WHY ARE SO MANY STAFFERS LEAVING THESE SENATORS, REPRESENTATIVES? High turnover rates tend to get a lot of attention during election years because legislators who can’t keep good staff are often thought to be suspect.

That’s not always the case, but Democrats may want to ponder the fact that when Legistorm compiled the turnover data for 2019 and for the period 2000-2019, most of the worst are from the Donkey party, including 13 of the top 20 last year, and 12 of the top 20 for the longer period.

SAYS IT ALL ABOUT SENATE, IMPEACHMENT, HOUSE DEMOCRATS:

IMPEACHMENT IS THE LAST GASP OF THE PROGRESSIVE ERA: Donald Devine was President Ronald Reagan’s Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and is a long-respected conservative strategist and thinker.

Writing today in The Imaginative Conservative, Devine argues the Trump impeachment is nothing less than the end of liberal Big Government’s ascendancy just when progressives thought they were on the brink of final victory:

Thanks to the pervasive political correctness they created, Devine writes, “progressives had assumed their education and mainstream media ‘mocking’ of traditional values had turned America progressive and now Donald Trump had proven they had not. Now with Mr. Trump in office, the last hope to contain the effects could only be by the expert bureaucracy that was the original faith of progressive scientific administration to produce the good welfare state.

“Rather than the elected president representing the people, salvation must now come from the permanent government. In the wake of the impeachment, there was a [Washington] Post op-ed headline actually arguing publicly that ‘bureaucratic resistance is what the Founders intended.’ Another piece by the celebrated intellectual Francis Fukuyama in The Wall Street Journal argued directly that ‘American liberty depends on the deep state.’”

Devine concludes with a warning for the Right that all conservatives ought to ponder with deep seriousness, as the end of the American story is far from written and may yet go in directions that are toxic to individual liberty.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was assistant director of OPM for two-and-a-half years (1982-1985), working for Devine.

CHILD POVERTY IS AT ALL-TIME LOW IN GREEDY, CAPITALIST AMERICA? – Yes, it’s counter-intuitive (if your brain has been through the Left Media’s wash-emote-repeat cycle), but the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) lays out the data.

The IFS’s Angela Rachidi says recognizing the flaws in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) are the essential first steps to understanding the reality.

NO, LOAN FORGIVENESS IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO THE COLLEGE DEBT CRISIS: Capital Research Center’s Scott Walter asks why anybody would expect more of the government that caused the crisis will end it?

HERE’S HOPING 2020 WILL BE AS GOOD FOR PRO-LIFERS AS 2019 WAS: Lots of progress last year, according pro-life leaders interviewed by The Christian Post. Formula for an even better 2020: Lots of hard work, courage, prudence and prayer because life is worth it.

JACK WILSON SAYS ‘BE PREPARED TO PROTECT YOURSELF:’ Wilson took down the shooter in the West Freeway Church of Christ of Fort Worth, Texas, in six seconds. America needs more like him.

THINGS I NEVER EXPECTED TO SEE IN MY LIFETIME: The fall of the Berlin Wall, a Washington Nationals World Series Championship and this.

UPDATE: OK, perhaps “this” was too obscure. I was referring to Chevy actually producing and selling a mid-engine Corvette. Lots of prototypes over the years, but never the real thing. Until now. I just wish the stylists would rediscover the beauty of the curved line.

OXFORD GUY SAYS SOME ATHEISTS NOW QUESTION GODLESS UNIVERSE: Brit Mathematician John Lennox often debates atheists and he hears some of them asking an unexpected question, one that torch-singer Peggy Lee would instantly recognize.

BYRON YORK ON DEMOCRATS’ TWO IMPEACHMENT DECEPTIONS: Some might wonder if Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler hiked in the same area as the guy who was bitten in the neck by a low-hanging copperhead in a Mississippi tree.

