Some people, no doubt, feel reading my opinions and thoughts here each Monday is quite enough. Others seem to say, always anonymously, they don’t want to read them at all. They actually encourage me, however, because they betray themselves by continuing to read and complain.

Weekly appearances allow many hot issues to cool prior to my being able to comment. Several are on the front burners at the moment, and I seek to address them at once with reasonable, however inadequate, treatment.

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The news media has, almost universally, become so much about entertainment we find it difficult to know when they are reporting the news, when they exaggerate the news, and when they make the news.

Is there really a moral scandal in the Vatican, or do their reports merely generate advertising revenue by entertaining sensationalism? Is it sequestering the crisis it is presented as being, or does this merely attract more attention? In light of what is known for certain, serious scandal seems evident. But I have seen no evidence presented that it is the cause of the pope’s abdication. This might be so, but we haven’t yet learned it from the media.

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I grew up being told we should never elect a Roman Catholic layman to any political office because the official would be ruled from Rome. However, whenever, or wherever this might have been true, I don’t think it was ever so in America. Now we are being told the cardinals must not elect an American Catholic cleric as pope because Rome would be controlled by America. Can’t you see Michelle Obama twisting the pope’s arm until he ordains women as priests? How about taxing St. Peter’s for our war effort?

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Many Republicans charge the Obama administration with scare tactics concerning sequestering. This could very well be so, but the administration and other Democrats counter-charge this is an empty and invalid notion merely for the purpose of political opposition and it isn’t at all the case. This, too, could be true. Both are possibly so, but I suspect there is some truth and a lot of error from both sides. An impressive piece of evidence Obama actually is using scare tactics is the hostility evidenced in the way it treats respected journalist Bob Woodward for raising the issue. The bard said it: “Me doth think the lady doth protest too much.”

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It looks like same-sex “marriage” is going to be legalized in Minnesota and even nationally. If not this session, then it seems likely in the near future. If this movement is to be reversed, someone needs to articulate in a convincing, non-political manner that our state and the nation should conceive of and treat marriage as it has done historically. I am convinced, but I empathize with those who do not recognize this. We want so passionately to be non-discriminatory that it is easy to forget our society suffers many things against which we must discriminate to be wholesome and safe. It is genuinely difficult to think about and deal with this issue as moral, social, or economic factors, because both sides have made it primarily a political issue.

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Any time any matter is twisted into a political issue and then exploited for partisan purposes, it loses its value. People will favor or disfavor an issue by mechanical obedience to the party they favor. Don’t confuse them with the facts, they’ve already made up their minds. Or, rather, their minds have already been made up for them. If you want to kill a value, wrap it in political colors and then forget the spirit of the law and enforce its letter.

By the time this column goes to press, any of these issues may change substantially and yet new issues may appear, or made to appear as if they have appeared. Whatever guilt the news media may bare for this, they at least let me have my say. And as one columnist, far wiser and more successful than I, titled his autobiography, “Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion.”