THE IDES OF MARCH: If you know your Roman history and your Shakespeare, no explanation of the significance of March 15 is needed. But if you are The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz, who once played Marcus Brutus in the movies, today is a great day to recall why Julius Caesar should have worked from home that day!

COVID COVERUP STARTED EARLY: At least that what appears to be shown by new emails uncovered and reported by Just the News’ Daniel Payne.

HOW WOULD YOU HAVE REACTED HAD YOU BEEN THERE: On D-Day at Omaha Beach? The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787? The Castle Church door in Wittenburg with Martin Luther in 1517? The Sunday after the Crucifixion on Friday?

That’s the premise of the movie “Risen.” It’s the story of Clavius, commander of Rome’s Jerusalem Garrison, who is tasked by Pilate to find the body of Jesus. And he does! It’s a fascinating way to look at the fulcrum of Western civilization, by putting yourself in the shoes of a key player. Pure Flix brings back the 2016 production for Easter season 2021.

LIBERAL SUPPORT FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE IS GROWING: Wait a minute. Hold the phone! Isn’t that barbed wire and all those military vehicles and National Guardsman there to guard the Capitol from violent extremists supporting Donald Trump? So how can it be that the percentage of very liberal and liberal respondents to this poll who say “not at all” when asked if they view violence as an acceptable political tactic plummeted between 2016 and 2020?

“The survey found that 95.8 percent of ‘very conservative’ white respondents said violence should never be used to pursue a political ambition, which was up from 93.3 percent in 2016. ‘Conservative’ respondents were nearly identical, with 95 percent disavowing political violence in 2020 and 93.3 percent in 2016,” The Blaze reports.

“However, on the other end of the political spectrum, leftists are more likely to embrace political violence as a means to an end. According to the poll, only 66.5 percent of ‘very liberal’ white respondents said it was wrong to use violence to attain their political goals. That means that over a third of ‘very liberal’ Americans would justify using some or a ‘great deal’ of violence to pursue their political goals. In the 2016 survey, the percent of ‘very liberal’ respondents willing to endorse political violence was much higher at 86.9 percent.

BART ERHMAN ISN’T IT, EITHER: At least not the guy with the best argument for Paul’s pastoral letters in the New Testament being written by somebody not actually named Paul, according to Erik Manning. Just a small Saturday exegetical exercise.

NOPE, ARDI ISN’T THE MISSING LINK, EITHER: That’s the conclusion of a team led by a Texas A&M paleontologist, anyway. Doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t one, but it’s not this one.

PASTOR TIM KELLER HAS A MESSAGE FOR JESUS: Stop saying all those mean things about your opponents. No wonder they won’t forgive you!

CANCEL CULTURE CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM: Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader reports that Georgetown University Law School Professor Sandra Sellers is no longer on the faculty after making the unforgivable mistake of being honest about the negative effects of race-based admissions policies on the beneficiaries. To see what is killing off what is left of American education, look no further than Georgetown.

JULIA LETLOW IS A CLASS LADY: Check out her recent interview on “Good Morning America.” Odds are good she will win the seat in Congress next week that her husband won last November.

THE BIGGER SCANDAL BEHIND CUOMO’S NURSING HOME SCANDAL: Willis Krumholz and Robert Delahunty, writing in The Federalist, lay it out in stark detail:

“The real scandal is what lay behind the high nursing home deaths in New York and a handful of other states led by leftist governors such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota’s Tim Walz, and Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf. It is the story of how grandpa and grandma got tossed aside for money.

“The high nursing home deaths were the direct result of policies that quickly discharged elderly or disabled COVID-19 patients from the hospital when they were still COVID-positive and then put them back in group or nursing homes. The hospital lobby directly engineered this approach, and these governors obliged.

“The stated reason for the policy was concern about hospital capacity, but these states kept the policy well after COVID hospitalizations peaked in April. In states like Minnesota, the policy remained in place even though the health-care system never faced the strain that was initially feared. What you don’t hear is that hospitals didn’t want to keep Medicare and Medicaid patients (especially Medicaid patients) in hospitals for too long, because longer stays with such patients are less profitable.”

And there is more.

LENIN SAW THE POWER OF MOVIES EARLY: Capital Research Center’s Ken Braun is up with Part One of a four-part series on Hollywood and the Left. Ever hear of Jeffrey Skoll? Me, neither until I read Braun’s piece. Skoll is a big player in moving Hollywood even further to the Left.

COVID-POSITIVE IMMIGRANTS FLOODING ACROSS THE BORDER: Hey, it’s being reported by NBC, so it must be true, right?

BIDEN HOPES TO BE THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN PRESIDENT: Looks like Babylon Bee has some competition. Check out Nod Daily, from Reformation Charlotte.

WOKE DISEASE INFECTS A MAJOR EVANGELICAL LEADER: This time, it’s Matt Chandler, whose Dallas/Fort Worth area mega-church claims more than 14,000 members. Will be interesting to see how that number changes as congregants realize where the path down which their pastor is leading them ends.

THIS IS POLITICAL WAR, NOT IDEOLOGICAL DEBATE: Less Government’s Seton Motley sees no possibility of compromises with the reigning Democrats because they have zero interest in the moderation required for such prudence.

