This is interesting. I learned today via TBogg that talk-radio shock whore Laura Schlessinger’s much proclaimed and vociferously exclaimed attachment to Orthodox Judaism has turned out to be, well, a little on the spindel side.

It appears the nation’s nastiest taskmaster -- and most repulsive internet amateur porn star -- is having something of a crisis of faith, at least according to a report in last week’s Forward.

I’m sorry to say I missed the radio program in question, but apparently on August 5 Schlessinger said she “will no longer practice Judaism.” She still considers herself Jewish but added, “My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals, etc., of the entity -- that has ended.”

Somehow I’m betting Schlessinger’s ritual fatigue has nothing to do with the monthly mikvah.

Notably, Schlessinger is not entirely pleased with the response of her (apparently quite few) Jewish listeners. She says: “From my own religion, I have either gotten nothing, which is 99% of it [sic], or two of the nastiest letters I have gotten [sic] in a long time. I guess that's my point -- I don’t get much back. Not much warmth coming back.”

What did she expect?

Perhaps Schlessinger’s faith has been shaken by the recent unfortunate -- and so long unnoticed -- death of her mother?

Nah. I doubt it.

But the big question is this: Is Schlessinger headed for a conversion to Christianity? I wouldn’t be surprised, frankly, if she did so. It could do wonders for her sagging, uh, career.

Meanwhile, this week’s National Catholic Register -- the mysteriously unacknowledged and cleverly concealed house organ of Fr. Marcial Maciel’s Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, neither to be confused with the even more disturbingly extremist sect known as Opus Dei, the latter confab created by the inexplicably canonized Josemaria Escriva -- reports that Judge Robert Bork recently converted to Catholicism (“Judge Bork Converts to the Catholic Faith,” by Tim Drake).

Bork, it’s worth noting, is just the latest “infidel” to be brought into the fold by Fr. John McCloskey of the Catholic Information Center, a little storefront near the White House from which McCloskey serves as the house confessor of, and spiritual adviser to, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the halls of Congress as well. (And the web site of which, by the way, prominently features information about Fr. Escriva, no surprise given Fr. McCloskey’s attachment to the cultish Opus Dei.)

Among other prominent Washingtonians taking the plunge, so to speak, under Fr. McCloskey’s direction: Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), pundit Robert Novak, soi-disant economist Lawrence Kudlow, and former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

Good Lord, who’s next? The Podhoretzes? I think they’re influential enough to fall into Fr. McCloskey’s gun sights.