ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

Since 2020, there has been a
massive increase in attendance at
Latin Mass parishes, particularly
among young people and men.

What has caused this change?

Why are men drawn to
the traditional Latin Mass?

In this razor-sharp book,
acclaimed radio host and author
Jesse Romero answers those questions
and more, showing how the traditional
liturgy equips men especially to put on the
armor of Christ and fight the daily
spiritual battle for souls.

Drawing from his background in
law enforcement (LAPD) and spiritual
warfare (busiest and most dynamic speaker
on this subject), Romero reveals why the
traditional Latin Mass spoke to him in
such a powerful way and transformed
his spiritual life.

He describes how the
implementation of the new Mass in
the 1970s, with its emotionalism and
horizontal focus, led men in particular to
lose their zeal — and how the manner in
which they worship God is central to
restoring that fervor.

Romero breaks down
exactly why men find their
natural and supernatural home at
the traditional Mass, highlighting:

The sacrificial nature of the TLM and how the actions of the Mass express each step of the Passion

The liturgy’s appeal to intellect over emotion

The power of silence in embracing mystery and instilling reverence

How the TLM is Christocentric rather anthropocentric (man-centered) and why this is the proper orientation toward the divine

Romero includes select essays
from priests on the efficacy of traditional
prayers and firsthand testimonies from powerful
Catholic men of today, including top NFL kicker
Harrison Butker, UFC Hall of Famer Bas
Rutten, and Navy SEAL Charlie Aeschliman,
who have found solace and purpose in
the traditional liturgy.

As contributor Kyle Clement,
a rancher, husband, and father puts it:
“Part of the masculine disposition is a desire
for ritual and fraternity — ritual meaning order.
The Holy Roman Mass in the Tridentine form
is ordered, and it is order that lifts
the soul toward Heaven.”

In the midst of a culture that
distorts authentic masculinity and
femininity, the timeless teachings of the
Catholic Church, as expressed through
her traditional liturgy, stand
steadfastly in the fray.

What Attracts Men to the
Sacred Liturgy — and Why gives men
insight into how the liturgy is the wellspring
of their vocations, the source of their
strength, and the fullest expression
of the truth worth dying for.

September 28, 2024
Special Edition
Our Out-of-Control Federal
Law Enforcement Agencies
By: Ryan Cleckner
Imprimis, Hillsdale College
August, 2024
(Emphasis added)

The following is adapted from a talk delivered on July 23, 2024, at Hillsdale College’s Blake Center for Faith and Freedom in Somers, Connecticut.

In March of this year, Bryan Malinowski, the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, was killed by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) during a pre-dawn raid of his home. It was an unwarranted and indefensible killing of a kind that should never, ever happen in a free country like the United States. This incident was not widely reported because we have a media that no longer serves its traditional role as a government watchdog. Because too many members of Congress no longer take their responsibility to protect the rights of those who elect them seriously, the ATF has suffered no repercussions.

How and why did this killing take place?

Bryan Malinowski grew up as an avid collector of coins and, more recently, firearms. He displayed his coin and firearm collections at gun shows and occasionally purchased and sold firearms.

Under federal law, it is perfectly legal to buy and sell firearms as a collector or hobbyist, even without a Federal Firearms License (FFL). An individual doesn’t need to obtain an FFL unless he is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. Congress has defined “engaged in the business” to apply to those who deal in firearms “as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit” as opposed to those who make “occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby.”

Malinowski already had a livelihood—indeed, as the airport’s executive director, he was one of the highest-paid city employees in Little Rock. Buying or selling firearms was something he did in his spare time. So it makes sense that he did not see the need to obtain a license. At some point, however, the ATF came to the view that Malinowski had crossed the nebulous line from hobbyist to “engaged in the business” and that he did need to obtain an FFL.

Leaving aside the question of whether the ATF was correct about this—a moot issue now, given the fact that the ATF killed him—the obvious thing for the ATF to have done was to contact Malinowski through the mail, by phone, or in person, to inform him that it had determined he needed a license. If it had, he could have decided whether to stop selling firearms or to pay the nominal annual fee of $65 for an FFL.

But the ATF didn’t do the obvious thing and contact Malinowski. Here is what we know happened instead. Multiple undercover ATF agents were sent to observe Malinowski selling firearms at a gun show, a GPS tracker was secretly placed on Malinowski’s car, and a search warrant was obtained for his home. Malinowski wasn’t home the first time ATF agents arrived to serve the warrant, so they left nothing to chance the second time. Dressed in SWAT gear, together with Little Rock police, they showed up in ten vehicles at Malinowski’s house before dawn on March 19. They cut the power to his house and put a piece of tape over the doorbell camera so that Malinowski couldn’t see who they were. Less than a minute later, after an exchange of gunfire, Malinowski was dead. In violation of both ATF and Little Rock police policies requiring body cameras, not one of the law enforcement agents involved in this deadly raid was wearing an activated camera.

After the killing, Malinowski’s wife was forcibly taken outside in her nightgown in 34-degree weather and was kept outside for over four hours despite multiple requests to see her husband and use the bathroom. In an audio recording from a police vehicle, she can be heard sobbing, asking why they killed her husband, and insisting that the agents must have the wrong house because she and her husband are honest, law-abiding people.

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What happened to Bryan Malinowski is not an isolated incident. It is part of a growing pattern of KGB-style behavior by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies. Let me mention briefly just a few other cases.

Back during the Trump presidency, Roger Stone, a Republican political consultant since the Nixon era, was targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice and making false statements regarding the WikiLeaks release of Hillary Clinton’s emails. These are non-violent crimes, and the nattily dressed, 72-year-old Stone has given no indication over his long life that he is prone to violence of any kind. But on January 25, 2019, the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home in a manner befitting a raid on an armed compound of a Mexican drug lord. Nearly 30 heavily armed agents swarmed Stone’s home at 6:00 a.m. With guns aimed at his entryway, they pounded on the door until Stone showed up barefoot in his pajamas. Topping things off, a boat was offshore behind Stone’s home manned by armed agents and equipped with floodlights.

In October 2021, pro-life activist Mark Houck and his twelve-year-old son were conducting a weekly prayer vigil near an abortion clinic in Philadelphia. Their standard practice was to hand out literature and, if women were interested, to help them find alternatives to abortion. Bruce Love, a volunteer escort at the facility, began to harass Houck’s son using vulgar language. During the ensuing argument, Houck pushed Love and Love fell to the ground. Philadelphia police reviewed the incident, and no charges were filed. Love later pressed charges, but the case was reviewed and dismissed. Soon thereafter, Houck received notice that he was the target of a federal grand jury investigation for violating the FACE Act, which prohibits blocking access to abortion clinics. Houck’s attorney offered video evidence that Houck had not blocked access. He also told federal prosecutors that if they insisted on bringing charges, Houck would voluntarily surrender. The FBI ignored the offer, and on September 23, 2022, at 6:30 a.m., roughly two dozen FBI agents and Pennsylvania law enforcement officers showed up at Houck’s home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Houck’s wife and seven children were still sleeping when five agents armed with rifles, tactical gear, and battering rams began pounding on the door. Additional agents surrounded the property. Houck came to the door, and his wife wandered down in her bathrobe. Houck was not allowed to say goodbye to his screaming children. Taken to a federal building, he was belly chained and had his wrists shackled to a table for six hours. Four months later, a jury found him not guilty.

Craig Robertson was a 75-year-old Air Force veteran from Provo, Utah, likely demented, who made online threats against elected leaders, including President Biden. Neighbors described Robertson as “barely [able to] get around with a cane.” But instead of confronting Robertson on his regular outings to church or the grocery store, the FBI again decided on a pre-dawn raid. At 6:00 a.m. on August 9, 2023, FBI agents first attempted to break down Robertson’s door with a battering ram, then resorted to using an armored vehicle to smash a hole in his house. The FBI claims that Robertson shot at agents before its agents shot and killed him—though the agency has refused to release any bodycam footage. Robertson’s body was moved to the sidewalk and left unattended for hours.

Other cases could be cited—including the FBI’s unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, in which the use of “deadly force” was authorized—but the point is clear enough. Such actions by federal law enforcement agencies go far beyond what is justified by law and custom in America. The agencies involved respond to criticism by saying their actions are “by the book.” But this lie, parroted by corporate media, is preposterous. If such a book exists, it represents a radical departure from the historical constraints of constitutional authority and the idea of equality before the law.

