Amazing what you can afford on NFL slave wages.

He packs the courts.

Pope Francis, in the end, does not make frontal attacks. He generally enlarges the memberships of organizations, until the balance swings to his side. The same procedure is taking place with the renewal of the College of Cardinals, designed step by step according to the criterion of national representation, rather than for merit.

This is how Pope Francis makes his decisions about the future of the Church, trying to control the discussion from the top. [Italics, boldface added]

Like FDR and the Supreme Court, in which the president was the uber-progressive prepared to subvert the constitutional separation of powers.

He’s in charge more than we were led to believe?

When speaking about Pope Francis’s pontificate, collegiality and synodality are always the keywords and they describe his way of acting. However, two events last week break out of this narrative, and shed light on the fact that Pope Francis is really a lone decision maker.

Say it ain’t so, Francis. (But will we believe you?)

Hold on, Drudge and others seeking to pillory Hillary for this supposed exorbitant, outrageous comment in quick back-and-forth converse with Charlie Rose, SHE WAS KIDDING.

Irony, folks. Clear case. She was saying the ridiculous, denying it, when pushed by Rose to liken Trump to Putin. So for the sake of quick, ironic give-and-take converse, COOL IT with this one. Gets tiresome after a while.

What he said:

“They were somewhat betwixt, between two different aspirations,” Emanuel told reporters Tuesday.

He has a way with words, I’ll give him that, although it goes for many a pol, much of not most of the time. Those darn different aspirations get you in the end.

Or: “Rich Brat Beats Rap”

Which could have been a front-page headline when newspapers were newspapers. Up there with the Post’s own “Headless body found in topless bar“?

Not even close, I admit. But still . . .

Meanwhile, Drudge and Chi Sun-Times are trying hard.

Amazing outbreak here of democratic spirit. It took a liberal to incite it.

The Church needs “more dialogue and reciprocal confidence” rather than “polarization and polemics,” he continued, adding that the Successor of St. Peter “deserves full respect for his person and divine mandate, and on the other hand his honest critics deserve a convincing answer.”

Incited by the pope, I mean. It’s a way to stimulate thinking. A sort of elected (chosen by the president/holy father, that is) house and senate, or parliament, in a spirit of the truth making us free.

Gearing up for their next meeting, my friends at OPCTJ (who welcomed me to their meetings, me pen in hand, etc.) open with this as its focus:

Meeting # 3,444 – In America, access to, and success in, higher education is often seen as the most viable path to class, cultural, and social improvement.

Count me among those who do not see it that way. Rather, I see it as stable, loving family life, a far less available but far more viable path to this goal.

She is an absolute dear. No doubt.

​Feel it, brother.

This is a speciality of the left. It’s guilt, as a Protestant minister told me years ago, “the gift that keeps on giving.”

The late Cardinal George of Chicago ​asked a TV-caster in his farewell press conference, “Why did you always ask me [as comment for a happening], ‘How do you feel?’ rather than ‘What do you think?'”

You gotta press the right buttons for some people. It’s how they operate and how they assume others operate.