Bernard Madoff will remain free on a $10 million bond, a federal judge ruled, denying a request by U.S. prosecutors that he be jailed while awaiting trial on a federal securities fraud charge.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis in Manhattan today said Madoff, arrested last month for running an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, may continue to live under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment on the Upper East Side. Ellis imposed new conditions, ordering Madoff to compile an inventory of all items in his home and barring him from transferring property.

“Because the government has failed to meet its legal burden, the motion is denied,” Ellis wrote in the order. “The government has failed to articulate any flaw in the current conditions of release.”

It seems bizarre to me but I just work here. Read it all.

Watch it all. A good reminder, I thought, that the gospel is intended to transform.

I enjoyed the games very much and with my wife being a Steel City native you can imagine our response to the last one. I feel very bad for Tennessee and Coach Fisher who beat themselves.

In three separate cases, three Pennsylvania county judges have ruled that marriages performed by ministers who do not have houses of worship or congregations are legal, rejecting a contrary 2007 ruling that had sowed statewide confusion.

All three suits were brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which argued that York County Judge Maria Musti Cook was wrong to invalidate a marriage in 2007 because the minister who performed it was ordained online and did not have a physical church or congregation.

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Now that he knows the name of a young enslaved prostitute in Indonesia ”” it’s Eka, pronounced “Ecka” ”” Mike Mercer is all in. The human-trafficking resister from Oregon is committed not just to the reclamation of Eka’s freedom and her pre-slavery lot in life, but also to her enjoying life prospects far brighter than if she had never been trafficked and had never crossed his path.

“As a Christian, I can’t be satisfied knowing there are people living in such a condition,” says Mercer, 37, a onetime youth pastor at an evangelical church near Portland and the founder and director of a fledgling non-profit called Compassion First. “As a Christian, I’m a steward of the image of God. And every person on the face of the earth bears that image. I became responsible for Eka the day I met her.”

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Long before cable television, spa treatments and eco-friendly soaps and shampoos became staples in hotel rooms, there was the Bible ”” the Gideon Bible.

And the book with the familiar two-handled pitcher and torch on its cover that most guests find inside hotel nightstands doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

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MR. [DAVID] GREGORY: And here you are on–have been on this journey in the course of your life and career, now you’re on this journey to get people as angry as you are, as you’ve said in, in a speech. What do you expect of this new president, who happens to be our first black president?

MR. [BILL] COSBY: Change, challenge for all of us. I believe he’s asking us to be honest. I, I, I believe he’s, he’s asking us to be honest. I believe he’s asking us to look around and see in all honesty what we can do and what makes sense as opposed to what will go into our pockets or make us feel good or who we can punish according to our religion. I think it’s time for all of us to, to do things in terms of community, to stop worrying about what other people think of us and, and just go right on in and begin to talk to our youngsters about correct choices, to not be afraid to, to challenge them and be honest with them and, and, and to not be afraid to just stand and, and work with him and think that we’re working with him to make change and choices and challenge.

MR. GREGORY: One of the things that really strikes me about this book, “Come On, People,” is that as a parent with three young kids, I think it just has a transcendent message.

MR. COSBY: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: Which is that parenting matters.

MR. COSBY: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: That you got to be involved in your kids’ lives, you got to let, let them know that, that you love them.

Caught this on the way home from worship yesterday via satellite radio in the car. Watch or read it all.

It’s possible we’ve reached a moment of creative commiseration. A friend in Iowa was invited to a poverty party–“because why should a worldwide recession spoil all our fun!” the invitation said. Guests were told to bring “a dish to share, a (cheap) bottle of wine, a hard-luck story and a devil-may-care attitude.” We share casserole experiments: food itself becomes communal, everything in the fridge pitching in. You learn a lot about your neighbors when you carpool, and save gas too.

And for every story of swindlers and cheats, dwell for a moment on these: Someone placed an 18-karat-gold diamond ring in the Salvation Army kettle in Uniontown, Pa. A Sioux Falls, S.D., hotel manager came up with a plan to open his doors to 200 homeless people for Christmas. A Santa Clarita, Calif., family took in an 83-year-old woman left homeless by wildfires and helped rebuild her life. Food donations in Paradise, Calif., were up fivefold. “We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,” we sing as we welcome a new year, and never more so than this time. Maybe as times get worse, we get better. Our pain makes us feel other people’s too; our fear lets us practice valor; we are tense, and tender as well. And among the things we can no longer afford are things we never really wanted anyway, like the solitude of snobbery, and the luxury of denial.

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The following is our annual Christmas letter sent out to friends and family. Authored by my wife Elizabeth (Like most clergy I know, I married up) it may be of interest to some blog readers. For background, my wife is a Family Nurse Practitioner, and we have three dogs, a big black lab, a medium sized orangish puggle, and a small white toy maltese–KSH.