I served in the military as a Special Operations sniper and Sniper Team leader in the 1st Ranger Battalion. I could have gone on to become a sharpshooter on a police SWAT team or even joined the FBI or one of the other three-letter federal agencies that were widely considered, in the past, to be the cream of the crop in terms of law enforcement. Sadly, they are no longer thought of in the same way.

The flip side of the increasingly thuggish character of these agencies is their diminished effectiveness in fulfilling their core missions, to the point that the American public cannot help but notice. Consider the recent assassination attempt—very nearly successful—on President Trump. The U.S. Secret Service and the FBI are being anything but transparent about their investigations and seem to be going out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for Congress and the public to learn what happened. But the most obvious fact about it, which cannot be covered up, is that the Secret Service allowed a 20-year-old shooter to access the ideal location for a sniper, even after he had been spotted acting suspiciously and using a laser rangefinder and had been watched for almost 30 minutes. This alone is enough to know the Secret Service that day was more Keystone Cop than cream of the crop.

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In closing, let me return to the agency I know best, having a lot of first-hand experience dealing with it—the ATF. Like all these federal law enforcement agencies, the ATF was created by Congress and is tasked with executing laws passed by Congress. Congress, in turn, represents and acts on behalf of the American people. In this context, the first and most important thing in bringing the ATF and these other agencies back under control is to impress firmly upon them the fact that they are accountable to Congress and are the servants and not the enemies of the American people—and in the case of the ATF, the fact that one of the people it would still be serving had ATF agents not killed him, is Bryan Malinowski.

Most of the cases in which I have dealt with the ATF have to do with companies that are licensed to sell firearms—companies that have FFLs—and are under threat of losing their license and thus being put out of business. The Gun Control Act of 1968 is the main body of law concerning this, and in 1986, this law was amended to allow the ATF to revoke an FFL only for a “willful” violation of the law. The willfulness standard was added “to ensure that licenses are not revoked for inadvertent errors or technical mistakes.” In recent years, however, the ATF has adopted a “Zero Tolerance Policy” that flies in the face of the willfulness standard—and, therefore, in the face of laws passed by Congress on behalf of the American people.

The ATF’s egregious treatment of Point Blank Firearms, a Michigan company that it is trying to put out of business, exemplifies the harm caused by ATF overreach.

During compliance inspections, the ATF is concerned mainly with determining three things:

• whether any firearms are missing,
• whether all the required records have been filled out and kept properly, and
• whether the licensed company is doing its job as the front line of defense against the criminal possession of firearms.

In the case of Point Blank, the ATF makes three claims, one of which amounts to an inadvertent clerical error. The other two are provably false. The first is that Point Blank was missing firearms transaction forms, which, if true, would be serious. The firearm purchaser fills out these forms containing information about the gun, the purchaser, and the background check results. They are the only way for the ATF to prove who ended up with a firearm or who possibly lied on the form. But every single form at Point Blank has been accounted for, complete with the customer’s signature and background check information.

The second claim is that Point Blank transferred a firearm to someone more than 30 days after his background check was run. Again, if true, this is a violation of the law. However, it has been proven that the firearm was transferred on the same day as the background check. Yet the Detroit field division of the ATF continues to threaten Point Blank with the loss of its license.

Point Blank is a client of mine, so I understand if you don’t take my word on faith. But if you look into it, you will see that the ATF is not only overreaching but also violating the rules it requires everyone else to follow. Indeed, in the many ATF inspections in which I’ve participated, the ATF’s records have not been accurate.

Do you remember Operation Fast and Furious, a program in which the ATF used licensed firearms dealers to funnel thousands of American firearms to Mexican drug cartels? Due to sheer incompetence, most of those firearms were lost and never recovered, and none of the high-level Mexican drug cartel members who ended up with the guns have been arrested. When U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout at the border, the weapon that was used to kill him was one of the guns that the ATF intentionally gave to the drug cartels. As a result, no heads ever rolled at the ATF.

Another area in which the ATF is violating federal law is keeping a firearms registry. The Firearms Owners Protection Act passed by Congress in 1986 specifically prohibits the ATF from having an electronic database of firearms and their owners. However, Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde recently visited the ATF records center in West Virginia and discovered that the ATF currently has over 900 million such records scanned and stored electronically.

So, how do we regain control over the ATF and other federal law enforcement agencies? It will not happen through congressional hearings that provide a forum for political showboating and partisan posturing and go nowhere. We The People must demand that Congress reassert its authority over these agencies in a way that will make it stick or abolish them and start anew.

If we don’t, Bryan Malinowski will have died in vain, and the rest of us, as if we are no longer Americans, will be looking over our shoulders.

Ryan Cleckner is an attorney, author, and firearms industry executive. A graduate of Arizona State University with a J.D. from the Quinnipiac University School of Law, he served as a special operations sniper in the U.S. Army’s 1st Ranger Battalion and completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

If you do not take an interest
in the affairs of your government,
then you are doomed to live under
the rule of fools.
Plato

Our So-called ‘Experts’
and their Silly Group-speak Letters

By: Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
September 23, 2024

One of the most preposterous recent trends has been the political use of supposed expert letters and declarations of support from so-called “authorities.”

These pretentious testimonies of purported professionalism are different from the usual inane candidate endorsements from celebrities and politicos.

Instead, politicians use them to impress and persuade the public to follow the “expertise,” “science,” or “authorities” to support all sorts of injurious initiatives and policies—of dubious value and otherwise without much political support.

Think of all the health experts who collectively swore to us that the COVID mRNA vaccinations would give us ironclad and lasting protection from infection and would have no side effects.

Other “authorities” assured us that the first nationwide lockdown in U.S. history would stop COVID without harming the country’s social or economic life.

Ditto testimonies about the pangolin-bat origins of COVID or the authenticity of the bogus Steele dossier.

Do we still remember the 1,200 healthcare “professionals” who, in June 2020, told us that hitting the streets in mass numbers to protest during the post-George Floyd riots was a legitimate exemption from their own prior insistence on a complete nationwide quarantine? Or, as these ideologues lectured us as “experts”:
“We wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response. We believe that the way forward is not to suppress protests in the name of public health but to respond to protesters demands in the name of public health.”

To convince the public to get behind the agendas of politicians—increasingly on the left—ideologues round up groups of politically kindred professors, researchers, retired officials, and former bureaucrats to show off their supposed expertise and convince the public by means of their “authority.”

Perhaps one of the most notorious examples was the “70 arms control and nuclear experts,” who in 2015 were gathered together by Obama subordinates to persuade Americans to support the administration’s bankrupt Iran Deal—the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

It was clearly a treaty designed to appease and empower Iran on empty promises that the theocracy would slow down its nuclear bomb program. And it was railroaded, illegally, through Congress without the constitutionally required two-thirds treaty vote of the Senate.

But what followed from the deal was an empowered Iran. Freed from the burden of embargoes, it subsequently raked in billions of dollars in oil revenues—to lavish upon its terrorist appendages Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

Trump withdrew from the farce in 2018. His actions quickly bankrupted the terrorist state with embargoes and sanctions—only to see Biden-Harris beg Iran, in vain, to reenter the deal in 2021.

What followed was a second round of U.S. appeasement and the greatest Iranian-fueled terrorist wave in the Middle East since the 1980 theocratic Iranian revolution.

None of those Iran-Deal experts have weighed in since.

Do we remember Joe Biden’s disastrous “Build Back Better” and related huge spending packages? Coupled with additional borrowing, they contributed to well over a combined $4 trillion deficit from 2021 to 2022.

The public at least knew well enough that the economy was beginning to boom after the gradual decline of COVID. Pent-up consumer demand was starting to skyrocket. Still, low interest rates encouraged reckless borrowing. Supply chains were still backed up and had not recovered from the national quarantines.

Stuff that the now cash-laden public wanted was often in short supply.

In other words, people wished to splurge on scarce goods—just as Biden printed $4 trillion of new “stimulus” to cool an already overheating economy.

The result would soon be hyperinflation topping at a 9% annual inflation rate. During the Biden-Harris administration’s four years, the price surge would leave key staple costs some 20-30 percent higher than in 2021.

Yet to ensure such madness, in 2021, we were assured there would be no such inflation. To convince us of the unconvincing, Team Biden rounded up “Seventeen recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences” to sign an implausible letter to reassure the public that the massive spending (called “investments”) was “long overdue.”

Worse still, the illustrious left-wing economists blindly doubled down on public fears of what soon would be crippling price hikes due to the massive borrowing: “Some, however, have invoked fears of inflation as a reason to not undertake these investments. This view is shortsighted.”

None of the seventeen Noble Prize winners ever apologized for their wrongheaded predictions and assessments that greenlighted destructive inflation.

