In which the pond tries to put together an old-fashioned matinee, with our Henry as the main feature ...

 

It won't fit anywhere else so think of this as one the advertisements in the slide show before the show, a promise of the quality products promoted and served up by the house ...

A quality product from a criminal crime gang ... buy with full confidence, entertainment guaranteed.

Now on to the current attractions, screening in a reptile theatre near you...

In our boutique auditorium, over on the far right of the entrance, you will find certain discreet items, of the kind once served up by the Roma in George street ...

Sorry, our programmer regets to advise that the promised arrival of Last Tango in Paris has been delayed ... instead, console yourself with these attractions ... perhaps a last tango with savvy Saul, or Jeremiah Jenny ...

Teaser for the main feature: 

...as Henry de Bracton, one of the common law’s great founders, warned centuries ago, immense dangers are involved in pardoning felonious assaults “lest it furnish others the temerity to perpetrate similar deeds”.It is, in the end, telling that the ancient Greek term for pardon, suggnome, imposes the requirement of gnome ...

But first what to do for the cartoon, a cliff hanger serial and a B picture Empire quota quickie?

Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee, made a valiant attempt at the quota quickie.

Who or what is MST Marquee you might ask? The pond is glad you did, because this line was immaculate: 

Analysts leverage domestic and international inputs to deliver differentiated insights.

It turns out that these "differentiated insights" were bog standard reptile speak. 

No reference to the recent reports of epic bleaching of the reef, no mention of the way that the weather has been acting kinda funny in the US, no mention of the wildfires or the snow in Florida, just In energy debacle, our biggest power failure is Chris Bowen, Chris Bowen has ceded too much to the green fringe. Prices are higher, renewables growth has collapsed and energy security risks are rising. He must resign.

The theatre management decided to can the usual visual interruptions and distractions just to get it done, clearing the way for savvy Saul to do a rant that could have served as a press release for the mutton Dutton.

The management pleaded with savvy Saul to work in ways to nuke the country, to save the planet, but you know how it is with B picture writers:
Chris Bowen must resign. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy has left Australia’s energy market worse off for every stakeholder.
Under Labor’s rule, prices are higher, breaking its promise of lower bills. Energy security risks are rising, with three near misses in as many years. Renewables growth has collapsed to near record lows, while fossil fuel investment has also fallen. Energy intensive manufacturing has been shutting down, shedding blue-collar jobs. Our reputation for investment has been decimated.
The government has lost control, despite assuming ever-expanding market powers. There is no confidence left, and new energy leadership is needed to move forward.
Everyone has been left disappointed. It’s one thing to balance policy trade-offs, and pick some winners leaving others as losers. But it takes a special level of ineptitude to leave virtually everyone as a loser under our current energy polices.

Ineffectual policies and unintended consequences over the past three years have seen the investment environment deteriorate, including for renewables. The aftermath has been less investment, less energy and higher emissions than there otherwise would have been. No part of our energy market is doing well any more.

Well he's right there, the environment has deteriorated ...

On with the mumbo jumbo, or with the "differentiated insights" if you will:

Energy consumers are worse off facing higher bills; taxpayers are worse off as they fund uneconomic policies and subsidies; renewable companies are worse off, struggling to gain approvals and grid connections; fossil fuel companies are worse off amid approvals challenges and higher taxes, and; decarbonisation ambitions are worse off as Labor subsidises old coal generation.
There is a popular misconception that Bowen has championed renewables at the expense of fossil fuels. While fossil fuels have been hit hard, even the renewables industry has been left deeply disappointed. For those who want to see faster decarbonisation, Labor has disappointed by overseeing record subsidies to extend coal generation while seeing renewables growth collapse to lows not seen since 2017, according to the Australian Energy Regulator.
For those more focused on energy security and prices, Bowen has overseen load shedding, has ideologically excluded gas from Labor’s signature Capacity Investment Scheme (despite gas being the best form of capacity), and has driven the collapse in gas investment. The public debate has focused on the choices between renewables and fossil fuels, or the role of nuclear longer term. There is merit and trade-offs to both sides of these policy preference debates. But the root of Australia’s energy market problem lies in the execution of the details after the high-level policy direction has been decided. The government has failed in these details and delivery.
Various policies have been announced. Some have taken so long to implement the interim uncertainty has done more damage than any benefit the policy may deliver. Bowen’s signature Capacity Investment Scheme was announced with no details. So far, it appears to have crowded out more investment than it has attracted.

