THREE THINGS GOP MUST DO IN 2023: Spencer Chretien offers three actions he believes Republicans must take in 2023 if they regain Senate and House majorities. Number three is to “meaningfully confront the national security state.” I absolutely agree, but how about this for number four: Meaningfully DEFUND the Administrative State” and do it on Day One?

CAN SOROS TURN ARKANSAS INTO LOS ANGELES? Apparently, Andrew Kerr reports, he’s decided to try, pouring nearly half a million dollars into a PAC — Arkansas Justice and Public Safety PAC — he alone funds and the campaign of Alicia Walton to become Prosecuting Attorney for Pulaski and Perry counties. The former includes Little Rock, which makes it Arkansas’ most populous, while the latter is a growing adjoining suburban/exurban area.

ABORTION CAPITAL OF THE U.S.: Will it be California or New York in the post-Dobbs era of state regulation of abortion? The Golden State already has five pro-abortion measures teed up, according to Tristan Justice.

NO GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS: Hans Bader notes the Stock Market’s precipitous plunge this past week and the assessments of two Democratic economists who still have connections to economic reality.

MORE DEBUNKING OF ABSURD BIDEN ECONOMIC CLAIMS: Libertarian economist Dan Mitchell takes apart the Biden claim that his administration has cut the federal deficit by $350 billion. Mitchell should be on the short list for Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2025.

ABOUT THAT RESURRECTION-AS-LEGEND CLAIM: It may be the most often heard objection — The resurrection of Jesus was pure legend, evolving over time from rumor to exaggeration to legend and not becoming “official” until 325 AD at the Council of Nicea.

But, as I show with two exhibits this morning on HillFaith, the timeline after the crucifixion shows the resurrection claim to be fresh and current literally within weeks of the event, so it is imminently reasonable to conclude that whatever else it may or may not have been, the resurrection was not a legend that required centuries to develop.

BEST SCENE FROM ‘THE CHOSEN:’ Remember when those “John 3:16” signs were familiar sites behind the goalposts in TV football games? Portraying that verse, about being “born again,” may be the most powerful and evocative scene thus far in “The Chosen.” No matter where you are on the spiritual spectrum, this scene, on HillFaith, is immensely arresting, and entertaining.

MOST AMERICANS SUPPORT ALITO: Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney digs into the data and finds the clear majority of Americans support the abortion position taken in the Alito draft. Ditto for abortion generally.

SCREEN-FREE SCHOOLS ARE COMING: Auguste Meyrat is a teacher who “sees rampant tech addiction up close.” That’s why the Meyrat kids are heading to schools without screens. This has the feel of a new movement. As Meyrat explains:

“Many of today’s children are ignorant, sad, and set up for failure. They lack the knowledge and skills to perform basic tasks. They are lonely and suffer from depression and anxiety. Also, as Mark Bauerlein explains in his book ‘The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,’ they are incredibly immature.

“The reasons for this are not a mystery. One top answer is actually incredibly simple: Screens. Instead of learning about their world and participating in it, the majority of young people are glued to their devices, playing video games, scrolling through social media, and streaming videos.”

I’m old enough to remember when there were actually liberals who advised Americans to “kill your TV.” That’s not what Meyrat is advising, but it won’t be long before today’s liberals accuse him of exactly that.

MORE EVIDENCE RUSSIAGATE WAS ‘DEEP STATE’ INVENTION: Margot Cleveland has been one of the handful of journalists who have consistently from the beginning of the Russiagate scandal stayed on top of this increasingly unbelievable scandal.

Today in The Federalist, Cleveland points out evidence CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that claimed Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was itself “easily spoofed” by others connected to the plot to frame Donald Trump.

“Concerns over CrowdStrike’s analysis reemerged after Special Counsel John Durham indicted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker. That indictment and other documents filed in the Sussmann criminal case revealed that cyber-security experts assisted tech executive Rodney Joffe in crafting deceptive data and white papers to create the false appearance of a secret communication network between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Sussmann then fed this ‘intel’ to the CIA and FBI.

“After the election, Sussmann also provided the CIA with deceptively cherry-picked data to suggest a connection between Trump or his transition team and Russians, using cyber-tracking of a Russian Yota cell phone. To compile both the Alfa Bank and Yota phone hoaxes, according to the indictment, Joffe exploited proprietary information he had access to because of his positions in various tech companies. More troubling still was the revelation that Joffe used sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President in his attempt to frame Trump.”

There is more, much, much more to come.