In 2024, the academic economists were back at it again, this time manifested in media speak as “sixteen of the world’s most notable economists—all Nobel Prize winners.”

They were now signing another letter with the opposite agenda: warning that a putative President Trump’s third term would spur inflation through his supposedly reckless spending proposals!

In other words, when Biden wished to print trillions of dollars, partisan Nobel Prize winners in advance discounted the crippling hyperinflation that followed. But given their dislike of Trump, they reversed course, warning the country that Trump’s likely deficit spending was “irresponsible.”

Would that such suddenly tight-fisted, inflation-hawk Nobel laureates had earlier warned us of their concerns in 2021, before the inevitable Biden inflation emasculated the middle class.

Yet the worst groupthink letter of supposed authorities was the now infamous and abject lie spread by the supposedly illustrious “51 former intelligence officials.” In weaselly language, they pontificated that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”—an emphatic assertion designed, however, by the word “earmarks” to shield them from the charge of lying, which, in fact, they knew that they were.

The signees were supposedly our best and brightest, headed by former CIA directors John Brennan (who previously had confessed to lying twice to Congress) and Leon Panetta and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (who previously also confessed to lying once to Congress).

The point of the letter, like the aim of all such disingenuous politicking masked by supposed academic credentials and past government expertise, was political: to help Joe Biden’s evasions in his last 2020 debate on the eve of the election.

Armed with the fraudulent letter, Biden on the stage trashed Trump’s charge of Biden family corruption by citing the letter’s professional authentication that his son’s incriminating laptop was cooked up in Moscow.

The charge of “Russian disinformation” was, of course, a blatant lie—given the FBI already had taken possession of the laptop and knew it was genuine.

Everything about the letter stunk.

It was cooked up by then-Biden campaign aide Antony Blinken (later rewarded by becoming our current Secretary of State). He wrote to Michael Morrell, a past interim CIA director, asking him to round up supposedly retired intelligence grandees to thwart Trump’s plausible accusations that the authentic laptop’s contents proved the Biden family’s corruption and tax evasion.

In a close election, the purpose was to prevent a Biden debate disaster and thus the perception that the Biden family was crooked. Such convincing charges might have lost him the election.

Many of the supposed disinterested “retired” authorities were actually still employed as contractors by the CIA.

In the end, none of the experts apologized for their misinformation, even when one post-election poll revealed that their deliberate efforts to mislead the voting public had affected the outcome of the 2020 election. Our experts’ charge of “Russian disinformation” turned out to be classic “American election interference.”

We recently saw another such letter with the same old boilerplate. Lots of names (100!) of supposedly “retired” Republican “national security figures” emphatically endorsed Kamala Harris.

Given the predictably corrupt genre, almost anyone could have anticipated the letter’s contents. The list of “former” national security signees broadcast their bloated titles (but did not disclose whether any are now still contracting for the government) to assure us of their exalted expertise.

Like all such letters, the public has no idea who these obscure supposed expert national security figures are or even who they were when they worked for past Republican administrations. The point is to scare the public into voting for Democrat Harris because supposed experts, who have titles and were once insider Republicans, now despise Donald Trump and want to use their former positions and supposedly conservative credentials to convince us he’s dangerous. But it does not take a Ph.D. or J.D. to fathom that Afghanistan, Gaza, Israel, the broader Middle East in general, Ukraine, North Korea, and Iran were all quiet during the Trump administration. And all have blown up during the derelict Harris-Biden tenure. In the case of Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded other countries on his border in three of the last four administrations—except Donald Trump’s.

Given the directorship of Border Czar Kamala Harris, we no longer have a southern border. We have no idea where or who some 10 million illegal aliens are who entered the country under Harris—after she and Joe Biden blew up an inherited 2020 secure border from Trump.

No matter. Our Republican experts nevertheless assure us that Trump “is unfit to serve again as President, or indeed in any office of public trust,” while Harris, they insist, has “consistently championed the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.”

In such Orwellian language, destroying the border and federal immigration law with it, helping to unleash an unprecedented lawfare at election time to ruin a presidential rival, or urging court packing, an end to the electoral college and the senate filibuster are all championing “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.”

In sum, as a general rule, we should completely discount any election-cycle solicited letter from retired functionaries replete with their grandiose former titles.

They were inevitably rounded up by politicos. In many cases, the signees are likely angling for a return to government; in others, they are loudly virtue-signaling. In nearly all instances, they are usually wrong but will never issue a second letter of apology when subsequent events thoroughly discredit their concocted expertise and pretentiousness.

September 21, 2024
Special Edition
STOP KILLING SCHOOL KIDS
By: Marvin L. Covault,
Lt Gen US Army retired,
September 19, 2024

BACKGROUND:
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20, 1999. Seems like yesterday. According to Post Data, there have been 417 school shootings since Columbine which reportedly exposed over 383,000 students to school shooter violence and trauma.

So, you ask, what have we learned in the past 25 years about school shootings? Here are some thoughts:
First, we have little or no ongoing deterrence in most school security programs.

Two, the majority of schools rely almost entirely on local law enforcement to respond.

Three, this “911 outside-in” concept of operations will inevitably result in first responders arriving on the scene in some number of minutes after it is determined a shooter is on campus.

Four, in most cases, casualties from the shooter have occurred before first responders arrive.

Five, multiple law enforcement organizations will show up: police, Sheriff’s deputies, highway patrol, fire department, etc. Result, no one is in charge. First responders may not be familiar with the area of operations. What does “left-wing third floor of building B” mean to the first on-scene arrivals? Who is going to brief the arriving first responders?

I refer you to the Uvalde, TX massacre on 24 May 2022 at the Robb Elementary School. There were 376 responders and no one in charge. A 600-page report revealed that the shooter was locked in a classroom with 9-and 10-year-old children for 37 minutes. Armed law enforcement officers were outside the classroom waiting for a key to unlock the door while the shooter was executing 19 children and 2 teachers. And how many similar shooter incidents have there been with the same after-action reporting of delays and incompetence since Uvalde?

I rest my case as I outline what needs to change.

THESIS:
The 61 million parents of school-age children and the 82,423 School Board members are all hoping there will not be a shooting in their school. When there is a shooting, and there will be a next time, everyone hopes the first responders will get there quickly. Everyone is also hoping there will not be casualties.

News flash…….” Hope “is not a process!!

All school administrators have the primary responsibility of providing a safe and secure environment for learning. School-age parents are primarily responsible for demanding safety as the first priority in their schools.

Wake up, America. While well intended, the “911 outside-to-inside in minutes” concept of operations has not worked for the past 25 years and will not work for the next 25.

All of this begs the question: Is it possible to have an “inside-to-outside security force concept” that can and will respond to a shooter incident in seconds? Yes, it is within the art of the possible, and I can recommend that concept to all 129,000 schools nationwide.

WHERE TO BEGIN WHEN BUILDING A NEW CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS:
The concept can take on a life of its own by working from three simple questions.
First, what are the tasks to be performed?
Second, what are the conditions in the area of operations?
Third, what are the standards of performance that will result in success?

Tasks/conditions/standards are a proven starting point for solving complex, multifaceted operations involving people as operators.

Tasks: Have in place a continuous, internal, all-encompassing, highly trained security force capable of reacting in seconds to any potential or actual on-campus shooter. From this, there will be lists of individual and leadership tasks for everyone involved for which they must sustain proficiency.

Conditions: The conditions for this operation are consistent and relatively unchanging. It is a daylight operation, with large, perhaps multiple-floor buildings with many hallways. It is also a target-rich environment with at least hundreds, if not a few thousand students, faculty, and staff on site every school day.

Standards: An organization without standards is a failed organization. With a concept based on proactive response in seconds, this will then dictate the levels of training to ensure the overall objectives are met every time.

THE DOWNSIDE OF AN INSIDE-OUT SECURITY OPERATION:
The thought of having armed faculty on site every school day does not have a good feel. However, it is possible to develop a security force operation wherein a weapon will never be visible until the moment it becomes necessary to engage a shooter.

THE INTERNAL ON-SITE SECURITY FORCE:
The size will be dictated by the size of the building, the number of entrances, and the number of students.

For this scenario, let’s say the force consists of a leader and eight operators. The leader should be a person of authority on the staff every school day. The best solution is to assign security operations to the Vice Principal as his/her highest priority responsibility.

The operators should all be volunteers for this additional duty and work in two-person teams. The team approach increases my confidence that my teammate always has my back, and an operator will feel more confident about using deadly force without hesitation when it is called for.

