The gun-toting, right-to-life populism (government is the problem, not the solution) that will be espoused by the McCain-Palin ticket will, I think, prove to be very well-received in rural areas of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, southern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia.

Am I worried? You bet. We Democrats tend to be very urban-centric in our strategies, focusing on metro areas (cities and suburbs) that absolutely contain the most registered voters in the majority of these states.

However, and ironically because of the power of the change message this time around, I believe rural areas, especially in swing states, will play a disproportionately large role in determining the outcome of this election.

For the past 28 years, my wife and I have had a house in Oconto County, a rural area about an hour and 15 minutes north of Green Bay, home to a lot of blue-collar workers and farmers, most of whom hunt and fish avidly and would consider themselves populists. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing McCain-Palin will be extraordinarily popular in Oconto and counties just like it across Wisconsin and other states.

Read it all from Sunday’s Chicago Tribune.

Is there somewhere on earth where the Sunday afternoons are so interminably long that ones life would be more enhanced by reading in detail the Reflections on the Lambeth Conference 2008 than by, say, watching another re-run of The Great Escape or re-attempting a Sudoku puzzle? Perhaps there is, but for most of us life is too short for me to recommend the exercise.

What was the Lambeth Conference convened to achieve? The answer is: nothing. Remember, with the exception of the very first (and with interruptions for world wars), Lambeth Conferences have occurred decennially. They are held because it is time to hold one, not (essentially) because there is something that needs to be done which only a gathering of Anglican bishops from all the corners of the globe can achieve.

Thus, despite the acknowledgement within the Reflections document itself that the Anglican Communion is in crisis’, it was possible to organize this conference with the express intention of avoiding confronting the issue. Behind the scenes, of course, the intention was that by avoiding confrontation, a resolution of sorts could be approached, since keeping everyone together would further establish the status quo as de facto policy.

Publicly, the means to this end was a bastardized African import, the so-called indaba groups. These, one suspects, as much resembled the real thing as village-hall yoga does the Indian mystic tradition. Historically, an indaba is a meeting of Africans, not Anglican bishops, and brings with it the assumptions of African, not western liberal, culture, one of which is not ‘constantly avoiding confronting the issue’ (thus, from an old ANC Daily Briefing on the internet: ‘Sport and Recreation Minister Ngconde Balfour has called a one-day indaba to thrash out the problems plaguing professional boxing in South Africa’). The organizers of the Lambeth Conference adopted the term indaba because it sounded good, but used it for their own ends.

And now a Conference called for no particular reason, holding meetings designed to reach no particular conclusions, has produced not a report but a series of reflections.
Having decided to decide nothing, it appears that the Conference felt it must comment on everything. Thus the reader who is willing may wade through pages of good intentions about good causes ranging from disaster relief to carbon footprints. Yet, of course, nothing is (nor could be) specific; not even the Gospel which, it is claimed, lies at the heart of the Communion’s concept of mission. In reality, as we know, there is no shared concept of ‘Gospel’ across the Anglican Communion, and so in matters of religion specifically there can be no shared concept of ministry. (Indeed, I amused myself with the thought that the Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, who addressed the Conference on the authority of Scripture, would have held that almost none of the delegates were gospel preachers’ in his own terms – certainly not Dr Rowan Williams, who has his own peculiar take on the topic.)

Moving beyond matters of doctrine, however, the Reflections unabashedly define the social mission of the Anglican Communion in terms of fulfilling the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. (Quite what would happen to the mission of the Church were these goals to be achieved does not seem to have crossed anyone’s mind).
But what about the elephant in the living room – the crisis in the Communion which prompted so many bishops not even to attend? Thanks to the process set up by the Conference organizers, the elephant is, of course, admired from every angle, but remember, there is no intention to remove it from the room. The last Lambeth Conference spoke clearly and concisely on the subject; yet we have been reminded by both words and deeds that such pronouncements have no binding force (despite the Conference being acknowledged as one of the instruments of the Communion, para. 136).

So no matter what the indaba groups may have shared or the Reflections may reflect, only the pathologically optimistic will suppose anything is going to deter the western churches from promoting and supporting the revisionist agenda. As many have noted, the dominant voice on campus, other than the bishops themselves, was that of the many pro-LGBT groups, not only in the market-place but via a daily ‘newspaper’.

