My wife caught this on Wednesday night and showed it to me–hilarious.

A Palestinian terrorist opened fire at a central Jerusalem yeshiva late Thursday night, killing eight students and wounding 11 others, police and rescue officials said.

The 8:45 p.m. shooting at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood broke a two-year lull in terror in the capital and sent students scurrying for cover from a hail of gunfire – a reported 500-600 bullets – that lasted for several minutes.

“There were horrendous screams of ‘Help us! Help us!'” recounted Avrahami Sheinberger of the ZAKA emergency rescue service, one of the first to respond to the scene. “There were bodies strewn all over the floor, at the entrance to the yeshiva, in various rooms and in the library.”

Makes the heart sick–read it all.

Palm Sunday is going “green.”

This year, more than 2,130 congregations across the USA, including Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians, will use “eco-palms” that are harvested in a more environmentally friendly way, says Dean Current, program director at the Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management at the University of Minnesota.

The number of churches using eco-palms on Palm Sunday ”” which, in the Christian faith, marks Jesus’ triumphant return to Jerusalem before his death and resurrection ”” has grown from a pilot program of 5,000 in 2005 to the 600,000 eco-palms ordered for this year’s March 16 celebration, Current says. He estimates that is about 1.5% of the 35 million to 40 million palms sold annually for Palm Sunday services in the USA but says he expects the growth to continue.

What makes the eco-palms different is the way that they are harvested, says RaeLynn Jones Loss, a research specialist at the University of Minnesota.

More than 50% of the palms are wasted by traditional methods, Jones Loss says. Harvesters in the eco-palm program are trained to be more selective. They cut only the best fronds, which results in only 5% to 10% waste.

Read it all.

Feast of St. David, Bishop of Wales
March 1, 2008

The Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, and
Members of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church
815 Second Avenue
New York, N. Y. 10017

Dear Bishop Schori and Members of the House of Bishops,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and only Savior Jesus Christ! Please accept this letter as my formal response to the charge of abandonment of the communion that has been lodged against me.

On December 8, 2007, the Diocese of San Joaquin was forced to make the painful decision to leave The Episcopal Church. This action enabled the diocese to participate in the provision of the Province of the Southern Cone of South America to become a member diocese on an emergency, temporary and pastoral basis. This drastic action was necessary because The Episcopal Church failed to heed years of warnings from all quarters of Christendom to turn back from false teaching and to accept Holy Scripture as the supreme authority for life. On September 25, 2007, The Episcopal Church and, specifically its House of Bishops, vetoed a plan created by the Anglican Communion Primates, and previously agreed to by Presiding Bishop Schori while in Dar-es-Salaam, that would have offered a spiritual safe harbor to the Diocese of San Joaquin and other orthodox dioceses. This defiance of the collective will of the Anglican Communion clearly demonstrated that The Episcopal Church fully intends to remain on a path that is irreconcilable with God’s word and the Anglican Faith.

The evidence in the public record reveals that the Diocese of San Joaquin was left with no choice but to separate from The Episcopal Church to preserve Biblical truth and the historic Anglican Faith and Order. It is important to note that this is separation and not schism. Separation, by definition, is the Biblical answer to unrepentant and public false teaching and immorality. The Diocese of San Joaquin consequently made the appropriate and courageous decision at its Annual Convention by an overwhelming vote in both clergy and lay orders (Pro 173 to Con 22) to realign itself with an orthodox province of the Anglican Communion made possible through the heroic action of both Archbishop Gregory Venables and the Provincial Synod of the Southern Cone of South America meeting in Valparaiso, Chile November 8, 2007.

Immediately after the Diocese of San Joaquin voted to accept the invitation of the Southern Cone, the Annual Convention was greeted by these words of Archbishop Venables: “Welcome home. And welcome back into full fellowship in the Anglican Communion.” It is my hope and prayer that one day The Episcopal Church will hear these same words. After the Diocese of San Joaquin had voted to become a member diocese of the Southern Cone, I was received into membership of the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone as the Bishop of San Joaquin. At this moment, therefore, I am a bishop in the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone, and I am the Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin. The Episcopal Church has no jurisdiction or authority to affect my status in any of these capacities. This leaves only my status as a member of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church to be determined. Rather than force the House of Bishops to a vote, I herewith tender my resignation as a member of the
House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church effective midnight EST, March 7, 2008.

The Episcopal Church and Bishop Schori will remain in my prayers and the prayers of all parishes and missions in the Diocese of San Joaquin. The door of reconciliation will always be open.

May God bless you and keep you.