Just to make sure we knew where Saul was coming from, the reptiles inserted an AV effort by petulant Peta:

Sky News host Peta Credlin has questioned “how deluded” Energy Minister Chris Bowen is. Ms Credlin says the energy minister is still “insisting” the “world is shifting to net zero”. “With emissions reduction no longer an American policy priority, and with China, Russia and India never committed to Net Zero by 2050 anyway, none of the world's biggest national emitters are now like-minded with Australia. “If Labor doesn't understand how much their energy failures are driving voters away, then they are in for the shock of lives come election day.”

Realising that this was after all a picture theatre, the management grudgingly relented and allowed another picture ...

Saul knew how to sing his lines from that favourite old reptile song sheet:

Labor’s green hydrogen initiatives have been deserted as uneconomic by the business community that initially cheered for them. Even the better-designed Safeguard Mechanism started off with more promise, but was compromised in concert with the Greens to make new manufacturing plans unviable, leaving blue-collar jobs hung out to dry.
In a single month, a rushed gas price cap policy undid Australia’s reputation, earned over decades, for investment certainty. In a spectacular backfire, gas prices have ended up higher. It’s been all pain for no gain. In an attempt to wind back the damage, Bowen has effectively now handed out exemptions to the policy for the entire market. He touts the 600PJ of gas supply commitments secured in return for giving these exemptions. But this is even less gas than was going to be produced before the policy was introduced! The result has been less gas, higher prices and more coal emissions.
Who are the winners here? Extraordinarily, this has fallen under Bowen’s remit as he has assumed overriding powers for gas that undermine Resources Minister Madeleine King’s jurisdiction. In the end, the elaborate lengths gone to in order to exempt everyone from a policy instead of just repealing it highlights how saving face appears to have taken priority over taking responsibility.
It’s been all headlines, and spin over substance and results. 

Sheesh, speaking of headlines, this is grim going, perhaps another picture?

Sorry poley bear, there's a lot more ranting still to come ...

This is what can happen when a minister thinks he is the smartest person in the room. When he ignores advice and warnings from industry experts, including from his own departments. When he refuses to meet with key industry players. When he cancels meetings with industry stakeholders multiple times in a row, then presents a standoffish demeanour leaving industry wondering why it even bothered. When he announces major policy initiatives on the fly, while government employees – who should have advised on it – learn of it on the news. When unprecedented major market interventions that remove property rights are rammed through parliament a week before Christmas, without giving anyone time to read the policy, let alone consult on it or debate it (as happened with the gas price cap; our most communist legislation in a generation)
Australia has had some pretty ordinary energy ministers from both sides of politics over the past couple of decades – no political party has clean hands in our energy mess. But Bowen stands out for the sheer scale of the damage and apparent lack of self-awareness to acknowledge the problem, let alone fix it.
The worst thing about the anti-business policies he has overseen has been the lack of appreciation as to how hostile they have been viewed by the business community, and the damage to the investment environment. A government that isn’t aware of the problem it created cannot fix it.
In fairness, Bowen inherited a tough market without easy solutions. He does appear to recognise the right middle path has always been a focus on gas and renewables together, at least for the near term. But Bowen’s ambitions for the leadership have seen him pandering to the green fringe, despite not coming from the left faction. He has been duped into green hydrogen hype, become hostile to gas, while leaving the renewables rollout bogged down by endless approvals problems and infrastructure logjams.
He has ceded too much to the green fringe, which paradoxically has made environmental approvals unworkable for renewables and green infrastructure. Labor’s blue-collar base has been deserted in favour of green activists. There has been a paltry attempt to reverse course but the damage is done. To salvage some credibility on energy policy, Labor needs a new energy minister to focus on delivering for blue-collar jobs, household bills and economic growth, while keeping decarbonisation on a practical path. It needs a minister who will actually deliver more energy, rather than more media headlines.

All very well, but where's Lloydie of the Amazon, where's the Riddster? 

Where's that report of coral reef bleaching that needs to be put down ... though not before getting all those greenie knickers in a knot ...

Sorry, messaging Maria, what you need is an Analyst leveraging domestic and international inputs to deliver differentiated insights.

That'll stop you getting really cranky.

Unsatisfied with that effort by Saul for the first half of the show, the programmers looked around a little more.

Jennifer Westacott made a valiant attempt to produce a Commonwealth quota quickie by rabbiting on about Australia day in We’re losing the plot on how to be Australian, Are we heading in the wrong direction, which could have catastrophic effects on our way of life? Are we becoming a more divided, insecure country that risks losing our sense of identity and confidence?

