Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.’

Read it all.

The Most Reverend Benjamin Nzimbi, the Primate and Archbishop has created a profile that will linger on long after he has left the ACK hierarchy.

To many people, the Bishop of All Saints Cathedral is a man of many faces. His voice was full of pain and compassion when he joined other clergymen in calling for peace following chaos that rocked the country after the disputed national elections early this year.

Yet, he was forthright and uncompromising when he stated the church’s stand against the ordination of gay bishops in the church. He has never shied away from calling on the Government officials to be more accountable in discharging their services to the citizenry.

Yet away from the glare of the cameras and the pulpit, Nzimbi, is a simple man, who loves eating fish and ugali with his hands, forget modern cutlery.

This, he says is how people ought to see him.

Read it all.

When people talk about the ongoing tumult in the stock market, they typically blame investors’ lack of information. There’s the uncertainty about the future state of the economy. There’s the confusion about what the government will do next with its ever-changing bailout program. And there’s the mystery of what the mortgage-backed securities clogging bank balance sheets are really worth. Yet, even with all these lurking unknowns, investors have far more information today than ever before. Your ordinary day trader, if any of those still exist, enjoys far greater access to economic and market data than men like J. P. Morgan did when they were running Wall Street. But this information isn’t necessarily making investors, or the market, any smarter. In fact, what may be driving the market crazy of late is that it knows too much.

The problem isn’t so much the never-ending stream of surveys, studies, and statistics””retail sales, housing prices, consumer confidence, unemployment claims, and so on. These numbers, though of varying accuracy and usefulness, at least offer a picture of what’s happening in the economy””which is, in the long run, the fundamental driver of stock prices. The real problem is that investors are also deluged with another data stream; namely, all the trading information from the world’s many markets, which gives them a constant, noisy, and often misleading impression of what other investors are thinking.

Read it all.

Now that his diocese is no longer torn by internal strife, Bishop Robert Duncan of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican) called on parishes to engage in bold, new missions.

“Sometimes we have to stop and heal wounds, but that is not our corporate task now,” he told several hundred people yesterday at the Anglican convention in Trinity Cathedral, Downtown. “Every one of our people is called to ministry.”

On Oct. 4 the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted to secede from the Episcopal Church, which it believed no longer upheld classic Christianity. The majority of 74 parishes joined an Anglican province based in Argentina, amid hope that the global Anglican Communion — of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. province — will create a second North American province for theological conservatives.

Read it all.

The Rev. Billy Graham has not preached in front of an audience since 2005, but there are countless people around the world with stories of how they have come to find God through his words. Now, some of those stories have been collected by grandsons Basyle and Aram Tchividjian.

Listen to it all.

Amid loud cheers for the man who had been deposed as their bishop just 50 days earlier, Bishop Robert Duncan was unanimously elected yesterday to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican).

“I guess this makes me the eighth bishop of Pittsburgh as well as being the seventh,” he said, joking about making buttons that say, “He’s baaack.”

Turning more serious, he continued, “It’s by our grace and our charity that we need to be known and to move on in mission. We don’t have any time to sit and recover from all that we’ve been through. It’s time to get on with what the Lord is asking us to do.”

He was the only candidate, receiving all 100 lay votes and all but one disqualified ballot from 79 clergy.

“It’s not often you get to vote for the same bishop twice,” said an elated Rev. Ann Paton, associate rector of the Church of the Ascension, Oakland.

Read it all.

(A press release received via email).

The Annual Synod of the Diocese of Quincy’s meeting November 7-8 in Quincy, Illinois, has voted by strong margins to realign itself with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, breaking its ties with The Episcopal Church in the US. On two key votes more than ¾ of the clergy and lay deputies voted in favor of the realignment.

The move came after several years of prayer and discernment about the diocese’s relationship with The Episcopal Church. Many in the Quincy Diocese, both clergy and lay people, have been at odds with the national leadership and other dioceses over the authority of the Bible, church order and discipline, and the church’s moral standards and teaching on Christian marriage.