Kendall is a moving target for the dogs since he is never in one place for long (and the dogs follow him from room to room). He can be found running on the elliptical while listening to NPR, using the Apple TV for downloads or catching up on Nightline; at the computer answering email related to various publications and responsibilities or tracking the stock market or updating his blog; walking outside with the dogs throwing the ball; with his head in a book or the Bible preparing sermon texts or articles for journals. Never one to need a great deal of sleep his usually up WAY before dawn and has put in half a normal workday before the rest of the family is awake and coherent.
Elizabeth has switched medical practices and is working part-time in a family practice an hour north of her home in a small town with one traffic light and an IGA food store. Being available to her children and husband for support, talking, errands, counsel and laughter fills her days to the brim and sometimes it overflows in not the easiest of ways.

Abigail spent this summer studying French Literature in Paris, which was a perfect fusion of her love for French and English. She transferred this fall to the College of Charleston as a sophomore, and is enjoying every moment of her new friends and classes. Her American Literature and Literary Studies classes have both refueled her passion for her English major, and she is excited about pursuing this field in the future. After three years of dormitory drama, she finally has her own apartment, which is situated in the old ballroom of a historic Charleston house. She is an active member of a small group with Seacoast church in Mt. Pleasant, and enjoys every chance she gets to drive over the new Cooper River Bridge. Abigail misses the snow of New England and hopes to return North in the future; for now she is looking forward to spring in Charleston and its every-weekend mass exodus to the beach.

Nathaniel is currently knee-deep in the college-app period of his life. Juggling which schools take what form and when is it due and who is writing the references and (praise God) no more SAT exams. This fall he was not home much between school, girlfriend and 2 varsity sports – cross-country and swimming. He will adamantly state that he hates to not have something to do and so we mostly keep in touch by text messaging with a nightly check-in. At present he is considering a double major of economics and computer science but recognizes this may change (as in “have you ever heard of ocean engineering? I was reading up on it and it sounds fascinating!”)

Selimah has transitioned to a boarding school this year and is currently at the Millbrook School in Millbrook NY. Adjusting to freezing weather and lifestyles that may be radically different from hers has pushed her out of her comfort zone but she continues to be resilient with a wry sense of humor. She continues to ride Aherlow, her Irish Sport Horse, who is boarded near the school, and she has discovered the racquet sport of squash this fall, making it onto the junior varsity team. Her competitive drive gets its outlet in smashing the ball. She is also a worker at the Trevor Zoo on the school campus and is currently working with the otters this term and previously tended to the black and white lemurs. The future may hold some kind of animal training or husbandry for her as a work profession.

AT least fourteen new bishops were yesterday in Ughelli, Delta State , consecrated by the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion with an exhortation to be good shepherds and not a wolves to the flocks of Christ .

Making the clarion call while consecrating the bishops during the service held at the All Saints Cathedral Church, Ughelli, the Archbishop and Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, the Most Revd Peter Akinola told the new bishops to abide by the discipline of Jesus Christ in the discharge of their duties as clergies.

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I recently asked a client that I care for about his feelings on televised and virtual church services. He watches them often because illness prevents him from attending “real church.” He said he felt “alone” because there were no people physically around him. He felt disconnected.

My own experience of online prayer and worship is also along these lines. For awhile I attended Compline online and felt a sense of desolation.

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Shortly before Christmas, the Speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Hayman, invited a group of peers and journalists to a meeting to discuss the economic crisis. I was particularly struck by the contribution of Lord Howe of Aberavon, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the early years of the Thatcher Government.

He said that his memory of the financial crisis when the Conservatives returned to power in 1979 was not whether the Government should borrow, but whether it could borrow.

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With every image of the dead in Gaza inflaming people across the Arab world, Egyptian and Jordanian officials are worried that they see a fundamental tenet of the Middle East peace process slipping away: the so-called two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state coexisting with Israel.

Egypt and Jordan fear that they will be pressed to absorb the Palestinian populations now living beyond their borders. If Israel does not assume responsibility for humanitarian aid in Gaza, for example, pressure could compel Egypt to fill the vacuum; Jordan, in turn, worries that Israel will try to push Palestinians from the West Bank into its territory.

In that case, both states fear, they could become responsible for policing the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, undermining their peace treaties with Israel.

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Even if personal genomics someday delivers a detailed printout of psychological traits, it will probably not change everything, or even most things. It will give us deeper insight about the biological causes of individuality, and it may narrow the guesswork in assessing individual cases. But the issues about self and society that it brings into focus have always been with us. We have always known that people are liable, to varying degrees, to antisocial temptations and weakness of the will. We have always known that people should be encouraged to develop the parts of themselves that they can (“a man’s reach should exceed his grasp”) but that it’s foolish to expect that anyone can accomplish anything (“a man has got to know his limitations”). And we know that holding people responsible for their behavior will make it more likely that they behave responsibly. “My genes made me do it” is no better an excuse than “We’re depraved on account of we’re deprived.”