Reading her guff made the pond almost drop its bundle and lose the plot, so again the pond decided to drop the snaps, just to get it over, just to get to the main feature more quickly.

The pond realises that there's only two days to go to get to invasion day, and this was the best the reptiles could do ... and like savvy Saul, Jeremiad Jenny knew how to hit the reptile sweet spot ... 

As we prepare to observe Australia Day, it’s a time of reflection on what it means to be an Australian and, for me personally, why I love my country and why I am so proud to be an Australian. And I do love my country. That’s not to say Australia is perfect. There are things we need to fix, and fix quickly, and I recognise Australia Day raises complex issues for many people.
This is still one of the greatest countries, if not the greatest, in the world. Australia is known for its friendship, beauty, compassion and kindness, and sense of mateship, which to me is not a masculine notion but the very definition of loyalty and support.
Our country’s greatest attributes are fairness and freedom. Fairness that embodies a sense of looking after people and institutional justice. Freedom is one of the most essential enduring requirements of a decent society and decent humanity.
Year after year, for decades, people have flocked here to escape their homelands full of hatred, division, violence, intimidation and persecution. They flee to Australia because of those things we cherish – freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom from fear.
We hold dear the separation of church and state and the judiciary, and embrace our democratic principles. 

Um, separation of church and state? Remind the pond how each session of parliament begins? The Senate will do ...

The President, on taking the chair each day, shall read the following prayer:
Almighty God, we humbly beseech Thee to vouchsafe Thy special blessing upon this Parliament, and that Thou wouldst be pleased to direct and prosper the work of Thy servants to the advancement of Thy glory, and to the true welfare of the people of Australia.
Our Father, which art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Sure they later tacked on an acknowledgement of country, but each session is marked by unctuous Xian guff, and even worse, it's the Proddie one.

Way back when, the pond realised it had been consigned to hell for speaking the Proddie doxology about the kingdom, the power and the glory.

Those were the days, way before Vatican II ...

Speaking of unctuous, time for Jeremiah Jenny to get with the reptile program ...

As I said, for me, it is the greatest country on Earth. But now every day I wake up, I recognise the country I love less and less. It’s why I urge all Australians to stop and pause and ask ourselves: Are we heading in the wrong direction, which could have catastrophic effects on our way of life? Are we becoming a more divided, insecure country that risks losing our sense of identity and confidence?
Let me call out two big issues we need to focus on. The first is the dangerous creep of anti-Semitism. I cannot believe what I’m seeing unfold in my country. I cannot believe I am seeing travel warnings issued to come to Australia versus leaving Australia.
I cannot bear to see some of my friends afraid, really afraid. I cannot bear to watch synagogues being burnt. I cannot believe this is unfolding on our shores. But there is no doubt that the events after October 7, 2023 unleashed an ancient, incomprehensible hatred.
This venom, anti-Semitism, runs the risk of becoming a defining force of our times, and that would be a catastrophe. It is an undeniable threat to our multiculturalism, our freedom, our way of life and our democracy.

Um, spare an Xian thought for others?

Never mind any of that, what this show needs to get punters rolling Jaffas down aisles is more Jeremiah Jenny claptrap ...

My call ahead of this Australia Day is that we collectively must do everything we can to prevent this hatred from spreading further.
We must lift our resolution to combat this evil. Our community leaders must stand together, recognising that anti-Semitism corrodes our entire society and repudiates the values that have shaped our character as a nation.
Of course, we must be vigilant against hatred in any form, but at the moment we are seeing an unmatched and sickening rise in anti-Semitism, which is associated with increasing violence.
But history tells us gradually turning a blind eye to one type of hatred unleashes a culture of hatred or opens the door to other hatreds such as Islamophobia, homophobia and racism in all its forms. So, we must reject anti-Semitism. We must reject hate. My university sector, which I’m so proud to represent, must be at the forefront of these actions. We cannot be the institutions that give legitimacy to anti-Semitism. Indeed we must be leaders in turning this around. We must be places of enlightenment, knowledge, social and economic progress, social cohesion and tolerance, not places of division and hatred. Universities have to return to their role as institutions that promote better societies. But universities can only do so much – it is time for all of us to stand up and guard against our society passively and incrementally acquiescing to this terrible force.
My second big plea is for a return to civility, particularly in this election year. Our country seems to have lost the plot on being civil. We seem to have lost our sense of humour and our larrikin streak. We seem to have lost the capacity to have a laugh at ourselves and never take ourselves too seriously, which has always been something I have adored about Australia.