FORMER CONGRESSMEN IN CCP’S BACK POCKET: Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross has the details on how Beijing uses the Association of Former Members of Congress (AFMC) to influence the U.S. government.

Ross reports that Beijing “has hosted multiple events since 2020 for the China-United States Exchange Foundation, the CCP’s leading foreign influence think tank. The Exchange Foundation sponsors the association’s annual awards gala, which will be held next month, and it has worked hand-in-glove with the Exchange Foundation’s lobbyist to host policy events where pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have been blamed on ‘foreign forces’ and the United States has been accused of directing ‘vitriol’ toward China.”

This should be a MAJOR story in the MSM. I’m not holding my breath.

HERE COMES THE TALIBAN’S DRUG FLOOD OF THE U.S.: Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader tells us that not only is Afghanistan the world’s leading Opium producer, the Taliban is turning it into a leading source of Methamphetamine.

“For decades, the country has been a global hub for opium production, estimated to supply 80 percent of the world’s opiate users. Now its meth industry is growing at breakneck speed, stoking fears among Western experts and officials that, under the Taliban, Afghanistan could become a major supplier as demand rises globally,” Bader explains.

If you think the flood of Fentanyl unleashed on America by the Mexican drug cartels is bad, an epidemic of Meth use and deaths will be even worse.

AMERICAN LEFT’S MUSHROOM CLOUD: As the clamor and rancor from Democrats goes ever higher in response to The Leak at the Supreme Court, it is now clear that “we have reached the point that the left has decided that policy will not be made like sausage but through tantrum, intimidation, and riot,” opines Issues & Insights (I&I).

DATA SHOWS RIGHT-TO-WORK STATES GREW DURING PANDEMIC: Latest data compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the 27 states with Right- to-Work laws (RTW) actually added jobs during the Covid Pandemic, while the other 23 states lost nearly 1.5 million jobs.

The presence of such laws was not the only factor involved, to be sure, but the data is strongly suggestive of a correlation of some significance, especially considering that seven of the 10 biggest gainers are RTW states, while seven of the bottom 10 are not.

AS INDIANA GOES, SO GOES THE GOP? We don’t hear much anymore about the split within the GOP between the so-called “economic conservatives” and the “social conservatives,” but this trenchant analysis by Aaron Renn of the Indiana GOP’s recent history deserves a close reading by anybody with an interest in the future of the party.

Here’s a sample:

“Indiana holds important lessons for both conservatives and liberals. For conservatives, it shows that the low taxes/low regulation/libertarianish economic policy approach does not always create growth and prosperity.

“For both liberals and conservatives, it shows that social policy has far less impact on talent attraction and economic growth than they commonly believe.

“When California passed Prop 8 banning gay marriage, was there a mass exodus of people and business out of the state on that account? Not that I saw. In fact, the exodus of people and business has been picking up more recently, as California has become a more solidly progressive environment.

“How much credit did Indiana get, and how much high wage investment did it attract as a result of killing a marriage amendment? None that I saw. Though people still talk endlessly about RFRA even years afterward, the fact that Indiana killed off its marriage amendment is already forgotten. California passed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Indiana did not. Think about that.

“Or look at Texas, which did pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, passed a RFRA law, and which just passed a very strong anti-abortion bill. None of that seems to have even dented their growth. Facebook even announced a major office expansion in Austin after the abortion law passed. Texas shows that states can grow while remaining very conservative, while at the same time having cities within them that have their own independent brand and are viewed as progressive. What the state did actually did not harm Texas’ cities. The Texas-Austin, and Indiana-Indianapolis parallels should be explored in more depth.”

TIK TOK IS CASH COW FOR THE CARTELS: If your teenage son or daughter, who watches a lot on the Chinese APP, tells you they are driving somebody’s car as a favor to them this weekend “to make a few bucks,” Joseph Simonson has the explanation for what’s really going on.

THE PRESENT CRISIS IN ONE SENTENCE: It’s from John Daniel Davidson in The Federalist as he dissects the roots and ramifications of The Leak: “Whenever the left feels they have lost control of an institution, they try to destroy it.” This is a strong candidate for today’s Must-Read.

TRUMP RISES, BIDEN SINKS: Latest I&I/TIPP Survey has no good news in it for His Fraudulency but lots of it for ORANGEMANMOREBADTHANEVER.

WHERE’S MARY POPPINS WHEN WE NEED HER? There is an active insurrectionist operating right out in the open in the U.S. Senate and his name is Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), warns Issues & Insights. Somebody should alert the Marshal of the Court (Supreme Court, that is).

