the Revision Division

SO MUCH FOR “BUSH LIED”: C.I.A. Is Said to Have Bought and Destroyed Iraqi Chemical Weapons.

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Every now and then I come across some article suggesting that there were indeed weapons of the sort the Bush administration said were in Iraq. (Whether any of that plays into a justification for war is a question I won’t pursue here.) This article is quite clear, referring to “chemical weapons . . . not accounted for by United Nations inspections.” An obvious question is why the Bush administration neglect to divulge information about such weapons after the invasion. I haven’t seen the press pursue this question, though.

THE COST OF IMMIGRATION to public English instruction:

A new report from FAIR reveals that in the D.C. metro area alone, the cost of educating children who are limited English proficient (LEP) runs to $2.4 billion.

Cost In Translation: English Language Education in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area breaks down the cost of LEP education in Washington, D.C. and six Maryland and Virginia school districts. These costs will only increase as the Obama administration circumvents the law to allow millions of illegal aliens to settle permanently in the U.S.

CLEVER: Lynchings in USA over an 86-year time-span vs. Homicides in St. Louis over a Decade.

You’ve seen a comparison of black homicides in Detroit over a ten-year span to lynching in America; you’ve seen a comparison of black homicides in Baltimore over a seven-year span to lynching in America.

It’s only natural we’d turn our eyes to St. Louis. . . .

In the entire United States of America, from 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched.

In just one decade in St. Louis, there were 1024 black on black homicides.

PRIORITIES: The attack on non-existent Catholic “libertarians”. “Any support of a market economy equals libertarianism equals Randism equals heresy.”

IF I HAD A SON: Gunfire Erupts as Nearly 1000 ‘Teens’ Storm Movie Theater – Loot Gas Station in Florida.

ARE THEY SURE THEY WANT TO DO THIS? Gay Ugandan King Proves that Homosexuality is African: Rights group cites last monarch before British invasion as evidence that anti-homosexuality bill gets it wrong.

Ugandan King Mwanga II was widely reported to have engaged in sexual relations with his male subjects, according to the report by NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) “Expanded Criminalisation of Homosexuality in Uganda: A Flawed Narrative”.

Ugandan martyrs were burnt to death between 1885 and 1887 on the orders of Mwanga II, for denying him gay sex when they converted to Christianity. . . .

According to the report, a commonly cited reason for maintaining, or expanding, criminalisation of homosexuality nowadays, is that homosexuality is “un-African” or, in other words, a foreign phenomenon.

The research, however, showed that throughout Africa’s history homosexuality has been a “consistent and logical feature of African societies and belief systems”, and that Uganda’s laws criminalising homosexuality originates entirely from legislations introduced by the British colonial administration in 1902 and 1950.

Hey Christian Ugandans, remember how you were killed because you wouldn’t submit to a homosexual tyrant who demanded to sodomize you? That shows how you need to accept homosexuality! Just listen to the SMUG people, all right?

THE END of South Africa.

Things are very bad in South Africa. When the scourge of apartheid was finally smashed to pieces in 1994, the country seemed to have a bright future ahead of it. Eight years later, in 2002, 60 percent of South Africans said life had been better under apartheid. Hard to believe — but that’s how bad things were in 2002. And now they’re even worse.

When apartheid ended, the life expectancy in South Africa was 64 — the same as in Turkey and Russia. Now it’s 56, the same as in Somalia. There are 132.4 rapes per 100,000 people per year, which is by far the highest in the world: Botswana is in second with 93, Sweden in third with 64; no other country exceeds 32.

ADVENTURES IN EUPHEMISM: “I wouldn’t characterize it as a terrorist event. I would classify it as a group of individuals that had some beliefs and were willing to carry out violent acts against citizens.”

He didn’t say what the beliefs were, other than that “they were not culturally based.”

What does that even mean?

ACCORDING TO PLAN: Obama amnesty creates loophole for illegal immigrants to vote in elections. Is it still a loophole if it’s done on purpose?

TODD ZYWICKI: New study finds that Dodd-Frank has promoted industry consolidation and killed community banks. “A new study by Marshall Lux and Robert Greene reports that since the enactment of Dodd-Frank community banks have lost market share at twice the rate that they did prior to Dodd-Frank.”