On the vote to disaffiliate from the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, 75% of the clergy and 82% of the lay deputies voted in favor. On the subsequent vote to realign the diocese with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone the vote in favor was 92% in the clergy order and 87% in the lay order.

“This decision was not made lightly,” said Fr. John Spencer, press officer for the diocese. “We have talked and prayed about this for a very long time. But we take our relationship to the Anglican Communion very seriously. Since 2003, over half the Provinces of the Anglican Communion have been in a state of broken Communion with The Episcopal Church. By realigning with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, we are now back in full communion with the majority of over 75 million Anglicans around the world.”

Canon Ed den Blaauwen, incoming President of the Standing Committee, said the focus of the diocese will remain on mission. “Our churches and our diocese will continue in mission and ministry locally and around the world. We feel much at home under the oversight of Archbishop Gregory Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone, who has warmly welcomed us into affiliation with that Province,” den Blaauwen said. “We are once again back in full fellowship with our brother and sister Anglicans.”

Shortly after the votes were taken, Canon den Blaauwen, who acted as chairman for the Synod, read a letter from Archbishop Venables welcoming Quincy as a member of the Province of the Southern Cone.

Bishop Keith Ackerman who retired from leadership of the diocese on November 1, spoke to the gathering Friday afternoon just before the synod convened. Quoting the Epistle of Jude, he encouraged them to remain faithful to the Gospel of Christ and the historic faith of the Christian Church as they considered the momentous decisions before them.

“While the votes show there was very strong support for this decision,” Fr. Spencer said, “we realize this was not a unanimous decision.” By a separate action, the synod made provision for a nine months grace period during which a congregation or member of the clergy might consider withdrawing from the diocese in order to stay in the Episcopal Church. “It is a matter of allowing everyone to follow their consciences in these very difficult times, without recrimination,” Spencer said.

Democratic congressional leaders urged Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to use the $700 billion rescue bill passed last month to provide temporary aid to the U.S. auto industry.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Paulson today saying the rescue bill gives him “broad discretion to purchase, or make commitments to purchase, financial instruments you determine necessary to restore financial-market stability.”

Pelosi was among the lawmakers who met two days ago with the chief executives of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. The three companies are seeking $50 billion in federal loans to help them weather the worst auto market in 25 years, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Read it all.

[Bob] ABERNETHY: A lot of us have been trying to find words to describe the meaning of Tuesday’s election. What does it mean to you?

[Maryland] Bishop [Eugene] SUTTON: Well, words are difficult to describe significant moments. More than words on our lips, I think we have to see what’s happening on people’s faces and bodies. What it means to me was that I was crying on Tuesday night. My wife and I, sitting there and watching the screen, tears coming down our faces, tears coming down the faces of people such as a woman on my staff who said that she voted this morning, and this older African-American woman just stopped and cried. We see it in the dancing, the crying in that crowd and people all over the world. The words will come later, but right now the meaning of it was something touched deep in their heart after that election.

Ms. [Kim] LAWTON: It seemed to have touched a deep place not just for African Americans but people of many races as well. I mean, have you see that?

Bishop SUTTON: Yes. Yes, it’s a moment in our nation, but also in the world — a moment, I believe, of redemption, and I like to use that word, meaning opening a door for a new possibility rather than closing the doors of what has happened in the past, and we know about the past history of our nation, of oppression, and of closing doors and building walls. So this was a redemptive moment, I think. I think for people in my generation and older, we look at this as a redemption of the past, all of the work that our forefathers and mothers put in to make sure that we could see a day of a truly multiracial society, where barriers of race and gender and misunderstanding are broken down. That was our redemption. But for my sons and daughter, and for people in the younger generation, it’s a redemption, yes, but of the future. They’re looking forward. They’re looking ahead.’

Read it all.

With such a great victory come unreasonably great expectations. Many of Mr Obama’s more ardent supporters will be let down””and in some cases they deserve to be. For those who voted for him with their eyes wide open to his limitations, everything now depends on how he governs. Abroad, this 21st-century president will have to grapple with the sort of great-power rivalries last seen in the 19th century (see article). At home, he must try to unite his country, tackling its economic ills while avoiding the pitfalls of one-party rule. Rhetoric and symbolism will still be useful in this; but now is the turn of detail and dedication.

