HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS LEGION: Hard on the heels of revelations one of the Black Lives Matter poo-bahs recently purchased a costly mansion in a posh nearly all-white California neighborhood comes Collin Anderson of the Washington Free Beacon with news about clean-shaven landlord Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA):

“The progressive congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) has called rent cancellation legislation ‘literally a matter of life and death.’ At the same time, she has collected cash from her own rental properties.

“Pressley and her husband made as much as $15,000 in rental income in 2019 after purchasing a $658,000 Boston home, according to property records and financial disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The income appears to come over the course of four months—the unit was first listed for $2,500 a month in June 2019 and the posting was removed in August.”

Who knew Pressley and hubby would die without collecting that rent?

LESSONS FROM ANOTHER FAILED U.S. WAR: That’s the title for The Federalist piece by Sumantra Maitra on the imminent withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, after 20 years of “stabilizing” the unstabilizable.

This graph captures the essential background:

“It was the same when the British empire retreated from Kabul in 1842, realizing that, unlike other parts of the globe that had some coherent form of civilization, Afghanistan had none, and as a result, had little chance of any genuine improvement. Upon their exit, the British kept a wary eye on the region and on the potential Russian imperial invasion that never came. The empire often took punitive counter-insurgency operations against tribal rebels, but never tried to occupy or pacify the proud region ever again (there are archival photos of the British-Indian air force bombing Afghan rebels in 1937).”

I’m not holding my breath on whether the U.S. elite has learned anything from these past 20 years.

IF YOU HAVEN’T YET READ BRYAN PRESTON ON THE ALAMO: Go do it now because it is both a superb corrective to the creeping rot of wokism and a wonderful tribute to the Tejanos, the men of the Alamo of Mexican lineage who were born in what became Texas.

The vast majority of people with Texas blood flowing in their veins instinctively recognize the Alamo as the enduring symbol of freedom that it is, but others need to hear the facts about what happened there, including especially that it had zero to do with “white supremacy.” Preston is doing it well. Thank you, Ed Driscoll, for posting his column link.

WHO WINS, ‘GENETICALLY MODIFIED SKEPTIC’ OR ERIK MANNING: Genetically Modified Skeptic’s real first name is Drew and he makes an articulate case for the idea that all spiritual visions are remarkably similar, regardless of the individual’s particular faith tradition. For that reason, he contends, there must be an underlying natural cause, not a supernatural one, for such experiences.

Erik Manning is a Christian apologist who devours “literature, podcasts, lectures, and online classrooms produced by both Christians and skeptics.” Manning responds to Drew in a detailed, factual and civil manner. The result is a fascinating analysis that challenges the thinking of both sides.

So, hey, it’s Saturday and watching this video will give you something to think about today as you cut the grass, pull those weeds, run weekend errands, make plans to party tonight, or whatever else you do to make today productive and enjoyable, regardless of which side you come down on.

QUESTION OF THE YEAR: Issues & Insights asks “why is everyone swallowing Biden’s lies”? Well, I must hasten to note that I’m not and I doubt that many Instapundit readers are, either.

That said, Biden’s approval rating is riding high in the latest survey, even though, as I&I notes: “He lies about the filibuster (National Review called them “brazen beyond belief”). He lies about the border crisis. He lies about his role in getting vaccines distributed. And everyone falls into lockstep.

“Now, we know why the mainstream press parrots everything Biden says. They are nothing more than Democratic operatives with bylines, as Glenn Reynolds puts it on his Instapundit blog. But why are corporate executives falling for it? Why are officials with sports leagues? Why are politicians in both parties bending to Biden’s reality distortion field?”

RELIGION OR RELATIONSHIP: Shane Morris, on Colson Center’s latest “What Would You Say,” explains the big difference between Christianity and the major religions like Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It’s one of those basic facts that critics often miss, which then leads them to critiquing straw men.

ROBERTS COURT HIGHLY FAVORABLE TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: That’s the conclusion of a new study published by The Supreme Court Review, which found the high court has ruled in favor of religious freedom 81 percent of the time since John Roberts became the Chief Justice.

