Appropriate for Mother’s Day is the old quip, “Well, at least your mother loves you!” 

That might be the way Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rationalized his overnight descent into Hell last week when his draft opinion on abortion rights was outed by some sleazy court clerk.  The obviously planned outing already had a prearranged mob of protesters denouncing Alito outside the building.  Alito is the purported ringleader of five justices who plan to demolish the 1973 Roe v. Wade court ruling that made abortion a popular form of birth control. 

If the draft survives a final vote and abortion authority is returned to the states, Alito will be both lauded by pro-lifers and Constitutionalists but vilified by the Left and the pro-choice faction.  Worse, the Left will redouble its efforts to “pack the court” with more liberal justices.  But first, they must overturn the U. S. Senate’s filibuster rule which requires a 3/5s majority for such legislation.  Another Italian American stands in the way of that strategy – Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Among the chants pro-choice activists yelled in front of the Supreme Court last week were “F–k Alito!” and “F–k Manchin!”  Sen. Manchin (orig: Mancini) can’t seem to do anything right for the utopian Left, even as a Democrat.  He is denounced for refusing to back Biden’s multi-trillion Build Back Better bill last year because he feared it would cause inflation (that ship had already sailed!), and putting the brakes on eliminating fossil fuels (a West Virginia staple!).  But those very stances have made Manchin the paragon of moderate politics.  Still, being in the middle of the road always gets you run over from one direction or another.

Then, there’s the case of Pope Francis (Bergoglio).  Wanting to be a peacemaker among Christians, the Pope offered a word of advice to fellow cleric Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Russia not to be “Putin’s altar boy” by encouraging aggression in Ukraine.  Kirill didn’t take kindly to Francis’s “incorrect tone.”  So, to be balanced, the Pope suggested that Putin was provoked by “NATO barking at Russia’s gate… I suspect [the invasion] was maybe facilitated by the West’s attitude.”   That didn’t sit well with Western diplomats.  The Pope found out why walking on water may be easier than crossing a 2-lane political highway.

And speaking of religion, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is finding that being a friend of the Jewish people doesn’t open all Jewish portals.  The Jewish Leadership Conference wanted to acknowledge DeSantis for promoting Jewish schools in Florida by legislating tax credits for Jewish parents.  The Conference hoped to spread the word to other states by hosting an event with DeSantis at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, a venue they have used a number of times. However, the Museum ‘cancelled’ DeSantis – because he doesn’t “align with the museum’s values and its message of inclusivity.” Like the lyrics ‘flying high in April, shot down in May’ DeSantis is lauded in Florida, vilified in New York.  The Conference is fighting this political ban on the governor of a state with the third largest Jewish population.  The event is scheduled for June 12th, but the Museum insists DeSantis can’t be there.  Behold Utopian America!

The poster boy for ‘lauded & vilified’ is Cristoforo Colombo.  The reputation of the man who joined two worlds – the greatest event in human and natural history – continues to divide this country.  His statues have been removed or defaced; his true story has been expunged or defiled on the grounds that he brought only misery to the Americas.  Somehow the history of homegrown indigenous misery has been successfully suppressed.  However, last week archeologists confirmed that 150 human skulls found in a Mexican cave ten years ago are the remains of sacrificial victims that predate Columbus.  They can be added to the thousands of other sacrificial remains unearthed over the decades.  Doubt has also been cast on whether Indigenous populations truly ‘vanished’ after 1492.  First, their numbers were probably overestimated by the arriving Spaniards.  Second, DNA tests show they did not ‘vanish’.  According to Puerto Rican researcher Dr. Juan Aviles, himself part Indigenous: “Now we have this [DNA] evidence to show that we weren’t extinct, we just mixed and we’re still around.”  As a footnote, Columbus adopted a Taíno native boy – Diego* Colón, who became his primary interpreter during the second and later voyages. (*Named after his godfather Diego, Columbus’s natural son.)

It isn’t easy to be laudable these days. -JLM