Sincerely, in Christ,

The Rt. Rev. John-David M. Schofield

Bishop of San Joaquin

Americans’ percentage of equity in their homes fell below 50% for the first time on record since 1945, the Federal Reserve said. Homeowners’ portion of equity slipped to downwardly revised 49.6% in the second quarter of 2007, the central bank reported in its quarterly U.S. Flow of Funds Accounts, and declined further to 47.9% in the fourth quarter — the third straight quarter it was under 50%. That marks the first time homeowners’ debt on their houses exceeds their equity since the Fed started tracking the data in 1945. The total value of equity also fell for the third straight quarter to $9.65 trillion from a downwardly revised $9.93 trillion in the third quarter. Home equity, which is equal to the percentage of a home’s market value minus mortgage-related debt, has steadily decreased even as home prices jumped earlier this decade due to a surge in cash-out refinances, home equity loans and lines of credit and an increase in 100% or more home financing. Economists expect this figure to drop even further as declining home prices eat into the value of most Americans’ single largest asset. Moody’s Economy.com estimates that 8.8 mln homeowners, or about 10.3% of homes, will have zero or negative equity by the end of the month. Even more disturbing, about 13.8 mln households, or 15.9%, will be “upside down” if prices fall 20% from their peak… Experts expect foreclosures to rise as more homeowners struggle with adjusting rates on their mortgages, making their monthly payments unaffordable. Problems in the credit markets and eroding home values are making it harder to refinance out of unmanageable loans. The threat of so-called “mortgage walkers,” or homeowners who can afford their payments but decide not to pay, also increases as home values depreciate and equity diminishes. Banks and credit-rating agencies already are seeing early evidence of this.

You can read more about this here.

That, in the opinion of this Conference, unity in faith and discipline will be best maintained among the several branches of the Anglican Communion by due and canonical subordination of the synods of the several branches to the higher authority of a synod or synods above them.

–Resolution IV of the 1867 Lambeth Conference

We, Bishops of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, in visible Communion with the United Church of England and Ireland, professing the faith delivered to us in Holy Scripture, maintained by the primitive Church and by the Fathers of the English Reformation, now assembled by the good providence of GOD, at the Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, under the presidency of the Primate of all England, desire, first, to give hearty thanks to Almighty GOD for having thus brought us together for common counsels and worship ; secondly, we desire to express the deep sorrow with which we view the divided condition of the flock of Christ throughout the world, ardently longing for the fulfillment of the prayer of our Lord: ”˜ That all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me’; and, lastly, we do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be most effectually promoted, by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity, as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive Church, summed up in the Creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed General Councils, and by drawing each of us closer to our common Lord, by giving ourselves to much prayer and intercession, by the cultivation of a spirit of charity, and a love of the Lord’s appearing.

–Lambeth 1867

Kenyans have been asked to forgive one another and reconcile as the country heals from the effects of post-election violence.

Religious leaders also thanked God for saving Kenya from the brink of collapse.

Praying in Parliament, retired Anglican Bishop Peter Njenga said: “You saved us from hatred, danger and ethnic violence that had threatened to tear our country apart. We, therefore, ask you to help us remain united and set aside our differences for the benefit of the country.”

Kakamega Catholic diocese Bishop Philip Sulumeti recognised the heavy burden the more than 200 MPs had on their shoulders in ensuring that the country remained united.

Bishop Sulumeti said Kenyans had experienced difficult moments due to the election violence and regretted the loss of lives and destruction of property.

Read it all.

I normally stay away from commenting on the convulsions of the Anglican Communion ”“ whether here in the Diocese of New Westminster, whose bishop is a heretic and schismatic (by the standard definitions of those terms); or in the Anglican Church of Canada, which tolerates such behaviour; or in the Anglican Communion worldwide, which is wracked by controversy over the legitimacy of homosexuality (ostensibly) and a lot of other things, such as heresy, schism, power politics, racism and more (fundamentally).

Read it all.

In this season of Lent, many Christians in liturgical traditions have been meditating on the Stations of the Cross, a series of events ”” biblical and traditional ”” depicting the story of Jesus’ death.

This year, however, the Episcopal Church is promoting new devotional material for Lent: the Stations of the Millennium Development Goals. The church’s Episcopal Relief and Development office created a liturgy based on the United Nations plan to eliminate extreme poverty and other global ills, and sent e-mail to church leaders encouraging its use “in lieu of the traditional Stations of the Cross service.”

Mike Angell of the denomination’s Office of Young Adult and Higher Education Ministries designed the stations for a September 2007 young adult conference. While the traditional Stations of the Cross meditation has 14 stations (though this has varied through church history), the Episcopalian Stations of the Millennium Development Goals liturgy has only eight stations, one for each goal.

Station four, on reducing child mortality, reads:

Every three seconds a child under the age of five dies. A disproportionate number of these children live in developing countries, without access to clean water or basic medical care.For personal reflection and prayer: Lord, help us to love and care for little children””the least of these who are of your family. Protect and heal them with your divine power.

Read it all.

A Tom Toles cartoon.

