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Theodore McCarrick illustrates the problem, but he is not the only problem

I have said it before: the Catholic priesthood must be changed, and restricted to married, heterosexual men.

Mandatory celibacy for priests was not established until the Second Lateran Council in 1139, and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in 1563. That means that, for 1,100 years, the majority of Church history, priests could be, and were mostly expected to be, married men.

With humans being naturally inclined to mate, the Church is expecting the priest to live an unnatural lifestyle. Human beings need to mate, they need to be married, and the celibacy discipline denies to Catholic priests that most basic normalcy in human life. Even St Paul, who stated that he was celibate, noted that marriage was the natural condition of life,[1]I Corinthians 7:1-11. And St Paul also set down the conditions that a man must meet to be a deacon, priest or bishop:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?[2]1 Timothy 3:1-5

St Peter, regarded as the first Pope, at least had been married at one point: Matthew 8:14-15 refers to his mother-in-law, though there is no reference to St Peter’s wife in the Bible.[3]1 Corinthians 9:5 has also been interpreted as confirming that not only was St Peter married, but that his wife accompanied him as he traveled with Jesus. Cephas, in the cited passage, refers to … Continue reading

The conditions for priests and deacon are similar. But clearly, St Paul expected those in Holy Orders to mostly be married.

Ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick pleads not guilty to child sex assault; some in crowd outside yell, ‘Shame on you!’

By Kurt Shillinger  and Michelle Boorstein | September 3, 2021 | 9:55 a.m. EDT

DEDHAM, Mass. — Disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 91, in street clothes, stooped and using a walker, was arraigned Friday in a suburban Boston courtroom on three counts of criminal child sex abuse.

It was the first time the former Catholic archbishop of Washington had appeared in public since 2018, when his fall began amid a wave of sex abuse allegations. Some in the crowd outside, including survivors of other assaults, screamed at the former global power-broker: “Shame on you! Prince of the church!”

Inside, McCarrick was charged with sexually assaulting a teen in the 1970s, the first time a U.S. cardinal has faced a criminal charge of abuse. He pleaded not guilty during the hearing that lasted less than 10 minutes. Judge Michael J. Pomarole ordered McCarrick to give up his passport and to stay away from people under the age of 18, as well as the victim.

There’s much more at the original, but the story of the former Cardinal is well-known: after scads of evidence, Pope Francis took away his title as Cardinal, and eventually he was laicized. Let’s be honest about it: Mr McCarrick was a predatory homosexual, using his power and position to abuse not just teenagers, but seminarians and subordinate priests.

We need to tell the truth here: while it is wholly politically incorrect to say, the sexual abuse of minors in the Church has been a problem of homosexuality: the vast majority of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has been against boys rather than girls. Several different Google searches have failed to turn up any notation concerning the number of victims in the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report divided by sex, something of obvious interest, because such would reinforce the rather obvious fact that most victims of an all-male clergy have been boys. The John Jay report noted that sexual abuse cases studied between 1950 and 2002 indicated that, rather than prepubescent children, abusers targeted older children:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.[4]The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002, page 12.

A celibate priesthood is a sexually immature priesthood. Sorry to tell the truth here, but if you have never, or only rarely, had sexual relations, you have simply not had time to mature in those relations.

There is no way that the Catholic Church could find a way to accommodate the sexual desires of its homosexual priests, when the Church holds that homosexuals cannot be married, that sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful,[5]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2353 that homosexual activity is “gravely depraved”,[6]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2357 and that homosexuality itself is “objectively disordered.”[7]Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358 This can mean only one thing: that Catholic priests must be heterosexual, and that they must be married.

This is a celibacy problem, in that priests are forced to live unnatural lives, but while it might be politically incorrect, it is also intellectually dishonest to deny that this is a homosexuality problem as well. We have a priesthood of sexually immature men who are far more heavily than the population homosexual in orientation. The statistics we do have indicate that they were preying on boys just entering puberty, not prepubescent children, and that is an indication that sexual orientation as opposed to pedophilia is the primary motivation.

We need a priesthood who understand and participate in normal, adult sexual relationships, and, given that the Church does not, and cannot, recognize homosexual marriages as legitimate, that can mean only one thing: a priesthood in normal, heterosexual marriages.

That will not eliminate all sexual abuse; Jerry Sandusky, were he available for comment — and cared to tell the truth — could tell us all about men in stable, heterosexual marriages who still had a preference for underaged boys. Nor will it prevent the inevitable, some priests being divorced by their wives, and some children or married priests turning out badly.

But it has to be better than what we have now, a priesthood with an out-of-proportion homosexual cohort, and all being denied the most natural of human impulses, that of mating.

This is what we must have, this is what the Catholic Church needs in order to survive to serve the faithful into the future. Denying it, because it is politically incorrect, is denying the truth.

Back to The Washington Post:

While shocking, due to the popularity and power of the sprightly, charismatic McCarrick, his case came two decades after the Catholic sex abuse scandal exploded in Boston and spread everywhere from high-level sports to the Boy Scouts. Forty-six U.S. bishops have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct with minors, according to BishopAccountability. Many thousands of complaints have been filed and multiple dioceses have filed for bankruptcy to cover costs of attorneys and settlements.

