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Something is Rotten in Buenos Aires – The Remnant… “Why won’t Bergoglio visit his homeland… Is Bergoglio afraid of the wrath of clergy abuse victims who were ignored, scorned, and dismissed by him when he was Bishop and Archbishop of Buenos Aires?”

March 16, 2023

Something is Rotten in Buenos Aires – The Remnant Newspaper

:

Bergoglio’s curious avoidance of Argentina prompts some serious questions—ones which should have been addressed by the Papal Conclave in 2013.

Has Bergoglio been told to stay away from Argentina?

Would enemies of Bergoglio cause a public scene if he returned to Buenos Aires?

Did Bergoglio leave Argentina with bad blood among factions in the Church?

Are there dark secrets about Bergoglio that may surface should he return like the conquering hero?

Is Bergoglio fearful that he would not receive a warm and large welcome from his fellow Argentines?

Is Bergoglio not viewed as merciful and joyful by his native Argentines? Would this risk damaging his carefully curated media image as the smiling merciful pope?

Can Bergoglio afford for the global media to descend on Buenos Aires, asking questions of locals, interviewing his former friends, colleagues and parishioners and generally snooping around?

Is Bergoglio afraid of the wrath of clergy abuse victims who were ignored, scorned, and dismissed by him when he was Bishop and Archbishop of Buenos Aires?

Is Bergoglio fearful of the messages on the homemade signs along the parade route? 

Is Bergoglio afraid of the Mothers of the Playa de Mayo whose children were killed by the military junta and his role with the junta?

Is Bergoglio afraid that there may be significant protests and boycotts if he visits Buenos Aires?

Is Bergoglio afraid of the wrath of clergy abuse victims who were ignored, scorned, and dismissed by him when he was Bishop and Archbishop of Buenos Aires?

What are Bergoglio’s skeletons that need to be kept hidden and buried in Buenos Aires and can’t risk being unearthed by a papal visit?

Something is rotten in Buenos Aires.

— Elizabeth Yore is an international child advocate attorney. She is a panel member of the LifeSiteNews podcast, Faith and Reason. Liz is also a regular contributor on Steve Bannon’s War Room. https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6449-something-is-rotten-in-buenos-aires%5D

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] 

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.SHARE

10 of 11

my review of new Scalia bio; wrongful-death lawsuit in TX targets abortion-pill manufacturer; Idaho events; and moreInboxEd Whelan ewhelan@eppc.org via gmail.mcsv.net Mar 15, 2023, 12:26 PM (15 hours ago)to meThe first item below is from the Law & Liberty website today. The other items are blog posts from NRO’s Bench Memos: How Little Nino Became Justice ScaliaBy Edward WhelanWhen Antonin Scalia died suddenly in February 2016, it seemed that his influence on the Supreme Court would also pass away quickly. By filling his seat, President Barack Obama would secure a solid liberal majority on the Court, a majority that would render unimportant the longtime swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. The Scalia vacancy was the first vacancy since 1991 in which a president of one party submitted a Supreme Court nomination to a Senate controlled by the opposing party. By following the path of election-year inaction that then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden had threatened in that same context in 1992, Republican leader Mitch McConnell secured a temporary reprieve.Four days before Election Day in November 2016, the Supreme Court held its traditional memorial service for Justice Scalia. Much as the occasion celebrated his many accomplishments, it also had a distinctly funereal mood. Nearly everyone—yes, myself included—knew that Hillary Clinton would win a huge and easy victory over Trump and go on to fill Scalia’s seat.As I gathered with some other former Scalia law clerks in the cafeteria before the Court’s memorial service, I met, for the first time, a Notre Dame law professor by the name of Amy Coney Barrett. Trump’s stunning victory on Election Day led, of course, to his appointments of Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia vacancy and of Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Kennedy. Barrett’s ascension four years later to the Supreme Court seat long held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would culminate in President Trump’s extraordinary transformation of the Court. In many ways, Scalia’s influence since his death has been greater than he enjoyed during his lifetime, when so many of his most memorable opinions were dissents. Trump’s pledge to fill Scalia’s seat with a conservative justice was critical to his narrow victory in 2016, and Trump largely remade the Court in Scalia’s image. The Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade last year—a result that Scalia failed to achieve in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and had probably given up hope for—is just the starkest of his posthumous victories and one in what may end up being a long line. “History is written by the winners.” Or so goes the exaggerated saying that Scalia once ruefully recited to me. The genre of history known as biography is more often written about the winners. So it’s fitting and welcome that journalist James Rosen has published Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986, the very fine first volume of his projected two-volume biography of the great justice. As Rosen’s subtitle indicates, this volume covers the first fifty years of Scalia’s life, from his birth in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1936 through his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986. Rosen is covering ground that has been previously stomped on. Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic published a biography of Scalia (American Original) in 2009, and college professor Bruce Allen Murphy wrote another (Scalia: A Court of One) in 2014. But as Rosen observes bluntly and accurately, both of those biographies “were unabashed in their contempt for Scalia’s jurisprudence and conduct” (with especially comical consequences for Murphy). So there’s plenty of room for Rosen’s much more admiring survey. What’s more, Rosen draws on nearly a hundred of his own interviews as well as a slew of newly available materials—for example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s papers from her time as a DC Circuit judge, which reveal the genuine admiration that Scalia and Ginsburg had for each other’s judicial craftsmanship. Rosen’s research is exhaustive and meticulously documented across 65 pages of endnotes. He has watched every video, listened to every audio recording—he pans Scalia’s only Supreme Court argument—read every transcript he uncovered, and collected lots of anecdotes (including, to be sure, some unflattering ones). In the interests of disclosure, I will note that, in addition to interviewing me, Rosen makes frequent and effective use of the collection of Scalia’s speeches that I co-edited—Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived (reviewed for Law & Liberty)—and cites several of my writings. On top of his vocation as husband and father, Scalia was drawn to opportunities to deepen his legal knowledge and to hone his abilities and thus to prepare himself to be the best Supreme Court justice he could be. It’s a challenge, of course, for any biographer to figure out whether and how to trace a person’s ideas to his experiences in life. One illustration captures the stark difference between Biskupic’s and Murphy’s ham-handed treatments and Rosen’s much more deft approach. Biskupic absurdly contends that “Scalia could not separate his constitutional views from the core of his identity, which was decidedly Catholic,” and Murphy similarly claims that Scalia’s originalism enabled him to “accomplish as a judge all that his [Catholic] religion commanded without ever having to acknowledge using his faith in doing so.” Rosen, by contrast, suggests that Scalia’s “reverence for text” derived from a combination of his Catholic upbringing, his father’s mastery of Romance languages, and a favorite high-school teacher’s devotion to Shakespeare. Rosen’s subtitle draws on a conversation that a close friend from his high school years, on his way to the priesthood, had with Scalia when Scalia was in law school. When Scalia revealed his ambition to be on the Supreme Court, his friend asked how he would achieve that, and Scalia is said to have responded: “I will be sent to Washington, and then I will rise.” Much of Rosen’s book reveals how Scalia’s improbable prophecy came true. It was far from clear whether his early steps were leading anywhere. Scalia began his legal career in private practice in Cleveland and left his prestigious law firm on the cusp of a lucrative partnership in order to become a law professor at the University of Virginia. His first position in DC came in 1971, as general counsel to an obscure, and newly established, White House office on telecommunications policy. In a city in which proximity is power, it’s telling that the office, while formally part of the White House, was “blocks away” from it. Yet somehow Scalia made such an impression on his colleagues that one of them, Brian Lamb (later the founder of C-SPAN), told Rosen that “there was no doubt in our mind” that Scalia “would end up on the Supreme Court.”Scalia’s real entrée into the corridors of power came in 1974 when he interviewed with deputy attorney general Laurence Silberman for the influential position of head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). “I have never reacted as positively in interviewing anybody,” recounted Silberman, who immediately recommended that Scalia be nominated. That this all happened in the midst of the Watergate drama is reflected in the oddity that one president, Richard Nixon, nominated Scalia and another president, Gerald Ford, after Nixon’s departure from office and Senate confirmation of the nomination, appointed him. Rosen explores how Scalia’s work at OLC shaped and sharpened his understanding of separation of powers and of the threats that Watergate-era congressional overreach posed to executive power. He also traces the formation of Scalia’s friendship with Robert Bork, who was then solicitor general. When Ford’s presidency ended, Scalia returned to academia, this time to the University of Chicago, but remained active in DC through his work for the American Enterprise Institute. When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, Scalia was “bitterly disappointed” to finish as runner-up for the post of solicitor general. “Larry, I don’t like Nino,” the patrician attorney general William French Smith told Silberman. With Bork’s support, Scalia instead ended up joining Bork on the DC Circuit and then, in a competition between friends that Rosen develops at length, won the nomination to the Court in 1986. In his account of Scalia’s “rise to greatness,” Rosen disputes suggestions by Biskupic, Murphy, and others that Scalia indulged “overweening ambition or crass careerism.” Rosen’s own assessment is that Scalia was “prodigiously gifted by God, disciplined and determined” and “simply understood accurately, and early in life, who he was, what the Court was, and why he belonged there”—and of course, like anyone else who reaches the Supreme Court, “caught more than a few breaks” along the way. Rosen’s assessment comports, I think, with the Catholic understanding of vocation that Scalia possessed. We sometimes speak of vocations as if the only vocations are to the priesthood or religious life. But in the Catholic understanding, every person has a vocation, a calling, both in his personal life and in his work, and it is his duty to discern and pursue that vocation. With a young and growing family, Scalia might have been tempted to stay in private practice in Cleveland and make the big bucks. But on top of his vocation as husband and father, he was drawn to opportunities to deepen his legal knowledge and to hone his abilities and thus to prepare himself to be the best Supreme Court justice he could be. Scalia’s Catholic understanding of his vocation as a jurist emphatically did not mean that it was proper or permissible for him to impose Catholic beliefs and policy preferences. As he explained (in a speech in Scalia Speaks), if he were to impose Catholic beliefs on abortion, “then I would say that the Constitution not only permits the banning of abortion, but requires it.” But the role of federal judges in the American system is not to make policy but instead “to discern accurately and apply honestly the policies adopted by the people’s representatives in the text of statutes—except to the extent that those statutes conflict with the text, the underlying traditions, or valid Supreme Court interpretations of the United States Constitution.”For Rosen’s account of how Scalia carried out his vocation as a Supreme Court justice, and for his broader narrative of the last three decades of Scalia’s life, I eagerly await volume two. Texas Wrongful-Death Lawsuit Targets Manufacturer of Abortion PillEd WhelanMarch 13, 2023Last week, Jonathan Mitchell, architect of the Texas Heartbeat Act, filed a civil wrongful-death lawsuit in Texas state court that threatens massive liability for manufacturers of abortion pills.According to the first sentence of the complaint, “Under the law of Texas, a person who assists a woman in obtaining a self-managed abortion has committed the crime of murder and can be sued for wrongful death.” Mitchell filed the lawsuit on behalf of Marcus A. Silva, the father of an unborn child killed with illegal obtained abortion pills. The complaint charges that the three individuals currently named as defendants—Jackie Noyola, Amy Carpenter, and Aracely Garcia—helped Silva’s wife kill their child.More importantly, Mitchell promises in the complaint that the manufacturer of the abortion pills that Mrs. Silva used “will be added as a defendant once identified in discovery.” The complaint seeks damages “in an amount over $1,000,000” as well as “an injunction that restrains each of the defendants from distributing abortion pills or assisting in illegal self-managed abortions in Texas.” Idaho EventsEd Whelanabout 22 hours agoI’ll be in the Gem State next week.I have two events in Boise on Monday. At lunchtime, I’ll be speaking to the Idaho lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society on the topic “The Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement?” (yes, question mark in title). Later that afternoon, I’ll discuss Justice Scalia’s legacy at an event sponsored by the University of Idaho law school chapter. See links for further information.I’ve never been to Boise before. By my quick count, Boise will become the 26th state capital I’ve visited.I will then head to Sun Valley, Idaho, where I will either speak on the topic of “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter” or go skiing for a few days. This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 15Ed Whelanabout 5 hours ago1933—Ruth Joan Bader is born in Brooklyn, New York. At her Supreme Court confirmation hearing sixty years later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, defending the invention of a constitutional right to abortion, decries the fact that her mother did not have the legal right to kill her in utero: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself.” 2016—No plaintiff? So what? Federal district judge Susan Dlott somehow sees fit to order Ohio’s secretary of state to keep polls open an extra hour in four counties. Dlott issues her order in response to phone calls that the clerk’s office received from unidentified individuals concerned that a serious accident on a bridge would prevent stranded motorists from voting. As the local paper notes, her action “came without a written complaint, a court hearing or a formal presentation of evidence that might show federal election laws were about to be violated.”  On review, a Sixth Circuit will rule that Dlott lacked jurisdiction because no plaintiff had standing. As Judge Jeffrey Sutton succinctly puts it, “There is no plaintiff with standing if there is no plaintiff.”   This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 14Ed WhelanMarch 14, 20232011—Elevated by President Obama to the Ninth Circuit two months earlier, Mary H. Murguia still has damage to carry out as a federal district judge. In acquitting Elton Simpson of a charge of making a false statement involving international terrorism, Murguia does verbal somersaults to rule that the government did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Simpson’s discussions about traveling to Somalia were sufficiently related to international terrorism: It is true that the Defendant had expressed sympathy and admiration for individuals who “fight” non-Muslims as well as his belief in the establishment of Shariah law, all over the world including in Somalia. What precisely was meant by “fighting” whenever he discussed it, however, was not clear. Neither was what the Defendant meant when he stated he wanted to get to the “battlefield” in Somalia. Some four years later, in May 2015, Elton Simpson will launch a jihadist attack in Garland, Texas.  2013—In the face of a federal statute stating that “no court shall have any jurisdiction to review … any judgment regarding the granting of relief under” specified provisions of immigration law, a Ninth Circuit panel holds (in Mamigonian v. Biggs) that the jurisdictional bar applies only to determinations made on discretionary grounds.     M. Edward Whelan III Distinguished Senior Fellow andAntonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies Ethics and Public Policy Center 1730 M Street N.W., Suite 910 Washington, D.C. 20036 202-682-1200 www.EPPC.org

