Not xenophobic locals, however.

What a story in NY Times about contemplative Dominican nuns. Wow.

In case you missed this anti-Madigan blast from one of his foot soldiers, consider it:

“For [Speaker Madigan] to throw me under the bus like that is foul,” [Rep. Ken] Dunkin [(D-Chicago)] told Chicago Tonight over the phone. “I guess they took for granted that I was going to be there. I told them emphatically that I was going out of town. They knew damn well I was going to be gone.”

Dunkin confirms that he was in New York for both work and personal reasons: he first attended a work conference and then a funeral for the friend of his wife. He says he told the speaker and his staff that he was upset the bill wasn’t called a week earlier, and he sacrificed personal and family time to be at the statehouse then, and that he supported the bill at that time. But Dunkin says that his support for the bill eroded when he started asking more questions.

AFSCME had no time for him.

“This is such an unprecedented move by any union under any governor in this state’s history. I wanted to see what they were talking about,” Dunkin says. “I wanted to see the union’s position and where they were in negotiations in writing. I asked AFSCME for information on what specifically they were negotiating and they said, ‘We don’t typically share that information.’ I also asked the governor’s office and had to squeeze information out of them.”

SB 1229 proposed to send the stalemated contract talks with union workers to an arbitrator, who would then have to choose either the governor’s final offer or the union’s. The governor, fearing an arbitrator would most likely side with the union, called it “the worst legislation in Illinois’ history,” said it would cost the state $2 billion, vetoed it and campaigned heavily to prevent an override.

“Hell no,” he said.

When asked if Gov. Rauner did anything to persuade Dunkin to miss the vote or if he offered any sort of benefit in return, Dunkin said, “Hell no.” But Dunkin admits that the governor made the case that AFSCME had a poor record on hiring and protecting the jobs of minorities in state agencies. He says AFSCME flatly rejected that claim but offered him no evidence to the contrary.

House Speaker Michael Madigan Dunkin says Madigan went into overdrive mode to try and secure enough votes for an override, and that his motivations were purely political – to score a major victory against the governor.

“The speaker made this a super issue,” Dunkin said. “I don’t want to be a part of his political manipulations. I don’t know what he was thinking when he called the bill knowing he didn’t have 71 votes. He knew I wasn’t 100 percent on board anyway. I’m not in the pocket of Mike Madigan. I don’t work for Mike Madigan, I work with him. I don’t work for the governor. You can print that.”

“There are 47 other bodies that [Madigan] has worked with equally if not longer,” Dunkin said. “But I’m the cause of his self-manufactured defeat? Meantime, on Wednesday eight people were killed in Chicago. The schools are $480 million short. And this is the most salient thing we can talk about in Springfield? This bill meant nothing to the average person.”

After the defeat on Wednesday, Madigan held a press conference and would not answer whether or not he would politically retaliate against Dunkin for not helping with the vote. Dunkin seemed unperturbed.

“I don’t care what the hell he decides,” Dunkin said. “You have to ask him that. I’m not fearful of Mike Madigan or any other politician for that matter. My record speaks for itself.”

So what does Chi Trib’s Eric Zorn assume we all know about Dunkin to make his non-support of Madigan “an act of political cowardice and malfeasance that will become legendary”?

The Big O. showed his hand early in the game, and it’s been downhill ever since.

The completely unprepared Barack Obama, who was elected to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer, set the tone early in his presidency with a bias that was – at best – skeptical about the police. And his fellow Democrats either remained silent or joined the chorus when radicals in their own party called for less incarceration, fewer arrests and a pullback of police presence in high-crime communities. Well, you reap what you sow. The spike in murders and violent crime is an issue of the Democrats’ own making. And, oh by the way, pandering to government unions for endorsements isn’t the same as supporting cops on the streets.

Except he was prepared, by rootless life, upbringing fatherless by hippie mother’s parents, fostered in radicalism by the Hawaiian communist “Frank” as in his autobio, and subsequent stints on various campuses as beau ideal of leftist mentors and facilitators plus homing in on radical-chic preacher and putting in his time as Alinsky-style organizer — except where’s the record (wins, losses, draws) even on that?

He was made for a race man’s down-with-cops, up-with-streetwise main-chancers who talk the talk, loud and often.

This piece nails the crucial difference between social justice as figured by the left and as figured by the likes of Chesterton and Belloc 100 years ago. The latter looks for injustice as cause of inequity, today’s proponents look for inequity alone as reason for change.

This is very good.

When can’t the president of the U.S. be quoted in a family newspaper? When he talks this way:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA…

Racism, we are not cured of it, clearly. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior. [boldface added]

Don’t matter the context, Barack, don’t matter your simon-pure, lily-white good intentions. Don’t matter none o’ that stuff. Apologize.

You can lose your job over this. You know that, don’t you?

“It is no secret that Planned Parenthood and the Democratic Party are the double helix of political partisanship.

The DNC makes sure that Planned Parenthood is flush with cash and then Planned Parenthood returns the favor by supporting Democratic candidates.

(And the mainstream press certainly gives them a helping hand.)”

Nicely said.

The mother-in-law account in Luke, recounted also in Matthew and Mark, is a homey item. Burning fever dispatched, she got up and went about rustling grub for the itinerant preacher and others.

Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, of course. I suppose not too much is to be made of that as regards centuries-old discipline in the Western church, but still it’s a nice touch. Those were real people. The gospels are full of them.

Translations matter, as I have noted. In addition to the wonderful Ronald Knox version from the mid-’40s, we have the St. Paul Catholic edition of the mid-’90s, the work of the very helpful and near-anonymous Mark Wauck.

Today’s reading is another triumph of selectivity.

1 Thes 5:1-6, 9-11 is the menu for first reading. Why not verses 7 & 8? Is there something subversive there? Something offensive to pious ears? Improper? Distracting? Peculiarly first century and misleading if read to weekday mass goers?

Let’s have a look.

7Those who sleep go to sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we are of the day, let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation.e

Well. The point is to be of the day.

5For all of you are children of the light* and children of the day.

Yes. That’s settled.

But the skipped-over part, as in getting drunk at night. That’s a reference that would make pewsitters sit up. It’s good, earthy talk, direct, which is good.

Let us be sober — take it several ways. One is not to be silly. Or foolish. Not act like damn fools if we can help it. Don’t be a jerk, taking on the breastplate of love and the helmet that is hope. Again plain talk and vivid.

Do the liturgical editors shrink from that? Do they think pewsitters shrink from it? I say put it out there. But what do I know?

He really is a third-world president, isn’t he?