I left the Roman Catholic church I grew up in some years ago, first for militant atheism and then for a non-denominational evangelical church with a Pentecostal background. As Johnny Cash might have remarked, I’ve been everywhere, man.

Nevertheless, even though I broke with the faith of my youth on a number of theological and practical issues, I must admit I still harbor some wistful admiration for Mother Church.

I also must admit that admiration seems to ebb by the year, and not without reason.

It isn’t just that Pope Francis is the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of pontiffs, although that certainly doesn’t help anything. It’s more that, in an age where every gaffe or offensive statement by every mildly famous personage is reported on with preternatural alacrity — up to and including the fact our most recent Heisman Trophy winner once tweeted some dumb stuff at the ages of 14 and 15, an age at which no child has ever said particularly dumb stuff — the more egregious verbal infelicities of the leader of the world’s largest Christian sect seem to go mostly unnoticed.

An object lesson in this phenomenon can be gleaned from remarks the Pope made in Vatican City on Friday. I probably don’t need to recapitulate the fact that Catholicism has been embroiled in a decades-long pedophilia scandal involving its priests and prelates. Even after that period of time, things aren’t exactly looking up; Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal and Archbishop of Washington, resigned from the College of Cardinals earlier this year after a pattern of abuse stretching back decades was revealed.

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McCarrick became the highest-profile Catholic official to face such accusations and became the first cardinal in the better part of a century to resign.

Of course, he won’t be spending any time in prison or anything like that. Instead, Pope Francis “sentenced” him to a life of prayer and penance, which seems like the punchline to a bad joke involving confession but is, in fact, a bad joke of a much different and more nauseating sort.

Given that someone of McCarrick’s eminence allegedly abused children sexually and got away with it for years, one can only imagine there are other such cases still to be uncovered. But fret not, dear Catholics. The pontiff has a foolproof method of extirpating this grave threat to the church and to its members, which he outlined at the Holy See on Friday.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: Convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Pope Francis said in an address to the Vatican’s central administration, according to Reuters.

While the Pope has previously used speeches before the Curia to harangue about mismanagement, this time he decided to deal with the sexual abuse crisis. Upon first glance, this seems to have a lot less to do with morality than expediency, since a major conference of bishops regarding the sexual abuse crisis is set to take place in two months.

“Let it be clear that, faced with these abominations, the Church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whoever has committed such crimes. The Church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case,” Pope Francis told the Curia.

This all is indeed an interesting take on the matter. “Interesting,” at least in this case, is not synonymous with “good.”

For starters, it’s difficult to establish credibility for a claim that your entity “will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whoever has committed such crimes” when a linchpin of your strategy seems to involve asking those who have committed these crimes to turn themselves in, presumably in the absence of evidence. I must confess to having limited knowledge of the particulars of criminology, but I’m fairly certain the success rate here isn’t terribly high.

As for that last part — the spiel about how the church would never deign to cover up or underplay accusations — let’s consider the case of McCarrick. As early as 2000, the Catholic Church had been informed of claims of improper sexual activity by the priest. According to an Oct. 1 article in The Washington Post, there were at least four complaints against McCarrick, who was eventually suspended for allegations he groped an altar boy. The case also attracted attention because there were plenty of other prelates and Vatican officials who were allegedly willing to cover up for him.

RELATED: Catholic Journalists Blow Sex Scandal Open, Print Letter Confirming Vatican Knew

Does this sound like a case in which self-reporting of grievous crimes is going to work?

But now as ever, Reuters subscribes to the Pope Francis mythos — anything he does must be a radical departure from the hidebound traditions of Catholicism and it must be for the good.

Here’s the opening of their story: “Pope Francis on Friday urged predator priests who have sexually abused minors to turn themselves in, making one of his strongest comments ever on the crisis sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.”

I will confess further to not having the best memory in the world, but I can at least take some solace in having better recall than Reuters writer Philip Pullella. After all, as he was typing that part about “one of his strongest comments ever on the crisis sweeping the Roman Catholic Church,” he literally forgot that right before that comma, he reported that Pope Francis’ solution to the crisis was priests self-reporting their own crimes.

Just imagine if this worked outside of the Catholic Church. Sorry, policemen — we can lay off most of you. When someone decides to flee a traffic stop because they have a bloody knife under the passenger’s seat, they would cut off the 120 mph chase once they lost the cop car and drive directly to the police station. There, they would turn himself in — presumably to the only other policeman in town, busy playing FreeCell on the precinct computer because all crime now solves itself  — and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.