Texas Wrongful-Death Lawsuit Targets Manufacturer of Abortion Pill

Ed Whelan

March 13, 2023

Last week, Jonathan Mitchell, architect of the Texas Heartbeat Act, filed a civil wrongful-death lawsuit in Texas state court that threatens massive liability for manufacturers of abortion pills.

According to the first sentence of the complaint, “Under the law of Texas, a person who assists a woman in obtaining a self-managed abortion has committed the crime of murder and can be sued for wrongful death.” Mitchell filed the lawsuit on behalf of Marcus A. Silva, the father of an unborn child killed with illegal obtained abortion pills. The complaint charges that the three individuals currently named as defendants—Jackie Noyola, Amy Carpenter, and Aracely Garcia—helped Silva’s wife kill their child.

More importantly, Mitchell promises in the complaint that the manufacturer of the abortion pills that Mrs. Silva used “will be added as a defendant once identified in discovery.” The complaint seeks damages “in an amount over $1,000,000” as well as “an injunction that restrains each of the defendants from distributing abortion pills or assisting in illegal self-managed abortions in Texas.”

Idaho Events

Ed Whelan

about 22 hours ago

I’ll be in the Gem State next week.

I have two events in Boise on Monday. At lunchtime, I’ll be speaking to the Idaho lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society on the topic “The Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement?” (yes, question mark in title). Later that afternoon, I’ll discuss Justice Scalia’s legacy at an event sponsored by the University of Idaho law school chapter. See links for further information.

I’ve never been to Boise before. By my quick count, Boise will become the 26th state capital I’ve visited.

I will then head to Sun Valley, Idaho, where I will either speak on the topic of “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter” or go skiing for a few days.

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 15

Ed Whelan

about 5 hours ago

1933—Ruth Joan Bader is born in Brooklyn, New York. At her Supreme Court confirmation hearing sixty years later, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, defending the invention of a constitutional right to abortion, decries the fact that her mother did not have the legal right to kill her in utero: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself.” 

2016—No plaintiff? So what? 

Federal district judge Susan Dlott somehow sees fit to order Ohio’s secretary of state to keep polls open an extra hour in four counties. Dlott issues her order in response to phone calls that the clerk’s office received from unidentified individuals concerned that a serious accident on a bridge would prevent stranded motorists from voting. As the local paper notes, her action “came without a written complaint, a court hearing or a formal presentation of evidence that might show federal election laws were about to be violated.”  

