While Barack Obama has struggled to capture the Jewish vote, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi ”” a fact that has gone largely unnoticed.

Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side, are first cousins once removed. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson) and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister.

Funnye (pronounced fuh-NAY) is chief rabbi at the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago. He is well-known in Jewish circles for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and the much smaller, and largely separate, world of black Jewish congregations, sometimes known as black Hebrews or Israelites. He has often urged the larger Jewish community to be more accepting of Jews who are not white.

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And the goals that young evangelical women have set for themselves reflect this worldview. In 2007, only 0.3% of women at non-Catholic religious institutions said that their probable career was “full-time homemaker.” There was also little difference between the goals of women at non-Catholic religious colleges and those at other schools when it came to pursuing advanced degrees. Surveys of college freshmen don’t necessarily reflect perfectly the choices that young people will ultimately make, but they do give a sense of the values that they have learned at home. Evangelical families now seem to expect their daughters to have careers.

Which is not to say these young women don’t place great importance on having a family. At secular schools 73% thought raising a family was very important, versus 80% at non-Catholic religious schools. Meanwhile, the percentage of women who said that being “very well off financially” was among their important objectives was also similar across the board — 69% at secular schools and 63% at religious ones. These goals are seen as no more incompatible for religious women than they are for secular ones. In fact, religious women may have a better chance of “having it all” than their secular counterparts. Since they tend to get married and have children earlier in life, they are less likely, Mrs. Palin notwithstanding, to have to have to make difficult choices between highly demanding mid-career work and the needs of a young family.

The reasons for these developments are many, but perhaps the most salient one is that evangelicals are an increasingly educated and upwardly mobile population. Evangelical colleges have grown at a rapid pace in the past 20 years, and the ratios of women to men there are even higher than at secular colleges.

So have evangelicals accepted the sexual revolution? Yes and no. While they generally agree that women should have careers, evangelical women and men still have some traditional social views — that sex should be reserved for marriage, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that the possibility of abortion on demand, far from being a key to women’s happiness, is simply wrong. In other words, like most Americans, they have rejected the more radical elements of feminism. Another newsflash for the pundits, perhaps.

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College students today celebrate 21st birthdays with an average of 12 drinks for men and nine for women, finds the most in-depth picture yet of the consequences of extreme partying.

The University of Texas-Austin research found 78% of students cited ill effects, including hangovers (54%). Of 44% who had blackouts, 22% found out later they had sex, and 22% got in a fight or argument. And 39% didn’t know how they got home.

Although the study focused on only one campus, researchers say the new level of “extreme drinking” goes way beyond “bingeing” ”” four or five drinks in one sitting. And it’s a phenomenon probably being repeated at schools across the country, researchers say. Studying 21st-birthday celebrations is a new area of research, and no national studies have been done, but studies on a handful of other campuses have found similar extremes.

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“There are two questions we will never have to ask ourselves, ‘Who is this man?’ and ‘Can we trust this man with the presidency?’ “

— Fred Thompson on John McCain, Sept. 2

This was the most effective line of the entire Republican convention: a ringing affirmation of John McCain’s authenticity and a not-so-subtle indictment of Barack Obama’s insubstantiality. What’s left of this line of argument, however, after John McCain picks Sarah Palin for vice president?

Palin is an admirable and formidable woman. She has energized the Republican base and single-handedly unified the Republican convention behind McCain. She performed spectacularly in her acceptance speech. Nonetheless, the choice of Palin remains deeply problematic.

It’s clear that McCain picked her because he had decided that he needed a game-changer. But why? He’d closed the gap in the polls with Obama. True, that had more to do with Obama sagging than McCain gaining. But what’s the difference? You win either way.

Obama was sagging because of missteps that reflected the fundamental weakness of his candidacy. Which suggested McCain’s strategy: Make this a referendum on Obama, surely the least experienced, least qualified, least prepared presidential nominee in living memory.

Palin fatally undermines this entire line of attack. This is through no fault of her own. It is simply a function of her rookie status….

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Bob Woodward, who wrote two books praising President Bush and then a third harshly criticizing him, is out with a fourth tome that renders a mixed verdict on Bush, lauding the president’s surge of troops into Iraq, but saying “too often he failed to lead.”