Many of the dystopian fears raised by personal genomics are simply out of touch with the complex and probabilistic nature of genes. Forget about the hyperparents who want to implant math genes in their unborn children, the “Gattaca” corporations that scan people’s DNA to assign them to castes, the employers or suitors who hack into your genome to find out what kind of worker or spouse you’d make. Let them try; they’d be wasting their time….

You can’t understand the stock market by studying a single trader, or a movie by putting a DVD under a microscope. The fallacy is not in thinking that the entire genome matters, but in thinking that an individual gene will matter, at least in a way that is large and intelligible enough for us to care about.

So if you are bitten by scientific or personal curiosity and can think in probabilities, by all means enjoy the fruits of personal genomics. But if you want to know whether you are at risk for high cholesterol, have your cholesterol measured; if you want to know whether you are good at math, take a math test. And if you really want to know yourself (and this will be the test of how much you do), consider the suggestion of François La Rochefoucauld: “Our enemies’ opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.”

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Q: Bush is at the end of his term, Obama has been very quiet. Do you see a leadership deficit during this crisis?

A: I think everybody’s working hard to bring it to a solution. But the problem is””the problem remains the problem. The problem is that the Palestinian side is divided. The only way out of this, in the end, is to provide that viable way forward for a Palestinian state. It can be done. Whether it’s the present administration or the next administration, that’s what it takes.

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SEELYE: Questions include whether it’s permissible to find a spouse through the Internet. Can a man divorce his wife in a text message? And what about Internet chatting? Flirting between men and women is forbidden in Islam, but can they chat online? According to clerics here, it’s best if a third party monitors the chat.

ABU MALIH (through translator): The Qur’an did not mention these details in their entirety, but it guides us in our advice.

SEELYE: But critics question the advice being given. Islam Online may be using modern technology, but it’s spreading a very traditional message. The cleric who founded the site, Yousef Qaradawi, is considered a moderate in the region. But his fatwas have opposed women traveling alone without a male guardian, and he’s ruled against women being heads of state.

For secular Muslims like Dalia Ziade, such views are decidedly anti-modern. Ziade is a human rights activist. The 26-year-old accuses religious institutions in Egypt of spreading fundamentalist beliefs, like the veiling of women.

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For all his talk of change, Barack Obama will start his presidency much as George Bush did: with a huge fiscal stimulus aimed at boosting an ailing economy and promoting some pet objectives. The need for stimulus is far greater than in 2001. America is in what could be its deepest recession since the Depression. With interest rates close to zero, the Federal Reserve is out of conventional monetary ammunition, so fiscal policy must do the lion’s share.

The problem with this is that higher spending and tax cuts will only make a big budget deficit even bigger. This danger does not justify penny-pinching now: that could merely prompt a bigger collapse in economic activity and even larger deficits. But Mr Obama should do what Mr Bush never did””and link the upcoming splurge to long-term fiscal reform.

The hole in America’s balance sheet is clearly partly Mr Bush’s fault. Even if you strip out the cyclical economic effects, the 1% surplus he inherited had become a deficit of more than 2% of GDP last year. But other things are at work. The collapse of the credit bubble will reduce tax revenues. The government has taken on big liabilities in its efforts to prop up the banking system. Above all, the first baby-boomers retired last year: as their numbers grow, the cost of the two big retirement programmes, Social Security (pensions) and Medicare, will soar.

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On this Sunday, which follows the solemnity of the Epiphany, we celebrate the baptism of the Lord. This was the first act of his public life and all four Gospels give an account of it. At the age of 30, Jesus left Nazareth and traveled to the Jordan River and, along with many other people, had himself baptized by John. The evangelist Mark writes: “On coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him” (Mark 1:10-11). In these words: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased,” the nature of eternal life is revealed: It is the filial relationship with God, as Jesus lived, revealed, and gave it to us.

This morning, following tradition, in the Sistine Chapel, I administered the sacrament of baptism to three newborn children. To the parents, the godfather and the godmother, the celebrant customarily asks: “What do you ask of the Church of God for your children?” They answer “baptism,” and the celebrant replies: “And what does Baptism give us?” They answer: “Eternal life.” This is a stupendous thing: Through Baptism the human person is brought into Jesus’ unique and singular relationship with the Father, in such a way that the words that are spoken from heaven about the only-begotten Son become true for every man and woman who is reborn from the water of the Holy Spirit: You are my sons and daughters, my beloved.