But McCarrick is one of only two U.S. bishops who have been criminally charged. The charges against former Springfield bishop Thomas Dupre were dropped the same day, in 2004, with prosecutors citing the statute of limitations.

Forty-six bishops, forty-six bishops! They might not all be guilty, and must be proven innocent until proven otherwise, at least legally.

Pope Francis has recognized the problem:

Pope Francis warned Italian bishops this week to vet carefully applicants to the priesthood and reject anyone they suspected might be homosexual, local media reported on Thursday.

‘Keep an eye on the admissions to seminaries, keep your eyes open,’ the pope was quoted as saying by newspaper La Stampa’s Vatican Insider service. ‘If in doubt, better not let them enter.’

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the remarks, which Vatican Insider and Il Messaggero said were made at a closed-door gathering on Monday.”

Had the Pope’s admonition been put in place by Pope Pius XII, who was the Bishop of Rome when Mr McCarrick entered the seminary, perhaps he would never have become a priest, perhaps all of the disastrous behavior he exhibited while under Holy Orders would have been avoided. Had we a married priesthood, perhaps we would not have the shortage of priests we have now, and perhaps, just perhaps, we would not have had the scandals which have rocked the Church.

Mr McCarrick is an infirm, old man, who might not spend a minute in jail, who might not even survive until the end of his trial. Quite frankly, I don’t really care what happens to him at this point; his punishment is the disgrace he has suffered, and that will probably have to be enough.

But Mr McCarrick is the symbol of what has gone wrong in the Catholic Church, and tells us, if we are willing to look honestly at the problem, what the solution is: while not all homosexuals are predators going after minors, while some truly can remain celibate, their continued presence in the Church has been a persistent problem, and one which will not go away by simply ignoring it. Those who have done nothing wrong should not be somehow kicked out of the priesthood, but we must open the seminaries to married men, as we already have with permanent deacons, and restrict them to mature, married men.

References

References
↑1 I Corinthians 7:1-11.
↑2 1 Timothy 3:1-5
↑3 1 Corinthians 9:5 has also been interpreted as confirming that not only was St Peter married, but that his wife accompanied him as he traveled with Jesus. Cephas, in the cited passage, refers to Peter.
↑4 The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002, page 12.
↑5 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2353
↑6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2357
↑7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2358
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The unintended (?) consequences of being #woke

The left have been slamming police departments across this country ever since the death of George Floyd while he was resisting arrest in Minneapolis. Had Mr Floyd just gotten in that police car when he was arrested, he’d be alive today, or at least he would be if he didn’t overdose on the fentanyl he was using at some point. The left and the #woke and antifa all led Mostly Peaceful Protests™ against the police and doing radical things like obeying the law.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the rioters burned and looted:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The “Buildings Matter, Too” headline got Stan Wischnowski, then Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer fired to resign, with published Elizabeth Hughes writing that she’s transforming that once-great newspaper into “an anti racist news organization,” and telling readers that the Inquirer was now:

  • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
  • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
  • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Translation: the Inquirer would censor the news if it might show black or ‘brown’ people committing crimes. We noted the Sacramento Bee’s description of their policy:

Publishing these (booking) photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

As we have pointed out, Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) are supporting a ballot measure to eliminate the Police Department in Minneapolis, and while Philadelphia hasn’t been that stupid — at least not yet — it’s clear that the chickens are coming home to roost:

Police struggle to hire officers and 911 dispatchers as homicides and shootings increase

The Police Department is struggling to find enough officers and 911 dispatchers to hire, amid a surge in violence that is on pace to make 2021 the deadliest year in history.

by Mensah M Dean | Sunday, September 5, 2021

An Overbrook man called 911 last week after hearing breaking glass outside his house and looking out to see a teen breaking into his next-door neighbor’s car, then running off.

Realizing he had just witnessed a burglary in progress, the man raced to his car to give chase. Along the way, he said, he repeatedly called 911 for help — and the phone rang and rang with no answer.

Far from unique, his experience of reaching for help by dialing 911 — to no avail — is being played out across the city as the Philadelphia Police Department grapples with a vacancy crisis among officers and 911 dispatchers.

Finding enough officers and dispatchers has been a challenge, according to department officials, as interest in such jobs declines amid calls for police reform and the national racial reckoning sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Philadelphia, city and police union officials say, the decline in interest in policing can also be attributed in part to District Attorney Larry Krasner’s stepped-up prosecution of police misconduct.

There’s more at the original

The Philadelphia Police Department, authorized to have 6,380 officers, is 371 officers below strength. There are only 252 dispatchers, out of an authorized strength of 353, 101 vacancies, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw stated that the city has imposed mandatory weekend overtime for 911 dispatchers to make up the shortfall. The story notes that Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Soros’ stooge Larry Krasner, has made prosecuting police ‘misconduct’ a priority.

Would you want to be a police officer in the City of Brotherly Love, with far-left idiots like Mr Krasner just salivating at the chance to catch a mistake and prosecute yet another police officer?

