Briefly...

I pointed out to some folks on Twitter that if the standard is no president can appoint a SCOTUS nominee when under federal investigation that Stephen Breyer (appointed after Attorney General Janet Reno opened an investigation into Whitewater in 1994) needs to resign.

Somehow I doubt these "principled" folks are going to demand that now which tells us all we need to know about them!

Briefly on an Upcoming Points to Ponder Series:

I came across a Q and A from The Village Voice that I contemplated posting in its entirety as a Points to Ponder installment but then realized if I did that, so much of what it would contain would be lost due to the volume of the text. For that reason, I will over the next month or so at various intervals post a small part of the piece for reflection by both you the reader as well as for your humble servant at Rerum Novarum for we can all use some material for pondering from time to time to both stimulate the mind's activation as well as exhort us to be better people. I will start the process in this posting by quoting in full the letter that served as the impetus for the response to follow in the series. Without further ado...

Hi Andrew,

I’m writing because I just can’t deal with my father anymore. He’s a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total asshole intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics. I’m more or less a liberal democrat with very progressive values and I know that people like my dad are going to destroy us all. I don’t have any good times with him anymore. All we do is argue. When I try to spend time with him without talking politics or discussing any current events, there’s still an underlying tension that makes it really uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I love him no matter what, but how do I explain to him that his politics are turning him into a monster, destroying the environment, and pushing away the people who care about him?


Thanks for your help,
Son of A Right-Winger

Stay tuned for more as the answer to the above letter is unfolded piece by piece in the upcoming Points to Ponder series.

Senate Resistance To Judge Kavanaugh Is Collapsing

If you are a socialist at 20, you are still a clueless ahistorical dumbass.


Michelle Ray
@GaltsGirl

Replying to @instapundit

"If you're not a socialist at 20... "

3:32 PM · Jul 3, 2018

How Do You Spell “Hypocrite?:” O-C-A-S-I-O-C-O-R-T-E-Z

Baasically, there is no socialist out there who is not a hypocrite but some (like Cortez) are worse than others.

SCOTUS pick Brett Kavanaugh used credit cards to buy baseball tickets and Shannon Watts is suspicious

"One From the Vault" Dept.

The following is a flashback to the archives of this website{1} from 2007...

The fact that your host does not plan to discuss this issue again until it is relevant aside for a moment[...], [Name Omitted] makes the same presumptions that theologically radical so-called "traditionalist Catholics" do on their pet issues. Much as they take an elastic application of Pope Pius X's encyclical Pascendi and try to apply its condemnations wholesale to the Second Vatican Council and the subsequent popes, [Name Omitted] does the same here with [their] own pet subjects.

Anyone even remotely familiar with general norms of theological interpretation[...] knows that condemnations are by their very nature very precise and are intended only in the sense intended, not every sense that a casual reader of a text applies to them. This is why none of the condemnations in Pascendi apply to Vatican II or to the popes since Pope Pius XII. A casual and careless reading of Pascendi or Pius XII's Humani Generis presents no small degree of problems. Those texts as indeed any text have to be read carefully and in accordance with general norms of theological interpretation if the reader is to avoid the kinds of misinterpretations which are sadly not uncommon...

Furthermore, your host has never said that anything short of a dogmatic definition is up for grabs -indeed in years past he wrote more on the authority of the ordinary magisterium and the proper sense of magisterial infallibility than any Catholic in cyberspace. But he is not now nor will he ever ascribe more to a statement of the pope or a council authority-wise than it actually contains. That is not 'minimalist' however much [Name Omitted] may want to misrepresent it but instead is a proper recognition of where the Church has spoken and where she has not...

[D]efinitions are essential for rational discourse. They are the tools of thought and those who refuse to provide them should never be taken seriously when they deign to pontificate on issues where there is a greater complexity than the conventional wisdom Readers Digest Condensed Books accounts often convey. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa April 27, 2007)]