What fewer seem yet to have noticed is that, as defined in the Reflections, one of the three ‘moratoria’ on actions currently ‘dividing’ the Communion would require sanctions against the Church of England itself, namely ‘Episcopal ordinations of partnered homosexual people’ [para. 131]. These are, of course, entirely permissible within the law of the land and the guidelines set out in the 2005 statement by the House of Bishops on Civil Partnerships: ‘The House of Bishops does not regard entering into a civil partnership [with someone of the same sex] as intrinsically incompatible with holy orders’ [para. 19]. True, the statement goes on to say that this is ‘provided the person concerned is willing to give assurances to his or her bishop that the relationship is consistent with the standards for the clergy set out in Issues in Human Sexuality (i.e. is sexually celibate).’
However, the Reflections clearly need to be more careful on this issue at least. And in any case, the latitude exercised by some English bishops in refusing, as the Bishop of Chelmsford puts it, ‘to engage in intrusive behaviour into the private lives of their clergy’ means that the conditions of the moratoria are almost certainly being breached in the English Provinces.

In any case, we keep returning to the question of whether anything coming out of this Lambeth Conference can add to what has gone before or to what is currently in process. Remarks contained in the Reflections suggest anxieties about the Instruments of Communion, a lack of confidence in the Windsor Process, suspicion about the Covenant (specifically when it comes to any disciplinary process) and a determination that the proposed Pastoral Forum should be toothless – a ‘pastoral’ body without legal powers acting solely at the discretion of the Primate of the Province concerned.

One is reminded finally (and ironically) of Oscar Wilde’s dictum: ‘The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say’ Sadly, we may modify his final comment about the House of Commons to read: ‘the Lambeth Reflections has nothing to say and says it.’

–This article appears in the September 2008 edition of New Directions magazine, page 10

Rocco describes what happened this past Sunday:

Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison told his usual Sunday-morning crowd that, having seen the [Meet the Press] program just prior to the liturgy, he was shelving his prepared preach to address the theme of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Delaware senator “as Catholics.”

“You can see I’m worked up about this,” the Wisconsin prelate — like Biden, a son of Scranton — said during his weekly 11am Mass at St Patrick’s parish in the heart of the “People’s Republic.”

It is an mp3 file and the homily is about 15 minutes long (hat tip: Rocco).

Update: A brief biography of the bishop is here.

September 6, 2008: Internet security officials just got another shock, when a British survey of network administrators (the people who run the networks, and Internet access, in large companies) revealed that 88 percent admitted they would take company Internet secrets (passwords, system layout and the like) with them if they were ever suddenly fired.

Read it all.

The London Stock Exchange yesterday suffered a seizure, blacking out as a result of a computer glitch on a critical day in the world’s stock markets. Across the Atlantic, Wall Street burst into life thanks to the government rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the companies that ultimately fund most American mortgages.
Little over a year ago, New York worried that London was set to leave it behind. These days, it is the City that eyes Wall Street with creeping envy. For America’s handling of the credit crunch has been in stark contrast to Britain’s approach. When the inter-bank markets froze last summer, the US Federal Reserve made cash much more freely available to the banks; the Bank of England, both in word and deed, was more measured. When the economy started to slow, the Fed slashed interest rates despite worldwide concerns about inflation; the Bank has held steady. When Bear Stearns faltered, the Fed orchestrated a weekend firesale; the Bank, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority spent nearly five months reversing into the nationalisation of Northern Rock. And when the housing market and the financial system were in danger, Washington stepped in to take control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; Downing Street announced a stamp duty holiday. On each occasion, America has chosen pragmatism over principle, decisiveness over dither.

The US and the UK are, of course, very different economies. The policy options available to London and Washington differ too. But America has responded to the financial turmoil in marked contrast to the UK and, so far, with more success: the dollar has strengthened against the pound and the US has avoided recession.

Read it all.

Florida’s Supreme Court on Wednesday tossed out two statewide ballot initiatives aimed at ending a longstanding ban on public funding for religious institutions, drawing praise from church-state watchdogs.

Civil liberties groups had filed suit to remove the amendments headed for the November ballot, which sought to rewrite the state constitution to allow church groups to participate in government programs, and pave the way for school voucher programs.

A lower court had upheld the initiatives in an Aug. 4 decision.

