Some thoughts on the political importance of empathy and the strange road empathy has traveled in these recent years. religionnews.com/2026/02/12/4...

If you're paying any attention to governing, you don't need a poll to tell you Biden was better today any more than you did on Nov 5, 2024. Biden had the most successful presidency of my lifetime. The better question is—What the hell's wrong with voters? www.axios.com/2026/02/12/t...

Polling has been quite destructive to representative self-government. This is a positive development. We need more like this. thehill.com/homenews/med...

I don't know Susan Ostermann or her work. I have nothing at stake with @notredame.bsky.social, no ties there at all. But isn't it dispiriting in 2026 to find there's a gaggle of noisy Catholic bishops who still want trampling academic freedom to be part of the Catholic brand?

I and millions of Americans believe exactly the same thing Kasparov does. Too many troops, too many new prisons, too much money not under Congressional supervision. We're not just witnessing a mass deportation scheme anymore. This is something significantly bigger and scarier.

Call-ins to CSPAN open forum on D and R lines are preoccupied by Epstein acctability. Something is shifting. But also. The Epstein stuff is intersecting 50yrs of antigovt rhetoric, paranoia, conspiracism. Institutions already are suffering. I wonder what mere anarchy awaits us after Epstein.

That consuming a Superbowl halftime show can seem like an act of effective resistance is powerful evidence of how much distorted by entertainment and consumerism our political sense has become.

🧪 I AM SO PROUD OF MY BLUE STATE! Governor @govpritzker.illinois.gov is a lifesaving HERO! Thank you. Illinois Joins WHO’s Global Disease Network ground.news/article/illi...

I'm delighted now to be a regular contributor to @flashesinsight.bsky.social. flashesinsight.com/2026/02/03/t...

all these conservative men who bleated on about their "legacy" will watch their children grow up and change their names when they realize the true horror of what their fathers supported

@nytimes.com @nytimesoped.bsky.social If you're looking to fill a slot -- I have over 100 bylines, can turn copy around fast, as secretary of the Edmund Burke Society I am a conservative and also a Catholic, but not with Douthat's voice and never for Trump. I could be your guy. DM if interested.

I'm never with the pile-on-the-natl-Dems crowd that prevails here. But the Don Lemon arrest is as much a confirmation that there's no "pivot" as the ongoing, unchanged ICE operation in MN. We have no signal an investigation into Alex Pretti's murder is active. Dems really need to hold out here.

The death of Joe Ely snuck past me last month. A huge loss to American music. With the Flatlanders and on his own, he gave us melodies that rose up from the landscape like they were stolen from the soundtrack of a... Joe Ely, Influential Texas Songwriter, Dead at 78 share.google/5U6ixcVFAp77...

Has any superpower ever become so irrelevant so quickly? www.msn.com/en-us/politi...

“The world has changed, Washington has changed. There is almost nothing normal in the U.S. now and that’s the truth." Mark Carney

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

If you are in or near Chicago and want to show solidarity with Minnesota, pray for our nation, consider this event Fri night. Tony Pizzo, OSA (provincial of the Augustinian Chicago province) will preside. Everyone welcome, its not just for Catholics. Please share.

This can't be repeated enough. Trump killed the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024. He needed his issue so he could be elected and send goons to MN. Now he is POTUS, 2 citizens are dead. And we still have a broken immigration system.

...tick...tick...tick...tick... www.newsweek.com/chart-showin...

Two former presidents felt compelled to comment publicly

Seen in Los Angeles (Credit: Zurita Carpio)

A federal district court judge (appointed by Trump) has ordered the Trump Administration not to destroy evidence in the Alex Pretti investigation. This is subtle but think about it. No other US president has ever achieved this. His Administration had to be stopped from covering up a killing.

Man, I bet the NRA is going to be furious when they hear that jack-booted thugs from the federal government executed a law-abiding citizen for exercising his Second Amendment right to carry a handgun. Any second now, I'm sure. He was a white guy, if that helps? Hello? NRA?

