Major procedural reforms will be needed as well. One essential step is the implementation of “pay-as-you-go” rules, which require that all increases in spending or tax cuts be financed by savings elsewhere in the budget. The statutory creation of a “fiscal future commission”””modeled on the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, a federal body whose recommendations are subject to an up-or-down vote in Congress””could represent a major breakthrough. It might even be time to reconsider passing a balanced-budget amendment to the US Constitution, a provision that exists in nearly all US states and is now being pursued in a somewhat analogous form by the European Union. Whatever the specific policy approach, the underlying objective should be to create a system that will achieve a balanced budget over the course of the economic cycle.

A responsible fiscal policy would permit the Federal Reserve to run a relatively easy monetary policy, which would hold down interest rates and prevent overvaluation of the dollar. If the Obama administration is looking for a historical model, it should aim to replicate the Clinton-Greenspan policy of the late 1990s (a mix of budget surpluses and low interest rates) rather than the Reagan-Volcker policy of the early 1980s (a mix of large deficits and high interest rates).

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The Rev. Timothy Paul Jones kept hearing one thing when — four weeks before Christmas — he brought a wreath and some purple and pink candles into his Southern Baptist church near Tulsa, Okla.

And all the people said: “Advent? Don’t Catholics do that?”This prickly response wasn’t all that unusual, in light of the history of Christmas in America, said Jones, who now teaches leadership and church ministry at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

“In the dominant American, Protestant traditions of this country, we’ve never had a Christian calendar that told us anything about Advent and the 12 days of Christmas,” explained Jones, author of “Church History Made Easy.”

“We went from the Puritans, and they hardly celebrated Christmas at all, to this privatized, individualized approach to the season that you see all around us. … If you mention the church calendar many people think you’ve gone Papist or something. They really don’t care what Christians did through the centuries.”

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Watch it all.

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The list of finalists to be Wyoming’s new Episcopal bishop has shrunk to four after one of the nominees withdrew his name last weekend.

The Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming didn’t give a reason why the Very Rev. Robert “Bob” Neske, dean of St. Mark’s Episcopal Pro-Cathedral in Hastings, Neb., took his name off the shortlist to succeed Bishop Bruce Caldwell, who is retiring next year.

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Here in the United States, an office of the Pentagon held an unusual contest earlier this month. Researchers wanted to see how thousands of people around the world could compete and collaborate to solve a problem that was too big for any one individual. The task was to find balloons scattered around the U.S. Competitors posted information and misinformation on Twitter and other social networking sites. Dr. Peter Lee is with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which sponsored the contest.

Dr. LEE: On December 5, we, in 10 public but undisclosed locations in the continental U.S., hoisted big red eight-foot wide weather balloons, about 50 to 100 feet in the air. And we challenged the world to find them. And the first person to report the locations – latitude and longitude of all 10 – would win a $40,000 prize.

[ARI] SHAPIRO: What was the point of this?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Dr. LEE: There were several reasons we did this. I think the most fundamental is we wanted to create the conditions that would allow researchers to understand something more about how information flows on the Internet and on social networks. But we also wanted to create an adversarial situation.

Caught this one yesterday via podcast on the morning run–fascinating. Read or listen to it all.

A law is just only if it protects human life, Pope Benedict XVI said.

The only laws that can be considered just “are those laws that safeguard the sacredness of human life and reject the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and unrestrained genetic experiments (and) those laws that respect the dignity of marriage between one man and one woman,” the pope said Dec. 16 during his weekly general audience at the Vatican.

Pope Benedict dedicated his audience talk to the writings of the 12th-century British philosopher and theologian, John of Salisbury. A close associate of St. Thomas Becket, John went into exile with him when, as the pope said, King Henry II tried “to affirm his authority over the internal life of the church, limiting its freedom.”

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Greetings all! I am wondering if we could experiment with some lists this week.

I am hoping that some of you would care to share the list of books to be considered by your reading groups for 2010.

My reading group met last Friday for our annual feast and book choosing. We also finally discussed Jane Eyre, and “that Potato book”, as one of the members referred to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

In choosing our books, we each bring along our copies of books we are interested in, or copies of reviews. We also have lists of book prize winners. We like to do some Australian novels, some young adult fiction, and a classic.

Take a look at her list and then please give us some of yours.

