HOW TO SAFEGUARD WORSHIP PLACES: Violence against Christian churches and Jewish synagogues is on the rise in this country, but there are effective steps officials can and should take to reverse the tide. Richard Pollock has the scoop in an interview with holy places security expert Stephen Bryen.

DON’T LEAVE JUST YET, NANCY: Mark Alexander at Patriot Post has a suitable retirement gift for the former Speaker of the House and with Joe Biden no longer controlling the Justice Department, Pelosi just might find herself opening an official envelope containing the gift.

DON’T FAIRFAX THE REST OF VIRGINIA: A Virginia Commonwealth University professor warns the state’s Democrats that they are headed down a seriously wrong path on the redistricting issue. The X post is from the Fairfax GOP, but Professor Alex Keena is not a Republican activist.

When I lived in Northern Virginia during the Reagan/Bush 1 era, you often saw bumper stickers in surrounding counties warning “Don’t Fairfax _____ County.” Now the whole state is being Fairfaxed.

DID ANCIENT CHINESE ASTRONOMERS KNOW OF JESUS? Yes, that’s an unexpected question, but the answer is yes, they did indeed, though not by the same name known in the West, according to a Catholic research and advocacy group.

The evidence comes from close readings in the archives of the pre-polytheistic era dynasties of Chinese history when the Far Eastern giant followed a monotheistic religion very much analogous to what we today call Christianity. I’m cautiously fascinated. What do you think?

ACADEMIC ‘FREEDOM’ ON LEFT CAMPUS: Powerline’s John Hinderaker points to a special ed teacher in a California school who lost her job after expressing support for the deportation of illegal aliens. And asks the next logical questions:

“How did we get to this pass? And what is the path forward? Honestly, I think it is hard to see how those of us who support the rule of law can continue to share a country with those who do not–a group that now numbers close to half of our population. What possible basis for a common citizenship is there, between us and them? I don’t think there is one.”

DATA SAYS GOING TO CHURCH KEY TO MARITAL BLISS: In fact, according to the joint analysis of the Institute for Family Studies and UVA and the Wheatley Institute at BYU, men are 3x as likely to be happily married if they regularly attend worship services with their wives and kids. So, if healthy families are the key building block for civilization …

NO ‘GET-OUT-JAIL-FREE’ CARD FOR LEMON: Just Facts points to three Supreme Court cases, all decided years before President Donald Trump was in the Oval Office the first time, that strongly suggest former CNN host Don Lemon is headed for big-time trouble.

HAD ENOUGH COLD, SNOW AND ICE? What if you, like the Wood Frog and Japanese Macaques, had to live with it most or all of your life? Check out the amazing ways such creatures are adapted to living in the Earth’s fridge.

REAGAN REMEMBERED: Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 115th birthday were he still among us. Rod Martin republishes the superb obituary he wrote following Reagan’s death in 2004. Writing fitting obits about significant figures is a hugely difficult challenge, but Martin’s is one of the finest I’ve ever read on this great and humble man.

EXODUS EXPLORED, PART 4: This series from the John 10:10 Project exploring the historical and archeological evidence of the accuracy of the Biblical account of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt to the Wilderness and finally to the Promised Land just keeps getting more fascinating. Today’s installment on HillFaith examines the location of Mt. Sinai, one of the most crucial facts in the whole odyssey because if the Bible got that fact wrong, well ….

A QUICK HISTORY LESSON: Illustration of true meaning of Mayor Mandami’s “we will replace the frigidity of capitalism with the warmth of collectivism”

SPEAKING OF DOOMED LEFTY INSTITUTIONS: Rick Moran at PJ Media lays out the likely demise of national election-shaping lefty political power in a column updating the old saw that “demographics are destiny” for a country.

“The blue states are in a demographic doom loop. They need to create high taxes to pay for the numerous goodies they give to residents, but that leads to an exodus of wealth and people. To make up for the losses, blue states import and encourage illegal aliens to settle there. But illegals are a huge drain on the state treasury, leading to the need to raise taxes, and the loop closes on itself.”

Yes, Lord, please let it be so!

TAPS’ WPOST OBIT: Jeff Bezos warned the Washington Post newsroom two years ago that reality is an undefeated champion. Yesterday, one of every three newsroomers were let go as reality struck home. My Substack obit of what was once a great newspaper.

HUGE FRAUD, MISMANAGEMENT EXPOSED IN RED AND BLUE STATES: State and local governments are required by federal law to permit outside auditors to conduct comprehensive “Single Audits” of how officials are administering federally funded social welfare benefit programs. Media coverage of these audits is typically meager at best.