It seems that Philadelphia doesn’t even need to dismantle the Police Department, the way the #woke are trying to do in Minneapolis; instead they’ve inflicted a festering wound of a hundred cuts, one which is slowly dismantling the department, because the #woke simply do not believe in law enforcement.

At least, not until one of them is the victim.

The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats, conservative and liberals, or even urban and rural. No, the real divide is between civilized and barbarian. The problem for the left is that, as barbarians, they have surrendered to the wants and mercies of the strongest, and most of them are weaklings.

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Philadelphia sports writers might just explain Philly’s murder rate The Inquirer wants to influence the city's culture, but their sportswriters might be going about it the wrong way.

In the city that booed Santa Claus, and which piled heaps of scorn and abuse on Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons after every bad game, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Marcus Hayes wants to blame 76ers point guard Ben Simmons and (former) Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz for wanting to leave.

    Ben-edict Simmons, Carson Wentz deserve Philadelphia’s fury as they abandon Eagles, Sixers

    They should have spent the summer on their knees, begging forgiveness, promising to improve. Instead, they sabotaged their trade value and put your teams in peril. They completely warrant your wrath.

    By Marcus Hayes | September 4, 2021

    Philly can be an angry place. Just ask Santa.

    Sometimes that anger is misplaced, as Jayson Werth can attest. But, in this moment, every ounce of Philadelphia’s fury directed at Ben Simmons and Carson Wentz is justified.

    Wentz forced a disastrous trade this spring to the Colts after logging one of the worst seasons in NFL history. Simmons, gun-shy in the playoffs, is trying to trump that unholy departure by strong-arming the Sixers, according to an Inquirer report Wednesday.

    They should have returned to the Eagles and Sixers, rehabilitated their images, and enhanced their trade values. They could not, and cannot. They fear competition. They abhor accountability. They see themselves as victims. So, instead, they sabotaged their trade values, which crippled the Eagles, and which probably will cripple the Sixers. That, on its own, should infuriate fans, even if the pair’s dismissiveness didn’t.

    Wentz and Simmons should have spent the summer of 2021 down on their knees, begging for your forgiveness, working on their flaws, willing to accept whatever role their bosses decided would best help the team. They should have apologized to their teammates for their shortcomings and for the distractions they caused. They should have pledged to, in the future, actually earn the millions of dollars that you lavish upon them — paying to watch them on TV, online, or in person; parking your cars and buying beers at the stadiums; purchasing their jerseys and shoes online.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Simmons grew up in Australia, where people aren’t treated the way Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, treat sports stars. Mr Wentz grew up in North Dakota, where people aren’t, you know, [insert plural slang term for the rectum here], yet somehow, some way, people there expect them to have Philly thick skins.

Of course, there are a lot of Philadelphians who don’t have such thick skins, which is why people keep getting shot in the City of Brotherly Love, but I digress.

Mr Simmons is an incredible athlete, but he has one glaring weakness as a basketball player: he just can’t shoot. So, with all that he can do, Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, had to jump on his biggest weakness, and forgot about all of the good things he can do. Philly fans, and sports writers, wanted him to play beyond his skill set, and trashed him when he couldn’t. Even before the playoffs, there were plenty of articles in the Inquirer about him taking very few three point shots. (I remember one in which it was noted that, at the time, Shaquille O’Neal had more career three-pointers than Mr Simmons.)

The pressure got to Mr Simmons, and he had a terrible series against the Atlanta Hawks, shooting just 33.3% . . . from the free throw line! Then, with just 3:30 left in the game, and the 76ers trailing by two, Mr Simmons, who is 6’11” tall, passed up a wide-open dunk over 6’1″ Trae Young. The game, as the announcer said, had gotten in his head.

Mr Simmons was rightly criticized, but Philly fans, and sports writers, went way, way overboard.

Mr Wentz? He was well appreciated, until last season, when he played behind a destroyed-by-injuries offensive line, had no rushing game, and second-quality receivers. His top target, Zach Ertz, was out for five games, yet Philly fans, and sports writers, expected Mr Wentz to be Superman anyway. I wasn’t a particularly good football player, but even in high school I knew that there were eleven guys on the field, all of whom are necessary to make plays, and it doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, if his receivers aren’t getting open, and his line isn’t keeping the defensive rush off of him, he’s not going to have a good game. Even Tom Brady can’t make great plays when he’s underneath a 260 lb blitzing linebacker.

The article was all about Messrs Simmons and Wentz having no loyalty to their Philadelphia teams, but, in reality, Philly fans, and sports writers, had no loyalty to those players. Mr Hayes is like the abusive husband who gets all urinated off and blames his wife for filing for divorce.

When I think of the homicide rate in Philly, which actually has been coming down of late, it seems to me like the Inquirer sports writers, writ large. People getting pissed off, for reasons that really aren’t that important, and overreacting in the extreme. Mr Hayes, of course, is being paid to overreact, even by the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer, but, in his own small way, he is contributing to the attitude which so frequently spills out onto the city’s mean streets. Through the end of August, 357 people had been murdered in Philly, which means that there were more murders there than any entire year from 2008 through 2019.

