UPDATE ON ‘THE CHOSEN’ TRAIL-BLAZING SERIES: “The Chosen” crowd-funded series on the life of Jesus Christ is nearing the launch of its third season and to date it has set new high marks in multiple categories. Among the most notable is how the series has proven crowd-funded entertainment has an exciting future, and not just in religious programming.

Writer and director Dallas Jenkins conveniently summarizes the first two seasons and provides a peek at what’s coming in season three. Things are about to get significantly more tense! BTW, one need not be a follower of Jesus to appreciate the stagecraft, acting and screenplay quality of this production.

DEMS SEE NO END TO BORDER SURGE: That appears to be the case, judging by the budget Senate Democrats are proposing for the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. Joe Simonson of the Washington Free Beacon ran the numbers in the bill text and concluded CBP would get $500 million less in 2022 than it did this year.

Not to worry, though, because, Simonson reports, the bill also provides for construction of more immigrant processing centers on the border. That way there will be minimal delays to the border crossers on their way from wherever they come from to wherever in the U.S. they decide to go.

But wait, there’s more!

“The bill forbids Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from enforcing immigration laws. It instead directs the agency to only focus on ‘the disruption of transnational crime,’ such as drug trafficking or money laundering.

“The proposed cuts come as the southern border faces a decades-high surge of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the United States. Immigration authorities expect to report nearly two million migrant encounters at the border this fiscal year, the first time the number has exceeded one million since 2006.”

TEAR DOWN THAT WALL: Senate Dems appear to be setting the stage to pull down the Trump wall on the border with Mexico.

KEEP POLITICS OUT OF THE CHURCHES, UNLESS IT’S FOR DEMOCRATS: Kylee Zempel reminds us of the incessant bleating during the Trump era about his support among “White Evangelicals” and “Separation of Church and State:”

“It appeared over and over and over, with certain moments during Trump’s presidency and the 2020 campaign drawing out particularly vicious smears of Trump-supporting Christians generally. It emerged in the Never Trump movement when he became the GOP nominee and many faithful Christians decided they would vote for him.

“It happened during the Bible photo op outside St. John’s Church near the White House, a story that was lied about relentlessly by the corrupt media then used to smear Trump and his Christian supporters. It happened during the 2020 presidential race when Trump was juxtaposed with self-proclaimed Christians Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. And it occurred nonstop after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, just to name a few.”

But none of that matters when it is Vice President Kamala Harris delivering a blatantly partisan appeal in 300 Virginia churches on behalf of fellow Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s campaign to secure another four year term as Virginia’s Governor. Hypocrisy gets deeper and deeper in such precincts.

And since we’re on the subject of Harris, Curtis Hill, also writing for The Federalist, details what Harris won’t tell black voters on occasions like her Sunday McAuliffe appeal in Virginia.

THE MOST RELUCTANT CONVERT: New film opens November 3 about C.S. Lewis. Here’s the trailer.

EXPLAIN THIS – THE MIRACLE OF MATHEMATICS: Geometry in the eighth grade was the last mathematics course in which I made at least a C. No surprise there as word guys tend not to be math whizzes. Then there is philosopher William Lane Craig who sees the (un)reasonableness of mathematics as huge evidence for God. (I’m just praying the entrance test at the Pearly Gates isn’t a math exam!)

WHY CHINA IS BIG WINNER ON INFRASTRUCTURE BILL: Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig digs into Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and finds $148 billion worth of reasons why China, which by the way produces twice as much Greenhouse Gas Emissions as the U.S., is the biggest winner.

PATRICK HENRY IS SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE: Hans Bader on Liberty Unyielding reports that a Fairfax County woman obtained documents through Virginia’s freedom of information process about the local school board’s spending on legal fees. Another Fairfax County woman published the documents after deleting confidential information.

Now a state judge has upheld the school board’s demand that the information be removed from the Internet and the documents returned to officials.

“This was a flagrant, obvious violation of Supreme Court rulings declaring that such court orders against speech are unconstitutional ‘prior restraints’ that violate the First Amendment,” Bader writes of the judge’s order.

“The Supreme Court has long made clear that people can’t be prevented from publishing information given to them by the government, even when the government gave them that information by mistake, and even when the information is highly private in nature. (See, e.g., Florida Star v. B.J.F. (1989)).

“As of today, the ACLU has not said one word about this highly-publicized instance of censorship, which has been widely discussed in the media in the last couple weeks, such as at Fox News, on TV, and in print publications.”

The saddest part of it is that nobody should be surprised by the Woke ACLU’s silence.

UPDATE: This post has been corrected from my original to make clear the ACLU filing was in the adjoining Loudoun County where parents are challenging use of woke pronouns in the school system, not the Fairfax case in which the judge sided with the school district and against the public’s right to know. The ACLU’s silence concerns the Fairfax case. For the record, Henry continues spinning.

GOP AGS TO SUE BIDEN ON VAX MANDATE: The White House is expected this week to release its official directive to private businesses to enforce Covid vaccination mandates on employees. The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports Republican state attorneys general plan to sue.

SENILITY TEST FOR AGING OFFICIALS? Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a gastroenterologist, told Axios on HBO that top government officials in all three branches should be required to submit to an annual cognitive test. But how long before taking such a test becomes old hat?