Read it all.

The Justice Department has quietly hired one of the nation’s best-known litigators, former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Sanford Litvack, for a possible antitrust challenge to Google Inc.’s growing power in advertising.

Mr. Litvack’s hiring is the strongest signal yet that the U.S. is preparing to take court action against Google and its search-advertising deal with Yahoo Inc. The two companies combined would account for more than 80% of U.S. online-search ads.

Google shares tumbled 5.5%, or $24.30, to $419.95 in 4 p.m. trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, while Yahoo shares were up 18 cents to $18.26.

For weeks, U.S. lawyers have been deposing witnesses and issuing subpoenas for documents to support a challenge to the deal, lawyers close to the review said. Such efforts don’t always mean a case will be brought, however.

Read it all.

“I think this is a bigger financial crisis…Instead of nationalizing an industry like the S&L industry, we’ve effectively nationalized the mortgage market.”

—Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com

MR. BROKAW: Two weeks ago I interviewed Senator Nancy Pelosi–she’s the speaker of the House, obviously–when she was in Denver. When Barack Obama appeared before Rick Warren, he was asked a simple question: When does life begin? And he said at that time that it was above his pay grade. That was the essence of his question. When I asked the speaker what advice she would give him about when life began, she said the church has struggled with this issue for a long time, especially in the last 50 years or so. Her archbishop and others across the country had a very strong refutation to her views on all this; I guess the strongest probably came from Edward Cardinal Egan, who’s the Archbishop of New York. He said, “Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being `chooses’ to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.” Those are very strong words. If Senator Obama comes to you and says, “When does life begin? Help me out here, Joe,” as a Roman Catholic, what would you say to him?

SEN. BIDEN: I’d say, “Look, I know when it begins for me.” It’s a personal and private issue. For me, as a Roman Catholic, I’m prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths–Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others–who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They’re intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life–I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. And I know you get the push back, “Well, what about fascism?” Everybody, you know, you going to say fascism’s all right? Fascism isn’t a matter of faith. No decent religious person thinks fascism is a good idea.

Read it all (there is a video link available for those who desire it also).

The Vatican has ordered an outspoken Bloc Québécois MP to quit his seat in the House of Commons and return to his job as a Roman Catholic priest.

Rev. Raymond Gravel said the decision was due to a backlash in English Canada over his “misinterpreted” comments on abortion, but that he had no choice but to follow his original calling.

“My first mission in life is to be a priest, not to be in politics,” he said in an interview.

Father Gravel, 55, is a former prostitute who became a priest in his mid-20s. He worked on behalf of the poor and the elderly after being elected to the House of Commons in a 2006 by-election in the Quebec riding of Repentigny.

Read it all.

The bishop’s article purports not to take sides in the dispute that is threatening to split the Anglican Communion. But such ”˜neutrality’ is not what it seems. What the Guardian has done with the piece is not fair, but nor is it entirely scurrilous. It represents the kind of over-simplification that nonetheless identifies the main ”˜cash value’ of what is being said. The 1991 report Issues in Human Sexuality essentially reaffirmed traditional Christian teaching, but it allowed for a freedom-of-conscience exception for lay-people who sincerely believe that it is God’s call to them to be in a homosexual sexual relationship. The press had no interest in the reaffirmation of traditional Christian teaching: the ”˜cash value’ of this was that the Church of England was giving approval to homosexual sexual relationships. The 2005 pastoral statement from the House of Bishops of the Church of England on Civil Partnerships, while on the surface of it much more restrictive, has in the public perception – and arguably in actual practice – done for the clergy what Issues in Human Sexuality did for the laity.

The attempt to keep the opposed views all at the table together in the name of the higher value of unity is admirable when the matters in dispute are not of core importance, or when it is not yet clear whether they are of core importance. But in relation to ethical matters the attempt to keep the conversation going over an extended period is to give victory to the most libertarian of the options under consideration, and especially so when the forces of politically correctness in the wider culture are all aligned with the most libertarian view. We would not countenance a protracted period of consultation ”“ with its implicit weakening of the force of existing guidelines ”“ if the issue at stake was, say, compulsory euthanasia of the over-sixties in view of the effect of population growth on the ecology of the planet. While there is always an important place for debate about how ethical principles are to be applied in practice to complex situations, there is no weight of moral conviction behind views that need to be endlessly questioned.