Mr Obama begins with several advantages. At 47, he is too young to have been involved in the bitter cultural wars about Vietnam. And by winning support from a big majority of independents, and even from a fair few Republicans, he makes it possible to imagine a return to a more reflective time when political opponents were not regarded as traitors and collaboration was something to be admired.

Oddly, he may be helped by the fact that, in the end, his victory was slightly disappointing. He won around 52% of the popular vote, more than Mr Bush in 2000 and 2004, but not a remarkable number; this was no Roosevelt or Reagan landslide. And though Mr Obama helped his party cement its grip on Congress, gaining around 20 seats in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate, the haul in the latter chamber falls four short of the 60 needed to break filibusters and pass controversial legislation without Republican support (though recounts may add another seat, or even two). Given how much more money Mr Obama raised, the destruction of the Republican brand under Mr Bush and the effects of the worst financial crisis for 70 years, the fact that 46% of people voted against the Democrat is a reminder of just what a conservative place America still is. Mr Obama is the first northern liberal to be elected president since John Kennedy; he must not forget how far from the political centre of the country that puts him.

Read it all. It is nice to see some in the media describe the outcome correctly. We have already posted about the numbers earlier, but this is best seen as a decisive electoral victory and a modestly solid victory in the popular vote. A landslide–as it was termed many times in the last week–it is not–KSH.

Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there’s good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would be hard pressed to make the case that there’s still a “blogosphere.” That vast, free-wheeling, and surprisingly intimate forum where individual writers shared their observations, thoughts, and arguments outside the bounds of the traditional media is gone. Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they’re part of a “blogosphere” that is distinguishable from the “mainstream media” seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion.

And that’s why there’s so much angst today among the blogging set. As The Economist observes in its new issue, “Blogging has entered the mainstream, which – as with every new medium in history – looks to its pioneers suspiciously like death.”

Read it all.

Watch it all. Somehow the real heroine of this story sounds like their mother–KSH.

Public defenders’ offices in at least seven states are refusing to take on new cases or have sued to limit them, citing overwhelming workloads that they say undermine the constitutional right to counsel for the poor.

Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is high and their pay low. But now, in the most open revolt by public defenders in memory, the government appointed lawyers say budget cuts and rising caseloads have pushed them to the breaking point.

In September, a Florida judge ruled that the public defenders’ office in Miami-Dade County could refuse to represent many of those arrested on lesser felony charges so its lawyers could provide a better defense for other clients. Over the last three years, the average number of felony cases handled by each lawyer in a year has climbed to close to 500, from 367, officials said, and caseloads for lawyers assigned to misdemeanor cases has risen to 2,225, from 1,380.

“Right now a lot of public defenders are starting to stand up and say, ”˜No more. We can’t ethically handle this many cases,’ ” said David Carroll, director of research for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

Read it all.

The deposition of the Bishop of Pittsburgh was a “totalitarian” abuse of power and will not be recognized by the church in Africa, the chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) has declared.

On Nov 1, CAPA chairman Archbishop Ian Ernest, Primate of the Church of the Indian Ocean and Bishop of Mauritius, wrote to Bishop Robert Duncan on behalf of the African provinces and stated the African archbishops “continue to recognize you as a bishop in good standing in the Anglican Communion.”

“Your commitment to orthodox Christian doctrine grounded in the Holy Scriptures is after all the mark of your identity as a true believer in the Anglican tradition,” Archbishop Ernest said. “Your grace, patience and forbearance in the face of opposition to your holy calling is an example to us all.”

Read it all.

