A NEW CPAC FOR A NEW ERA: The Federalist’ David Marcus was in Florida for the 2021 edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and came away with a number of interesting observations, including this one:

“I would not be terribly surprised if CPAC moves permanently to Florida. It speaks to a GOP and a conservative movement that its moving away from big city establishmentarianism and reliance on suburban white voters to a more national party. It sees its future in smaller and more diverse communities. The increase of diversity has been remarkable at CPAC these four years. Anyone who thinks this is a blip and not a trend really isn’t paying attention.”

I am and I think Marcus is exactly right.

BIDEN LIED, PEOPLE DIED: Issues & Insights says the Biden total for his first two months in the Oval Office exceeds 100,000 fatalities. Sorry, Joe, but it works both ways.

BIDEN STATE DEPT. NOMINEE DEFENDS CHINA SPY TOOL: Does Victoria Nuland not know that China’s Confucius Institutes on multiple U.S. campuses are used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to buy allies and public defenders in this country’s debate about how to respond to the Asian giant? Right, and let’s talk about the great deal I have for you on that bridge I own in Brooklyn.

WHO’S WHO OF THE LEFT’S 2020 ELECTION CONSPIRACY: Capital Research Center (CRC) has a comprehensive listing, rich with details and definitely worth keeping for future reference.

BEST LINE AT CPAC: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem – “Covid didn’t crush the American economy. Government crushed the American economy.”

TRIFECTAS OFTEN ARE GOOD. NOT THIS ONE: It’s the Biden $1.9 trillion Covid Christmas Tree that mostly has little to nothing to do with battling the disease, and everything to do with rewarding supporters and growing the government on which they depend,

FIREBOMB A COP CAR, GET A PLEA DEAL: Apparently, that’s how it works for radical lefty lawyers in New York City these days, reports Washington Free Beacon’s Kevin Daley.

DO AMERICAN PASTORS HAVE THE COURAGE OF THIS CANADIAN MAN OF THE CLOTH? My latest column in the Culture precincts at PJ Media.

QUEEN ESTHER WAS QUITE A CODE WRITER, TOO: Just ask the modern-day Persians in Iran who had to deal with the Stuxnet computer bug that hobbled their nuclear arms development for years. The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains how she did it, 2,000 years ago to give rise to the Jewish holiday of Purim, and more recently for what was no holiday at all for Tehran.

FACEBOOK MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR JAN 6 THAN PARLER: Rachel Bovard dug into the flood of Mainstream Media (MSM) reporting accusing Parler of being the social media of choice for organizers of the January 6 Capitol riot. Here’s what she found:

“Of the 223 charging documents, 73 reference posts on Facebook as evidence, 24 reference posts YouTube, 20 single out Instagram posts (owned by Facebook), and only eight highlight posts on Parler.

“Was Parler involved? Yes. Was the platform the virtual Bat Cave of Incitement and Violence that Apple, Google, Amazon, and thoroughly un-critical press reporting made it out to be? Hardly. If any single platform can be fingered as the favorite of the rioters, it appears to be Facebook.”

Bovard has more, much more and, boy, is it damaging to the MSM and Big Tech.

IT’S ONLY RACIST WHEN YOU DO IT: Tori Richards of the Washington Examiner pulls the lid off a government employee training program in San Diego so intrinsically racist that, were the colors reversed, it would warm the heart of the KKK:

“The Health & Human Services Agency required employees to spend six hours watching the online racism course, a training participant told the Washington Examiner. Critical Race Theory classes taught participants ‘Racism is a WHITE’ problem, and, ‘Only white people can be racist.’ The title of the course is ‘Power and Privilege.’

“’This training is lumping people into groups, and it has not explained how some (minority) individuals have succeeded in this systemically racist country — like Barack Obama, NBA/NFL players who make millions, Dr. Ben Carson, Oprah, and Whoopi Goldberg, to name a few,’ the employee said. The Washington Examiner is not identifying the employee, who asked to remain anonymous over fears of retaliation.”

Expect many more stories like this across the country in the days ahead. And oh yes, you will be helping to pay for it with your federal tax dollars.

PELOSI PREACHES ANTI-GERRYMANDERING, THEN POURS BUCKS INTO GERRYMANDERING: The Washington Free Beacon’s Joe Schofstall — Right Media’s best money-in-politics reporter — notes that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi condemned gerrymandering congressional districts in 2019, then her PAC handed $300,000 to the pro-gerrymandering outfit of former Attorney General Eric Holder.

IS ‘AVERAGE’ OVER? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Hudson Institute’s Walter Russell Mead sits down Tuesday with George Mason University economist Tyler Cowan to talk about “the information revolution and the middle class.” I’ll be logging in for this one.

ECONOMIC REFORMS AREN’T ENOUGH, AMERICA NEEDS POETRY, TOO: Writing for Law & Liberty, Micah Mattix, literary editor of the American Conservative, points to Rod Dreher’s excellent “Live Not By Lies” as well as Christopher Lasch’s classic Revolt of the Elites, Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood, “and even Robert Penn Warren of the Southern Agrarians as a line of American analysts making the point that, just as the individual life devoted entirely to acquiring more things is eventually empty, so, too, is a nation of individuals who view the pursuit of happiness as consisting entirely of material goods and security.

It’s a point worth pondering, though I would argue that poetry, understood in the classical sense, is not the end in itself, but a worthy waypoint. See also Glenn’s post below pointing to Brent Hamachek’s explanation that those who believe in economic freedom are now the dissidents in the Land of the (Once) Free.

