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Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.
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Tuesday, April 12, 2022
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1686
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Monday, April 11, 2022
Blogs With Rule 5 Links
The Other McCain has: Rule 5 Sunday: Sydney Melman
Proof Positive has: Best Of Web Link Around
The Woodsterman has: Rule 5 Woodsterman Style
EBL has: Rule 5 And FMJRA
The Right Way has: Rule 5 Saturday LinkORama
The Pirate's Cove has: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup
Pope Francis Calls on Christians to Surrender Before Violence
“There is no such thing as a Just War.”
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Pope Francis, a leading advocate of Doormat Christianity, is at it again, trying to reverse nearly two millennia of Christian doctrine, by preaching total passivity—even against violent aggression.
On March 18, 2022, Francis declared before an audience that “A war is always—always!—the defeat of humanity, always. We, the educated, who work in education, are defeated by this war, because on another side we are responsible.”
So far, all well and good, if only because such lofty but impotent words are expected.
But then Francis went so far as to say that, “There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!”
That is a remarkably dangerous claim, one that, if embraced—as no doubt it is by millions of similar naïve thinkers—can easily lead to their annihilation.
There is, indeed, such a thing as a just war—the only rational way of responding to unjust wars—and it is firmly grounded in Christian, especially Catholic, teaching, even if the head of the Catholic world argues otherwise.
In fact, from the very start, Christian theologians had concluded that “the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person [and not the state],” to quote historian Christopher Tyerman.
Christ himself—who called on his followers to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s (Matt. 22:21)—differentiated between the social and spiritual realms. In the only recorded instance of Jesus being slapped, he did not “turn the other cheek,” but rather challenged his slapper to explain himself (John 18:22–23). The Nazarene further praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to “repent” by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries in world history (Matt. 8: 5–13). Similarly, when a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages (Luke 3:14)—and said nothing about their quitting the Roman army.
This is because there is “no intrinsic contradiction,” continues Tyerman, “in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul’s phrase, Christians ‘may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (1 Tim. 2:2).”
Or in the words of that chief articulator of Just War theory, Saint Augustine (354–430), “It is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.” Crusades historian Jonathan Riley-Smith elaborates:
FBI Kidnapping Caper Was Flagrant Election Interference
The only people pushing to do something big before Election Day resided in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.
On October 8, 2020, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced shocking news: federal authorities had arrested several men for conspiring to kidnap and possibly kill her before Election Day. After indulging in a moment of self-pity, Whitmer quickly pinned the blame on President Trump, a man with whom Whitmer had engaged in a very public feud throughout 2020 over pandemic-related lockdowns.
Trump, Whitmer claimed, fueled the rage of alleged white supremacists and right-wing militias responsible for the dastardly abduction plot. “When our leaders meet with, encourage, or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions,” Whitmer said in a televised speech. “And they are complicit.”
Earlier that day, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, also a Democrat, and officials from the U.S. Department of Justice detailed the charges in a separate press conference. “Last night, the FBI and Michigan State Police arrested six individuals charged in a criminal complaint with conspiring to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer,” explained Andrew Birge, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan. The defendants, Birge claimed, plotted to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation cottage “before the November election.”
His office took the lead in prosecuting the six defendants, who also faced weapons of mass destruction charges.
Exactly 18 months to the day, Birge’s prosecutors suffered a humiliating defeat in a Grand Rapids courtroom after a jury acquitted two of the men and deadlocked on the guilt of two others. (Two defendants pleaded guilty and testified for the government during the three-week trial). Despite endless resources and favorable rulings by the judge overseeing the case, the government failed to secure a single conviction in what the Justice Department considered one of its largest domestic terror investigations ever.
Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, after a year and a half in prison, went home to their families on Friday night; Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader, and Barry Croft, Jr. remain incarcerated while Birge’s office prepares to retry the men—a fool’s errand, as they didn’t know each other prior to the FBI’s involvement in the faux plot and live almost 1,000 miles apart. (Croft resides in Delaware.) It’s a desperate attempt to save face, regardless of the lives and the principles of justice at stake.
Not only were jurors unpersuaded by Birge’s prosecutors, the jury instead seemed to believe defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients were entrapped by the FBI. At least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants, working out of numerous FBI field offices across the eastern half of the country and at the direction of supervising agents, concocted and funded the sting operation. Dan Chappel, the main informant compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for “bringing people together,” as his FBI handler ordered him, took the stand to explain his role. But his testimony was lackluster and ultimately did not convince the jury the men were guilty.
The Justice Department and FBI have lots of explaining to do—so, too, does Andrew Birge. Hundreds of hours of secret recordings and thousands of texts fail to prove what Birge said in his initial press conference: there was no evidence to support his claim that the defendants wanted to “kidnap” Whitmer before Election Day. After all, if no kidnapping conspiracy or legitimate threat existed, no deadline existed, either.
The only people pushing to do something big before Election Day resided in...
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