Team schedules must be constantly coordinated so that at least one member is in the schoolhouse while classes are in session.

Security force members will train to be as comfortable with their weapons as they are with their toothbrushes.

Seek training assistance and training facilities from the County Sheriff and/or the local Chief of Police.

All potential team members in training will undergo a psych evaluation. The purpose is to determine if the operator has, under certain circumstances, the will to inflict deadly force on a shooter.

OPTIMIZE THE ENTIRE AREA OF OPERATIONS:
Some examples:
· Make it user-friendly, optimize relevant technology, and limit the number of entrances, preferably one with metal detectors.

· In compliance with fire safety regulations, all fire exits should be covered by a continuous-feed camera and an alarm system that continuously reports to the operations center whenever a door is opened.

· For operational reasons, name every potential entrance with a letter designation; door “A” will be Entrance Alfa or Bravo, Charlie, etc.

· All of the technology will flow to the Operations Center. In the best case, the center will be the Vice Principal’s office or adjoining room. Additional long-range cameras will continuously provide a view of the parking areas.

· Again, for operational clarity, every hallway should be named. For example, use states. Hallway Iowa, Colorado, etc. For example, “Entrance Charlie just breached, shooter is moving down Nebraska towards the intersection with Minnesota.”

· A “shooter alarm” should be on the wall with every fire alarm, both covered by a camera.

COMMUNICATIONS DISCIPLINE:
Every security team member and leader will be equipped with a small radio that is turned on and worn on their body every minute they are on campus.

Each day will begin with a communications check of every radio with the ops center. There will be absolutely zero chatter on the radios. The only time there is a transmission is to activate the teams and cause them to immediately deploy to their first designated station, according to the standard number of seconds.

EQUIPPING SECURITY OPERATORS:
Every team member will have a secure, immovable “box” at their place of work, be it a classroom or office. It will have a digital panel that opens in a couple of seconds with a 3-digit code known only to the operator.

Every box will hold a pistol, loaded with a round chambered and the safety on. There will also be a second loaded magazine. Additionally, there will be a lanyard to put around their neck with a master key to open every door in the building. Why the key? Remember the law enforcement personnel outside a classroom in Uvalde waiting for a key to unlock the door and thereafter engaging the shooter.

Hanging next to the box will be a red armored vest with “SECURITY” in big letters on the front and back. The vest will have a special pocket for the extra, fully loaded magazine.

The point of explaining the above is that within a few seconds after a breach has occurred, the ops center will know it, and seconds later, phone calls go out simultaneously to every operator. When the operators’ phones go off, they immediately get to their vests, open the box, and go out the door, armed and deploying to their first position, perhaps within 10-15 seconds.

AN EXAMPLE SCENARIO:
An alarm goes off in the ops center. The Vice Principal (call sign, Security 2) sees an open door from the reporting camera at fire exit Charlie and yells into the phone, “Breach, breach at fire exit Charlie, I say again, breach at fire exit Charlie.”

Through multiple training scenarios, Team 2 knows they are closest to fire exit Charlie and will deploy directly to that location. All teams will deploy to a location associated with a breach at exit Charlie. All teams will report to the ops center via phone.

“Team 4 out the door.” Each team reports “out the door” and reports again at their assigned destination.

About now, the Vice Principal, Security 2, has sounded the campus-wide alarm for a possible shooter on site. All teachers and staff immediately lock their doors, and everyone is on the floor face down.

Security 2 also calls 911 to report a possible shooter and tells the operator to stay on the line for in-process reports. “Fire exit breached; all operators are armed and deploying with red vests.”

“This is team 2 at Charlie, door open no one in sight.” If a shooter enters from Charlie, he/she will most likely be moving down the Alabama hallway. So, under the Charlie scenario, Team 4 knows they are to deploy to Alabama.

“This is Team 4. One male in Alabama headed for Texas has a long gun.”

Security 2 to 911 operator. “Shooter sighted inside armed with a long gun.”

Each of the Security Teams is deployed to a designated area associated with a Charlie breach. Similar but different scenarios exist for breaches at Exit Alfa, Bravo, Delta, Echo, etc.

The Security Teams will be trained for every scenario and know where to go without radio conversation. Based on those exercises, the Security Leader will know within about 5 seconds what time every team will be in place. THAT’S WHAT TRAINING TO ESTABLISHED STANDARDS IS ALL ABOUT, and it is not rocket science. It’s common sense.

The Principal (call sign Security 1) also has a radio and monitors all the action. He/she is the logical one to get outside to meet and brief the arriving first responders so they can assist, but also so they do not get in the way.

Back to the action:
“This is team 4. The shooter has seen us and is running to evade or escape. He will be at Team 3’s location in seconds.

“This is Team 3, Roger all, ambush set, IPRF (in position ready to fire), OUT.” The “OUT” signals to everyone that radio silence is now in effect, and the next transmission will be from Team 3.

“This is Team 3, shooter down, alive, need medics.”

When shots were fired, all teams abandoned their current locations and moved toward the sound of gunfire to assist if necessary.

Security 2 reports this to the 911 operator, who keeps the deploying first responders in the loop.

“This is Security 1. I just wanted to inform you that first responders are on their way. Team 3, please provide your location and shooter status.”

“Team 3 is located at the end of Montana. Shooter with leg injuries, bleeding heavily, applying pressure.”

“This is Security 1; I will escort medics to your location ASAP.”

Security 2 informs the 911 operator that the shooter is wounded and in custody.

“Security 2, this is Security 1, give the all-clear over the campus intercom. Tell all personnel to remain in their locked rooms until told to do otherwise. Also, provide this public address to 911 for immediate release……..A shooter at Smith Elementary is in custody as of 0942 this morning. The shooter did not have contact with any students. No one was injured. All classes have been canceled for the day. Students will be released at 11 o’clock. Students not having transportation will be kept in the dining hall.”

“Security 2 This is Security 1; all security team members are to report to the end of Montana immediately to debrief law enforcement when they arrive. The entire security team will attend the After Action Review (AAR) in the conference room at 1230.”

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS:
Timely situational awareness is critical in any operation; the larger the organization, the more difficult it becomes. However, in this case, with a limited number of security personnel and all of them hearing every phone transmission in real-time, situational awareness becomes positive as long as strict communication discipline is maintained.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (ROE):
Everyone associated with security must know the ROE and train them.

First, the first rule of ROE is the right of self-defense.

Second, if a shooter is obviously armed, preemptive fire is allowed.

Third, there are two levels of attack: to disable the shooter or use deadly force.

If the shooter has not raised his weapon to fire, consider incapacitating him/her by firing rapidly below the waste. If the shooter gives any indication that they are about to fire, aim for the center of mass with deadly force.

In the above scenario, Team 3 observed the shooter moving rapidly towards an exit with his rifle pointed down. Team 3 opened up rapidly, firing their semi-automatic pistols at the shooter, waste down to incapacitate him.

TRAIN THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY:
Hold periodic mandatory assemblies for everyone on campus. Go over the concept. Everyone must know to lock their door and get on the floor. Everyone will expect to hear rapid movement by the Security Teams in the hallways. Everyone will know there is a possibility of hearing shots fired. Everyone knows they will remain in place until they get an “all clear” from the principal only on the campus-wide speakers.

Drill into the heads of everyone at the assembly that it is essential that, IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING. IF YOU HEAR SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING. Tell them exactly what to do. Make the points by providing some examples. For example, have a student walk across the stage with a jacket on, and it appears that the butt of a pistol can be seen outside the pocket. Tell them that if they see a gun of any kind anywhere on campus and the person is not wearing a red security vest, they have permission to pull the nearest alarm located in the hallways.

Explain that the words “gun,” “rifle,” and “pistol” are absolutely forbidden on campus even if used in jest.

TRAIN THE STAFF AND FACULTY:
Ensure they know and understand the operations plan in detail and are 100% committed to it. If they are not, they must do something else.

Emphasize that if students see or hear something, they will likely tell their teacher. Tell the staff and faculty what they are to do immediately.

TRAIN THE PARENTS:
Hold a series of Parent Teacher Association evening meetings at the school early in the school year, as many as necessary, to ensure that everyone has had an opportunity to attend.

Explain the “Inside to out in seconds” concept in detail, emphasizing that the “911 outside to inside in minutes” will not keep your children safe. Explain the Uvalde, TX mess ending with 17 small children killed and hundreds more traumatized.

There undoubtedly will be some loud-mouth parents preaching to the audience that the school has no right to have armed teachers. Plan on it and be prepared to deal with it.