Civility? But what are we to do if inspired by our great neighbour when engaging in political discourse?

So much for pending civility.

Time to wrap this Jeremiah Jenny show up ...

That’s not to say we aren’t serious people, but we’ve never had this situation before where people cannot raise issues without being personally vilified. We’re becoming a nation where people can’t engage in a contest of ideas without being threatened or labelled. If you ask questions or raise an issue, you are immediately shot down or given a label, in and of itself, which attempts to diminish your argument. We have to return to the Australian way where we can debate and discuss issues without intellectually belittling and intimidating people. Anything that falls short of this threatens our way of life.
I want every Australian to be able to walk down the street and feel safe, and to have the confidence that our institutions, which are designed to protect them, are delivering on this. I want Australians – whoever they are and wherever they are from – to know they have an unrestricted opportunity to get ahead. But mostly, I want them to feel free in this great country. But with freedom comes responsibility. Freedom is not the freedom to vilify, hate, persecute, or intimidate. Freedom is a cherished right. We must protect it and remember that it is never a licence for division. As we reflect on what Australia Day means and look ahead to a year that could define our national character, let’s hope we make the right choices and return to the country, identity and values I love.
Professor Jennifer Westacott is the chancellor of Western Sydney University

The long absent lord help the students of WSU, forced to endure this sort of guff whenever the speechifying out that way gets going ... including that usual blather about the contest of ideas ... 

You know what follows ...

Nazis gotta be Nazis ... wikis gotta want to do both sides ... free speech Uncle Leon gotta want to defund Wikipedia ...

Please, on complaints to management, how else to end the first half of the matinee, except with a bang, a comic villain or at least a cartoon villain ...

And so at last to the main feature, the never-ending attraction that ensures punters are well-served with arthouse exotic subtitled fare on a Friday ...

The point of our Henry today is devious distraction. 

The more egregious act, the clear violation of laura n'order came with the pardoning of assorted criminals, not least the Silk Road man and assorted assaulters of cops ... so somehow that infamous deed - fuck it, release 'em all - must be made the fault of the Biden master criminal crime gang.

History unlikely to forgive Joe Biden’s farewell pardons, Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons will not only undermine Americans’ already battered confidence in their system of government; they will legitimise Donald Trump’s attacks on the federal administration and enforcement of justice.

Instead of a mug shot of the new CIC waving his magic pardon wand, there came a reminder of the criminal master of crime, Former president Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden wave as they board Air Force One during a farewell ceremony on January 20, following Donald Trump's inauguration. Picture: AFP

Instead of a reminder of the recent words of that hollow man ...

“I think it’s very simple: Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6, and you had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” Vance told host Shannon Bream. “If you committed violence on t hat day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” 

Instead of a reminder of the hypocrisy (and laziness) of the real villain ...

...the hole in the bucket man spent all his energy pinning the rap on those masters of crime, the Biden family crime gang:

No matter how history judges Joe Biden, it is unlikely to look kindly on his use of the pardon power.
From that of Hunter Biden through to the pardons issued, in his administration’s dying moments, to a broad range of family members, Biden’s exercise of the pardon power amounted to an unprecedented attack on the reputation of the federal judiciary, which, he implied, could not be counted on to dismiss politically motivated charges.
That will not only undermine Americans’ already battered confidence in their system of government; it will also legitimise Donald Trump’s own attacks on the federal administration and enforcement of justice.
To say that is not to deny that Biden’s actions fall within the scope of the power the president has, under Article II, section 2 of the American constitution, “to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”.
Alone among the powers the constitution enumerates, that power proceeds unfettered. As the Supreme Court held in US v Klein (1871), “To the executive alone is entrusted the power, and it is entrusted without limit’’.
The power’s breadth reflects its ancient origins. As early as 668 AD, the Anglo-Saxon monarchs had the prerogative of dispensing mercy. But it was only in the 12th century that the pardon power began acquiring its modern shape.

Then came a further reminder of the Napoeleon of crime and his spawn, the two chief players in the Biden family crime gang :

Former US president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in November 2024. Biden issued an official pardon for his son. who was facing sentencing for two criminal cases related to tax evasion and the purchase of a firearm. Picture: AFP

Here's the thing: the GOP, always a bunch of lickspittles and fellow travelling lackeys, have already started moves which suggest how things would have played out ...

Once the false narrative had been established, criminal action would have followed, at least for a few prize targets such as Liz ... and it wouldn't have mattered if it failed, the sheer expense would have been ruinous. It's hard for individuals to go up against government machinery ...

