On September 11, Russian scholarly journal Russia in Global Affairs highlighted a new research project, “Russia’s Living Idea-Dream: The Code of the Russian in the 21st Century.”

The project aims to build on a similarly titled report published by Sergey Karaganov, one of the founders of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and his like-minded colleagues (Faculty of World Economy and World Politics, July 11).

Karaganov’s work is meant to codify a renewed set of norms for Russian citizenship and identity in the making of a new world order (Russia in Global Affairs, July 2025). It aspires to become a new moral-political guide for Russian society; an analogue of Soviet ideals adapted to modern conditions.

The new Russian code has come to the forefront of public debate at a time of marked resurgence in rehabilitating Stalin’s image. This rehabilitation has manifested in the installation of new monuments to the Soviet dictator and favorable public statements from Russian officials.

This may be the hardest column I’ve ever written, one where I’m so angry that it’s hard for me to put my words into a sequence that’s both coherent and not profane.

They murdered Charlie Kirk yesterday.

They shot him dead because he dared to exercise his right as a human being to speak freely – contrary to what Democrat senators insist, our rights do not come from government but are endowed within us by our Creator.

So, this was not merely a crime against one man, or against his beautiful family, but against both this country and our God.

And it will be righteously avenged.

He’s not going to be forgotten.

They may have killed him, but they’re not going to kill the movement he started.

Oh no, they don’t get to win.

They don’t get to murder their way to victory.

They don’t get to scare us, intimidate us, or decapitate our movement.

We’re going to double down.

No, we’re going to triple down.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) this week warned the American people that a Trump nominee for a State Department position was an extremist, cut from the same cloth as the Iranian mullahs and religious extremists.

Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, revealed his dangerous proclivities to Kaine in his opening statement when he said that “All men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”

It was a line that should be familiar to any citizen — virtually ripped from the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

Yet Kaine offered a very surprising response in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

The idea that laws “come from the government” is the basis of what is called “legal positivism,” which holds that the legitimacy and authority of laws are not based on God or natural law but rather legislation and court decisions.

[TTP:  This isn’t getting much notice in the press, but it is a YUGE win for Trump!]

A federal immigration board said Friday that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are ineligible for bond hearings while they challenge deportation proceedings in court.

The decision, rendered by Judge Keith E. Hunsucker at the Board of Immigration Appeals, affirms a previous July order from Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who told ICE officers in a memo that such immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.

Lawyers say the policy will apply to millions of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few decades, including under the Biden administration.

President Donald Trump’s greatest achievement within six months was simply ending illegal immigration as we had once known it — without “comprehensive immigration reform” or any other rhetorical trickery.

It remains difficult to find, much less deport, the 10 to 12 million illegal aliens who entered in the last four years.

Those who helped break the law, by design or indifference, now believe it was moral to destroy federal immigration law but immoral to uphold it.

And it is still unclear whether former President Joe Biden’s handlers deliberately sabotaged their own border for political and demographic purposes out of sheer orneriness or utter incompetence.

Many of the left’s cherished totems — massive Green New Deal subsidies, the diversity/equity/inclusion industry, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the USAID revolving door — are either comatose or in their death throes.

The historic drop-off in military recruitment reversed shortly after Trump took office.

Republican voter registration is up, and Democratic registration is down.

Late last week NBC ran a “news” story featuring a dozen disgruntled federal judges whose rulings against various Trump administration policies have been stayed or overturned by the Supreme Court.

These lower court judges, none of whom had the courage to allow NBC to name them in the article, bewailed the failure of SCOTUS to provide sufficient justification for ruling against them.

It’s blindingly obvious, however, that the real issue they are whining about is the Court’s refusal to countenance their usurpation of the President’s Article II powers and frustrate implementation of his agenda.

Upon assuming office, the President signed a number of executive orders involving a variety of issues. Many of these EOs were challenged by lawsuits filed in district courts presided over by activist judges.

Inevitably, these judges issued “universal injunctions” that halted implementation of the EOs nationwide. The administration filed emergency appeals with SCOTUS to ensure these cases received expedited attention.

According to the NBC story, “The Supreme Court has granted Trump administration requests to block lower court rulings in more than 70 percent of cases brought by the administration that were decided via the shadow docket.”  [Cue ominous Darth Vader background audio]