No need for handcuffs, a jury trial, even a prison. They’d just stand in one place for 10 years until their sentence was finished and then go back out into society.

Aside from a few practical hitches, this sounds great.

Unfortunately, this works about as well outside of the walls of the Vatican as it does inside of them, and judging by the fact that this comment by Francis was the foregrounded takeaway from the Curia address, it seems that now as ever, the Vatican is going to pretend to take this crisis seriously for the 32,044th time while doing less than nothing about it.

Victims and believers deserve better.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

If the idea of universal basic income was going to catch on anywhere in the United States, it would have to be the state of California. After all, there’s no place in these 50 states where the idea of giving people money for existing would be more likely to catch on, particularly given the word “debt” doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot to state legislators.

The pilot locale for this program seems to be Stockton, a Central Valley city of roughly 300,000 that I previously knew primarily because it was where the band Pavement was from. Now, the city is making news because it’s giving 1,200 households $500 a month as part of a study into the efficacy of the universal basic income concept.

The problem is that nobody seems to really want it.

KOVR-TV in Sacramento reports that “a team of independent researchers randomly selected 1,200 households where the median income is at or below $46,000.  From the group, 100 will be selected to receive $500 a month for 18 months. But the response has been slow.”

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Apparently, even they think that this is a joke.

“We’re looking for at least half of the folks who have received the letter to respond back because it gives the evaluators a chance to select the 100 people from that group,” Mayor Michael Tubbs said.

The project — Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED — is the first study of universal basic income run by a city.

“SEED is looking to study how an extra $500 will impact people’s health and stress level. They are looking to see if people feel financially secure,” KOVR reported.

If they don’t get the appropriate number of respondents — namely, 50 percent — by Sunday, Dec. 23, they’re going to have to come up with another way to get the SEED project to work..

“If half the people don’t respond, our research team, our evaluators will find a way to make sure we get a sample size that is representative of the city,” Tubbs said.

So, what’s the solution? Probably to send out more mailers.

“It’s not a scam, it’s not a hoax. It’s a chance to be part of this groundbreaking program,” Mayor Tubbs said.

Indeed, it seems more than likely that residents thought this was a scam than they were averse to availing themselves of free money. Then again, it might be for the best. As recently as 2008, Stockton filed for bankruptcy in the midst of the housing crisis and was once known as the foreclosure capital of America. We’re not exactly talking about Dubai here.

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Of course, this also raises the question of how badly a city has to be managed when it’s just years from earning that foreclosure capital of America moniker and it can’t even get its citizens to accept $500 “free” of charge.

If the suzerains of Silicon Valley, a few dozen miles west of Stockton, have their way, this is a program that’s going to be expanded greatly. We’re going to have a giant government bureaucracy running a UBI scheme that tiny Stockton, California can’t even get 0.5 percent of its residents to sign up for. I can’t possibly see how things could go wrong when this is all scaled up.

If SEED doesn’t get the 50 percent participation rate, I have a piece of advice to the fine people of Stockton: Give it a rest. You’ve already got that whole foreclosure capital thing going. You don’t need another failure. I mean, universal basic income was never going to work, but I never pictured it would fail this bad. Stick to Pavement, Stockton. Pavement was pretty good.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Does she know those things aren’t the responsibility of the federal government? She’s throwing a fit because people are always asking her how she proposes to pay for the Medicare for all that she proposes.

Via Twitchy:

Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded earlier this year to questions about the projected tens of trillions of dollars price tag for funding the dream of “Medicare for all” by saying you “just pay for it.” Now, Ocasio-Cortez has a similar question about the border wall that President Trump wants:

Who wants to tell her?

Keep reading…

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, I have been directly involved in advising the country’s top National Security Team in planning and executing the United States and Allied Powers response to the attacks.

I’ve trained trained troops to deploy, supervised and conducted intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations and deployed myself in the first Operation Enduring Freedom, as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom as a commander.

My support for President Trump’s decisions to bring American forces out of Syria now and soon Afghanistan is informed not only by my experiences since 9/11, but also four decades of military and civilian experience planning and executing national security policy. I have studied national security matters under retired US Marine Lt General Mick Trainor at Harvard, and many other great thinkers at the U.S. College of Naval Warfare.

As you can see from my background, I’m no pacifist, but I’ve also seen the horrors of war firsthand and understand that military force should always be a final resort and that it is the duty of the Commander in Chief to bring our troops home as soon as the stated mission is complete.