At 487 pages, “The War Within” is the fourth installment in Woodward’s series of books on the president. Its release is embargoed until Monday, although an advance copy was obtained exclusively by FOX News.

The new book is less critical than Woodward’s last tome, “State of Denial,” which savaged Bush for his execution of the war in Iraq. “Denial” ended with the line: “With all Bush’s upbeat talk and optimism, he had not told the American public the truth about what Iraq had become.”

Woodward repeats the line in his new book, adding: “My reporting for this book showed that to be even more the case than I could have imagined.”

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On a hot June evening in 1854, a group of liberal Christians met in the Odd Fellows Hall in downtown Exeter to vote the Universalist Society out of existence. Out of the meeting, the First Unitarian Society of Exeter was born.

There had been a small Universalist presence in the town for decades. Rejecting the notion of predestination, universalist teachings granted salvation to everyone and not just a chosen few. Followers had formed into a congregation in 1831 and by 1841 had built themselves a fine church on the corner of Front and Center streets. But the mortgage on the building was high and they didn’t have enough members to support themselves.

Meanwhile, the Second Parish Congregational Church was leaking members to the growing Unitarian movement. Unitarians rejected the idea of the holy trinity and had elements of universalism tempering those beliefs. Like margarine and butter, the Universalists and Unitarians were similar, but not quite the same. Still, they had enough in common to bring them all together for the meeting at the Odd Fellows Hall. They banded together and quickly paid off the mortgage.

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Hundreds of California high schools met this year’s federal academic targets released Thursday only because the state uses easier standards for high schools than for elementary and middle schools, a Times analysis has found.

But even with this boost, just 48% of the state’s high schools met the federal standard of “adequate yearly progress” in this year’s results.

The Times analysis identified about 300 high schools that were reported as meeting all federal standards even though their combined proficiency scores in math or English language arts on the California standards tests fell below proficiency levels required for federal compliance this year. Their passing marks were based on much higher scores registered on the easier high school exit exam.

In practical terms, this means that high schools are not being consistently evaluated on what their students are supposed to be learning. The situation exemplifies California’s complex, uneven and often competing state and federal accountability systems.

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From time to time I have pondered on the Archbishop’s viewpoints as revealed to me and whether they should be more widely known. But I had no desire to embarrass Dr. Williams: I didn’t want people mocking him or saying ”˜If he is averagely muddled what does that say about the rest of them!’ I have respect for his authority and I appreciated his responding graciously and candidly to my enquiries. As a physician I have a high regard for the principle of confidentiality. Besides I hoped that in time it would become apparent that he had changed to more orthodox views. I also wanted to be clear before God as to my own motives, for I had at times over the years found myself quite cross with him! In fact other than sharing the correspondence with my vicar at the time I had shown the letters only to a few people and made very little reference over the years. In a way it was all rather embarrassing and awkward and I had to just not fret about it, but hope and pray for the best. Besides, these are my Christian brothers and sisters in turmoil. How can I not be concerned?

The trigger to deciding to send the letters to the Press was this . In the Sunday Telegraph of 13th July I read an article about an interview with the Archbishop of Wales. He stated that he would be happy to ordain a homosexual bishop. It occurred to me that he would not have been so brazen if he had not known that Dr. Williams had significant liberal views on the matter. I had also sensed that the liberal wing of the church knew far more than the GAFCon group about those views. I decided that the balance should be redressed, and that the best place for Dr. Williams’ views to be aired was at Lambeth. The best way to do that was to give any journalist who thought the matter relevant enough the opportunity to challenge Dr. Williams or discuss with other bishops or whatever journalists usually do.

The copies of Dr. Williams’ letters along with a covering letter were mailed on 15th July. However, Ms Gledhill, who was the first to express interest in doing an article, did not get them before she left for Lambeth. This explains the delay in publication.

I enclose a copy of the covering letter. It will help explain my thinking..

It does seem that my hunch was right; from what I have gathered the GAFCon members were startled to learn Dr. Williams’ views and the Liberals knew them anyway.

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All the Primates have been sent copies of Dr [Rowan] Williams’s post-Con­ference reflections; but on Wednes­day the promised “bridge-building” letters had still not been sent out. “I know it is being worked on in the office, and it is in process. But the letters have not physically gone out to everyone absent yet,” a source in the Anglican Communion Office said.

The press officer, Canon Jim Rosen­thal, confirmed later in the day that they would be sent out at the end of the week.

