Twenty-One Things That Caught My Eye Today: Anti-Semitism in Paris, the Cruelty of Chemical Abortion Expansion & More

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1. Bari Weiss: Why France refuses to Prosecute an Anti-Semitic Murderer

Sarah Halimi was a retired French physician and schoolteacher. She was also an Orthodox Jew. On April 4, 2017, Halimi was in her Paris apartment where she lived alone. In the middle of the night, a 27-year-old Muslim man of Malian origin named Kobili Traoré, who lived in the building, broke into her apartment. Traoré tortured Ms. Halimi, who was in her 60s, beating her and kicking her. According to neighbors, who called the police after hearing Halimi’s cries, Traoré called her a “shaitan” (satan) and a dirty Jew. Ultimately, he threw Ms. Halimi’s battered body out of her third-story apartment window shouting “Allahu akbar.”

2. U.S. Bishops’ Pro-Life Committee Chairman on Chemical Abortion Pill Policy Change

“It is difficult to see the FDA’s decision to not enforce important safety protocols as anything other than callous capitulation to the requests of abortion activists without regard for the health and safety of the women involved. An in-person evaluation by a medical professional is necessary to accurately determine the age of the baby (abortion pills are only approved for use in the first 70 days), whether the pregnancy is ectopic (which the woman has no way of knowing on her own), and to test and treat for Rh-incompatibility between mother and baby. Without this information and proper treatment, a woman’s health, future fertility, and life are placed in serious jeopardy. With this decision, not only are women being sold the lie that abortion will solve their problems, but also that chemical abortion is a safe and easy way to go about it. By pushing women away from medical oversight, abortion advocates are luring women into isolated, unsafe, and medically unwise decisions. The inalienable dignity of women and their unborn children deserves so much more.”

3. Sen. Steve Daines & Kristan Hawkins: Biden Administration Puts Abortion Industry Profits Over Women’s Safety

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5. Father Raymond J. de Souza: Cardinal Pell’s Acquittal, One Year Later

In the intervening year, there have been four major developments in Cardinal Pell’s story. 

The most significant is the publication of the first volume of Prison Journal, the daily diary that Cardinal Pell wrote while incarcerated. With a spirit remarkably free of bitterness or self-pity, the cardinal recalls how his world shrank to his cell, “seven to eight metres long, more than two meters wide on the side of the opaque window.”

Confined day and night, save for a short period of daily exercise, Cardinal Pell’s diary frequently records literally the most mundane of topics — the weather. Yet, how important that became in his severely diminished prison life; inclement weather might make it impossible for him to leave his cell at all. 

Solitary confinement was required, in the judgment of the prison authorities, to protect Cardinal Pell from assault by the other prisoners. The cardinal is generous in his assessment of his guards, but it remains a terribly harsh punishment for a man no one considered a threat to others or to good order.

6. BBC News: Jimmy Lai: The Hong Kong billionaire’s last interview as a free man

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8. Lebanon, a haven for Christianity, on the brink of collapse if world fails to act, experts warn 

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10. First Nation finds hope in survival of St. Kateri portrait after church fire 

11. Jonathan Horn: D.C. Statehood and the Insurrection Threat

Even in light of the response to the Capitol riot, it is difficult to see how shrinking the federal district’s borders to the shadows of its most important buildings would help federal officials set up a proper security perimeter the next time a mob descends. It is far easier to see how the proposed change could result in a situation similar to the one that unfolded last year in Portland, Ore., where local officials seemed more sympathetic to a mob laying siege to a federal courthouse for nights on end than to the beleaguered federal officers defending it. America’s founders had such nightmares in mind when they set aside 10 miles square for a federal district outside the control of any state.

12. George W. Bush: Immigration is a defining asset of the United States. Here’s how to restore confidence in our system.

The backgrounds are varied, but readers won’t have to search hard for a common theme. It’s gratitude. So many immigrants are filled with appreciation, a spirit nicely summed up by a Cuban American friend who said: “If I live for a hundred years, I could never repay what this country has done for me.”