ZONING: Book swap station ordered closed because it’s not in a commercial zone.

One of Shreveport’s Little Free Libraries was ordered to cease operations Thursday, and others in the city could face the same fate.

Alan Clarke, the MPC’s zoning administrator, said the book swaps are, by definition, libraries equivalent to Shreve Memorial Library, and under city law a library can only exist in a commercially-zoned area.

Shreveporter Teresa Edgerton learned this after her husband opened a certified letter from the zoning division ordering them to stop operating their Little Free Library, a decorative structure containing books, outside of their Wilkinson Street home.

Passersby are permitted to “take a book, return a book.” Money is not exchanged. But according to the letter, which Teresa Edgerton posted on Facebook, their book swap station still is considered a commercial enterprise and can’t operate in a residential neighborhood.

USEFUL: The Ultimate Firestarter: How to Make Char Cloth. “The resulting substance has a low ignition temperature — just a single spark or point of heat can start it burning.”

TIM CARNEY: The latest liberal defense of Obamacare: Megahospitals love it!

An industry being subsidized by a law defends the law, and somehow that industry’s arguments are supposed to carry special weight? . . .

This is a standard liberal way of defending regulations and subsidies: pointing to the industries that benefit from the policies, and saying, “look, even industry supports this intervention!”

In an editorial, Florida’s Sun-Sentinel defended regulations that protect Realtors and other professionals from competition by pointing out that the protected professionals don’t want these protections to go away.

Seemingly on a hundred occasions, liberals defended the light bulb law by pointing out how even the light bulb industry supported these rules, which pad their profit margins. . . .

And on climate change legislation, lefties again and again point to support from megacorps like General Electric or Nike as proof that their bill is salutary.

UK: Single mother of EIGHT “forced into work” says Cameron’s new £23k benefits cap will lead to suicides.

Marie Buchan is looking for her first-ever job because of proposed new Government benefit cuts – and complains: “I’m being forced into work”. . . .

She said looking after her eight children – all of them under the age of 13 – was a 21-hour working day. Marie explained that she gets up at 6am and does not get to bed some days until 3am.

If only there were some institution other than the welfare state that allowed women to take care of children without having also to provide the means to do so.

RAPE FANTASY CULTURE: Woman asks to be raped, so it wasn’t really rape.

Kayla Bowen,, a 24-year-old Clarksville, Tennessee woman pleaded guilty to making false report to officers, a Class D felony. . . .

It turns out Bowen had solicited the “rape” to fulfill a sexual fantasy. From a news report: “A Clarksville Police investigation uncovered a Craigslist ad she posted titled ‘Have a deep dark fantasy.’ In the ad, Bowen said she wanted to be raped and for anyone who responds to say how they would do it and why, according to her arrest warrant.”

This reminds me of the earlier, similar case of Mary Kate Gullickson, a 20-year-old Fargo, North Dakota woman:

A student who advertised a sex fantasy on Craigslist involving a mock rape has been arrested after she later claimed to have been abducted and attacked. . . .

The man told police he answered an advert placed on Craigslist by Gullickson who was seeking sex in a role play fantasy that involved her being kidnapped and raped.

He said he was instructed to grab her off the street, bound her with duct tape, force her to have sex and then drop her off.

Investigators tracked down Gullickson’s Craigslist advert and uncovered the email and phone number associated with it.

And then there’s the case of Morgan Triplett, a 20-year-old UC Santa Barbara student (although the motive here remains a matter of speculation):

On February 17, Triplett called 9-1-1 to report she had been raped . . . authorities became suspicious when Triplett refused to provide her clothing as evidence or allow DNA samples to be sent away for testing. . . .

Police determined Triplett had instead actually met a man through Craigslist who agreed to kick and punch her and be paid afterward with sex. Triplett would eventually admit to fabricating the rape incident.

IF I HAD A SON, he would look like Travon.

SCIENCE: “An international team of health scientists has completed a systematic study of the evidence available back in the 1970s and ’80s and concluded that a relationship of causation between fat consumption and coronary heart disease was never established.”