Unlike the bipartisan foreign policy swamp, which has been consistently proven wrong about nearly every major military decision of the last decade, President Trump has overseen a clear, steady and realist foreign policy, focused on putting America First. From re-building America’s military, destroying ISIS, ending the Iran deal, de-escalating tensions with North Korea, he has consistently proven the naysayers in the foreign policy swamp wrong.

Those who have led us down the failed and dangerous path of endless wars in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and beyond, are the last people who should be listened to in regards to Syria. In fact, many of those people attacking President Trump today over Syria, are they themselves responsible for the chaos we see currently in the Middle East. Why trust a group of people whose policies have been discredited time and time again over a man whose policies and instincts in regards to foreign policy have been consistently proven right?

The members of the foreign policy swamp can’t even account for why it’s in America’s national interest to keep 2000 American soldiers and intelligence officers in Syria after they’ve already completed the mission the President gave them two years ago, to destroy and defeat ISIS. Could it be that that the foreign policy swamp was never actually interested in defeating ISIS and instead want us to stay in Syria because of their misguided and dangerous fetish for more regime change in the Middle East?

They scream that there will be chaos if we leave, conveniently ignoring the fact that most of the chaos we see in the Middle East is a direct result of their policies of regime change Libya and Iraq. Furthermore, do we really want to turn Syria into another Afghanistan, where we stay there for 17 years with no real purpose and no actual American interests at stake?

We’ve seen that script before and it hasn’t ended well for the United States. But that matters little to the foreign policy swamp, as they don’t even pretend this is about our national interest, but rather about their impossible dream for liberal Democracy in the Middle East.

Luckily, President Trump understands that we owe our troops more than that.

The President understands what I understand: The Middle East will never be a liberal democracy and our foreign policy should never be guided by grand ideological goals, but rather by a simple doctrine that asks: What is best for America and its people?

In the case of Syria, it’s clear to me that there is no tangible American interest left in staying. As a 32 year military man, I say President Trump is right, we completed our mission, destroyed the enemy and it’s finally time to bring our troops home and declare victory.

And to those who disagree,I have one question to ask: How much American blood are you willing to spill to achieve your goal of regime change in Syria? Because if you ask me, the answer should very clearly be, not a single drop.

Retired Colonel Rob Maness enlisted in the US Air Force at age 17 as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician.  As an officer, he served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, survived the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, commanded a B-1 bomber squadron in combat, was Vice Commander of America’s largest airborne intelligence wing, and as a wing commander in nuclear operations.

Over the last two years, Stockholm county has seen a total of thirty fatal shootings, but according to a review of the cases, only eight individuals have been convicted for the crimes.

The review examined the thirty cases, all of which are believed to be connected to organised gang crime, and found that in the majority of fatal shootings — 18 total cases — no suspects were arrested at all, Sveriges Radio reports.

In some cases there were suspects who arrested by police but later let go due to a lack of evidence, and the vast majority of the thirty murders are still in the preliminary phase of their investigations.

The regional police chief of Stockholm, Ulf Johansson, claimed police have made steady progress, but noted the difficulty in solving the cases revolved around getting witnesses to testify, saying police had to rely almost entirely on forensic evidence.

When asked if hard forensic evidence was always present at crime scenes, Johansson admitted “no, in some cases there is none.”

Study: Young Men in Sweden Twice As Likely To Be Killed in Shootings Compared to Rest of Europe https://t.co/8SjnN3AV8q

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 13, 2018

To tackle to problem of gangs, Johansson suggested that lawmakers should open up a debate on whether or not to criminalise gang participation entirely.

“I think we should be open to legislative measures and I think our politicians are now too. But we have to continue this work in order to get the right tools,” he added.

Deadly violence in Sweden, according to a Swedish Crime Prevention Council (Brå) report released earlier this year, saw a record high level in 2017 with 113 fatal shootings.

In the city of Helsingborg, the rise in gun violence was even sharper, with the city seeing a 300 percent increase in 2017.

Local police district manager in Helsingborg Sven Holgersson, blamed criminal elements, saying the shootings were often tired to disputes over money, drugs and weapons.

Five Percent of Swedish Suspects Commit a Quarter of Crimes, Majority From Foreign Backgrounds https://t.co/HXT6lUNRQy

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 14, 2018

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

Jair Bolsonaro will assume the presidency of Brazil next month with a mandate to establish trustworthy institutions in his country after nearly two decades of socialism.