On review, a Sixth Circuit will rule that Dlott lacked jurisdiction because no plaintiff had standing. As Judge Jeffrey Sutton succinctly puts it, “There is no plaintiff with standing if there is no plaintiff.” 

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 14

Ed Whelan

March 14, 2023

2011—Elevated by President Obama to the Ninth Circuit two months earlier, Mary H. Murguia still has damage to carry out as a federal district judge. In acquitting Elton Simpson of a charge of making a false statement involving international terrorism, Murguia does verbal somersaults to rule that the government did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Simpson’s discussions about traveling to Somalia were sufficiently related to international terrorism: 

It is true that the Defendant had expressed sympathy and admiration for individuals who “fight” non-Muslims as well as his belief in the establishment of Shariah law, all over the world including in Somalia. What precisely was meant by “fighting” whenever he discussed it, however, was not clear. Neither was what the Defendant meant when he stated he wanted to get to the “battlefield” in Somalia. 

Some four years later, in May 2015, Elton Simpson will launch a jihadist attack in Garland, Texas.  

2013—In the face of a federal statute stating that “no court shall have any jurisdiction to review … any judgment regarding the granting of relief under” specified provisions of immigration law, a Ninth Circuit panel holds (in Mamigonian v. Biggs) that the jurisdictional bar applies only to determinations made on discretionary grounds.  

M. Edward Whelan III
Distinguished Senior Fellow and

Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies
Ethics and Public Policy Center
1730 M Street N.W., Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-682-1200
www.EPPC.org

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Still Wearing a Mask? You’ll Want to See This & Flashback: Science on Mask’s Possible Effects: “Can Damage the Lungs… can even be Life Threatening” & “Mental Confusion… Loss of Consciousness and Death”

March 14, 2023

COVID News

Still Wearing a Mask? You’ll Want to See This

August 22, 2020

The coronavirus overwhelmingly kills elderly people.

It appears that the coronavirus mask might have a better chance of killing a non-elderly person than COVID-19:

“COVID-19… N95 masks are estimated to reduce oxygen intake by anywhere from 5 to 20 percent. That’s significant, even for a healthy person. It can cause dizziness and lightheadedness. If you wear a mask long enough, it can damage the lungs. For a patient in respiratory distress, it can even be life threatening.” [https://news.stanford.edu/2020/04/14/stanford-researchers-reengineer-covid-19-face-masks/]

“Because there are no warning signs of reduced oxygen concentrations, these environments are extremely dangerous. Effects of exposure to low oxygen concentrations can include giddiness, mental confusion, loss of judgment, loss of coordination, weakness, nausea, fainting, loss of consciousness and death”

[https://www.airproducts.com › Files › PDF › company › safetygram-17]

Is science saying that you have a greater chance of death and  “mental confusion” because of the mask than of COVID?

Is the mask causing “mental confusion”?

Unknown said…

“It appears that the coronavirus mask might have a better chance of killing a non-elderly person than COVID-19:”

I am saying exactly that for the months, since the beginning of the plandemic.
And I am not even a doctor nor scientist.

Ivan

8:05 AM 

Anonymous said…

So if this is true, then all surgeons and surgery staff would have damaged their lungs long ago. Some of the surgeries last an entire day. The mask thing is nuts on all sides of this issue. Good Lord, we have more serious issues to worry about.

6:39 AM 

Fred Martinez said…

First, since you are a COVID eternal mask wearing Karen, please answer this question:

Shouldn’t these masks be considered “toxic waste” – especially as they are supposedly trapping a virus so deadly we need bogus test to know we have it. Surely even muzzle wearers can see the blatant inconsistency here? Or is that simply too much to hope for?

Next, so “[i]f you wear a mask long enough” said the piece.

If “surgeons and surgery staff” like many female and male COVID hysteria Karens were to wear their masks all day long or most of the day and for months on end might they “damage their lungs” especially if they had other medical issues?

Think about it:

In the history of “all surgeons and surgery staff” mask wearing did they wear their masks all day long or most of the day and for months on end and maybe forever if your beloved pro-abortion Biden is elected.

7:35 AM 

Fred Martinez said…

Yes, promoters of the sacred “pro-life” and eternal mask are helping to promote the election of pro-abortion Biden.

7:40 AM 

Anonymous said…

Fred, remember, we will all answer for every word we utter. If you call people idiots or Karens, you must answer to the Lord. And Karen is being used in a derogatory manner by you. I too would like to t-off on people, and I have. But we need keep Christ’s words in mind. Never said one must wear one 24/7. Don’t know where that is required or mandated by anyone. I don’t think anyone can say with absolute certainty that masks will help or not. So those who are against them may be wrong, and those who for them may be wrong. I do know, but masks have been used for a long, long time in the medical field, worn by people appear to be healthy, doctors and nurses. And they have also been used by the sick in the past. It was never an issue until now. Oh, by the way, I hate the mask. The only thing I seek is the truth. Not your truth, not my truth, but the truth. Some times the truth is not always apparent. I voted for Trump. Voted for Reagan twice. I am no liberal. My dad was a WWII combat vet in S. Pacific.

10:52 AM 

Catholic Monitor said…

Karen means someone who complains. You were complaining about my post. I answered your complaining comment and you accussed me of calling you a “idiot” when I used a word that means you were complaining.

Please identify who you really are if you want to keep commenting on the Catholic Monitor.

12:43 PM 

Catholic Monitor said…

If you are a Trump supporter, I apologise for saying Biden is beloved by you. I agree objective truth is what is important. I will pray for you. Please, pray for me

12:53 PM 

Unknown said…

Oh, Good Lord, no I do not support Joe. Glory be! I find communication to be difficult in these formats Fred. So much misunderstood. Poorly expressed by me. It would be far superior to do chew the fat over a brew! I will pray for you from the Heart of the Country.

2:42 PM 

Fred Martinez said…

Unknown, thank you for your prayers “from the Heart of the Country.” I am praying for you from California.

3:26 PM 

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] 

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.SHARE

The March Madness 

of the President

Joe Biden’s political utility and 

near senility serve as exemptions 

for his often sexist, racist,and 

creepy riffs.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

March 12, 2023

Another couple of weeks, another bout of madness from Joe Biden and his team. Of recent Biden delusions, consider:

ü Biden went off in one of his impromptu Corn Pop or“beat-up-Trump-behind-the-bleachers” fables. These often slurred and nearly unintelligible tales characteristically virtue signal Biden’s own victimhood and “courage.”

ü They are interspersed with his bizarre propensity for eerie female contact. So we see or hear of his long record of blowing into the ears and hair or squeezing the necks of young girls. He hugs, for far too long, mature women. He can call out among a crowd an anonymous attractive teen stranger. Or, recently he relates an incoherent but quasi-sexual vignette. 

ü So Joe recalled his patient days in his usual off-topic “no lie/not kidding/no joke” manner (i.e., tip-offs that he’s lying). He told us that a noble nurse once would “come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical school—in nursing school.” The president got a nervous laugh from the apparent quasi-pornographic reference (but then again Joe is excused because he is a “feminist”) before he detailed her technique:  

“She’d whisper in my ear.  I didn’t—couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was—there was a connection, a human connection.”

ü A woman leaning over to blow into a prone man’s ear certainly constitutes a “human connection.” Yet all of Joe’s fables have different Homeric-style retellings. Two years ago he claimed that the same nurse in question actually blew into his nostrils. What a strange air-pressure technique that must have entailed for a person recovering from brain surgery. But perhaps it was consistent with biblical references to God blowing the spirit of life into the nose of man.

ü About a week later, referencing that hospital stay, Biden added that doctors “had to take the top of my head off a couple of times, see if I had a brain”—a reference that did not reassure the nation he is not enfeebled. 

ü No one in the media had much of a reaction because Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs. 

ü Instead, the media wrote off the nurse breathing into good ol’ Joe’s orifices as belonging to the same weird genre that a while back gave us inner-city kids stroking the golden hairs on Joe’s tan legs, or the shower revelations of Ashley Biden’s diary, or his “you ain’t black,” “put y’all back in chains,” and “junkie” sorts of racial condescension (e.g., “Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man. That’s like saying before you got on this program, you take a test on whether you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”).

