By Selwyn Duke

Given how Senator Tim Kaine (shown) just announced that the Catholic Church may soon follow his lead and change its “position” on marriage, it sounds more like he aspires to be pope than a vice president. But while that church status is unavailable to him, he may already have another: the excommunicated.

At issue is something called “automatic excommunication,” or excommunication latae sententiae, Latin for “sentence [already] passed.” It occurs when a Catholic commits certain offenses, such as procuring an abortion or, in the case of a priest, breaking the seal of confession. Relevant to Kaine’s situation, however, is section 1364 of the Code of Canon Law, which states that “an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs alatae sententiae excommunication.”

Read thee rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

It’s a common and sad story of addiction. Thoroughly hooked, John began to ignore and disengage from other aspects of his life. His behavior deteriorated, and his personal relationships suffered. But John wasn’t in the grip of drugs or alcohol, and he wasn’t a middle-aged man. He was six years old — and his “bottle” was an iPad.

Although the names have been changed, John’s is a true story. His mother, Susan, bought him an iPad in first grade at the recommendation of a technology teacher. He eventually found the popular game Minecraft, which the educator claimed was just “electronic Lego.” But Susan soon learned why it’s the third-best-selling video game of all time despite not being introduced until 2009.

John was hooked.

As he became ever more addicted, he began losing interest in reading and baseball, the latter of which he’d loved; his behavior deteriorated, and he refused to do his chores.

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

There clearly is something wrong with Hillary Clinton.

Very, very wrong.

The Democratic nominee’s shocking collapse at Sunday’s NYC 9/11 ceremony has finally broken the mainstream-media blackout on discussing her waning health, concerns over which had previously been dismissed as “conservative conspiracy theories.”Washington Post Clinton sycophant Chris Cillizza, who had shrugged off the concerns just last week, now admits that “Clinton’s health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign.” The hard-left Independent has finally acknowledged that the nominee has a “life-threatening disease that could alter the US election.” And reporter David Shuster tells us that Democrat insiders have informed him an emergency meeting by the Democratic National Committee is being considered to replace Clinton on the presidential ticket.

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

“It’s so much easier just to discredit people and call them names,” said Bill Clinton at a North Carolina rally on Tuesday. And Hillary proved this just days later, calling roughly a quarter of the electorate a “basket of deplorables" who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.”

Making her comments at a New York City “LGBT” fundraiser Friday night, Clinton was referring to half of Donald Trump’s supporters, who she also said were “irredeemable” and “not America.” This lies in contrast to the other “basket” of Trump supporters, said Clinton, “people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures.”

Read the rest here.

By Selwyn Duke

Is the real issue in the Colin Kaepernick situation that an athlete won’t stand for the National Anthem?

Or is it that the nation won’t stand strongly against unpatriotic citizens?

One man who might assert the latter and won’t be part of the problem is head coach of Team USA Hockey, John Tortorella. In fact and as Fox Sports reports, “He’s already making it known that he's not going to tolerate any national anthem protests from his players during the tournament. ‘If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game,’ Tortorella told ESPN's Linda Cohn on Tuesday.’”

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

Recently I reported on the dire state of Hillary Clinton's health. Now she has experienced another shocking medical episode, at the 9/11 ceremony in NYC this morning. After being forced to leave early, she can be seen in the video below collapsing, and then being caught by handlers, right as she tries to enter a van.

A law enforcement source states that during the episode Clinton lost a shoe, which ended up on the curb and then was retrieved by someone other than the candidate. Clinton's campaign claims she was overheated, but it's a beautiful day in NYC, with morning temperatures that were only in the 70s. 

Some speculate that Clinton suffers from Parkinson's disease; others say she has subcortical vascular dementia, which is just as severe, or that she is experiencing mini-strokes. Whatever the case, Clinton isn't even remotely close to being healthy and, aside from her other deficits, is not physically fit to be president. 

The recent article I wrote on the state of Clinton's health can be found here. 

By Selwyn Duke

“You could either be a Christian, or you could be successful.” The preceding, a Hungarian tour guide explained early last year, is how her nation’s former communists dealt with Christians. And while it may seem those days are long gone, we today are increasingly being presented with a similar choice: “You can be Christian/conservative, or you can be successful.”  

Oh, it’s happening (somewhat) slowly, gradually, with a policy here, a lawsuit there, a government intrusion here and there, and a lot of unofficial discrimination. Just consider one of the latest efforts: Imagine you spend the better part of a quarter-million dollars on higher education and earn a law degree. Then, just as you’re cutting your teeth in your profession and looking forward to paying down your student-loan debt, your law license gets revoked. Why?

Because you expressed pro-life views.

That marriage is between a man and a woman.

Proclaimed that adopting a “gender identity” doesn’t actually change you from one into the other.

Or any other crimethink.

Read the rest here. 

By Selwyn Duke

That Muslims are receiving preferential treatment in the US probably won’t shock astute cultural observers. But it may shock them to learn that, at least in a current case in Alabama, the ACLU is taking exception to it and is suing. Here is the story, courtesy of law professor Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post:

From the complaint in Allen v. English:

Plaintiff Yvonne Allen is a devout Christian woman who covers her hair with a headscarf as part of her religious practice. In December 2015, Ms. Allen sought to renew her driver license at the Lee County driver license office, where officials demanded that she remove her head covering to be photographed. When Ms. Allen explained her religious beliefs, the County officials responded with a remarkable claim: They admitted that there was a religious accommodation available for head coverings, but contended that it applied only to Muslims.

According to an ACLU press release, “The [county] staff also ridiculed Allen’s beliefs, with one clerk proclaiming that she was a Christian and felt no need to cover her hair.”

(more…)

By Selwyn Duke

It can be a good thing to be idealistic. But you’d better make sure you have the right ideals. As to this, the modern West is quickly becoming something non-Western — precisely because our ideals are now far less than ideal.

It has often been noted that some among us use our freedoms to destroy our freedoms. George Soros, a real-life James Bond villain, comes to mind; other leftist entities such as the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center also qualify, as they sue Americans into shedding Americanism. Another example is a group they aid and abet: Muslim conquerors bent on winning the West for Dar al-Islam. And since this is not just an American phenomenon but a Western one, it has recently been addressed by a French academic — in strikingly blunt language.

(more…)

By Selwyn Duke

Many students on today’s college campuses are trigger-warning happy. No, this doesn’t generally have anything to do with guns, although it on occasion may. But it just as likely may concern racism, sexism, classism, able-bodyism, heterosexism, the Constitution, Pokemon Go, white men, or just about anything else.

What are trigger warnings? As columnist Jonah Goldberg explained in a humorous 2014 piece, “They started on left-wing and feminist websites. Like a ‘spoiler alert’ in a movie review or a more specific version of the movie rating system, trigger warnings are intended to alert very sensitive people that some content might set off, or trigger, their post-traumatic stress disorder or simply deeply offend some people. According to most accounts, this was a conscientious accommodation of people who'd been raped or otherwise horribly abused.”

For instance, in deference to child-sexual-abuse victims, a subject might be introduced with “Trigger Warning: pedophilia.” But it didn’t end there. Not only did the practice migrate to college campuses, it also metastasized.

Read the rest here.