That compares with just 46 percent by the infamous Warren Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, and only 51 percent during the tenure of Chief Chief Justice Warren Burger, according to the study, Christian Headlines reports.

So why has the conservative majority that doesn’t include Roberts so studiously declined to accept cases that might provide credible evidence that His Fraudulency’s handlers stole the 2020 presidential election?

TODAY IS ISRAEL’S INDEPENDENCE DAY: Jeff Dunetz at The Lid explains how God used Harry Truman to do a modern-day miracle. The greater miracle may well be that Israel has survived to this day and remained America’s best ally in the Middle East.

THOSE WOKE CEOS ARE HEADED IN WRONG DIRECTION: Issues & Insights argues the movement represented by the more than 100 CEOs who met Sunday to proclaim their virtuous opposition to restrictive election laws has bad ending written all over it.

NEVADA GOP CENSURES SECRETARY OF STATE OVER 2020 ELECTION: Biden took Nevada by 34,000 votes, even as more than 40,000 voters cast two or more ballots. Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, Gateway Pundit reports that Nevada’s lone GOP statewide office-holder is being censured by the party for failing to recognize the vote fraud staring her in the face. Uh, what took so long?

UK RIGHT GOES FOR POWER AND SO SHOULD U.S. GOP: Writing in The Federalist, Sumantra Maitra encourages U.S. conservatives to drop the traditional commitment to preserving the existing order in favor of a populist positioning that gains power and thus the opportunity to implement needed change.

I have a much simpler approach: How about Republicans who talk limited government actually walk it by taking the necessary actions to limit government when they are in power?

THEY’LL TAKE MY GAS-POWERED TRUCK WHEN THEY PRY MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS FROM THE KEYS: Issues & Insights warns that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan is hinting broadly about forthcoming regulations designed to create a “Use-By” date on internal-combustion powered vehicles.

There is so much that is so outrageously wrong with this latest illustration of President Biden’s determination to be the most recklessly left-wing chief executive ever that it’s impossible to detail in this short space. Let’s just say Biden and Regan are already running on empty of facts, logic and consumer readiness.

LAWS FOR THEE, NOT ME: Lynne Patton is nailed for allegedly violating the Hatch Act by speaking at the 2020 Republican National Convention. Six Obama administration officials spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention and got …. zilch. This is not equal justice under law.

WHAT CBS SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT PUBLIX: Ellie Reynolds, writing in The Federalist, notes that one of the many things that Floridians appreciate about their Publix grocery stores is that the checkout folks always bag your groceries and offer to help you load them into your car.

It takes a particular sort of cultural arrogance to not recognize the significance of such cultural indicators of civilized commerce and community, arrogance of the sort routinely found among New York-Washington media types, especially those associated with elite programming like, well, “60 Minutes.”

BTW, Reynolds is a Patrick Henry College senior interning at The Federalist. If you love liberty and America, PHC is a place you should know about because it specializes in serving home-schoolers with a superb educational experience.

NEXT TIME SOMEBODY DENIES THE HOLOCAUST TO YOU: Show them this, from Jeff Dunetz at The Lid.

NEXT, THE FEDS REGULATE WEB SITES: That’s what will happen, according to former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith and Free Speech Institute President David Keating, if the Democrats’ HR1/S1 monstrosity makes into law. And that’s just for starters.

THERE’S A REASON NOBODY TALKS ‘SWOON THEORY’ ANYMORE: HillFaith reminds this morning that there was a time at the turn of the century when critics claimed Jesus survived crucifixion, escaped from the tomb and secretly headed off to live out his life in obscurity in India or Japan or, maybe, Burbank.

Today being Easter Friday, crucifixion day, it’s useful to review the lethal effects of the Romans’ routine execution method — including the scourging  before being nailed to a cross — as a measure of the remote likelihood of anybody surviving so lethal an ordeal. Which leaves us all with the question: How is the empty tomb best explained, by the Gospels or by naturalistic explanations like swooning?

