Bret Stephens- D.E.I. Will Not Be Missed

In December 2015 the Obama administration decided to allow women to serve in all combat roles. “There will be no exceptions,” Ashton Carter, then the secretary of defense, announced. Women would be accepted as “Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry,” among other demanding roles previously open only to men.

As for physical standards, those would not change: “There must be no quotas or perception thereof,” Carter said.

In some ways, the policy has produced inspiring results. More than 140 women have completed the Army’s elite Ranger School, and a few have passed the Marines’ Infantry Officer Course (though none, as yet, have become SEALs). Women serve with distinction in other combat roles, including as fighter pilots and tank commanders.

In other ways, however, the policy has realized the worst fears of its early critics. Though it has elevated women who meet the same physical standards as their male counterparts, it has also led to an erosion of standards. From the initial laudable goal — equality of opportunity for all, regardless of gender — the military has been sliding toward something else: equality in outcomes. That is what today is usually meant by the word “equity,” at least in the context of diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I.

Take the Army’s efforts to create gender-neutral fitness requirements, known as the Army Combat Fitness Test. The test, developed over a decade, was designed to be rigorous, requiring soldiers of either sex to meet physical standards appropriate to the roles they might perform — with the toughest requirements for jobs like artillery soldiers, which require a lot of muscle.

But that caused a problem: Women were failing the test at noticeably higher rates, according to a RAND study. Among active-duty enlisted soldiers, the fitness test had a pass rate of 92 percent among men but only 52 percent among women. (Female officers did better, with a pass rate of 72 percent.) Democratic senators, including New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, were also putting pressure on the Army to delay implementation of the test, arguing, as The Washington Post reported in 2020, that it “could undermine the goal of creating a diverse force.”

The Biden administration yielded to this complaint.

Read the rest here.

Joe Biden Inducted into Freemasonry

Via Rorate comes this report that the 46th President of the United States (nominally a Catholic) has been inducted into Freemasonry. It is worth noting that this was done by a Prince Hall Lodge, a historically African-American branch of the Craft founded at a time when blacks were generally barred from mainstream Masonry (AF&AM) here in the United States.

Scandalous

Anglican prelate Ian Ernest & Metropolitan Polycarp of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, together with a sitting Pope Francis, administer a "joint" blessing at the ecumenical vespers in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside The Walls (1 of 4 main Basilicas in Rome). 

Anyone conscious of the historic divisions that erected the schism between the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Anglicans, will understand the extreme significance of this. 

Does it breed indifferentism? Of course, it does. How could it not? You have 3 men who are presented as Apostolically capable of issuing a blessing upon the congregation, despite the fact that each leads a community of Christians that would mutually understand each other to be in either heresy, schism, or both. 

Read the rest here. 

HT Blog reader John L.

I have my differences with the Old Calendarists (self styled "True Orthodox). But they are not wrong when they point out the degree to which many of the local churches have swallowed the ecumenical Kool-Aid. This should be both shocking and scandalous. Sadly, my guess is that it will get a collective yawn from most of the Orthodox world. 

New Martyrs of Russia

Memory Eternal!

Anastasios Archbishop of Tirana, Durrës and All Albania has reposed at 95.

The Easy Part May be Over

There are (at least for now) limits to even Donald Trump's ability to govern by decree. In the not too distant future he is going to be facing the threat of default on the national debt while simultaneously pressing to extend his first term tax cuts. Here he may be facing two very powerful obstacles. The first is the greatly diminished, but not yet extinct, fiscal conservative wing of the GOP. There are still several dozen Republicans in Congress who have never once voted to increase the Federal debt limit. They are going to be a hard sell and with their razor thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Republicans may have to do some deal cutting with Democrats to get even a temporary spending bill and short term hike in the debt limit through. 

The second obstacle is the bond market. Interest rates have been drifting up over the last few months, and the Federal Reserve is sending signals that it may not be in a hurry to cut rates. If bond investors start getting nervous about the US Government's ability to get its finances in order, they can make their displeasure known by demanding higher interest rates in order to lend the government money. Given the current level of debt, this could create serious problems fast. The US Government is currently borrowing more money just to pay the interest on the existing debt, than it  is spending on the entirety of the national defense budget annually. Back in the early1990s Bill Clinton's ambitious agenda got almost completely shut down by the so called "bond vigilantes," leading the famed Democratic political guru James Carville to opine that when he dies he wants to come back as the all powerful bond market. Clinton, with a lot of help from a frequently hostile Republican Congress (that actually was fiscally conservative) has gone down in history as the last president to balance the Federal budget. Privately he groused that he had been turned into an "Eisenhower Republican." But when he left office in 2001 we were running surpluses that were being used to pay down the principal on the debt, which in turn meant paying less interest and freeing up more money. Then came George Bush (43) and everything went to the hot stinky bad place. 

