The tragedy for Mr Brown and his party is that his chance to change it has gone. Although he still purports to be a radical, he has adopted the caution of an establishment man. He cannot lead a revolution against his own way of doing government, and yet a revolution is necessary. Grandstanding on his claims to good intentions, the prime minister demands the right to carry on, even as the cabinet implodes around him. The home secretary, the chancellor, and perhaps even the foreign secretary may go, and Labour faces its worst defeat in its history on Thursday, but the prime minister does not recognise his direct responsibility for the mayhem.

The truth is that there is no vision from him, no plan, no argument for the future and no support. The public see it. His party sees it. The cabinet must see it too, although they are not yet bold enough to say so. The prime minister demands loyalty, but that has become too much to ask of a party, and a country, that was never given the chance to vote for him. Had there been a contest for the leadership in 2007 – and had Mr Brown called a general election – he would probably have won. He decided not to do these things. And he has largely failed since….

The blunt reality is that, even if he set out a grand programme of reform now, his association with it would doom its prospects….it is too late. The chance for him has passed….

Read it carefully and read it all.

Their stories kept him awake through much of the night. The expectant father in his 20s who was to be a witness at his brother’s wedding Saturday. The disbelieving teens who had come to Charles de Gaulle airport expecting to greet family members arriving from Brazil. The woman in her 60s who grabbed his hands, begging him to say there was still hope of finding her child.

“I had to tell them the truth, that in my opinion there was no hope,” said Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, weariness evident in his voice.

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Months before financial markets collapsed in fall 2008, boutique proprietor Lee-Lee Sprenger noticed that her usually free-spending customers were flinching at $900 price tags on sweaters fresh from Italy. Sales at Mélange on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica have been sinking ever since.

“We’re barely making it here on Montana,” she said. “Most of the businesses have had a 60% drop in sales.”

Sprenger is holding on, barely, but dozens of empty storefronts and “going out of business” signs along the tony shopping street attest to the pervasive misery afflicting merchants.

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Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the Obama administration felt the need to pick an Arab country.

“Arabs are a minority of Muslims, but they have [a] disproportionate voice in Muslim life and Muslim jurisprudence ”¦ so they decided it has to be in an Arab city,” he says. “And if you start thinking about Arab cities, there aren’t a lot that leap off the page.”

Alterman says there was a process of elimination: Morocco, while more democratic than Egypt, is too peripheral; Jordan is too small; and Saudi Arabia would bring other problems, he says. “So, you end up going to Cairo, which has been an influential Arab and Islamic city for centuries.”

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ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report: The other day we heard a comment from a White House aide that never would have been uttered during the primaries or general election
campaign.

During a conference call in preparation for President Obama’s trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said “the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to — or before he’s been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world — you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a
Muslim father — obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago.”

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[Kevin] Roose passed himself off as an evangelical Christian to blend in with students at the school founded by the late Moral Majority leader. The experience led to a book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.

Roose, the product of the “ultimate, secular, liberal upbringing,” got the idea to go undercover after meeting a group of Liberty students while a freshman at Brown. “I had never really come into contact with conservative Christian culture,” he says. “It became clear very quickly that we had almost no way to communicate with each other.”

He decided to investigate. “My goal was to see the real, unfiltered picture of life at Liberty University,” he says. Even though his method required deception, Roose says the intent was honest. It “really did allow me to get a more accurate ”” and actually a fairer picture ”” of what life at Liberty was like.”

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The woman across the table told Dr. Jeanne Loring she was on the horns of a dilemma: feed and clothe her existing family, or continue to pay to keep frozen her embryos from an earlier fertility treatment.

The woman, a hairdresser who was married to a mechanic, had had one child and then triplets — all born after successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.

“I can’t afford to keep the remaining embryos frozen,” the woman told Loring over lunch. “I can’t afford to feed the family I have.”

The question of what to do with excess (or unused) embryos is a vexing one for parents who have completed their families….

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Such government micromanagement of the economy is everywhere. The Post recently reported that Richard Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors who was removed by the government, remains on GM’s payroll “because senior Treasury officials have yet to decide whether he should get the $20 million severance package that the company had promised him.” His 2009 compensation — $1 — is payable Dec. 31. The $20 million promised to him includes contractual awards, deferred compensation and pension benefits accrued over 32 years with the company. Promise-keeping, including honoring contracts, is the default position of a lawful society. But suddenly, many citizens’ legal claims are merely starting points for negotiations with an overbearing government.