So Truth-In-Accounting (TIA) is digging deep into the most recent such audits (2024) and uncovering all kinds of costly, long-running waste, fraud and corruption. And the garbage is showing up in both Blue and Red states. Check it out here. 

PROMOTED FROM LAST EVENING

EXCLUSIVE — AMERICA’S FIVE WORST CITIES: The green eyeshade rockers at Truth-In-Accounting took a look at reams and reams of dry, boring audit reports and came away with a list with some surprises. I got my hands on an advance copy and report it on Substack.

WORLD-WIDE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS: North Korea tops the latest edition of World Watch’s Top 50 Most Dangerous Places for Christians, HillFaith’s Amanda Hughes reports. Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Libya and Iran fill out the top 10. See a pattern here?

MOST HILL AIDES FAVOR STOCK TRADES BAN: Talk about a super-majority! More than three-quarters of all congressional staffers surveyed say their bosses — senators and representatives — should not be able to trade stocks while in office.

WAITING GAME ON IRAN: Will there be genuine negotiations seeking a new future for the Iranian people or is President Donald Trump about to whack the Ayatollah’s regime that first came to power in 1979? Richard Pollock wants to know and he’s tuned in with some smart people.

4 WAYS CBO TOOL IS BIASED TO GROW SPENDING: It may be an obscure, deep-in-the-woods reality but the federal budget baseline tool routinely used by the Congressional Budget Office to project federal budget trends, tax revenue and economic growth has four flaws that prompt more outlays.

MINNESOTA FRAUD OLDER THAN THOUGHT: An FBI raid on a fraudulently run child care center in 2015 suggests things have been rotten in Minnesota than previously thought. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) has reforms to get a handle on all of the fraud.

CHRISTIANS FALLING FOR WEAPONIZED EMPATHY: Too many professing American Christians are gullible and thus taken in by Leftist ideology masquerading as empathy, claims Michael Clary, Lead Pastor of Cincinnati’s Christ the King Church:

“That’s a big problem in the modern church. Too many people are gullible, and gullible Christians are causing a lot of harm in the church. These people aren’t blue-haired radical leftists we see at ICE protests in Minneapolis. No, they are ordinary Christians who sit next to you in church on Sunday but are led by their emotions. They are the nicest people you’d ever meet. They just don’t have the stomach to face hard realities. They think being ‘Christlike’ is whatever seems ‘nice’ or makes them feel good,” Clary explains.

“But here’s the truth: It isn’t Christlike to be gullible. It isn’t Christlike to believe and share debunked propaganda. It isn’t Christlike to be led by your emotions. It isn’t Christlike to outsource your critical thinking skills to the left-wing activists in the media.”

Clary is in the guest slot for Rod Martin today on Substack.

WHERE THE ANTI-ICERS ARE HEADING: Unfortunately for most, it’s not, as yet, jail. But the logic of their protest demands and actions, as explained by Modern Age Editor Daniel McCarthy, is this: America is irretrievably and utterly fascist, which means it’s not merely justified to resist the regime, but absolutely mandatory to use whatever means necessary to bring it down, including violently and against the cops (and, ultimately, the U.S. military).

ONLY 85 SECONDS TO DOOMSDAY: That’s according to the “Doomsday Clock” maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Funny thing, though, as explained by Issues & Insights, the clock seems to be opposite reality:

“First, look at the reasons behind why it ticked closer to midnight this year. One of those listed was the bombing of Iran’s nuclear weapons sites last year. So, according to these ‘experts,’ crippling a radical Islamic regime’s ability to build a nuclear bomb is making the world less safe?

“Then there’s the fact that the bulletin includes ‘climate change’ as an indicator of annihilation. What does a supposedly warming planet have to do with launching nuclear bombs? And why does it matter if the Trump administration ‘stripped back’ (to use the New York Times’ words) public health infrastructure?”

There more of this leftist gibberish. Go here.

ANTI-ICERS ARE NEW ‘MASSIVE RESISTANCE’ REBELS: Those anti-ICE protestors in Minneapolis are interposing themselves between federal immigration law enforcement and state/local authorities, much as did the Southern Massive Resistance did against federal civil rights enforcement.

Somewhere Harry Byrd Sr. Orval Faubus and George Wallace wonder why the media that today hails the Anti-ICErs as heroes condemned the Southerners as bigots. One wonders, too, what John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina senator best known for his views on interposition and nullification, would think were he among us today.

TRUMP RIGHT TO DUMP WHO: Dr. Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation knows a thing or forty three about government healthcare programs and he lauds President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization (WHO).