There is always a danger that Christian groups are only reflecting the values of their contexts; and there is always a need for Christian groups to clarify their values in relation to their contexts. In relation to questions of homosexual sexual practice the Bible both engages with and transcends its larger social context. Its guidance in this area is clear and it is equally clear that it treats the matter as one of profound importance. Listening to the experience of gays and lesbians, Christians or not, will always be important. So will valuing them as people, drawing close to them, extending compassion to and giving all practical support. But we do no kindness to anyone (homosexuals included) or to our society at large, if we allow ourselves to drift away from traditional Christian sexual morality.

Read it all.

Members of the diocese of the Yukon, meeting in Whitehorse on May 31, failed to elect a new bishop, and Archbishop Terrence Buckle said he would postpone his retirement and remain in office.

Archbishop Buckle, who is 67, had said earlier this year that he would retire at the end of 2008. Canadian Anglican bishops generally retire before or at the age of 70.

Through seven rounds of voting, the 35 delegates assembled at Christ Church Cathedral were not able to give any of the five candidates the required simple majority in each of the two houses of clergy and laity as well as an overall two-thirds majority.

Read it all.

In Pittsburgh, in any case, the situation is markedly different. For many months “remaining Episcopal” diocesan officers, clergy, and lay leaders from across the spectrum of diocesan theological diversity and representing all the regions of the diocese, have been working together in the context of “Across the Aisle” conversations to establish plans for an orderly and canonical reorganization of the Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church, should the constitutional amendment concerning realignment be approved at the October 4 convention. These preparations have been taking place transparently, not secretly. Importantly, the leadership of the Episcopal Church has been apprised of these preparations and has indicated a commitment to support the local initiatives for canonical transition.

Despite rumors and anxieties that have moved through the diocese in the past few months, the Presiding Bishop and other leadership of the Episcopal Church have clearly indicated that they do not wish to improvise extra-canonical solutions when canonical solutions are possible, as they most certainly are here. This is an important point, as our clergy, vestries, and congregations seek to discern the best way forward. Ecclesiastical “martial law” is not going to be declared in Pittsburgh, armies of occupation will not descend upon us, and decisions about episcopal leadership and other matters of governance will be made by the clergy and laity of the remaining diocese ourselves, in an orderly, canonical process.

For us in Pittsburgh, as for our brothers and sisters in San Joaquin, remaining-Episcopal or realigning, the future is in many ways a mystery. We have problems to address on both sides of that dividing line, and among the members on both sides, that are going to be challenging. My sense is that in San Joaquin what began as sometimes unsettling and experimental improvisation is now gradually settling into a more orderly pattern of life and ministry, the California courts gradually sorting out the various legal concerns involved–and that as both we in Pittsburgh and the leadership of the Episcopal Church have learned from the experience of the San Joaquin transition, the prospects for a successful transition here have significantly improved.

Read it all.

Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

“For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church,” ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. “It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society.”

Yet an opposing collection of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest before it starts, calling the ADF’s “Pulpit Initiative” an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.

Backed by three former top IRS officials, the group also wants the IRS to determine whether the nonprofit ADF is risking its own tax-exempt status by organizing an “inappropriate, unethical and illegal” series of political endorsements.

Read it all.

As unambiguous as we might wish the subject were, though, the reality of teen sex and pregnancy won’t go away just because some want it to. It isn’t laughable. And it’s not really news.

The hormonal imperative to reproduce has been getting young Americans in trouble since before there was an America: As many as a third of colonial brides were pregnant at the time of the Revolution, according to several historical sources, and possibly more than a third of births were out of wedlock.

What has changed, though, is birth control. The modern day fairly bristles with it.

Among sexually active 15- to 19-year-olds, 83 percent of girls and 91 percent of boys report using contraception””possibly explaining the 34 percent drop in teen birth rates between 1991 and 2005, according to the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

Yet the recent reversal of that trend (teen births have since risen 3 percent) reminds us that we must never relax our efforts at education. Every single kid has to be given the necessary information and urged to be smart, even when hormones scream.

Getting pregnant young is a tough thing. Carrying a baby and raising the child is hard work; giving one up is, for many, even harder. And though I support reproductive choice, it can’t be argued that abortion is a cakewalk either. I know””and I was an adult when I had mine.