Is that fair to Mr Hayes? He might not think so, but the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love is, in the end, an issue of culture, and the Inquirer is, and wants to be, both an element of, and contributor to, the culture of the city. When published Elizabeth Hughes wrote that the newspaper was trying to become “an anti racist news organization,” she was saying that she wanted her newspaper to become a leader in the community, to make the city a better place in which to live. Thus, it has to be asked: do columns like Mr Hayes’, in which he wrote of Messrs Simmons and Wentz, “So yes, this pair warrants your wrath,” lower the rhetoric, dampen down the anger, reduce the tendency to violence? When he wrote, “Ben-edict Simmons and Ginger Jesus are Philly sports’ version of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wasn’t he asking for an extreme reaction? If players like Messrs Simmons and Wentz, who have virtually nothing to do, personally, with the vast, vast majority of people in Philly, deserve the “wrath” and “fury” of Philadelphia fans, then doesn’t the guy down the block, who stole your girl, or dunked in your face on the playground, or cut you off in trying to grab a parking space, or sold drugs on your corner, deserve your “wrath” and your “fury” even more?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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I completely support this measure in Minneapolis Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. -- Galatians 6:7

Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) have endorsed a November ballot initiative that would abolish the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a new Department of Public Safety.

The initiative would remove language in the city charter that requires Minneapolis to keep a police department with a minimum number of officers based on population.

The city would then create a new agency responsible for ‘integrating’ public safety functions ‘into a comprehensive public health approach to safety.’ The new agency could have police ‘if necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of the department.’

Mrs Mynett argued, in an OpEd in the Star Tribune:

Charter change on Minneapolis public safety is needed

The amendment on November’s ballot lets citizens choose a more humane system.

By Ilhan Omar | August 31, 2021 | 11:41 AM CDT

Minnesota and the entire world watched in horror last May as George Floyd, a resident of my congressional district, had his life taken from him by the very officers who had sworn an oath to protect him. One of those officers is now in prison. But as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at the time, that verdict represented accountability, not justice, because justice implies restoration. “Now,” he told us, “the cause of justice is in our hands.”

What many don’t know is that the murder of George Floyd was not a one-off event. I remember witnessing my first police shooting as a teenager, where the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) put nearly 38 bullets into the body of a mentally ill man who was just released from an institution, didn’t speak a word of English, couldn’t respond to commands and was not of any imminent threat. Many of us, particularly people of color, have witnessed those kinds of killings in front of civilians far too often.

The truth is the current system hasn’t been serving our city for a long time. Right now, we expect the MPD to respond to all types of emergencies, from mental health crises, to domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and simple noise complaints and traffic stops. But the department simply is not equipped to deal with all these issues, which can lead to escalating tensions and even violence at the hands of police.

One of the biggest impediments to change is the Minneapolis Police Federation. Led by far-right Donald Trump supporter Bob Kroll until recently, the union routinely shields bad cops from any discipline. A recent Reuters investigation found that 9 out of 10 accusations of misconduct resulted in no punishment or intervention aimed at changing the officers’ behavior. The union also openly championed violent “warrior-style policing,” which treats any interactions with civilians like a war zone. These were the very tactics used against protesters in the wake of Floyd’s murder.

It looks to me like Minneapolis has become a war zone: with 61 homicides through the end of August, there have been two more murders in the city than at the same time last year, and last year saw a real spike due to the death of George Floyd. Robberies are up, 1,245 to 1,156, as are aggravated assaults, 1,975 to 2,030.

So, what would Mrs Mynett and Mr bin Ellison do about these killings, these crimes? Why, they’d send a social worker, or a crisis intervenor, or have some other #woke reaction. Of course, the number of reported crimes would actually decrease, because the people of the city would throw up their hands and say, “What’s the use?”

But murders would increase, because murder is a crime of evidence, not a crime of reporting: unless a killer has planned very well, it’s very difficult to dispose of a body, 100 to 300 lb of blood and tissue and bone, something which will start to stink in relatively short order. Bodies almost always get discovered.

Still, if that’s what the idiots good people in Minneapolis want, I say, let them have it, let them show us what an absolutely brilliant idea it is. After all, I don’t live there, so why would I care when they reap what they sow?

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Jill Filipovic is just hopping mad!

It was March 3, 2016, when uber-feminist Jill Filipovic published Dear Everyone Who Said Ruth Bader Ginsburg Should Retire: You Were Wrong: The Texas abortion case before the Supreme Court is just further proof that the justice knew what she was doing. Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was before the Supreme Court, and, in the end, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan formed the five member majority which invalidated some restrictions the Lone Star State placed on abortion.

Well, Justice Kennedy retired and Justice Ginsburg departed this mortal vale, and the seat left vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died have been filled, by Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, all appointed by President Trump.

Miss Filipovic wrote:

Ginsburg, who many pundits were calling on to retire a little over a year ago, may be the justice who offers the best chance not only of overturning the law, but of writing a coherent and fair opinion laying out a detailed standard for challenging future abortion laws.

The argument for Ginsberg’s retirement was fairly straightforward: She was old, there was a midterm election looming in which Republicans were set to potentially take control of the Senate, and it was Obama’s last chance to appoint a liberal. And what if a Republican won in 2016? And again in 2020? Ginsburg, in her 80s, could be replaced by a conservative.