Dr Williams and Canon Kearon have both been on leave.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, who is the newly appointed secretary of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), told The Guardian last week: “At Lambeth there was talk of building bridges, but as far as I know there has been no approach made.”

His remarks followed the publica­tion of a communiqué from the GAFCON Primates’ Council’s first meeting, held in London from 20 to 22 August. The five Primates ”” of Nigeria, the Southern Cone, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda ”” who formed the Council said that GAFCON “continues its advance”. They had found no reason “to make us hesitate from the course we are taking”.

They warned that a breach of the three Windsor Process moratoriums supported widely at the Lambeth Conference ”” no episcopal ordina-tions of partnered homosexual people, no blessing of same-sex unions, and no cross-border incur-sions by bishops ”” would lead to the Communion’s “fracture”.

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Senator John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday with a pledge to move the nation beyond “partisan rancor” and narrow self-interest in a speech in which he markedly toned down the blistering attacks on Senator Barack Obama that had filled the first nights of his convention.

Standing in the center of an arena here, surrounded by thousands of Republican delegates, McCain firmly signaled that he intended to seize the mantle of change Obama claimed in his own unlikely bid for his party’s nomination.

McCain suggested that his choice of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate gave him the license to run as an outsider against Washington, even though he has served in Congress for more than 25 years.

“Let me just offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second crowd: Change is coming,” McCain said.

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When First Baptist Church of Ridgeland opened its doors to Hurricane Gustav evacuees, some of the same people who fled Hurricane Katrina showed up.

“It’s kind of been like a family reunion,” said ministry assistant Jessica Heath. “We have some people staying with us and some stopped by to say hello.”

Hailed as the first responders to the 2005 storm, many churches and faith-based groups found they were even more prepared to help people affected by Gustav. And like they did during Katrina’s aftermath, the seasoned religious groups are quickly mobilizing to help restore normalcy to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“We’ll make sure they’re taken care of when they get home,” said Heath, whose church is preparing care packages for the 180 people it’s been housing since Hurricane Gustav struck.

Makes the heart glad–read it all.

Palin identifies herself only as Christian in her biography on the National Governors’ Association Web site. In an Aug. 14 interview with Time magazine, she once again described herself as Christian. When pressed, she said she attended a “nondenominational Bible church.”

“I was baptized Catholic as a newborn and then my family started going to nondenominational churches throughout our life,” she said. She did not mention her longtime association with the Assemblies of God, which claims nearly 3 million members and is one of the biggest Pentecostal groups in the U.S.

Grant Wacker, an expert in Pentecostalism at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., said he can understand why. He said the McCain campaign likely doesn’t want Palin associated with the best-known Pentecostal to ever hold public office, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, an active member of the Assemblies of God.

“Though Pentecostals are diverse and rapidly mainstreaming themselves, the public still perceives them as sectarian and uncompromising, and those traits will not help Palin’s image,” Wacker said.

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I believe that this gathering had a great chance to move forward in relationship building, and to some extent, as I have mentioned earlier, it did. But when it came to addressing the pressing needs of the Communion to develop a global Anglican strategy to address the issues of disease, poverty, illiteracy, the environment and state-sponsored violence against civilian populations, this conference succumbed to “blaming the victims.” As in 1998, the victims are those whose sexual orientation happens to be different from the majority. It is far easier to blame our divisions and our inability to act as a united Communion to address pressing global issues on those least able to defend themselves. Blaming the least among us continues to divert our attention away from the issues that threaten the very existence of humankind and the environmental health of our planet.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for sacrifices to be made to keep the garment of the Communion together. And for the American and Canadian churches, that clearly means sacrificing once again the full participation of gay and lesbian persons in the life of our church. I for one will not ask for any more sacrifices to be made by persons in our church who have been made outcasts because of their sexual orientation.

This Lambeth Conference could have been a positive turning point for the Anglican Communion, but instead the powers that be chose to seek a middle way that is neither “the middle” nor “the way.” It will therefore be up to bishops from around the Communion who have continuing partner and companion relationships to work toward a more holistic view of the church. The Anglican Communion must face into the hard truth that when we scapegoat and victimize one group of people in the church, all of us become victims of our own prejudice and sinfulness.

