Forgetful Biden Never Forgets to Use Demagoguery, part one

There is much disinformation being spread by the mainslime media about the report issued by special counsel Robert Hur about Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s., willful retention and use of classified documents that he, either as a United States Senator or as the Vice President of the United States of America, had no statutory right to retain or to use.

Some of the reports I have read have indicated that Robert Hur’s report “cleared” Biden of wrongdoing.

Not so.

Quite to the contrary, Robert Hur’s report indicated that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., deliberately took classified documents for a variety of reasons, including to provide him with original source information for his ghostwritten memoirs.

Other news reports have stated that, unlike the contentions made by special counsel Jack Smith about former President Donald John Trump’s retention of classified documents, Biden’s legal counsel notified the National Archives and Records Administration that classified material as soon as it had been “found” in Biden’s office at the Red Chinese funded Penn Biden Center in Washington, District of Columbia.

While it may be true that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr’s., legal counsel did not know about the existence of the documents, Biden himself knew he had them as he took them deliberately and stored them in, of all places, next to his Corvette in the garage attached to his mansion in Wilmington, Delaware. The plagiarist, demagogue, and grifter who resides in the White House on a part-time basis when he is not riding his bicycle in Delaware, that is, kept documents that he was not permitted to have in his possession and he even used them when giving interviews to his ghostwriter, and those documents were strewn about in completely unsecured locations.

Unsurprisingly, President in Name Only Biden himself claimed that he had no idea how the documents got in his possession while blaming his “staff” for taking them:

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that President Biden contradicted Special Counsel Robert Hur's report on his possession of classified documents.

The president gave a hastily organized speech and press conference from the White House Thursday night during which he took questions from reporters regarding Hur's report on Biden's handling of classified documents. 

Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy which Hur said implicated "sensitive intelligence sources and methods."

In a statement after Hur released the report, Biden said he was "pleased to see they reached the firm conclusion that no charges should be brought against me in this case." 

Biden also said that the report found that "the evidence suggests that Mr. Biden did not willfully retain these documents." But Hur said his investigation "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen."

Honig said Thursday he was surprised by Biden's statement about the special counsel's report. 

"That’s what blew my mind about Joe Biden’s statement," Honig said. "Two major things he just outright contradicts or is contradicted by, however you look at this, this report. Two things he said are completely the opposite of what Robert Hur found."

"Who you believe is, I guess, up to the individual consumer," he added. 

"First, Joe Biden says ‘I did not act willfully.’ That means voluntarily, intentionally," Honig said. "The second "Joe Biden is correct that Trump's conduct was worse," Honig said. "But his conduct was still very close to the line." 

Honig summarized the report, saying that Biden "retained sensitive, classified documents after he left the presidency." 

"It related to our international affairs, to war plans, to foreign relations. He knew it. He knew it! He’s on tape after he’s out of the vice presidency, saying to his autobiographer [that] the classified documents are in the basement," he said. 

"He knew it!" Honig repeated.

The special counsel's report also described Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," in statements that have started a firestorm in the press. 

 sentence of the summary says, ‘President Biden willfully retained classified materials.’ The facts in here show it was willful. He knew. He talked about it."

Honig also pointed out that while Biden claimed that he did not disclose documents to his ghostwriter, the special counsel's report indicated otherwise. 

"Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information from those notebooks with his ghostwriter," Honig said, quoting from the report. (Biden 'blew my mind' by contradicting facts in special counsel report, says CNN legal analyst.)

Having read Robert Hur’s Executive Summary of his 308-page report, I think that it is fair to say the article cited just above is a very fair and accurate account of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, willful retention of classified material. However, Hur’s efforts to distinguish between the Biden case and that of former President Donald John Trump fail to acknowledge that the essential distinction between the two cases is that Trump, who certainly can be faulted for “gaming” the National Archives and Records Administration, had been president and thus was entitled to a time of evaluating what was in his possession whereas Biden, as vice president, had no such right.

It is also furthermore the case that the National Archives and Records Administration responded to political pressure from Biden himself to escalate its confrontation with Trump so that his Ministry of Injustice could bring charges against him just in time for the 2024 elections. This is the same National Archives and Records Administration that has repeatedly denied efforts on the part of Republican Congressional investigators to obtain records pertaining to then Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s., emails, including those he sent under various pseudonyms. Everything about the administration of “justice” in the administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris is politicized and duplicitous. Biden, a career-long demagogue, believes that the protection of “democracy” requires the prosecution of his political adversaries, encouraging his allies to defy legitimate Congressional subpoenas while making sure that Republicans who have done are tried and imprisoned, and the use of various means to suppress dissenting voices in the name of combatting “disinformation.”

Indeed, despite several prior attempts to silence dissenting voices, one of which was critiqued scathingly as an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth” by Judge Terry Doughty of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on July 4, 2023, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., now wants to use artificial intelligence to combat “disinformation” to “help” people, especially those who read the Constitution and/or the Bible, to know what is “true” and what is “disinformation”:

Get ready, America: Joe “Big Brother” Biden wants to make sure you only see and hear what his minions think is appropriate. 

The Biden administration has been spending millions on R&D for AI-powered tools meant to sniff out “disinformation,” reports the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The AI would alert social media companies on what to squelch, enabling an industrial-scale version of the suppression efforts Biden’s enforcers and allies already provably engaged in around COVID, Hunter’s laptop, and other major true stories. 

The money’s going to tech-development heavy hitters like MIT, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Michigan under a program ominously named “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems,” part of the even more ominously named “Convergence Accelerator Program.” 

It’s Biden’s aborted Ministry of Truth all over again but on steroids. 

The program’s true thrust is revealed in the words of the researchers building the tools: “Broad swaths of the public cannot effectively sort truth from fiction online,” including and especially “military veterans, older adults, military families” as well as people who read “the Bible or the Constitution.”  

In other words: Time to make sure those stupid, backward, Republican hicks only get a diet of government-approved news. 

Remember, “disinformation” means “true information that is politically inconvenient for Democrats.”

Like the fact that Hunter Biden’s laptop is real, verifiably his and filled with evidence of his crookery. 

Or COVID facts such as: Vaccines can have side effects and do not meaningfully stop transmission of the virus, which likely escaped from a Wuhan lab — and prolonged, society-wide lockdowns did more harm than good.

Again and again, operators in the White House and multiple federal agencies used the implied threat of their regulatory and prosecutorial powers to make backroom calls to Facebook and Twitter and kill content they didn’t like. 

Heck, they even tried to bully Amazon into not selling books they objected to.

That’s what these programs aim at.

Suppressing info the government (as directed by self-proclaimed, inevitably left-leaning “disinformation experts”) deems bad so you can’t read it or talk about it or — ultimately — think about it. 

And not to create space for factual, correct content, but to propagate tales from “The Big Progressive Book of Bedtime Stories,” like “Donald Trump Is a Russian Spy” and “Wanting Your Kids’ School To Be Open Means You’re Racist.”  

So kudos to committee chief Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who continues to do yeoman’s work blowing up the drive by disinfo “experts” to marshal the power of the federal government against Americans engaging in constitutionally protected activities. 

And don’t forget, America: Big Brother is watching. 

At least until you vote him out in November.  (Big Brother Biden wants AI to control what you read, say and think.)

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is certainly in mental decline. However, he certainly does know what he is doing with respect to censoring dissenting views as “disinformation” and setting up his administration and its security/police agencies as the true secular church which defines “orthodoxy” and outside of which one can find only falsehood.

Now, with respect to Biden’s mental decline, which is so obvious as to need no further elaboration here, suffice it to say that he knew full well what he was doing when he took the classified information and stored it for his own use. He said early last year that some of the documents he took were in his garage next to his prized Corvette, which, evidently, he considers a more secure place than the rooms with locked doors at Mar-a-Lago. Robrt Hur’s decision to decline to prosecute Biden because he has a faulty memory and is in “mental decline” has nothing to do with the fact that he had enough possession of his faculties during his time as vice president and in 2017 after he left that office to take and store documents that he was not entitled by law to keep.

United States Senator Joshua Hawley (R-Missouri) put the matter this way in a letter to Minister of Injustice Merrick Garland, with whom Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is upset for permitting Robert Hur’s report to be made public as written without any redaction or “corrections”:

Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said that Attorney General Merrick Garland is at a crossroads after Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to charge President Joe Biden for mishandling classified documents because of his mental state. 