UNANNOUNCED EXERCISES:
Only one person will know there will be an unannounced exercise some morning. The Principal will call the Sheriff and Chief of Police at 0930 on a school day and tell them that he/she will begin the exercise in a few seconds.

The Principal gets on the campus intercom and says:
“This is an exercise, this is an exercise. There has just been an exercise breach at Exit Charlie. I repeat, this is only an exercise, but everyone is to take action as if it were real.”
Then the stopwatches come out. The Vice Principal calls the operators on the phone, activates the campus-wide alarm, and calls 911, emphasizing that it is an exercise only.

When it is concluded, all the times the operators checked in on their phones:
“Team 3 out the door,” “Team 4 at first location,” etc.

When it is over, from the ops center, calculate the number of seconds it took for every team to call in their reports and actions.

CONDUCT THE AAR IMMEDIATELY AFTER SCHOOL:
An After-Action Review is a tool developed by the U.S. Army and advertised by Harvard Business School as a valued technique to get crucial immediate feedback from any group or organization-wide activity that can be fed back into improvements. The “R” in AAR does not stand for “report”. A report can take days to months to prepare and may be keyed to finding fault and placing blame. While the AAR keys on individual accountability and immediate fixes.

An AAR is a gathering of the key players to answer three questions:
One, what did we do well? In this security exercise, the answers would depend on the timing of all the communications and deployments.

Two, what could we have done better? Team 3 is new and missed the standard time of getting out the door. Team 2 initially deployed to the wrong destination. The Sheriff’s deputies didn’t arrive for 20 minutes after the 911 call, etc.

Three, how do we institutionalize the fixes? On Saturday morning, we will go through all the breach scenarios again to improve timing and communications, etc.

An AAR is not a blame game. Its success is based on honest accountability from every leader and player.

Hundreds of AARs take place throughout the U.S. Army every day.

A SALARIED SECURITY OFFICER ON CAMPUS:
They could play a role: Be visible at the main entrance every morning to monitor the metal detector. Conduct the morning radio communications check. Physically visit every entry point to ensure it is locked and alarms and cameras are functioning. Occupy the operations center when the Vice Principal is absent. Stand in for a missing security team member.

CONCLUSIONS:
Many schools nationwide have a retired law enforcement officer on salary and have declared themselves “secure.” They are not secure. One person cannot be in more than one place at a time to successfully deal with a security breach. Security will result from a highly trained and capable multi-person security force.

Local law enforcement first responders can never match the reaction times of an internal security force present every minute of every school day.

Once the equipment is in place, this is not an expensive operation by a group of faculty volunteers.

This proactive inside-out-in-seconds concept of operations can deter potential shooters. Credible deterrence is a powerful and effective force.

BOTTOM LINE:
Lessons that should have been learned at Columbine 25 years ago have never replaced the 911 outside-in concept. We can, and we have to do better to stop killing kids in our schools.

This is not a federal or state government issue. God help us if the Departments of Education get involved with thousands of bureaucrats and reams of regulations to guide us. This is a local issue that can and should be solved locally. Just do it.

There is an old saying that sort of defines what is going on with respect to school security: “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” What we “got” is more dead kids. There is one more that is appropriate when dealing with an organization (such as a school district): “Change or die.” In this case, literally more kids will die if we don’t change.

Note to subscribers: If you agree with this concept, please send a copy to your local Board of Education and Superintendent of Schools for their consideration.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of two books, Vision to Execution and Fix the Systems, Transform America, as well as the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com

If you do not take an interest
in the affairs of your government,
then you are doomed to live under
the rule of fools.
Plato

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LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report
Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Having problems reading this email? To read the news, visit LifeNews.com.
Top Stories

• Abortion Pill Kills Woman, Left Remains of Her Unborn Babies Inside Her
• Kamala Harris Lies About Woman Who Died From Abortion Pill, Falsely Claims Pro-Life Law Killed Her
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Bishop Gracida vs. Layman Feser: Bp. Gracida who would have to be part of such a “universal acceptance” demonstrated that Feser’s statement is false
September 15, 2024

Chris Jackson
@BigModernism

Trump is a non-Catholic politician having to run for President in a 60% pro-abort nation trying to save us from an anti-Christian Hell on earth. Francis holds a position where all he needs to is teach the Catholic Faith and all he can do is spout errors & heresy & spread scandal.
Quote

Edward Feser

@FeserEdward
·
Sep 14
Catholics who defend Pope Francis’s doctrinal ambiguities are eerily like conservatives who defend Trump’s betrayal of the pro-life cause. They shrilly tie themselves in logical knots to uphold what is really a cult of personality rather than any clear and coherent principles.
7:13 PM · Sep 14, 2024
·
319
Views
Is a layman bound under pain of sin to suspend his rational intellect and submit to a public heretic?

[https://nonvenipacem.org/2024/09/14/is-a-layman-bound-under-pain-of-sin-to-suspend-his-rational-intellect-and-submit-to-a-public-heretic/]

” As Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote in his Historical Tract on the Arian Controversy, it was the overwhelming resistance of the laity to the Arian heresy which eventually persuaded the majority of bishops ‘who were either Arian or semi-Arian’ to support the efforts of Saint Athanasius and the Pope that eventually led to the condemnation of the heresy at the Council of Nicaea,” – Bishop René Henry Gracida, the Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi [https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/09/retired-texas-bishop-signs-filial-correction-pope-francis]

Edward Feser said that “arguments claiming to establish the invalidity of Benedict’s resignation are no good” for the “reason is that, for the Church as a whole corporate body to accept as pope a man who is not in fact the pope would be contrary to her indefectibility, and thus contrary to Christ’s promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against her. This is just standard, traditional Catholic theology. (Robert Siscoe [and John Salza] provides a useful overview of the main points here and here.) Hence the morally unanimous acceptance [universal acceptance] of Francis as pope in the years immediately following his election is by itself enough to ensure that he really is pope.” [[http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2022/05/benedict-is-not-pope-reply-to-some.html]

In 2020, John Salza claimed that Francis was “universally accepted”

“In no case were any of these antipopes universally accepted by the entire episcopacy following their election, as in the case with Pope Francis.”

[http://www.trueorfalsepope.com/p/annbarnhardt-is-liar-and-fool-byjohn.html?m=1]

On March 23, 2019, Bishop Rene Gracida who would have to be part of such a “universal acceptance” demonstrated that Salza’s statement is false:

WHY DO INTELLIGENT MEN PURSUE THE APPLICATION OF AN OBSOLETE CONCEPT “UNIVERSAL ACCEPTANCE” TO THE PROBLEM OF THE INVALIDITY OF THE PAPACY OF FRANCIS THE MERCIFUL IN THIS DAY AND AGE OF INSTANT ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION AROUND THE WORLD

WHY DO INTELLIGENT MEN PURSUE THE APPLICATION OF AN OBSOLETE CONCEPT “UNIVERSAL ACCEPTANCE” TO THE PROBLEM OF THE INVALIDITY OF THE PAPACY OF FRANCIS THE MERCIFUL IN THIS DAY AND AGE OF INSTANT ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION AROUND THE WORLD

I am in receipt of an email from Steve Skojec, publisher of the website OnePeterFive in which he defends his posts in which he argues for the validity of the election of Francis the Merciful on the basis of the “universal acceptance” of Francis’ election by the world’s Catholic population.

The idea of “universal acceptance” of the election of popes of the past may have had it’s origin in the first centuries of the Church when popes were chosen by acclamation of the assembled citizens of Rome, and perhaps later when the princes and kings of Europe decided on the legitimacy of papal contestants in the time of the Avignon captivity of the papacy.

But the idea of “universal acceptance” as the principle determining the validity of Francis’ claim to the Chair of Peter is absurd in this day of instant electronic communication. There is not a world-wide Pew or Gallup poll that can determine the degree of “acceptance” of the Bergolian regime as valid by the world’s Catholic population.

From the moment that Francis appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica improperly dressed and accompanied by men of known or suspected homosexual orientation many Catholics besides myself were shocked and dismayed.

Almost immediately almost every word publicly uttered by Francis shocked Catholic sensibilities, such as telling the woman with several children to “stop breeding like rabbits.” Many Catholics withheld their “acceptance” and adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

Then the Amoris Laeticia debacle unfolded and now an even larger percentage of Catholic around the world began to express reservations about the ‘papacy’ of Francis the Merciful. There was never universal acceptance of the validity of Jorge Bergoglio.