Ginsburg’s refusal to retire hinged on a few points: She still had all of her mental faculties, she was good at her job, and even the pre-midterm Senate wasn’t liberal enough to appoint someone as progressive as her. Besides, she’s a Supreme Court justice — have some respect and let her make the call.

“Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have?” Ginsburg told ELLE. “If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court. [The Senate Democrats] took off the filibuster for lower federal court appointments, but it remains for this court. So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided. As long as I can do the job full steam…. I think I’ll recognize when the time comes that I can’t any longer. But now I can.”

So, Justice Ginsburg was concerned not the President Obama couldn’t get a liberal through, but that even if he tried with a stealth liberal like he did with Merrick Garland, the nominee wouldn’t be liberal enough for her.

When Miss Filipovic wrote, it was becoming clear that Donald Trump was in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination, and of course he could never defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. The seat once held by Justice Scalia would be filled by someone nominated by incoming President Clinton.

This recent case offers the court an opportunity to clarify the “undue burden” standard, or craft a new one. Before Scalia’s death, there were fears the conservative wing of the court could use this case as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade and dismantle abortion rights generally. Now, there is virtually zero chance of that happening; instead, the best-case scenario is that the liberal wing of the court triumphs and publishes an opinion making it more difficult for state legislators to cut off women’s access to safe, legal abortion, protecting abortion rights for at least the next generation.

The most likely candidate to write that opinion is Justice Ginsburg. And that should be enough for a clear ruling: She was absolutely right when she ignored the mostly male peanut gallery imploring her to hang up her robe, relied on her own supreme wisdom, and refused to retire.

I’m sure that the then-Miss Filipovic never, ever thought that it would be President Trump who would nominate the replacement for Mrs Ginsburg after she went to her eternal reward.

To the right is a screen capture of the now Mrs McCormick’s angry tweets of this morning. I chose a screenshot just in case she either deletes them — which is unlikely — or blocks me from seeing them, which she might do if she sees this article. The links to the original are for the first, second and third.

What has her so bitterly angry? From CNN:

Texas 6-week abortion ban takes effect after Supreme Court inaction

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter | Updated 2:32 AM ET | Wednesday, September 1, 2021

(CNN) A controversial Texas law that bars abortions at six weeks went into effect early Wednesday morning after the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court failed to rule on pending emergency requests brought by abortion providers.

The lack of judicial intervention means that the law — which is one of the strictest in the nation and bans abortion before many people know they are pregnant — goes into force absent further court intervention.

The law allows private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the ban.

No other six-week ban has been allowed to go into effect — even briefly.

“What ultimately happens to this law remains to be seen,” said CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas Law School professor Steve Vladeck, “but now through their inaction the justices have let the tightest abortion restriction since Roe v. Wade be enforced for at least some period of time.”

The case comes as the justices are poised in the upcoming term to rule on the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bars abortion at 15 weeks.

There’s more at the original.

Mrs McCormick, in the last of the three tweets I listed, complained about an “authoritarian court,” which leads me to ask: at what point would she favor authoritarianism herself? In her article The Importance of Being Honest: Sometimes we have to sacrifice for public health. But don’t deny the sacrifice itself, she expresses understanding that being forced to wear a facemask, something Republicans and libertarians see as an authoritarian dictate, is a burden, is a sacrifice, but sometimes that burden must be borne. She calls “proponents of stricter anti-Covid measures,” “a group I’m generally a member of,” and says:

The impulse to downplay inconvenient outcomes of one’s own position has been in full force throughout Covid, and with the school reopening + Delta, it’s gotten even more extreme. I keep hearing, for example, that wearing a mask is no big deal and anyone who complains about masking is probably a Covid denialist reactionary. This is pretty weird, because it seems to me to be obviously, demonstrably true that wearing a mask is an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice — it means you can’t fully read other peoples’ facial expressions, it impedes basic human interactions, it makes you break out, it irritates your face, it fogs up your glasses, and I find that when I wear one I start to feel a little disoriented after a while, especially inside under bright lights. Wearing a mask sucks! But it sucks far less than giving someone else Covid, or getting Covid yourself. And so of course, in scenarios where people are not all fully vaccinated and infection rates are high, we should continue wear masks inside. I wear masks inside and I think indoor mask-wearing for essential activities should be mandatory (I also think vaccines should be mandatory for inessential activities, like dining out).

She is, by her own words, willing to force people to bear the burden of mandatory vaccinations and mandatory masking. She recognizes the burdens being put on people, but believes that not getting vaccinated and not wearing a mask is a greater danger than being burdened by doing so, even against your will.

So, apply that logic to abortion. A woman gets pregnant, and does not want to be, does not want a child.[1]It is completely legal, in every state, for a mother to take her unwanted child to a police or fire station, or hospital, and leave him there, surrendering her parental rights, with no questions … Continue reading That is a burden to her, no doubt about it. Her solution: abortion.

But abortion is a burden as well. While it’s a financial burden, though not a great one, on the woman, it also places the burden of ‘relieving’ her burden onto the unborn child. His burden? A death sentence!

