Every time Julie Badon, a 46-year-old Berwyn homemaker and lifelong devout Catholic, goes to church in Oak Park on Sunday, she violates an edict of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.

The mass, in which a priest stands with his back to the people, who pray to God with prayer books and rosaries, is celebrated by a priest of the Society of St. Pius X, founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a Frenchman who rejected the reformist Second Vatican Council as the work of the devil and was excommunicated for ordaining bishops on his own.

For Julie Badon and hundreds of other worshipers at Our Lady Immaculate, 410 W. Washington Blvd., ostracism by her church is not too high a price to pay for the consolations of the pre-Vatican II mass and the devotion it inspires.

Every time Julie Badon, a 46-year-old Berwyn homemaker and lifelong devout Catholic, goes…

Looking for a laugh? Sun-Times gives us some on page 6 of today’s hard copy, a whole page of marketing for the City of Chicago and its mayor. And why not? She’s the only mayor we have.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her “authentic” personality will be a cornerstone of the plan to “rebrand” Chicago and help the city recover from the economic havoc wreaked by the coronavirus, the city’s chief marketing officer said Thursday.

Michael Fassnacht, a former commercial advertising whiz, donated his time to work on former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s failed pitch to attract Amazon’s second corporate headquarters.

Now, he’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $1-a-year chief marketing officer, charged with developing a “master brand” for Chicago to rebuild a convention and tourism industry decimated by the pandemic.

And if there every was a man with a plan, this fellow is. He’ll do it on the cheap.

That means…

Not just almost word for word but the very (for him fake) scenario.

Britain’s Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock had talked about his coal miner ancestors. “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university…Was it because all our predecessors were thick? . . . Those people who could sing and play and recite and write poetry? . . . Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football?”

Mr. Biden had stolen the lines: “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? . . . Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree? That I was smarter than the rest? Those same people who read poetry and wrote poetry and taught me how to sing verse? Is it because…

Good old Joe getting older, faster.

There’s a bad joke about a music scholar who visits Beethoven’s grave in Vienna. As he nears, he hears the Ninth Symphony being played backward. He turns to the cemetery caretaker and asks, “What’s that strange music?” The caretaker answers, “Oh, that’s just Beethoven de-composing.”

That joke pops into my mind every time I see photos of Joe Biden or hear him speak. On the one hand, Biden is holding up better than I would have expected a few months ago. On the other hand, no one can deny that the man is aging with incredible speed.

(Thank you, Andrea Widburg.)

Man on Dan & Amy this morning considers it an even bet that if Joe wins he will not be sworn in at the inauguration.

He’s a fooler.

In his piece, “The Demand for Abolition,” Kaepernick argues that institutions of justice should concentrate more on the well-being of people instead of controlling them.

This is why his idea of a really good time is a stroll in the wee hours on any number of hot streets in the South or West Side of Chicago. Handing out $50 bills.

You want dark comedy done to a T, see “Barney Thomson.”

A sumptuous delight. Includes an Emma Thompson you have never seen before. A 2016 film. Typical British acting company success. Mystery (suspense) factor doesn’t hurt either.

William M. Briggs quotes a scholarly paper on origins and determinants of intelligence quotients, IQ’s, a paper whose publication is condemned by a raft of other scientists:

In a very short time, it is likely that we will identify many of the genetic variants underlying individual differences in intelligence. We should be prepared for the possibility that these variants are not distributed identically among all geographic populations, and that this explains some of the phenotypic differences in measured intelligence among groups.

However, some philosophers and scientists believe that we should refrain from conducting research that might demonstrate the (partly) genetic origin of group differences in IQ. Many scholars view academic interest in this topic as inherently morally suspect or even racist. The majority of philosophers and social scientists take it for granted that all population differences in intelligence are due to environmental factors.

The present paper argues that…

Today two priest-pundits offer essays that really cannot be missed, says the eminently alert Phil Lawler:

Father George William Rutler is at his best, which is very, very good, as he analyzes the US bishops’ discussion of capital punishment for Crisis. He focuses attention on the decision by Pope Francis to change the Catechism, to say that the death penalty is now “inadmissible.” One hapless bishop described that word a bit of “eloquent ambiguity,” and readers will enjoy Father Rutler’s reaction to that comment. On the new wording itself, Father Rutler writes:

If “inadmissible” does not mean something essentially different from what has already been said magisterially about capital punishment, why is it necessary to revise the Catechism to include it? Secondly, if the word “inadmissible” is deliberately ambiguous, why does it belong in a catechism whose purpose is to eschew ambiguity?

Now you see the alleged white supremacist, now you don’t.

Chalk up another for MainStream Mediums, who LEAP toward something that reinforces their narrative.

Last week, the FBI says it foiled a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), after the FBI infiltrated an anti-government militia and arrested 13 members who “talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a sitting governor.”

And while the FBI never suggested a race-based ideology in its criminal complaint, the MSM – as well as Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), took the ‘white supremacist’ ball and ran with it – hard.

On Friday, however, the Washington Post profiled several members of the group. Notably absent were accusations of ‘white supremacy’ – perhaps after acknowledging:

“One of alleged plotters, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in June, telling the Oakland County Times he was upset about the…