Left Foot Media

Ben Shapiro—after telling his audience for months that bombing Iran wouldn't lead to a wider war, and then claiming the war was just going to be a quick bombing campaign—is now telling Americans to prepare for a long war. "There is no way to extricate ourselves from this situation right now." Americans only got "tired" of Vietnam after 50,000 troops died, he says. "Our" military members are "heroes" because they're willing to "sacrifice" their lives "for a greater good"—a future world where "energy will become cheap again because the Strait of Hormuz will be free again."

Pope Leo XIV in a message to the French Bishops, tells them to find generous solutions to include those attached to the Traditional Latin Mass: “Dear brothers, you finally intend to address the delicate subject of the Liturgy, to which the Holy Father is particularly attentive, in the context of the growth of communities bound to the Vetus Ordo. It is troubling that a painful wound concerning the celebration of Mass, the very sacrament of unity, continues to open in the Church. To heal it, a new way of looking at one another, with a greater understanding of each other's sensitivities, is certainly necessary; a way of looking that can allow brothers, enriched by their diversity, to welcome one another in charity and the unity of faith. May the Holy Spirit suggest to you concrete solutions that will allow for the generous inclusion of those sincerely attached to the Vetus Ordo, in accordance with the guidelines established by the Second Vatican Council regarding the Liturgy.”

I’m broadly pro-Israel at a basic, first-principles level. And there's nothing really religious about why. Try as people might, you just can't get away from the Holocaust as the defining moral catastrophe modern history. It was a systematic, industrial attempt to eradicate the Jewish people. It was threatened in advance and widely understood to be happening. And what did the world do? Very little. Even where there was knowledge, there was no meaningful, targeted intervention to stop it. How could the survivors draw any lesson other than to never, ever put your faith in others coming to your aid? Having barely survived and not being able to avoid noticing that the so-called international community proved unwilling or unable to prevent it, it is pretty reasonable for a people to conclude that their survival cannot depend on promises and impotent moral posturing. Only a nation state, with the ability to defend itself, control its borders, and act decisively in its own interest, is a practical safeguard. It is the difference between hoping others will protect you and ensuring that you can protect yourself. None of this settles arguments about proportionality, settlements, diplomacy and so on. But at bedrock level, the existence of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state flowed from a reality established in the wake of a grim lesson: when everything is on the line, you are on your own.

I noticed several errors in Dr. Taylor Marshall's letter to Protestants. So I offer a corrected version below, addressed to Catholics. Dear Catholics, Your Bible contains 7 non-canonical books, added by the Council of Trent in 1546 over the objections of your own best bible scholar. Marshall says Jerome "changed his mind" about the deuterocanonical books around 402 AD in obedience to Pope Damasus. I've read Jerome's prefaces. This doesn't hold up. Damasus died in 384. Jerome wrote his famous Prologus Galeatus in 391. It excluded the deuterocanonicals as part of the canon. He labels these books as apocrypha. That's 7 years after Damasus was gone. That's not obedience to a living pope. The quote Marshall uses from Against Rufinus, which reads "What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches?", isn't about the canon. It's about Jerome's decision to translate from the Hebrew instead of the Septuagint. Rufinus attacked him for it. Jerome defended himself. In context, he's talking about translation method, not about which books belong in the Bible. And Jerome didn't stop his take. I've quoted these before, but here he is for the next 24 years of his life: 391: "Whatever is outside of these is set aside among the apocrypha." 398: The Church reads Tobit and the Maccabees "not for the authoritative confirmation of ecclesiastical doctrines." 405: Tobit is excluded from "the catalogue of Divine Scriptures." Judith is "considered among the apocrypha." 406: Cites the Book of Wisdom with "if one wishes to accept this book." 415: Still distinguishing Wisdom ("lest you gainsay this volume") from Ecclesiastes ("about which there can be no doubt"). This is one of his last works. Gallagher, a top scholar on Jerome on the canon, explains, "All of our evidence indicates that he always considered them outside the canon." Jerome never retracted. He never published a revised list. Never wrote "I was wrong." He translated Tobit and Judith under pressure, finished each in a single day, and attached prefaces denying them canonical status. That's not submission. That's a scholar doing what he's told while making sure everyone knows what he thinks. Dear Catholics, please drop the fan fiction that Jerome submitted to Rome on the canon. He held the same position from 391 until he died in 420. And Trent overruled him 15 centuries later by a vote of 24(Y)-15(N)-16(A). It passed by 44%. Not exactly a passing grade. Surely not one I'd write letters to Protestants about.

The crisis of extremist settler violence in the West Bank must be confronted, and the perpetrators must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There should be zero tolerance for violent extremism, no matter what form it takes and no matter what direction from which it comes.

US officials tell The Post they no longer believe it is possible to achieve the war's original goals of overthrowing the Iranian regime and putting its nuclear program permanently out of reach