Hur’s report, which was made public on Thursday, found that after a months-long investigation, Biden "willfully retained and disclosed classified materials," but he concluded that no criminal charges were warranted, because based on "direct interactions with and observations of" the president, Hur and his team said "[i]t would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."

Hawley, who also served as attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, said Friday that Garland "can’t have it both ways" by not charging the president and also declining to recommend invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which authorizes the vice president and a majority of the president's cabinet or Congress to decide whether the president is unable to perform their duties. 

"I'm calling on [Garland] publicly now to do what I think is required under the law in the Constitution . . . either charge the president, or he will go to the cabinet and tell them, ‘I believe we have to invoke the 25th Amendment.’ He's got to do one or the other," Hawley told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

"If he doesn't, it will just confirm what everybody thinks, which is that there are two tiers of justice and that Garland himself is completely complicit in the corruption of this administration," Hawley said. 

Hawley noted that every prosecutor has to weigh whether they can get a conviction, which ultimately informs the charging decision. 

But in Hawley’s view, what is "unique" in Hur’s case is that he concluded that the elements of a crime were present, but chose not to charge based on the president’s mental state.

"He concluded that the elements of a crime were present, namely that the president had willfully retained and disclosed classified information, so he knew it. I mean, the report makes it very clear he knew that it was classified information, this was done over years and decades — not just a couple of months — and he willfully did it," says Hawley. 

"But he ultimately recommends against prosecution, not because he didn't do it, but because, basically, Biden is mentally unfit to be prosecuted. Because he doesn't think that he can get a jury to ultimately convict, because the president is so mentally unstable," Hawley added. 

Garland has ultimate authority over whether to agree with Hur’s recommendations or to pursue charges against the president. 

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Hawley says that Garland’s "only recourse," should he decide not to press charges — noting that DOJ brought charges against former president Donald Trump on "precisely the same grounds — is to go to the rest of Biden’s cabinet members to invoke the 25th amendment. 

"It can't be that . . . 'He's totally fit to continue in office, but we're not going to prosecute him.’ I mean, that's just — that would be the most brazen miscarriage of justice and degradation of the rule of law," Hawley charged. 

President Biden in a press conference late Thursday night addressed the report, saying his memory is "fine," and defended his re-election campaign, adding that he is "the most qualified person in this country to be president." (Hawley says Garland should invoke 25th Amendment if DOJ declines to charge Biden: 'One or the other'.)

Senator Hawley is very correct. However, Merrick Garland, whose nomination to succeed the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America Antonin Scalia was thwarted by United States Senator Adison Mitchell McConnell (R-Kentucky) in 2016 (McConnell’s only truly courageous act of his long career of compromise with leftism), is in enough trouble with Biden now as it is clear that Merrick Garland’s only purpose, in Biden’s view, is to prosecute Donald John Trump, pro-lifers such as Mark Houck, John Hinshaw, and Joan Andrews Bell, as well as to spy on “dangerous” people in the “traditional” Catholic world, while protecting the Biden family crime syndicate. Biden has skated in February just as Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton skated in July of 2016.

Once again, it is certainly the case that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is in a steep mental decline (see, for example, Joe Biden's mental decline cannot be ignored). Robert Hur, though, ignores the fact that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is not a “well-meaning” elderly man. Biden is a calculating, mendacious demagogue who has long trafficked in taking credit for the work of others and in demonizing his opponents no matter how low he must stoop to do so. Here is a little review:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign, today acknowledged ''a mistake'' in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.

Mr. Biden insisted, however, that he had done nothing ''malevolent,'' that he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully. And he asserted that another controversy, concerning recent reports of his using material from others' speeches without attribution, was ''much ado about nothing.''

Mr. Biden, the 44-year-old Delaware Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, addressed these issues at the Capitol in a morning news conference he had called expressly for that purpose. The news conference was held just before he presided over the third day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court.

To buttress his assertions of sincerity and openness, Mr. Biden released a 65-page file, obtained by the Senator from the Syracuse University College of Law, that he said contained all the records of his years there. It disclosed relatively poor grades in college and law school, mixed evaluations from teachers and details of the plagiarism. (Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not 'Malevolent'; see also Joseph Biden's Plagiarism.)

Nothing Biden does is ever “malevolent” or criminal. He is the victim of one “innocent” circumstance after another, or he made a “mistaken” or did something “stupid.” He never “intended” to do this or that, of course.

The plagiarism revelation was made public in September of 1987 after John Sasso, then the campaign manager for Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis's campaign to secure the 1988 presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, had aired an "attack video" that placed side-by-side, split-screen footage of speeches given by Neil Kinnock, the Trotskyite leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, and the then Senator Biden on foreign policy that were identical (here is a link to a compilation of news reports from 1987 about Biden’s legendary lies: Joe Biden's lies are legendary). Kinnock was then the leader of the Labour Party, which was out of power in the United Kingdom from May 4, 1979, to May 2, 1997, at which point the party, then led by Tony Blair, defeated the Conservative (or Tory) Party in the general elections, ousting Margaret Thatcher's successor, John Major, as prime minister. Biden and Kinnock were soulmates on matters of foreign policy.

Why not steal Kinnock's speech?

After all, it was "much ado about nothing."

Well, despite Biden's willingness to let his fellow pro-abortion Catholic, Edward Moore Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), to his bidding for him by demonizing United States Judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Judge Robert Bork during the latter's confirmation hearings in 1987 to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, he had to fold up his presidential aspirations for 1988 soon after the plagiarism became known, following the departure of former United States Senator Gary Hart (D-South Dakota), whose "monkey business" forced him out of the race on May 8, 1987 (he reentered seven months later principally to become eligible for Federal matching funds to pay off his campaign debt). The gaffe-prone Biden thought that he could win that presidential nomination he so coveted if he only waited a little while, having to settle for the vice presidency under Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, a first-class demagogue in his own right, after in 2008 campaign fizzled out after receiving four percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008.

The loose-mouthed, foul-mouthed (see When "Boys Will Be Boys" They Grow Up to Be Men Like Joe Biden) was a walking demagogue throughout the course of his eight years as the nation's forty-seventh vice president. It was in 2011 that Biden accused House Republicans associated with the loosely organized Taxed Enough Already movement (TEA Party) of being "terrorists" for seeking to achieve significant cuts in Federal spending in exchange for the raising of the national debt ceiling. True to his lying self, Biden denied that he used the word terrorism:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists.”

Biden’s office initially declined to comment about what the vice president said inside the closed-door session, but after POLITICO published the remarks, spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said: “The word was used by several members of Congress. The vice president does not believe it’s an appropriate term in political discourse.”

Biden later denied he used that term in an interview with CBS.

“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.

Earlier in the day, Biden told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals. (Joe Biden likened tea partiers to terrorists.)

Biden lies.

Biden denies that he lies.

He has used this same pattern of demagoguery and deceit throughout his entire life, including his repeatedly blaming a deceased truck driver for the death of his first wife and infant daughter in a traffic accident in 1972 even though she was at fault and the driver was never ticketed by the police or charged with any crime:

The worst moment of Joseph R. Biden’s life — the 1972 car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter — has drawn renewed attention over a falsehood that the former vice president repeated for years: that the other driver was drunk.

From 2001-07, Mr. Biden indicated at least twice that the tractor-trailer driver who hit his wife’s car had been drinking, even though the state official who oversaw the investigation and the driver’s daughter said that wasn’t true.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Pamela Hamill, the daughter of driver Curtis C. Dunn, called on Mr. Biden to apologize publicly after he told a crowd that her father “drank his lunch” before the accident, according to a 2008 article in the Newark [Delaware] Post.

“A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly and killed my daughter instantly and hospitalized my two sons,” Mr. Biden said in 2007.

In a 2001 speech at the University of Delaware, he referred to an “errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive” and “hit my children and my wife and killed them,” according to a 2008 report in NewsBusters, citing a 2001 “Inside Edition” report.

Mr. Biden apparently stopped making the claim after a burst of media attention.

In a January article in Politico, Ms. Hamill said that Mr. Biden called her to apologize following a 2009 CBS report on the discrepancy.