Rather than being intimidated by the scope of this domestic objective, Bolsonaro and his Social Liberal Party (PSL) appear keen on not just rehabilitating Brazil, but establishing an international coalition of anti-socialists to prevent the spread of Marxist ideology, particularly in Latin America, where leftists spent most of the 21st century in power partially thanks to their robust support networks.

In his most direct foreign policy message yet, Bolsonaro stated this week that his administration would do “everything we can within legality, within democracy, against these countries,” referring to Cuba and Venezuela. He argued that Brazil’s security will remain in jeopardy so long as leftist regimes exist in the hemisphere, and has sought cooperation with right-wing leaders to eradicate the threat for all affected states.

Bolsonaro’s call for a united conservative front in the Americas is a mirror image goal to what the left has done for decades. Led by late dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, leaders like Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega mastered the art of using multilateral venues to promote their agenda. For over a decade, they dominated institutions like the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), turning them into anti-American soapboxes. They cultivated ties with enemies of Washington like Russia, China, and Iran, all desperate for influence in the Western Hemisphere.

People shout slogans during the opening of the XIII Meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum, in a room decorated with a banner with portraits of Latin American leftist presidents in San Salvador, on January 12th, 2007. YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images

Often, they created their own institutions to ensure constant contact and coordination, ensuring their regimes increasingly mimicked each other and prevented anti-socialist opposition movements throughout Latin America from reinforcing each other. Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro created the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA), an alternative to the OAS, in 2004. Over a decade prior, Castro and Lula da Silva created the Sao Paulo Forum.

Few in Bolsonaro’s coalition will fail to mention the Sao Paulo Forum in conversation. Founded by Lula da Silva and Fidel Castro, the Forum, as described by Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, “is the largest political organization to have ever existed in Latin America and, without a doubt, one of the largest in the world. All the leftist rulers on the continent are members.” Conservatives in the country call it “Brazil’s worst enemy,” as it emboldens international socialist and communist leaders and allows them to organize and support each other across state borders.

The Sao Paulo Forum has already declared war on the allegedly “xenophobic, racist, misogynist, and homophobic” Bolsonaro, issuing a statement of repudiation following his election in October.

Bolsonaro’s allies, meanwhile, have begun building their own alternatives. This month, members of the PSL organized the Conservative Summit of the Americas, an event inviting regional anti-socialists to partake in forums discussing how to improve the quality of life in their respective states and fight the specter of communism in the region – in government, academia, and media. At the event, Jair Bolsonaro described the fight against communism as an “obligation” that Brazil, as South America’s largest nation, must fulfill. Brazil will “join other nations” to fight for “democracy, freedom,” he said, adding, “we will not leave the Cuban people.”

 

 

Prince Luiz Philippe de Orléans e Bragança – a member of Brazil’s royal family who won a congressional seat representing Sao Paulo as a member of the PSL, the first of his family to assume office since 1889 – told Breitbart News in an interview shortly after attending the Conservative Summit that these venues need to be a priority precisely because of the tremendous impact the Sao Paulo Forum has had in promoting socialism.

“Socialist movements … created a network of communication and sustainability,” he explained. “The Foro de Sao Paulo… what they have done is set up a network of financing revolutionary parties, revolutionary progressive movements that are disruptive of society across the region.”

Even in a federal presidential system far from the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, he argued, “wherever a Sao Paulo Forum member takes hold of public tax revenues, they will use it for the benefit of the [leftists in the] whole region, so it is a global network … an evil empire that they have created of financing schemes.”

Feliz c/ a realização não d um evento, mas de um primeiro passo para sedimentar na América Latina uma ideia que pode servir de alerta ao mundo inteiro: cuidado, o socialismo mata! P contrapor queremos conservar os costumes ocidentais construídos por mtos anos e uma econ. liberal. pic.twitter.com/aQGUJoDBYB

— Eduardo Bolsonaro (@BolsonaroSP) December 9, 2018

Orléans e Bragança suggested that conservatives must learn from their unity, if not their lax interpretation of campaign finance laws. “If we do not have a similar type of network of communication, of addressing political change and preserving identity as far as global identity and citizenship, and nation-states, the Foro de Sao Paulo guys will win.”

The newly elected congressman expressed optimism for his country and, due to the size of Brazil, the region as a whole.

“We have a tremendous advantage now because the largest country in the region has turned to the right,” he noted. Expressing shock that some young Americans are comfortable referring to themselves as socialist, he noted, “in Brazil, it’s the reverse, you see the younger generation claiming to be conservative with honor and pride, which is totally unheard of. I have never in my life heard a Brazilian say they are conservative.”

