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May 26 , 2021Wedesday of the 8th week of Ordinary time; Memorial of St. Philip Neri sanctuary at St. Philip Neri Church in Linthicum Heights, Maryland Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. First readingEcclesiasticus 36:1-2,5-7,13-19 ©Lord, let the nations acknowledge youHave mercy on us, Master, Lord of all, and look on us, cast the fear of yourself over every nation.Let them acknowledge you, just as we have acknowledged that there is no God but you, Lord.Send new portents, do fresh wonders, win glory for your hand and your right arm.Gather together all the tribes of Jacob, restore them their inheritance as...

The Bible tells us that Jacob received an incredible revelation through a face-to-face encounter with God: “Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30, NKJV). What was the circumstance surrounding this revelation? It was the lowest, scariest point in Jacob’s life. At the time, Jacob was caught between two powerful forces: his angry father-in-law, Laban, and his estranged brother, Esau. Jacob had labored over twenty years for Laban who’d cheated him time after time. Finally, Jacob had had enough, so he took his family and...

“Whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice, yes, and I will rejoice” (Philippians 1:18). It is possible to maintain your joy even while dealing with criticisms and irritating distractions. The dictionary definition of detraction is “the uttering of material (as false or slanderous charges) that is likely to damage the reputation of another.” A detractor wants to undermine and destroy the good name and credibility of another. Great statesmen, such as President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, often have been the targets of contentious political opponents and stinging detractions by the...

Americans may not have to wait until 2022 to sense the potential for Republicans to move the nation back in a conservative direction. The race for governor in Virginia, one of just two major elections taking place this year, could be a barometer of national sentiment. Republicans have just nominated a dream-team ticket, combining talent and achievement with all the diversity demands of today's political marketplace. The nominee is investor/businessman Glenn Youngkin, who campaigned for his party's nomination as a "conservative, Christian outsider." Youngkin is a wealthy man who was co-CEO of the highly respected investment firm The Carlyle Group....

In nearly every major city in the U.S., people of color are exposed to more extreme urban heat than white people, a new study found. Using government temperature and census data, researchers examined the distribution of heat islands – parts of cities with higher average temperatures than the surrounding areas. The study, published Tuesday, found that during the summer of 2017 in nearly all large urban areas, the average non-white person lived in a census tract with higher heat island intensity. Glenn Sheriff, a co-author of the study and environmental economics professor at Arizona State University, was surprised to find...

Traditionally, an activity of female bondage and corruption is now being called by some an expression of female liberation. This writer received an advertisement from Oxford University Press offering me a complimentary copy of a book on a supposedly "hot issue" in philosophy entitled Debating Sex Work. The publisher appealed to me to request this book, which outlines two positions held by two different females philosophers regarding the "world's oldest profession." One position supports what is called the "Nordic Model," whereby the female prostitute (euphemistically called "sex worker" rather than "whore") is de-criminalized, but the buyer of her "services" (her...

So, I am following the media (not just any media talking heads and writers, but Experts) telling viewers, listeners and readers that “We need an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic so we can know what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.” Really? If Nicholas Wade in his earth-moving (or is it butt-moving since it got some asses in gear?) article seemed to set the stage pretty well -- currently, the preponderance of the evidence points to the Novel Coronavirus as having escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. From there, the rest is history...

WASHINGTON - Heading into the Memorial Day travel weekend, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and other members of his party are falsely blaming President Joe Biden for higher gasoline and lumber costs. MCCARTHY: “Despite gas prices being at historic lows this time last year, the average price for a gallon of gas is currently an astounding $3.10. That’s the highest it’s been since 2014, the last time Joe Biden was in the White House.” — blog post on Monday. THE FACTS: Biden’s policies aren’t behind the price increases. Gas prices are up because of a rapid and unexpected bounce-back in...

In 1981 Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin was asked by a group of Americans what he thought were the lessons of the Holocaust. He answered, “if an enemy of our people seeks to destroy us, believe him. Don’t doubt him for a moment, don’t make light of it. Do all in your power to deny him the means of carrying out his satanic intent.” This past April in Vienna, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Biden Administration joined talks to renegotiate the terms of a return to the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Psalm 76Psalm 76[a] For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A psalm of Asaph. A song. 1 God is renowned in Judah; in Israel his name is great. 2 His tent is in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion. 3 There he broke the flashing arrows, the shields and the swords, the weapons of war.[b] 4 You are radiant with light, more majestic than mountains rich with game. 5 The valiant lie plundered, they sleep their last sleep; not one of the warriors can lift his hands. 6 At your rebuke, God of...

