radical Leftists taking up arms against ICE, Trump, the police, and everything else associated with America.

What Davidson misses, though, is that the Brown analogy doesn’t end with merely taking up a bolt-action rifle and killing Charlie Kirk, or an illegal alien sitting in an ICE van in Dallas.

No, as I explained in detail a couple of years ago in this PJ Media column, Brown was a thorough-going revolutionary in search of dictatorial powers he viewed as required to carry out his fundamental remaking of American society.

Man, I wish I had finished that doctoral dissertation entitled “John Brown and Gnostic Millenarianism in the American Political Regime”!

COUNT THE COST FIRST: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) sees the Democrats writing on the wall – They demand President Trump and Hill GOPers effectively abandon the agenda voters put them in office to carry out, or the Democrats will shut down the federal government come October 1. The Washington Stand reports that Ernst is telling CBO to “score” the actual costs of such a scenario before it comes to be.

TWO CONSERVATISMS: Did you catch the two distinctive approaches to defining the issues by speakers during the Charlie Kirk memorial on Sunday? The Washington Stand’s Joshua Arnold did and it’s deserving of wider discussion.

ONE MONUMENT, TWO WORDS: They cannot be seen from ground-level at the Washington Monument, but on its peak there are two Latin words facing the rising Sun each morning.

ERNST TARGETS DOUBLE DIPPING FEDS: One might think the federal government would be able to uncover employees from getting paychecks from more than one department or agency.

But, as Sen, Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) points out this morning in The Washington Stand, there are more than a few such double-dippers in the federal workforce but it’s unclear if the government has the tools needed to prevent such criminal activity.

HOUSING TO NOWHERE EARMARK: Buried in that lengthy list of nearly 14,000 earmarks sought by senators is one for Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski for $2 million in housing project funding. Nothing unusual about that, so far.

Then we learn that the South Naknek housing project is for a village with 67 residents. The place is so remote that the few kids living there must use an airplane to get to and from school! Chuck Schumer has an earmark that will make the New York Met Opera sing, and Hawaii’s two Democrat senators, Hirono and Schattz, want nearly $7 million for a bike path. Details here in The Washington Stand.  

NO, HIGHER TEACHER PAY DOESN’T INCREASE STUDENT LEARNING: A new analysis by Open the Books comparing student academic performance between 2019 and 2024 with school payrolls finds an inverse relationship. You will not read or see this story in the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, USA Today, CBS, etc. etc.

CHARLIE KIRK, IN HIS OWN WORDS: There have been so many tributes to Charlie Kirk since his assassination. But this one — prepared by cross-examined.org — depends solely on what he said in countless situations on campuses across America.

You want to see him at his gentlest, it’s here. You want to see him confront a Satanist, it’s here. You want to hear him on the relationship between Grace and Truth, it’s here, too. This is Charlie, in his own words.

PRITZKER’S ‘FULLY FUNDED’ PENSION PLOY: Illinois has the worst state pension funding of the 50 states in great part due to the word games GOP and Dem officials alike have routinely played. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker continues the games, which won’t be helpful to his presidential hopes in 2028.

HOW THE RADICAL LEFT REALLY SEES CHARLIE KIRKS: Richard Pollock, who knows the American Left from the inside, reminds us from Saul Alinsky that being a solid church-going, tax-paying citizen-leader is no guarantee of security against political violence.

“[Charlie] Kirk is widely known as a good person, a follower of Christ, a man who openly espoused debate and the free flow of ideas. Therefore, some say, he is beyond attack, especially a murderous attack. Not so, says Alinsky. He says the ‘good person’ label is a ruse and ‘political idiocy.’

“’Can you imagine in the arena of conflict charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard and then diluting the impact of the attack with qualifying remarks such as He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity, and a good husband? This becomes political idiocy,’ Alinksy argued.”

And in the context of the post-October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel the Kirk assassination should be understood as an escalation from the subsequent surge in anti-Jewish violence in the U.S. In other words, more such violence could be right around the corner.

TURNS OUT I WAS RIGHT ABOUT CHARLIE KIRK: His pastor, Mark Driscoll, explains that Charlie Kirk was preparing to become a full-time evangelist and apologist for Christianity, just as I suggested might well have been the case had he lived.

WHAT IF CHARLIE KIRK LIVED? Yes, Charlie Kirk was an amazing force in conservative politics, but what if he was still with us? Might he have become the next Billy Graham? Check out my latest PJMedia column.

HOW THE LEFT ENCOURAGES, LEGITIMIZES POLITICAL VIOLENCE: Now-former MSNBC Analyst Matthew Dowd got himself fired but not before providing the public with a concise illustration of how the Left does it.

ACT BLUE INDICTMENTS AHEAD? Rod Martin’s status report on the revelations thus far regarding the federal probe of political fund-raising behemoth of the Left suggests some other shoes are about to drop. Money laundering, foreign contributions are involved and 19 states are investigating in addition to the Feds.

THE ORCS ARE COMING FOR RFK JR: That tumultuous Senate Finance Committee hearing last week in which HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. was subjected to an unprecedented series of insults, misrepresentations, outright lies, and character assassination is just the opening of Sauron’s massive assault. The goal is to do whatever is necessary to either persuade President Donald Trump to fire Kennedy, or to render Kennedy so bloodied and distracted that he resigns.