And abstinence programs just don’t work: A 2004 study by Yale and Columbia Universities found that fully 88 percent of those who pledge abstinence have premarital sex anyway.

So we’re left with birth control, and information. And kindness, and compassion.

Read it all, also from yesterday’s Chicago Tribune.

Hungry after a recent day of classes, Lake Forest College freshman Peter Bacon piled an odd assortment of chicken patties, a grilled cheese sandwich, Tater Tots, mashed potatoes and meatloaf onto two dinner plates.

And he would have taken even more food, he said, if one staple weren’t missing from the college’s cafeteria: a plastic tray to carry it all.

“At most, I’ll carry two, maybe three plates on top of each other,” Bacon, 18, said. “I would love to have a tray.”

But students returning this fall to Lake Forest College and dozens of other campuses nationwide are finding that’s no longer an option. In one of the latest””and perhaps quirkiest””environmentally conscious initiatives, cafeteria trays are becoming as outdated as mystery meat.

Ditching the trays decreases food waste, conserves water and energy used in cleaning and reduces the need for polluting detergents, according to proponents of trayless dining. The move comes as campuses are competing to be the greenest by starting bike-sharing programs, adding environmental majors, focusing on energy efficiency and hiring “sustainability” coordinators.

But critics of the tray take-away, including Bacon, have a menu of complaints: It’s cumbersome to carry multiple plates. It’s disruptive to make several trips to get more food. And it takes longer to clear dirty dishes from the table.

Read it all from the front page of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune.

(ENS) In another step toward the Episcopal Church’s 76th General Convention in Anaheim, California, the process of forming legislative committees has begun.

Deputies have until September 30 to express three preferences for appointment to one of 23 committees.

While a preliminary review of those completed forms will begin next week, according to House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, no appointment decisions will be made until after the deadline. Anderson will appoint deputies to the committees and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will appoint bishop members.

To aid the appointment process, deputies also have been asked to outline their previous General Convention experience as well as their experience in the wider Episcopal Church. “It’s likely that first-time deputies without wider church experience won’t be appointed” to the committees, Anderson said.

There is a lot to learn about General Convention, she said, and first-time deputies can find themselves overwhelmed and feeling like observers rather than active participants. Anderson said this can be especially true when first-time deputies are named to legislative committees.

Read it all.

I’m sorry, Ms. Palin, but out there in Alaska, between moose shoots, did you hear about Bagram, Abu Ghraib, renditions, waterboarding, Guantánamo and the rest?

John McCain knows what happens when those rights disappear. He described his Vietnamese nightmare the next night: “They worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.”

A man remembers getting broken: That’s why McCain fought the use of torture by the Bush administration. His condoning of those words from his vice-presidential candidate is appalling. Foreign policy be damned if you can score a God-fearing-macho-versus-liberal-constitutionalist point.

But the bloody wars, seven years after 9/11, have not paused for this sterile U.S. cultural battle. With some 180,000 troops in the two theaters, U.S. reserve capacity is stretched to the limit – something Iran knows when it keeps the centrifuges turning and Russia knows when it grabs Georgia.

In Afghanistan, a Taliban-led insurgency is growing in reach and effectiveness. There’s talk of a mini-surge in U.S. troops there – now about 34,000 – to counter the threat, but little serious reflection on what precise end perhaps 12,000 additional forces would serve. Until that’s clarified, I’m against the mini-surge.

Read the whole article.

Sarah Palin’s baby shower included a surprise guest: her own baby. He had arrived in the world a month early, so on a sunny May day, Palin, the governor of Alaska, rocked her newborn as her closest friends, sisters, even her obstetrician presented her with a potluck meal, presents and blue-and-white cake.

Most had learned that Palin was pregnant only a few weeks before. Struggling to accept that her child would be born with Down syndrome and fearful of public criticism of a governor’s pregnancy, Palin had concealed the news that she was expecting even from her parents and children until her third trimester.

But as the governor introduced her son that day, according to a friend, Kristan Cole, she said she had come to regard him as a blessing from God. “Who of us in this room has the perfect child?” said Palin, who declined to be interviewed for this article.

