12 September—The late Charlie Kirk, whose surname means church in Scottish, Northern English, and Danish, was an excessively evangelical Protestant, but he and his wife were looking into switching over to Roman Catholicism. So don’t be surprised if Donald Trump tries to prevail on Pope Leo XIV to make Charlie a saint. (Technically you don’t have to be Catholic to be canonized, but for practical doctrinal reasons there’s never been a non-Catholic saint.)

So El Liberalissimo comments thus on the last sentence of yesterday’s disquisition: “Geritol would have been a better president, but on the theory that whomever Biden might have picked for VP would have had increasing influence as or if Biden’s decline grew worse, I would have had no problem voting for Biden for another term. Harris was clearly a terrible candidate even before she was picked. However, we vote not merely for President but for the President’s likely cabinet and other advisors.”

Amen. Pity that more voters aren’t as thoughtful.

And El Conservatissimo comments thus on the third paragraph: “wishful thinking mord why not admit you want pres trump dead” [sic—no capitalization or punctuation in El’s email]

To expand on Ian Richardson’s inimitable Francis Urquhart in “House of Cards”: One may very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment, lest I be persecuted and prosecuted by Trump’s evil, vile, and vindictive absolute monarchy.

Moving back to Charlie Kirk, for all it’s worth, even in death it evidently pays to be a conservative friend of Donald Trump. Because not only has Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for five days (through 14 September) in Kirk’s memory, but the late conservative firebrand is to be awarded—posthumously, of course—the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Trump definitely would have awarded Charlie the medal even if he hadn’t been murdered.

Compare that with Trump’s purely obligatory and perfunctory reaction to the assassination of rather more illustrious Minnesota liberal politician Melissa Hortman (and her golden retriever and husband) in June: bupkes on a stick. Of course, we shouldn’t have expected otherwise from Trump.

Back to Charlie Kirk, then, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned “foreigners” yesterday not to celebrate his death: “In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

Remember when that sort of rhetoric would have gotten Landau fired or at least censured? Ah, the good old days.

Certainly violence and hatred should never be glorified, but the First Amendment is supposed to protect all people in the United States, not just citizens. Then again, the Trump administration has ignored, abused, and run roughshod over the Constitution from the get-go, with the imprimatur of a disgracefully misguided and politicized majority of the Supreme Court . . .