Impending doom focuses the mind, occasionally leading to deathbed conversions, especially the Roman Catholic variety – for example, English king Charles II.

Charles II, nominally an Anglican monarch, after all was a closet Catholic, understandably solicitous toward his successor, brother James II, a daily Roman communicant finally exiled for his faith.

Charles II likely thought himself too far removed from piety and virtue, having fathered more than a dozen illegitimate children, as licentiousness at his court was the currency of the Restoration, to find grace at the end of his life.  Still, contrition, penance, and conversion offered him an even-money chance, as Charles II was redeemable in part by his enlightened governance permitting the Church to be tolerated after a century and a half of persecution.

Deathbed conversions – accompanied by confession, contrition, absolution, and receiving the Eucharist – open the pathway to salvation.  At least, that is the doctrine.  Skeptics, who sneer at religious devotion generally, are particularly dismissive of deathbed conversions as mere cynical theatrical devices.

No one has yet reported that Charles Manson, evil incarnate – who should have been tortured, then hanged, rather than languish in prison for 45 years – sought confession and absolution before his death a few days ago.  Even so, such a supplication would surely have been ignored if not militantly rejected.

Of course, just the thought of Charles Manson seeking confession, Eucharist, and extreme unction is absurd on its face.  This means that any report of Charles Manson's deathbed conversion is as plausible, and sincere, as Democrats confessing their sins of adulating Bill Clinton, whose serial sexual misdeeds, sometimes accompanied by assault according to numerous alleged victims, overshadow all of the extant sensational storylines today.  But the Democrats, taking no chances, outflanked Manson in the race to the confessional.

The Democrats, and their progressive accompanists, led by the disingenuous U.S. senator from New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, a longstanding recipient of the Clintons' stained patronage, have been happy to defend and endorse the sordid, squalid, and destructive criminal enterprise known as Bill and Hillary Inc. – until doom by association threatened to crush their electoral aspirations.  And Hillary Clinton's political power had expired, no longer threatening potential rivals, with Clinton endorsements now worthless.

Thus, Gillibrand decided this past week to finally denounce Satan, seeking deliverance by confessing her sins of commission.

These are desperate times for Democrat politicians.  Their Hollywood mogul patrons have been reliably accused of criminal sexual assault, led by Harvey Weinstein.  Following close behind are multiple sexual harassment claims against Democratic Party faithful, those cinema celebrities, and mainstream media liberal darlings such as Charlie Rose.  And now Sen. Al Franken, Congressman John Conyers, and other Dem officeholders' sexual appetites far outpace any statute of limitations, imperiling Democratic incumbency.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's newfound contrition is but a shamelessly shoveled intellectually and morally bankrupt ploy to anoint herself with born-again myrrh by condemning Bill Clinton's abominations.

But Gillibrand's darkest sin – indeed, the first tenet in the liberal progressive creed – is the corrupt bargain of tolerating any manner of sexual misconduct, from harassment to coercion to rape, as committed by Democrat politicians and jurists in exchange for their votes to uphold abortion on demand, including partial-birth infanticide.

Lest we forget Bill Clinton groupie Nina Burleigh, writing for Time magazine in 1998:

"I'd be happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal," boasted former Time magazine White House correspondent Nina Burleigh about Bill Clinton. She made her offer known to Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz when he called to discuss a piece Burleigh penned in the July/August Mirabella magazine detailing her lust for Clinton.

Until Democrats beginning with Kirsten Gillibrand condemn the slaughter of the innocents – abortion – with the same evangelical awakening they now display over sexual transgressions, their deathbed conversions will have the same sacramental value as if Charles Manson chanted, Christe eleison.

On the other hand, Charles Manson will never be accused of hypocrisy.