This rightward shift – which Orléans e Bragança is quick to note is not a sharp rightward turn to military rule, as some in American mainstream media have claimed, but a pivot towards “a democratic regime of limited government, of decentralization of power” – has also inspired hope in anti-socialist advocates and security experts who have long warned that the Cuba-Venezuela axis presents a dire security threat for the hemisphere.

Among those Bolsonaro has brought closest into his circle are pro-democracy Cuban activists. On Thursday, Bolsonaro welcomed to his home Dr. Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, the head of the Assembly of Cuban Resistance, a Cuban-American advocacy group. Gutiérrez-Boronat, who also participated in the Conservative Summit of the Americas, told Breitbart News in an interview from Rio de Janeiro that he left the meeting feeling confident in what Bolsonaro is trying to build.

“This is a solid anti-Communist movement grounded in Brazilian history, with a formidable intellectual framework and a clear notion of Brazilian national security priorities,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said. “Ignoring the Communist regime in Cuba has been a calamity for Latin America, which Bolsonaro is addressing in his foreign policy vision.”

Joseph Humire, the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and an expert on Iranian infiltration of Marxist regimes in Latin America, told Breitbart News that he, too, expects Bolsonaro’s leadership to make it more difficult for Venezuela and Cuba to enable groups like Hezbollah.

“Almost all Islamist terror plots or attacks in South America have an origin or connection in Brazil. While the Federal Police, and other agencies, have done great work over the years in cooperating with the United States, there has also historically been a lack of political will in Brazil to tackle Islamist terrorism head-on,” Humire explained. “I am very optimistic that a Bolsonaro presidency in Brazil will not only deal with this issue but can provide regional leadership on anti-terrorism at a critical juncture when Iran, Hezbollah, and other terrorist elements are on the move in Latin America.”

From L to R: Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu hold hands after the Islamic republic inked a nuclear fuel swap deal in Tehran on May 17, 2010 under which 1,200 kilos of low enriched uranium will be shipped to Turkey, potentially ending a standoff with world powers gearing for new sanctions against Tehran. ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

The use of Brazilian territory to support groups like Hezbollah and regional Marxist organizations like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), he adds, “I believe … will change under the leadership of President Bolsonaro, who has made it a point during his campaign to challenge the socialist/populist regimes in Latin America, namely Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela, who have destabilized so much of the region.”

Ample evidence, including documents revealed as part of the Panama Papers leak,

indicate

that Cuba has helped Venezuela provide a variety of Shiite terrorists with authentic Venezuelan legal documentation, including passports, to help them escape international police detection. Evidence compiled throughout years of research indicate that 

Tarek El Aissami

, Venezuela’s Minister of Industries and National Production and former vice president, is one of Hezbollah’s most powerful fundraisers in Latin America. Like Humire, the U.S. State Department has

warned

that Bolivia has also aided Hezbollah’s establishment in the region.

Bolsonaro’s rise precedes a turbulent election in Bolivia, where leftist President Evo Morales is illegally seeking a third term. Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal, under Morales’ control, ruled to allow him to appear on the 2019 ballot despite a ban on third terms, which passed via national referendum in 2016. Morales has relied heavily on support from Venezuela and Cuba to stay in power.

Bolivian opposition Senator

Juan René Guachalla

, from Cobija-Pando, a border state with Brazil, told Breitbart News via email from Bolivia that he hopes Bolsonaro’s win will make clear to the region’s Marxists that “the global left is a no-go” for the world’s peoples.

“I don’t see it being too hard for countries that are against socialist governments, in the not-too-distant future, to sit down and reach agreements so that once and for all we can eradicate this scourge that has hurt our people so much,” he noted. “Corruption in my country has gone to such an extreme that, should someone denounce it, they will go to jail.”

From the Brazilian border, he adds, “the expectations of the Brazilian people are very great;” on the Bolivian side, the timing is right, as Morales “is using methods similar to Venezuela’s” to stay in power.

Adding the expectations of the long-maligned Latin American right to the weight of fulfilling campaign promises to the Brazilian people has made Bolsonaro’s one of the most anticipated presidential tenures in the region’s history. As a politician, whether he achieves his goals will most likely depend on whether his people will hold him accountable – but what he has made clear is that his administration has a lot more than the future of Brazil riding on his shoulders.

 

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.