By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Twelve years ago, in a regrettable dilution of the university’s moral mettle, Notre Dame bestowed an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on Barack Obama at its commencement exercises. This past February, we asked, would President John Jenkins, CSC, risk a rerun of the 2009 disaster?
The odds weren’t favorable. In an interview just prior to Biden’s inauguration, Jenkins condemned President Donald Trump as “divisive,” while stating that “Biden wants to bring our fractured nation together. . . . He sees that we must overcome the divisiveness, the undermining of our institutions and the disregard for the common good — all of which are tearing apart our nation.”
Well, four months later, the cards are face-up on the table. Biden has betrayed Fr. Jenkins, and the country, celebrating abortion worldwide while amplifying the radical divisiveness that flourished during the eight years he spent with Obama. Biden has frolicked in every aspect of the Left’s defiance of natural law, embracing the LGBT tranny “RACIST!!!” enterprise and threatening to destroy outright what’s left of the Constitution.
Surely Fr. Jenkins would heed the alumni who pleaded with him not to allow “Catholic Joe” to mock Notre Dame by sneaking that moral cesspool along Bulla Road onto campus once more. Surely he’s read Charlie Rice’s What Happened to Notre Dame? about the Obama disaster.
Fr. Jenkins was warned, but he extended the invitation anyway.
And then Joe Biden turned him down.
Notre Dame was too embarrassed to talk about it, but “sources from the White House confirmed to Catholic News Agency that Biden had indeed been invited by the university but could not attend due to scheduling.”
So here’s where things stand: Fr. Jenkins was willing to put Notre Dame through the wringer, with bishops, alumni, hundreds of thousands of Catholics, and millions of Americans outraged at the university’s honoring the most pro-abortion, anti-Catholic poseur in presidential history. But Biden’s handlers slapped him down with the lowest of Washington insults: a “scheduling conflict.”
So Fr. Jenkins will get all the opprobrium — and he deserves it — and none of the shabby benefits.
Benefits? What benefits? Well, after Obama’s visit, Notre Dame received a generous government grant that helped make 2009 the university’s best fundraising year ever. Moreover, the “vulgar lust for prestige” that Professor Ralph McInerny had accurately identified among a growing faction in the university’s faculty and administration would have been satiated once more.
Instead, “Catholic Joe” gives Notre Dame the back of his hand, grateful no doubt that he has escaped the grueling challenge of a plane flight (an hour each way!) and an extended public appearance (two more hours!) that would have included a challenging stairway leading to the podium.
No, don’t weep for Joe. Don’t bother. Weep, weep copious tears, for Notre Dame.
Kamala’s Hurt Feelings
Among Democrat voters, Kamala Harris was the most unpopular 2020 candidate in the presidential primaries. It shows. Joe Biden put her in charge of the border and foreign policy; in both areas, the administration has crashed and burned.
It’s nothing new. Throughout the ages, countless rulers have brought incompetence to the throne. America’s founders, fully aware of man’s fallible nature, placed strict limits on such individuals in our system of checks, balances, express powers, division of powers, and separation of powers. Over time, in our own history, these barriers to power have been the targets of those seeking inordinate power. Here enters the axiom of Friedrich Hayek in the Road to Serfdom: “The Worst Do Rise To The Top.” And in today’s cast of such characters, Kamala Harris has soared to a leading role.
The Atlantic magazine, hardly a right-wing bastion, now reports that Ms. Harris has compiled a list of reporters and others whom she suspects of being “racist.” Edward-Isaac Dovere explains that even those not so perceived still might not “fully understand her or appreciate her life experience.”
But wait, there’s more: To Kamala, words matter. “She particularly doesn’t like the word ‘cautious,’ and aides look out for synonyms too. ‘Careful,’ ‘guarded,’ and ‘hesitant’ don’t go over well.”
Curious. Kamala isn’t hesitant, she is totally inert. But apparently she spends her time and our money telling her staff to search for ThoughtCrime in the media — whose lapdogs are manifestly fawning — instead of the border, which is in chaos.
The Atlantic’s story is manifestly damning. So we must ask, because Kamala will: is the magazine “racist” in reporting it?
Undoubtedly, the USCCB’s Kamalaphiles will quickly resort to the shopworn epithet; but the Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles has another view: “In many ways, Harris is merely a non-white version of Hillary Clinton,” he writes. “Both women are possessed by ruthless ambition, yet lack the necessary skills to succeed in politics at the national level. They are most comfortable when regurgitating talking points and platitudes. Objectively speaking, they share a knack for unsettling laughter and launched their political careers by dating powerful men.”
Joe Biden’s batteries are draining fast. We must prayerfully prepare; prognostication is too painful.
Garland Fiddles
While Justice Burns
During the Trump Administration, the Deep State platoon at the FBI did everything possible to avoid pursuing leftist criminals inside and outside the government. We now learn that, in a classic admission from the Ministry of Truth, the FBI quietly admitted Friday [May 14] that the 2017 Alexandria, Va., baseball field shooting that nearly killed Cong. Steve Scalise has been classified as “domestic terrorism” carried out by a ‘domestic violent extremist’ targeting Republicans after the bureau had previously classified it as ‘suicide by cop’,” reports Jerry Dunleavy, who pored through the small print of an FBI “appendix” describing domestic terrorist incidents to discover this gem.
While tens of millions of Americans are potential terrorists, according to Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland, the FBI willfully ignored terrorist Trump-hater James Hodgkinson’s avid support of Bernie Sanders and his determination to “Terminate the Republican Party” (Hodgkinson had tried to murder some two dozen Republicans, most of them Members of Congress, as they were playing baseball).
Two lessons: First, the radicalization of our federal justice system is dangerously escalating; and second, thank you, Mitch McConnell, for keeping Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court in 2016, and making sure that Amy Coney Barrett, who had the highest GPA in history at Notre Dame’s School of Law, was confirmed in 2020.
Detritus
Joe Biden occasionally complains about his handlers, but he still likes to boss people around. “The rule is now simple,” he tweeted on May 13; “get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours.”
Fat chance, Joe.
Meanwhile, the mask is coming off the Democrats’ 2020 “victory” as the Arizona Senate election audit of Maricopa County votes continues. Over a hundred Democrat lawyers in Phoenix and the Justice Department in Washington are trying to shut the audit down. Desperation is in the air.
And, while nobody in Washington seems to be paying attention, our pro-life friends in Peru report that a Communist named Pedro Castillo has won the first round in the country’s presidential election. Castillo has vowed to scrap the Peruvian constitution and inaugurate a socialist regime.
At home, Washington’s Kennedy Center should have been renamed ages ago, but it just keeps on taking while taxpayers keep on giving. Adam Andrzejewski, who digs deeply into government spending, celebrated the delayed IRS tax deadline by reporting that the posh hangout of DC’s liberals has received $270 million from taxpayers since 2016. That sum includes more than $5 million paid to the center’s president.
In gratitude for our generous support, the center will host a Capital Drag Festival featuring “queer works from local filmmakers” and other “monumental drag acts.”
I think they misspelled “dregs.”
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress