watch it all (a little over 21 minutes).

Once in a while comes an historical event so momentous, so packed with unexpected force, that it acts like a large wave under still water, propelling us momentarily up from the surface of our times onto a crest, where the wider movements of history may be glimpsed better than before.

Such an event was Benedict XVI’s landmark announcement in October 2009 offering members of the Anglican Communion a fast track into the Catholic Church. Although commentators quickly dubbed this unexpected overture a “gambit,” what it truly exhibits are the characteristics of a move known in chess as a “brilliancy,” an unforeseen bold stroke that stunningly transforms the game. In the short run, knowledgeable people agree, this brilliancy of Benedict’s may not seem to amount to much. Some 1000 Church of England priests may convert and some 300 parishes turn over to Rome””figures that, while significant when measured against the dwindling numbers of practicing Anglicans there, are nonetheless mere drops in the Vatican’s bucket.

But in the longer run””say, over the coming decades””Rome’s move looks consequential in another way. It is the latest and most dramatic example of how orthodoxy, rather than dissent, seems once again to have taken the driver’s seat of Christianity. Every traditionalist who joins the long and already illustrious history of reconversion to the Catholic Church just tips the religious balance more toward Rome. This further weakens a religious communion battered from within by decades of intra-Anglican culture wars. Meanwhile, the progressives left behind may well find the exodus of their adversaries a Pyrrhic victory. How will they possibly make peace with the real majority of Anglicans today””the churches in Africa, whose leaders have repeatedly denounced the Communion’s abandonment of traditional teachings? Questions like these are why a few commentators now speak seriously about something that only recently seemed unthinkable: whether the end of the Anglican Communion itself might now be in sight.

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“Hope without memory is like memory without hope” is the striking phrase by Sir Elie Wiesel brought forward by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the 2010 commemoration under the theme: ‘the Legacy of Hope’. Elie Wiesel was awarded an honorary knighthood in 2006 as a public sign of the importance of the living memory that survivors of the Holocaust are for present day humanity. Our 2010 commemoration of the Holocaust has at its heart the survivors of the Shoah, the unique human beings who are the primary source for our continued attention, our understanding and our need to continue to work at the lessons in a world that seems not yet to have learned them.

As those who directly connect us and our children with that archetypal genocide pass from this life, we are confronted with the challenge of keeping alive the reality of what happened and of its defining significance. There may still be some 5000 Jewish and other survivors of the camps and of the years of Nazi occupied Europe. But tragically there are also many hundreds of thousands of people in this and other countries who are survivors of the many other genocidal events of the 20th and 21st centuries, including those atrocities that have taken place, like the Holocaust, on European soil.

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Despite the length of the speech – it lasted 70 minutes, making it the longest since he shot to national attention with his perfectly pitched address at the 2004 Democratic convention – it was short on detail. At times it seemed like a laundry list of proposals that could have been issued at any time.

Mr Obama laughed a bit at himself. This was uncharacteristic and disarming. But he insisted that he would press on. “We don’t quit,” he said as he reached his final crescendo. “I don’t quit.”

Despite some attempts at optimism, Mr Obama’s underlying message was the same as his campaign theme – that Washington is broken. At the end of the speech, however, no one was any the wiser as to whether he even knows how to fix it.

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President Barack Obama’s message to the country Wednesday night boiled down to a Reaganesque mantra: Stay the course.

Stick with the man they elected 14 months ago to change Washington. Trust that his stimulus plan, now projected to cost $862 billion, is lifting the country out of its worst economic mess in 80 years. Push forward to enact the rest of his blueprint, including at least some overhaul of the country’s health care system, to build a strong recovery.

Sure, Obama tried to tap into the voter anger and anxiety about the economy in his first State of the Union address, hoping to channel it rather than being overrun by it, as the Democratic Party in Massachusetts was last week. He added some new proposals, such as $30 billion to small banks to encourage lending and tax breaks for small businesses, calling them just more steps in his plan to grow the economy and create jobs. He also vowed to start reining in soaring budget deficits.

