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Despite a recent strongly worded clarification from Rome, confusion is continuing to be stirred up over the Catholic Church’s practice of refusing Communion to those who are divorced and remarried. A prominent curial cardinal, and favorite of Pope Francis, has defied the Vatican’s doctrinal office, saying that he expects a change. Cardinal Walter Kasper has said bluntly, and in direct opposition to the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), that the rules will shortly be changed to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to be admitted to Holy Communion.

The College Football Czar: 2013-14 Bowl Game Picks a sports publication from The Shinbone, by Daniel Clark Week fifteen in review: Once again, the BCS has succeeded in doing exactly what it was designed to do, by matching the two most qualified teams, Florida State and Auburn, in the national championship game. Fans nevertheless hate it, and can’t wait for it to be gone. Granted, there is an element of luck involved in being able to create an unassailably valid national title game. If not for Ohio State’s loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten championship, people would be...

The College Football Czar: Week 15 Week fourteen in review: Actually, the biggest news of the week has just broken earlier the same day that this installment of picks is being posted, when the attorney general of Florida announced that Heisman trophy favorite Jameis Winston of Florida State will not be charged with sexual assault. Hopefully, this means that the freshman phenom truly is innocent, but all we really know is that the prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to support the charges. Alabama’s three-peat chances faded into the Great White North, as Auburn dug into the CFL...

The College Football Czar: Week 14 Week thirteen in review: Before we get to last week’s events, you’ve probably already noticed that this week’s installment of picks is being released two days early. That’s so that they can be available to College Football Czar’s readers at work, on the last day before Thanksgiving weekend. This, of course, leaves the Czar a condensed time frame in which to make a larger-than-usual number of picks, so please excuse their relative brevity and semi-literacy. The number of undefeated national contenders has been whittled to three, with Oklahoma State’s 49-17 blowout of Baylor. The...

The College Football Czar: Week 13 Week twelve in review: The sexual assault investigation involving Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston has taken an especially disturbing turn this week, with his accuser now saying that she had not voluntarily dropped the charges as previously reported, but that she was intimidated into silence. Perhaps the worst part of the story is that whatever the outcome, it is bound to be a miscarriage of justice. If Winston is innocent, he’ll still have suffered great damage to his reputation, and possibly to his career, depending on how he lets the attention affect him on...

The College Football Czar: Week 12 Week eleven in review: The College Football Czar has finally seen ESPN’s new Saturday night intro featuring Eminem’s “Berzerk.” In case you haven’t yet had the misfortune of experiencing it, Mr. Em liberally samples (i.e., steals) parts of Billy Squier’s 1981 hit, “The Stroke.” Memo to ESPN: You can’t have it both ways. You must now either pretend that Billy Squier is cool, or admit that Eminem is not. So which is it? The BCS picture cleared up very slightly last Thursday, with Oregon’s 26-20 loss at Stanford, a game whose tone was set...

President Barack Obama’s second term is off to a woeful start, plagued by deceit, scandal, and standoffs—and Governor Mitt Romney saw a lot of it coming last fall in his unsuccessful bid for the White House. Romney warned at the first presidential debate that Obamacare would be fully installed and cause many to lose their health insurance plans should Obama be re-elected. Romney was hardly the first Republican to see that coming, but President Obama pledged at the same debate, as he had dozens of times before, that Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it under the...

The College Football Czar: Week 11 Week ten in review: Florida State’s big win over Miami pushed them back up to #2 in the BCS ratings, but there was otherwise very little movement, what with unbeaten Alabama, Oregon and Baylor all being idle. Since taking over as head coach at Grambling, former Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker Dirt Winston is 1-1, with an overtime loss to Texas Southern, and a 47-40 victory over Mississippi Valley State, which snapped an 18-game losing streak against NCAA opponents. Granted, those are not two of their better opponents in the SWAC, but the results are enough...

The College Football Czar: Week 10 Week nine in review: The horse race is on for the #2 BCS rating, with Oregon pulling ahead of Florida State on the strength of their 42-14 win over UCLA. They will likely trade places again this week, while the Ducks are idle, and the Noles face undefeated arch rival Miami. The College Football Czar takes back what he said about doubting Ohio State’s #4 rating in light of last week’s games. There has now developed a bold line of demarcation between the top four teams and everyone else. The most recent nominees for...

The College Football Czar: Week 9 Week eight in review: Despite the large percentage of teams that were idle, it proved to be the most consequential week to this point of the season, with eight ranked teams being upset by lower-ranked or unranked opponents. Many of the most surprising results were in the SEC, where LSU, Texas A&M and South Carolina were all beaten, and thus all but officially eliminated from the national championship picture. The first BCS ratings of the season are out, and as expected, Alabama is on top. Florida State is rated second, very slightly ahead of...

