What’s that you say? Its long history.

It’s autumn again in America. But as hurricane season draws to a close, a final storm approaches.

Columbus Day is back. And with it, renewed charges of the explorer’s villainy; charges made, as always, from the cushy confines of the continental United States. Tension is higher than ever in the wake of recent protests targeting virtually all of Western history.

Christopher Columbus is a triple threat: white, male, and Catholic, he sailed from Inquisition-era Spain as if he had nothing to be ashamed of. Once a national hero, he now endures an annual show trial evoking the Cadaver Synod of AD 897, where the corpse of Pope Formosus was dug up and tried with full ceremony by a succeeding pontiff. Like Formosus, Columbus is posthumously found guilty. But at least the decomposing pope was assigned a proxy deacon to answer the charges.

You wanna do it right with your story, you reporter you, and you turn to the bible of correctness and what are you told?

America’s most influential media stylebook is discouraging the nation’s newspapers from reporting on mass urban violence, on the grounds that writing about what’s happening is “stigmatizing.” That’s right: The Associated Press Stylebook, whose standards are followed by countless outlets, last week announced new guidelines around reporting on riots.

After a “D’oh” definition of “riot,” the guidance preached: “Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.”

And never mind that increasing evidence suggests most violence can be pinned not on real Black Lives Matter protesters (radical though their agenda may be), but on mostly white…

She lies and lies and lies . . . boldly, without blinking, time and time again . . . about things that are easily found to be lies. Amazing.

In the debate Wednesday night, Kamala Harris stated, “The American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact.” But Biden and Harris have both repeatedly expressed support for getting rid of fracking. Biden has said that there would be “no” place in his administration for fossil fuels in his administration and he would make sure they are “eliminated” (Twitter). Biden also is on video saying, “I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels” (Twitter). Harris, on the other hand, said during a CNN town hall that, “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” (Twitter). From the Federalist: She also lied frequently, and perhaps in ways that were…

Dirty pool.

I’m shocked that the Debate Commission didn’t even consult with President Trump’s campaign before making this radical change. I mean, they consult with the campaigns when they talk about the height of the podiums, Hugh, and the size of the notepads that will be on the podiums.

I think it’s just another example of the Washington establishment, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, wrapping their arms around Joe Biden and trying to put him in a protective cocoon all the way to November 3rd.

So I think the President is right not to simply accept this unilateral decision by the Debate Commission. Look, we have another week to this debate. The President could have multiple negative tests for the virus by then. Additional precautions could be taken. They could move it back a day or two if necessary.

But to make this decision without any consulting with Donald Trump

St. John Newman by name . . . and his books.

Everybody has their favourite Newman book. I love the wickedly satirical Loss and Gain with its portrait of 1840s Oxford … and his Development of Christian Doctrine. His sermon about the Second Spring still gets the tears pricking behind my eyes. And his Grammar of Assent seems to me to anticipate the insights towards which some philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century so laboriously trudged.

And his analysis of the Syllabus Errorum meticulously, ‘surgically’, analyses the magisterial status of that document and of every paragraph within it. Rarely read now, it is a superb example of S John Henry’s fierce conviction of the necessity of obedience towards the Successor of S Peter, combined with a cold and almost rationalist approach to exercises of the papal magisterium.

And Newman was a pastor; witness the care he took…