A CLASS-ACTION SUIT I COULD GET EXCITED ABOUT: The Lid notes that millions of American kids are being cheated out of major learning time by teachers unions that are more than happy to use Covid as an excuse to keep getting paid for not working.

And here’s an interesting idea:

“Wouldn’t it be a damned shame if some of the money these Teachers’ Unions have to shovel into local elections were tied up with a national class-action lawsuit by the students and families who have been harmed by their outright refusal to return to work?”

UPDATE: Link fixed. Sorry about that, folks.

RESISTANCE GROWS TO CREEPING EVANGELICAL WOKISM: Natasha Crain is an evangelical blogger, podcaster and author who normally focuses on family life issues. But she recently took up the issue of reputation and the public perception of the evangelical community.

In the course of a sterling analysis, Crain pointed to some fundamental flaws in a widely read piece by Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention:

“Similarly, Moore says that we all must acknowledge the reality of systemic racism. But systemic racism is a loaded term that has a very specific meaning today — it’s the idea that racism is baked into the very structure of our society, and any disparity in outcomes between people is due to oppressive social structures. There are many Christians who would not agree with Moore that this is a ‘truth’ we should be lining up behind in order to salvage our cultural credibility.”

Crain is likely not well known to many Instapundit readers. I would humbly suggest that she should be.

MEDICARE PART A BANKRUPTCY IN 2026: Congress and Presidents have been warned over and over and over. Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation explains how the coming insolvency will affect everybody, not just seniors.

WITHOUT COPS, NOBODY GETS TO WORK: Except criminals, of course. It’s an important point that rarely gets made, as J. Warner Wallace reminds us. Lots of folks who happen to be Members of Congress ought to think about this, too.

WHICH INSTITUTION WILL PIVOT NEXT? When Bethany Christian Services caved to the Cancel Culture’s pressure to allow gay couples to adopt children without parents, it marked a hugely significant pivot by a major player in America’s culture wars, according to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler, Jr:

“Bethany’s surrender exemplifies the growing cultural pressures from the LGBTQ community and the looming threat of the Equality Act. The moral revolution is now firmly established in the Democratic majorities in Congress and in the White House, where President Biden is proudly leading the charge for what are presented as LGBTQ rights, but would actually mean a near total restructuring of society. The consequence is a legislative agenda designed to coerce Americans into the celebration of the LGBTQ agenda.”

Four more years of this will not end well.

ABOUT THOSE INCREASING LGBT NUMBERS FROM GALLUP: Focus on the Family’s data meister, Glenn Stanton, writing in The Federalist, gets behind the numbers and turns up some interesting facts that cast a different light on the matter:

“Gallup’s report backs up this fact, showing that young adults today are more than three times more likely to report ‘being LGBT’ than even Gen Xers are. Gen Xers are certainly not so traditional that they would be reticent to admit any alternative sexual practices to pollsters or their peers.

“It is simply becoming increasingly fashionable to be seen as sexually experimental today, evidenced in the fact that 55 percent of those who told Gallup they were “LGBT” said they were bisexual. Most of those are coupled with opposite-sex partners when they do have a romantic partner.

“Queer advocates and their media partisans regularly tell us that ‘being LGBT’ is a normal, natural thing. But the data is beyond dispute that young people are far more likely to identify as being LGBT than are all other age groups. Also, that identity is often at odds with their actual sexual behavior, as evidenced by the fact that women who openly identify as lesbian tend to have stunningly high unwanted pregnancy and abortion rates.”

PELOSI’S ‘SUBWAY TO NOWHERE’ KILLED IN SENATE: Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough throws out Pelosi’s $140 million earmark to extend San Francisco’s subway to Silicon Valley. If she keeps this honesty up, expect a flood of “news” stories about McDonough being a secret Republican, a Trump puppet or Mitch McConnell’s love child. Or something.

THREE REASONS WE AREN’T ALL RACISTS: Colson Center’s Ryan Bomberger points to three huge flaws in the Critical Race Theory that is the foundation of the Left’s critique of America.

FORMER NYT REPORTER SAYS BAQUET PRESSURED HIM TO RESIGN: Donald McNeil is a Pulitzer-nominated former New York Times reporter who became a victim of Cancel Culture last year after being accused of using the N-word.

His account in Medium of the events of the day he first learned of the Daily Beast story that prompted his departure from the Grey Lady includes this poignant passage: “From the very beginning, I misread the situation. I was blasé about the Beast email. The Times was in full freakout message-control mode.”

I suspect such naivete in a veteran journalist about the true nature of Cancel Culture and the character of the players involved is typical of its victims, but McNeil’s account is especially worth reading because of the detail and candor he provides. The manner in which one can be defenseless against baseless charges ought to shock us all.

30 YEARS OF SOBRIETY AND GRACE: And on a personal note, so many blessings have come to me in these three decades, including becoming part of this Instapundit community that is one of Blogdom’s most original and positive contributions to America’s public policy debates. I so enjoy enjoy reading and engaging with Instapundit readers of all stripes.