When her brother could no longer help support her, Luzetta Reeves asked her small mortgage company to cut her monthly payments. It did ”” by 11 percent ”” making it possible for her to afford her house here on her modest fixed income.

In Miami, Jeffrey Mitchell saw his family income drop just as real estate taxes and insurance premiums increased, making his monthly mortgage payments crushing. He got a lower interest rate, too. But with the added fees and penalties, his monthly payment remained the same. He is now back in foreclosure.

As the Obama administration steps up efforts to help troubled homeowners modify their mortgages, it might consider the experiences of these two South Florida borrowers and their mortgage companies, one small, one large.

National statistics on mortgage modifications suggest that what happened to Ms. Reeves, a disabled 54-year-old, and Mr. Mitchell, a 42-year-old union representative, is fairly typical.

Read it all from the front page of Thursday’s New York Times

Ms. Hassan had filed for divorce and had taken out a restraining order on her husband only six days before her husband told the police she was dead. Friends, family members and even the police were aware of prior domestic abuse issues in the marriage.

“The only good thing that can come from this tragedy is that hopefully Muslim families will treat domestic violence seriously and perhaps women will be able to come out and speak about it,” said Nadia Shahram, a Buffalo divorce lawyer, who teaches at the University at Buffalo Law School.

I really abhor this subject, but it has to be faced. Read it all.

Update: General Convention has rightly addressed this matter:

Resolution Number: 2000-D073
Title: Support Legislation to Reduce Domestic Violence and Protect Victims
Legislative Action Taken: Concurred as Amended
Final Text:

Resolved, That the 73rd General Convention of the Episcopal Church call upon state governments to promote and enact statutes addressing the reduction of domestic violence and the protection of victims of domestic violence and child neglect.
Citation: General Convention, Journal of the General Convention of…The Episcopal Church, Denver, 2000 (New York: General Convention, 2001), p. 680.

And:

Resolution Number: 2006-A086
Title: Create and Disseminate Training Materials to Recognize and Respond to Abuse
Legislative Action Taken: Concurred as Substituted
Final Text:

Resolved, That the 75th General Convention instruct the Standing Commission on Ministry Development to create and disseminate training materials to assist leaders in ministry to recognize and respond to evidence of abuse; and be it further

Resolved, That the Standing Commission on Ministry Development report on this initiative to the 76th General Convention.
Citation: General Convention, Journal of the General Convention of…The Episcopal Church, Columbus, 2006 (New York: General Convention, 2007), p. 511.

With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.

The missile strikes on training camps run by Baitullah Mehsud represent a broadening of the American campaign inside Pakistan, which has been largely carried out by drone aircraft. Under President Bush, the United States frequently attacked militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban involved in cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, but had stopped short of raids aimed at Mr. Mehsud and his followers, who have played less of a direct role in attacks on American troops.

The strikes are another sign that President Obama is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy in using American spy agencies against terrorism suspects in Pakistan, as he had promised to do during his presidential campaign. At the same time, Mr. Obama has begun to scale back some of the Bush policies on the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, which he has criticized as counterproductive.

Read it all.

I once asked a well-instructed Christian whether as humans we are basically good or bad. The question clearly startled the person and instinctively he replied “basically good”. Now it was my turn to be startled. I did not ask whether human beings are incapable of good or thoroughly bad ”“ it was a question about our basic disposition. I would have thought that the reading of Scripture and our church liturgy may have suggested that there is such a thing as original sin and that there is a tendency to evil which we share. Indeed, we only have to hold up the mirror of God’s law ”“ say the Ten Commandments for a start ”“ to recognise our constant failure to do what God requires of us.

It is a shallow view of human nature which suggests that as long as we choose the right we can accomplish it. In fact we are called the enemies of God, because our basic sin is the desire to worship anything or anybody rather than the true Lord of the universe. Sin is something which we are caught up in as a race ”“ individually and collectively. It has us in its grip, it corrupts our inner selves. Because of sin we have evil desires, evil thoughts, evil intentions. Such inner failures manifest themselves in words and deeds which are evil. Hedges is certainly right to warn us against any system or ideology which promises us a rosy future based on human effort.

Read it all.

“Personally I like talking to a lot of people at a time,” says Amelia, a Pittsburgh area teen. “It kind of keeps you busy. It’s kind of boring just talking to one person cause then like”¦you can’t talk to anyone else.”

–Diane F. Halpern and Susan E. Murphy, From Work-family Balance to Work-family Interaction: Changing the Metaphor (Routledge, 2002), page 145

It’s interesting that dark ages are not necessarily all negative. I think that’s a kind of illusion. We have the idea that nothing goes well in a dark age. It’s a time of horror. But, actually, in the Middle Ages and in other dark ages there were tremendous technological advances. I found that very intriguing.