Elderly couples are buying each other suicide kits as Christmas presents, says controversial euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke.

Speaking at Tweed Heads yesterday on a new “peaceful pill” suicide method being developed overseas, Dr Nitschke’s comments sent right-to-life campaigners and church groups into a frenzy.

Asked whether it was in the spirit of the season to be publicising ways of ending life just a week before Christmas, Dr Nitschke said he was always going to attract criticism.

“Our main opposition is from religious groups who would still be getting outraged at Easter, or any other time of year for that matter,” he said.

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US Special Envoy Lt Gen Scott Gration has also vowed to make saving the CPA a top priority of the Obama administration. However, the “inter-ethnic violence currently witnessed across much of Southern Sudan, the ongoing violence against civilians in Darfur, and the violent attacks on civilians being perpetrated by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the south-west of the country,” was destabilizing the region, the church warned.

The escalation of violence “will make registration and voting in the elections and referendum very difficult,” the church warned. “The conclusion that is drawn is that this violence is intended to negatively affect the elections and referendum,” it concluded.

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Needless to say — once spelled out like that, the goals that Bishop Lawrence lays out are ambitious. He wants to both protect and educate more thoroughly his own diocese, mobilize his laity, differentiate the diocese strikingly from TEC’s heretical actions, and reach out to others throughout TEC and the Anglican Communion, building strategic clusters of individuals, parishes, dioceses, and provinces.

To do that, as nearly as I can see, he will need to accrue some significant funding and allies, as well as producing 1) some excellent communication tools [for more Internet, video, and email communication, along with ads and direct mail pieces with excellent mailing lists], 2) event planning throughout the country, and 3) discipleship tools for laity. All of those things help to circumvent the “information gatekeepers” whether they be rectors in his own diocese, bishops in other dioceses, or ENS and 815.

But do his proposals offer any glimmers of hope to folks trapped in dioceses ruled by heterodox bishops and clergy?

I believe they do, for people both in excellent parishes [but not dioceses] and people in not so great dioceses or parishes.

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President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world has been ranked by the nation’s religion journalists as the top religion story of the year.

The June speech in Cairo, in which the president quoted from the Quran and said America will “never” be at war with Islam, was ranked as the No. 1 religion story by members of the Religion Newswriters Association.

Evangelical leader Rick Warren, whose invocation at Obama’s inauguration was greeted by protests from gay-rights groups, was named the 2009 Religion Newsmaker of the Year.

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South Carolina’s budget woes got even worse Tuesday when government spending was slashed by another 5 percent, leaving agency directors to decide between layoffs, employee furloughs and turning away the state’s downtrodden.

The Budget and Control Board voted 3-2 to cut $238.2 million from the state budget, which has fallen from $6.7 billion to $5.1 billion in less than two years.

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Let’s not fool ourselves. Whatever threat the real Afghanistan poses to U.S. national security, the “Virtual Afghanistan” now poses just as big a threat. The Virtual Afghanistan is the network of hundreds of jihadist Web sites that inspire, train, educate and recruit young Muslims to engage in jihad against America and the West. Whatever surge we do in the real Afghanistan has no chance of being a self-sustaining success, unless there is a parallel surge ”” by Arab and Muslim political and religious leaders ”” against those who promote violent jihadism on the ground in Muslim lands and online in the Virtual Afghanistan.

Last week, five men from northern Virginia were arrested in Pakistan, where they went, they told Pakistani police, to join the jihad against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. They first made contact with two extremist organizations in Pakistan by e-mail in August. As The Washington Post reported on Sunday: “ ”˜Online recruiting has exponentially increased, with Facebook, YouTube and the increasing sophistication of people online,’ a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official said. … ”˜Increasingly, recruiters are taking less prominent roles in mosques and community centers because places like that are under scrutiny. So what these guys are doing is turning to the Internet,’ said Evan Kohlmann, a senior analyst with the U.S.-based NEFA Foundation, a private group that monitors extremist Web sites.”

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The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes, he does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, round about him a mighty tempest.

–Psalm 50:1-3

As we approach the end of the first decade of the new millennium, let’s consider what life will be like a decade hence. Changes in our lives from technology are moving faster and faster. The telephone took 50 years to reach a quarter of the U.S. population. Search engines, social networks and blogs have done that in just a few years time. Consider that Facebook started as a way for Harvard students to meet each other just six years ago; it now has 350 million users and counting.