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Leaders of a conservative group of Anglicans in the United States will hold an organizational meeting later this month.

The inaugural assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) will take place at the end of June in Bedford, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The meeting will bring together more than 700 congregations into a growing North American province in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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Frank Lockwood has the goods

On Jan. 21, 1988, a General Motors executive named Elmer Johnson wrote a brave and prophetic memo. Its main point was contained in this sentence: “We have vastly underestimated how deeply ingrained are the organizational and cultural rigidities that hamper our ability to execute.”

On Jan. 26, 2009, Rob Kleinbaum, a former G.M. employee and consultant, wrote his own memo. Kleinbaum’s argument was eerily similar: “It is apparent that unless G.M.’s culture is fundamentally changed, especially in North America, its true heart, G.M. will likely be back at the public trough again and again.”

These two memos, written by men devoted to the company, get to the heart of G.M.’s problems. Bureaucratic restructuring won’t fix the company. Clever financing schemes won’t fix the company. G.M.’s core problem is its corporate and workplace culture ”” the unquantifiable but essential attitudes, mind-sets and relationship patterns that are passed down, year after year.

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I am writing this in the midst of a great prayer meeting. The Chapter House is crowded with people calling on the Lord for our city and our nation. We are not so much praying for our churches, but for the mission field by which we are surrounded.

I can’t tell you how much joy there is in the room, for that is the strange fact ”“ we find every excuse possible not to pray and not to meet for prayer, but when we do, the Lord’s presence is manifest and the Lord’s people build each other up. More importantly, we have the Lord’s specific promise to hear and respond to our prayers in his name.

Next time we have this opportunity to join together in prayer ”“ say ”˜No’ to the evil one who always wishes to frustrate our prayers, and readily join together to call on the name of our great Lord!

Read it all–a great reminder.

There will be no recovery until there is a halt in the relentless rise in foreclosures. Foreclosures threaten millions of families with financial ruin. By driving prices down, they sap the wealth of all homeowners. They exacerbate bank losses, putting pressure on the still fragile financial system. Lower monthly payments are a balm, but they are no substitute for home equity. And until more Americans can find a good job and a steady paycheck, the number of foreclosures will continue to rise.

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There are indications that Judge Sotomayor is more like the majority of American Catholics: those who were raised in the faith and shaped by its values, but who do not attend Mass regularly and are not particularly active in religious life. Like many Americans, Judge Sotomayor may be what religion scholars call a “cultural Catholic” ”” a category that could say something about her political and social attitudes.

Interviews with more than a dozen of Judge Sotomayor’s friends from high school, college, law school and professional life said they had never heard her talk about her faith, and had no recollection of her ever going to Mass or belonging to a parish. Her family did not return phone calls for comment.

A White House spokesman, speaking on background, put it this way: “She currently does not belong to a particular parish or church, but she attends church with family and friends for important occasions.”

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Kavya Shivasankar doesn’t want a cell phone, and she doesn’t like the makeup applied for television appearances that began early Friday, the morning after she spelled “Laodicean” to win the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The 13-year-old from Olathe, Kans., likes her violin, Indian dancing, swimming, biking, playing with her little sister Vanya and spelling, of course.

“I’m going to really miss spelling this next year because it’s such a big part of my life,” Kavya said Friday.

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Members of the congregation of St. Francis Episcopal Church are making knitted hats as part of a ministry. Parishioner Ellie Mahouski said church members have created “hundred of hats” to send to victims of Hurricane Katrina and others needing warmth.

”When an announcement was made at church that a Prayer Shawl Ministry was beginning, one envisioned a caring outreach to those in need in faraway places,” Mahouski said.

I really like the picture. Read it all.

Another global financial crisis triggered by a loss of confidence in the dollar may be inevitable unless the U.S. saves more, said Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank adviser.

It’s “very natural” for the world to be concerned about the U.S. government’s spending and planned record fiscal deficit, Yu said in e-mailed comments yesterday relating to a visit to Beijing by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The Obama administration aims to reduce the fiscal deficit to “roughly” 3 percent of gross domestic product from a projected 12.9 percent this year, Geithner reaffirmed today. The treasury secretary added that China’s investments in U.S. financial assets are very safe, and that the Obama administration is committed to a strong dollar.

It may be helpful if “Geithner can show us some arithmetic,” said Yu. “We need to know how the U.S. government can achieve this objective.”