ü Joe also blustered to a crowd during Black History Month, “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid.” 

ü The crowd laughed at the idea that the jester Biden believes white people are usually stupid, but that he, Joe, the exception to his race, is not stupid, despite being white. At least Biden finally referenced himself as “boy.” Usually, he has used that racial putdown for prominent blacks like Maryland Governor Wes Moore or a senior White House advisor Cedric Richmond.

The February-March madness of Joe was not through. Sometimes, his venom renders him disgustedly comic, as when he took the occasion of mass American deaths from fentanyl on his watch, to chuckle that the carnage was at least worse under Trump (an abject lie): 

    ‘I should digress, probably. I’ve read, she [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene], she was very specific recently, saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that fentanyl they took came during the last administration.’ Followed by the Biden laugh.

Apparently, 100,000 dead at least deserve from Joe a “Trump did it” chuckle.

Joe, for the third time in two years, tripped and nearly fell ascending the ramp of Air Force One. At some point, even his supporters will concede that when octogenarians repeatedly stumble and fall, if not put under careful watch or provided a walker, it is only a matter of time until they break a hip and become bedridden.

In another replay, once again Biden finished his remarks, turned around to exit—and had no idea where he was going to go or whose invisible hand he was supposed to shake.

Amid all this, Biden more or less stuck to his now tired rhetorical themes. 

One is the serial denunciation of the MAGA Republicans. Usually, he trashes them as semi-fascists or un-American, often in the context of his “unity speeches.” After calling for reconciliation, bipartisanship, and unity, Joe then usually tightens his face, grimaces, and starts yelling about the MAGA dregs and chumps. 

If Biden is really angry, he adds the intensive adjective “Ultra” for the MAGAites. He gets particularly incensed when referencing the one percent who “don’t pay their fair share” (the one percent pays over 40 percent of all income tax revenues). Biden is oblivious that the entire Biden clan is under popular suspicion of not reporting all of the millions of dollars in quid pro quos leveraging they raked in from foreign governments without registering as their agents.

Note that his entire team, when stung by charges of incompetency or illegality, usually follows Joe’s tactic of “Trump did it.” So when Pete Buttigieg was criticized for ignoring the East Palestine rail wreck and reminded of his past serial transportation failures, junkets, and incoherent systemic racism charges, he retreated to blaming Trump for the derailment. 

Buttigieg falsely claimed that Trump’s past lifting of particular electric railcar brake regulations caused the wheel bearing failure in East Palestine, a lie that even members of his department could not stomach.

Too, Joe creates elaborate fables. In the past two weeks, he returned to his civil rights lie that he was a campus activist agitating for racial justice. At least he did not add his usual fillips of being arrested or standing up to apartheid police in South Africa.

In Biden’s world, he brags he has reduced inflation. Yet when he entered office in January 2021, the annualized inflation rate was 1.7 percent. Two years later in January 2023, inflation went up to 6.4 percent, after hitting a high in June 2022 of 9.1 percent—3 ¾ times  higher than when he took office. In mid-March, we will learn of the February 2023 annualized rate, but it is expected to climb back to more than 8 percent. 

If anyone compares the current price of eggs, rent, diesel fuel, a natural gas heating bill, or building materials to their respective costs when Biden entered office, then he would know Biden’s inflation is cumulative, and has nearly destroyed the affordability of shelter, food, and fuel—the stuff of life.

He mentioned lowering the heating and cooling costs of American homes through his climate change advocacy. In truth, on average electric rates shot up over 10 percent last year. Natural gas and fuel went even higher to over 25 percent in a single year. 

Biden talks about his low unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. But it is almost identical to what the Trump Administration achieved—without Biden’s high interest rates and acute inflation—in the months before the massive COVID lockdowns. 

Moreover, current low employment is largely a reflection of reduced labor participation—due to early retirements, exits during the pandemic, fear of COVID, long COVID, the zoom culture, and most importantly the Biden continuance of massive COVID-era subsidies that discourage employment. The labor participation rate has hit near historic lows under Biden, lower than the pre-COVID rate under Trump. 

It was not until last month that the Biden economy finally achieved the level of total employed Americans who had been working in January 2020 on the eve of the Covid lockdowns. 

As far as interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages, they were 2.9 percent when Biden took office. Now they are currently over 7 percent -2.4 times higher than when Biden took office.

In sum, Biden repeats the same patterns of deception: crash the economy as evidenced by many of its major indicators, then when a data point reveals a slight and likely temporary monthly recovery, he brags he “reduced” inflation, interest, or unemployment.

We also heard during the same week from Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who was shredded during his testimony to the Senate. He argued that the vastly disproportionate FBI response to violence against abortion centers versus attacks on pro-life groups was only due to the differences between light and dark—literally: abortion centers are attacked during daytime; in contrast, pro-life shelters are attacked during the night. 

Apparently, his Justice Department and the FBI shut down at sunset and reawaken at dawn—as if either most violent crime does not occur at night or there is nothing to be done about it when it does. 

Garland further embarrassed himself when he could not explain the disproportionate use of force in arresting or detaining conservative suspects versus the virtual exemptions given prominent left-wing suspects. 

Most embarrassingly, when asked why he did not charge mobs that swarmed the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices to influence their decisions—a federal felony—he lamely claimed there were federals protecting the residences.

In Garland’s world, some criminals committing felonies are completely exempt if law enforcement prevents further violent manifestations of their criminal behavior. So illegally swarm a Supreme Court justice’s residence to influence a court decision, but then stop short of escalating further by the sight of law enforcement—and, presto, you never committed a crime in the first place. 

Garland finished off his recent nonsense by repeating the lie that five police officers were killed due to the January 6 protests. In fact, none were. Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes after the protests were over. The other four committed suicide weeks or even months later and no one has connected their self-induced deaths with any act of the protestors. 

About the same time, a beleaguered Pete Buttigieg went off on riffs about Tucker Carlson, who, he implied, lacked the grassroots, working-man fides of Buttigieg.

He claimed that for all the criticism he has endured, he believes that he will be remembered for posterity for his fight against “climate change”—although he did not point to any concrete result in reducing carbon emissions due to his singular policies. 

Buttigieg will be known but for other characteristics: He repeatedly emphasizes his identity politics gay stature both to note his supposedly pathbreaking courage and to claim victimhood when attacked. He sees transportation through the lens of race and so chases the unicorn of white privilege, whether concerning past freeway routes or the makeup of current construction crews (falsely charging that white men are overrepresented on them). Under his tenure as Transportation Secretary, the country experienced dangerous supply interruptions, ossified ports, and harbor-bound trains robbed in Wild West fashion. 

Buttigieg’s diversity mandates either did nothing to ameliorate or actually led to:

ü a series of near-miss airline crashes, 

ü the complete shutdown of the airline industry due to computer glitches and weather, 

ü the implosion for a week of Southwest Airlines, 

ü the East Palestine derailment disaster, and 

ü labor interruptions. 

In all these cases he either was on leave or a junket, wrote them off as Trump’s fault, or contextualized them as no big deal. 

Delusional Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas has declared the border closed and the nation secure, even as 100,000 Americans per year have died from overdoses of fentanyl shipped with impunity across the open border by Mexican cartels. When upwards of 7 million aliens flow across the border illegally since Biden took office, it is written off as Trump’s fault. 

Finally, last week there were several interviews with FBI Director Christopher Wray. He could not explain why his agency goes full military mode to arrest a father and husband for protesting at an abortion clinic while having no clue who has been attacking pro-life shelters. 

In Wray’s mind, the performance art sweep into Mar-a-Lago, which he claims was not a “raid,” was no different from having Biden’s lawyers quietly conduct their own “investigations” of Biden’s improper removal of classified documents (improper with an asterisk, since no vice president has the president’s legal authority to declassify whatever he wishes). 

Wray could not explain why the FBI sat on the Biden trove until the midterm election was over, and then only acted to further search Biden’s residences when its own asymmetrical protocols came under fire. 

Add up the last few weeks, and we learned that Christopher Wray’s FBI is doing splendidly in its even enforcement of the law. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is absolutely disinterested and treats all sides equally. Alejandro Mayorkas has closed the border and we are now “secure.”Pete Buttigieg is building a legacy for the ages as a climate change crusader.