One thing is certain, the popes of the Twentieth Century were aware that the election of future popes was now no longer subject to the interference of kings and princes as in the past, now the corruption of the democratic processes for choosing the heads of nations was threatening the papal conclaves of the Church. Pope Paul VI, perhaps alarmed by the forces for radical reform of the Church follow the lead of his recent predecessor and published a revision of the Apostolic Constitution which governs papal conclaves.

It is unthinkable that Pope Saint John Paul II was unaware of the plotting that began with the St. Gallen Mafia in the early 1990s.

His magnificent Apostolic Constituion, Universi Dominci Gregis, was his prescient action to head off the corruption of the conclaves of the future. Yet, the rot at the center of the hierarchy had progress to such point that Jorge Bergoglio was almost elected instead of Joseph Ratzinger, but the St. Gallen conspirators succeed in 2013 with the election of Francis the Merciful.

What is the sure test of the validity of the election of a cardinal to the papacy? It is not the medieval concept of ‘universal acceptance.’ It is compliance with the law of the Church. The Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis is the only law in effect since it was published by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1992.

If there is one characteristic that is common to the leadership of the Church since the Second Vatican Council is disregard for law, all law, divine law and canon law. Men who would be architects of the Church of the Future ignore the law of God and the law of His Church. That is why some cling to the outmoded concept of ‘universal acceptance’ of a man who obtained the Chair of Peter through the manipulations of many who by their immoral lives reveal their contempt for law, all law, including Divine Law.

His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, having known a prodigious amount of information on this,
was fully knowledgeable in the details of dogmatic and doctrinal principles which previous
to his Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis, could and would be applied to resolve
questions about the validity of a particular historic Papacy, and that His Holiness categorically
and specifically intended to dispense with, and utterly to preempt, the need for, and use of,
any principles which had been applied historically to resolve ambiguities and doubts
about the incumbency of any Pontiff putatively emerging from a Conclave to which His
Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis applied.

This means that because the status of Monsignor Bergoglio can be determined completely
by a fair and just application of Universi Dominici Gregis without reference to any guidance
external or extrinsic to such Constitution, having recourse to such historic doctrinal and
dogmatic concepts, e.g., universal acceptance, is neither material nor relevant, and never
necessary or proper for the rational discernment of the question of whether or not
Monsignor Bergoglio was validly elected as a true Roman Pontiff. The “scienter” Promulgation
determines this certainty of discernment confined within the “four corners” of the Constitution:

“This Constitution . . . is to be fully and integrally implemented and is to serve as a guide
for all to whom it refers. As determined above, I hereby declare abrogated all Constitutions
and Orders issued in this regard by the Roman Pontiffs, and at the same time I declare
completely null and void anything done by any person, whatever his authority, knowingly
or unknowingly, in any way contrary to this Constitution.”[Promulgation Clause, Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis]

This language does not admit of any exception, and certainly not an exception based on
the degree to which a putative Pope has “acceptance” as such. “Universal acceptance”
originated in an age before the printing press, a time when what was required was known
by few and what was performed was understood by even less. It simply has no place
in discerning a Conclave called subject to Universi Dominici Gregis. What Skojec,
Does not seem to understand is that, long in advance and lawfully, His Holiness, Pope
John Paul II, has forbidden anyone from resorting to “universal acceptance”
or any other principle extrinsic to Universi Dominici Gregis to discern the outcome of papal election.

Thus, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, having known a prodigious amount of information on this,
was fully knowledgeable in the details of dogmatic and doctrinal principles which previous
to his Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis, could and would be applied to resolve
questions about the validity of a particular historic Papacy, and His Holiness categorically
and specifically intended to dispense with, and utterly to preempt, the need for, and use of,
any such principles which had been applied historically to resolve ambiguities and doubts
about the incumbency of any Pontiff putatively emerging from a Conclave to which His
Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis applied.

This means that because the status of Monsignor Bergoglio can be determined completely
by a fair and just application of Universi Dominici Gregis without reference to any guidance
external or extrinsic to such Constitution, having recourse to any such historic doctrinal and
dogmatic concept, e.g., universal acceptance, is neither material nor relevant, and never
necessary or proper for the rational discernment of the question of whether or not
Monsignor Bergoglio was validly elected as a true Roman Pontiff. The “scienter” Promulgation
determines this certainty of discernment confined within the “four corners” of the Constitution:

“This Constitution . . . is to be fully and integrally implemented and is to serve as a guide
for all to whom it refers. As determined above, I hereby declare abrogated all Constitutions
and Orders issued in this regard by the Roman Pontiffs, and at the same time I declare
completely null and void anything done by any person, whatever his authority, knowingly
or unknowingly, in any way contrary to this Constitution.” [Promulgation Clause, Apostolic Constitution, Universi Dominici Gregis]

This language does not admit of any exception, and certainly not an exception based on
the degree to which a putative Pope has “acceptance” as such. “Universal acceptance”
originated in an age before the printing press, a time when what was required was known
by few and what was performed was understood by even less. It simply has no place
in discerning a Conclave called subject to Universi Dominici Gregis.

Some do not seem to understand that, long in advance and lawfully, His Holiness, Pope
John Paul II, has forbidden and anyone from resorting to “universal acceptance”
or any other principle extrinsic to Universi Dominici Gregis in order to discern the outcome.

[https://abyssum.org/2019/03/23/why-do-intelligent-men-pursue-the-application-of-an-obsolete-concept-universal-acceptance-to-the-problem-of-the-invalidity-of-the-papacy-of-francis-the-merciful-in-this-day-and-age-of-instant-elec/]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”

[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html

– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.’”

– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes:

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1%5D

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Pope Francis Urges Voters To Choose ‘The Lesser Evil’ In 2024 Election

September 13, 2024

Pope Francis weighed in on the 2024 U.S. presidential election on Friday, offering his perspective on the importance of voters making thoughtful decisions. The pontiff urged voters to choose “the lesser evil” when faced with challenging options.

He has previously criticized former President Donald Trump for his anti-migrant policies. Additionally, the pope has expressed contempt for Vice President Kamala Harris’ wholehearted support for abortion rights, labeling both Trump’s and Harris’ views as being “against life.”

“One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” Francis said while talking to reporters aboard the papal plane. “Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”

Though it’s shifting rightward, the Catholic vote has historically been divided, with a significant portion of the faithful leaning towards conservative policies, especially on issues like abortion, while others align with more progressive stances on economic justice, immigration and social welfare.

However, the issue of abortion is highly important to devout Catholics, as the Catholic Church strongly opposes it. For many practicing Catholics, especially those who attend Mass regularly and are more engaged with their faith, abortion is a defining issue when it comes to political decisions.

So, what do you think? Will the Pope’s less-than-enthusiastic views about Harris affect the outcome in swing states with sizable Catholic populations, such as Pennsylvania?

Keep Elon Musk and Speech Free

By: Joshua Rauhand & Gregory Kearney
The Washington Examiner
September 5, 2024
(Emphasis added)

Former Labor Secretary turned TikTok influencer Robert Reich just last week penned an op-ed in the Guardian suggesting that “regulators around the world should threaten [Elon] Musk with arrest” if he refuses to “stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”

Funnily enough, Reich has for years strongly insinuated the existence of some nefarious link between former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that won Trump the presidency. Mind you, this link proved to be vastly exaggerated, if not completely false. One wonders whether Reich would hold himself to his standard for “disseminating lies,” necessitating his own arrest. We won’t hold our breath.

To be fair, Reich is not alone. Many prominent leaders have called for greater censorship online to “combat misinformation.” In 2022, the Biden administration briefly attempted to establish a “Disinformation Governance Board” (i.e., a 1984-style Ministry of Truth) through the Department of Homeland Security to combat misinformation online. The administration ultimately pulled that effort after significant public backlash.

But recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that during the pandemic, Biden administration officials constantly pressured the company to “censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” despite emphatic denials by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in testimony before Congress in 2022.

Much of the normalization of this sort of discourse and behavior came as a consequence of the 2016 election results both in the United States presidential election and in the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” referendum.

Many within each country’s respective political classes deemed these results to have destabilizing effects on democracies. The argument goes that we now need government bureaucrats monitoring the internet, choosing what opinions should be allowed and disallowed because otherwise, Russia will elect our president.

But is this true? Was the 2016 election decided by a bunch of Russian troll farms somewhere in Moscow? Seems unlikely. Last year, researchers published a paper in Nature Communications studying 1,500 U.S. voters’ attitudes and voting behavior and their exposure to Russian-produced content on X (then Twitter).