So, which is the greater burden: nine months of an unwanted pregnancy, or death for the child? Because, whether Mrs McCormick will admit it or otherwise, that is the exact comparison.

We have placed even greater burdens on people in the past; the United States has had a conscription system under which, though no one has actually been drafted since the 1970s, millions of men have been drafted in the past, and hundreds of thousands of them paid the ultimate price, in World War I, in World War II, in Korea and in Vietnam.[2]Full disclosure: though I was of draft age at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I was not called up due to a high lottery number. The burden of an unwanted pregnancy is far, far less than that of a soldier bleeding out his life’s blood in the rice paddies of South Vietnam.

We do not know how many children will be saved by the Texas law, though surely some will. Some pregnant women will travel to New Mexico or Oklahoma or Louisiana to be ‘relieved’ of their burdens, though hopefully fewer than would otherwise have had abortions in Texas clinics.

How will the Supreme Court rule on the Mississippi case? It is absolutely certain that the three justices appointed by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will vote to overturn it. The left are deathly afraid that Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett will uphold the law, at least in some form. The Chief Justice? If he is going to be in the minority with the three liberal justices, he might just vote with the majority, so that he can assign the opinion, rather than Justice Thomas, assigning it to the Justice he believes will write the most restrictive opinion . . . probably himself. But predicting Supreme Court decisions has rarely been a money-winning game.

References

References
↑1 It is completely legal, in every state, for a mother to take her unwanted child to a police or fire station, or hospital, and leave him there, surrendering her parental rights, with no questions asked. Having a child she does not want does not mean that the mother must keep the child.
↑2 Full disclosure: though I was of draft age at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I was not called up due to a high lottery number.
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Mugshot and photo hypocrisy from the Lexington Herald-Leader

We noted on Sunday that the Lexington Herald-Leader declined to post the mugshot of Brent Dyer Kelty, a man previously convicted of “several prior felonies in Fayette County since 2010,” in their story about him being indicted for the murder of an infant. In that, the newspaper followed the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, despite the fact that Mr Kelty, even if acquitted of murder, is still a multiply convicted felon.

The McClatchy policy is due to the possibility that an accused person might not ever be convicted, and thus having his mugshot published could harm him later in life. Of course, someone’s name is far more easily searchable, and just printing the suspect’s name can have far wider implications. For instance, prospective employers who do their due diligence on an applicant, will be searching for his name, not his photo.

But it seems that the Herald-Leader has no compunctions about printing the photo of someone accused of, and convicted of, a simple misdemeanor:

    Woman who attended University of Kentucky pleads guilty in U.S. Capitol riot case

    By Beth Musgrave | August 30, 2021 | 1:21 PM EDT

    Gracyn Dawn Courtright, a University of Kentucky student, faces charges linked to the Capitol riot on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2020. This photo was included in a criminal complaint filed against Courtright and allegedly shows her holding the “members only” sign. PHOTO VIA FBI.

    A woman from West Virginia who attended the University of Kentucky pleaded guilty Monday to charges related to entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot.

    In federal court in Washington D.C., Gracyn Dawn Courtright pleaded guilty to a charge of entering and remaining in a restricted area, according to federal court records. She had faced more charges.

    Courtright will be sentenced Nov. 16. She could face up to six months in prison in addition to other fines and restitution.

There’s more at the original.

It might be complained that Miss Courtright is a convicted criminal now, but the Herald-Leader published the same photo on June 28th, before she was convicted of anything.

Miss Courtright is hardly the only one of the Capitol kerfufflers whose photo has been published by the Herald-Leader, even before they were convicted of anything. The newspaper had at least two articles on Lori Vinson, one of which was before she was even charged with any crimes, which featured her photos.

Both Miss Courtright and Mrs Vinson are facing maximum sentences of six months in jail; Mr Kelty is a multiply convicted felon looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, but the Herald-Leader protected the photo of Mr Kelty. On March 3rd, the newspaper published a story which identified 12 Kentuckians by name, with photos of 10 of them — some difficult to identify — who were charged with crimes related to the demonstration, but at the time not convicted of anything.

The Herald-Leader also declined to publish the mugshots of two men sentenced to a year for their part in assaults during a Black Lives Matter protest in the city. Their crimes were more serious than any of the ones of which the Capitol kerfufflers were convicted.

Of course, the very liberal Herald-Leader probably sees the Capitol kerfuffle as a hideous and heinous crime, because that’s what the left do, when it was, in reality, little more than an out-of-control, disorganized frat party. The only shot fired was from a Capitol policeman, and even though a few firearms were recovered from a couple of the protesters’ vehicles, none were taken from protesters in the Capitol Building.

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Ignoring a very, very large elephant in the room

Do reporters for The Philadelphia Inquirer read their own news paper?

Inquirer reporter Harold Brubaker, who specializes in the business side of health care and nonprofit sector, reported on the Keystone State’s attempts to revise nursing home regulations, but somehow he managed to miss the elephant in the room:

‘Insulting and dumb.’ That’s how a nursing home manager labeled criticism of Pa.’s new staffing proposal

Advocates say more staffing is desperately needed. But nursing home executives say Medicaid rates won’t support it.

by Harold Brubaker | August 28, 2021

Anne Clauss hates to imagine what her mother would have endured at a nursing home in Langhorne if she or another relative hadn’t visited daily during her stay from 2017 to 2018.