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In America, we change things that need to be changed. Each generation makes its contribution to our greatness. The work that is ours to do is plainly before us. We don’t need to search for it.

We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.

The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn’t a cause, it’s a symptom. It’s what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you.

Read it carefully and read it all.

The U.S. government needs to start using more of its money to support markets to stem a burgeoning “financial tsunami,” according to Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund.

Banks, securities firms and hedge funds are dumping assets, driving down prices of bonds, real estate, stocks and commodities, Gross, co-chief investment officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., said in commentary posted on the firm’s Web site today.

“Unchecked, it can turn a campfire into a forest fire, a mild asset bear market into a destructive financial tsunami,” Gross said. “If we are to prevent a continuing asset and debt liquidation of near historic proportions, we will require policies that open up the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury.”

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It was made starkly clear by the Windsor Continuation Group (WCG) that actions moving toward affirming same-sex unions, including those in the Anglican Church of Canada, have increased the danger of fracture in the Communion. The WCG’s call to observe the Windsor Report’s moratorium on such rites, seconded by Archbishop Williams, was widely supported by the bishops. Most of the bishops also seemed to concur with Archbishop Williams’ challenge to receive the Covenant as the best hope for an enduring Communion. Only as we as a church receive the Covenant positively do we have the best chance of remaining full participants in the Communion. As any marriage counselor will tell you, holding a family together finally means facing hard truths and making sacrifices.

A theme of Archbishop Williams’ addresses was thinking and acting out of “the centre” of our faith. Such a centre implies accountability to one another in important matters of doctrine and practice on behalf of the Church catholic. He said this as centrifugal forces of a confessional right and a revisionist left strain at our Communion. I wonder if Archbishop Williams didn’t have the voice of another melancholic Celt in the back of his mind: “Things fall apart/ the centre cannot hold”¦”

We give thanks for the bishops’ experiences of unity at Lambeth, and for proposed new means to support it. But will the centre hold? That depends in part on our own church. Time may soon tell.

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Try a mental exercise with me. Imagine you were not a person of faith and you came to the parish where you worship ”” would there be a way for you to find a safe place there where you felt free to explore your questions, struggles and doubts?

I bet you answered no; I know I have in most parishes in which I have served.

Yet it was William Temple who said that the church is the only organization in the world which exists primarily for those who are not yet her members. If that is the case, then why do people who do not have faith but who wish for faith or have questions about the gospel find most churches so unwelcoming in their quest?

To do better, churches need to provide porches. Although disappearing in many American homes recently, porches play a vital function. They are an intermediate ground in which people who live in the house come out of the house and can be seen, and indeed talked to, by passers by on the sidewalk.
It is a big risk to go into someone’s house, but not to talk to them on their porch. Indeed, most people when invited will go onto a porch and speak with people who ask them to come.

Such a safe intermediate ground is exactly what parishes need to provide. What will it look like? One example is the Alpha course, used in many Anglican parishes worldwide. It involves a meal, it has small group discussion after a presentation, and it seeks in its format to bend over backwards to allow people who do not consider themselves as Christians to partake.

In one parish in the diocese in which I serve, Saint Paul’s in Summerville, South Carolina, a self-professed Satanist became a believer through an Alpha class (Really).

Think about that for a moment. Do you think when he began he would have felt comfortable in Sunday morning worship? Indeed not. But the Alpha course gave him a safe porch on which to strike up a conversation and ask hard questions.

Another example would be what I call “Agnostics Anonymous” where you take a small group Bible study meeting at someone’s home and you plan an evening where group members invite friends for exactly the purpose of asking questions about the faith. You then bring in an ordained leader or lay leader who gives a provocative five minute presentation and then takes questions. With planning and prayer, these can be great opportunities.

Another idea of which I am fond is called “Questions from the Heart.” You have an Adult Sunday school class explicitly devoted to questions people are wrestling with in their faith. When the class begins you ask people to come prepared with written questions ”“ which they in their hearts really need answered ”“ which the leader then reads aloud. After that first introductory class, the questions are then printed and numbered. The subsequent classes consist of taking numbered questions, several at a time, and preparing for them over the next week together. This is the kind of an environment which someone wrestling with faith sometimes finds inviting.