A DAY LATE BUT NO LESS SERIOUS A WARNING: I meant to link this post by Jeff Dunetz at The Lid yesterday, May 1, aka “May Day,” but unaccountably didn’t. So here it is today, marking the rotten fruit of the deadliest political movement in human history:

“That’s right, during the 20th-century, communism, and socialism murdered at least 94 million people. The reason for using both communism and socialism is they are both based on Karl Marx, are bloody, and many Communist regimes call themselves Socialist.

“Per the detailed analysis in “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression” (which should be required reading by every student in America), the number of deaths caused by Communism and Socialism was estimated at 94,360,000, broken down as follows:

• USSR — 20 million
• China — 65 million
• Vietnam — 1 million
• North Korea — 2 million
• Cambodia — 2 million
• Eastern Europe — 1 million
• Latin America — 150,000
• Africa — 1.7 million
• Afghanistan — 1.5 million
• Communist and Socialist movements, parties not in power — 10,000

“These estimates were made twenty-five years ago, in 1997. Imagine how some of the socialist and communist regimes have added to their total since (and some believe the estimates are too conservative). And let’s not forget the full name of Hitler’s Nazi party was; Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National-Socialist German Workers’ Party).”

Tragically, there is more to this reality check, so click the link and read the rest of it.

While we’re here, I also highly recommend Robert Conquest’s three works on Soviet Communism, especially “Reflections on a Ravaged Century,” written at the dawn of the 21st century to look back at the accumulated horrors of the 20th and prophetically ahead at the ills likely to accompany the European Union (he was right on target).

THE COUNTLESS FAILURES OF BUREAUCRACY: Doesn’t matter if the bureaucracy is in the military or Department of Defense civilian workforce, or anywhere else in the sprawling, out-of-control, unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

Don Devine, who ran the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during the Reagan era, knows a thing or three about bureaucracy and, in a post on the American Spectator, offers examples from the Pentagon that ought to scare the crap out of every one of us.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I was a Reagan appointee, serving for three years under Devine as Assistant Director of OPM for Public Affairs.

BACTERIA WITH MACHINE GUNS? Believe it. Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute explains that and some other absolutely amazing bacteria on HillFaith this Saturday morning.

Whether you an IDer or a Darwinian, check out the incredible characteristics of these cells. And don’t miss the medical and digital design and production nanotechnology possibilities Behe describes.

DESPITE BEING FULLY COGNIZANT OF LINCOLN’S MAXIM: You know, the one about it being better to be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.

Well, I’m throwing caution to the wind this morning and inviting those who care about such matters to give this HillFaith post a read and then tell me where you think I am right, wrong, maybe somewhere in the vicinity of getting it correct, or just plain without hope of ever understanding.

Here’s the basic proposition: If information is the sine qua non of creation, then there must be intelligence behind the information, it cannot be randomly ordered, which is oxymoronic.

Why am I doing this? Because I know there are a lot of Instapunditeers who are a whole lot smarter than I am and more than a few who will gladly and civilly point out flaws and good ones.

One final note: No, I am not in the midst of regression to Philosophy 101, sophomore year in college. Why we are here, how we got here and what happens to us after we die are forever questions that are always in order.

YEP, THAT’S BIDEN’S STAGFLATION THAT JUST ARRIVED: That 1.4 percent contraction in the economy in the first quarter of 2022 represents the first statistical evidence that we’re entering a period of roaring inflation and stagnate growth.

“The trade deficit ballooned massively, due to mushrooming imports. American exports fell by 9.6 percent, while imports went up by 17.7 percent. Economists had predicted a 1 percent economic growth rate, rather than the decline in the economy that actually occurred,” reports Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader.

And the cause is clear, according to Bader, who says “the economy is being held back by Biden administration policies that discourage work, reward idleness, and make it harder for companies to attract employees. Biden enacted policies that reduced the size of America’s private-sector workforce and made America less economically competitive.”

CANCEL CULTURE INCLUDES SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY THAT IS QUASHED: Physicist and Professor Eric Heiden explains during a presentation at the recent Dallas Conference on Science and Faith what happened when the Cancel Culture stifled academic freedom at Ball State University, deep in the heart of conservative Indiana.

This is a longer video (43 minutes+) than usual for HillFaith, but the issue and analysis present concrete challenges to all of us who profess to support academic independence and free thought about the most important issues.

Also, be aware that in the center of his presentation, Heinden includes a moving meditation on the crucial role of forgiveness, that most difficult of all the virtues. And don’t miss his discussion of the uniqueness of the human recognition of and appreciation for beauty.