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.

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.