“Government dietary fat recommendations were untested in any trial prior to being introduced,” writes Zoe Harcombe of the University of the West of Scotland, lead author of the study. Despite this, “to date, no analysis of the evidence base for these recommendations has been undertaken,” which is what prompted Harcombe and her team to conduct their investigation. . . .

Beyond reducing fat intake, the Dietary Goals also urged a reduction in the consumption of salt and sugar, whose deleterious health effects have been far better established. [For salt, maybe not.]

Though they haven’t materially changed since their introduction, the low-fat dietary guidelines have been undermined by subsequent research that has indicated that low-carbohydrate diets are more effective at promoting better health than low-fat ones. The longstanding advice to increase the consumption of carbohydrates as a way to offset the reduction in fat may now be proving Dr. Hegsted’s assertion wrong: there could well be downsides to embracing the McGovern report’s full recommendations.

The conclusion of the Harcombe study is stark and unequivocal: “The present review concludes that dietary advice not merely needs review; it should not have been introduced.”

NARRATIO SUPER FACTIS: Obama: Paris Shooters ‘Randomly’ Shot Up Kosher Deli.

Related: Kosher supermarket killer ‘told TV station he deliberately targeted Jews’. “He explained his target, why this kosher store: because he was targeting Jews.”

TODD STARNES: Students opposed to LGBT agenda shamed in classroom.

During the class, the students, ages 14 and 15, were instructed to stand in a circle. Then, they were grilled about their personal beliefs and their parents’ beliefs on homosexuality, PJI [Pacific Justice Institute] alleges.

“The QSA [Queer Straight Alliance] had students step forward to demonstrate whether they believed that being gay was a choice and whether their parents would be accepting if they came out as gay,” PJI attorney Matthew McReynolds said. “Students who did not step forward were ridiculed and humiliated.”

The phrasing here is ambiguous, but presumably they were ridiculed if they supported the notion that being gay is a choice. Heretics!

They also had students line up to demonstrate where they fell on the “gender spectrum.”

“It was an exercise in gender fluidity,” the parent of one child told me. “They told the students that one day they could come to school feeling like a boy and the next day they could come to school feeling like a girl.”

Students were given a handout with LGBT terminology – including words like pan-sexual, demi-boy and gray gender.

Demi-boy/girl is defined as someone who only partially identifies as a man or woman. Gray gender defines someone who feels as though they sort of fit inside the gender binary, but that their gender is more hazy and undefined.

Some questions: (more…)

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: UK: Nigerian GP who groped suicidal woman telling her ‘you want it’ keeps job after he blamed ‘cultural differences’. “There is a clear divide between the doctor and the patient here, which is very different in Nigeria.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Timed nutrition more important for experienced strength athletes than for beginners. Maybe. I’d like to see this done with more test subjects.

CANADA must welcome more refugees with HIV, says human rights group. “‘Having HIV when you’re a refugee living in a camp bordering Syria is potentially a death sentence,’ she said. ‘Canada can play an important role in the global fight against HIV by providing asylum to people affected or at high risk, and provide them with access to medical treatment.'”

If your concern really is “fight[ing] against HIV,” then “a death sentence” would be more effective than asylum, wouldn’t it? Let’s at least be honest here that this is about providing for the spread of AIDS, in one’s own country no less.

ANTHONY ESOLEN: How to Kill Vocations in Your Diocese.

Be effeminate. Get rid of every single hymn that has anything to do with Christian soldiership. Castrate the rest of the hymns. Or, better, favor hymns that make Jesus into a kind of safe sweet Boyfriend, with whom you can make out on the couch now and in heaven later. Let the music be led by women, especially women who like to be seen and heard performing it. Put the hand-raising cantor up front, to upstage the priest and Christ. . . . Use as many altar girls as possible. Discourage the boys from joining. Give them nothing important to do. Use as many women lectors as possible. . . .

Never suggest that the Church needs men for anything. Make “man” into an obscenity. Never suggest that fathers and mothers play complementary roles in the family. Never suggest that Jesus had something important in mind when He chose twelve men as his brothers. Suggest instead that to be a genuine Christian, a man has to stop being a man. Buy the silly feminist notion that Christian women have been “oppressed” for nearly two thousand years.

Earlier: Cardinal Burke: “The radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.”

IS EMMA SULKOWICZ LYING about being sexually assaulted? Read her own words.