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In today’s Episcopalianism, he writes, “there is a seemingly unstoppable momentum to ratify the culture’s choices — the whole range of them, centered on the plenary power of humans to ordain and dispense and control and rearrange.”

In the abstract, this may leave open the possibility of an ecclesiastical endorsement of a libertarian utopia — but in practice it robs the culture of an important witness to the deeper truth about man: that he is broken and fallible, and in need of God’s grace as much as of political liberty.

–Michael Potemra in a review of Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity, by William Murchison, in the latest National Review

All you need to know to diagnose the state of the Catholic Church in America today is that Pope Benedict XVI — who has a knack for ticking off both Muslims and Jews — spent a recent week wandering the Middle East, yet Catholics here barely noticed. They were too busy fighting over Barack Obama’s appearance as commencement speaker at Notre Dame or arguing about the fate of a popular Miami priest known as “Father Oprah,” who was caught on camera sharing a seaside embrace with his girlfriend.

Is this what Catholicism in America has come to? Bickering about whether Notre Dame is really Catholic, or whether a priest can make out on the beach with his gal pal? Well, yes. And that should come as no surprise.

Since the emergence of Catholicism in the 19th century as a counterweight to the United States’ reigning Protestant culture, American Catholics have struggled to balance their desire to assimilate into society with the fear of losing their faith in the nation’s melting pot. These new controversies show that, in the Catholic saga, assimilation is winning.

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Regina Hill is single and has just turned 38 – the age when her fertility is about to go into steep decline. Single motherhood does not appeal to her. And if she does find a partner in the next year or so, she does not want to rush headlong into parenthood.

But the business consultant wants to keep the option of motherhood open. So, like increasing numbers of thirtysomethings in Australia and around the world, she has opted for a treatment originally designed as insurance for women facing fertility-damaging cancer therapy.

She is about to pay almost $12,000 to have unfertilised eggs extracted from her ovaries and then frozen and stored until she has a partner and is ready for parenthood.

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…times have indeed changed: in a former time, social pressure and shame would have pushed most people in the direction of pre-marital abstinence. People would have lived out a Christianised ethic in their sex lives, but on the basis of conformity to social norms. And the dangers, especially for girls, of misbehaviour were very severe. Without reliable contraception or easy access to abortion, self-control was a necessary weapon against the terrible stigma of teen pregnancy or worse. Religious teaching of course played a part, but in a negative sense: reminding people of the terrible eternal consequences of misbehaviour rather than the possibility for grace and forgiveness.

Now social pressure runs the other way. 75% of people think pre-marital sex is fine. Religious groups are in decline. The public square is saturated with sexual images. It is thought normal and healthy to experiment with sex outside marriage, so long as you don’t hurt anyone. It is ”˜part of a life’ – felt to be part of really living. Girls and boys are taught that to be a full person you need to express your sexual self, not exercise restraint.

This is where a theological account of human nature needs to come in. Whereas before, conformity to social norms made celibacy humanly possible, the new context makes it (for many people) humanly impossible. And this is where just telling people to try harder, or getting them to make pledges, or take cold showers, is bound to fail. Or it gives them false hope in their ability to master themselves. It trusts too much in the flesh over which we have in the end so little power – without the Spirit of God. If you are a youth leader wondering how on earth you can tell your young people to keep their hands off each other, well let us acknowledge the reality of the situation: it is impossible. It is impossible because of social convention, because consequentialist arguments don’t convince, and because human flesh is weak.

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It is the third point, though, that has made all the difference to me. Jacob says to the stranger/angel/God, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

Somehow, within every crisis lies the glorious possibility of rebirth. I have found, and so surely have many others, that the events that at the time were the most painful, were also those that in retrospect most caused us to grow. They helped us to make difficult but necessary decisions. They forced us to ask: “Who am I and what really matters to me?” They moved us from the surface to the depths, where we discovered strengths we did not know we had, and a clarity of purpose we had hitherto lacked. I have learnt to say to every crisis: “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
The struggle is not easy. Though Jacob was undefeated, after it he “limped”. Battles leave scars. Yet God is with us even when he seems to be against us. For if we refuse to let go of him, He refuses to let go of us, giving us the strength to survive and emerge stronger, wiser, blessed. It is the third point, though, that has made all the difference to me. Jacob says to the stranger/angel/God, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

Somehow, within every crisis lies the glorious possibility of rebirth. I have found, and so surely have many others, that the events that at the time were the most painful, were also those that in retrospect most caused us to grow. They helped us to make difficult but necessary decisions. They forced us to ask: “Who am I and what really matters to me?” They moved us from the surface to the depths, where we discovered strengths we did not know we had, and a clarity of purpose we had hitherto lacked. I have learnt to say to every crisis: “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

The struggle is not easy. Though Jacob was undefeated, after it he “limped”. Battles leave scars. Yet God is with us even when he seems to be against us. For if we refuse to let go of him, He refuses to let go of us, giving us the strength to survive and emerge stronger, wiser, blessed.