One evening Clauss found her mother at the end of a hallway facing away from her room, where she had been stuck for a few hours, another resident told her. Other times, staff — whom she called underpaid and overworked — forgot to bring her mother her meals.

Her mother died at a hospital in 2018. But that experience prompted the Levittown resident to comment in favor of a Pennsylvania Department of Health proposal to increase the homes’ minimum level of direct care to 4.1 hours daily per patient, up from the current 2.7 hours.

“I hope regulations can be updated to help our elderly live out their lives well cared for and treated respectfully,” Clauss wrote to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which will review the comments and eventually hold a public hearing. It’s not clear how quickly the commission will act.

Let’s tell the truth here: nursing homes are dreadful places, facilities in which to warehouse the elderly who can no longer care for themselves, but who can, and do, live on with nursing care and physical assistance. It’s a truth all of us know, but no one is willing to say out loud, because so many people fear that they will one day have to warehouse their aging parents in such a facility.[1]My family has been fortunate in that regard; such a decision was never one we faced. And I cannot imagine that any of us do not dread the thought of having to be in a nursing home themselves. I’m very thankful that I’m very healthy, but who can know what the future holds.

There’s a lot more at the original, and Mr Brubaker did a thorough job in his story, save for one thing. He noted that nursing homes have real difficulties in attracting staff, and that Medicaid payments for patients work out to roughly $8.00 an hour, which is significantly less than certified nursing assistants are paid. To provide more hours of patient care, more nursing staff would have to be hired, but there’s simply not enough money paid to nursing homes to do so. For the details, read Mr Brubaker’s original.

The effort is coming to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic in which over 13,000 people have died in Pennsylvania’s nursing homes.

This is where Mr Brubaker’s story fails. He mentions the COVID-19 panic just this once, and that’s it. But, as we previously noted, and as Mr Brubaker’s own newspaper has reported, Philadelphia’s Acting Health Commissioner, Dr Cheryl Bettigole, has mandated that all health care workers in the City of Brotherly Love must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 15th. Dr Bettigole has noted that more than a dozen long-term care facilities in Philadelphia have less than 50% of their staff vaccinated.

If you’re more committed to not getting the vaccine than to the safety of your patients, it’s time to do something else. Health care is not for you.

This is something that Mr Brubaker should have mentioned: not only are patients in nursing homes getting fewer hours of care than they should, Dr Bettigole and the city of Philadelphia want to fire the CNAs and RNs who refuse to get vaccinated.

Oh, they won’t put it that way — though the Commissioner came close — but that’s the result of the policy. The city obviously wants to force the reluctant to get vaccinated, and some will probably concede, but if over half the staff have resisted vaccination, in an industry which has been continually pushing for it, it has to be expected that at least some, quite probably a significant percentage of them, will continue to refuse to comply.

From an article referenced by the much nicer Dana on Patterico’s Pontifications:

As of last night, there were 102 people waiting for an ICU bed in the greater Houston area.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told Begnaud that she was prepared to open a field hospital, but as of Friday morning, hospitals in the Houston area were telling her they had extra beds — but not enough nurses. Seven hundred nurses arrived last week, but it’s still not enough to meet the demand.

Of course, that article, too, failed to address the elephant in the room:

Houston hospital workers fired, resign over COVID-19 vaccine

By Jamie Stengle | June 22, 2021

DALLAS (AP) — More than 150 employees at a Houston hospital system who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine have been fired or resigned after a judge dismissed an employee lawsuit over the vaccine requirement.

A spokesperson for Houston Methodist hospital system said 153 employees either resigned in the two-week suspension period or were terminated on Tuesday.

The case over how far health care institutions can go to protect patients and others against the coronavirus has been closely watched. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. But it won’t be the end of the debate.

It’s not a case of some health care workers may quit, or may be fired, for refusing vaccination, but that some have already quit, some have already been fired.

I get it: the editorial position of the Inquirer is strongly in support of vaccination, and perhaps noting that the city’s vaccine mandate will actually cost the city’s nursing homes employees isn’t something a biased newspaper like the Inquirer wants to report.[2]I take publisher Elizabeth Hughes opinion piece as an admission that the Inquirer has, and will continue to have, a bias toward the left. But for an article like Mr Brubaker’s to fail to note the potential loss of nursing home employees, just as he is noting that the Commonwealth might require more, is simply poor journalism. It wasn’t just a missed point, but ignoring a very, very large elephant in the room.

References

References
↑1 My family has been fortunate in that regard; such a decision was never one we faced.
↑2 I take publisher Elizabeth Hughes opinion piece as an admission that the Inquirer has, and will continue to have, a bias toward the left.
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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader hides a mugshot, this time of a convicted felon.

As we have previously noted, the Lexington Herald-Leader adheres to the McClatchy Mugshot Policy. The policy states as one of its reasons is the possibility that a criminal suspect might be acquitted or have the charges dropped, in which case publishing his mugshot would have a detrimental effect on him.