“He apologized for hurting my family in any way,” she said. “So we accepted that — and kind of end of story from there.”

Mr. Dunn, who died in 1999, hit the station wagon driven by 30-year-old Neilia Biden as she drove to buy a Christmas tree with the Bidens’ three young children: Beau, 4; Hunter, 3, and Naomi, 13 months.

The rig overturned as Mr. Dunn swerved to avoid the collision, but he “ran to the wrecked car and was the first to offer assistance,” the Post reported.

Now-retired Delaware Superior Court Judge Jerome O. Herlihy, who oversaw the investigation as chief deputy attorney general, told Politico, “She had a stop sign. The truck driver did not.”

In 2008, he told the Post that rumors about alcohol playing a role in the accident were “incorrect.”

This is awful. Did you know for years  told people his wife and 13-month-old daughter were killed by a drunk driver, when in fact the accident was tragically her fault. The truck driver was haunted by the accident until he died — Rosie memos (@almostjingo) 

Townhall’s Guy Benson called the vice president’s inaccurate references to drinking, which first appeared in 2001, “bizarre and disturbing.”

“The whole situation is sad enough, why embellish it with what amounts to be an unsupported smear of a man who — according to the authorities — was not drunk, did not cause the accident, and immediately sought to ‘render assistance’ to the victims?” asked Mr. Benson in a Thursday op-ed.

An extremely difficult and sensitive topic to cover.

Whoa: Did Joe Biden Falsely Smear the Truck Driver Involved in the Car Crash That Killed His First Wife and Daughter? 

Joe Biden Lied for Years about the Car Accident that Claimed the Life of his Wife and Daughter

Mr. Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential primary front-runner, has been criticized for embellishing his speeches with exaggerations and inaccuracies, such as his claim that he met with Parkland students at the White House after the 2018 shooting, even though he left office in January 2017.

RedState’s Elizabeth Vaughn said Mr. Biden’s “mischaracterization of this accident doesn’t surprise me.”

“It’s part of a pattern of behavior that we’ve come to associate with Biden,” she said in a Thursday post. “He has a history of embellishing events which have occurred and occasionally inventing entire stories out of whole cloth if it serves his purpose. Put another way, this man’s word is not to be trusted.”

The Biden boys recovered from injuries sustained in the crash, which happened six weeks after Mr. Biden was elected to his first term in the Senate. Beau Biden died in 2015 of cancer.

In the 2008 article, Ms. Hamill said she worried that without a Biden rebuttal, the “drunk driver” angle could eventually take root in the public narrative. The claim had already appeared in several articles about Mr. Biden leading up to the election.

“Suppose he becomes the next vice president,” she told the Post. “Movies could be made about him and books could be written about him, all falsely portraying my father as a drunk driver. We need to set the record straight and clear my father’s name right now before this goes any further.” (Joe Biden's false claim about drunken driver draws renewed scrutiny.)

I, for one, am amazed that anyone finds the pro-abort, pro-perversity, pro-open border, pro-everything bad grafter Biden’s mendacious behavior in the White House to be in any way extraordinary. The man has lived his entire life lying with impunity, and he is also a greedy, slimy, transparent crook as well:

Crooks lie.

Crooks lie all the time.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is a thief, a crook, a bum, a deranged demagogue, a thug, and an enabler of George Soros-sponsored harassment of Democratic Party opponents, including United States Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) and Joseph Manchin (D-West Virginia), of his $3.5 trillion budget and $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill (see George Soros-Linked Group Behind Public Harassment of Kyrsten Sinema).

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s, lies are indeed legendary, but perhaps more legendary is his hypocrisy when he becomes righteous in the condemnation of others for the “mistakes” or “stupid things” he has done. Consider how he personally blocked the confirmation of President James Earl “The Appeaser” Carter, Jr.’s., nominee for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, former John Fitzgerald Kennedy speechwriter and hagiographer Theodore Sorensen, back forty-six years ago:

Joe Biden reportedly played an integral role in then-President Jimmy Carter withdrawing his selection to lead the CIA during the late 1970s — over the apparent mishandling of classified documents.

In 1977, the first full year of Carter's tenure as commander-in-chief, American lawyer Ted Sorensen never got past the Senate confirmation process, largely stemming from his question-and-answer session with Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware.

According to Fox News, Sorensen admitted to taking boxes of classified records home with him after leaving the White House in 1964 — after working for the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson — as a means of using certain materials for a Kennedy biography.

Around that time, Democrat Biden aligned with Senate Republicans to block Sorensen from being confirmed by the chamber. 

Biden also suggested Sorensen may have violated the Espionage Act of 1917, according to Fox News.

During the Senate confirmation hearing, Biden seemingly mocked Sorensen for "carelessly" ignoring the laws pertaining to possessing classified materials.

"If [Sorenson] did so, can he now bring the activities of the intelligence community within the strict limits of the law?" Biden rhetorically asked then. "We will expect that in the future of intelligence agencies. If that is to be the case, then we must hold the director ... accountable as well."

Shortly after being grilled on Capitol Hill, Sorensen didn't contest Carter's withdrawn nomination.

However, according to a Washington Post report from 1977, the embattled former White House staffer noted his "handling of classified information was at all times in accordance with the then-existing laws, regulations and practices."

Fast forward to the present: As the current president, Biden has expressed no public remorse for batches of classified materials being discovered either at his Washington, D.C., office (the Penn Biden Center) or his Delaware home — from a time when Biden was vice president, a position that holds no powers of declassifying top-secret government documents.

And as Newsmax chronicled Thursday, some Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about the information from a recent Washington Post report, suggesting the White House and DOJ had previously agreed to obscure President Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents from public view — at least before CBS News contacted the White House about the first batch of improperly stored sensitive documents.

The White House, which has been accused of shielding the press from access to DOJ representatives, maintains that it will continue to cooperate with federal agencies, including Attorney General Merrick Garland's special counsel appointment Robert Hur. (Biden Thwarted CIA Director Pick in 1977 Over Classified Docs Scandal.)

What Robert Hur failed to acknowledge this history, which would be admissible in a court of law to prove Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.’s., ability to lie, cheat, and cut corners while painting those who oppose him in a completely demagogic manner.

Regardless of the Hur Report, though, everyone, including the powerful, wealthy, and the celebrated, will have to stand before Christ the King when they die. Those who have sinned with impunity without any inward remorse or outward sign of contribution and, worse yet, have suborned sin and sought to protect it under cover of law while persecuting those who oppose their promotion of sin fall, objectively speaking, into the category of the likes of sinners whose deaths are described as follows by Saint Alphonsus de Ligouri:

"Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee." LUKE xix. 43.

SEEING from a distance the city of Jerusalem, in which the Jews were soon to put him to death, Jesus Christ wept over it. "Videns civitatern flevit super illam." Our merciful Redeemer wept at the consideration of the chastisement which was soon to be inflicted on the city, and which he foretold to her inhabitants. ”Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee. ” Unhappy city! thou shalt one day see thyself encompassed by enemies, who shall beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children in thee, and shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone. Most beloved brethren, this unhappy city is a figure of the soul of a sinner, who, at the hour of death, shall find himself surrounded by his enemies first, by remorse of conscience; secondly, by the assaults of the devils; and thirdly, by the fears of eternal death.

First Point. The sinner at death shall be tortured by remorses of conscience.

1. "Their soul shall die in a storm." (Job xxxvi. 14.) The unhappy sinners who remain in sin die in a tempest, with which God has beforehand threatened them. ”A tempest shall break out and come upon the head of the wicked." (Jer. xxiii. 19.) At the commencement of his illness the sinner is not troubled by remorse or fear; because his relatives, friends, physicians, and all tell him that his sickness is not dangerous; thus he is deceived and hopes to recover. But when his illness increases, and malignant symptoms, the harbingers of approaching death, begin to appear, then the storm with which the Lord has threatened the wicked shall commence. "When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction as a tempest shall be at hand." (Prov. i. 27.) This tempest shall be formed as well by the pains of sickness as by the fear of being obliged to depart from this earth, and to leave all things; but still more by the remorses of conscience, which shall place before his eyes all the irregularities of his past life. ”They shall come with fear at the thought of their sins, and their iniquities shall stand against them to convict them." (Wis. iv. 20.) Then shall his sins rush upon his mind, and fill him with terror. His iniquities shall stand against him to convict him, and, without the aid of other testimony, shall assail him, and prove that he deserves hell.