Was Sulkowicz in denial about being raped, or was she a woman on a mission to “understand” why a man would assault her?

And how did she go from wanting to see, “hang out” and have “real time” with Paul Nunsegger (and to accomplish this meeting, she told him she loved him), to allegedly being terrified of seeing him and of suffering great trauma when she was near him?

In short, is this the story of a shattered and confused rape victim, or is it the evolving narrative of a woman groping for victimhood?

What’s disconcerting isn’t so much the inconsistency of her accounts but rather the credulity and complicity of the press.

DENMARK: Women write love letters to gorilla.

HE GOT GAME: Random Dude Tries to Pick Up Girls Using Only Marshawn Lynch Quotes, and It Kinda Worked?

INTERESTING: Among blacks the more religious, the more Democratic.

UK: Rotherham abuse didn’t happen because of political correctness. It happened because of racism.

The leaders and officers of Rotherham council . . . were standing back and watching while children were raped, abducted, beaten and trafficked around the country as sex slaves. And they were standing back because the victims were white and the rapists were not.

Even now – despite everything we have seen and everything we have read and everything we have heard – there is an unwillingness to accept that fact.

Race, the central factor in everything that occurred in Rotherham, is still being brushed under the carpet. . . .

A victim reports a crime to the authorities. They look at her and see she is white. They look at the accused and see he is not white. And on that basis – and solely on that basis – they refuse to take any action. That is not anti-racism. It is not political correctness. It is the very definition of racism itself.

The author doesn’t seem to realize that political correctness is itself racist.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Eight Swedes (?) detained for gang rape on ferry.

One of Sweden’s dissident sites (hate sites in politically correct Swedish lingo) dug up the court documents: . . .

1. Prosecutor
2. Suspect: Abdi MOHAMED Ahmed
3. Suspect: Shakir Bjar Mhamed

Ah yes, good ol’ fashioned Swedish names.

DID NASA DECLINE because of diversity? And was Silicon Valley built by white NASA rejects?

The agency was a persistent target of civil rights activism from the very beginning. Apparently, even President Kennedy attempted to smooth the way for a black pilot named Ed Dwight to join the moon landing mission despite a lack of qualifications, with the motive being to sway the black community and solidify their loyalty to the Democratic party. . . .

By 1976, NASA had instituted an entirely new method for selecting astronauts to ensure greater representation, on threat from a lawsuit ginned up by the black lady from Star Trek.

Not so oddly enough, this was a similar time period during which power was beginning to transition to Silicon Valley, and its unprincipled exceptions of filtering employees by proxy IQ tests. Microsoft was founded in 1975, at the same time as the capable were being told they were no longer wanted in the government.

The reason why this story doesn’t get told too often should be clear: after the calls for increased diversity, NASA built a useless shuttle full of unqualified astronauts that kept exploding on television instead of colonizing Mars.

MAYBE HE SHOULD TELL THEM TO STAY HOME: Pope Francis Decries “Inhuman Conditions” Illegal Immigrants Face Crossing Into America Illegally. Better yet, he can tear down the wall around the Vatican and invite everyone to his house. Lead by example.

LET ‘EM GO: FBI official: ISIS is recruiting U.S. teens.

“In the majority of cases, we know that someone recognizes that change in behavior, that radicalization,” he said. “That family member or friend chooses not to intervene. And by not getting involved, the story ends in a very familiar fashion, and that’s death.”

He also said ISIS is aggressively pursuing women on social media.

“The recruitment of women by ISIS is much more than we’ve ever seen by a terrorist organization,” he said. “We have seen everything from a female fighter — dedicated groups of women fighters — and those who have come over to support foreign fighters by marrying them.”

STUDY: Sex differences in the relationship between status and number of offspring in the contemporary U.S. “Analysis of U.S. data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that personal income is positively associated with number of offspring for men, and this is true for men at all levels of education. This is mostly because of increased childlessness among low income men. For women, personal income is negatively associated with number of offspring, and this is true for women at all levels of education. Other measures of status (intelligence and education) are negatively associated with number of offspring for men and women, although the negative association is less for men.”

UK: “The cabinet of Rotherham council resigns after a report into the council’s ongoing handling of thousands of child sexual exploitation cases paints a picture of cover ups, archaic sexism and bullying.”