But what if the accused is already a convicted felon, one with “several prior felonies”? Why should he be shielded?

    New Lexington murder indictment was from an infant’s death in 2018. Bond set at $500k

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | August 27, 2021 | 4:41 PM

    Brent Dyer Kelty. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center. Click to enlarge.

    The Lexington man indicted by a grand jury this week is accused of killing an infant three years ago, according to court records.

    Brent Dyer Kelty, 30, has been charged with murder in the death of 4-month-old Landon Mayes, who suffered head trauma. Mayes died on Sept. 8, 2018. Kelty was indicted on Wednesday, according to court records.

    Lexington police investigated the death, but the attorney general’s office presented the case to a grand jury, resulting in Kelty’s indictment. A spokesperson for Attorney General Daniel Cameron said representatives couldn’t comment on why the indictment came three years after Mayes’ death.

    “We cannot share details regarding the investigation,” Elizabeth Kuhn said.

    Kelty was already in jail on unrelated charges, according to jail records. In addition to murder, he was also indicted on a count of being a persistent felony offender. Kelty had been convicted of several prior felonies in Fayette County since 2010, according to court records.

There’s more at the original, but I would think that a man, a previously convicted felon, who has now been indicted for killing an infant, would qualify as accused of committing what should be considered a “high profile crime”.

The First Street Journal does not hold to the policy of shielding such defendants, and their mugshots are matters of public record. If this guy is guilty of killing an infant, there ought to be exactly one sentence: lock him up and throw away the key.

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Impeach Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd!

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd. Photo: Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts.

I wrote Impeach Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd! back on March 3, after he issued his illegal and unconstitutional injunctions against laws passed by the General Assembly, and it appears I was right. It took way, way, way too long for the state Supreme Court to rule that the injunctions should not have been issued, and order the injunctions dissolved:

    We find that this matter presents a justiciable case or controversy but that the Franklin Circuit Court abused its discretion in issuing the temporary injunction.[1]Cameron v Beshear, Section B, pages 13 forward. Accordingly, we remand this case to the trial court with instructions to dissolve the injunction.[2]Cameron v Beshear, page 2.

Now, five days later, we find that Judge Shepherd is not going to follow the instructions to dissolve the injunctions!

    KY judge delays following Supreme Court COVID order as Beshear & lawmakers negotiate

    By Jack Brammer | August 26, 2021 11:57 AM

    Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and legislative leaders are working together on a new set of COVID-19 emergency orders, which they hope to present to a Franklin Circuit Court judge before he dissolves an injunction against new laws that will torpedo Beshear’s existing emergency orders and regulations.

    At a status conference hearing Thursday morning, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd said he will follow the Kentucky Supreme Court’s instructions in a ruling last Saturday for him to dissolve the injunction but he will wait until the court hears more about the work between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislative leaders.

    The high court unanimously said the injunction was wrong and that the new laws limiting Beshear’s emergency powers during the coronavirus crisis should not have been blocked. A provision in one of the new laws would limit Beshear’s executive orders to 30 days unless renewed by the legislature.

Just where in the Court’s ruling does it give Judge Shepherd the discretion as to when to dissolve the injunctions?

    Beshear has said he would like to implement a statewide mask mandate, but lawmakers have shown little interest in that suggestion.

Of course they haven’t: getting rid of the mask mandate was what the voters elected the legislators to do!

    David Fleenor, counsel for Senate President Robert Stivers, told Shepherd he did not know exactly when the negotiations between the governor and lawmakers would be completed but said he expects it to be in days, not weeks, quickly adding, “I hope I’m not being overly optimistic.”

The Court specified that the General Assembly makes policy for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, not the Governor,[3]Cameron v Beshear, page 20: “As we have noted time and again, so many times that we need not provide citation, the General Assembly establishes the public policy of the Commonwealth.” yet somehow Judge Shepherd believes he has the authority to hold off on following the Supreme Court’s instructions to dissolve the injunction until he hears more about what, if any, negotiations are ongoing between the Governor and legislative leaders.

That was not part of the Court’s ruling.

Judge Shepherd has told the parties to report back to him on Tuesday, September 7th, 12 days from now, and 17 days since the Supreme Court issued its ruling. Judge Shepherd, who had already suspended the laws which the state Supreme Court noted were passed legally, for 171 days, now thinks he can add another 17 days on top of that. That would be one day short of 27 weeks, more than half a year.

The state House of Representatives needs to impeach this judge when the regular session begins next January, and the state Senate needs to remove him from office and attaint him from ever holding another office in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The state Court of Appeals needs to overrule him and dissolve the injunctions, if the Supreme Court doesn’t beat them to it; I would expect Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R-KY) to immediately appeal Judge Shepherd’s refusal to dissolve the injunctions, and move that he be removed from the case.

References

References
↑1 Cameron v Beshear, Section B, pages 13 forward.
↑2 Cameron v Beshear, page 2.
↑3 Cameron v Beshear, page 20: “As we have noted time and again, so many times that we need not provide citation, the General Assembly establishes the public policy of the Commonwealth.”