The researchers ultimately concluded that just 1% of users studied accounted for 70% of the total exposure to Russian accounts, and the exposure was heavily concentrated among users who strongly identified as Republicans and thus were already likely to vote for then-candidate Trump. Finally, domestic sources far overshadowed this information, which ultimately led the authors to conclude that there was “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaigns and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

Beyond the empirical question about whether foreign “misinformation” definitively affects voters in any meaningful way, it’s worth pondering who exactly would be the altruistic arbiters of what we are allowed to see and say online. Would we be forced to outsource this responsibility to some supposedly unbiased group of “fact checkers”?

In a 2023 report from the Washington Free Beacon, reporters discovered that nearly 100% of political contributions from self-styled “fact-checkers” went to Democrats. So, ironically, the very people we are informally trusting to discern fact from fiction are some of the country’s most biased people.

Unfortunately, Reich and others who have advocated for centralized internet censorship or arresting those who attempt to resist it have refused to show their work when making extraordinary claims about the impact of so-called “misinformation.”

If the last five years have taught us anything—whether it was the Hunter Biden laptop story being falsely deemed foreign disinformation by intelligence officials or during the pandemic when government officials censored true stories of vaccine injuries to avoid “vaccine hesitancy”—it is that the government is not capable of judiciously handling information for the public.

Americans must resist these measures and call them out for what they are: threats to our civil liberties and way of life.

Joshua Rauh is a professor of finance at Stanford University, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and served at the president’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2019 to 2020. Gregory Kearney is a researcher at the Hoover Institution.

August 18, 2024
Special Edition
The Week That Was.
By: Victor Davis Hanson

Part One: The Middle East Cauldron
Israel is certainly in dire straits. The U.S., for the first time since the Carter administration, is now unapologetically anti-Israel. It leverages military aid to Israel to coerce concessions to Hamas and destabilize the Netanyahu government. Washington itself is rudderless, with a debilitated and evaporating president, a puerile and now mute vice president, and a Democratic ticket that is mostly guided by 200,000 pro-Hamas voters in Michigan.

Israel’s own Left is increasingly pro-Biden and supports its interference in Israeli politics and against its own elected government.

Over 100,000 northern Israelis are displaced. Iran is on the verge of attacking the Israeli homelands with supposedly greater force than its prior barrage. Europe, the U.S., and the new China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Turkey axis all seem oddly aligned in their condemnation of Israel—this after Hamas pulled a medieval slaughter of some 1,200 Israelis in a time of peace.

Yet, all that said, Israel is still in an ascending position.

It has all but destroyed Hamas—its command-and-control leadership, subterranean headquarters, munitions storage and production, and its underground transit system. Almost all the planners of October 7 are dead. Those in hiding likely will be in a few months.

Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis are ready to strike in unison but oddly remain in an unforeseen, if temporary, pause phase—and perhaps for a variety of reasons.

One is that the Iran gang is now conducting a full cost-to-benefit analysis. Tehran, especially, is trying to figure out how much damage its consortia will incur if their actions soon match their loud, existential threats.

The rubble of Hamas in Gaza seems a warning of what Shiite Beirut and its rocket depositaries could soon look like—far worse than the flotsam and jetsam of 2006. Or if the logic of absolute war were to follow, Gaza City is an apocalyptic vision of what the critical infrastructure of Iran itself might soon resemble.

The loud and blowhard Houthis, in a nanosecond, lost their port facilities. That represented a hundred-million-dollar infrastructure loss. And their international Western and Chinese patrons may not wish to replace the bombed-out cranes and docks—given the Houthis’ terrorism in the Red Sea’s international maritime lanes.

Iran knows that during its last exchange, a handful of Israeli rockets did more damage than over 320 Iranian counterpart missiles launched at Israel. But more importantly, Israel has now taken out Hamas and radical Islamic terrorist leaders in three major Islamic cities—Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran. Iran and its surrogates know that even the Mossad and the IDF could not have pulled those hits off without inside helpers, who apparently hate their own terrorist leaders more than the Zionist entity. How many more are there, and where and who are they? The theocracy wonders.

The danger now, however, is that Israel’s enemies know that the waning Biden presidency and the 50/50 chance of an even more sympathetic Harris presidency both suggest that there is a window of opportunity for attack between August 2024 and late January 2025—and possibly beyond—when Israel’s traditional patron will not be a reliable counter to Iran.

Moreover, Iran also fears the possibility of a Trump presidency in January 2025. That scenario would likely allow Israel the wherewithal to do whatever it deemed necessary to reestablish theater-wide deterrence—while Washington would warn Tehran to stay out of any Hezbollah-Israeli border war.

Add it all up, and we are entering a dangerous six-month window of war where Israel’s enemies may do something stupid on the rationale that such an opportunity of U.S. disengagement from Israel may not recur.

Part Two: Recalling Coups, Conspiracies, and Cabals
Harris now says she will give one press conference before the conclusion of August. In other words, she admits that since the implosion of Biden and her immediate coronation, she has not spoken impromptu for more than a minute or two—the green zone, on-her-own maximum time her handlers have accorded her on rare occasions.

After that time is up, she is yanked, lest she confirm to the world that she cannot articulate a complete thought, will exhaust her tiny vocabulary in seconds, and thus initiate her loopy, wash/rinse/spin cycle of gobbledygook and accompanying cackling.

Her similar neo-socialist counterpart, Tim Walz, has the opposite problem but the same left-wing solution—muzzling. He is bombastic, a blowhard who cannot stop talking and thus cannot stop fabricating, exaggerating, and sometimes lying about his past and bio. His herky-jerky stage presence suggests more the work of a clown or court jester than the experience of a seasoned governor and politician.

The solution for both is what saved a similarly challenged Biden in 2020—seclusion, or at least teleprompted events without any questioning or impromptu interviews.

This media-Democratic-Orwellian conspiracy of silence is the latest coup in what has been a series of orchestrated cabals and conspiracies (in the words of liberal journalist Molly Ball, who bragged of leftwing successful machinations in 2020 with just those two cabal/conspiracy nouns).

When you add up all these clandestine efforts between 2020–2024, what you conclude is a systematic effort to undermine democracy and constitutional government by the very self-appointed guardians who warned us that “Democracy dies in darkness.” A more appropriate Washington Post motto might now read, “Our version of democracy thrives in darkness; yours will die in light.”

So, ponder these cabals; I count at least seven. Here they are:

1) The initial backroom effort was to erase the 2020 primary frontrunners Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg and, in their place, anoint Biden, who had not won a single primary.
2) Using a clearly enfeebled Biden as a “moderate” veneer to mask his hard-left handlers’ implementation of a virtual third Obama term.
3) In June 2024, Biden was coerced to hold a historic “stress-test” debate with Trump before both conventions, when neither was yet nominated and in time to remove Biden from state ballots, should he publicly implode on stage: The event was pulled off by Biden baiting Trump to take up his challenge.
4) The coup to remove Biden immediately after his expected disastrous meltdown, given the supposedly hale and dynamic president would likely sink the Democratic Congress and lose the White House: His party nomination abdication was pulled off by threatening Biden with 25th Amendment removal from his very presidency should he not drop his reelection bid.
5) The backroom crowning of Harris as the Democratic nominee—before the convention, without a single won delegate, without ever entering a primary, by nullifying the wishes of 15 million primary voters, and squashing any talk of an open convention or rival candidates.
6) The radical change in a matter of hours of the state DNC/media Orwellian narrative: The fit-as-a-fiddle Biden, his tenure protected by his Spiro-Agnew-like choice of an empty pantsuit Vice President Harris—who was viewed as so incompetent than even an enfeebled Biden was preferable—was suddenly denounced as unfit. He was blasted as selfish for not abdicating hours after his debate meltdown.
7) And then, once Biden did as directed, he was abruptly deified as a Washingtonian in his self-sacrifice and allowed to continue his presidency.

The narrative concerning Harris’s incompetence and embarrassment in a matter of hours was rescripted to a female version of Barack Obama. Note how the consortium brazenly believed the public would not object to these Pravda-like corrections, given that everything they swore was gospel for years went down the memory hole in just hours.

The media/DNC effort to seclude Harris/Walz from public scrutiny, run out the 85-day clock, and install the most radical socialist government in U.S. history: The public will hear as much unscripted from either candidate as Cubans once heard from Castro or Russians from Brezhnev.

Part Three: – Can this Cabal Be Cracked?
Trump/Vance have less than 12 weeks to crack the Harris/Walz/DNC/media/donor/ backroom conspiracy and expose the Democratic ticket as the first Biden administration on steroids. Can it be done?

Debates? Trump is again negotiating for debates. He must avoid the 2020 first debate performance when his disruptions gained sympathy for a bewildered Biden (who was not confused but saved by Trump’s interruptions).

