Judge Daniel Manion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently voiced concern over the almost complete lack of Christians among the more than 10,000 Syrian refugees admitted into the United States over the past year.

Judge Manion, a Reagan appointee, noted that the administration had reached the “laudable goal” of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States.

“And yet,” he wrote, “of the nearly 11,000 refugees admitted by mid-September, only 56 were Christian.”

“It is well-documented,” the judge wrote, “that refugees to the United States are not representative of that war-torn area of the world. Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one-half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian.”

This is especially appalling given that ISIS continues to target Christians in Syria and throughout the Middle East. And as Judge Manion pointed out, “To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy.” Up until now, he notes, “many of us remain in the dark as a humanitarian catastrophe continues.”

There can be no moral justification for this kind of disparity. The Obama administration rabidly pursues diversity and inclusion in all of its public policies, but not when it comes to Islamic fanatics committing genocide against Christians—they are sent to the back of the refugee line. When Trump becomes president, he must deal with this issue forthrightly, and with celerity.

Macy’s is in trouble not only for unleashing its Thought Police against innocent workers, it is hurting financially.

Despite being pounded by Catholics, the mega-department store has continued to stand by its decision to fire an Hispanic Catholic store detective for simply disagreeing with its policy of allowing cross-dressing men to use the women’s bathroom; the employee agreed to enforce the policy, but that wasn’t good enough—his mere beliefs were enough to have him canned.

The third quarter numbers recently came in, and they were not encouraging: Macy’s sales and profits both slid.

Its sales were off 4.2 percent, marking the seventh straight quarterly decline. Its profit of $17 million sounded impressive until we learned that it was $118 million a year ago; shares dropped from 36 cents to a nickel.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade recently took place. If it were honest, it would have featured a float of cross-dressing men hanging out in a women’s fitting room, thus inviting children to have asked what’s going on.

Just as bizarre, Macy’s decided to make its workers show up on Thanksgiving. It did so last year—for the first time—but this year it opened two hours earlier. This is yet another sign that it is both ethically and financially challenged. Catholic staffers would have been making a great statement if they just happened to call in sick.

Pleas for more diversity and inclusion are a mantra at the New York Times. For example, it demands more inclusion in the Catholic Church’s clergy—women must be ordained—and rails against the glass ceiling in the corporate world that keeps women from reaching the top.

There is one exception: when it comes to hiring a new publisher at the New York Times, it throws diversity and inclusion to the wind. Not only does it confine its search to white boys, it only considers blood relatives. The New York Times is not only a patriarchy, its affection for hiring along patrilineal descent lines is boundless.

Mark Thompson, who heads the New York Times Company, recently announced that Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is the new deputy publisher of the newspaper. Thompson is perhaps best known for allegedly covering up the deeds of BBC child rapist Jimmy Savile.

This appointment is critical because it signals the continuation of the Times monarchy: Arthur Gregg’s father, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., is the current publisher, and his son is next in line to succeed him on the throne. Sulzberger Jr. got his job because his predecessor, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, was his father.

A.G., as Arthur Gregg is now known (it was confusing at the newspaper so they settled on his initials), would represent the fifth generation of his family since the Grand Patriarch, Adolph S. Ochs, bought the newspaper in 1896.

To elect Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the Times erected a cement ceiling: the only other two candidates for the job were Sam Dolnick and David Perpich. All three are cousins.

No women were interviewed. No blacks were interviewed. No Latinos (including the undocumented) were interviewed. No Native Americans were interviewed. No Asians were interviewed. No Catholics were interviewed. No Protestants were interviewed. No Muslims were interviewed. No Mormons were interviewed. And to the best of our knowledge, no transgender persons were interviewed.

This triumph of patriarchy was not, however, equally distributed along descent lines: no one from the Ochs family, or any of the other branches of the family, was considered. This is a cement ceiling that even ISIS  couldn’t crack.

In keeping with its incestuous tradition, the selection committee included senior executive Michael Golden and his sister-in-law, Trudy Golden. Carolyn Green-spon was on the committee: she is a family trustee and board member of the New York Times Company. Thompson, chief executive of the Company, was also on the committee. No one not from the inner circle of the board, newspaper, or the family, was included.