And an eloquent and dynamic Joe Biden has compiled an impressive legislative record on his way to a great presidency—with the energy, we are told by Dr. Jill Biden, that is more impressive than any 30-year-old’s.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

SEARCH

Is Anti-Death Penalty Francis Silent on Beloved Islam’s Evil Death Penalty & Ted Bundy?: Jihad Watch Saudi Islamic scholar reaffirms Islamic law’s death penalty for leaving Islam

March 12, 2023

Jihad Watch

Saudi Islamic scholar reaffirms Islamic law’s death penalty for leaving Islam“

“Pray the rosary for Francis because something appears to be wrong with the poor man if he wants to free dangerous criminals and serial predators from prison.” – Catholic Monitor  

Does Francis think that the death penalty is worst than what Ted Bundy did?Bundy was a serial murderer and rapist who, also, tortured the victims and even engaged in necrophilia with their bodies.

In 2015, Francis gave his approval to the following quote:

“To kill a murderer is a punishment incomparably worst than the crime itself.” (edwardfeser.blogspot, “The curious case of Pope Francis and the ‘new natural lawyers,'” June 3, 2017)

If Ted Bundy had not received the death penalty and was instead given a sentence of life imprisonment, would Francis want Bundy set free?

In 2014, Francis said:

“A life sentence is just a death penalty in disguise.” (edwardfeser.blogspot, “The curious case of Pope Francis and the”‘ new natural lawyers,'” June 3, 2017)

Pray the rosary for Francis because something appears to be wrong with the poor man if he wants to free dangerous criminals and serial predators from prison.

Extreme cases of this type of behavior is called Passive Hybristophilia in which persons write “to notorious serial killers whilst they are in prison… They even end up believing… they could help rehabilitate them, and may even make excuses for the man’s past behavior.” (actforlibraries.org, Focus on Medical, Science, Health and Wellness, “Fatal Love the Psychological Disorder Hybristophilia”)

Also, pray the rosary to protect innocent women and children from serial killers and predators like Bundy as well as those who enable them.

Fr. Donald Callaway in his book “Champions of the Rosary” shared the following miracle of the woman saved from becoming another Bundy victim by the rosary.

Stephanie Engelman retells the story in her blog of how the rosary according to Monsignor William Kerr saved a young women from rape and murder.

In 1978, Bundy had just brutally raped and murdered two sorority sisters and was entering another room to kill another young women when “he stopped, dropped his weapon and fled.”

Monsignor Kerr came to the scene and the woman from whose room the murderer fled told the priest that she had fallen asleep praying the rosary which she did every night.

Kerr, years later, was ministering to Bundy. He asked the killer about the sorority incident.

Bundy told him that “when he tried to step through the doorway, a mysterious force prevented him from doing so. He dropped his weapon and ran away.” (stephanie engelman.com, “The Ted Bundy Rosary Miracle,” October 7, 2016)SHARE

The March Madness 

of the President

Joe Biden’s political utility and 

near senility serve as exemptions 

for his often sexist, racist,and 

creepy riffs.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

March 12, 2023

Another couple of weeks, another bout of madness from Joe Biden and his team. Of recent Biden delusions, consider:

ü Biden went off in one of his impromptu Corn Pop or“beat-up-Trump-behind-the-bleachers” fables. These often slurred and nearly unintelligible tales characteristically virtue signal Biden’s own victimhood and “courage.”

ü They are interspersed with his bizarre propensity for eerie female contact. So we see or hear of his long record of blowing into the ears and hair or squeezing the necks of young girls. He hugs, for far too long, mature women. He can call out among a crowd an anonymous attractive teen stranger. Or, recently he relates an incoherent but quasi-sexual vignette. 

ü So Joe recalled his patient days in his usual off-topic “no lie/not kidding/no joke” manner (i.e., tip-offs that he’s lying). He told us that a noble nurse once would “come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical school—in nursing school.” The president got a nervous laugh from the apparent quasi-pornographic reference (but then again Joe is excused because he is a “feminist”) before he detailed her technique:  

“She’d whisper in my ear.  I didn’t—couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was—there was a connection, a human connection.”

ü A woman leaning over to blow into a prone man’s ear certainly constitutes a “human connection.” Yet all of Joe’s fables have different Homeric-style retellings. Two years ago he claimed that the same nurse in question actually blew into his nostrils. What a strange air-pressure technique that must have entailed for a person recovering from brain surgery. But perhaps it was consistent with biblical references to God blowing the spirit of life into the nose of man.

ü About a week later, referencing that hospital stay, Biden added that doctors “had to take the top of my head off a couple of times, see if I had a brain”—a reference that did not reassure the nation he is not enfeebled. 

ü No one in the media had much of a reaction because Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs. 

ü Instead, the media wrote off the nurse breathing into good ol’ Joe’s orifices as belonging to the same weird genre that a while back gave us inner-city kids stroking the golden hairs on Joe’s tan legs, or the shower revelations of Ashley Biden’s diary, or his “you ain’t black,” “put y’all back in chains,” and “junkie” sorts of racial condescension (e.g., “Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man. That’s like saying before you got on this program, you take a test on whether you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”).

ü Joe also blustered to a crowd during Black History Month, “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid.” 

ü The crowd laughed at the idea that the jester Biden believes white people are usually stupid, but that he, Joe, the exception to his race, is not stupid, despite being white. At least Biden finally referenced himself as “boy.” Usually, he has used that racial putdown for prominent blacks like Maryland Governor Wes Moore or a senior White House advisor Cedric Richmond.

The February-March madness of Joe was not through. Sometimes, his venom renders him disgustedly comic, as when he took the occasion of mass American deaths from fentanyl on his watch, to chuckle that the carnage was at least worse under Trump (an abject lie): 

    ‘I should digress, probably. I’ve read, she [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene], she was very specific recently, saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that fentanyl they took came during the last administration.’ Followed by the Biden laugh.

Apparently, 100,000 dead at least deserve from Joe a “Trump did it” chuckle.

Joe, for the third time in two years, tripped and nearly fell ascending the ramp of Air Force One. At some point, even his supporters will concede that when octogenarians repeatedly stumble and fall, if not put under careful watch or provided a walker, it is only a matter of time until they break a hip and become bedridden.

In another replay, once again Biden finished his remarks, turned around to exit—and had no idea where he was going to go or whose invisible hand he was supposed to shake.

Amid all this, Biden more or less stuck to his now tired rhetorical themes. 

One is the serial denunciation of the MAGA Republicans. Usually, he trashes them as semi-fascists or un-American, often in the context of his “unity speeches.” After calling for reconciliation, bipartisanship, and unity, Joe then usually tightens his face, grimaces, and starts yelling about the MAGA dregs and chumps. 

If Biden is really angry, he adds the intensive adjective “Ultra” for the MAGAites. He gets particularly incensed when referencing the one percent who “don’t pay their fair share” (the one percent pays over 40 percent of all income tax revenues). Biden is oblivious that the entire Biden clan is under popular suspicion of not reporting all of the millions of dollars in quid pro quos leveraging they raked in from foreign governments without registering as their agents.

Note that his entire team, when stung by charges of incompetency or illegality, usually follows Joe’s tactic of “Trump did it.” So when Pete Buttigieg was criticized for ignoring the East Palestine rail wreck and reminded of his past serial transportation failures, junkets, and incoherent systemic racism charges, he retreated to blaming Trump for the derailment. 

Buttigieg falsely claimed that Trump’s past lifting of particular electric railcar brake regulations caused the wheel bearing failure in East Palestine, a lie that even members of his department could not stomach.

Too, Joe creates elaborate fables. In the past two weeks, he returned to his civil rights lie that he was a campus activist agitating for racial justice. At least he did not add his usual fillips of being arrested or standing up to apartheid police in South Africa.

In Biden’s world, he brags he has reduced inflation. Yet when he entered office in January 2021, the annualized inflation rate was 1.7 percent. Two years later in January 2023, inflation went up to 6.4 percent, after hitting a high in June 2022 of 9.1 percent—3 ¾ times  higher than when he took office. In mid-March, we will learn of the February 2023 annualized rate, but it is expected to climb back to more than 8 percent. 

If anyone compares the current price of eggs, rent, diesel fuel, a natural gas heating bill, or building materials to their respective costs when Biden entered office, then he would know Biden’s inflation is cumulative, and has nearly destroyed the affordability of shelter, food, and fuel—the stuff of life.

