VANDERBILT COURSE PENALIZES STUDENTS WHO DON’T SEE CONSTITUTION AS RACIST: It’s the largest course ever offered on the Nashville campus, but Campus Reform reports students are penalized who answered “no” to question asking if the Constitution is a tool of white supremacy.

WHERE’S THE PORK? Open The Books maps $2.3 Trillion – yes, that’s T-as-in-Trillion – in wasteful federal spending in just the years 2017-19.

WHAT??? HUMANIST GROUP SUPPORTS CHRISTIAN SPEECH: The American Humanist Association (AHA) has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the case of Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski.

The case was originally filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of former Georgia Gwinnett College student Chike Uzuegbunam, who was twice denied his right to share his Christian faith with other students on campus. This case could be among the first Judge Amy Coney Barrett hears as a Supreme Court justice.

This kind of legal cooperation on a constitutional issue between groups that come from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum used to be not at all uncommon, but has become all but unknown more recently.

Let’s hope for everybody’s sake we see more of this level of cooperation, initiated by both sides, because everybody has a stake in defending First Amendment liberties. And don’t miss the superb video produced by ADF. Our side needs much more such creative professionalism in presentation.

BROOKINGS FELLOW WANTS TRUMP’S DEBATE MIKE TURNED OFF: Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Elaine Kamarck suggests the moderator of the next Trump-Biden debate be allowed to turn off the mike whenever one of the two combatants speaks out of turn.

It’s hard not to think what Kamarck really wants is to turn off Trump’s mike. Note the difference in how she ascribes responsibility, first Trump, then Biden:

“For 90 minutes President Trump repeatedly interrupted former Vice President Joe Biden when it was his turn to speak.”

“Biden was also into the game, frequently talking over Trump. He had no other choice.”

And why did Biden have no other choice? It was Trumps’ fault, of course:

“To stand back would be to appear old, weak and confused — the ‘sleepy Joe’ that Trump wants him to be. And so, for a painfully long 90 minutes we were subjected to a debate that was incoherent.”

So, in the typical contemporary liberal/progressive/socialist/Marxist fashion, the solution is to empower somebody to silence somebody else.

NO WONDER BIDEN POO-POOED SWINE FLU: Issues & Insights points out this morning the reasons why former Veep Joe Biden didn’t want to go there when President Donald Trump brought up the H1N1 epidemic:

“According to the Centers for Disease Control’s latest numbers, out of the more than 200,000 people who died with COVID-19, only 92 were under age 18.

“But 1,282 children died from the H1N1 pandemic of 2009-2010, when Barack Obama was in the White House and Joe Biden was vice president.

“The number of children hospitalized from COVID has been around 8,000. The number hospitalized because of H1N1 – 86,813.

“The swine flu was particularly worrisome because, unlike COVID and the seasonal flu – this one targeted the young more than the elderly. In fact, fully 10% of the deaths from H1N1 were age 17 or younger, while just 13% were over age 65.”

DOJ WARNS SAN FRANCISCO: Limiting church attendance to one congregant at a time is “draconian” and a possible violation of the First Amendment. Geez, ya think???

WILL TRUMP BE OVERCONFIDENT TUESDAY NIGHT? Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff has watched a few presidential debates in his day and he notes that incumbents tend not to do well in the first contest of the quadrennial campaigns.

Mirengoff doesn’t suggest Trump will stumble for that reason but he does see some significant potential problems from a related factor, namely, OrangeManBad’s reliance on rhetoric, presence and (selected) facts to make his case.

Mirengoff, his Powerline colleagues John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, and Glenn here at Instapundit are the three guys I have followed longer than anybody else in Blogdom, and I especially pay attention to Paul’s analysis before significant events like presidential debates.

WHY MUST THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE GRIND SO SLOWLY: Or maybe they really aren’t grinding, they just appear to be?

SEQUEL TO MEL GIBSON’S ‘PASSION OF THE CHRIST’ IN THE WORKS: Actor Jim Caveziel, who portrayed Jesus in the 2004 film, returns (no pun intended!) in “Resurrection,” buoyantly predicting that it will be “the most successful film ever made.” Perhaps Mel should have a little chat with his charge about raising expectations?

BARR SAYS NO FAITH, NO LIBERTY: Candor and truth from the Attorney General’s recent address to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast:

“That crucial link between religion and liberty, so well understood at the Founding, is all too often forgotten today. In American public discourse, perhaps no concept is more misunderstood than the notion of ‘separation of church and state.’

“Militant secularists have long seized on that slogan as a facile justification for attempting to drive religion from the public square and to exclude religious people from bringing a religious perspective to bear on conversations about the common good.”

Confession: When President Donald Trump appointed William Barr to replace Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, I worried that choosing a Bush I administration retread signaled a worrisome choice to reach an accommodation with the GOP Establishment. I was wrong about Trump and Barr.

CHINA REWRITES JESUS WITH WOMAN CAUGHT IN ADULTERY: Just wait till He hears about this!

