IF YOU’RE NOT FAMILIAR WITH LAWFARE: Sundance at the Last Refuge explains why you should be if you want to understand some key characteristics of the anti-Trump jihad, including why they just can’t give up on Kavanaugh’s destruction.

IS YOUR BRAIN IDENTICAL TO YOUR MIND? Something to cogitate about over the weekend, from NBC “Dateline” cold-case detective J. Warner Wallace.

DECEASED INDIANA DOC DID ABORTIONS ON 10-YEAR-OLD GIRL: Dr. Ulrich Klopfer died September 3 and, following a call from his attorney, authorities shortly thereafter found more than 2,200 medically preserved parts of aborted babies in his home. The Epoch Times reports today he also performed abortions on girls as young as 10.

“Board members also said they were disturbed that Klopfer didn’t give pain medication to all women, only automatically to those under the age of 16 and then to adults who could pay him extra money. When he did give the medication to women, his staff weren’t qualified to follow best practices for the drugs,” The Epoch Times continued.

This case illustrates why at least some states are considering laws allowing abortions to be performed only in facilities that meet health standards equivalent to those applied to hospitals. A search of the Planned Parenthood media relations web site found no references to Klopfer.

BEEN A ROUGH WEEK? THIS WILL HELP: Check it out, Friday Poetry Fun from Recovering Know-It-All.

WE’RE GOING TO MISS T. BOONE: Whatever you may have thought of his corporate raids, or superego, or prairie populist orneriness, T. Boone Pickens was one of a kind, as this delightful Forbes profile by Christopher Helman makes clear.

Those of us who also graduated from Oklahoma State University have our own special reasons for admiring Pickens. He will be buried on the campus in Stillwater, so I wonder how long till reports circulate of his ghost being seen around the football stadium named after him and the geology  classrooms in which he first began learning where to look for black gold.

WHAT IF THIS GUY IS RIGHT THAT THE PENTAGON DOESN’T GET CHINA? David P. Goldman uses his Law & Liberty review of Bill Gertz’ latest book — “Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy” — to make the case that U.S. political and military leaders are disastrously wrong about what the Asian giant has accomplished and how we must respond. I advise you not to read Goldman’s analysis if you have a weak heart.

IT’S 9/11 AND YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS MAN: His name was simply Father Fonzie and Flight 93 crashed in his backyard. He did something about it.

HERE’S WHY COMPUTERS WILL NEVER BE AS SMART AS HUMANS: Imagining a world utterly dominated by computers makes for interesting movies, occasionally, but this Pomona College data wonk explains why we will always know things our little whirring boxes can never grasp. And guess who that points to! Still leaves a lot of room for smart folks to become fabulously wealthy with a spot on the Forbes Cloud 100.

“THE HOP’ IS THE $128M STREETCAR TO NOWHERE: Great video from the Badger Institute comparing the federally funded Milwaukee transportation boondoggle to the privately funded Joseph Project in which a group of churches pooled resources to get people to their jobs.

NO, THE FIRST CHRISTIANS WERE NOT SOCIALISTS: No matter what you were taught in college, or in (a liberal Protestant or liberationist Catholic) church, the claim the early believers were socialists simply doesn’t square with the facts, according to Sean McDowell. And while we’re at it, they didn’t borrow that resurrection stuff about Jesus from popular pagan myths of the day either, argues Mary Jo Sharp.

IDENTITY POLITICS IS WHAT WE GET WHEN WE ABANDON THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY: Now, that is a provocative suggestion, coming from author Mary Eberstadt, according to The Federalist’s Joy Pullman in a review of “Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.”

Put most simply, the argument is stated thus by Pullman: “How many more generations must pay the emotional and financial price for our society’s refusal to require people to be fully responsible for what happens when they have sex?” It really is in the final analysis about the children.

A CASE FOR GETTING OUT OF AFGHANISTAN, FINALLY: Daniel DePetris, writing on The Federalist, addresses what he calls the disaster myths propagated by supporters of a continued U.S. presence in the no-man’s land of central Asia.

Not sure I agree with everything he says, but it’s well-worth reading and considering carefully, especially the point that the U.S. military quickly achieved our objective of driving out the Taliban regime that harbored al Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden, but then the politicians took over, thus beginning the “nation-building” phase now approaching 20 years in duration.

