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Church vs. State: Catholic Bishops Vow to Defy Blue-state “Reveal-confessions” Law

By Selwyn Duke

“‘We must obey God rather than men.’” So said Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne, quoting the Bible, while explaining why priests will go to prison before complying with a new Washington state law. The issue?

The law requires clergymen to report acts of child abuse revealed during Confession. The problem?

Among other things, Catholic Church Canon Law forbids a priest from breaking the “seal of Confession.” The penalty for doing so is excommunication, which a sincere priest would fear more than any worldly punishment. It is such a serious matter, too, because Confession is one of seven Sacraments in Catholic belief. And the Sacraments are believed to have been established by God. They are thus nonnegotiable.

De Facto “Hate Speech” Law in America? Woman Falsely Arrested for Using Racial Slur

By Selwyn Duke

Founded by Puritans in 1638 as a safe harbor against religious persecution, New Haven, Connecticut, is, ironically, now no safe haven from the dark religion of wokeness’ speech suppression. A shocking example is a conservative woman who was put through the city’s criminal-justice crucible for an entire year. Her trespass?

She allegedly used a racial slur.

Videos would ultimately exonerate her, but not before she incurred heavy legal fees and suffered intense, life-rending stress. An added irony is that the woman, First Amendment advocate Lauren Noble, is the founder of the Buckley Institute. This is an entity that exists to promote “freedom of speech at Yale University,” which is located in New Haven.

Monumental DEI: Statues of Generic Black Women Being Erected — Replacing the West’s Greats

By Selwyn Duke

Does it matter when a society’s long-present statues are torn down and replaced with very different ones? Well, consider an analogy. Imagine that upon coming home each day, you noticed that more and more pictures of your family members, which had adorned your walls, mantels, and desktops, were disappearing and were being replaced with those of people you don’t even recognize.

Would it matter?

Well, this is essentially what has been happening with our national family. For many years now, statues have been continually torn down/removed, replaced with people of little accomplishment and/or poor character. One of late cocaine-using Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry, erected in his city in 2018, is an example. Even further down the rabbit hole of risibility, statues and other monuments honoring criminal George Floyd appeared in 2020-2021.

This brings us to a new monument in Times Square of a black woman of, uh, let’s say, generous proportions. Oh, unlike Floyd, we can’t say she’s a criminal; she’s got that going for her. But that’s for an odd reason:

She’s not anybody.

Leaked Docs: Nashville “Trans” Shooter’s Homicidal Fantasies Were Known YEARS Before She Killed Kids

By Selwyn Duke

Should healthcare professionals have reported “trans” school-shooter-to-be Audrey Hale to authorities after she related experiencing suicidal and homicidal ideation? And they did know about these troubling developments, too, leaked documents show — years before her violent act.

What’s more, should Hale’s travails have raised extra alarms because, research shows, “trans” individuals are more likely to kill than be killed?

Study Finds the Left Has Now Embraced “Assassination Culture”

By Selwyn Duke

“People will do what they do.” So said then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2020, when asked about a Baltimore mob tearing down a Christopher Columbus statue. Her attitude may be her political set’s norm, too. After all, no one in the Democratic Party leadership has, for example, spoken out against the attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships. And this could make one wonder:

Are Democratic pols leading their base astray?

Or, are they being led by it (or is it both?)?

Whatever the case, it certainly seems that violence is now “a leftist enterprise.” This not only is what I wrote in 2020, do note, but is also essentially the finding of a recent academic study.

The “Trans” Empire Strikes Back, Attacks U.K. Court; J.K. Rowling Responds

Image created with Grok AI.

By Selwyn Duke

If Daniel Radcliffe and the rest of the Harry Potter actors really could perform magic, maybe, just perhaps, they could turn a man into a woman. But it’s impossible beyond the world of Hollywood fantasy. This hasn’t stopped them, however, from embracing the fantasy that this sexual transformation can, somehow, occur in real life. Moreover, actors as a group have become defenders of this “faith,” reflexively attacking any expression of anti-“trans” sanity. Thus did many hundreds of actors and writers recently sign open letters opposing last month’s U.K. Supreme Court (UKSC) ruling. The issue?

The ruling found that 15-year-old British legislation really did mean “sex” when using the term “sex,” and not a misused term (“gender”) with twice as many letters and syllables.

(The UKSC puts our Supreme Court to shame on this, by the way. That is, a few years back the latter somehow couldn’t figure out that 1964 legislators didn’t mean “gender” when writing “sex.” This is even though “gender” was virtually never applied to humans at the time.)

But one writer that didn’t sign any protest letter is Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. In fact, she posted a long rebuttal to the effort on X this past Saturday. She made some excellent points, too.

Nullification? Ignore Judge’s Immigration “Order,” Florida AG Tells State Law Enforcement

By Selwyn Duke

With “each decision … unabashedly based not on law,” the Court moves “one step closer to being reminded of [its] impotence,” warned late Justice Antonin Scalia in his Obergefell v. Hodges dissent (2015). Now, a decade later, the judiciary has just gotten a major reminder.

That is, an Obama-appointed activist judge recently “ordered” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to halt a state immigration law’s enforcement. And the people-elected realist Uthmeier has responded, saying, in essence:

Go pound sand.

Big Bad Putin? Covid Kingdom China Is the World’s Real Boogeyman

By Selwyn Duke

“China is going to eat our lunch?” Joe Biden asked dismissively on the campaign trail in 2019. “Come on, man…. They’re not competition for us.” The Trump administration has taken a very different posture. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned that Beijing is undertaking the “fastest, most rapid, most expansive peacetime military buildup in history” and called it “the single greatest challenge this nation has ever faced.” And, of course, President Trump has targeted China with tariffs that have become a bone of contention domestically.

Of course, some good, intelligent people, such as economist Thomas Sowell, consider the tariff strategy misguided. But wherever we stand and whatever the truth on that, a striking reality is inescapable.

China is not just our main geopolitical adversary; rather, it’s the most fearsome and foreign of foreign threats.

It is, in fact, from the Western perspective, the closest thing there is to an aggressive, planet-imperiling, alien civilization on Earth.

Black Americans in Africa Learn: The Grass Is Actually Meaner on the Other Side of the Fence

By Selwyn Duke

“Thank God our grandpappies caught that boat!” is a line generally attributed to late boxing great Muhammad Ali. It appears, however, that it might’ve actually been uttered by rival George Foreman’s manager, Dick Sadler, in 1974. Regardless, the meaning is the same. The man was happy his ancestors ended up in America — even if it was slavery that brought them here. (The issue arose because Ali and Foreman were at the time in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for their “Rumble in the Jungle” heavyweight title fight.)

Someone else who learned this is a black American woman who, distressed about the “racist” United States, moved to Ghana. How’d it go? Well, she didn’t exactly find her Wakanda.

Killing Deadly Anti-Americanism

By Selwyn Duke

Hatred is like darkness: The more there is, the less you can see. For this reason, the object of hatred is never perceived clearly, ever painted in a darker color than the most shadowy recesses of its soul. Anti-American wrath is no exception, either. Why, listening to the hate-America-first crowd, you’d think our country was Hell on Earth instead of the best land this side of Heaven.