When comparing the findings from The Field Poll’s final pre-election survey of likely voters (n-966) to the Edison Media Research exit poll in California, the biggest differences relate to the turnout and preferences of frequent church-goers and Catholics. The Field Poll, completed one week before the election, had Catholics voting at about their registered voter population size (24% of the electorate) with voting preferences similar to those of the overall electorate, with 44% on the Yes side. However the network exit poll shows that they accounted for 30% of the CA electorate and had 64% of them voting Yes. Regular churchgoers showed a similar movement toward the Yes side. The pre-election Field Poll showed 72% of these voters voting Yes, while the exit poll showed that 84% of them voted Yes.

The same kind of phenomenon occurred when the first same-sex marriage ban was voted in California in the March 2000 election (Prop. 22), although because of the size of its victory( 61% Yes vs. 39% No) it didn’t matter much back then. In that year The Field Poll’s final pre-election poll, also completed about one week prior to the election, had 50% of Catholics on the Yes side, and accounting for 24% of the vote. Yet, the network exit poll conducted that year by Voter News Service showed them to account for 26% of the electorate with 62% voting Yes.

My take is that polling on issues like same-sex marriage that have a direct bearing on religious doctrine can be affected in a big way in the final weekend by last minute appeals by the clergy and religious organizations.

Read it all.

Arizona State University, anticipating at least $25 million in budget cuts this fiscal year ”” on top of the $30 million already cut ”” is ending its contracts with as many as 200 adjunct instructors.

Boston University, Cornell and Brown have announced selective hiring freezes.

And Tufts University, which for the last two years has, proudly, been one of the few colleges in the nation that could afford to be need-blind ”” that is, to admit the best-qualified applicants and meet their full financial need ”” may not be able to maintain that generosity for next year’s incoming class. This fall, Tufts suspended new capital projects and budgeted more for financial aid. But with the market downturn, and the likelihood that more applicants will need bigger aid packages, need-blind admissions may go by the wayside.

“The target of being need-blind is our highest priority,” said Lawrence S. Bacow, president of Tufts. “But with what’s happening in the larger economy, we expect that the incoming class is going to be needier. That’s the real uncertainty.”

Read it all.

The Anglican Bishop of Rochester has called on the British Government to agree that marriage between men and women is the basis of society.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali raised the issue during a discussion of same-sex relationships in the House of Lords.

Liberal Democrat Lord Lester of Herne Hill, a leading light in the campaign to introduce civil partnerships in the UK, had questioned the Government’s contention, in a case before the European Court of Human Rights, that same-sex relationships “fall outside the ambit of family life”.

Read it all.

See what you make of it.

BARACK OBAMA’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election was in many ways a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s win 28 years ago.

His eventual success as president may depend on a willingness to do what Mr. Reagan did: be willing to combat long-term economic problems while accepting short-term pain and the risk of a prolonged slowdown that could damage his popularity….

In passing a tax bill, the Congress and Mr. Obama will have to balance the long-term deficit problem with the need for shorter-term stimulus.

Mr. Bush’s first tax bill presaged a leadership style that focused on partisanship and a determination to avoid compromise with his opponents. Mr. Obama’s first tax bill could show whether he will follow the bipartisan approach that he, like Mr. Bush before him, promised in the campaign.

The success or failure of his administration is likely to be determined by how well he deals with the long-term problems the nation confronts, not by how soon the current recession ends.

Read it all.

Mr. Obama and his advisers acknowledge that their focus has to shift, but the change is still likely to be challenging, and a bit disappointing. “Unfortunately, the next president’s No. 1 priority is going to be preventing the biggest financial crisis in possibly the last century from turning into the next Great Depression,” says Austan Goolsbee, an Obama adviser. “That has to be No. 1. Nobody ever wanted that to be the priority. But that’s clearly where we are.”

Throughout the campaign, whenever Mr. Obama was asked about the financial crisis, he liked to turn the conversation back to his long-term plans, by saying that they were meant to solve the very problems that had caused the crisis in the first place. Back in January, he predicted to me that the financial troubles would probably get significantly worse in 2008. They had their roots in middle-class income stagnation, which helped cause an explosion in debt, and the mortgage meltdown was likely to be just the beginning, he said then.