Movement-conservative icon, author, and direct-market pioneer Richard Viguerie threw down the gauntlet to establishment Republicans and the GOP leadership Tuesday, charging that conservatives "have been betrayed, abandoned by our leaders, and that includes Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, [and] Reince Priebus at the Republican National Committee." Viguerie and other grass-roots conservative leaders are warning that Republicans who voted to end the shutdown on terms favorable to President Barack Obama and the Democrats will face major primary opposition in 2014.

The College Football Czar: Week 8 Week seven in review: The NCAA officially released its appointments to next year’s playoff selection committee, although the names had been leaked almost a week earlier. The only thing in the world that makes the committee a less awful idea than it might otherwise be is the fact that the list of committee members does not include Mark Cuban, who voiced interest in running a college football playoff last year. Just because a guy’s not guilty of insider trading doesn’t mean he isn’t still a buffoon. If the NCAA ever lets Cuban anywhere near...

The College Football Czar: Week 7 Week six in review: The NCAA has proceeded with its disastrous decision to appoint a college football playoff selection committee, and already, you can foresee the fabric of the game coming unraveled. Among the committee members who have been appointed to select the four semifinalists for the 2014 season is former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Immediately, there came protests that Rice is unqualified, but then, what qualifications are there, really? If the idea is to make sure that the best team gets a shot at the national championship, then just about any fan...

The following is a correction to the Czar's pick on the Arizona State-Notre Dame game, which is being played in Arlington, and not in San Antonio, as is indicated in his original pick. Arizona State vs. Notre Dame The 3-1 Sun Devils stuck a fork in USC coach Lane Kiffin in a 62-41 runaway. Quarterback Taylor Kelly led the team in rushing with 79 yards on four carries, while also passing for 351 yards and three TDs. At 3-2, the Fighting Irish have lost to their first two ranked opponents: Michigan (41-30) and Oklahoma (34-20). Last week against OU, quarterback...

The College Football Czar: Week 6 Week five in review: Although the 2013 season has really just now gotten underway in earnest, there have already been two head coaches fired, and rightly so. USC finally tired of Lane Kiffin’s poor results and abrasive personality during his fourth season with the Trojans. The only reason Kiffin’s record at Southern Cal was as good as 28-15 was that he was fortunate enough to inherit QB Matt Barkley from his predecessor, Pete Carroll. It’s not just that Kiffin has only gone 10-8 since the start of the 2012 season, but the fact that...

The College Football Czar: Week 5 Week four in review: Predictably, the NCAA has wussed out and scaled back its penalties against Penn State, which will now be allowed to add five scholarships each year until its full complement of 85 is restored in 2016. Under the original sanctions, PSU’s scholarships would have been capped at 65 until then. The Powers That Be Stupid say that they made this decision in recognition of the Nittany Lions’ “continued progress toward ensuring athletics integrity.” … But wait a minute, the punishment was only contingent upon the university’s good behavior insofar as that...

The College Football Czar: Week 4 Week three in review: Everybody is convinced that the Pac 12 officials were at fault in last week’s Arizona State-Wisconsin fiasco, but nobody seems to know what they should have done differently. The strange scenario began when Badger QB Joel Stave grazed the turf with his knee, then popped back up and placed the ball on the ground with 15 seconds to play. One of the Sun Devil defenders, unable to see Stave’s knee touch the ground, jumped on what he thought was a live ball as the clock continued to run. By the...

Remember the endless stream of dire global warming predictions? Since the 1990s we have been insulted with lies and wishful thinking about how we had to turn off our air conditioners and park our cars or be complicit in causing the Northeastern states to be wiped away by tidal waves of melted ice caps. Wrong wrong, wrong! All of them, all but 3%, were lies as in Penn State and the University of East Anglia lies! Al Gore and his shrinking band of far left lunatics have now been proved wrong merely by comparing their claims to what has actually...

The College Football Czar: Week 2 Week one in review: If you thought you were watching the same game throughout the long weekend, that’s because it was everyone’s last chance to wear white before Labor Day. Watching highlights from around the nation, one might have thought that all the games had been sponsored by Sta-Puft marshmallows. One of the big story lines was the number of Division I-A teams that were upset in their openers by Division I-AA opponents. This is really nothing new, but viewers are more aware of it now, because so many of those games are being...

A computer program called The Predictalator created by Prediction Machine simulated the NFL season 50,000 times, says that the 49ers are the most likely team to win the Super Bowl this season, winning in 20.1% of the simulations. The Eagles won the Super Bowl in 0.5% of the simulations.