DID YOU CATCH WHAT PUTIN AND PELOSI BOTH DID THE SAME DAY THIS WEEK? To be honest, I missed the dating and power-grabbing parallels, but Issues & Insights’ Tom McCardle didn’t.

A FINELY-TUNED MIRACLE OR AN ACCIDENTAL HAPPENING? That’s the question posed by the Intelligent Design folks in this arresting video. One thing everybody should be able to agree on is what an amazing place is our universe, regardless of how we believe it came to be.

DON’T MISS THIS TONIGHT AT 7 PM EST: There was so much more in the Horowitz IG FISA Report than has been reported by the MSM to date. John Spiropoulos of One America News (OAN) put it all in a one-hour investigative documentary that airs this evening.

NO, ALL THINGS AREN’T EQUAL, QUID PRO QUO-WISE: Over at Issues & Insights today, Pepperdine Economics Professor Gary Galles explains why “this-for-that” in the impeachment war doesn’t work in free markets. Personally, I thought that Smith guy from Scotland settled this issue in 1776 but evidently the rising generation prefers an impoverished green new deal to a wealthy nation.

JIMMY HOFFA IS STILL DEAD, BUT UNION CORRUPTION ISN’T: It being awards season among the glitterati and all, the Capital Research Center’s superb video about Hoffa and dirty unions is a timely reminder of the facts of history.

DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT JESUS AND THE MUSHROOMS? It could be funny if it weren’t taken so seriously by folks like Joe Rogan.

BUREAUCRATIC CODING MAKES HEALTHCARE COST TOO MUCH: There’s a distinct bias in favor of government-controlled healthcare in this Reuters analysis but it still manages to provide a clear description of how bureaucracy and code manipulation drive spiraling medical bills higher. What’s left unsaid, of course, is that the federal government is the original healthcare code maker.

WAIT, IF CHOICES ARE JUST BRAIN CHEMISTRY, WHAT IS ‘FREEDOM?’ Ideas really do have consequences, perhaps none more so than viewing the choices we make as nothing more than neurons acting and reacting to other neurons between our ears.

WOULD A PHOTO OF JOE BIDEN BEING INAUGURATED SCARE YOU? Well, then just ignore the photo and go straight to the Issues & Insights editorial that drives a stake through the heart of Joe the (Plastic) Bag Man.

UH-OH, SURVEY SHOWS FAKE NEWS IS REAL: And contrary to NBC’s Chuck Todd, the Left’s false narrative continually pours out of the mainstream media, according to Just Facts. Check out, for example, what is typically believed about the middle class paying higher tax rates than the top 1 percent.

EXPECT A PARTY LINE VOTE: That is, if there ever is a tally for and against Rep. Bradley Byrne’s resolution censuring Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s delay in delivering impeachment articles to the Senate.

STEFAN HALPER LOOKING EVER MORE SKETCHY: The Federalist’ Margot Cleveland has more details. Geez, I met Halper very briefly at the Reagan-Bush headquarters in Arlington, VA. during the 1980 campaign. Seemed like a nice guy, though rather nerdy. If we’d known then what we know now …

UPDATE: Just remembered that the occasion for meeting Halper was that he was one of the people with George H.W. Bush who came over after Reagan named Bush as his veep nominee.

HOW CAN JESUS BE THE ONLY WAY IF ALL RELIGIONS TEACH THE SAME STUFF? According to Reasonable Faith, they don’t, actually. In fact, there are huge differences, and not just those at the heart of the yawning chasm that separates Christianity and Islam.

WHILE IRAN HEATS UP, LOOK WHAT TRUMP IS DOING ON THE BORDER: Actually, according to Issues & Insights, look at what is not happening on the border these days,

ERIC HOLDER TARGETS FOUR RED STATE LEGISLATURES: Florida, Texas, Arizona and North Carolina are in the cross-hairs of major lefty campaign marked by Obama’s attorney general. Interesting parallel to the Soros and Bloomberg efforts aimed at state and local offices.