Since that day, Trig Paxson Van Palin, still only 143 days old, has had an unexpected effect on his mother’s political fortunes. Before her son was born, Palin went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his arrival would not compromise her work. She hid the pregnancy. She traveled to Texas a month before her due date to give an important speech, delivering it even though her amniotic fluid was leaking. Three days after giving birth, she returned to work.

Read the whole article.

(ACNS) The man in charge of one of the country’s best loved landmarks and the cradle of Christianity in Wales was elected as the new Bishop of St Davids.

The Dean of St Davids Cathedral, the Very Reverend John Wyn Evans, was elected as the 128th bishop of the diocese by the Electoral College of the Church in Wales, at a “lock in ” meeting at the cathedral.

The election took place following the resignation of the former bishop, Rt Rev Carl Cooper, in May, who was bishop from 2002.

The Very Rev John Wyn Evans (known as Wyn), 61, has served as Dean for the past 14 years, during which time he was the driving force behind the £5.5m Cathedral restoration project, which included the acclaimed rebuilding and expansion of the historic cloisters area, and has secured the future of the building for generations to come.

He said he was stunned but honoured to have been elected bishop of the diocese in which he has served since his ordination. He said, “We are fortunate that Bishop Carl gave the diocese a sense of purpose and direction which I look forward to continuing.”

Read it all.

When Marilyn Lorenz of Alma, Mich., talks about living out her Catholic faith in daily life, she starts by describing what’s inside her refrigerator.

The produce is grown on nearby farms, and the milk is organic and hormone-free. Meat comes from a local farmer who lets his animals graze freely and doesn’t use antibiotics.

“Packing animals in factory farms, I think, is against God’s wishes,” says Lorenz, who changed her shopping and eating habits after a speaker at her parish broached the issues in 2007. “It isn’t something my faith could ever support.”

In bringing faith to bear anew on diet, Lorenz is among a growing movement of believers from various traditions who are exploring how to better reflect their moral values in the ways they eat. A few examples…

Read it all.

“Jesus for President!” So proclaims a progressive Christian movement aiming to tweak the national conscience. Recent trend lines in the country suggest an even more provocative tagline for our consideration: “Jesus for Parole.”

That’s right. Jesus is imprisoned ”” at least in the view of an increasingly vocal set of Christians spurred into action by some deeply troubling truths about America and our bursting-at-the-seams prison system.

The concern seems as well placed as it is challenging. The United States has crossed, for the first time, a dismal threshold: One out of every 100 American adults is in prison, according to the Pew Center on the States. Five states have reached the point where they are spending as much or more on corrections than they do on higher education systems. To place it all in perspective, consider that America has approximately 5% of the world population but about 25% of the world’s prison population.

The fact that violent crime, according to the Justice Department, has dropped over the same three decades of surging prison-population growth poses a complex tangle: Is less crime the product of get-tough enforcement and sentencing, or are we just incarcerating more low-level offenders who don’t need to be in prison? Probably some of both. But whatever the case, the situation is enough to chew on the conscience of any follower of a religion that emphasizes compassion and redemption. Multitudes of Americans are languishing in prison ”” and it’s all suggestive of something deeper afflicting the soul of the nation.

Read it all.

The Republican National Convention has given John McCain and his party a significant boost, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken over the weekend shows, as running mate Sarah Palin helps close an “enthusiasm gap” that has dogged the GOP all year.

McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters, the Republican’s biggest advantage since January and a turnaround from the USA TODAY poll taken just before the convention opened in St. Paul. Then, he lagged by 7 percentage points.

Read it all.

The Bush administration’s seizure of troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is potentially a $200 billion bet that it will help reverse a prolonged housing and credit crisis.

The historic move announced Sunday won support from both presidential campaigns, but private analysts worried that it may not be enough to stabilize the slumping housing market given the glut of vacant homes for sale, rising foreclosures, rising unemployment and weak consumer confidence.

Officials announced that both giant institutions were being placed in a government conservatorship, a move that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said allowing the companies to fail would have extracted a far higher price on consumers by driving up the cost of home loans and all other types of borrowing because the failures would “create great turmoil in our financial markets here at home and around the globe.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com predicted that 30-year mortgage rates, currently averaging 6.35 percent nationwide, could dip to close to 5.5 percent. That’s because investors will be more willing to buy the debt issued by Fannie and Freddie – and at lower rates – since the federal government is now explicitly standing behind that debt.