2. The dying sinner will confess his sins; but, according to St. Augustine, “The repentance which is sought from a sick man is infirm." (Serm, xxxvii., de Temp.) And St. Jerome says, that of a hundred thousand sinners who continue till death in the state of sin, scarcely one shall be saved. ”Vix de centum milibus, quorum mala vita fuit, meretur in morte a Deo indulgentiam, unus." (Epis. de Mort. Eus.) St. Vincent Ferrer writes, that it is a greater miracle to save such sinners, than to raise the dead to life. ”Majus miraculum est, quod male viventes faciant bonum finem, quam suscitare mortuos." (Serm. i., de Nativ. Virgin.) They shall feel convinced of the evil they have done; they will wish, but shall not be able, to detest it. Antiochus understood the malice of his sins when he said: ”Now I remember the evils that I have done in Jerusalem." (1 Mach. vi. 12.) He remembered his sins, but did not detest them. He died in despair and oppressed with great sadness, saying: "Behold, I perish with great grief in a strange land" (v. 13). According to St. Fulgentius, the same happened to Saul at the hour of death: he remembered his sins; he dreaded the punishment which they deserved; but he did not detest them. “Non odit quid fecerat, sed timuit quod nolebat."

3. Oh! how difficult is it for a sinner, who has slept many years in sin, to repent sincerely at the hour of death, when his mind is darkened, and his heart hardened!”His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smiths anvil." (Job xli. 15.) During life, instead of yielding to the graces and calls of God, he became more obdurate, as the anvil is hardened by repeated strokes of the hammer. ”A hard heart shall fare evil at the last." (Eccl. iii. 27.) By loving sin till death, he has loved the danger of his damnation, and therefore God will justly permit him to perish in the danger in which he wished to live till death.

4. St. Augustine says, that he who is abandoned by sin before he abandons it, will scarcely detest it as he ought at the hour of death; for he will then detest it, not through a hatred of sin, but through necessity. ”Qui prius a peccato relinquitur, quam ipse relinquat, non libere, sed quasi ex necessitate condemnat." But how shall he be able to hate from his heart the sins which he has loved till death? He must love the enemy whom till then he has hated, and he must hate the person whom he has till that moment loved. Oh! what mountains must he pass! He shall probably meet with a fate similar to that of a certain person, who kept in confinement a great number of wild beasts in order to let them loose on the enemies who might assail him. But the wild beasts, as soon as he unchained them, instead of attacking his enemies, devoured himself. When the sinner will wish to drive away his iniquities, they shall cause his destruction, either by complacency in objects till then loved, or by despair of pardon at the sight of their numbers and enormity. "Evils shall catch the unjust man unto destruction." (Ps. cxxxix. 12.) St. Bernard says, that at death the sinner shall see himself chained and bound by his sins. “We are your works; we will not desert you." We will not leave you; we will accompany you to judgment, and will be your companions for all eternity in hell.
Second Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the assaults of the devils.

5. “The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." (Apoc. xii. 12.) At death the devil exerts all his powers to secure the soul that is about to leave this world; for he knows, from the symptoms of the disease, that he has but little time to gain her for eternity. The Council of Trent teaches that Jesus Christ has left us the sacrament of Extreme Unction as a most powerful defence against the temptations of the devil at the hour of death. “Extremæ Unctionis sacramento finem vitæ tanquam firmissimo quodam præsidio munivit." And the holy council adds, that there is no time in which the enemy combats against us with so much violence in order to effect our damnation, and to make us despair of the divine mercy, as at the end of life. ”N ullum tempus est, quo vehementius ille omnes suæ versutiæ nervos intendat at perendos, nos penitus, et a fiducia, etiam, si possit, divinæ misericordiæ deturbandos, quam cum impendere nobis exitum vitæ perspicet." (Sess. 14, cap. ix. Doctr. de Sacr. Extr. Unct.)

6. Oh! how terrible are the assaults and snares of the devil against the souls of dying persons, even though they have led a holy life! After his recovery from a most severe illness, the holy king Eleazar said, that the temptations by which the devil assails men at death, can be conceived only by him who has felt them. We read in the life of St. Andrew Avelliuo, that in his agony he had so fierce a combat with hell, that all the religious present were seized with trembling. They perceived that, in consequence of the agitation, his face swelled, and became black, all his members trembled, and a flood of tears gushed from his eyes. All began to weep through compassion, and were rilled with terror at the sight of a saint dying in such a manner. But they were afterwards consoled, when they saw that as soon as an image of most holy Mary was held before him, he became perfectly calm, and breathed forth his blessed soul with great joy.

7. Now, if this happens to the saints, what shall become of poor sinners, who have lived in sin till death? At that awful moment the devil does not come alone to tempt them in a thousand ways, in order to bring them to eternal perdition, but he calls companions to his assistance. "Their house shall be filled with serpents." (Isa. xiii. 21.) When a Christian is about to leave this world, his house is filled with devils, who unite together in order to effect his ruin. "All her persecutors have taken her in the midst of straits." (Lamen. i. 3.) All his enemies will encompass him in the straits of death. One shall say: Be not afraid; you shall not die of this sickness! Another will say: You have been for so many years deaf to the calls of God, and can you now expect that he will save you? Another will ask: How can you repair the frauds of your past life, and the injuries you have done to your neighbour in his property and character? Another shall ask: What hope can there be for you? Do you not see that all your confessions have been null that they have been made without true sorrow, and without a firm purpose of amendment? How can you repair them with this heart, which you feel so hard? Do you not see that you are lost? And in the midst of these straits and attacks of despair, the dying sinner, full of agitation and confusion, must pass into eternity. “The people shall be troubled and they shall pass." (Job xxxiv 20.)

Third Point. The dying sinner shall be tortured by the fears of eternal death.

8. Miserable the sick man who takes to his bed in the state of mortal sin! He that lives in sin till death shall die in sin. "You shall die in your sin." (John viii. 21.) It is true that, in whatsoever hour the sinner is converted, God promises to pardon him; but to no sinner has God promised the grace of conversion at the hour of death. ”Seek the Lord while he may be found." (Isa. iv. 6.) Then, there is for some sinners a time when they shall seek God and shall not find him. “You shall seek me, and shall not find me." (John vii. 34.) The unhappy beings will go to confession at the hour of death; they will promise and weep, and ask mercy of God, but without knowing what they do. A man who sees himself under the feet of a foe pointing a dagger to his throat, will shed tears, ask pardon, and promise to serve his enemy as a slave during the remainder of his life. But, will the enemy believe him? No; he will feel convinced that his words are not sincere that his object is to escape from his hands, and that, should he be pardoned, he will become more hostile than ever. In like manner, how can God pardon the dying sinner, when he sees that all his acts of sorrow, and all his promises, proceed not from the heart, but from a dread of death and of approaching damnation.

9. In the recommendation of the departing soul, the assisting priest prays to the Lord, saying: ”Recognize, O Lord, thy creature." But God answers: I know that he is my creature; but, instead of regarding me as his Creator, he has treated me as an enemy. The priest continues his prayer, and says: ”Remember not his past iniquities. ” I would, replies the Lord, pardon all the past sins of his youth; but he has continued to despise me till this moment the very hour of his death. ”They have turned their back upon me, and not their face: and, in the time of affliction, they will say: Arise, and deliver us. Where are the gods which thou hast made thee? let them rise and deliver thee." (Jer. ii. 27, 28.) You, says the Lord, have turned your back upon me till death; "and do you now want me to deliver you from vengeance? Invoke your own gods the creatures, the riches, the friends you loved more than you loved me. Call them now to come to your assistance, and to save you from hell, which is open to receive you. It now justly belongs to me to take vengeance on the insults you have offered me. You have despised my threats against obstinate sinners, and have paid no regard to them. ”Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide." (Deut. xxxii. 35.) The time of my vengeance is now arrived; it is but just to execute it. This is precisely what happened to a certain person in Madrid, who led a wicked life, but, at the sight of the unhappy death of a companion, went to confession, and resolved to enter a strict religious order. But, in consequence of having neglected to put his resolution into immediate execution, he relapsed into his former irregularities. Being reduced to great want, he wandered about the world, and fell sick at Lima. From the hospital in which he took refuge he sent for a confessor, and promised again to change his life, and to enter religion. But, having recovered from his illness, he returned to his wickedness; and, behold! the vengeance of God fell upon him. One day, his confessor, who was a missionary, in passing over a mountain, heard a noise, which appeared to be the howling of a wild beast. He drew near the place from which the noise proceeded, and saw a dying man, half rotten, and howling through despair. He addressed to him some words of consolation. The sick man, opening his eyes, recognized the missionary, and said: Have you, too, come to he a witness of the justice of God? I am the man who made my confession in the hospital of Lima. I then promised to change my life, but have not done so; and now I die in despair. And thus the miserable man, amid these acts of despair, breathed forth his unhappy soul. These facts are related by Father Charles Bovio (part iii., example 9).

