Glenn Beck’s Fever Dream

Radio host Glenn Beck is urging GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to team up to oppose Donald Trump.

 Beck called for a ticket of “Ted Cruz for president, Marco Rubio as vice president,” on his radio show Wednesday, according to The Blaze. Beck has already endorsed Cruz for president.

 The radio host laid out a plan for other prominent GOP figures to align themselves with a Cruz-Rubio team.

 “Say our Supreme Court nominee is Mike Lee,” Beck said, suggesting the Utah senator as a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

 “Rand Paul is going to be Treasury secretary. Ben Carson, we’re going to back you with everything we have to take Rubio’s Senate seat. How is that not a win for absolutely everybody?”

Somebody needs to check Glenn for the Zika virus because he’s clearly hallucinating.

How Many Babies Have You Had, Father Pavone?

From CNN regarding the Zika crisis:

In December, authorities in Brazil urged women not to get pregnant. Then last month came the warning from Colombia to delay pregnancy until July. Then in an interview, a health official in El Salvador recommended that women “try to avoid getting pregnant this year and the next.”

Does this mean couples in these largely Catholic countries should abstain from sex for two years? Or should they use so-called “natural family planning”? The method, which involves a woman monitoring her basal body temperature and vaginal secretions to avoid having sex at fertile times of the month, has a 25% failure rate, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Or, because of Zika, should couples use more effective methods of birth control?

So far, the church hierarchy has remained silent on these questions.

The Catholic catechism states that besides “natural family planning,” anything else that works to “‘render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil.”

The Rev. Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said that means birth control is wrong no matter what. “That prohibition doesn’t change based on circumstances,” he said. “So couples have a responsibility to live according to the church’s teachings in whatever circumstances they find themselves.”