Who needs affirmative action? Who needs to advertise? Who needs a head hunter? This is an old-boys club par excellence.

Thompson said the selection “was done in an extraordinarily careful, systematic way.” On that, everyone can agree.

What makes this story so priceless is how the Times reacted to the news that President-elect Donald Trump plans to appoint several members of his family to key posts. “The Trump family, it is clear, will wield unusual power in the composition of an administration that is already shaping up as remarkable for its clannishness.”

It would be instructive to learn what Maureen Dowd thinks about this nativistic, misogynistic, racist, non-inclusive, diversity-be-damned, rigged hiring system at the New York Times. But this is not likely: she has long settled in, and knows exactly what her place is.

Recently, the New York Post and the Jewish Forward reported on an Orthodox yeshiva in Brooklyn that agreed to pay $2.1 million in a child sexual abuse settlement. The case involved Rabbi Joel Kolko, a senior rabbi, who was charged with molesting two boys at the Jewish day school. This was not the first time that charges had been made against this rabbi—they have been going on for 25 years.

Rabbi Kolko is quite unlike most of the priests accused of abusing minors. In the case of priests, almost all of the abusers were homosexuals: 81 percent of the victims were male and 78 percent were postpubescent. In the case of Rabbi Kolko, he started molesting the boys when they were six-years-old. He is a true pedophile.

The other two New York newspapers, the Daily News and the New York Times, are both known for their fixation on priestly sexual abuse, and for their hard-hitting editorials on this subject. Indeed, just the previous month, the Daily News had run a story on a Bronx priest accused of molesting a 15-year-old boy 30 years ago. The month before that, the New York Times ran a story about a teenage boy at Fordham Prep who was allegedly abused by a lay teacher 32 years ago.

Yet at first, neither newspaper reported on the Rabbi Kolko story, in which millions of dollars were paid out in a settlement—in 2016—in a case involving a pedophile rabbi. We took them both to task.

The following day, however, the Daily News offered a responsible rejoinder. It conceded that it “blew it,” explaining that it “sometimes misses stories.” Fair enough. It then contended that it covers the sexual abuse of minors whenever and wherever it occurs. It also defended itself against charges of anti-Catholicism, providing some examples of its fairness.

Unlike the Daily News, the New York Times has not explained why it did not cover the story about Rabbi Kolko. While we believe that the absence of a story in the Daily News was indeed an error, we do not believe that the Times erred.

The reasoned response by the Daily News was much appreciated, and we let them know it.

The Smithsonian has hired its first religious curator since the 1890s. “Peter Manseau was born for the job,” says the Washington Post. “The son of a priest and a nun,” the story notes, “Manseau was meant to be a scholar making sense of history.” For five years, he will oversee new exhibitions on American religious history, and will add to the museum’s holdings on religious objects.

This could signal a real breakthrough, providing wonderful opportunities for the public to rediscover the religious roots of America. Or it could wind up like so many other Smithsonian projects and become another exercise in political correctness.

To the latter point, the Smithsonian’s new African American Museum is a disgrace: every major black scholar, politician, and activist of a conservative bent has been whitewashed out of existence. Also, the Smithsonian’s willingness to offend Christian sensibilities was on grand display six years ago when it launched the exhibit, “Hide/Seek.” It featured large ants eating away at Jesus on the crucifix. A Catholic League protest of this scurrilous video led curators to withdraw it.

Therefore, much depends on Manseau. From what we know, there is cause for concern.

His book, One Nation Under Gods: A New American History, was hailed by Publishers Weekly for being “subversive.” What was subversive about it? Manseau wrote extensively about “the supposed Christian roots of the Republic.” So who does he think founded America? Buddhists?

Manseau’s Catholic roots are themselves interesting. It is telling that his father, Bill, did not accept the Church’s teachings on ordination: he said he was called to be a married priest. Also, both of his parents worked to reform the Church along the lines of the mainline Protestant denominations. By any measure, that hasn’t worked out too well.