His prognosis was right ”” and the pundits now demanding that he give up major parts of his economic agenda in response to the financial crisis are, for the most part, wrong. When you discover that a patient is in even worse shape than you thought, you don’t become less aggressive about treatment. But you do have to deal with the most acute problems first.

And Mr. Obama has a big incentive to do so. The hangover from a recession typically lasts more than a year, and this recession isn’t over yet. So he will be at risk of the same kind of midterm drubbing in 2010 that Ronald Reagan received in 1982 and Bill Clinton did in 1994. In the days leading up to this year’s election, as they confidently reviewed the polls, some Obama aides took to joking darkly that 2010 was already looking bad.

Read it all.

South Carolina has announced it is ready to start making controversial “I Believe” license plates, a move that is already the subject of a lawsuit.

The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles posted an announcement on its Web site that it has received enough pre-applications to begin manufacturing the plates.

Read it all.

Billy Graham’s work as a pastor to presidents is coming to an end, but he is praying for Barack Obama as the nation’s next leader begins his work, Graham’s son said Friday on the ailing evangelist’s 90th birthday.

Franklin Graham said in an interview that his father’s mind remains sharp even as his body continues to fail. But the preacher who has counseled every president beginning with Eisenhower is not in line to mentor Obama.

“My father feels like his time and day for that is over,” Franklin Graham said. “But he would certainly like to meet (Obama) and pray with him.”

Read it all.

The Diocese of Quincy’s governing synod has voted resoundingly to leave the national Episcopal Church.

The announcement came Friday afternoon during the group’s meeting at Quincy Country Club. In the past five years the Peoria-based Diocese of Quincy and some of the other conservative-leaning dioceses around the nation have threatened to leave the Episcopal Church to join other Anglican bodies.

Read it all.

Update: An ENS article is here.

Bishop Robert Duncan is once again the diocesan bishop of The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Clergy and lay deputies to a special convention of the diocese on November 7 voted to invite Bishop Duncan back into leadership of the diocese 50 days after the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church voted to remove (“depose”) him.

“It is good to be back. God has clearly watched over the diocese and watched over me and Nara as we have walked through these challenging days together. God willing, I look forward to many years together sharing the good news of Jesus Christ,” said Bishop Duncan.

Read it all.

All year, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner has been insisting his company will never declare bankruptcy. “We’re well positioned,” he said in August. Company spokespeople reiterated that in October, despite the big stock market plunge. Even the company website states that “bankruptcy protection is not an option GM is considering.”

Well, guess what. While announcing a $2.5 billion third-quarter loss, GM also said that its “estimated liquidity during the remainder of 2008 will approach the minimum amount necessary to operate its business.” That means the company is spending way more than it’s earning and, unless something changes, will run out of cash sometime early next year. The company itself hasn’t raised the possibility of a Chapter 11 filing. But at this dire juncture, Wagoner and his lieutenants ought to be fired if they’re not doing contingency planning for bankruptcy””since that’s where companies end up when they run out of money and can’t pay their bills.

There’s one alternative, of course. No, it’s not a desperate merger with Chrysler, which GM has now disavowed, since Chrysler is in even worse shape than GM. Salvation lies in””you guessed it””a government bailout.

Read it all.

The Diocese of New Westminster on November 5 filed its Statement of Defence and Counterclaim in a second suit brought against it in BC Supreme Court.

The second suit was brought on October 15 by a former clergy, Stephen Leung, and some others at the parish of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Vancouver. Stephen Leung left the Priesthood in the Anglican Church of Canada in April of 2008.

Good Shepherd, primarily Chinese-speaking, was one of the four parishes in the diocese that last February voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and join a dissident group, the Anglican Network in Canada, affiliated with the Church of the Southern Cone of South America.

Read it all.

I remain convinced that to understand the heart of our struggles we need to recognise that there are two distinct but related issues. One is the issue of sexuality and attitudes to Anglican teaching, discernment and practice on this subject as found in Resolution I.10 of Lambeth 1998. The other ”“ in some ways the more complicated one, especially for evangelicals ”“ is the issue of ecclesiology and what it means to be a global communion of Anglican churches….

