The Catholic Church is looking to compromise with the bad guys in order to get into China (cough-Google-cough): Pope Francis has agreed to recognize Catholic bishops chosen by the Chinese government (what??) in exchange for some input into the process or something. (Sounds like a really solid deal you got there, Francis.) Ian Johnson at the Times explains what makes all of this even skeevier:

The ruling Communist Party sees the compromise with the Vatican as a step toward eliminating the underground churches where Chinese Catholics who have refused to recognize the party’s authority have worshiped for generations. With the pope recognizing all bishops and clergy in the Roman Catholic churches approved and controlled by the party, the underground church might have no reason to exist.

Right-wing commentator Dennis Prager says that taking the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh seriously is damaging America’s moral compass and “undermines foundational moral principles of any decent society.” Excuse me? Jack Hunter at The American Conservative demolishes Prager over his astounding hypocrisy over offenses committed in one’s youth:

Prager has spent many years saying that the non-violent offense of selling drugs is far worse than what drug war critics claim. Yet on Tuesday he wrote a column basically saying attempted rape really isn’t, and even if it was, it should be forgiven regardless due to the passage of time.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decides in a 2-1 ruling that anti-LGBTQ street preachers had their rights violated when they were moved farther away from a Pride festival for their protests. In his dissent, Judge Moore (not Roy!) said:

I believe that it was a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction for … Nashville … to require [the preachers] to cross a downtown street if they wished to continue shouting disruptive messages through bullhorns during a permit-authorized event in a public park.

PayPal joins other tech platforms by banning Alex Jones and Infowars, explaining, “We undertook an extensive review of the Infowars sites and found instances that promoted hate or discriminatory intolerance.”

James Woods, who has become…let us say…eccentric in his right-wingery, is locked out of his Twitter account for spreading a hoax meme. Woods, in his own particular idiom, says:

The irony is, Twitter accused me of affecting the political process, when in fact, their banning of me is the truly egregious interference, because now, having your voice smothered is much more disturbing than having your vocal cords slit. If you want to kill my free speech, man up and slit my throat with a knife, don’t smother me with a pillow.

You’re fun.

I could try and summarize this Friendly Atheist post about a Satanist bewildering the legal system, but I’ll just link to it and point out Hemant’s refrain: “I kid you not.”

Susan Brink at NPR interviews Michael Kinch, author of the new book Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity. Turns out anti-vaxxers are an old problem:

The anti-vax movement is actually older than vaccines. There was a well-established anti-variolation movement when people were using scabs and pus to try to prevent smallpox. … For virtually any vaccine you can name, there was an anti-vax movement around it. An 1802 cartoon was titled “The Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation.” It was a spoof, reflecting widespread fear and showing people sprouting cow’s heads and horns and tails after being vaccinated against smallpox.

The FTC puts “iV Bars” with their iV cocktails in its crosshairs:

In connection with the advertising, marketing, promotion, or sale of any covered product, the order prohibits iV Bars from misrepresenting that it has had medical professionals test or approve the product, or that it has a research facility.

English professor Josh Mayo at First Things writes in amused praise of the quasi-religious podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text:

All silliness aside, much of HPST is simply an exercise in thoughtful reading—the kind of joyful reflection that draws avid readers and makes avid readers, that reminds us how great books comes alive when we trust them to teach us something.

Nominee for Headline of the Year, from Ars Technica:

Drugged puppies blamed for spreading diarrhea superbugs in multi-state outbreak

Bigfoot is very troubled by the fact that there seems to be no proof of the existence of Rep. Pat Kessler.

Quote of the Day

It’s a hot one. Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior on how conservative Christians are handling the Kavanaugh allegations:

As an evangelical Christian, I am convinced Dante himself could not have devised a more fitting circle of hell for my faith community than the one in which we find ourselves: being destroyed from the inside out by the sexual sin we spent decades pointing out everywhere but in our own house.

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Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.