The help and respect historically accorded to new arrivals is one reason so many people still aspire and wait to become Americans. So how is it that in a country more generous to new arrivals than any other, immigration policy is the source of so much rancor and ill will? The short answer is that the issue has been exploited in ways that do little credit to either party. And no proposal on immigration will have credibility without confidence that our laws are carried out consistently and in good faith.

13. The Dispatch: ‘We Just Can’t Do This Anymore’

A line cook at Dale’s Diner starts at $11 per hour, up $2 per hour over what it was before the pandemic, according to Bill Anderson. That’s $440 per week or $1,760 per month—roughly $21,000 per year, not including overtime and bonuses. 

But pandemic-driven unemployment often pays more—sometimes far more. In Ohio, according to data from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, the state provided weekly unemployment benefits that averaged nearly $340. Add to that the unemployment supplements from the federal government—which have ranged between $300 and $600 per week, depending on which COVID relief law funded them—and you have some workers paid between $640 and $940 per week to stay home, between $33,000 and almost $50,000 on an annualized basis.. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, these enhanced unemployment payments made some sense. A primary objective as the virus spread was to keep workers from going to a job where they could become infected or infect others. So, getting employees to stay home was the point—or one of them. Now, however, with vaccinations ramping up quickly and more Americans comfortable returning to pre-pandemic activities, these same workers are needed to get the economy moving and to keep businesses open. But with the extension of a policy designed to keep workers home, it’s not surprising that many of them are doing just that. 

14. Thomas Spochr: Biden’s New Policy on Transgender Troops Will Weaken Our Military

After months of careful study, the Pentagon under Defense Secretary James Mattis modified this policy, prohibiting individuals from serving if they were suffering from gender dysphoria, or had a recent history of suffering from the condition. Everyone else who was qualified could serve.

Many on the left and in the media falsely termed this a “transgender ban,” when in fact, it was anything but. It was an important step taken only after thoughtful deliberation to ensure that America’s men and women in uniform were not put at risk in a rush to engage in social engineering with our armed forces.

The facts show that thrusting individuals with gender dysphoria into a stressful military environment would have devastating consequences.

15. Rod Dreher: Truly De-Colonizing The Curriculum

Look at classical, or classical Christian, schools near you, and inquire about what their students are learning in 10th grade. I guarantee you the parents of those schools’ students aren’t paying $55,000 per year to be radicalized by teachers who hate Western civilization.

I read the Chapin stuff aloud to my wife, who is a teacher and administrator at our local classical Christian school. She said, “If Chapin wants to be edgy, have the girls read Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy is edgier than bell hooks.”

16. Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The Ambassador of Blame America First

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is supposed to speak for American values and interests. But judging by her recent remarks, new Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield is going to speak mainly about the faults of her own country.

17. Fr. Raymond J. de Souza: Pope Benedict XVI, the Anchor That Kept Germany Rooted in Christ

The current theological chaos in Germany, where the “binding synodal path” raises the possibility of schism, invites renewed attention to German theology, one of the most influential forces in ecclesial life in the past century. For 60 years, from his ordination in 1951 to his abdication in 2013, Joseph Ratzinger was at the center of it. Indeed, he became something of an anchor in stormy seas. After his abdication, the boat began to drift.

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19. Dr. Samuel Gregg: What Mozart taught Hans Kung about God

Personally, I’m unsure that Catholics will be reading many of Küng’s writings in, say, twenty years’ time. Most of them are highly conditioned by the preoccupations of progressive theologians in the 20th century’s last quarter. And if there is anything about liberal religion that we have learned over the past 60 years, it is that progressive Christianity can’t sustain itself outside church bureaucracies and university departments.

There is, however, one book authored by Küng which I continue to find enlightening in more ways than one ever since I first read it in the late-1990s. It concerns a very unlikely topic: the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

20. Fr. Roger J. Landry: 4 Seismic Lessons I Learned from Father Joseph Henchey, Jesus’ ‘Holy Henchman’

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