CAPITOL HILL BAPTIST CHURCH SUES DC MAYOR, GOVERNMENT: It’s tough to survive as a congregation when government officials bar any worship gatherings of 100 or more people, regardless if they are indoors or outdoors.

That’s why the 850-member Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) is suing Mayor Muriel Bowser and the District of Columbia government. Church leaders told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that for CHBC there is no theologically acceptable alternative to meeting together in person for fellowship and worship. Thus, the church has no virtual meeting capacity.

This suit could prove to be much more significant than at first glance it might appear because the D.C. government is the creation of Congress, which is itself explicitly barred by the First Amendment from prescribing what is acceptable worship practice and what is not.

There is also an element of basic hypocrisy, as the church pointed out in its filing:

“Defendants have been discriminatory in their application of the ban on large scale gatherings. For example, on June 6, 2020, Mayor Bowser appeared personally at an outdoor gathering of tens of thousands of people at the corner of 16th and H Streets, NW and delivered a speech describing the large gathering as ‘wonderful to see.’”

The church is represented by the First Liberty Institute of Plano, Texas, which has successfully defended multiple individuals and congregations that have tangled with authorities as a result of Covid-19 enforcement policies.

SURVEY FINDS MILLENNIALS THE MOST INTOLERANT GENERATION: They are also most likely to seek revenge against those they believe harmed them, according to the 2020 edition of Dr. George Barna, research director for the Center for Cultural Resources at Arizona Christian University.

But here’s a question for us: Should we Baby Boomers put a hold on our tut-tutting, since we raised the Millennials and allowed the public school system and the media-driven culture to inculcate values like intolerance of contrary opinions?

A SINGLE RAY OF HOPE IN THE FETID, DARK BIZARRO-WORLD OF ACADEMIA: Converse College Associate Professor of Politics Joel Poelvoorde still has his job despite refusing to take mandatory “diversity” training.

U.S. SANCTIONS FORCE RUSSIA TO CUT DEFENSE SPENDING: Let me get this straight —OrangeManBad is a tool of the Russkies, so OrangeManBad imposed sanctions on the Russkies that are so tough they had to reduce military spending? Uh, what am I missing here?

HAS ANYBODY NOTICED THE TRUMP ECONOMY IS HUMMING? Despite the Covid-19 lockdown, the American economy is beating all kinds of expectations.

COURT-PACKING COMING IF BIDEN WINS: And boy, Hans Bader explains, it’s not going to be good for America.

SHOULD DR. SCOTT ATLAS SUE HIS DETRACTORS? One can only hope.

NOW WHY WOULD BLM GO AND DO THAT? Delete their About page that talked about disrupting the nuclear family and much more toward the end of Western civilization, Christianity and capitalism.

TRUMP KILLED REAGAN CONSERVATISM OR RESCUED IT? Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal is out with an arresting book assessing how the conservative movement that swept Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980 ended up split in major ways over Donald Trump’s time in the Oval Office.

Having lived and worked through this epoch in American political history, there is more than a little of Seib’s analysis that I find inadequate, but this statement by Samuel Gregg in his review of “We Should Have Seen It Coming” is not part of those doubts:

“The push to deepen America’s economic engagement with China may have begun with the Clinton administration but it was a Republican administration which assented to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001. The consensus was that greater immersion into global markets would increasingly liberalize China and its regime. That calculation lies in tatters today.”

It does indeed and you would be hard-pressed to find anybody on the Right today willing to argue the U.S. should reverse course in its present resistance to Chinese expansion around the globe. Gregg uses his Steib review as a tool for his own assessment of where the Right has been and where it is going. I’d be very interested in how Instapunditeers view Gregg’s analysis.

THESE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS REJECT COVID LOCKDOWNS: This open letter to Belgian health authorities to date has signatures of 401 medical doctors, 1,375 medically trained health professionals and 9,141 private citizens

WHAT KILLED MICHAEL BROWN? Historian Shelby Steele’s new documentary provides the answers sure to outrage BLM, the Squad, the Biden Brigades, the MSM, and pretty much everybody on elite and state-run campuses. Here’s the trailer:

MAYBE IT’S TIME TO RECONSIDER CROMWELL: Paul Lay’s new book, “Providence Lost,”  will either become the focus of another academic book-burning episode, or it will go mostly unnoticed. Either outcome would be a loss for the Republic.

Daniel Johnson’s excellent review for Law & Liberty of Lay’s book illustrates why thoughtful folks with a passion for understanding the historical, spiritual and legal roots of the American Revolution and Constitution should get “Providence Lost” before it’s banned.

WILL THIS ‘OCTOBER SURPRISE’ RE-ELECT TRUMP?

OUTBREAK OF COMMON SENSE REPORTED AT EEOC: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit against the Kroger grocery store chain for violating the First Amendment religious freedom rights of two employees who declined to wear a uniform apron bearing the LGBQT symbol.