In relation to North America, GAFCON is clearly seeking to be the means of constituting a new Anglican province. While I am among those who believe this is a sign of failure, it is now the inevitable consequence of developments over recent years and the key task is to ensure it is at least as good a “second best” as possible rather than something worse. The aim must be not only to build the church and spread the gospel in the US and Canada. The aim must also be to establish a structure which, even if initially only recognised by a few provinces, is able and willing, once the Anglican covenant is agreed, to make the necessary affirmations and commitments and so align itself with the newly configured covenantal Communion. The danger is that this development may become ”“ whether intentionally or not – the trigger for a fracturing of the wider Communion and the founding of a more narrowly defined purely confessional fellowship which is shaped less by the ecclesiological vision of Windsor and more by the forces of post-colonialism and hostility to the American church’s response to same-sex unions.

And what, finally, of our own Church [of England]? That is, I take it, where much of our discussion will focus today and I don’t want to pre-empt that but a few comments as I close. We would be foolish to deny that the fault-lines in North America and the wider Communion are not present here or to pretend that realignment in these other contexts can take place without effecting us. In particular, if the failings of Lambeth place more weight on the Archbishop of Canterbury, they also place more pressure on the province of which he is Primate. However, it would be both foolish and dangerous to pretend that our own situation is anywhere near as dire as that of either the American or Canadian churches or to claim that we are called to follow their path. The challenge especially for evangelical Anglicans in the CofE is therefore to find a way of maintaining their own unity and rejecting further fragmentation, standing in solidarity with others here in England and across the Communion who are committed to biblical teaching, and supporting the covenant process and all other means of reforming, healing and revitalising the Anglican Communion and serving God’s mission in the world.

Read it all.

Squeezed by tight credit and plunging spending power, the American economy is losing jobs at the fastest pace since 2001, and the losses could accelerate to levels not seen since the deep recession of the early 1980s.

Employers shed 240,000 more jobs in October, the government reported Friday morning, the 10th consecutive monthly decline and a clear signal that the economic slowdown is troubling households and businesses.

Since August, the economy has lost 651,000 jobs ”” more than three times as many as were lost from May to July. So far, 1.2 million jobs have been lost this year.

“Clearly, these are very bad numbers,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at IHS Global Insight. “Businesses had been paring back for most of the year, but I suspect that it had been more caution on hiring rather than firing,” Mr. Gault said. “In September, they decided, ”˜O.K., look, this isn’t just a mini-recession, this is a full-blown recession. We better take some action.’ And they did.”

Read the whole article.

The Bishop of Los Angeles has challenged California voters who backed the successful ballot initiative to ban gay marriage to examine their consciences and banish their ignorance on homosexuality.

In a statement released on Nov 5, the Rt Rev J Jon Bruno (pictured) called upon Californians who supported Proposition 8 “to make an honest and dedicated effort to learn more about the lives and experiences of lesbian and gay humanity whose constitutional rights are unfairly targeted by this measure. Look carefully at scriptural interpretations, and remember that the Bible was once used to justify slavery, among other forms of oppression.”

With 99 per cent of precincts reporting, voters backed Proposition 8 by 5,376,424 to 4,870,010 votes, or 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Proposition 8 amends the state constitution to specify that only marriages between one man and one woman would be recognized as valid in California — overturning a May 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

Bishop Bruno and the bishops of San Diego, California, Northern California, El Camino Real, and the bishop of the provisional diocese of San Joaquin lent their support in September to the “no” campaign.

Read it all.

He was an avid sportsman who loved soccer and the outdoors. But he also loved his country. On Wednesday, he died in Iraq.

Adam McKamey Wenger, 27, was the second Charleston-area soldier to have lost his life in the war on terror in about a month.

The circumstances are unclear and his family does not have many details. He had been in the Army for about eight years and leaves behind a wife and two young children.

His older brother spoke Thursday of someone who made sacrifices.

“He was a good kid,” said David Wenger, 31. “He loved his country. He wanted to serve his country. He wanted to do his duty.”

Please let us not forget those who serve. Read it all.