NEAT: Sea slug has taken genes from algae it eats, allowing it to photosynthesize like a plant.

This is one of the only known examples of functional gene transfer from one multicellular species to another, which is the goal of gene therapy to correct genetically based diseases in humans.

“Is a sea slug a good [biological model] for a human therapy? Probably not. But figuring out the mechanism of this naturally occurring gene transfer could be extremely instructive for future medical applications,” says study co-author Sidney K. Pierce.

SUCKERS: What’s In Those Supplements?

The New York State attorney general’s office accused four national retailers on Monday of selling dietary supplements that were fraudulent and in many cases contaminated with unlisted ingredients.

The authorities said they had run tests on popular store brands of herbal supplements at the retailers — Walmart, Walgreens, Target and GNC — which showed that roughly four out of five of the products contained none of the herbs listed on their labels. In many cases, the authorities said, the supplements contained little more than cheap fillers like rice and house plants, or substances that could be hazardous to people with food allergies.

Do your homework, or at least look to a reliable source. See Mangan’s list of recommended supplements (with Amazon links) over at his Rogue Health and Fitness blog.

KATY FAUST: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent.

When two adults who cannot procreate want to raise children together, where do those babies come from? Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.

Making policy that intentionally deprives children of their fundamental rights is something that we should not endorse, incentivize, or promote. . . .

If it is undisputed social science that children suffer greatly when they are abandoned by their biological parents, when their parents divorce, when one parent dies, or when they are donor-conceived, then how can it be possible that they are miraculously turning out “even better!” when raised in same-sex-headed households? Every child raised by “two moms” or “two dads” came to that household via one of those four traumatic methods. Does being raised under the rainbow miraculously wipe away all the negative effects and pain surrounding the loss and daily deprivation of one or both parents? The more likely explanation is that researchers are feeling the same pressure as the rest of us feel to prove that they love their gay friends.

There are a lot of echoes of Robert Oscar Lopez here. See the earlier post, “You’re trusting these clowns to say whether kids should have moms and dads?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Frozen Fruit & Vegetables: Excellent Sources of Dietary Vitamins C, E & B2, Even After 90 Days of Storage.

The scientists evaluated the ascorbic acid, riboflavin, α-tocopherol, and β- carotene in corn, carrots, broccoli, spinach, peas, green beans, strawberries, and blueberries. . . .

Only for beta carotene there were significant decreases in some commodities.

COOL: “A forest of crosses engraved in the rocks of the desert of Saudi Arabia is a sign of the presence of a . . . Christian community around the fifth century AD.”

RELIGION OF PIECES: Muslim Persecution of Christians, December 2014.

Here are two earlier installments that I missed:

• Muslim Persecution of Christians, October, 2014.
• Muslim Persecution of Christians, November 2014.

STEVE SAILER: “The more a group is above criticism, the worse they behave.”

White guys get criticized a lot. And, guess what? We behave pretty well. Having your group criticized for your stereotypical bad behavior tends to make you want to avoid that kind of behavior.

In contrast, members of lots of other groups are largely off-limits for being criticized for behaving in stereotypical fashions. For example, everybody knows that poor young black men are more likely on average to, say, loot convenience stores and attack policemen. But you aren’t supposed to admit you know that. That’s a stereotype!

So when Michael Brown looted a convenience store and attacked a policeman, and the policeman didn’t get indicted, lots of poor young black men in Ferguson responded by … you guessed it: looting convenience stores. And then a poor young black man in Brooklyn attacked a couple of policemen and shot them dead.

Funny how that works.

JAMES DELINGPOLE: Forget Climategate: This “global warming” scandal is much bigger.

If it wasn’t for the diligence of amateur investigators like retired accountant Paul Homewood, probably no one would care, not even Paraguayans, what has been going on with the Paraguayan temperature records. But Homewood has done his homework and here, revealed at his site Notalotofpeopleknowthat, is what he found.

He began by examining Paraguay’s only three genuinely rural weather stations. (ie the ones least likely to have had their readings affected over the years by urban development.) . . .