“Effectively, the federal government has now become the nation’s mortgage lender,” he said. “This takes a major financial threat off the table.”

Read it all.

Paradoxically, it’s Torres’s refusal to see beyond her personal experience that gives “American Widow” its power. Torres recounts her alienation from friends, many of whom get to the “enough is enough” phase with her a few months after Eddie’s death. And she flinches at the bullying commentators, from the political left to the right, who portrayed 9/11 widows as publicity-hungry media vultures.

“American Widow” is particularly barbed in its depiction of the incompetence, and sometimes the callousness, of aid organizations and government agencies assisting the victims. In one scene a haggard American Red Cross representative tells Torres the organization will contact her “when we can” about flying Eddie’s relatives from Colombia for the funeral, which is only a few days away. You could argue that these people were stretched to the limit. You could also argue that there are some jobs simply too sensitive to mismanage ”” a standard embodied here by a competent and compassionate F.B.I. agent who steps in and takes charge after Torres’s encounter with the Red Cross.

“American Widow” is a contrary beast for its depiction of a series of missed connections in a time venerated for the way it unified people. These incidents are sometimes unbearably moving, as when the smile of a maternity-shop clerk deflates after she’s told Torres is shopping for a black dress.

Read it all.

Allowing that the gospels contain “stories which we may reasonably suspect of being metaphysical fables”, Swinburne insists that they are “a basically reliable source of information about the life of Jesus”. Of course, Jesus did not go about saying, “I am God”, yet “the historical evidence of the actions as well as the words of Jesus are such as we would expect if Jesus did teach that he was divine”.

Thus, Jesus was not revealed to be divine only at the Resurrection, or in the Easter experience of the disciples, as some theologians would maintain. Without quoting any of them, Swinburne obviously aligns himself with the small, though perhaps increasing, number of New Testament scholars who would conclude from the evidence that Jesus knew all along that he was divine.

Much more adventurously, in an intellectual climate in which Christian fundamentalism and militant atheism often seem the loudest voices, Richard Swinburne argues, against both, that the key doctrines about Jesus – that he was God Incarnate, atoned for our sins, rose from the dead, and founded the Church – each is at least “moderately probable”, in terms of sheer logic. It is an exercise in what Catholics used to call natural theology that would have taken St Thomas’ breath away.

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Rabbis and bishops joined in affirming their common beliefs regarding marriage in a joint statement titled “Created in the Divine Image.” The statement was signed by Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld of Young Israel Synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills, New York, and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, with other Catholic and Jewish leaders

The bishops and rabbis affirm “our shared commitment to the ordinance of God, the Almighty One, who created man and woman in the divine image so that they might share as male and female, as helpmates and equals, in the procreation of children and the building up of society.”

In June, California became the second U.S. state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The governor of New York earlier this year instructed authorities in his state to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in states or countries where the unions are legal.

The Catholic-Jewish statement contests the claim that refusing to recognize same-sex unions as marriage is discrimination against homosexuals.

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DURING a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, the boss of General Motors (GM), Rick Wagoner, unveiled the Cadillac Provoq, a new hydrogen fuel-cell concept car. With a drivetrain emitting only water vapour, a 300-mile range and a top speed of 160kph (100mph), the vehicle, said Mr Wagoner, represented “the promise of truly sustainable transportation”. It was a promise that sounded vaguely familiar.

A decade earlier, in 1998, Mr Wagoner’s predecessor, Jack Smith, told the Detroit auto show that GM had a plan to produce a production-ready fuel-cell vehicle “by 2004 or sooner”. That same year, Ford’s incoming boss, Jacques Nasser, said that he saw fuel-cell cars as being a viable alternative to petrol cars for many people during the course of his career (he was replaced in 2001). And as recently as 2004 California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rhapsodised about “hydrogen highways” all across the state by 2010.

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Battered by weak sales, declining market share and miserable credit ratings, Detroit’s Big Three automakers are now turning to the US government for help.
General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC will be launching a campaign in the coming days to secure at least 25 billion dollars in federal loans to help get past the current economic malaise.

“This isn’t a bail out,” said Greg Martin, Washington spokesman for GM, the largest US automaker which has been awash in speculation for months that it is running short of cash.

“These are direct loans that we have to pay back,” added Ford spokesman Mike Moran.

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