I think that we are really in the midst or on the cusp of defining our own dark age. When we pander to our machines rather than look each other fully in the eye, when doctors interrupt, on average, after 18 seconds of listening to the patient, when two-thirds of the children 18 and under grow up in homes where the TV is on most of the time, which is an environment linked to attention difficulties — when we can’t think — when, in a knowledge economy, we can’t find the time to think deeply, to wrestle with an idea or a problem — well, we’re really facing a dark age on many scores. So a dark age can be a wonderful time, but the costs are steep.

—Also from Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe columnist and author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2008)

I think all our gadgets today are great, but they do change our lives – we’re so mobile, split-focused, cyber-centric – that we’re squeezing out room for “pause” – for conversation, for reflective thought. That’s the problem. We need to re-balance – and particularly nurture our powers of attention….

In my book, I talk about the costs of living distracted. When we aren’t fully aware or split our focus all the time, we essentially don’t go deeply, in thought or in relationships. We become a skimming culture – and that’s dangerous. But new discoveries related to attention can help – for instance, attention can be trained! That’s exciting news for us all.

—Maggie Jackson, Boston Globe columnist and author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2008)

Well worth the time–just under 40 minutes.

As legal battles over property rights and organizational authority play out between the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego and two breakaway churches in North County, leaders of those two congregations insist the real conflict is over core religious beliefs.

The California Supreme Court recently issued two decisions with implications for St. Anne’s in Oceanside and St. John’s in Fallbrook, both of which seceded from the Episcopal Church and joined foreign dioceses within the global Anglican Communion three years ago.

A Jan. 5 court ruling in favor of the national Episcopal church in its legal battle against three Los Angeles and Orange County breakaway congregations attempting to keep their properties is being cited by the San Diego diocese as strengthening its case against St. Anne’s and St. John’s. The two North County churches continue to meet in their existing buildings as Anglican congregations —- with the San Diego diocese suing to regain control of those properties.

Read it all.

Spain is on course to ease its restrictive law on abortion, setting the stage for another clash between a Socialist government that has already introduced sweeping social changes and conservatives and Catholic clergy bent on preserving traditional family values.

A parliamentary committee took the first step this week, recommending that the government legalize early stage abortions, while gradually imposing more restrictions as pregnancies progress.

Abortion is technically a crime in Spain, though it is readily available under the current system, with women needing a doctor’s certification that their health ”” either physical or mental ”” would be at risk if the pregnancy was allowed to proceed.

Read it all.

$10 fee proposed for filing state tax returns. Unbelievable!

As I read celebrity atheist Christopher Hitchens’s recent Newsweek attack on the pope in particular and Roman Catholicism in general, I remembered an incident that happened when I was in the U.K. in early January. Walking out of London’s Victoria Station, I was stopped by a TV reporter who asked me what I thought about the British atheists’ newest ad campaign. It was one of those typical man-in-the-street interviews, with a reporter and a cameraman buttonholing passersby to find a snappy quote for the evening news.

In England, which has long been a cultural template for the U.S., the atheists, after years of calling themselves humanists, have finally come out of the closet. With strong support from the renowned Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, the new campaign has splashed an ad on the side of 800 British buses proclaiming, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Immediately following the ads came an announcement from the BBC early last month that it would add atheists to the list of various people of faith who are invited to offer the three-minute “Thought for the Day” on the influential Radio 4.

Britain has actually recognized atheism for some time now. As a country with an officially established church, it requires all its state primary schools to include religious-education classes. The classes often reflect the ethnic and religious composition of the schools’ surrounding neighborhoods, so that those in heavily Muslim or Hindu communities will focus largely on non-Western religious traditions. Yet one mandate of all these classes involves introducing students to religious diversity and pluralism rather than teaching any specific dogma. In 2004, the government decided that pluralism requires that all schools include some instruction on atheism.

Read it all.

Digital podcasts and streaming video might bring Christian audiences inspirational messages in the future, but they aren’t bringing in the cash that broadcast ministries need to weather a painful economy.

To make ends meet, religious broadcasters are tightening their belts and going back to basics. That means sticking with time-tested formulas, postponing innovations and counting on loyal (largely senior) audiences to keep donating even when it hurts.

Read it all.

Figures from the Church of England released today show further evidence that, while some trends in churchgoing continue to change, the overall number of people regularly attending church has altered little since the turn of the millennium. The 2007 figures confirm that attending a Church of England church (including cathedrals) is part of a typical week for some 1.2 million people.

Read it all.

The Rt. Rev. Keith Whitmore has agreed to serve as consulting bishop to the reorganizing Episcopal Diocese of Quincy in the period prior to a special synod at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Peoria, Ill., on April 4.