MORE EVIDENCE BIDEN IS DIVIDING AMERICA: It’s in the latest Issues & Insights/TIPP Survey and the results point to divisions unlike anything seen since 1960s. About the only thing the respondents agreed on in fact is the U.S. is profoundly divided under His Fraudulency:

“A majority of groups agree America is divided, whether it’s White (73 percent say we’re divided) or Black/Hispanic (59 percent), Male (63 percent) or Female (72 percent), Democrat (55 percent) or Republican (80 percent) or Independent (75 percent), young (68 percent of 18-24 year olds) or old (83 percent of those over 65). “

THREE REASONS MIRACLES AREN’T ALWAYS HOAXES: It’s the latest “What Would You Say” number from the Colson Center. And for those who prefer to read the transcript than watch the five-minute video, the link to the document is included. Now, on your marks, set …. snark! I mean go, with intelligent, reasoned, evidence-based responses. (Put another way, enjoy our freedom of speech while we still can).

WANT TO KNOW WHY CRIME IS SPIKING: Discovery Institute’s Wealth and Poverty Review picks up a piece from The Federalist to examine the role of Leftist prosecutors who decline to prosecute criminals, thus denying justice to victims and encouraging chaos. The “reimagining criminal justice” disaster that is Seattle could be coming soon to your town.

FOSSILS AND FAKE NEWS: When the facts don’t fit the Left’s political narrative, they ignore them or just make up new ones. It turns out, according to Science Uprising, that happens on the Left’s evolutionist front, too.

DATA SHOWS IMMIGRANTS MORE, NOT LESS, LIKELY TO REPORT CRIME: Leftists have claimed for years that immigrants, especially those here illegally, won’t report crimes against them to local police for fear of being hassled or even deported. That claim is reported as gospel throughout the major media to justify sanctuary cities.

But guess what, according to federal data made public today by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the reality is immigrants, including illegals, are more likely than natural born citizens to report the crimes they suffer. So, expect to see this on top of the homepages of the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today.

What … it’s not there on any of them you say???

MAN, MEAT OR MIND? Seems like a rather stark choice, but neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explains why it really isn’t. And what that tells us about the case for Intelligent Design.

KERRY INVESTED IN CHINESE FIRM: Alana Goodman of The Washington Free Beacon details climate czar John Kerry’s investment of at least $1 million in a firm “that is a major funder of China’s artificial intelligence sector—including a tech company blacklisted by the United States for human rights abuses against the Uyghurs.”

HEALTHCARE RATIONING IS HERE: Don’t go to the Cleveland Clinic seeking a kidney transplant if you aren’t vaccinated. Didn’t there used to be something in that Hippocratic Oath about doing no harm?

CENSORSHIP KILLS: That’s the message from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who cites the censorship of videos of doctors discussing how they successfully treated Covid patients with Ivermectin and other repurposed drugs.

HOW TRUMP DIDN’T KILL DEMOCRACY: Another day, another evil caused by Donald Trump. This time, it’s an “intensifying erosion of American democracy” because those gutless Republicans won’t silence the former president, according to The Hill’s Niall Stanage. Except the erosion didn’t start with Trump, based on the survey data I cover today in my PJ Media column.

THE SELLING OF AXIOS’ SOUL: Axios is an up and coming entrant in the digital news media platform universe and claims it has “no B.S. for sale.” Well, Chuck Ross at Washington Free Beacon shines a much-needed light on the latest way journalists sell their souls, by helping corporate lobbyists corner the politicians they seek to persuade.

CITY VS SUBURBS WAR IS OVER. SUBURBS WON: That’s the verdict of Allan Berger and David Gordon, writing for Joel Kotkin’s Newgeography. How long will it take the enviros and their urban planning allies to figure this out?

“Here’s what we found: Most — 63 percent — of those the U.S. Census defines as ‘urban’ Americans are actually suburbanites who commute by car from auto-dependent places. An additional 18 percent live in exurbia and also commute by car. People that live relatively close to city centers and ride in by public transit are another 13 percent. Still, even they rely on cars in their home communities.

“Any realistic route to a sustainable urban future needs to harness this combined population, a racially and economically diverse 92 percent of U.S. ‘metropolitan’ residents, and their automobile-based mind-set. It’s these suburbanites in their much-dissed ‘bedroom’ communities and anything-but-iconic houses that can create the radical changes we need.”

Berger and Gordon are high on Electric Vehicles. I’m not, as I suspect most Instapundit readers aren’t. But putting that issue aside, the key implication of their findings — the suburbs, and the exurbs, are here to stay — is that, if you want to save the environment, you better figure out how to do it with something other than forcing people to move back into the cities.

TWO PEAS IN A POD: Stuart Rothenberg has seen it all in the nation’s capital, over and over and over … Can you guess which congressional crisis he refers to it in this Roll Call oped?

“Congress often waits until the clock is running out before it actually gets down to dealing with big issues, whether spending or policy matters. … But the current hyper-partisan political environment makes it even less possible than usual to negotiate deals well before the clock strikes midnight. That’s because party leaders and activists spend most of their time playing to each party’s political base, rallying supporters behind their agenda and mobilizing their base against the opposition.”

Sounds a lot like the current impasse on Capitol Hill, doesn’t it? But Rothenberg wrote that passage back in 2011. And that’s the problem, Rothenberg and the rest of sentient America have heard this same song over and over and recognize it for the sham that it is. And just in case you missed the Motown reference, remember this?

FREE SPEECH AND PELOSI’S JANUARY 6 INQUISITION: Writing at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson puts it bluntly: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is mounting “a brazen attack on the First Amendment rights of peaceful, law-abiding Americans.”

Observes Davidson:

“Let’s be clear on this point. Since its inception, the Select Committee has amounted to a show-trial for House Democrats and leading NeverTrumpers who are attempting to make examples out of ordinary citizens who dared to protest the election, just as President Biden’s Justice Department is throwing the book at anyone connected to the events of Jan. 6 to make examples of them.”

mRNA INVENTOR DECRIES MEDICAL CENSORSHIP: The vaccine insanity is global, Dr. Robert Malone. He knows a thing or three about Covid vaccines.