Meanwhile Trump is threatening to start trade wars with a not insignificant part of the rest of the world, including countries that we have historically had very close relations with. A tariff war would have immediate and serious consequences, almost certainly spiking inflation and damaging GDP. 

All of which brings to mind the old Chinese curse; "may you live in interesting times." 

Political Silly Season

Periodically one sees really idiotic proposals from political people. Most of the time they are some form of red meat, intended to appeal to the more extreme wing of their party or to provoke people from the other side of the political spectrum. Think of it as the political version of trolling. Here are two recent examples that are going nowhere at the speed of light. 

Mississippi lawmaker introduces 'Contraception Begins at Erection Act'

Montana bill would jail priests for 5 years if they refuse to violate seal of confession

Quote of the day...

Russia: 3 lawyers for Alexei Navalny are jailed

PETUSHKI, Russia (AP) — Three lawyers who once represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were convicted by a court Friday as part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent that has reached levels unseen since Soviet times.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were already in custody and were given sentences ranging from 3 1/2 to five years by a court in the town of Petushki, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Moscow. They were arrested in October 2023 on charges of involvement with extremist groups, as Navalny’s networks were deemed by authorities.

The case was widely seen as a way to increase pressure on the opposition to discourage defense lawyers from taking political cases.

The U.S. State Department condemned the sentences against the lawyers “who were simply doing their jobs to ensure a political prisoner was afforded his right to legal representation, turning defense lawyers into political prisoners themselves,” said spokesman Matthew Miller.

He called it “yet another example of the persecution of defense lawyers by the Kremlin in its effort to undermine human rights, subvert the rule of law, and suppress dissent,” and urged the government to release all political prisoners immediately.

Read the rest here.

Memory Eternal

My step brother has reposed. In your charity please pray for the servant of God Doug and his family who are in shock and deep mourning. His passing was both sudden and unexpected. Thank you.

How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected a Faltering President

The people closest to President Biden were well aware that he had changed. He talked more slowly than he had just a few years before, needed to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine and walked with a halting gait.

“Your biggest issue is the perception of age,” Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime strategist, told him in mid-2022, according to three close aides who heard it. That bit of feedback, delivered repeatedly by Mr. Donilon, was the sort of blunt talk that did not often make its way to a man who had spent a half-century in politics prizing loyalty and deference.

Mr. Biden acknowledged the concerns, but the warnings only ignited his defiant, competitive streak. In April 2023, without convening his family or having long deliberations with aides, he announced he was running again.

Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump heads back to the White House, demoralized Democrats debate what might have been had the president bowed out in time to let a younger generation run. Mr. Biden, 82, has at the same time made the extraordinary admission that he might not have made it through a second term. “Who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?” he said in an interview with USA Today on Jan. 5.

The president’s acknowledgment has put a new spotlight on his family and inner circle, all of whom dismissed concerns from voters and Mr. Biden’s own party that he was too old for the job. And yet they recognized his physical frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged. Then they cooperated, according to interviews with more than two dozen aides, allies, lawmakers and donors, to manage his decline.

They rearranged meetings to make sure Mr. Biden was in a better mood — a strategy one person close to him described as how aides should handle any president. At times, they delayed sharing information with him, including negative polling data, as they debated the best way to frame it. They surrounded him with aides when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn so that news cameras could not capture his awkward bearing.

Read the rest here.

Trouble in the House

Less than two weeks after Mike Johnson narrowly secured the speakership after a brief revolt from the right, he’s now drawing ire from the opposite wing of the Republican Party. 

Johnson sent shockwaves around Capitol Hill when he decided to oust Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio — a staunch NATO supporter who has aggressively pushed for U.S. aid to Ukraine — as chair of the House Intelligence Committee and replace him with Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., a conservative who voted against the most recent Ukraine aid package.

It’s a move that appeased conservatives and allies of President-elect Donald Trump, but infuriated the GOP’s more moderate members. 

One lawmaker who, like Turner, is a member of the Main Street Caucus, said the unexpected swap at the intelligence panel has eroded trust within the Republican conference and could make it much harder to pass Trump’s agenda. With two House Republicans up for positions in the Trump administration, the party’s majority could soon shrink to 217-215 — giving Johnson just a one-seat cushion on party-line votes.

These Republicans said they were giving Johnson an earful after Turner’s removal became public.

“This hurts us in the reconciliation process,” said the lawmaker, referring to the expedited budget process Republicans plan to use to pass legislation related to Trump’s pledges on taxes, the border and energy costs. “Looks like backroom politics and backstabbing.”