So how does our Henry cope? In the usual way, by introducing meaningless blather about the past, a meretricious parade of portentous pomposity

The impetus for that development came from the great formalisation of legal systems Pope Gregory VII initiated, with respect to Canon law, in 1075. Soon, the rulers of Europe’s emerging territorial monarchies followed suit, with Henry II more tightly defining the actions that constituted a breach of the king’s peace and appointing England’s first permanent court in 1178.
However, as the machinery of justice came into place, reaching ever deeper into daily life, the prevalence of draconian punishments and the absence of appellate mechanisms gave the royal power of mercy new prominence.
At the same time, monarchs saw the power to erase or commute sentences as a way of asserting their supremacy over the courts of common law, as well as over the manorial and ecclesiastical courts they were battling to control.
And last but not least, the pardon forged a direct relation between the monarch and the people, with clemency petitions forming the bulk of popular appeals to the Crown.

Sheesh, if our Henry wanted legal challenges, there were plenty more recent matters to hand ...

Nope, ancient times for an ancient mind ...

As medievalist Helen Lacey put it, “the idea that all of the king’s subjects had access to royal mercy was pervasive, and not entirely divorced from reality”.
But the prerogative’s unconstrained scope made it vulnerable to abuse, provoking incessant disputes between successive monarchs and the parliament. By 1309, the parliament was seeking to rein it in; however, precisely because the power was intended as the means by which the harsh results of formal rules could be corrected, attempts to delimit it invariably fell foul of exceptional cases that were impossible to predict.
As a result, although the Crown eventually conceded it could not be used to prevent an impeachment, the Act of Settlement in 1700 entrenched the power’s broad sweep. And it was in that form that it migrated across the Atlantic, delegated mainly to the governors of the newly established colonies.

What has any of that got to do with the price of eggs? 

About as much as the recent array of executive orders emanating from the tangerine tyrant...and so to another distracting snap ...

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump say goodbye to former president Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden on January 20. Picture: AFP

Why are the reptiles so coy with their illustrations? Why do they always avoid the comedy?

The pond needs some comedy. Our Henry's wandering through history is always excruciating and tedious:

There too, its exercise was controversial. But as Alexander Hamilton argued at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, “the criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity that without an easy access to exceptions in favour of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel”.
Granting that power to the Senate risked unreasonable delay and could encourage corruption. It was, James Iredell told the Convention, hard to see “where (the pardoning power) could be more properly vested, than in a man who had received such strong proofs of possessing the highest confidence of the people” – that is, the president.
But the convention’s decision reflected more than Hamilton and Iredell’s advocacy. The reality is that the colonial judiciary was distrusted, if not detested. Nor was loathing of the judicial system tempered by the Revolution and its immediate aftermath.

Hasn't the man ever heard of TikTok? You can still have great fun on TikTok ...

The pond knows with this sort of programming, the Roma will be out of business within the year ...

On the contrary, those years consolidated the view – brilliantly epitomised by the aged scout Natty Bumppo, America’s first universally accepted folk symbol, in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823) – that the legal system was a gigantic conspiracy of the learned against the helpless integrity of common folk. Granting the president an unconstrained prerogative of pardon was consequently the price the Convention paid for its decision to create a powerful, independent judiciary – much as the pardon power’s distant ancestor, in the time of Henry II, was the counterpart to the creation of strong, permanent courts. Nor did the safety valve it provided for an increasingly rule-bound justice system prove, despite occasional abuses, an entirely unreasonable price to pay.
However, that balance now seems more problematic. Inevitably, the debate will focus on Trump’s pardon of the January 6 rioters, including those who committed serious crimes. But for all of Trump’s objectionable rhetoric, the January 6 pardons are more closely aligned with the pardon power’s traditional function than those of the Biden administration’s final months.

Yep, in his own bizarre way, our Henry has stumbled towards absolution of King Donald I, yet anyone addicted to a sense of reality would realise that the tangerine tyrant would have ordered his Justice Department and FBI - emphasise "his" - to go after the criminal Biden gang.

Now to a snap of the innocents, just peacefully going about their business in a love-in:

Trump supporters hold signs outside the DC Central Detention Facility where some defendants from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol were held, after US President Donald Trump signed pardons for Capitol rioters. Picture: AFP

Indeed, indeed, there's nothing like beating cops or running the dark web or being a neo-Nazi to show your patriotism.