He mentioned lowering the heating and cooling costs of American homes through his climate change advocacy. In truth, on average electric rates shot up over 10 percent last year. Natural gas and fuel went even higher to over 25 percent in a single year. 

Biden talks about his low unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. But it is almost identical to what the Trump Administration achieved—without Biden’s high interest rates and acute inflation—in the months before the massive COVID lockdowns. 

Moreover, current low employment is largely a reflection of reduced labor participation—due to early retirements, exits during the pandemic, fear of COVID, long COVID, the zoom culture, and most importantly the Biden continuance of massive COVID-era subsidies that discourage employment. The labor participation rate has hit near historic lows under Biden, lower than the pre-COVID rate under Trump. 

It was not until last month that the Biden economy finally achieved the level of total employed Americans who had been working in January 2020 on the eve of the Covid lockdowns. 

As far as interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages, they were 2.9 percent when Biden took office. Now they are currently over 7 percent -2.4 times higher than when Biden took office.

In sum, Biden repeats the same patterns of deception: crash the economy as evidenced by many of its major indicators, then when a data point reveals a slight and likely temporary monthly recovery, he brags he “reduced” inflation, interest, or unemployment.

We also heard during the same week from Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who was shredded during his testimony to the Senate. He argued that the vastly disproportionate FBI response to violence against abortion centers versus attacks on pro-life groups was only due to the differences between light and dark—literally: abortion centers are attacked during daytime; in contrast, pro-life shelters are attacked during the night. 

Apparently, his Justice Department and the FBI shut down at sunset and reawaken at dawn—as if either most violent crime does not occur at night or there is nothing to be done about it when it does. 

Garland further embarrassed himself when he could not explain the disproportionate use of force in arresting or detaining conservative suspects versus the virtual exemptions given prominent left-wing suspects. 

Most embarrassingly, when asked why he did not charge mobs that swarmed the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices to influence their decisions—a federal felony—he lamely claimed there were federals protecting the residences.

In Garland’s world, some criminals committing felonies are completely exempt if law enforcement prevents further violent manifestations of their criminal behavior. So illegally swarm a Supreme Court justice’s residence to influence a court decision, but then stop short of escalating further by the sight of law enforcement—and, presto, you never committed a crime in the first place. 

Garland finished off his recent nonsense by repeating the lie that five police officers were killed due to the January 6 protests. In fact, none were. Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes after the protests were over. The other four committed suicide weeks or even months later and no one has connected their self-induced deaths with any act of the protestors. 

About the same time, a beleaguered Pete Buttigieg went off on riffs about Tucker Carlson, who, he implied, lacked the grassroots, working-man fides of Buttigieg.

He claimed that for all the criticism he has endured, he believes that he will be remembered for posterity for his fight against “climate change”—although he did not point to any concrete result in reducing carbon emissions due to his singular policies. 

Buttigieg will be known but for other characteristics: He repeatedly emphasizes his identity politics gay stature both to note his supposedly pathbreaking courage and to claim victimhood when attacked. He sees transportation through the lens of race and so chases the unicorn of white privilege, whether concerning past freeway routes or the makeup of current construction crews (falsely charging that white men are overrepresented on them). Under his tenure as Transportation Secretary, the country experienced dangerous supply interruptions, ossified ports, and harbor-bound trains robbed in Wild West fashion. 

Buttigieg’s diversity mandates either did nothing to ameliorate or actually led to:

ü a series of near-miss airline crashes, 

ü the complete shutdown of the airline industry due to computer glitches and weather, 

ü the implosion for a week of Southwest Airlines, 

ü the East Palestine derailment disaster, and 

ü labor interruptions. 

In all these cases he either was on leave or a junket, wrote them off as Trump’s fault, or contextualized them as no big deal. 

Delusional Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas has declared the border closed and the nation secure, even as 100,000 Americans per year have died from overdoses of fentanyl shipped with impunity across the open border by Mexican cartels. When upwards of 7 million aliens flow across the border illegally since Biden took office, it is written off as Trump’s fault. 

Finally, last week there were several interviews with FBI Director Christopher Wray. He could not explain why his agency goes full military mode to arrest a father and husband for protesting at an abortion clinic while having no clue who has been attacking pro-life shelters. 

In Wray’s mind, the performance art sweep into Mar-a-Lago, which he claims was not a “raid,” was no different from having Biden’s lawyers quietly conduct their own “investigations” of Biden’s improper removal of classified documents (improper with an asterisk, since no vice president has the president’s legal authority to declassify whatever he wishes). 

Wray could not explain why the FBI sat on the Biden trove until the midterm election was over, and then only acted to further search Biden’s residences when its own asymmetrical protocols came under fire. 

Add up the last few weeks, and we learned that Christopher Wray’s FBI is doing splendidly in its even enforcement of the law. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is absolutely disinterested and treats all sides equally. Alejandro Mayorkas has closed the border and we are now “secure.”Pete Buttigieg is building a legacy for the ages as a climate change crusader.

And an eloquent and dynamic Joe Biden has compiled an impressive legislative record on his way to a great presidency—with the energy, we are told by Dr. Jill Biden, that is more impressive than any 30-year-old’s.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

March 9, 2023

Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a Portland, Oregon good Samaritan confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.

More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage—of the thieves!

They pouted. They screamed. They resisted. How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished?

The criminals entertained no fear of any consequences for walking out with bags of things that were not theirs. They had no care that mainstreaming their habits would undermine the entire fabric of society.

What is common to the pandemic of smash-and-grab, carjacking, fighting on airliners while in flight, and deadly Saturday night shoot-outs is this same apparent assurance there will be no consequences.

That expectation of exemption is why the Antifa thugs in Atlanta were so bold in their latest violent attacks on the police.

And why not, after the 120 days of rioting, looting, arson, and assault in the summer of 2020 which resulted in few Antifa indictments, fewer convictions, and almost no imprisonments?

The “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1990s and 2000s showed how the failure to punish even minor infractions soon leads to escalation to more violent crimes.

The homeless take for granted that ancient rules forbidding urination, defecation, fornication, and injection on the sidewalks do not apply to them. Is it any wonder that they increasingly are not victims of circumstance but victimizers of innocent passersby?

Yet deterrence is not just eroded from the bottom up, but also from the top down—and by an elite who assume it will never be subject to the chaos it wrought.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on four occasions to federal investigators, apparently with the prescient expectation he would never be prosecuted.

The same hubris was true of former CIA Director John Brennan who admittedly lied under oath to Congress—twice—with absolute impunity.

The former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not only lied under oath to Congress but crowed that he gave the “least untruthful” answer. He too faced zero consequences.

Could the FBI and the CIA recover their tarnished reputations if their directors knew in advance they would go to jail for lying under federal oath?

Sometimes the problem is not just the absence of sure punishment for criminal behavior, but the asymmetry of penalties.

Why are some violent criminals released from custody the very day they punch, club, or shoot innocents, while others committing lesser offenses are not?

Nations are no different from people. Without expectation of a severe reaction to their provocations, they only escalate their aggression.

Why are athletes who choose not to be vaccinated barred from competing in the United States, while 6-7 million illegal entrants were waved in without passports, vaccinations, or COVID tests?

And once those millions south of the border saw a few thousand illegally cross with impunity shortly after Joe Biden was inaugurated, then they followed en masse.

Why does the Mexican government shrug when the United States asks it not to greenlight illegal immigration?

Why does Mexico City tolerate factories inside Mexico producing lethal fentanyl pills for export northward that kill over 100,000 Americans a year?

What sort of deterrence would stop millions from illegally entering the United States or Mexican-manufactured fentanyl from killing more Americans in the last decade than all the dead in all our wars since World War II?

Should the United States tax the $60 billion in remittances sent back yearly to Mexico, mostly by those who are here illegally and so often subsidized by our own state and federal entitlements?

Should America declare cartels international terrorists, extradite them, and bar all their accomplices and abettors from the global banking system?

China knowingly sends Mexico the raw ingredients of fentanyl, believing it is a win-win strategy of enormous profits and lots of deaths of America’s youth.

What would deter China from its nonchalant aggression? Still more concessions? More ignoring the Wuhan origins of the COVID pandemic?

Or would the expulsion of 350,000 Chinese students from American universities stop their fentanyl exporting? Or prohibiting Chinese companies with ties to the Communist government from buying American farmland?

