HAS AMERICA REALLY COME TO THIS? From Issues & Insights this morning comes a frank description that fits far too many of our fellow citizens:

“At one time Americans cherished freedom. While some still do, it’s obvious a large portion of the population prefers comfort provided by others, don’t want to hear ideas and opinions they don’t agree with, and are happy to see the liberty of others restricted, and even eliminated, if those restrictions are holding back freedoms they don’t care about, such as the right to bear arms.”

Quite a pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into, folks. But, as I & I points out, there is yet hope.

REMEMBER WEBB HUBBELL? Capital Research Center’s Ken Braun reminds us that when it comes to presidents taking care of their own, Donald Trump is a piker compared to Bill Clinton. This is a particularly timely read, given the grim prospects facing Roger Stone.

THIS MAY BE UNCLE SAM’S MOST WORRISOME PROBLEM: When government gets so big that it can’t manage its own records, everybody in America is harmed. Check out this from The Epoch Times’ Ivan Pentchoukov:

“The man who shot and killed 26 people at a church in Texas in 2017 used guns he wouldn’t have been able to purchase if the Air Force had properly managed its records.

“On six occasions, military officials failed to send Devin Kelley’s records to the FBI while the Air Force investigated, court-martialed, and imprisoned him for abusing his wife and stepson. Had the FBI received the records, the killer would have been barred from buying the weapons used in the massacre.

ONLY IN LA-LA LAND: Would a former senior management official of a key Chinese Communist Party (CCP) financial asset be hired to manage CalPERS, the biggest public employee pension program in the U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) tells Gov. Gavin Newsom he ought to fire Yu Ben Meng.

NEW STUDIES FIND RISE OF THE ‘NONES’ HAS STOPPED: Their ranks increased to 30 percent of the U.S. population in recent years, thanks primarily to the Millennials, but two new data-driven analyses find the expansion has stopped and, at least among Gen Zers, may even be receding.

Could this be a sign that the woke secularization of American culture has reached its high-water mark?

PROMOTED FROM LAST NIGHT.

NOT IMPRESSED WITH THE HILL STAFF OR BERNIE POSTS? Then how about a good old-fashioned debate on whether final causality in Quantum Mechanics points to the need for God to give the universe its purpose?

CONGRESS NEEDS A BIGGER STAFF: R Street Institute’s Kevin Kosar (I wonder if he’s related to Bernie?) points to the hard data showing the dramatic decline in congressional staff from 1981 to 2015. This won’t help my popularity here on Instapundit, but, having worked on the Hill and covered the federal government for a long time, I also see lack of sufficient staff as one of the key factors in the declining influence of Congress. It’s not the only one, but it’s an important one.

UPDATE AFTER 61 COMMENTS: Man, this room is even tougher than I thought!

HERE’S THE BROOKLYN BASEBALL MYTH THAT MADE BERNIE A COMMIE: Well, not entirely, but over at The Federalist Jonathan Tobin makes a persuasive case that Bernie Sanders bought the myth that capitalist greed prompted Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley to move the team to Los Angeles, breaking Flatbush hearts forever. That myth in turn was one of the factors that put young Bernie on the road to becoming the old crank he is today.

POPULATION MOVING TO LOWER TAXED STATES WITH FEWER LAWYERS: A Truth-in-Accounting (TIA) analysis of the latest IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data shows states with the highest taxes, most deficit spending and more lawyers per capita losing the most population, while states with the lowest taxes, least deficit spending and fewer lawyers per capita are gaining the most. So when are the politicians going to get out in front of this parade?

DID YOU MISS ME? For those of you who wondered why I wasn’t posting this past week, it was because I was in Puebla, Mexico, on a church mission trip for construction work and evangelism. Considering all the good things that happened last week, maybe I should leave more often (don’t answer that!).

NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE: Coming soon to your town, too!

THERE’S A LIFE LESSON IN SUNDAY’S SUPER BOWL: When the final gun sounds on the 49ers and Chiefs in the Super Bowl, there will be no doubt about the outcome. That’s because the purpose of the game for each team was clear at the kickoff – score more points than the other guys. Frank Turek sees a valuable life lesson in that simple fact.