Between now and 2020, the trend will continue, spreading cutting-edge technologies to every corner of the country and beginning to make innovations once consigned to the realm of science fiction real for millions of Americans. Specifically what can we expect? Solar power on steroids, longer lives, the chance to get rid of obesity once and for all, and portable computing devices that start becoming part of your body rather than being held in your hand.

What will drive all this accelerating change is precisely what has driven it this past half-century: the exponential growth in the power of information technology, which approximately doubles for the same cost every year.

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The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has – at least numerically – exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill.

The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.

A senior Treasury official told CBS News that the department has some “extraordinary accounting tools” it can use to give the government breathing room in the range of $150-billion when the Debt exceeds the Debt Ceiling.

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With days remaining in the Copenhagen climate talks, the rich have finally begun to discuss climate financing for the poor. The negotiating round has gone on for two years with little serious discussion on financing and many other topics, a gaping failure of a process run by and for rich-country politicians who do not like to be bothered with unpleasant details. This will not do. Climate financing needs a formula.

The governing law is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in 1992. It is unambiguous. “The developed country Parties shall provide new and additional financial resources to meet the agreed full costs incurred by developing country Parties in complying with their obligations” under the treaty. Moreover, “developed country Parties shall also assist the developing country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation to those adverse effects”. The treaty emphasises the need for “adequacy and predictability in the flow of funds”.

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A ”˜sharp decline’ in religious belief has seen the number of people who consider themselves Christian drop to half.

According to a new academic study, an increasing majority are described as the ”˜fuzzy faithful’ who have only a vague belief in God. These do not belong to a particular denomination or attend services.

Nearly 4,500 people were questioned for the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey, which revealed 37 per cent of Britons do not believe in God ”“ compared to 35 per cent who do.

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Formal negotiations have reopened at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen after a delay of nine hours.

The hold-up was caused by wrangles over the texts to be used as the basis for the talks.

Beneath the dispute lies a long-running accusation from developing countries that the Danish hosts are trying to sideline their concerns.

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“I’ve got a driver’s license, my American Express card, a debit card, a Jos. [A.] Bank card where I get my suits, I have a health insurance card. And then I have a variety of other cards, phone numbers, United Airlines, frequent flyer. And I have $45”¦$75”¦$85. I’m all set.

Take a look at the picture and guess.

What many people do not know, and others, I’m afraid, choose to ignore, is the legal independence of the Episcopal Church from other jurisdictions. In fact, it was in Chestertown, Maryland, in 1780, that a convention of clergy and laymen began the process of making an American Church separate from the Church of England, in the spirit of our declaration of political independence of 1776.

After that, the Archbishop of Canterbury had no more legal jurisdiction in this nation than King George III, the “Supreme Governor” of the established Church of England. So when Archbishop Rowan Williams says that he regrets Canon Glasspool’s election and urges the American church to reject her, he does not speak in any official capacity.

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A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesn’t have a commanding presence. He isn’t a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices. His arguments aren’t partisan or ideological; they’re methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn’t know something, he doesn’t bluster or bluff. He’s professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor.

He is not, in other words, a typical Beltway power broker. He’s shy. He doesn’t do the D.C. dinner-party circuit; he prefers to eat at home with his wife, who still makes him do the dishes and take out the trash. Then they do crosswords or read. Because Ben Bernanke is a nerd.

He just happens to be the most powerful nerd on the planet.

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Thirty-six members of Congress came out against a proposed tax on stock and derivatives trading, warning that it would drive up unemployment and undercut a shaky economic recovery in the U.S.

Charging investors for trading stocks, futures, options and other instruments would also drive up the cost of credit and private investment for both businesses and governments, according to a Dec. 15 letter sent by the 36 members, a copy of which was seen by Dow Jones Newswires.

The letter marks the latest opposition to an early December proposal by Rep. Peter DeFazio, (D., Ore.), who introduced the transaction-tax idea as one way to raise money for job creation and paying down the federal budget deficit.

“In reality, it would be a tax on all investment and savings vehicles because mutual funds and money market fund transactions are, by definition, purchases and sales of securities and bonds,” wrote the members of Congress in the letter.

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