10. Let us conclude the discourse. Tell me, brethren, were a person in sin seized with apoplexy, and instantly deprived of his senses, what sentiments of pity would you feel at seeing him die in this state; without the sacraments, and without signs of repentance! Is not he a fool, who, when he has time to be reconciled with God, continues in sin, or returns to his sins, and thus exposes himself to the danger of dying suddenly, and of dying in sin? "At what hour you think not," says Jesus Christ, "the Son of Man will come," (Luke xiii. 40.) An unprovided death, which has happened to so many, may also happen to each of us. And it is necessary to understand, that all who lead a bad life, meet with an unprovided death, though their last illness may allow them some time to prepare for eternity; for the days of that mortal illness are days of darkness days of confusion, in which it is difficult, and even morally impossible, to adjust a conscience burdened with many sins. Tell me, brethren, if you were now at the point of death, given over by physicians, and in the last agony, how ardently would you desire another month, or another week, to settle the accounts you must render to God! And God gives you this time. He calls you, and warns you of the danger of damnation to which you are exposed. Give yourself, then, instantly to God. What do you wait for? Will you wait till he sends you to hell?” Walk whilst you have light." (John xii. 35.) Avail yourselves of this time and this light, which God gives you at this moment, and now, while it is in your power, repent of all your past sins; for, a time shall come when you will be no longer able to avert the punishment which they deserve.

[I entreat my reader to read Sermon xliv., or the Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, on the practical death, or that which practically happens at the death of men of the world. I know by experience that though it does not contain Latin texts, whenever I preached that sermon, it produced a great impression, and left the audience full of terror. A greater impression is made by practical than by speculative truths.] (Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year by St Alphonsus Liguori in .pdf format.)

We had better to pray to Our Lady, the August Queen of Heaven, that we live a life of such moral rectitude that we will not, as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., has done throughout his entire life and continues to do to this very moment, make excuses for our sins by denying that they are sins in the first place, which calls to mind the following words of Psalm 104:

I have cried to thee, O Lord, hear me: hearken to my voice, when I cry to thee. [2] Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight; the lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice. [3] Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and a door round about my lips. [4] Incline not my heart to evil words; to make excuses in sins. With men that work iniquity: and I will not communicate with the choicest of them. ... [5] The just shall correct me in mercy, and shall reprove me: but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head. For my prayer also shall still be against the things with which they are well pleased:

Their judges falling upon the rock have been swallowed up. They shall hear my words, for they have prevailed: ... [7] As when the thickness of the earth is broken up upon the ground: Our bones are scattered by the side of hell. ... [8] But o to thee, O Lord, Lord, are my eyes: in thee have I put my trust, take not away my soul. ... [9] Keep me from the snare, which they have laid for me, and from the stumblingblocks of them that work iniquity. ... [10] The wicked shall fall in his net: I am alone until I pass. (Psalm 140.)

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.'s, ultimate act of treason is against Christ the King and His Catholic Church.

It is hard work to save one’s immortal soul, and it becomes harder still if one becomes arrogantly steadfast in his own impeccability and invincibility.

Men in public life must put First Things first, which means that they must be serious about the sanctification and salvation of souls, something that Pope Leo XIII noted in his last encyclical letter, Mirae Caritatis, May 25, 1902:

Indeed it is greatly to be desired that those men would rightly esteem and would make due provision for life everlasting, whose industry or talents or rank have put it in their power to shape the course of human events. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

Pope Leo XIII had the sad duty to note, however, that most of the men of civic importance in the world one hundred eleven years ago, like most of the men of civic importance today, believe that they and their ideas can save the world, a version, of course of semi-Pelagianism (the heresy that contends human beings more or less stir up graces in themselves to be virtuous and to save themselves, a form of human "self-redemption" that is of the very blasphemous essence of the "American way").

How many hollow men (and one woman) of the two major political parties babble inanities as they promise us a "better" world and a more "secure" future if only we believe in their message of secular self-redemption and support their presidential campaigns during elections and their policies thereafter if elected?

Not one of them is an advocate for Christ the King and for Mary our Immaculate Queen. Each of them, therefore, utters inanities about how this or that form of naturalism or religious indifferentism, or non-denominationalism is going to "improve" a world that can be improved only to the extent that individual souls cooperate with Sanctifying Grace and thus seek to root out sin in their own lives and to root it out, as far as is humanly possible, in the life of nation.

The civil leaders of Modernity have fallen into the description of modern "men of importance" written by Pope Leo XIII in Mirae Caritatis:

But alas! we see with sorrow that such men too often proudly flatter themselves that they have conferred upon this world as it were a fresh lease of life and prosperity, inasmuch as by their own energetic action they are urging it on to the race for wealth, to a struggle for the possession of commodities which minister to the love of comfort and display. And yet, whithersoever we turn, we see that human society, if it be estranged from God, instead of enjoying that peace in its possessions for which it had sought, is shaken and tossed like one who is in the agony and heat of fever; for while it anxiously strives for prosperity, and trusts to it alone, it is pursuing an object that ever escapes it, clinging to one that ever eludes the grasp. For as men and states alike necessarily have their being from God, so they can do nothing good except in God through Jesus Christ, through whom every best and choicest gift has ever proceeded and proceeds. But the source and chief of all these gifts is the venerable Eucharist, which not only nourishes and sustains that life the desire whereof demands our most strenuous efforts, but also enhances beyond measure that dignity of man of which in these days we hear so much. For what can be more honourable or a more worthy object of desire than to be made, as far as possible, sharers and partakers in the divine nature? Now this is precisely what Christ does for us in the Eucharist, wherein, after having raised man by the operation of His grace to a supernatural state, he yet more closely associates and unites him with Himself. For there is this difference between the food of the body and that of the soul, that whereas the former is changed into our substance, the latter changes us into its own; so that St. Augustine makes Christ Himself say: "You shall not change Me into yourself as you do the food of your body, but you shall be changed into Me" (confessions 1. vii., c. x.).

Moreover, in this most admirable Sacrament, which is the chief means whereby men are engrafted on the divine nature, men also find the most efficacious help towards progress in every kind of virtue. And first of all in faith. In all ages faith has been attacked; for although it elevates the human mind by bestowing on it the knowledge of the highest truths, yet because, while it makes known the existence of divine mysteries, it yet leaves in obscurity the mode of their being, it is therefore thought to degrade the intellect. But whereas in past times particular articles of faith have been made by turns the object of attack; the seat of war has since been enlarged and extended, until it has come to this, that men deny altogether that there is anything above and beyond nature. Now nothing can be better adapted to promote a renewal of the strength and fervour of faith in the human mind than the mystery of the Eucharist, the "mystery of faith," as it has been most appropriately called. For in this one mystery the entire supernatural order, with all its wealth and variety of wonders, is in a manner summed up and contained: "He hath made a remembrance of His wonderful works, a merciful and gracious Lord; He hath given food to them that fear Him" (Psalm cx, 4-5). For whereas God has subordinated the whole supernatural order to the Incarnation of His Word, in virtue whereof salvation has been restored to the human race, according to those words of the Apostle; "He hath purposed...to re-establish all things in Christ, that are in heaven and on earth, in Him" (Eph. i., 9-10), the Eucharist, according to the testimony of the holy Fathers, should be regarded as in a manner a continuation and extension of the Incarnation. For in and by it the substance of the incarnate Word is united with individual men, and the supreme Sacrifice offered on Calvary is in a wondrous manner renewed, as was signified beforehand by Malachy in the words: "In every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a pure oblation" (Mal. i., 11). And this miracle, itself the very greatest of its kind, is accompanied by innumerable other miracles; for here all the laws of nature are suspended; the whole substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and the Blood; the species of bread and wine are sustained by the divine power without the support of any underlying substance; the Body of Christ is present in many places at the same time, that is to say, wherever the Sacrament is consecrated. And in order that human reason may the more willingly pay its homage to this great mystery, there have not been wanting, as an aid to faith, certain prodigies wrought in His honour, both in ancient times and in our own, of which in more than one place there exist public and notable records and memorials. It is plain that by this Sacrament faith is fed, in it the mind finds its nourishment, the objections of rationalists are brought to naught, and abundant light is thrown on the supernatural order. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