Jesus told us to be fishers of men and women. In order to be effective at fishing, you need to have the right time and the right bait. That means providing porches where fish and bait can some together. May God grant us energy and creativity to provide such environments in our parishes in the weeks and years ahead.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is Canon Theologian for the Diocese of South Carolina and convenor of this blog

This message is specifically directed to every priest in charge of a congregation in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. However, I am sending it to all clergy, vestry members, and convention delegates on our mailing list so that everyone will know what I am proposing.

As the date approaches for our momentous Diocesan Convention vote in November, many parish clergy have attempted to make certain that their parishioners understand the issues surrounding the proposal that we separate from the General Convention of The Episcopal Church. In several places parish forums have been held, where outside speakers have been brought in to present the opposing sides on the question of realignment. Some of you have preached sermons on this subject, written articles for your parish newsletter, and even in a couple of places brought in General Convention authorities to speak to your people. In addition, several different groups have been formed in the Diocese, including Remain Episcopal, Via Media, and Remain Faithful, which have attempted to educate, organize, and motivate the laity to take sides on the question: “Should we remain with TEC or with the Diocese?” Legal counsel has been engaged, lawsuits are being anticipated, various steering committees have been formed, and outside assistance from the “815” church headquarters in New York is being sought.

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In Moscow, there has been no official comment about Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to Georgia. Russia has so far ignored or dismissed warnings from the West of economic and diplomatic consequences for its attack on Georgia. Russian officials appear to be enjoying defying the West.

Listen to it all.

The best deal on fuel in the country right now might be here in Utah, where people are waiting in lines to pay the equivalent of 87 cents a gallon. Demand is so strong at rush hour that fuel runs low, and some days people can pump only half a tank.

It is not gasoline they are buying for their cars, but natural gas.

By an odd confluence of public policy and private initiative, Utah has become the first state in the country to experience broad consumer interest in the idea of running cars on clean natural gas.

Residents of the state are hunting the Internet and traveling the country to pick up used natural gas cars at auctions. They are spending thousands of dollars to transform their trucks and sport utility vehicles to run on compressed gas. Some fueling stations that sell it to the public are so busy they frequently run low on pressure, forcing drivers to return before dawn when demand is down.

It all began when unleaded gasoline rose above $3.25 a gallon last year, and has spiraled into a frenzy in the last few months.

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Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

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I will consider posting comments on this article which are submitted first by email to: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Married couples in their later years often show a great deal of affection,says best-selling author Maggie Scarf, 77, who has spent more than 30 years studying relationships.

“There’s intimacy.There is pleasure in each other’s company. They say to each other, ‘I loveyou more than ever.’ ” Scarf’s new book is September Songs: The Good News About Marriage in the Later Years, out today. She has been married for 55 years to Herb Scarf, 78, a Yale professor.

They have three daughters. Scarf shares her insights with USA TODAY…

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Palin’s speech ended up being much more partisan than I expected. But that was added to by the fact that she had to start her speech while the auditorium was still awash in the teeth-gnashing froth ginned up by Rudy’s speech. I’ve seen political events that I totally got and others that I thought I got but was totally wrong about. So who knows? But take this as a sign that the McCain campaign has abandoned an effort to compete for swing voters and go back to the base energizing strategy that worked for President Bush in 2004. The numbers make that look like a tough proposition. But I think a few months from now, everyone will agree this was a mistake.

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I will consider posting comments on this article which are submitted first by email to: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Several moderate-Democrat friends of mine have been emailing–few if any would ever vote for McCain–but all agree that Palin was very strong. The more liberal among them are a little panicked.

Read it all.

I will consider posting comments on this article which are submitted first by email to: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The imposition of Canon 15 “comes with regret after many years of dispute with the clergy and lay leadership of these two parishes,” said Dean Elliott. “The clergy in both parishes have relinquished their licenses as priests of the diocese and their orders within the Anglican Church of Canada. In our polity, a parish is a creation of the diocese.”

He added that parish properties “are entrusted to clergy, licensed by the diocesan bishop, to offer the ministry of the Anglican Church of Canada.” Therefore, he added, “loyalty to the bishop is a key part of the oaths that clergy make at ordinations and inductions.” Since he said clergy no longer hold the bishop’s licence, the diocese is “legally required to ensure that the authorized ministry of the Anglican Church of Canada continues in those places,” added Dean Elliott.

ANiC Chancellor Cheryl Chang, however, insisted that “whether the diocese of New Westminster has the right to unilaterally replace these duly elected trustees and move to seize control of the parishes’ assets is in dispute.”