Dear friends, how great is the gift of baptism! If we make ourselves fully aware of it, our life will become a continual “grace.” What a joy for Christian parents, who have seen a new creature blossom from their love, who have brought this child to the baptismal font and seen the child be reborn in the womb of the Church, for a life that will never end! Gift, joy, but also responsibility! The parents, in fact, together with the godparents, must bring up their children according to the Gospel.

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Statistics leave no doubt that the number of women religious has dropped sharply over the last 50 years, but there is an ongoing debate over the reasons for the decline.

The question surfaced recently when L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, asked one priest to review another priest’s book about the phenomenon.

Italian Claretian Father Angelo Pardilla, author of “Religious Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” said the principal cause for the decline was that many religious misunderstood the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and lost a sense of their identity.

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The nature of the underlying “Godness” is recognisable through the capacity to love. It is natural for us to say: “I love … ” with respect to a multitude of things, places, persons, art forms, acts, feelings – at differing levels, but all reflecting the ability for objects to engender a meaningful stimulus, to which one can respond. So something akin to a personal relationship is inherently involved – expressible in a variety of forms. As narrated, Jesus saw his relationship, and role, as one of son to father, and this metaphor of faithful obedience formed the basis for his life and actions; it was manifestly right for him.

Thus it can be seen that a valid set of beliefs can be erected on the basis of personal metaphors of the divine, underpinned by the moral precepts and example of Jesus, as portrayed in the gospels. Whether this is describable as Christianity is unclear. Perhaps it does not greatly matter.

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5. GLOBAL CONCERNS

a. As a result of a presentation of a mission survey in the Sudan we were humbled by the remarkable faith of the bishops, clergy and congregations in a country that has been devastated by war for more than two decades. We embraced the Primate’s call for a continuing Sudan Mission Initiative and as initial steps appointed the Dean, Archbishop Maxwell Anikwenwa, as the interim Sudan Mission Coordinator to work with the leadership of the Church of the Sudan so that we might discern together the next steps for this partnership. We resolved to continue the work of the Church of Nigeria Mission Society locally and in the francophone countries of West Africa including Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivore, Chad, Niger, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Mali and Togo and individual dioceses are urged to take an active role in specific projects.

b. Following the Primate’ report on the meeting of the GAFCON Primates Council with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the House of Bishops, while expressing support for this effort to build bridges, stressed that in any effort to bring restoration to the Communion there can be no compromise on the need for genuine repentance by those who have walked away from the ”˜faith once delivered to the saints’. We are, however, delighted by the continuing fruit of GAFCON, the developing Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans around the world, the work of the GAFCON Primates Council and the emerging Anglican Church in North America.

Read it carefully and read it all.

To be clear: Everyone dies. There are no life-saving medications, only life-prolonging ones. To say that anyone chooses to die is, in most situations, a misstatement of the facts. But medical advances have created at least the facade of choice. It appears as if death has made a counter-offer and that the responsibility is now ours.

In today’s world, an elderly person or their family must “choose,” for example, between dialysis and death, or a feeding tube and death. Those can be very simple choices when you’re 40 and critically ill; they can be agonizing when you’re 80 and the bad days outnumber the good days two to one.

It’s not hard to identify one of these difficult cases in the hospital. Among the patient-care team — nurses, physicians, nursing assistants, physical and occupational therapists, etc. — there is often a palpable sense of “What in the world are we doing to this patient?” That’s “to” and not “for.” We all stagger under the weight of feeling complicit in a patient’s torture, but often it’s the nurses who bear most of that burden, physically and emotionally. As a nurse on a dialysis floor told me, “They’ll tell us things that they won’t tell the family or their physician. They’ll say, ‘I don’t want to have any more dialysis. I’m tired of it,’ but they won’t admit that to anyone else.”

This sense of complicity is what makes taking care of these kinds of patients the toughest thing I do. A fellow physician told me, “I feel like I am participating in something immoral.” Another asked, “Whatever happened to that ‘do no harm’ business?”

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Israel and Hamas showed little interest over the weekend in moving toward an internationally brokered cease-fire, as both sides vowed to keep fighting.

As the rockets and missiles fill the skies over Gaza and southern Israel, it sharpens the question: What are the goals ”“ and exit strategies, if any ”“ of each side?

Within the Israeli public, there is a debate about whether the intent of the Israeli military ”“ having already sent large numbers of tanks and ground troops into the Gaza Strip for the first time ”“ is to occupy southern Gaza to prevent smuggling or “go all the way” and topple the Hamas government. Rule of the Gaza Strip might then be turned over to Fatah, the Palestinian party that was ousted in a Hamas military coup some 18 months ago and supports a two-state solution to the conflict.

For Hamas, there appears to be an ideal by which ”“ as part of a cease-fire ”“ the Palestinian militant group will be able to declare itself victorious in reaching all of its demands, including an opening of all crossings into Gaza and an end to the economic blockade enforced by Israel and others in the international community.

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