STUDIES FIND GOING TO CHURCH IS KEY TO BEING HAPPIER, HEALTHIER: Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) points to three recent studies, including from Turkey, that conclude regular attendance is associated with being healthier and happier. HillFaith thinks that’s policy news congressional aides should know about.

It’s not the only factor, of course, but odds are it’s the one that is most often ignored in contemporary social science, as well as by Covid policymakers like California’s Gavin Newsom, New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Nevada’s Steve Sisolak. Dr. Patrick Fagan, formerly of the Heritage Foundation and Family Research Council, is the founder and president of MARRI.

‘GOD’S CRIME SCENE’ ZOOMINAR RETURNS: HillFaith’s first offering of the 8-session, once-a-week-for-an-hour course by Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace and led by yours truly has three sessions left, and people are still trying to enroll. So starting March 30, we’re doing it again. It’s free, it will challenge your thinking and it’s great fellowship, too.

UPDATE: Well, that was quick! All 12 available slots are filled for the course beginning on March 30. There will be a third round of it, most likely beginning in late May, so if you are interested, send your info and get on the waiting list now.

HERE’S FEDERALISM IN ACTION: HT to Thom McKee and The Daily Gouge:

EVERYTHING THEY TOLD YOU ABOUT JANUARY 6 WAS FALSE: Between liberal journo Glenn Greenwald’s nuking of the New York Times’ “beaten to death with a fire extinguisher” fairy tale and this damning editorial from Issues & Insights, how can anybody ever again believe what they read in the mainstream media?

RETURN OF THE ‘BLAME AMERICA FIRST’ CROWD: Daily Caller News Foundation’s Chuck Morris reports that  Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economics professor who formed and runs the Lancet COVID-19 Commission to investigate the pandemic, thinks America is a “divisive” force on the world stage, unlike those ever-peace-loving guys running the dictatorship known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

And in other Lancet-related news, the august medical group’s commission to study the impact of Donald Trump on everybody’s else’s health concluded thusly: “Trump exploited low and middle-income white people’s anger over their deteriorating life prospects to mobilise racial animus and xenophobia and enlist their support for policies that benefit high-income people and corporations and threaten health.”

This apparently is an illustration of that to which The Lancet is entirely devoted, “The best science for better lives: A manifesto for social change.” Uh, huh. If you have the stomach for it, the study can be read in its suffocating completeness here.

FORGET FIXING AMERICA, LET’S KEEP TRUMP OUT OF ARLINGTON CEMETERY: That’s the mindset of the 13 House Democrats co-sponsoring H.R. 484, the “No Glory for Hate Act of 2021” that bars former President Donald Trump from being buried at Arlington National Cemetary.

IMPERMANENCE OF THE PAST: “Fully recovered lawyer” Mark Pulliam, writing at Law & Liberty, cogitates about how quickly freedom can be lost when parents don’t pass along to their off-spring knowledge of and appreciation for the facts of the nation’s history.

But the passage is made doubly difficult by systematic and sustained efforts to erase the heritage and its memory. Pulliam’s observations about the campaign led by Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush to “reimagine” the Alamo, the remarkable shrine of Texas liberty, are thus especially on point:

“Alamo defenders, adamant that the shrine to Texas valor needed no ‘reimagining,’ ultimately thwarted Bush’s plans after an extended fight — at least for now. Revisionist historians risibly demonize the Alamo as a ‘symbol of whiteness’ and even ‘the largest statue to the Confederacy in this country.’ The battle is not over.”

BIDEN’S $1.9 TRILLION ‘STIMULUS’ WILL SHRINK THE ECONOMY: Hans Bader notes that even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) agrees that in the long run, the Biden plan will shrink the economy.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY? IS AMERICA RACIST? I doubt that there is a more tolerant nation anywhere on the globe or in history, but that fact doesn’t stop the Hate America Crowd from constantly telling us we are all a bunch of bigots.

Having endlessly heard that accusation for so long, my temptation is increasingly just to tell the accusers to bugger off. Here, however, the Colson Center’s Ryan Bomberger offers four more diplomatic responses to proponents of Critical Race Theory.

WAIT A MINUTE, TRUMP ‘LAUNCHED’ THE GOP CIVIL WAR? To hear an unidentified Washington Examiner headline writer tell it, that’s exactly what former President Donald Trump did by responding to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denunciation on the Senate floor shortly after the second acquittal of the impeached 45th Chief Executive. “Trump Launches Republican Civil War With Attack on ‘Hack’ McConnell” is how the headline read.

Examiner White House Reporter, Rob Crilly, who wrote the news story thus headlined, put the issue slightly more deftly, saying in his lead that Trump merely “threatened” a civil war with his vintage OrangeManBad verbal stomping on McConnell.

So, to apply these two standards, we would have to rewrite the history books to say, for example, that President Abraham Lincoln either launched the Civil War or threatened to do so by re-supplying Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The bloody four-year conflict that followed was not the started by the Confederates who first fired on the freshened facility, as we were all taught many years ago.

LET THE PARENT REVOLT BEGIN: David Catron at The American Spectator sees a revolt coming from parents who are sick and tired of hearing from teachers about why they can’t come back to work due to Covid.

My view is the long-extended sickout justified by Covid fears is the best thing to happen to American education in decades because it finally exposed the teachers unions for the frauds they are. And home-schooling has gotten a huge boost. So when do Republicans in Congress start talking up an opt-out on education taxes for parents whose kids do not attend public schools?