In a press statement, she said that “the elected trustees of the parish believe the parish properties are held in trust for the benefit of the current congregation who have paid for and maintained these properties, and who are upholding traditional Anglican ministry in accordance with the founding principles of the Anglican Church of Canada (contained in the Solemn Declaration 1893), and the current doctrine of the global Anglican Communion.”

Read the whole article.

As a final vote approaches on whether the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh should secede from the national church, local Episcopalians who want to remain part of the New York-based denomination are meeting to plan for their future.

“A Hopeful Future for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh: An Alternative Solution” will present reasons for opting to stay in the Episcopal Church.

It will also present what may happen with property, a new diocesan government and other issues if Bishop Robert Duncan and most local Episcopalians change their allegiance to the theologically conservative Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, which covers six nations in southernmost South America. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

“A Hopeful Future” will take place at 1 p.m. Sept. 13 in St. Paul Episcopal Church, Mt. Lebanon.

On Oct. 4, the diocesan convention is expected to take the second of two votes required to attempt to secede from the Episcopal Church. In the first, taken in November, laity voted 118-58 and clergy voted 109-24 to leave the Episcopal Church.

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Senator John McCain’s Republican primary campaign looked all but hopeless. He had risked the wrath of his party to push for an immigration overhaul and now, just months before the Iowa caucuses, his grand compromise was falling apart on the Senate floor as well.

“Lindsey, my boy, this may bring us down,” Mr. McCain said, turning to his friend Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “But wasn’t it fun?”

By this spring, when Mr. McCain had astounded political handicappers by virtually locking up the nomination, the thrill of noble defeat had been replaced by an anxious discomfort about his own victory. “I refuse to believe that this is possible,” he said, curling up his face during an interview on his campaign plane. “I tend to be fatalistic about these things.”

As he accepts the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night in St. Paul, John Sidney McCain III, of Arizona, stands at the pinnacle of a career defined by a singular ambivalence about his own ambition, and success. Time and again, he lunges for the prize, then lashes himself for letting his pursuit get the better of him ”” for doing favors for his patron Charles H. Keating Jr., for stooping to ugly attacks on George W. Bush during the 2000 primary, for outbursts of temper at lawmakers who get in his way.

It reflects what his brother, Joe McCain, calls a “public dialectic” between the senator’s drive to succeed and his desire to serve a higher cause. For decades his outward display of that inner conflict has proved advantageous, helping advance his career by forging his image as the un-politician, the candidate with an almost reckless disregard for his own fortunes.

Read the whole article.

“The frontier mentality, whether myth or not, is still alive,” said Donald Linky, director of the Program on the Governor, at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Political organizations and the careful grooming of rising stars have long been part of the political culture in creating governors-to-be in many other states, Mr. Linky said. Not so in Alaska, and elsewhere in the West.

In places where politics is closer to the ground, an insurgent like Ms. Palin, who challenged a governor from her own party in 2006 and won, has an easier road, Mr. Linky said. Ms. Palin’s storming of the gates was helped by the taint of the Alaskan money culture gone awry, as federal authorities investigated oil-cash corruption in the State Legislature in 2006, an inquiry which has since expanded to include Mr. Stevens and others.

“It was a situation that was absolutely ripe for somebody to come in and say, ”˜Hey, the emperor has no clothes,’ ” said Mr. Haycox of the University of Alaska. “To give her her due, she had the morals and intellectual acumen to do that, but the situation was just waiting for someone to take advantage.”

Read the whole article.

Sure, large parts of the speech were clearly not hers. And she usually didn’t lean forward like that when she made a point. But that pursed lip thing? Where her lower jaw juts out a little when she’s looking tough?

“Oh, this is so Sarah,” he said. “When she twists her mouth that way that’s her.”

“That’s just like her mother Sally,” said Ms. Morgan.

All in all, what America saw Wednesday night was just the beginning, her friends said.

“That’s why we’re so excited,” said Mrs. Peek. “She doesn’t change. I just keep picturing her at lunches and meetings. They’re going to be shocked because this is who she is.”

“All this stuff is definitely from her heart,” said Ms. Morgan, including all the smack talk about Senator Barack Obama.

“She can be very, what should we say, fierce?” she said.

Read it all.