Trump’s second 2020 debate was far more successful, but it took place after 50 million voters had already cast early/mail-in ballots and thus was not entirely advantageous. His 2024 debate destroyed Biden, but Trump winged it and let the ossified Biden self-destruct rather than confront him with detailed counterarguments.

Trump should always avoid generic insults, especially against a black woman: labeling Harris as “stupid,” a “disaster,” “horrible,” or “dumb” tells the audience little. The key is to demonstrate in detail why that is so, e.g.:

Why, Vice President, do you talk of what you will do and what your agenda will be when right now you have half a year left as Vice President with a vanished president—in other words, why not implement your visions now?

Why, Vice President, do you avoid speaking ad hoc to journalists or crowds?

What was the real purpose of letting in 10 million unaudited illegal aliens? Did you care about the people whose small towns were swamped with thousands of illegal aliens without background checks? What did you think defunding the police would accomplish other than to render the poor defenseless?

And so on—in detail.

The audience can assess whether Harris is supposedly “stupid” or not by the caliber of her repartee and answers. And she may prove that if given a chance to debate without name-calling.

Cannot someone ask Harris:

Why are you not proud of letting in 10 million aliens—you seemed to be until this election year?

Why did you drain the strategic petroleum reserve at midterm time and suddenly start encouraging oil and gas pumping—but only at election time?

What was so great about bailing out felonious rioters and defunding the police? Please explain.”

Is there still a despised late Lee Atwater sort in the Republican Party, who is now postmortem roundly trashed (and by just those Obama ethicists who ran the McCain senile ads (and the Romney dog and high-school hazing ads) as too mean?

But in 1988, after Atwater closed a 17-point deficit in less than two months, he was considered a crazy genius for redefining Dukakis, who went from a supposedly apolitical “technocrat,” “professional,” and virtual nonpartisan shoo-in who built the “Massachusetts miracle” into a hard-core leftist whose policies endangered his state, spiked crime, nearly bankrupted it, and did nothing to clean up its pollution.

Note that Obama vastly outspent Romney in 2012 on negative ads that were also much more toxic and effective.

When Obama got through with the aristocratic Romney (who perhaps preferred to lose nobly than win ugly?), the Republican nominee was reduced to a selfish tax cheat (remember also Sen. Harry Reid’s infamous brag of that bogus 2012 tax-cheat campaign lie that “It worked, didn’t it?”).

We saw night after night Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, pushing the wheelchair-bound over cliffs (thereby executing granny). And again, Romney was the scourge who supposedly never talked to his garbage man—as well as having an elevator in his house and whose MS-stricken wife, God forbid, was an elite equestrian.

Add in the debate “moderator” Candy Crawley attacking Romney, hijacking the debate, and becoming an ally of Obama on stage.

Ditto the asymmetry in the earlier 2008 campaign against McCain. Do we remember the planted rumors of his “affair” or the ads suggesting he was demented or that he was a virtual war criminal or a veritable crook?

The point is not to revel in dirty ads but instead not to fall victim to the leftwing pseudo-morality that it abhors negative advertising when, in recent years, it has been the past master of destroying candidates through one-minute hit pieces as a way of redefining their opponents.

As for Trump’s press conferences and rallies:

· Hold them weekly to highlight the differences between Trump and the secluded Harris.
· Ensure they are 25 minutes—not over an hour.
· Avoid all ad hominem insults not just because they are “mean” (Harris routinely calls Trump a “perpetrator”) but because they don’t give any detail to convince the listener why the insult may be true.
· Rallies also should not go over 90 minutes. They should accentuate the positives of what Trump did in the past as a guide to how he will even do better in the future. Don’t waste time settling scores with perceived old tormentors, especially when they are of your own party and have endorsed you.
· Ignore the 2020 election. It is ancient history. Learn privately from it, but don’t publicly beat it to death.
· Don’t brag about crowd sizes. Observers can see the vast assembly without the need to claim that Trump’s rallies are bigger than those once held by Martin Luther King. Demonstrate popularity and superiority without a need to assert it.

History now begins from mid-August to November 5. Anything before then is increasingly irrelevant. Trump must play smart. Given that his dawdling opponents are trying to run out the clock, it is a beat-the-clock 2-minute football drill.

If you do not take an interest
in the affairs of your government,
then you are doomed to live under
the rule of fools.
Plato

Who Is ‘Destroying Democracy
in Darkness?’

By: Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
August 22, 2024

The 2023-2024 campaign season is not just the strangest on record; it’s also arguably the most anti-democratic.

Ostensibly, the Democratic Party has claimed over the last decade that Donald Trump posed a continued and existential threat to the republic. That allegation subsequently justified a variety of anti-democratic means to neuter his first two presidential candidacies, his presidency, and now his third and final run for the White House.

A near decade ago, we witnessed the 2015-2016 Hillary Clinton/Democratic National Committee/FBI-assisted effort to plant the false accusation of Trump-Russian collusion to warp the 2016 election. That gambit centered around the fraudulent Steele dossier and nearly fatally crippled the Trump 2016 campaign. That hoax would later sidetrack 22 months of his presidency before being proven a fantasy.

On the eve of the 2020 election, the left next birthed the Russian laptop disinformation campaign. That hoax also warped a presidential debate with false charges that Hunter Biden’s own incriminating laptop was once again the work of Russians seeking to conspire with Trump.

Those unusual efforts continued during the Biden administration. For the first time in election history, the allies of one campaign sought to persuade some 16 states to try to remove a major party’s likely nominee from their primary and general election ballots. The plan was to smother a Trump third presidential bid in its infancy and thus once again prevent the people from accepting or rejecting his candidacy.

Nearly simultaneously, four federal, state and local prosecutors filed dozens of felony charges against Trump. They all shared some strange similarities. These indictments would likely not have been filed, had Trump not run for office. Nor would any of them have proceeded had Trump not been a controversial conservative Republican seeking reelection. Almost all the charges had not been filed against any other prior candidate and rarely a private citizen. Some of them could just as easily have been lodged against Joe Biden and his son.

Some indictments and convictions may still achieve their objectives of bankrupting, jailing, or keeping Trump inert during the campaign’s final weeks. One of the Georgia prosecutors had undisclosed meetings with the Biden White House counsel. President Biden himself, on the eve of the federal prosecutor Jack Smith’s indictment, all but declared his campaign rival Trump guilty.

Biden’s chief of the White House had also met privately and secretly with Smith. In an unprecedented fashion, Smith rushed his prosecution to ensure it synchronized with the 2024 campaign.

Similar federal charges could just as easily have led to President Joe Biden’s indictment if the special counsel in that case had not claimed that he could not convince a jury to convict a culpable but cognitively challenged Biden.

Another Biden prosecutor mysteriously left his top position at the Justice Department to join the Alvin Bragg Manhattan prosecutorial staff.

Nonetheless, Trump had survived collusion, disinformation, de-balloting, lawfare, and a subsequent assassination attempt to surge far ahead of Biden in the June presidential polls. Biden’s poll collapse prompted Democratic donors and high-ranking politicos to force a stress-test presidential debate before either candidate was even nominated at their respective conventions.

When Biden imploded in the debate, a supposedly once-fit president was suddenly declared impaired. A previously uninspiring Vice President, Kamala Harris, was abruptly transformed into a superb replacement candidate. Biden was forced to resign his candidacy to save his last five months in office from a Democrat-threatened removal via the 25th Amendment. The primary votes of nearly 15 million voters were abruptly nullified.

Harris, who had neither won a primary nor a single delegate through an election, was suddenly coronated as the new Biden replacement candidate—without an open convention contest or vote. The donor-politico class further decided that, like a challenged Biden in 2024, Harris could not be allowed to hold press conferences. She would do few, if any, live interviews, unscripted town halls, or any other venue, given fears her visible liabilities might endanger her candidacy.

So, the Party that had proclaimed democracy dies in darkness now favors the shadows as the preferable means of obtaining and retaining power—whether by ignoring primary voters, holding open conventions, or holding transparent venues with the voters.

Add up the last decade’s purchased collusion caper, unprecedented two impeachments, orchestrated disinformation hoax, efforts to de-ballot Trump, warping of the legal system to jail him and destroy his candidacy, forced removal of an unpopular but unwilling President Biden from the Democrat ticket, virtual anointing of Harris by fiat in his place, and the current collusion with a compliant media to avoid public scrutiny and cross-examination of Harris.

And the conclusion?

Have those who lectured us about democracy in danger now decided to save it by destroying it?