Defaults on home mortgages touched another all-time high at the end of the last year as foreclosures surged on adjustable-rate mortgages, an industry group reported on Thursday.

The latest data is expected to put further pressure on policy makers and the mortgage industry to move faster to contain losses and help more homeowners. In recent days, regulators and lawmakers have begun suggesting that the federal government might need to take a more interventionist role in the mortgage business.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday that the number of loans past due or in foreclosure jumped to 7.9 percent, from 7.3 percent at the end of September and 6.1 percent in December 2006. Before the third quarter, the rate had never risen past 7 percent since the survey began in 1979.

Read it all.

Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.

The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in hospital diagnosis to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a range of black and white photographs. Then a computer was able to correctly predict in nine out of 10 cases which image people were focused on. Guesswork would have been accurate only eight times in every 1,000 attempts.

The study raises the possibility in the future of the technology being harnessed to visualise scenes from a person’s dreams or memory.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley, said: “Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience at any moment in time.”

Read it all.

Worth a look; one of the panelists, an Anglican, comments on the diocese of New Westminster.

Watch it all and there is more here.

The newly enthroned Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, The Right Reverend Michael Lewis, recently held a series of meetings with representatives of political, religious and community organisations. A graduate of Merton College, Oxford, England where he studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, before completing his second degree in Theology. Michael Lewis is a theologian of the highest order.

Previously the Bishop of Middleton in Manchester-England where he was responsible for over 150 churches in an area no more than 35 miles in length, Bishop Michael now finds himself as the Leader of one of the largest Dioceses in the Anglican Church. His new area of geographical responsibility has a distance from end to end of around 2,000 miles. Having moved from England’s second city to cover an area of the world which is, ‘where the great questions of our day are focussed’ it would be easy to imagine that his job has changed in the same magnitude. His thoughts are mixed on this. ‘My job has not changed radically, but certainly in detail.’
Having an open agenda for this first visit to Kuwait Bishop Michael was, he said, eager merely to ‘get around, listen to people, and to preach the Gospel and assist others in living out the Christian mission’ as he would anywhere.

Read it all.

Members of an Anglican parish in Metchosin, determined to quit the church over gay marriages, can continue to use the premises of St. Mary of the Incarnation.

Under an agreement reached this week, the two ministers of St. Mary of the Incarnation have resigned. Sharon Hayton is no longer rector and Andrew Hewlett is no longer assistant priest.

But also under the agreement, the Diocese of British Columbia has agreed to allow the breakaway parishioners to continue to meet at the church at 4125 Metchosin Rd., at least temporarily.

Read it all.

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.

The Michigan governor, along with top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign and Florida’s state party chair, are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. That’s a change from their previous insistence that the primaries their states held in January should determine how the their delegates are allocated.

Clinton won both contests, but the results were meaningless because the elections violated national party rules.

Read it all.

At first, as he adjusted pumps and checked temperatures, Aaron Boucher looked like any technician in the control room of an electrical plant. Then he rushed to the window and scanned the sky, to check his fuel supply.

Mr. Boucher was battling clouds, timing the operations of his power plant to get the most out of patchy sunshine. It is a skill that may soon be in greater demand, for the world appears to be on the verge of a boom in a little-known but promising type of solar power.

It is not the kind that features shiny panels bolted to the roofs of houses. This type involves covering acres of desert with mirrors that focus intense sunlight on a fluid, heating it enough to make steam. The steam turns a turbine and generates electricity.

The technology is not new, but it is suddenly in high demand. As prices rise for fossil fuels and worries grow about their contribution to global warming, solar thermal plants are being viewed as a renewable power source with huge potential.

Read it all.

A third lesson, big banks are stuck with hundreds of billions in bad real estate loans. That’s also happened before, in the 1980s savings and loan crisis. Back then, everybody had to learn that the best way to unravel bad credit was fast. Yet once again we’re hearing prominent politicians urging rate freezes and foreclosure moratoriums, postponing the inevitable at great cost.

We like to think that we get smarter as we get older, and that society makes intellectual progress from year to year — not on present evidence. It would be bad enough if we did not know better. It’s worse. We have unlearned what we do know.

Read it all.

Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today began plotting a ground game, advertising budgets and a confidence-brimming outreach strategy in hopes of both scoring a big victory in April’s Pennsylvania primary and accumulating enough superdelegates over time to even the nomination fight against Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama, who had 11 straight primary and caucus victories in February, has enjoyed momentum lately in picking off superdelegates, the party leaders who have a vote in the nomination. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers now believe that with her victories in Texas and Ohio last night, she can convince superdelegates to stand with her after a Pennsylvania victory.