The reorganizing synod became necessary after a majority of clergy and lay delegates voted last November to disaffiliate from The Episcopal Church. The Rt. Rev. Keith L. Ackerman, Bishop of Quincy, resigned Nov. 1, six days before the synod convened.

Read the whole article.

A two-year-old church property dispute between Episcopalians and Anglicans appears to be on its way to the Virginia Supreme Court.

On Feb. 3, The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia together filed an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court hoping to overturn a Dec. 19 decision by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows in favor of the Anglican District of Virginia, known as ADV.

On Feb. 10, the Episcopal appeal was followed by a motion asking for an exception to the Supreme Court’s limit of 35 pages in appeal cases.

Read it all.

Take a look.

The belief of the resurrection of our Lord from the dead, and of His ascension into heaven, has strengthened our faith by adding a great buttress of hope. For it clearly shows how freely He laid down His life for us when He had it in His power thus to take it up again. With what assurance, then, is the hope of believers animated, when they reflect how great He was who suffered so great things for them while they were still in unbelief! And when men look for Him to come from heaven as the judge of quick and dead, it strikes great terror into the careless, so that they betake themselves to diligent preparation, and learn by holy living to long for His approach, instead of quaking at it on account of their evil deeds. And what tongue can tell, or what imagination can conceive, the reward He will bestow at the last, when we consider that for our comfort in this earthly journey He has given us so freely of His Spirit, that in the adversities of this life we may retain our confidence in, and love for, Him whom as yet we see not; and that He has also given to each gifts suitable for the building up of His Church, that we may do what He points out as right to be done, not only without a murmur, but even with delight?

”“Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine

People like the gentleman profiled in this story are helping hold this country together right now–good for him. Watch it all.

US banking shares hit their lowest level since 1992 on Thursday as fears mounted that the government would be forced to nationalise a key institution.

Further heavy selling of key names ”“ Bank of America and Citigroup were once again among the worst performing, down 14 per cent to $3.93 and 13.8 per cent to $2.51, respectively ”“ helped push the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its lowest level in six years.

Shares in several regional banks also sustained heavy losses as the S&P financial index dropped 5.2 per cent to its lowest level since 1995.

“Every time someone mentions the word [nationalisation] then investors shiver ”“ and with good reason,” said Marc Pado, chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald. “There’s a lot of angst over what [US Treasury Secretary] Geithner’s going to propose.”

Read it all.

Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC Thursday morning really did go viral all through the day, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see it open the news–but I was. Watch it all.

The launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies ”“ which the founders have agreed to shorten to the abbreviated AHS ”“ is the latest in a series of pro-secular movements that have sprung up to oppose what they believe is a growing pandering towards religious groups.

With scientists and rationalists celebrating the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth this year, the timing is more than apt. But the creation of this latest manifestation of atheism reveals a renaissance over the past three years for secular and humanist ideals that began with Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion and only recently manifested itself in the popular atheist bus campaign, in which double deckers carried the message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

There was once a time when those ideals were, of course, commonplace. Two centuries ago, progressive intellectuals of the post-Enlightenment age were all too happy to predict the end of religion, that the triumph of science and reason would win out and that man would turn away from God. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, meanwhile, student atheist groups were a vibrant and influential part of university life. Thinking the battle had been won, they largely died out two decades ago .

But, as religious conflict spreads once again throughout the world, throwing the Western world into a so-called clash of civilisations with radical Islam, the time is ripe, according to secularists, for a new religion ”“ a live-and-let-live brand of soft atheism.

Read the whole article.

In order to lift restrictions on gay clergy, the assembly must approve each of the following resolutions before the next could be
considered:

— That the ECLA is committed to allowing congregations and synods to recognize and support “lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

— That the ELCA is committed to finding a way for people in such relationships to serve as clergy in the church.

— That the ELCA agrees to “respect the bound consciences” of churchmembers who disagree on the issue.

— The ELCA must agree to remove the blanket ban on partnered gay clergy.

Task Force leaders said the church must deal with underlying issues — how it feels about gay relationships and the lack of consensus in the church — before it can amend its rules.

Read it all.

I was going to begin this column with a 13-year-old Chadian boy crippled by a bullet in his left knee, but my hunch is that you might be more interested in hearing about another person on the river bank beside the boy: George Clooney.

Clooney flew in with me to the little town of Dogdore, along the border with Darfur, Sudan, to see how the region is faring six years after the Darfur genocide began. Clooney figured that since cameras follow him everywhere, he might as well redirect some of that spotlight to people who need it more.

It didn’t work perfectly: No paparazzi showed up. But, hey, it has kept you reading at least this far into yet another hand-wringing column about Darfur, hasn’t it?