Apparently, the more technologically sophisticated and affluent Americans became, the more their elites believed they could change ancient human nature which is fixed and predictable across time and space.

They redefined criminality as either a lifestyle choice or reimaged the criminal as one with legitimate grievances against the society he subverts.

The more the Biden Administration ignores those harming us abroad, the more they interpret it as American weakness, if not decadence to be further exploited.

The result is the predictably dangerous present.

When our state and federal governments allow criminals and foreign nations to injure with impunity their own law-abiding citizens, is it any wonder the civilized world we once knew has vanished—replaced by the Hobbesian rule of the wild?

 The Price of Eliminating Consequences

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

March 9, 2023

Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a Portland, Oregon good Samaritan confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.

More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage—of the thieves!

They pouted. They screamed. They resisted. How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished?

The criminals entertained no fear of any consequences for walking out with bags of things that were not theirs. They had no care that mainstreaming their habits would undermine the entire fabric of society.

What is common to the pandemic of smash-and-grab, carjacking, fighting on airliners while in flight, and deadly Saturday night shoot-outs is this same apparent assurance there will be no consequences.

That expectation of exemption is why the Antifa thugs in Atlanta were so bold in their latest violent attacks on the police.

And why not, after the 120 days of rioting, looting, arson, and assault in the summer of 2020 which resulted in few Antifa indictments, fewer convictions, and almost no imprisonments?

The “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1990s and 2000s showed how the failure to punish even minor infractions soon leads to escalation to more violent crimes.

The homeless take for granted that ancient rules forbidding urination, defecation, fornication, and injection on the sidewalks do not apply to them. Is it any wonder that they increasingly are not victims of circumstance but victimizers of innocent passersby?

Yet deterrence is not just eroded from the bottom up, but also from the top down—and by an elite who assume it will never be subject to the chaos it wrought.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on four occasions to federal investigators, apparently with the prescient expectation he would never be prosecuted.

The same hubris was true of former CIA Director John Brennan who admittedly lied under oath to Congress—twice—with absolute impunity.

The former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not only lied under oath to Congress but crowed that he gave the “least untruthful” answer. He too faced zero consequences.

Could the FBI and the CIA recover their tarnished reputations if their directors knew in advance they would go to jail for lying under federal oath?

Sometimes the problem is not just the absence of sure punishment for criminal behavior, but the asymmetry of penalties.

Why are some violent criminals released from custody the very day they punch, club, or shoot innocents, while others committing lesser offenses are not?

Nations are no different from people. Without expectation of a severe reaction to their provocations, they only escalate their aggression.

Why are athletes who choose not to be vaccinated barred from competing in the United States, while 6-7 million illegal entrants were waved in without passports, vaccinations, or COVID tests?

And once those millions south of the border saw a few thousand illegally cross with impunity shortly after Joe Biden was inaugurated, then they followed en masse.

Why does the Mexican government shrug when the United States asks it not to greenlight illegal immigration?

Why does Mexico City tolerate factories inside Mexico producing lethal fentanyl pills for export northward that kill over 100,000 Americans a year?

What sort of deterrence would stop millions from illegally entering the United States or Mexican-manufactured fentanyl from killing more Americans in the last decade than all the dead in all our wars since World War II?

Should the United States tax the $60 billion in remittances sent back yearly to Mexico, mostly by those who are here illegally and so often subsidized by our own state and federal entitlements?

Should America declare cartels international terrorists, extradite them, and bar all their accomplices and abettors from the global banking system?

China knowingly sends Mexico the raw ingredients of fentanyl, believing it is a win-win strategy of enormous profits and lots of deaths of America’s youth.

What would deter China from its nonchalant aggression? Still more concessions? More ignoring the Wuhan origins of the COVID pandemic?

Or would the expulsion of 350,000 Chinese students from American universities stop their fentanyl exporting? Or prohibiting Chinese companies with ties to the Communist government from buying American farmland?

Apparently, the more technologically sophisticated and affluent Americans became, the more their elites believed they could change ancient human nature which is fixed and predictable across time and space.

They redefined criminality as either a lifestyle choice or reimaged the criminal as one with legitimate grievances against the society he subverts.

The more the Biden Administration ignores those harming us abroad, the more they interpret it as American weakness, if not decadence to be further exploited.

The result is the predictably dangerous present.

When our state and federal governments allow criminals and foreign nations to injure with impunity their own law-abiding citizens, is it any wonder the civilized world we once knew has vanished—replaced by the Hobbesian rule of the wild?

The result is the predictably dangerous present.

 The Price of Eliminating Consequences

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

March 9, 2023

Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a Portland, Oregon good Samaritan confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.

More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage—of the thieves!

They pouted. They screamed. They resisted. How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished?

The criminals entertained no fear of any consequences for walking out with bags of things that were not theirs. They had no care that mainstreaming their habits would undermine the entire fabric of society.

What is common to the pandemic of smash-and-grab, carjacking, fighting on airliners while in flight, and deadly Saturday night shoot-outs is this same apparent assurance there will be no consequences.

That expectation of exemption is why the Antifa thugs in Atlanta were so bold in their latest violent attacks on the police.

And why not, after the 120 days of rioting, looting, arson, and assault in the summer of 2020 which resulted in few Antifa indictments, fewer convictions, and almost no imprisonments?

The “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1990s and 2000s showed how the failure to punish even minor infractions soon leads to escalation to more violent crimes.

The homeless take for granted that ancient rules forbidding urination, defecation, fornication, and injection on the sidewalks do not apply to them. Is it any wonder that they increasingly are not victims of circumstance but victimizers of innocent passersby?

Yet deterrence is not just eroded from the bottom up, but also from the top down—and by an elite who assume it will never be subject to the chaos it wrought.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on four occasions to federal investigators, apparently with the prescient expectation he would never be prosecuted.

The same hubris was true of former CIA Director John Brennan who admittedly lied under oath to Congress—twice—with absolute impunity.

The former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not only lied under oath to Congress but crowed that he gave the “least untruthful” answer. He too faced zero consequences.

Could the FBI and the CIA recover their tarnished reputations if their directors knew in advance they would go to jail for lying under federal oath?

Sometimes the problem is not just the absence of sure punishment for criminal behavior, but the asymmetry of penalties.

Why are some violent criminals released from custody the very day they punch, club, or shoot innocents, while others committing lesser offenses are not?

Nations are no different from people. Without expectation of a severe reaction to their provocations, they only escalate their aggression.

Why are athletes who choose not to be vaccinated barred from competing in the United States, while 6-7 million illegal entrants were waved in without passports, vaccinations, or COVID tests?

And once those millions south of the border saw a few thousand illegally cross with impunity shortly after Joe Biden was inaugurated, then they followed en masse.

Why does the Mexican government shrug when the United States asks it not to greenlight illegal immigration?

Why does Mexico City tolerate factories inside Mexico producing lethal fentanyl pills for export northward that kill over 100,000 Americans a year?

What sort of deterrence would stop millions from illegally entering the United States or Mexican-manufactured fentanyl from killing more Americans in the last decade than all the dead in all our wars since World War II?

Should the United States tax the $60 billion in remittances sent back yearly to Mexico, mostly by those who are here illegally and so often subsidized by our own state and federal entitlements?

Should America declare cartels international terrorists, extradite them, and bar all their accomplices and abettors from the global banking system?

China knowingly sends Mexico the raw ingredients of fentanyl, believing it is a win-win strategy of enormous profits and lots of deaths of America’s youth.

What would deter China from its nonchalant aggression? Still more concessions? More ignoring the Wuhan origins of the COVID pandemic?

Or would the expulsion of 350,000 Chinese students from American universities stop their fentanyl exporting? Or prohibiting Chinese companies with ties to the Communist government from buying American farmland?

Apparently, the more technologically sophisticated and affluent Americans became, the more their elites believed they could change ancient human nature which is fixed and predictable across time and space.

They redefined criminality as either a lifestyle choice or reimaged the criminal as one with legitimate grievances against the society he subverts.

The more the Biden Administration ignores those harming us abroad, the more they interpret it as American weakness, if not decadence to be further exploited.

The result is the predictably dangerous present.

When our state and federal governments allow criminals and foreign nations to injure with impunity their own law-abiding citizens, is it any wonder the civilized world we once knew has vanished—replaced by the Hobbesian rule of the wild?