WHAT IF BEIJING KNOWS EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU? Don’t laugh until you read this Hudson Institute briefing memo by William Schneider. The “Internet of things” made possible by 5G could be the crucial technology leap that China makes before the U.S., with horrendous consequences. “The United States is late to the game, and the time to catch up is short.”

NO, BRITAIN IS NOT IN BREXIT CRISIS AND YES, BORIS WILL WIN: Daniel Hannan explains it all in the Washington Examiner. Interesting how their elites are as out of touch with voters as ours are.

WHY YES, WHERE IS THE INFAMOUS ANTHONY WEINER/HUMA ABEDIN LAPTOP? Inquiring minds still want to know.

DOES ELIZABETH WARREN EVEN REMEMBER WRITING THIS BOOK? It was titled “The Two-Income Trap” and it argued, perhaps unknowingly, for the proposition that progressive taxes harm two-income families. Somebody should ask the candidate about this.

THE MSM’S FALSE PICTURE OF THE 2020 ELECTION: Consider this: “Progressives bitterly clinging to the strong version of ’emerging Democratic majority’ theory are not fighting the last war; they’re fighting the war before the last war.” That’s the analysis of Warren Henry over at The Federalist.

Besides being an astute campaign analysis, Henry’s post is a reminder that the MSM narrative is not based in Trump-era political reality, a fact that is too easily forgotten in the crush of faux reportage and posturing. Put otherwise, everybody on a plummeting airliner insisting they are losing altitude due to pilot incompetence doesn’t change the fact a birdstrike took out all the engines.

DEM FEC CHIEF GETS SOME POINTED QUESTIONS: Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) is the ranking Republican on the Committee on House Administration, which has oversight over the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Ellen Weintraub is the hyper-partisan Democrat currently occupying the commission chairman’s seat. She has an ongoing feud with President Donald Trump because he claims massive voter fraud kept him from winning New Hampshire in the 2016 presidential race. She recently used official FEC stationery to challenge Trump to produce evidence for his allegation or shut up about it.

So now, Davis has addressed a flurry of pointed questions to Weintraub that taken together essentially tells her to stop playing partisan games with the FEC and to pay attention to the job for which taxpayers are providing her a tidy salary and benefits package. Any bets on whether she will? I didn’t think so, either.

THIS CASE MIGHT BE THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR SANCTUARY POLICIES: Judicial Watch has filed suit in California Superior Court seeking a permanent injunction against Santa Clara County’s version of sanctuary policy.

The litigation was prompted by the murder of a 59-year-old resident, allegedly by an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal record in the U.S. Six times the feds asked the locals to hold the guy until they could take him into custody, but county officials refused. Keep an eye on this one and a similar suit Judicial Watch is pursuing in San Francisco in the wake of the Kate Steinle murder.

OMAR GIVES NEW MEANING TO ‘TAKING CARE OF YOUR FRIENDS:’ Sara Carter reports that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) paid $230,000 to a firm owned by the former staff aide with whom she is romantically involved. Doesn’t the Sharia law Omar as a faithful Muslim presumably wants to impose on the rest of us say something about not doing this kind of thing?

PROFESSOR’S PARTISANSHIP METRIC RANKS HOUSE COMMITTEES: I’ve been around Congress for a long time and I have to confess the results here were a bit surprising. But then he who administers controls, right?

IS SOCIAL MEDIA WHY MILLENNIALS ARE THE LONELIEST GENERATION? New survey from YouGov finds they are the loneliest despite being the most “connected.” Maybe Glenn’s latest book should top the reading list of every parent raising kids? There’s also a second survey with a deep look at Gen Z’s top values, notable for what’s not among the top five.

HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR ATP SYNTHASES LATELY: You should, you know, because without them, you cease. And that raises some interesting questions about how they came to be.

THE ‘1619 PROJECT’ IS WHAT THE GENIUSES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES CAME UP WITH: Ken Braun of the Capital Research Center (CRC) does a deep dive into the influence of the MacArthur Foundation in the Times’ newsroom. Lots of MacArthur “genius” grant winners led the way.

And speaking of the 1619 Project, The Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech responds and includes links to five superb pieces that have appeared on his site about the Times’ work.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT’EM, WELL THEN, JUST REPLACE’EM: That appears to be a key part of Beijing’s emerging strategy for dealing with Hong Kong, replacing it as a world financial center with the city just across the border from it, Shenzhen. Those units of China’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) are still nearby.