So I’ll tell you what. You read my columns about Darfur from this trip, and I’ll give you the scoop on every one of Clooney’s wild romances and motorcycle accidents in this remote nook of Africa. You’ll read it here, way before The National Enquirer has it, but only if you wade through paragraphs of genocide.

The Darfur conflict has now lasted longer than World War II, but this year could be a turning point – provided that President Barack Obama shows leadership and that the world backs up the International Criminal Court’s expected arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Read it all

The holding companies seem to have invested most of their TARP money in their other businesses or else retained the option to do so by keeping it in deposit accounts, even as the capital of their banks decreased. At the same time the banks, which provide the majority of loans to large corporate borrowers, drastically reduced lending to new borrowers.

It’s easy to see why holding companies would withhold capital from their troubled banks. If a bank is insolvent – as many are now believed to be – and the government has to take it over, the holding company loses any capital it gave to the bank. Rather than take that risk, the holding company can opt to spend its money elsewhere, perhaps on trading of its own.

But this is not a good use of scarce capital. We might end up with too much of this proprietary trading and too little lending. It also means that when it comes time to recapitalize banks there is a bigger hole to fill, and when banks fail there is less capital available to meet the government’s obligations to insured depositors and other creditors.

Keeping money at the holding company may benefit its shareholders, but it is costly for taxpayers.

Bailouts, at the very least, should reach their target.

Read it all.

Cindy Dreeszen and her husband live in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. They have steady jobs, his at a movie theater and hers at a government office. Together, they earn about $55,000 a year.

But with a 17-month-old son, another baby on the way, and, as Dreeszen put it, “the cost of everything going up and up,” the couple went to a food pantry this month to ask for some free groceries.

“I didn’t think we’d even be allowed to come here,” said Dreeszen, 41, glancing around at the shelves of fruit, whole-wheat pasta and baby food.

“This is totally something that I never expected to happen, to have to resort to this.”

Read it all.

Iran has now built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had now accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz. If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material ”“ enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Read it all from the FT (subscription required).

Many pastors remember struggling in their first ministerial position””isolated geographically or professionally, lacking ready access to mentors and peers. The first person to greet young Daniel Aleshire after he led his first worship service “told me my sermon was ‘the worst damn sermon’ he had ever heard.”

Aleshire was forewarned that the man was a troubled congregant. But the comments from the rest of the Baptist congregation months later “were so ambiguous that I was never sure how I was doing,” said Aleshire, now top executive at the Association of Theological Schools.

More than a decade ago, analysts of congregational ministry for the Lilly Endowment decided that seminarians’ customary year or nine months of internship at a church were not enough to prepare graduates for the pitfalls and anxieties facing a new pastor.

Read it all.

“I expect it to get much worse in the next two years. This is really going to be the story going forward, probably by the summer. We’re going to be hearing more and more about problem commercial real estate loans,” said Scottsdale economist Jim Rounds.

Vacancies in commercial properties have skyrocketed, yet millions of square feet of commercial real estate are under construction and will be flooding the market in 2009.

“It’s kind of like getting punched when you’re already down. This is what’s going to happen in this economy, and I don’t think people are paying enough attention to it,” Rounds said. “It’s going to lengthen the downturn and make conditions in 2009 worse than they would have been.”

Read it all.

Update: In the minutes from their meeting released yesterday, this was where the Federal Reserve said their concern was focused:

The pace of commercial construction also had slowed. A number of participants expressed concern that the commercial real estate sector could deteriorate sharply in the months ahead. They noted that a large number of commercial real estate mortgages will come due at a time when banks likely will still be facing balance-sheet constraints, the ability to securitize commercial real estate mortgages may remain severely restricted, and vacancy rates in commercial properties could well be climbing. Some participants worried that the outcome could be an increase in defaults on commercial real estate mortgages and forced sales of commercial properties, which could push prices down further and generate additional losses on banks’ commercial real estate loan portfolios.

The Anglican Communion is in a state of grave crisis and is broken in a way that is very resistant to reconciliation. The church is broken de facto both within provinces and between provinces. There is a sense of the bizarre and of unreality about discussions that view schism as something that approaches but has not yet come. (The next General Convention of The Episcopal Church may clarify this reality in a stunning way.) The church at all levels is torn and the question now is what degree of reconciliation is possible and what will the de jure structures of a reconciled communion look like. It is a positive development that there is a growing recognition that the current instruments of communion are not adequate to maintain the faith, order and unity of a world-wide church. The emphasis on autonomy by the local provinces across the theological spectrum is hard to square with mutual submission in the Body of Christ especially when issues arise that scandalize large portions of the faithful….

All of the suggestions for pastoral care of the alienated orthodox in North America have been too little and too late. The main defect of these proposals is that they are developed without consulting the very people they are supposed to help and are promulgated without a clear signal that those to whom they are supposed to offer relief, see their needs adequately met.

Read it all.