Biden, for all his offensive kowtowing to King Donald I and offering cups of tea in the transfer, was clued up enough to know what a vengeful, mean, bitter, spiteful tangerine tyrant might do.

 It might have been messy, it might have been problematic, but it surely saved the Bidens a whole mess of tangerine tyrant shit.

Here, have a dose of that alternate reality ...

Yes, it's amazing, you'll find more in the gray lady than in our Henry ... Pardoned Biden Family Members Were Targets of Republican

Meanwhile, our Henry, always averse to current reality, was still wandering down the byways with his standard, routine, ostentatious parade of book larnin'...

In effect, few pardons were more significant in English history than the general pardon Richard II issued after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which aimed at turning the page on the anger that had fuelled the descent into violence.
Indeed, Hamilton saw the ability of “the benign prerogative of pardoning” to mark such a new beginning as the pardon’s great virtue, arguing, immediately after a farmers’ rebellion had torched courthouses in Massachusetts, that “in seasons of insurrection there are critical moments when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth”.
And it was with that goal of reconciliation in mind that Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson issued comprehensive pardons during and after the Civil War.
There was, in other words, a higher public purpose in those pardons. In contrast, Biden’s pardon of his family is manifestly inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s dictum in Biddle v Perovich (1927) that “a pardon is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power”; it must be an act oriented, rightly or wrongly, “to the public welfare”, rather than to private interests.

Should the Biden family have stood their ground, copped all the shit, spent years under investigation and spent a small fortune defending themselves against time in the clink? You know ...

Likely enough there'll be plenty of that to come - even with the pardons, poor Hillary - but in the meantime, at least the Biden criminal family crime gang has been spared some of our Henry's convoluted claptrap...

But the contrast should not be pushed too far. The pardons in the Peasants’ Revolt and the Civil War reached out to former enemies; Trump, like Biden, rewarded his friends, while threatening his adversaries. And as Henry de Bracton, one of the common law’s great founders, warned centuries ago, immense dangers are involved in pardoning felonious assaults “lest it furnish others the temerity to perpetrate similar deeds”.
It is, in the end, telling that the ancient Greek term for pardon, suggnome, imposes the requirement of gnome, judgment or good sense, on the spirit of forgiveness. As respect for the law frays, America needs a surer grasp of both.

Oh go suck the teat of the con artist and snake oil salesman, and maybe invest in some crypto .. 

Here's how it's really going to go, courtesy of Parker Molloy, The Price of Speaking Up in Trump's America...

There's always some silly Xian who's actually read the bible and listened to what Jesus said ...

Okay enough already with that Xian blather, the pond has a limited appetite for it, but apparently not as limited as some alleged Xians ... clueless about how woke Jesus really was ...

The response was swift and severe. Trump himself attacked her on Truth Social, calling her a "Radical Left hard line Trump hater" and demanding an apology. He told reporters the service was "not too exciting" and that organizers "could do much better."
But that was just the beginning. Right-wing media launched an all-out assault on Budde that revealed exactly how power plans to deal with dissent in Trump's second term. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld literally called her "Satan." His colleague Sean Hannity described it as a "disgraceful prayer full of fearmongering and division." Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones called Budde’s words “radical leftist.” The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh declared that "hell exists for people like Mariann" and called her "exhibit A for why women should not be pastors, priests, or bishops.”
Even members of Congress got in on the act, with one Republican suggesting that the American-born bishop should be "added to the deportation list.”
Naturally, with conservative audiences fully whipped into a fury, Budde says she began receiving wishes for her death.
All of this—the full machinery of right-wing outrage—deployed against a religious leader who simply asked for kindness toward vulnerable people. The disproportionate response tells us exactly what we're dealing with.
When asked about the backlash, Budde told NPR, "I regret that it has caused the kind of response that it has, in the sense that it actually confirmed the very thing that I was speaking of earlier, which is our tendency to jump to outrage and not speak to one another with respect." But she stood firm: "I don't feel there's a need to apologize for a request for mercy."
The irony here is that Budde's sermon was actually about unity. As she explained to The View, her responsibility "was to reflect, to pray with the nation for unity," and her remarks were an attempt to "say we need to treat everyone with dignity, and we need to be merciful.”

Maybe at some point our Henry could do a little blather about Xianity and what Jesus actually said. 

Or maybe not, blaming the Biden criminal family crime gang is so much easier, so much more simple-minded, albeit dressed up in fancy historical clothes ...

Maybe it's just better to let sleeping Xians lie ... and lie ... and lie ...