ONE GOOD THING BERNIE’S CAMPAIGNS HAVE DONE FOR AMERICA: Just think of all the closet authoritarians the Vermont senator’s presidential campaigns have emboldened to come forward and show their true colors. As the Issues & Insights guys point out:

“The inescapable fact is that socialism cannot be implemented without authoritarian action, even if it’s supposedly a ‘democratic socialism,’ in which majorities decide how life is to be arranged. Even a ‘soft’ authoritarianism, a ‘democratic’ mob rule that rejects the views of his ‘revolutionary’ staffers, will grow into a malignancy.”

FISA TO BE RE-UPPED, SPYGATE REFORMS DELAYED: Careful reading of the coronavirus emergency funding bill that will pass Congress soon will likely also uncover a reauthorization provision for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Just don’t expect to see any of the reforms Republicans say must be enacted to prevent future recurrences of the FBI surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign in 2016.  Most important among those reforms is a ban on bulk metadata collection derived from telephone calls by individuals within and without the country.

DID YOU KNOW CAVEMEN DID THE FIRST COMIC BOOKS? Me either, but biochemist Fazale Rana makes a fascinating case for the proposition. Trigger Warning: God is mentioned along the way. And it has nothing to do with those old GEICO ads.

THE BUDGET PROBLEM WASHINGTON DARE NOT MENTION: It’s the unfunded future obligations under Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements that make the national debt $122 trillion, not the officially cited figure of $23 trillion.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) had an otherwise-excellent summit on the budget Tuesday that featured Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY), Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehosue (D-RI), plus key Senate and House budget panel staffers going back to 1985.

But nobody said anything about that $122 trillion monster lurking in the “out years” that won’t be out sooner than anybody thinks.

TRUMP THUMPS SANDERS 50-43 AMONG LIKELY VOTERS: Rasmussen’s survey was conducted Monday and Tuesday.

YOU DIDN’T KNOW CHILDREN ARE BORN WITHOUT A BIOLOGICAL SEX? Then you just aren’t as smart as British Labour Party Member Dawn Butler.

ELECTING SANDERS MEANS MORE, NOT LESS CORRUPTION: More regulation creates more opportunities for political corruption, Issues & Insights notes this morning, and it follows as logically as night follows day that electing Bernie Sanders will result in more of the very things he promises to get rid of in government. There’s even objective evidence of this process at work around the world.

ABOUT THOSE DOJ FORMERS CALLING FOR BARR’S RESIGNATION: Turns out, surprise! surprise! they are down-the-line Democrat partisans.

WILL THIS GUY BE BERNIE’S CHOICE TO HEAD THE DNC? Reid Hoffman is the name. He’s big into ACRONYMs.

SO ATHEISM LEADS TO CANNIBALISM? What is it with Richard Dawkins and having your neighbor over for lunch?

HERE’S WHAT BURISMA PAID HUNTER BIDEN TO DO: The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross follows up on yesterday’s Hunter Biden scoop this morning with details on how the former vice-president’s son used his access to key Obama administration officials while trying to block corruption investigations of his employer, Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. So that’s what Biden was paid $83,000 a month to do for Burisma!

BIPARTISANSHIP’S LAST GASP OR FRESH BREATH? Some senators and advocacy groups from both sides of the aisle think government should have tougher financial management controls. If the reforms are approved, will be first update since 1990.

ANOTHER HUNTER BIDEN SCANDAL UNCOVERED: The former vice-president’s son was on the board of an industry coalition that lobbied the Obama administration on trade issues in 2014, according to The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross.

Lobbying disclosure forms examined by Ross show Hunter Biden’s firm was significantly smaller by comparison to others represented on the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) board, but what the the Biden operation “lacked in terms of assets and name recognition it made up for in access to key figures in the Obama administration, with Joe Biden being at the top of the list,” Ross writes.

I wonder why we’re only now reading about this and not in the New York Times or Washington Post or any other MSM media outlet?

‘1776’ Corrects The New York Times’ ‘1619’ Lies: Bob Woodson, a Black conservative who has labored for decades against liberal welfarism, has launched “1776” as a counter to the identity politics screed, “1619.” The URL says it all: https://1776unites.com/

TRUMP’S BIGGEST MISTAKE IS NOT HIRING A TEAM: Presidents who seek to implement lasting policy change must have a dependable team of skilled loyalists appointed throughout the executive branch, according to Angelo Codevilla. President Ronald Reagan knew it well in 1981. Is John McIntee an indication Trump has figured this out in 2020?

Speaking as a Reagan administration political appointee, I would further argue that having approximately 6,000 political appointees to ensure proper policy implementation and enforcement among 2.1 million career civil servants is far too few.

HOW ARE YOUR TELOMERES TODAY? If your telomeres are healthy, your odds of living longer are improved. And a healthy faith life nourishes your telomeres. At least that’s what the first-ever study of the connection found. But you won’t hear about it in the MSM.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This study was pointed out to me by my former colleague at the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Pat Fagan, who is the founder of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) and editor of Marripedia. Both are invaluable social science policy resources regardless of one’s view on faith issues.

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?