You break-a da rules, out you go, you execrable pro-lifer. 

In the grand scheme of things, columnist Kevin Williamson being fired by The Atlanticisn’t exactly earth shattering. But it does signal yet another marker in a critical war on free speech.

First, the brief backstory. Last week, Williamson left National Review to take a job at The Atlantic. His departure was amicable, and he was merely taking another opportunity. A few days later, however, he was fired for old and long-since deleted tweets and a podcast years ago. Nonetheless, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg blamed the firing on Williamson’s “carefully considered views” on abortion — specifically, that abortion is murder and, therefore, doctors and perhaps even mothers who kill unborn babies should face punishment up to and including capital punishment.

Williamson’s views, born of his own experience of having not been aborted but given up for adoption, are not the subject here; the intolerant mob of leftists is. But, ironically, if Williamson had championed stabbing a partially born infant in the neck, dismembering it and maybe selling a few organs — as rabidly pro-abortion leftists do in not so many words — he’d still have a job.

Instead, he was fired because one of the sacraments of the leftist religion is abortion, and that religion’s first commandment is “Thou shalt not ever criticize a woman for making that choice.” Thus Williamson’s views were not only far beyond the pale but evidence that we really are living in the dystopian “Handmaid’s Tale.”

via Nate Jackson: The Thought Police Take Out Another Conservative — The Patriot Post

If I hadn’t seen the headline, as above, the lede sentence would have set me up for a take-down of CNN, unless I also realized she works for CNN:

If Jonestown had had a television network, it might have aired something like this.

Instead, she pities the poor journos, forced to do as the boss says.

Another view is that she “parroted the CNN company line by condemning Sinclair Broadcast Group as nothing more than state-owned propaganda.”

Cupp talked this up on CNN, basically blaming Sinclair for giving conservatives favorable (fair? not?) treatment and covering more conservative issues. But make it CNN doing this for liberal issues, and you have a match.

Later: While we’re on the subject, take note, please that deciding what’s news and what isn’t is key to the bias debate. If every story is accurate, it’s still a story the editors (writers too in most cases) picked. There’s the rub, my friends.

#1, the Dubia group (questioners of Pope Francis’ Amoris letter permitting communion for divorced and remarried):

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, April 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond Burke will speak about the nature of marriage at a conference in Philadelphia on April 21.

The dubia cardinal will be joined by Father Gerald Murray of The World Over fame and Father Dennis Gill, rector of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The conference will take place in that cathedral and will include a Marian procession and crowning, Eucharistic Adoration, and a recitation of the rosary.

Called Matrimony: Rediscovering Its Truth, the conference is being organized by The St. John Neumann Chapter and Catholics United for the Faith.

via Cardinal Burke to speak on marriage, offer Mass at Philadelphia cathedral on April 21 | News | LifeSite

And #2, the (majority) pro-Amoris bishops, convened by Cardinal Cupich of Chicago:

Boston College, the University of Notre Dame and Santa Clara University hosted day-long seminars last week on the theme of “A New Momentum for Moral Formation and Pastoral Practice” in light of Amoris Laetitia.  The conferences, that followed a two-day conference on the same theme last October at Boston College, were conducted in concert with the Dicastery on Family, Life and the Laity.  Boston College professor Fr James Keenan SJ  and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago were the principal organisers.

Each session featured theologians and bishops presenting on different topics related to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, with a team of theologians presenting at all three venues, although each session had different bishops among the presenters. Bishops Robert McElroy and Steven Biegler gave talks at Santa Clara, Cardinals Cupich and Joseph Tobin delivered presentations at Notre Dame; Archbishop Wilton Gregory spoke at the Boston College event, and Archbishop Bernard Hebda read a paper prepared by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who cancelled his appearance at the last minute due to the flu.

Heavy hitters, to be sure. #1 is outnumbered. “We few, we happy few,” they tell themselves?

Via Cardinal organises US campus dialogues on Amoris Laetitia

No contest, numerically speaking. Otherwise? One thinks not.

via Thoughts! Pen! Words!

Do not go there unless you are prepared to spend a lot of time, or if you are a strong-willed person who can pull himself away.

Offering mass “for Divine intervention regarding the Crisis in the Church which has been brought to a head by Pope Francis,” this priest had a very weird experience, he tells One Peter Five.

As in this account, one of many, of a car hijacking two hours ago.

Talk about laboring the obvious!

via Hostage-taking in French supermarket: French Bishops, “unacceptable and inadmissible” | AgenSIR

Here’s the old debbil himself:

We have the “Divisive Bolton” part thanks to today’s hard-copy head for this story, page 27, Section 1. Digital editors thought differently, though their mean old headshot does something like it.

The writers pretty much let their hair down on this one, unloading all things negative and scary about a Trump appointment who shivers their timbers and gives an opening to their deepest fears and worries.

Nothing good to say about this fellow, just what feeds the the similarly deepest fears and worries of the echo chamber. Fair and balanced, eh?

via John Bolton’s take-no-prisoners style may prove problematic in the White House – Chicago Tribune

Heck, we knew all about it, what with the publicity it’s getting from the mainstream media. They are all over the story, yawn.

(Hey, it took him a whole year, didn’t it? Yawn.)

Big deal.

Via Trump Boom Continues as Personal Earnings Up in Most States

It’s become hackneyed by now, but sometimes the trite is applicable.

You can’t make this stuff up!