BTW, since my Houston Texans didn’t quite make it to the big show, the Chiefs are my favorite, but I have a strong feeling the Patriots are going to be wishing they had kept Jimmy Garoppolo as Tom Brady’s backup. Is there a life lesson in that for the Pats?

LOOK TO AFGHANISTAN FOR IRAN’S NEXT MOVE AGAINST U.S.: That’s the suggestion from Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the U.S. top commander for the Middle East. Makes sense, as Iran could then take “credit” for the U.S. withdrawal that seems imminent.

BOLTON DEFENDED OFFICIALS LYING TO THE PUBLIC: There it is, in a 2010 Fox News interview. You know the next question.

WHY DO WE NEED THE FISA COURT? We don’t, according to Issues & Insights, and the case presented there today seems as solid as cold blue steel.

ERNST SAYS ABOLISH ‘WELFARE FOR POLITICIANS’ CAMPAIGN CHECKOFF FUND: Only in Washington, D.C. could a program that nobody has used in years go unnoticed despite having $356 million just sitting there. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) says it’s time to abolish the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.

CAN THERE ACTUALLY BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST? My former Heritage Foundation colleague James Carafano is a realist in such matters, so I put great stock in his assessment of the prospects for the plan President Donald Trump is set to unveil today.

“What Trump is putting on the table is, in essence, a Marshall Plan to help the Palestinian people. And it’s a very big investment — proportionally even larger than what we put forward for rebuilding Western Europe after World War II,” Carafano writes this morning on Fox News.

“In return for that investment, the plan proposes some significant land concessions from the Palestinians and a long list of compromises to be made by both sides.” My View (For what it’s worth): There’s hardly anything short of national suicide left for Israel to offer, so it will have to be the Palestinians making the big concessions this time around.

WOULD YOU PAY SOMEBODY TO PRAY FOR YOU? In politics, it’s called “pay-to-play,” but what about “pay-to-pray”? Study asked that question of 482 North Carolinians who suffered injury or property damage in Hurricane Florence in 2018. The results may suggest something wholly unexpected about how non-believers view believers. May say something as well about the poor state of theological understanding among laymen.

STUDY FINDS DEMOS GET 95 PERCENT OF ACADEMICS’ CONTRIBUTIONS: No, it’s not a surprise to most Instapundit readers, but it’s not every day that two academics make the reality so brutally clear. So what are these ideological automatons doing to increase diversity on campus?

IF THESE GUYS KNOW WHAT YOU’RE CLICKING ON … Interesting expose from tech industry media on the big names buying detailed browsing data for individual devices. “Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site.” The data doesn’t include user names but how difficult would it be for the government to create user profiles, then go to court asking a judge to force the firm to turn over the names of owners of every device in a profile?

POOR GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS JUST CAN’T KEEP UP WITH THE OKIE SENATOR: The ABC News host and former inner circle Clintonista becomes Sunday lunch for Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).

DON’T BELIEVE CLAIMS WOMENS’ MARCH PURGED ITS ANTI-SEMITIC LEADERS: No, the anti-semites just served out their terms, according to Capital Research Center’s Ashley Rae Goldenberg.

NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE MARCH FOR LIFE TURNOUT: This time-lapse video gives a unique perspective on the mass of humanity who turned out today.

OH BY THE WAY, CAPITALISM IS ENDING POVERTY WORLDWIDE: Those Issues & Insights rapscallions are at it again, today blowing up the Left’s myth that evil capitalism is pushing humankind toward a hellish inequality and impoverishment. As with so many of the Left’s claims, the opposite is true and to an astonishing degree. What’s even more astonishing is how little notice this reality gets among Western elites.

UNNERVING PARALLELS BETWEEN SPYGATE, WISCONSIN ABUSES: Badger State senator Tom Tiffany describes the multiple common themes seen in the FBI’s spying on the Trump campaign in 2016 and how state law enforcement and judicial authorities conspired against allies of former Gov. Scott Walker.