BIDEN TEAM MANIPULATES VACCINE DATA: Issues & Insights applied their rigorous analytical skills to the Biden administration’s latest claims regarding the progress of vaccinations among Americans. The result is not a pretty picture but it is a revealing one:

“On the front page of WhiteHouse.gov is a bar chart showing how many shots have been delivered relative to Biden’s new goal of 200 million shots by April 29. (See chart below.)

“There’s a curious feature about this chart, however. Based on the scale, there were zero shots administered on Day 1 of the Biden administration. The chart is divided up into equal 50 million shot increments. So, it appears that on Biden’s ‘Day 1’ there’d been none, when in fact there had already been more than 21 million shots administered.”

And pointing to a recent Politico report, Issues & Insights notes that Biden has abandoned his much-ballyhooed plan to speed up vaccinations by creating a flood of government-backed sites for administering the shots:

“Biden is abandoning his hugely expensive government-run vaccination program and relying on a private-sector arrangement established by Trump to get vaccines out quickly. Yet the White House has the gall to imply that no vaccines had been administered when Biden took office?”

That’s what I like about these I&I guys, they are so diplomatic in their questions!

COVID IS THE LEFT’S INVENTED ‘PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE:’ The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman, in a column I admittedly missed earlier this week, applied this fact to Monday’s White House “press briefing” with the Biden Covid team.

“On Monday government disease experts Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky reasonably and responsibly urged Americans to get vaccinated and to take care in avoiding infection.

“But they also went beyond reasonable admonitions, fearfully encouraging continued restrictions by state governments without even addressing the pros and cons, as if lockdowns have been proven to work and have no negative impact on public health …

“Dr. Walensky set the tone early in the discussion by saying, ‘I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom.’ Dr. Fauci made his case for ‘why we cannot pull back on our mitigation efforts.’”

One might ask how much power over the public would Fauci, Walensky and the rest of the Covid response team have if the virus were to suddenly disappear entirely from among the American public?

WANT AN ADVANCE LOOK AT VACCINE PASSPORT AMERICA? Check out this report by The Epoch Times’ Daniel Teng on the list of 5,000 foreigners tracked by China’s pervasive internal surveillance system. The lead photo of dozens of surveillance cameras on a beam in Hangzhou is chilling.

COWARDS, CROOKS OR COMPROMISED: That’s the question asked by The American Thinker’s Andrew W. Coy. I’m not sure if any of those three descriptors applies. That said, the Supreme Court remains in Alexander Hamilton’s famous formulation “the least dangerous branch” of the federal government.

Yet, it also remains the only one that can declare acts of either of the other two unconstitutional and thereby illegal. So why has the five-member conservative majority on the present Supreme Court so resolutely refused to accept any cases having to do with the 2020 presidential election and claims that it was rife with fraud? Coy is anything but in making his assessment clear.

AZ HIRES FOUR FIRMS TO AUDIT 2.1 MILLION BALLOTS: It’s getting virtually no coverage in the MSM, but the Epoch Times reports Arizona’s state senate is moving ahead with an audit and recount of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million November 2020 ballots. What happens if they confirm something was stolen?

IT’S EASTER WEEK, DO YOU KNOW WHY THE TOMB WAS EMPTY? If the Resurrection of Jesus actually happened, it’s the central event of history. If it didn’t, and there are many claimed explanations for why it couldn’t have, then it matters little to anybody today except as an historical curiosity. But ask yourself this question: If it’s true, why on Earth did Jesus allow it to happen?

DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TITAN AND THE TITANIC? Brook McIntire of the Colson Center explains why that difference is important in responding to claims the Easter Resurrection story was merely borrowed from ancient pagan myths.

$83 MILLION FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD TO FIGHT COVID: Right, PP took the $83 million intended to help small businesses survive the Pandemic lockdowns and used it to prevent Covid deaths? That’s telling us that warm yellow liquid running down our legs is just rainwater, my friends.