I know well that publicly questioning how some people raise money disturbs their peaceful hearts. A pity that murdering a citizen in the streets is not a cause for so great a disturbance.

I won't endorse the victim carrying a weapon and magazines, if that happened. But I didn't endorse it either when the NRA and GOP were telling us we should be ready to do that when "jack-booted govt thugs" came for us in the streets. apnews.com/article/immi...

"TV ads not only reach low-interest voters, but also teach them useful, accurate, issue information. So for a candidate to get his message across to all the voters, he cannot simply rely on free TV news time; he must buy costly TV ad time. The implications for campaign finance are obvious." 1976

New in PN: What if we just stopped paying taxes? "Like many other blue states, Minnesota pays more to the federal government than it takes in. But why should the state continue to subsidize a government bent on destroying it? What if it just … didn’t?"

It is disgraceful for a Catholic bishop simply to accept uncritically this bad faith propaganda intended to demonize immigrants while undermining help for the hungry and justifying state-sponsored, lawless brutality. share.google/pgT01GSN80nx...

Sic semper tyrranis

23-year professor in the humanities here, but even my math skills are adequate to inform you confidently this fiftysomething is below average. www.usatoday.com/story/money/...

Remarkable. Lucid. Needed. @mark-carney.bsky.social names the moment, leans heavily on the wisdom of Thucydides and Havel. The American Century firmly is over. youtu.be/dTvFnC-oFGw?...

Pew Research Institute (2023): • Red State Texas has about 2.1 million undocumented immigrants • Red State Florida has 1.6 M undocumented immigrants • Blue State Minnesota has 130,000. And yet only Minnesota is being occupied by masked thugs over "immigration." It's *not* about immigration.

Average Sunday show interview: OFFICIAL: we are going to dip enemies of the state into acid vats HOST: how will you pay for it? OFFICIAL: tariffs HOST: critics say tariffs don't generate acid vat money OFFICIAL: tariffs have generated more money than has ever existed HOST: thank u for ur time

Please SHARE if you agree!

Sadly relevant today.

Say what you want about classicist design and the architecture God likes but southsiders know the Chateau Busche' when we see it. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/u...

I heard someone say recently that synodality can't change that the church is hierarchical. I wanted to laugh. Read LG. The church is both hierarchical and synodal. It cannot un-be either. But we've overemphasized hierarchy so much for 1500yrs that every time someone says lets tend to this other...

A solemnity with its own liturgical color.

Extortion of an ally as foreign policy. archive.ph/otBtB

As I thought all along— they're not tough enough to handle our winter. Farewell, snowbird soldiers. Texas National Guard troops expected to leave Chicago and return home, source says | CNN share.google/IxzLX0qc0PH8...

For poor Italians, Germans, Poles, Irish, Bohemians For African Americans escaping Jim Crow For Venezuelans and Colombians fleeing for survivial. Chicago is a city of hopes and dreams. Maybe things will be better in Chicago. youtu.be/fbO4--793Y0?...

Mockery of Catholicism 'The Catholic Church Is Wrong': Tom Homan Responds To US Bishops Lamenting US Immigration Policies search.app/pZXg6

There's another, older, less inflammatory way to say this— Never cross a picket line Source: Business Insider search.app/My66W

For no particular reason….posting former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell’s mugshot before he went to Federal prison for committing numerous crimes on behalf and or/at the direction of President Nixon including obstruction of justice and conspiracy.

It’s been a year to the day we bought (and then didn’t, for reasons we still don’t fully know) InfoWars. We’re still trying. In the year since, we built The Onion into one of the biggest newspapers in the United States. I’m so proud of this place. I’m proud we do hard stuff. Thank you for caring.

"Please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong *** It is not law enforcement; it is terror."

Believing in the essential dignity of all human beings the way I do, I find it hard to call any person scum. But I am exploring an exception.

Friends, Commonweal Magazine has become an exciting place for Catholic readers. Not just Heidi Schlumpf, but now they also have added Antonio Spadaro, SJ as a regular contributor. Indispensable reading. subscribe.commonwealmagazine.org/CMW/?f=donat...