Stanford and Judge Duncan; Fourth Circuit transgender follies; and more

Inbox

Ed Whelan ewhelan@eppc.org via gmail.mcsv.net	Mar 13, 2023, 2:10 PM (1 day ago)
to me

From NRO’s Bench Memos:

What Punishments Must Stanford Impose?

Ed Whelan

about 3 hours ago

In their joint apology to Judge Kyle Duncan, Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Stanford law dean Jenny Martinez acknowledged the obvious fact that the protestors’ disruption of Duncan’s presentation “was inconsistent with our policies on free speech.” They further acknowledged that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

The question now is what punishments Stanford should impose. I think that it’s clear that DEI dean Tirien Steinbach should be fired. As for the student protestors, Stanford’s written policy on campus disruptions—a policy that Steinbach herself linked to in her email to students before the event—provides valuable guidance. That policy expressly states that while Stanford “firmly supports the rights of all members of the University community to express their views or to protest against actions and opinions with which they disagree”:

It is a violation of University policy for a member of the faculty, staff, or student body to:

Prevent or disrupt the effective carrying out of a University function or approved activity, such as lectures, meetings, interviews, ceremonies, the conduct of University business in a University office, and public events.

That policy also expressly states that while there is no “ordinary” penalty for violations, past infractions “have led to penalties ranging from censure to expulsion.” (Emphasis added.) It thus gives clear notice that censure should be expected as the minimum penalty.

Princeton professor Robert P. George offered this helpful guidance:

Hold everything constant–the interruptions, vile language, and the rest–except the speaker is Sonia Sotomayor, the sponsor is the Stanford Women’s Collective, and the students disrupting the event and hurling hateful epithets at the speaker are anti-abortion. What would happen?

Whatever the true answer to that question is, is also the answer to the questions of what should have been done by administrators at Judge Duncan’s talk, and what sanctions should be imposed now on those who disrupted it.

Boston University professor David Decosimo responded:

Let’s be real. If a group of conservative Stanford law students shouted down a federal judge w/ obscenities & mocked their sex life while a Dean watched & praised them, there’d be front page stories on fascism, the Dean would be fired, & they’d be expelled & banished from big law.

‘Please Reach Out To Your Abuser For Support’

Ed Whelan

about 1 hour ago

Another entry in the beyond-parody category: As the Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium has reported, one of the Stanford law bureaucrats who attended Judge Duncan’s event and who did nothing to stop the disruption has emailed student leaders of Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter “to provide you with resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health.”

Believe it or not, one of acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino’s suggestions is to “reach out” to DEI dean Tirien Steinbach—yes, the leading culprit in this whole matter—“if you would like support or would like to process last week’s events:

Fourth Circuit’s Transgender Follies

Ed Whelan

about 1 hour ago

In early January, I highlighted the federal district judge, Clinton appointee Joseph R. Goodwin, who had the guts and humility to reverse his position and to dissolve the preliminary injunction that he had initially entered against West Virginia’s “Save Women’s Sports” law. Under the West Virginia law, biological males cannot take part on girls’ sports teams in public schools. Goodwin ruled that the law survives intermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause and that it satisfied—indeed, “largely mirrors”—Title IX.

Just after expedited briefing was completed on appeal (in B.P.J. v. West Virginia Board of Education), a divided Fourth Circuit panel, in a one-sentence order devoid of reasoning, dramatically altered the status quo, as it enjoined operation of the West Virginia law for the duration of the appeal.

West Virginia has now filed in the Supreme Court a motion to vacate the Fourth Circuit’s injunction. From the introduction to that motion (citations omitted):

[The Fourth Circuit’s] unreasoned order unjustifiably upsets the way that things traditionally work in school sports. For as long as schools have offered sports teams, it has been the “norm” to designate student athletes to them by sex. Without that separation, there is “a substantial risk that boys would dominate the girls’ programs and deny them an equal opportunity to compete in interscholastic events.” Separate teams also “aid in th[e] equalization” of athletics programs for men and women by “mak[ing] monitoring of the opportunities provided easier.” And sometimes, co-ed teams cause a “detrimental effect on the safety of the participants.” For these and other reasons, many have recognized that “commingling of the biological sexes in the female athletics arena would significantly undermine the benefits” that separate sports teams “afford to female student athletes.”

Nothing warrants the Fourth Circuit majority’s radical approach, and this Court should vacate its unreasoned and incorrect injunction. Complete lack of analysis is the first tell that something is amiss, as federal courts should not enjoin democratically passed legislation without at least providing a rationale. What’s more, B.P.J. will not succeed on the merits. All parties, B.P.J. included, agree that separated sports teams serve important interests. Consistent with that starting point, the Act makes the reasonable judgment that many have made before: Biological differences between males and females matter in sports. Both Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment allow that judgment.

Let’s hope that the Court promptly grants West Virginia’s motion.

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 13

Ed Whelan

about 7 hours ago

1963—Ernesto Miranda is arrested in Phoenix on charges of abduction and rape. His interrogation by police yields a written confession. His confession is admitted at trial, and he is convicted.

Three years later, in Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court rules by a 5-4 vote (with the majority opinion by Chief Justice Warren) that a confession made during custodial interrogation will be conclusively deemed involuntary and inadmissible unless police first provide what are now known as the Miranda warnings (or unless other effective safeguards are adopted). It therefore vacates Miranda’s conviction. In dissent, Justice Harlan states that “[o]ne is entitled to feel astonished that the Constitution can be read” to bar admission of a confession “obtained during brief, daytime questioning … and unmarked by any of the traditional indicia of coercion.” Harlan also observes that the “thrust of the [Court’s] new rules” is not to protect against coerced confessions but “ultimately to discourage any confession at all.”

In response to Miranda, Congress in 1968 enacts a law providing that voluntary confessions shall be admissible in evidence in federal prosecutions, whether or not Miranda warnings were given. In 2000, in a striking illustration of the staying power of activist precedents, the Supreme Court rules 7-2 in Dickerson v. United States that Miranda “announced a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively,” and it voids the federal statute. As Justice Scalia argues in dissent, the majority in Dickerson does not in fact hold that the use at trial of a voluntary confession, in the absence of Miranda warnings, violates the Constitution, but rather regards Miranda’s rules as merely “prophylactic.” Thus, in voiding the federal law, the majority necessarily rules that it has the “immense and frightening antidemocratic power” “not merely to apply the Constitution, but to expand it, imposing what it regards as useful ‘prophylactic’ restrictions upon Congress and the States.”   

2014—By a vote of 5 to 2, the Florida supreme court rules (in Estate of McCall v. United States) that a statutory cap on wrongful-death non-economic damages on medical-malpractice claims violates the equal-rights guarantee under the state constitution. Five justices agree that the plurality opinion misapplies rational-basis review. But three of those justices nonetheless concur in the plurality’s result. That leaves only the two dissenters to embrace the simple reality that the cap “is rationally related to the legitimate state interest of decreasing medical malpractice insurance rates and increasing the affordability and availability of health care in Florida.”

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—March 11

Ed Whelan

March 11, 2023

2020—“I think it needed to be said,” asserts octogenarian federal district judge Lynn S. Adelman in defense of his 35-page political screed titled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.” 

In fact, Adelman says nothing that hasn’t already been said, over and over, in the fever swamps of the Left. He condemns Chief Justice Roberts’s metaphor of a judge as umpire as a “masterpiece of disingenuousness,” charges that “the Court’s hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy,” alleges that the Court’s rulings “constitute a direct assault on the right of poor people and minorities to vote,” and complains that the “Republican Party has been particularly afflicted by the concentration of wealth at the top,” “has also become more partisan, more ideological and more uncompromising,” and has displayed a “zealous partisanship” on judicial appointments that “reminds one of nothing so much as … those fervent defenders of slavery who pushed the South into the Civil War.” (And that’s all just in his screed’s first eight pages. How could anyone read further?) 

Adelman, a longtime liberal state senator who was appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1997, might be said to epitomize the judge as politician in a robe—except that he is known to appear frequently in his courtroom without even bothering with the pretense of a robe.

M. Edward Whelan III
Distinguished Senior Fellow and

Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies
Ethics and Public Policy Center
1730 M Street N.W., Suite 910
Washington, D.C. 20036
202-682-1200
www.EPPC.org

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