It should also be noted that Manseau is not a practicing Catholic. No wonder he likes Andrew Greeley’s definition of a Catholic: it depends on whether the person is “loyal to the poetry of Catholicism.” For some reason, there are no entries in the Catholic Catechism on that interpretation.

Stay tuned.

Late night talk-show hosts are known for their edgy comedic routines, and for the most part, they learn not to cross the line. There are two hosts, however, who make it a habit to cross the line, especially when it comes to Catholics: Samantha Bee and Bill Maher.

These are the same two foul-mouthed anti-Catholic bigots who the president of the United States recently decided to honor by going on their TV shows.

President Obama was interviewed on October 31 by Bee on her TBS show, and on November 4 on Maher’s HBO show. Bee, of course, was respectful, and so was Maher. But both have a history of saying things about the pope, priests, the sacraments, and Catholicism in general, that are downright malicious. Here is a sample.

Earlier this year, Bee obscenely ridiculed St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson for raising concerns about the pro-abortion ties of the Girl Scouts. She attacked him for not being the “best person to judge what you do with your body,” instructing him that “if you don’t want girls getting knocked up, and you won’t let them have contraception, you better teach the Boy Scouts to use some of those fancy knots on their d****.”

When cardinals assembled to elect a new pope in 2013, Bee called the gathering a “grope,” likening it to “molestation,” saying that the process was not complete until the cardinals reached a “fellatio,” or “oral consensus,” culminating in “white smoke rising from the chimney.”

Maher is so vicious that we have compiled a record of some of his most anti-Catholic statements from 1998-2016. His latest offensive remark came in June when he said of Pope Francis, “at least my big dumb hat gets me p***y.” Earlier in the year, Maher commented on a 2014 episode of “Family Guy” where, he said, “Jesus was f**king Peter’s wife, but it was a scam. He was f**king a lot of people’s wives.”

President Obama has told us for eight years how insensitive we have become to others, how bullying is widely tolerated, and how bigotry mars our culture—he is especially keen on driving these points home when it comes to blacks, gays, and Muslims—yet he offered a respectful platform to Bee and Maher.

Someone should have asked White House press secretary Josh Earnest why the president gave cover to these two anti-Catholic bigots. That he chose the week before the election shows how downright hypocritical he is. We hope that Catholics took note.

Not all of the comments made by President Obama in his interview with Bill Maher on November 4 were aired on Maher’s HBO show. Fortunately, the ones that were cut are available on YouTube. Here are some statements made by Obama that were not aired:

“I think we should foster a culture in which people’s private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected and that’s the kind of culture that I think allows all of us to believe in what we want. That’s freedom of conscience. It’s what the Constitution guarantees and where we get into problems typically is when our personal religious faith or the community of faith that we participate in tips the fundamentalist extremism in which it’s not enough for us to believe what we believe but we start feeling obligated to hit you over the head because you don’t believe the same thing or to treat you as somebody who’s less than I am.”

This is remarkable for several reasons. The man Obama said this to is a raging anti-Catholic bigot; he has relentlessly used his show to portray all priests as predators. Maher obviously does not respect people of faith, especially Catholics, yet Obama spoke to him as if he were a Boy Scout. This demonstrates how utterly vacuous his comments are.

Obama cannot claim to be ignorant of Maher’s vulgar attacks on Catholics, especially priests. We know this because he bragged to Maher how often he watches his show. Those who say that Obama is simply laughing at Maher’s jokes, and is not condoning bigotry, need to ask whether Obama would be as forgiving if the jokes were made about African Americans. No one could seriously believe that to be true.

Obama’s embrace of conscience rights is also phony. In 2009, he told the graduating class at the University of Notre Dame that when considering healthcare policies, we need to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause.” If he had made good on his pledge, the Little Sisters of the Poor wouldn’t have been forced to sue him.

When Obama talks about “fundamentalist extremism,” he only notes religious extremists (even then he is careful when speaking about radical Islamists), never acknowledging the role that secular fundamentalists have played. Who does he think was responsible for the totalitarian carnage of the 20th century? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were not animated by religious extremism—they committed genocide in the name of atheism.

The biggest mistake Obama made was giving legitimacy to a hater. That he did so speaks volumes about his alleged sensitivity to bashing people of faith.