She also believes that a strong showing in Pennsylvania, which has 188 delegates at stake, could set up a powerful one-two punch two weeks later in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, which have a combined 218 delegates. Her team believes she has an especially good shot at winning Indiana, where the state’s influential Democratic senator, Evan Bayh, a former two-term governor, was one of Mrs. Clinton’s earliest supporters.

Clinton advisers acknowledged on Wednesday that the delegate arithmetic still has them at a disadvantage; Mr. Obama has 1,456.5 delegates to Mrs. Clinton’s 1,370, and the upcoming primaries will award delegates proportionally to both the winner and the loser. That will have the effect making each candidate inch toward the 2,025 delegates needed for the nomination.

Senator Clinton is also hoping to get an extra boost by adding delegates to her column from Michigan and Florida, and her advisers today have been discussing ways to deal with the conundrum in those states.

Read it all.

Our panel of bloggers reacts to last night’s election results and dissects media coverage of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Joining in are Arlene Fenton of Black Women Vote; Baratunde Thurston of The Huffington Post and Jack and Jill Politics; and Kevin Ross of Three Brothers and a Sister.

Listen to it all from NPR.

Most legislators thought it was a terrific idea last fall when they required students in Illinois schools to have a moment of silence to pray or reflect, but House lawmakers now think they could have used a few more moments for reflection themselves before they put the law in place.

The House voted Tuesday to reverse the requirement after getting an earful of complaints from school administrators and teacher unions who found the requirement poorly thought out and unenforceable.

A total of 33 lawmakers switched positions on the moment of silence since last fall-18 Democrats and 15 Republicans, including Republi can leader Tom Cross of Oswego.

The move represented a stark contrast from last year’s position of both the House and Senate, which overwhelmingly voted to give students a brief period for “silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.”

Not only did they approve the moment of silence requirement, but in October both chambers delivered a three-fifths supermajority to override Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s veto of the legislation.

Read it all.

Twice, Nancy Cadavid left her native Colombia to live in the United States. Twice, she settled in cities that have long attracted large numbers of immigrants ”” New York first, Miami second.

Now that she’s here to stay, Cadavid, 44, has chosen to live far from the large cities that have been traditional immigrant gateways. She works two jobs and owns a house here in central Florida, near Orlando and Disney World. Her daughter graduated from Florida State University and works in advertising in Tampa. Her son attends community college and works part time at Disney.

Cadavid’s tale is more than an immigrant success story. It reflects the path that immigrants increasingly are taking after they first enter the country ”” legally or illegally. Her moves eventually landed Cadavid ”” now a U.S. citizen ”” in a suburban county, well ensconced in middle-class America.

Read it all.

I enjoyed this.

The BBC says:

Quentin Letts takes a witty but thought-provoking look at some great British institutions….

in this case the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Listen to it all.

Watch it all.

What if we told you the Pentagon has a ray gun? And what if we told you it can stop a person in his tracks without killing or even injuring him? Well, it’s true. You can’t see it, you can’t hear it, but as CBS News correspondent David Martin experienced first hand, you can feel it.

Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq. But it’s still not there. That because in the middle of a war, the military just can’t bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn’t kill.

I highly recommend the whole video report (link accompanies article). The problem is they do not get into the real potential ethical dilemmas this could create: What if it were used to prevent the Birmingham boycott or Tiananmen Square or some other protest?

Joseph Stiglitz: The war has led directly to the U.S. economic slowdown. First, before the U.S. went to war with Iraq, the price of oil was $25 a barrel. It’s now $100 a barrel.
While there are other factors involved in this price rise, the Iraq war is clearly a major factor. Already factoring in growing demand for energy from India and China, the futures markets projected before the war that oil would remain around $23 a barrel for at least a decade. It is the war and volatility it has caused, along with the falling dollar due to low interest rates and the huge trade deficit, that accounts for much of the difference.

That higher price means that the billions that would have been in the pockets of Americans to spend at home have been flowing out to Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters.

Second, money spent on Iraq doesn’t stimulate the economy at home. If you hire a Filipino contractor to work in Iraq, you don’t get the multiplier effect of someone building a road or a bridge in Missouri.

Third, this war, unlike any other war in American history, has been entirely financed by deficits. Deficits are a worry because, in the end, they crowd out investment and pile up debt that has to be paid in the future. That hurts productivity because little is left over either for public-sector investment in research, education and infrastructure or private-sector investment in machines and factories.

Read it all.

As athletes train for the summer Olympics in China, a new book claims that the country’s vast spy network is gearing up for a different challenge – keeping an eye on journalists and potential troublemakers.

French writer Roger Faligot, author of some 40 intelligence-related books, has penned ‘The Chinese Secret Services from Mao to the Olympic Games’, due out February 29.

His findings claim that special teams are being formed at the country’s embassies abroad “to identify sports journalists … and to define if they have an ‘antagonistic’ or ‘friendly’ attitude in regards to China.”

Read it all.