Pope Leo XIII went on to explain that the results of an abandonment of the worthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament and of time spent before It in fervent prayer are tragic for societies, which can be set aright only by the Catholic Faith. There is never any short-cut to the betterment of men and/or the world in which they live at any given point in time. It is the Faith and only the Faith that can help souls to know, to love and to serve God as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church, which alone is the repository and infallible explicator all that He has revealed in the Deposit of Faith. To Pope Leo in Mirae Caritatis:

But that decay of faith in divine things of which We have spoken is the effect not only of pride, but also of moral corruption. For if it is true that a strict morality improves the quickness of man's intellectual powers, and if on the other hand, as the maxims of pagan philosophy and the admonitions of divine wisdom combine to teach us, the keenness of the mind is blunted by bodily pleasures, how much more, in the region of revealed truths, do these same pleasures obscure the light of faith, or even, by the just judgment of God, entirely extinguish it. For these pleasures at the present day an insatiable appetite rages, infecting all classes as with an infectious disease, even from tender years. Yet even for so terrible an evil there is a remedy close at hand in the divine Eucharist. For in the first place it puts a check on lust by increasing charity, according to the words of St. Augustine, who says, speaking of charity, "As it grows, lust diminishes; when it reaches perfection, lust is no more" (De diversis quaestionibus, Ixxxiii., q. 36). Moreover the most chaste flesh of Jesus keeps down the rebellion of our flesh, as St. Cyril of Alexandria taught, "For Christ abiding in us lulls to sleep the law of the flesh which rages in our members" (Lib. iv., c. ii., in Joan., vi., 57). Then too the special and most pleasant fruit of the Eucharist is that which is signified in the words of the prophet: "What is the good thing of Him," that is, of Christ, "and what is His beautiful thing, but the corn of the elect and the wine that engendereth virgins" (Zach. ix., 17), producing, in other words, that flower and fruitage of a strong and constant purpose of virginity which, even in an age enervated by luxury, is daily multiplied and spread abroad in the Catholic Church, with those advantages to religion and to human society, wherever it is found, which are plain to see.

To this it must be added that by this same Sacrament our hope of everlasting blessedness, based on our trust in the divine assistance, is wonderfully strengthened. For the edge of that longing for happiness which is so deeply rooted in the hearts of all men from their birth is whetted even more and more by the experience of the deceitfulness of earthly goods, by the unjust violence of wicked men, and by all those other afflictions to which mind and body are subject. Now the venerable Sacrament of the Eucharist is both the source and the pledge of blessedness and of glory, and this, not for the soul alone, but for the body also. For it enriches the soul with an abundance of heavenly blessings, and fills it with a sweet joy which far surpasses man's hope and expectations; it sustains him in adversity, strengthens him in the spiritual combat, preserves him for life everlasting, and as a special provision for the journey accompanies him thither. And in the frail and perishable body that divine Host, which is the immortal Body of Christ, implants a principle of resurrection, a seed of immortality, which one day must germinate. That to this source man's soul and body will be indebted for both these boons has been the constant teaching of the Church, which has dutifully reaffirmed the affirmation of Christ: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (St. John vi., 55).

In connection with this matter it is of importance to consider that in the Eucharist, seeing that it was instituted by Christ as "a perpetual memorial of His Passion" (Opusc. Ivii. Offic. de festo Corporis Christi), is proclaimed to the Christian the necessity of a salutary selfchastisement. For Jesus said to those first priests of His: "Do this in memory of Me" (Luke xxii, 18); that is to say, do this for the commemoration of My pains, My sorrows, My grievous afflictions, My death upon the Cross. Wherefore this Sacrament is at the same time a Sacrifice, seasonable throughout the entire period of our penance; and it is likewise a standing exhortation to all manner of toil, and a solemn and severe rebuke to those carnal pleasures which some are not ashamed so highly to praise and extol: "As often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, ye shall announce the death of the Lord, until He come" (1 Cor. xi., 26).

Furthermore, if anyone will diligently examine into the causes of the evils of our day, he will find that they arise from this, that as charity towards God has grown cold, the mutual charity of men among themselves has likewise cooled. Men have forgotten that they are children of God and brethren in Jesus Christ; they care for nothing except their own individual interests; the interests and the rights of others they not only make light of, but often attack and invade. Hence frequent disturbances and strifes between class and class: arrogance, oppression, fraud on the part of the more powerful: misery, envy, and turbulence among the poor. These are evils for which it is in vain to seek a remedy in legislation, in threats of penalties to be incurred, or in any other device of merely human prudence. Our chief care and endeavour ought to be, according to the admonitions which We have more than once given at considerable length, to secure the union of classes in a mutual interchange of dutiful services, a union which, having its origin in God, shall issue in deeds that reflect the true spirit of Jesus Christ and a genuine charity. This charity Christ brought into the world, with it He would have all hearts on fire. For it alone is capable of affording to soul and body alike, even in this life, a foretaste of blessedness; since it restrains man's inordinate self-love, and puts a check on avarice, which "is the root of all evil" (1 Tim. vi., 10). And whereas it is right to uphold all the claims of justice as between the various classes of society, nevertheless it is only with the efficacious aid of charity, which tempers justice, that the "equality" which St. Paul commended (2 Cor. viii., 14), and which is so salutary for human society, can be established and maintained. This then is what Christ intended when he instituted this Venerable Sacrament, namely, by awakening charity towards God to promote mutual charity among men. For the latter, as is plain, is by its very nature rooted in the former, and springs from it by a kind of spontaneous growth. Nor is it possible that there should be any lack of charity among men, or rather it must needs be enkindled and flourish, if men would but ponder well the charity which Christ has shown in this Sacrament. For in it He has not only given a splendid manifestation of His power and wisdom, but "has in a manner poured out the riches of His divine love towards men" (Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII., De Euch. c. ii.). Having before our eyes this noble example set us by Christ, Who bestows on us all that He has assuredly we ought to love and help one another to the utmost, being daily more closely united by the strong bond of brotherhood. Add to this that the outward and visible elements of this Sacrament supply a singularly appropriate stimulus to union. On this topic St. Cyprian writes: "In a word the Lord's sacrifice symbolises the oneness of heart, guaranteed by a persevering and inviolable charity, which should prevail among Christians. For when our Lord calls His Body bread, a substance which is kneaded together out of many grains, He indicates that we His people, whom He sustains, are bound together in close union; and when He speaks of His Blood as wine, in which the juice pressed from many clusters of grapes is mingled in one fluid, He likewise indicates that we His flock are by the commingling of a multitude of persons made one" (Ep. 96 ad Magnum n. 5 (al.6)). In like manner the angelic Doctor, adopting the sentiments of St. Augustine (Tract. xxxvi., in Joan nn. 13, 17), writes: "Our Lord has bequeathed to us His Body and Blood under the form of substances in which a multitude of things have been reduced to unity, for one of them, namely bread, consisting as it does of many grains is yet one, and the other, that is to say wine, has its unity of being from the confluent juice of many grapes; and therefore St. Augustine elsewhere says: 'O Sacrament of mercy, O sign of unity, O bond of charity!' " (Summ. Theol. P. III., q. Ixxix., a. 1. . All of which is confirmed by the declaration of the Council of Trent that Christ left the Eucharist in His Church "as a symbol of that unity and charity whereby He would have all Christians mutually joined and united. . . a symbol of that one body of which He is Himself the head, and to which He would have us, as members attached by the closest bonds of faith, hope, and charity" (Conc. Trid., Sess. XIII., De Euchar., c. ii.). The same idea had been expressed by St. Paul when he wrote: "For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all we who partake of the one bread" (I Cor. x., 17). Very beautiful and joyful too is the spectacle of Christian brotherhood and social equality which is afforded when men of all conditions, gentle and simple, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, gather round the holy altar, all sharing alike in this heavenly banquet. And if in the records of the Church it is deservedly reckoned to the special credit of its first ages that "the multitude of the believers had but one heart and one soul" (Acts iv., 32), there can be no shadow of doubt that this immense blessing was due to their frequent meetings at the Divine table; for we find it recorded of them: "They were persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles and in the communion of the breaking of bread" (Acts ii., 42).