On May 18, Pennsylvania held its customarily scheduled municipal primary elections. Following the example of previous municipal primary elections, Keystone State voters were faced with several statewide questions and ballot initiatives. This year, these prompts included a new genre of questions: those related to Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency powers... According to the Morning Call, both questions had margins of approximately 54 percent in favor to 46 percent opposed. Overall, Keystone State voters rejected Wolf’s heavy-handed gubernatorial emergency powers, which shows their desire to rightfully inject the people and the legislative branch back into the decision-making process when it comes to...

... As President Joe Biden undoes Trump immigration policies that he considers inhumane, he faces a major question: How far should he go to right his predecessor’s perceived wrongs? Biden halted “Remain in Mexico” his first day in office and soon announced that an estimated 26,000 asylum-seekers with active cases could wait in the United States, a process that could take several years in backlogged courts. More than 10,000 have been admitted to the U.S. so far. But that leaves out more than 30,000 asylum-seekers whose claims were denied or dismissed under the policy, known officially as “Migrant Protection Protocols.”...

resident Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met in the Oval Office Tuesday with the family of George Floyd, the man who died one year ago in the custody of Minneapolis police. The occasion is an opportunity to look at the enormous upheaval the reaction to Floyd's death has caused in the last year. First, wall-to-wall media coverage of Floyd's death gave Americans a distorted picture of the extent of police violence. Unlike Floyd, most people who die in interactions with police are killed by gunfire. And fatal police shootings of unarmed civilians, black or white, are exceedingly rare....

One of the big themes of this blog over the years has been chronicling the counter-productive results of various progressive government schemes for perfecting the world — everything from “anti-poverty” programs, to “affordable” housing, to energy restrictions in the name of the “climate,” to punitive tax rates on high earners, and so on and on. My general observation has been that all of these things inevitably fail to ameliorate the problem they are supposed to address, and instead bring about gradual economic and societal decline in the jurisdictions that try them. Decades into the effort, places that have continuously followed...

After suffering a setback at the beginning of the month in a congressional special election in Texas, Democrats are taking no chances this time around in neighboring New Mexico in the showdown for a safe seat the party has held for a dozen years. Early voting’s been underway for a week and a half for next Tuesday’s special election in the state’s 1st Congressional District, in the race to succeed Deb Haaland, who stepped down from her congressional seat after she was confirmed as Interior Secretary in President Biden’s Cabinet. The district, in the central part of the New Mexico,...

Home prices keep climbing. It's another reason to let people build housing. But corrupt politicians sometimes prevent that. The little town of Edgewater, New Jersey, sits right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. A developer, Maxal Group, bought a dumpsite there and proposed building more than a thousand new waterfront apartments. The town said no. Why? The development would generate $12 million a year in taxes for Edgewater. To please the politicians, Maxal even offered to build parks and a school at no cost. But Edgewater Mayor Michael McPartland and his town council rejected the parks, school and extra tax...

The Biden administration is poised to hand out billions of dollars to what it misleadingly labels "socially disadvantaged" farmers, restaurateurs and other business owners hurt by the pandemic. The money will start flowing to them in early June ... provided they don't have white skin. Whites are out of luck. Biden's American Rescue Plan defines "socially disadvantaged" based on skin color and ancestry, not the hardships faced by an individual. Blacks, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asians, Hispanics and Pacific Islanders are included. One group is excluded: whites. Fortunately, the new law's anti-white provisions are being challenged in court, and the...

+669 DEAD +22,738 NEW CASES ***605,208** TOTAL DEAD

The early 20th century saw a lot of experimentation in the firearms department after the adoption of smokeless powder completely redefined the cartridge and the guns that fired them. In a time when armories raced to develop reliable and dependable automatic weapons one Italian manufacturer held out with a tried-and-true design. The revolver. But this revolver isn’t like anything else you’ve probably seen. The Pistola Con Caricato (upwards-loading pistol) is that revolver. Complete with three barrels and 18 chambers, for all its appeal it is somewhat of a mystery gun. Chambered in .25 ACP we know it had to have...

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has never been conservative activists’ dream for a House GOP leader. The blow-dried apotheosis of the mediocre businessman class that has led the GOP to the brink of irrelevance through decades of failed leadership, McCarthy is an easy person for movement conservatives to despise. McCarthy’s Twitter handle @GOPLEADER, represents what he aspires to be—but in reality, it is we who must say “Go! Pleader” to this political hack who pleads ineffectively with his caucus to stand against the Democrats’ agenda, pleads to disenfranchise members of his caucus in order to appease Democratic whims, and...