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Scientists have developed the first “personalised” drug shown to be effective against advanced melanoma, the deadliest type of skin cancer which is on the rise in Britain.

Warnings about the risks of melanoma were heightened this weekend as the fine weather drew thousands to sunbathe outdoors, putting them at increased risk. “Binge tanning”, where sunbathers allow their skin to burn in their eagerness to get a tan, is a key cause of the cancer.

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By promoting the lottery on the one hand ”“ but liberalising gaming on the other ”“ the government has created its own, rather odd Camelot. Gambling has become an act of civic responsibility. It is something for all the family to enjoy. The great personal dream of citizens, one which children are encouraged to aspire, is win some impossible jackpot and never work again.

Through the cunning expedient of funding good causes, the government has silenced criticism from those who might otherwise have had qualms about its sleazy, back-scratching arrangement with the gaming industry. The national lottery is, in the words of Camelot, “serving the nation’s dreams”.

Last year, online gambling in the UK reached an all-time high, according to a recent ICM poll.

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Vigeland: -You know, your big message to all of us, is that the only real way to have stability and to build wealth, is to get rid of debt. Although, you do make an exception for mortgages. Now a lot of us in personal finance talk about, say the differences between good debt and bad debt. Credit cards, bad. Student loans, good.

You want us all, the entire nation, to never use debt, that none of it is good. Why is there no such thing as good debt?

Ramsey: Well, it’s really simple. I’ve looked at people who’ve built wealth. By and large, they stay away from debt. They don’t discuss good debt. Only financial planners discuss good debt. And as a matter of fact, when the Forbes 400, the wealthiest 400 people in America, were surveyed, 75 percent of them said the best way to build wealth is get out of debt and stay out of debt.

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The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don’t provide effective opposition. And the press — on domestic, if not foreign, policy — has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

The lack of self awareness and self-criticism about this is simply embarrassing, and, yes, I hope I would have the consistency to say that were a Republican in the White House. I like him personally but as with many Americans I have more than a few policy anxieties, but when last week’s Time Magazine came with Michelle on the cover I thought–this is so overboard! Read it all–KSH.

Thirty-seven bishops, including five Canadians, one from Scotland, and one from Ireland, recently joined six episcopal faculty members and 10 guest instructors in North Carolina for a College for Bishops’ residency program.

The three-year Living Our Vows program is designed to support the spiritual health and personal development of new bishops. A series of three residential retreats is complemented by peer coaching with an experienced bishop, according to a news release.

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The federal Liberals are making a deliberate attempt to woo religious groups after years of “benign neglect” by the party, Liberal MP John McKay says.

Mr. McKay, an evangelical Christian, said Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff asked him to start meeting with religious leaders across Canada to find ways of including them in the national discussion.

Observers, however, say the courting of religious groups can pose tricky political questions, and recent history shows Canadian parties have distanced themselves from religion, not embraced it.

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Perhaps most important of all, he believes in a “living word of God,” one that ever reveals and expands, that comes from unexpected sources. “When I read the Bible,” he has written, “I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelations whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion.”

These “new revelations” might come from a non-Christian religion as well, for Obama does not believe his Christianity is the final word. “I am rooted in the Christian tradition,” he has said. But “I believe there are many paths to the same place and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

Already in his first months in office, then, he has hosted a Jewish Seder, attended a Baptist church, and put a Pentecostal in charge of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and Neighborhood Partnerships. He invited a gay Episcopal bishop to speak at an inaugural event, but he also asked the most prominent American evangelical of our time to give an opening prayer. And when he spoke at the University of Notre Dame recently, he both honored the Catholic tradition and defied that faith’s stand against abortion rights, all the while saying we must carve out a new unity on the issue of abortion. And this is what we can expect a big tent faith-based presidency, rooted in a non-traditional approach to Christianity yet seeking to draw in nearly every religious tradition. For this, he understands, is how the majority of the people he serves would want it to be.

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