Besides all this, the grace of mutual charity among the living, which derives from the Sacrament of the Eucharist so great an increase of strength, is further extended by virtue of the Sacrifice to all those who are numbered in the Communion of Saints. For the Communion of Saints, as everyone knows, is nothing but the mutual communication of help, expiation, prayers, blessings, among all the faithful, who, whether they have already attained to the heavenly country, or are detained in the purgatorial fire, or are yet exiles here on earth, all enjoy the common franchise of that city whereof Christ is the head, and the constitution is charity. For faith teaches us, that although the venerable Sacrifice may be lawfully offered to God alone, yet it may be celebrated in honour of the saints reigning in heaven with God Who has crowned them, in order that we may gain for ourselves their patronage. And it may also be offered-in accordance with an apostolic tradition-for the purpose of expiating the sins of those of the brethren who, having died in the Lord, have not yet fully paid the penalty of their transgressions.

That genuine charity, therefore, which knows how to do and to suffer all things for the salvation and the benefit of all, leaps forth with all the heat and energy of a flame from that most holy Eucharist in which Christ Himself is present and lives, in which He indulges to the utmost. His love towards us, and under the impulse of that divine love ceaselessly renews His Sacrifice. And thus it is not difficult to see whence the arduous labours of apostolic men, and whence those innumerable designs of every kind for the welfare of the human race which have been set on foot among Catholics, derive their origin, their strength, their permanence, their success. (Pope Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis, May 28, 1902.) 

When was the last time you heard someone in public life citing the example of Saint Henry the Emperor or Saint Edward the Confessor or Saint Stephen of Hungary or Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia or Saint Louis IX, King of France, or Saint Casimir of Poland or Saint Elizabeth of Hungary as the example of civil leadership that would shape their own exercise of civil power? 

government is to advance the common temporal good of men in light of First and Last Things and to thus to foster those conditions wherein citizens can better sanctify and save their immortal souls, upon which rests the fate of both men and their nations.

Moreover, men in public life must be duly submissive to Holy Mother Church in all that pertains to the good of souls.

Even Catholics in public life, such as Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., are “too eager to manage their own temporal affairs. They resent what they call the Church's interference”:

For men, as a rule, have but shown themselves too eager to manage their own temporal affairs. They resent what they call the Church's interference. This resentment culminates in a deliberate exclusion of the Church from the councils of peoples. Even at the best of times, when States were not yet professedly secularist, what jealousy was always manifested with regard to the action of the Church in secular matters! How slow men were to take her advice! How her efforts for procuring the temporal welfare of men were hampered, thwarted and positively resisted!

The gradual silencing of the voice of Christianity in the councils of the nations is the evil cause of the chaotic conditions of modern civilized life. This issue was inevitable. For though the Church's wisdom is primarily in the domain of things of the world to come, yet she is wise, too, with regard to the things of the world that is. She is not for the world, and yet she is able and even ready to act as if she were equipped specially to procure the temporal good of men.  [See Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 134.] She is able and willing to give men directions in temporal matters, which, if followed, will result in temporal prosperity. She is too wise to promote unrealizable Utopias, from which all suffering and toil will be banished. She can give prudent directions how to devise measures for the mitigation of inevitable hardships and the elimination of unnecessary evils. If rulers and ruled alike listened to her voice, the authentic voice of Christianity, what a change would come over the world! It would not cease to be a vale of tears but would cease to be a vale of savage strife. It would not become an earthly Paradise but would become an earth where man's dreams of a satisfying order of things could be realized. (Father Edward Leen, Why the Cross?, originally published by Sheed & Ward in 1938, and republished in 2001 by Scepter Publishers, Princeton, New Jersey,  pp. 14-15.)

The world in which we live, however, has rejected the voice of Holy Mother Church, who herself has been forced into the catacombs by the twin revolutions of Modernity and Modernism.

Thus, all the secular commentaries cited above are good as far as they go.

However, we should have learned by now that those who deny the existence of supernatural truths that do not depend upon human existence for their binding force or validity will just as readily deny facts in natural order of things as they lie without regard to the binding precepts of the Eighth Commandment and without even thought about the loss of their immortal souls, whose salvation has been won for us all at the high cost of the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy on Good Friday.

Moreover, we should have learned by now that those in public life who are “leftists” will inevitably “skate” whenever they break the laws God and the just laws of men without much in the way of earthly consequences. Double standards galore exist whereby those in the camp of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” are held to high and exacting standards, including endless investigations into crimes and offenses, real or concocted, while those in the camp of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” cry “partisanship” when their own misdeeds are exposed for all to see.

In humility, therefore, must we pray Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary every day so that we will be ever ready to accept with equanimity of soul the death that God has from all eternity fashioned for us no matter where and when it should overtake us as we seek to make a bit of reparation as Magdalene souls by offering all to the Throne of the Most Holy Trinity as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

May Our Lady pray for us all now, and at the hour of our death.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Appendix A

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori: Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday

The Devil brings sinners to hell by closing their eyes to the dangers of perdition. He first blinds them, and then leads them with himself to eternal torments. If, then, we wish to be saved, we must continually pray to God in the words of the blind man in the gospel of this day,” Lord, that I may see." Give me light: make me see the way in which I must walk in order to save my soul, and to escape the deceits of the enemy of salvation. I shall, brethren, this day place before your eyes the delusion by which the devil tempts men to sin and to persevere in sin, that you may know how to guard yourselves against his deceitful artifices.  

2. To understand these delusions better, let us imagine the case of a young man who, seized by some passion, lives in sin, the slave of Satan, and never thinks of his eternal salvation. My son, I say to him, what sort of life do you lead? If you continue to live in this manner, how will you be able to save your soul? But, behold! the devil, on the other hand, says to him: Why should you be afraid of being lost? Indulge your passions for the present: you will afterwards confess your sins, and thus all shall be remedied. Behold the net by which the devil drags so many souls into hell. “Indulge your passions: you will hereafter make a good confession." But, in reply, I say, that in the meantime you lose your soul. Tell me: if you had a jewel worth a thousand pounds, would you throw it into a river with the hope of afterwards finding it again? What if all your efforts to find it were fruitless? God! you hold in your hand the invaluable jewel of your soul, which Jesus Christ has purchased with his own blood, and you cast it into hell! Yes; you cast it into hell; because according to the present order of providence, for every mortal sin you commit, your name is written among the number of the damned. But you say.” I hope to recover God’s grace by making a good confession." And if you should not recover it, what shall be the consequences? To make a good confession, a true sorrow for sin is necessary, and this sorrow is the gift of God: if he does not give it, will you not be lost for ever?  

3. You rejoin:” I am young; God compassionates my youth; I will hereafter give myself to God." Behold another delusion! You are young; but do you not know that God counts, not the years, but the sins of each individual? You are young; but how many sins have you committed? Perhaps there are many persons of a very advanced age, who have not been guilty of the fourth part of the sins which you have committed. And do you not know that God has fixed for each of us the number of sins which he will pardon?” The Lord patiently expecteth, that, when the day of judgment shall come, he may punish them in the fulness of their sins." (2 Mach. vi. 14.) God has patience, and waits for a while; but, when the measure of the sins which he has determined to pardon is tilled up, he pardons no more, but chastises the sinner, by suddenly depriving him of life in the miserable state of sin, or by abandoning him in his sin, and executing that threat which he made by the prophet Isaias “I shall take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be wasted.” (Isa. v. 5.) If a person has cultivated land for many years, has encompassed it with a hedge for its protection, and expended a large sum of money on it, but finds that, after all, it produces no fruit, what will he do with it? He will pluck up the hedge, and abandon it to all men and beasts that may wish to enter. Tremble, then, lest God should treat you in a similar manner. If you do not give up sin, your remorse of conscience and your fear of divine chastisement shall daily increase. Behold the hedge taken away, and your soul abandoned by God a punishment worse than death itself.