A second GOP lawmaker, one who had a recent conversation with Turner, predicted the ousted chairman would make life difficult for Johnson in the coming year and could be in a position to halt Republicans’ entire agenda if he chooses to do so. Turner did not participate in House votes on Wednesday or Thursday.

“I think Turner will burn the House down,” the second lawmaker said. “He will be a no vote on everything. I mean, he just got totally f-----.”

Read the rest here.

The news here is not the Trumpist coup on the intel committee. The big news is that apparently there actually are a handful of normal Republicans left in Congress.

A note from the land of long ago

From here.

I'm not sure which is more disturbing, a man drinking a bottle of bed bug poison thinking it was rum, or a doctor prescribing a bath of New England rum as a cure for what ails you. 

Vatican Allows Gay Seminarians

VATICAN CITY, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The Vatican has approved new guidelines from Italian bishops that allow gay men to enter seminaries as long as they abstain from sex, in an unexpected adjustment to how the global Catholic Church considers possible future priests.

Although the Vatican had not explicitly barred gay men from entering the priesthood in the past, an earlier 2016 instruction had said seminaries cannot admit men who have "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

The new guidelines, posted without fanfare on the website of the Italian bishops' conference on Thursday, say seminary directors should consider a priestly candidate's sexual preferences, but only as one aspect of their personality.

"When referring to homosexual tendencies in the formation process, it is also appropriate not to reduce the discernment to this aspect alone, but … to understand its meaning within the whole framework of the young person's personality," state the guidelines.

Read the rest here.

I've seen this movie before, and I know how it ends. 

Addendum: The above report is being denied.

The Biden Presidency: Four Illusions, Four Deceptions

Americans tend to have a soft spot for our former presidents. Even the bad ones.

By the time Richard Nixon died in 1994, his presidency was as likely to be lauded for the opening to China or the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency as it was to be damned for Watergate. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, furiously condemned at the time as a dirty political bargain, was later celebrated as an example of selfless statesmanship. Jimmy Carter’s reputational resurrection — not just for the way he conducted his post-presidency, but also for his acts in office — would have astounded the country that sent him packing in 1980 amid stagflation and a hostage crisis.

Will Joe Biden enjoy a similar place in our national memory? It’s possible, and his administration had its achievements: NATO enlargement, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, defending Ukraine and Israel, strengthening alliances in the Pacific.

But Biden’s presidency will also be remembered for four big illusions — and four big deceptions. They will not serve his legacy well.

The illusions: first, that the 2021 surge in migration was seasonal (“happens every single solitary year,” as Biden said that March); second, that the Taliban would not swiftly seize Afghanistan (“the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” as he said that July); third, that inflation was transitory (“Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen are expected to be temporary,” also that July).

The fourth, and the biggest: that he was the best Democratic candidate to defeat Donald Trump: “I beat him once, and I will beat him again,” he often insisted, even after the debate debacle.

That last illusion was pure hubris. But there was an arrogance to the first three, since he was loudly alerted (including by, well, me) on each point that he was making a fundamental mistake. The White House spent months in 2021 refusing to use the term “crisis” for the border — it was, instead, a “challenge.” Pentagon leaders warned the president that the Afghan government would soon collapse if the United States withdrew. Biden shrugged. Larry Summers was outspoken about the inflationary risks of Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Biden ignored that, too.

Read the rest here.

Trump reiterates intent to annex Greenland, Panama Canal and Canada

Well, it's not like we didn't know the man was barking mad.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested he would consider using military force to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, and "economic force" to acquire Canada.

In Kosovo a Return to Christianity

The Catholic priest stood at the altar in the hilltop church for the mass baptism, dunking dozens of heads in water and tracing a cross with his finger on each forehead.

Then he rejoiced at Christianity’s recovery of souls in a land where the vast majority of people are Muslim — as the men, women and children standing before him had been.

The ceremony was one of many in recent months in Kosovo, a formerly Serbian territory inhabited largely by ethnic Albanians that declared itself an independent state in 2008. In a census last spring, 93 percent of the population professed itself Muslim and only 1.75 percent Roman Catholic.

A small number of ethnic Albanian Christian activists, all converts from Islam, are urging their ethnic kin to look to the church as an expression of their identity. They call it the “return movement,” a push to revive a pre-Islamic past they see as an anchor of Kosovo’s place in Europe and a barrier to religious extremism spilling over from the Middle East.

Until the Ottoman Empire conquered what is today Kosovo and other areas of the Balkans in the 14th century, bringing with it Islam, ethnic Albanians were primarily Catholics. Under Ottoman rule, which lasted until 1912, most of Kosovo’s people switched faiths.

By reversing that process, said Father Fran Kolaj, the priest who carried out the baptisms outside the village of Llapushnik, ethnic Albanians can recover their original identity.

Read the rest here.