The odd thing is that no satisfactory explanation has been forthcoming from any of the institutions which have been making these adjustments. Not from NASA GISS. Nor from NOAA, which maintains the dataset known as the Global Historical Climate Network. Nor from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia which, with the Met Office, maintains the third of the world’s three surface data records, known as Hadcrut. . . .

And this isn’t just an issue with the adjustments to the Paraguay stations by the way. It has happened all over the world.

As Paul Homewood reminds us here, it has been happening everywhere from Iceland, Greenland and Russia to Alice Springs in Australia. Also, it has been reported on, at least in the climate sceptical blogosphere, for quite some time.

MANGAN on the so-called diversity dividend. “The diversity dividend dogma is also at odds with another cornerstone of progressive thought, that of equality. If we’re all equal, and differences in aptitudes and personality are due only to culture and nurture, it’s difficult to see how having, say, a woman on a corporate board will make any difference to the quality of management or vision of the future.”

STEVE SAILER: NYT Baffled by Lack of Attention to Vanderbilt Gang Rape; Perhaps Photos of the Accused Would Explain?

Earlier: Gee, I wonder why this alleged college gang rape isn’t getting much attention.

Also: The Violent Threat Near UVA that Rolling Stone Downplayed.

“Jesse Matthew Jr. does not ‘fit the narrative’ of the article’s spoiled, entitled, privileged, out-of-control frat boys.” In other words, the suspect is black.

THE UNRAVELLING CONTINUES: More Insight Into Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Flawed Reporting. “So much attention has been paid to the fact that Jackie’s story is false; I think not enough has been paid to the other bricks in the wall of accusation that Rubin Erdeley constructed. It’s not just that she made a mistake in believing Jackie and in how she chose to (not) report out Jackie’s story; it’s that there are abundant other details in the piece, having nothing to do with Jackie, that seem either wrong or fabricated.”

ANN COULTER on how Republicans can go on the offensive in response to Obama’s “free” community college idea.

Republicans should say: We’re not giving you anything, and, in fact, we’re demanding answers from the entire “higher ed” establishment. . . .

The GOP needs to hold tobacco company-style hearings, hauling in the presidents of various universities and asking them to justify their multimillion-dollar salaries.

We want professors explaining, under penalty of perjury, exactly how much they make per hour for their rigorous schedules of two classes a week, summers off, and full-year “sabbaticals” every few terms. . . .

College professors relentlessly hound the rest of society for its crimes — racism, sexism, “white privilege” — look what you’re doing to the environment! Why are we paying them, again? There’s no visible reason most of these people should be teaching at all. How about they explain their value to the taxpayers who subsidize their cushy lives?

PHILIPPINES: KFC has introduced a hot dog wrapped in a cheese-stuffed chicken breast. “It appears to be a hot dog version of the infamous ‘Double Down,’ a sandwich that uses chicken patties in place of bread.” Good work.

FOR THE LADIES: Don’t cut your damn hair: Beauty Queen edition. “Ladies, it’s not that hard. Men find long hair attractive. They always have, they always will. That is never going to change, so deal with it. No one is telling you that you can’t cut your hair off[. W]e’re just warning you that the consequences will generally be negative.”

PRIORITIES: Bishop Silences German Priest For Speaking At PEGIDA Rally.

The Bishop of Münster, Felix Genn, has banned Father Paul Spätling from preaching in a Catholic church after Spätling addressed a PEGIDA rally in Duisburg earlier this week. The Bishop said he “cannot and will not tolerate” such talk.

Invoking Canon 764 of Catholic Canon Law, the Bishop has stripped the 67-year-old priest of his preaching authority, forbidding him from speaking inside or outside of houses of worship. The PEGIDA movement—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West—was founded in Dresden in October 2014.

Meanwhile, German bishops’ head defends Communion plan for divorced. “The leader of the German bishops’ conference has defended a plan by the prelates to offer Communion to divorced Catholics, saying he feels ‘strengthened’ by Pope Francis on the matter despite opposition from the Vatican’s highest doctrinal official.”

21ST-CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Houston woman marries [sic] herself in elaborate ceremony. You can probably tell by the headline that she isn’t exactly a looker.

Anyway, she’s late to the party. In 2010, a Taiwanese woman “married” herself, in a story which Reuters filed under Oddly Enough, those bigots.