4. You say:” I cannot at present resist this passion." Behold the third delusion of the devil, by which he makes you believe that at present you have not strength to overcome certain temptations. But St. Paul tells us that God is faithful, and that he never permits us to be tempted above our strength. "And God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able." (1 Cor. x. 13.) I ask, if you are not now able to resist the temptation, how can you expect to resist it hereafter? If you yield to it, the Devil will become stronger, and you shall become weaker; and if you be not now able to extinguish this flame of passion, how can you hope to be able to extinguish it when it shall have grown more violent? You say: "God will give me his aid." But this aid God is ready to give at present if you ask it. Why then do you not implore his assistance? Perhaps you expect that, without now taking the trouble of invoking his aid, you will receive from him increased helps and graces, after you shall have multiplied the number of your sins? Perhaps you doubt the veracity of God, who has promised to give whatever we ask of him?” Ask, “he says,” and it shall be given  you." (Matt. vii. 7.) God cannot violate his promises.” God is not as man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed. Hath he said, then, and will he not do ?" (Num. xxiii. 19.) Have recourse to him, and he will give you the strength necessary to resist the temptation. God commands you to resist it, and you say: “I have not strength." Does God, then, command impossibilities? No; the Council of Trent has declared that ” God does not command impossibilities; but, by his commands, he admonishes you to do what you can, and to ask what you cannot do; and he assists, that you may be able to do it." (Sess. 6. c. xiii.) When you see that you have not sufficient strength to resist temptation with the ordinary assistance of God, ask of him the additional help which you require, and he will give it to you; and thus you shall be able to conquer all temptations, however violent they may be.  

5. But you will not pray; and you say that at present you will commit this sin, and will afterwards confess it. But, I ask, how do you know that God will give you time to confess it? You say: “I will go to confession before the lapse of a week." And who has promised you this week? Well, then you say:” I will go to confession tomorrow." And who promises you tomorrow? “Crastinum Deus non promisit," says St. Augustine, “fortasse dabit, et fortasse non dabit." God has not promised you tomorrow. Perhaps he will give it, and perhaps he will refuse it to you, as he has to so many others. How many have gone to bed in good health, and have been found dead in the morning! How many, in the very act of sin, has the Lord struck dead and sent to hell! Should this happen to you, how will you repair your eternal ruin?” Commit this sin, and confess it after wards." Behold the deceitful artifice by which the devil has brought so many thousands of Christians to hell. We scarcely ever find a Christian so sunk in despair as to intend to damn himself. All the wicked sin with the hope of afterwards going to confession. But, by this illusion, how many have brought themselves to perdition! For them there is now no time for confession, no remedy for their damnation.  

6. “But God is merciful.” Behold another common delusion by which the devil encourages sinners to persevere in a life of sin! A certain author has said, that more souls have been sent to hell by the mercy of God than by his justice. This is indeed the case; for men are induced by the deceits of the devil to persevere in sin, through confidence in God’s mercy; and thus they are lost.  "God is merciful." Who denies it? But, great as his mercy, how many does he every day send to hell? God is merciful, but he is also just, and is, there fore, obliged to punish those who offend him. “And his mercy,” says the divine mother,” to them that fear him." (Luke i. 50.) But with regard to those who abuse his mercy and despise him, he exercises justice. The Lord pardons sins, but he cannot pardon the determination to commit sin. St. Augustine says, that he who sins with the intention of repenting after his sins, is not a penitent but a scoffer.” Irrisor est non pœnitens." But the Apostle tells us that God will not be mocked.” Be not deceived; God is not mocked." (Gal. vi. 7.) It would be a mockery of God to insult him as often and as much as you pleased, and afterwards to expect eternal glory.  

7. “But”; you say, “as God has shown me so many mercies hitherto, I hope he will continue to do so for the future.” Behold another delusion! Then, because God has not as yet chastised your sins, he will never punish them! On the contrary, the greater have been his mercies, the more you should tremble, lest, if you offend him again, he should pardon you no more, and should take vengeance on your sins. Behold the advice of the Holy Ghost:” Say not: I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? for the Most High is a patient rewarder." (Eccles. v. 4.) Do not say: “I have sinned, and no chastisement has fallen upon me.” God bears for a time, but not for ever. He waits for a certain time; but when that arrives, he then chastises the sinner for all his past iniquities: and the longer he has waited for repentance, the more severe the chastisement. “Quos diutius expectat,” says St. Gregory.” “durius damnat.” Then, my brother, since you know that you have frequently offended God, and that he has not sent you to hell, you should exclaim:” The mercies of the Lord, that we are not consumed." (Thren. iii. 22.) Lord, I thank you for not having sent me to hell, which I have so often deserved. And therefore you ought to give yourself entirely to God, at least through gratitude, and should consider that, for less sins than you have committed, many are now in that pit of fire, without the smallest hope of being ever released from it. The patience of God in bearing with you, should teach you not to despise him still more, but to love and serve him with greater fervour, and to atone, by penitential austerities and by other holy works, for the insults you have offered to him. You know that he has shown mercies to you, which he has not shown to others.” He hath not done in like manner to every nation." (Ps. cxlvii. 20.) Hence you should tremble, lest, if you commit a single additional mortal sin, God should abandon you, and cast you into hell.  

8. Let us come to the next illusion. “It is true that, by this sin, I lose the grace of God; but, even after committing this sin, I may be saved.” You may, indeed, be saved: but it cannot be denied that if, after having committed so many sins, and after having received so many graces from God, you again offend him, there is great reason to fear that you shall be lost. Attend to the words of the sacred Scripture: “A hard heart shall fare evil at the last." (Eccles. iii. 27.) The obstinate sinner shall die an unhappy death. Evil doers shall be cut off." (Ps. xxxvi . 9.) The wicked shall be cut off by the divine justice. “For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap." (Gal. vi. 8.) He that sows in sin, shall reap eternal torments. “Because I called and you refused, I also will laugh in your destruction and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared." (Prov. i. 24, 26.) I called, says the Lord, and you mocked me; but I will mock you at the hour of death. “Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time." (Deut. xxxii. 35.) The chastisement of sins belongs to me, and I will execute vengeance on them when the time of vengeance shall arrive. “The man that with a stiff neck despiseth him that reproveth him, shall suddenly be destroyed, and health shall not follow him." (Prov. xxix. 1.) The man who obstinately despises those who correct him, shall be punished with a sudden death, and for him there shall be no hope of salvation.  

9. Now, brethren, what think you of these divine threats against sinners? Is it easy, or is it not very difficult, to save your souls, if, after so many divine calls, and after so many mercies, you continue to offend God? You say: “But after all, it may happen that I will save my soul.” I answer: "What folly is it to trust your salvation to a perhaps? How many with this “perhaps I may be saved," are now in hell? Do you wish to be one of their unhappy companions? Dearly beloved Christians, enter into yourselves, and tremble; for this sermon may be the last of God’s mercies to you.

On The Number of Sins

In  this day’s gospel we read that, having gone into the desert, Jesus Christ permitted the devil to “set him upon the pinnacle of the temple," and say to him: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down;” for the angels shall preserve thee from all injury. But the Lord answered that, in the Sacred Scriptures it is written: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” The sinner who abandons himself to sin without striving to resist temptations, or without at least asking God’s help to conquer them, and hopes that the Lord will one day draw him from the precipice, tempts God to work miracles, or rather to show to him an extraordinary mercy not extended to the generality of Christians. God, as the Apostle says, “will have all men to be saved,” (1 Tim. ii. 4); but he also wishes us all to labour for our own salvation, at least by adopting the means of overcoming our enemies, and of obeying him when he calls us to repentance. Sinners hear the calls of God, but they forget them, and continue to offend him. But God does not forget them. He numbers the graces which he dispenses, as well as the sins which we commit. Hence, when the time which he has fixed arrives, God deprives us of his graces, and begins to inflict chastisement. I intend to show, in this discourse, that, when sins reach a certain number, God pardons no more. Be attentive.   (Saint Alphonsus di Liguori, Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday.)