THEY PRAISED IKE FOR SENDING IN THE NATIONAL GUARD: Liberals profusely praised President Dwight Eisenhower in 1957 when he federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to escort nine students to ensure the safe enrollment and begin the process of desegregation of that state’s public school system.

Rod Martin wonders why is it the Left goes apocalyptic in angry protests against President Donald Trump for sending in the troops to help local law enforcement protect Chicago’s 2.7 million inhabitants against the murderers, rapists, car-jackers, gangs and drug dealers who will ultimately destroy the Windy City if they aren’t stopped now?

THE SEISMIC SHIFT YOU HAVEN’T HEARD ABOUT: No, it’s not the move of young male voters to the Trump/Republican column, important as that certainly is in the political calculations of the days ahead.

But politics is downstream from culture and culture is downstream from you know what, and that’s where the most important — and totally unexpected — shift in the tectonic plate underlying the American experience is happening. Read all about it in my latest PJMedia column.

WHERE WERE SENATE DEMS WHEN CDC ISSUED THESE LIES? Yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing in which Democrat after Democrat raised bogus issue after bogus issue should be understood in the context of the sorry performance of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Over and over again, in response to ridiculous Democratic claims that assumed the CDC could do no wrong, Kennedy retorted by pointing out Senator X said nothing for years as the nation became sicker and sicker.

Now Just Facts’ documents the reality that “the CDC issued reams of unscientific pronouncements that killed and harmed multitudes of people during the Covid-19 pandemic.” THIS IS A MUST-READ.

WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? It’s a classic question, but maybe, as suggested by the latest issue of the Colson Center’s “What Would You Say?” video on HillFaith, the issue may be less complicated than we think.

TALK ABOUT COOKIN’ THE BOOKS: Officially, the U.S. National Debt is more than $37 trillion. But, as I report today at The Washington Stand, experts at Truth-in-Accounting (TIA), the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) and elsewhere point out, the actual debt is $158 Trillion. That’s because the federal government exempts itself from the same accounting rules it imposes on private and corporate businesses.

Let’s say you are the government and you just bought a new vehicle for $50,000 (including the interest on the loan). The monthly payment is $500. As things presently stand, your balance sheet only show a debt obligation of $500.

If you had $50K in hand, you could have slapped those bills on the table and driven away debt free. But the fact is you incurred an unfunded obligation you must repay at the rate of $500 per month for a total of $50,000.

That’s how the feds account for hundreds of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations under Social Security, federal pensions, Medicare, loan guarantees and a host of other programs. And that’s why any time you see a politician in either party wringing their hands about that terrible $37 Trillion National Debt, ask them what they are doing about the other $121 Trillion.

WHEN HATE CALLS ITSELF ‘THE PEOPLE’S CONFERENCE FOR PALESTINE:’ If you were in the vicinity of Huntington Place Detroit this past weekend, you were at Ground Zero in America for radical Leftist and Islamists making common cause to destroy Israel and America, according to Richard Pollock.

During the three-day hatefest, Rep. Rashida Talib (D-Mich.) provided yet more evidence, as if any more was needed, for why the House of Representatives should refuse to seat her. As Pollock reports:

“She defiantly told cheering Palestinian activists, ‘We aren’t going anywhere. We’re just getting started. I want to say to all of them, look at this room, mother-f—–s – we aren’t going anywhere!’

“Talib routinely denounced many of America’s political institutions, including the U.S. Congress where she serves, saying they were objectively evil. ‘The political situation that I have to work in, that we are surrounded by, was built on slavery, genocide, rape and oppression.’

“Channelling the rhetoric of the 1970’s she urged the activists to seek the ‘power in the streets,’ telling the adoring crowd, ‘the power that we will have in the streets and pushing these institutions is going to work!’”

Stay tuned because it’s also becoming clear that the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s never really changed or went away; they just changed their costumes.

CRIME FACTS NEWSOM MISSED: Issues & Insights (I&) dug into the crime data for America’s major urban areas and found some facts that ought to be on the front page of the New York Times, Washington Post and throughout the Mainstream Media:

• Of the 20 cities with the highest homicide rates in the country, 14 are located in blue or purple states.
• Just one of the remaining six currently has a Republican mayor – Dallas’ Eric Johnson – and he was twice elected as a Democrat, and switched to become a Republican in his second term.
• The remaining five cities, despite being in red states, have been under Democratic control for years, if not decades.

There’s more, much more, in this much-needed fact-based corrective to pretty much everything being claimed about crime by the like of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill.

DON’T GIVE UP TOO SOON: That’s the bottomline advice of David Tennent, a remarkable young former Capitol Hill aide and aspiring entrepreneur who heeded the Lord’s guidance even in the darkest pit of the COVID closure of Congress.

Three years later, Tennent’s CNCT, a digital platform that breaks down social and political isolation among congressional aides, is a great success, demonstrating that following God’s plan for your life and embracing the free market culture of opportunity and innovation is an amazing combination.

Happy Labor Day to my fellow Instapunditeers!

WHEN IDENTITY BECOMES IDOLATRY: The lesson at the darkest center of the Minneapolis school shooting.