Yet despite the stinging defeat his party suffered in Massachusetts, the erosion of his own political support and calls from Republicans and moderate Democrats to change his agenda, Obama signaled that he’ll make no abrupt turn from the path he set more than a year ago.

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Gordon Brown’s attempts to cast himself as the architect of financial reform were dealt a humiliating blow on Tuesday after the Governor of the Bank of England rubbished the Prime Minister’s flagship proposal and allied himself with President Barack Obama.

Addressing the influential Treasury Select Committee, Mervyn King dismissed Mr Brown’s plan for a tax on financial transactions, the so-called “Tobin tax”. He said: “I don’t know anyone on the international circuit who’s enthusiastic about it … Of all the measures being considered, the Tobin tax is probably at the bottom of the list.”

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A U.S. immigration judge has granted political asylum to a Christian family from Germany that wants to home-school its children.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, which defended the family, announced the Tuesday (Jan. 26) decision by Judge Lawrence Burman in Memphis, Tenn.

“This decision finally recognizes that German home-schoolers are a specific social group that is being persecuted by a Western democracy,” said Mike Donnelly, an attorney and director of international relations for the Purcellville, Va.-based association.

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Lord Lester of Herne Hill, countering this, said: “Removing proportionality . . . would inevitably lead to complex and costly litigation . . . [which] would require the principle of proportionality to be applied as part of the law of the land, whatever the movers of these amendments and the seven Bishops now present may say. It is the law under European law and it is the law of the land. Proportionality is required whether they like it or not.”

The Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Winchester and Exeter also spoke in the debate. Dr Sentamu said: “Successive legislation over the past 35 years has always recognised the principle that religious organisations need the freedom to impose requirements in relation to belief and conduct that go beyond what a secular employer should be able to require.

“Noble Lords may believe that Roman Catholics should allow priests to be married; they may think that the Church of England should hurry up and allow women to become bishops; they may feel that many churches and other religious organisations are wrong on matters of sexual ethics. But if religious freedom means anything, it must mean that those are matters for the churches and other religious organisations to determine in accordance with their own convictions. They are not matters for the law to impose.”

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The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in Utah was funded by a $150,000 2009 Federal Stimulus Package grant.

You can find more here.

As the CBO notes, Fannie and Freddie “purchase mortgages at above-market prices,” driving down interest rates and passing some of the savings to home buyers. That subsidy is felt right away, but the risks in providing it are stored up over time, and their real costs may not be felt for years or even decades””as was the case in the years leading up to their spectacular collapse in 2008.

Yet this is precisely the fiction that the Obama Administration seeks to preserve by keeping the cost of Fan and Fred off the government’s books. The Administration’s budget accounting assumes Fannie and Freddie are private companies. So under its preferred treatment, the only recognized cost to taxpayers is the money that is being pumped in to keep them afloat””$110 billion so far.

That’s plenty as it is, but in the wake of their government takeover, there is no justification for pretending that their risks aren’t taxpayer risks. This is all the more true with the likes of New York Senator Chuck Schumer giving the companies marching orders to rescue tenants in the Stuyvesant Town development in Manhattan.

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One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.

–John 6:8-11

Embattled Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke won confirmation for a second term Thursday, but only by the closest vote ever for the crucial post and after withering criticism from lawmakers for bailing out Wall Street while other Americans suffered in recession.

The Senate confirmed Bernanke for a new four-year term by a 70-30 vote, a seemingly solid majority but 14 votes worse than the closest previous vote for a Fed chairman.

The battle over Bernanke’s confirmation has been a test of central bank independence, a crucial element if the Fed is to carry out unpopular but economically essential policies. Its decisions on interest rates can have immense consequences, from the success or failure of the largest companies to the typical home-buyer’s ability to get an affordable loan to the price of cereal at the grocery or gas at the corner station.

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[Patrick] Gray’s arrival at the end of October coincided with a painful split in the church. More than half the congregation broke away to form Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church, in the former St. Alphonsus Catholic church in Beverly.

Its founders left Christ Church over what they called the “moral drift” of the Episcopal Church, where liberals and conservatives have been deeply divided over issues such as the consecration of an openly gay bishop. Some conservatives opted to leave.

Gray said he knew what he was getting into when he took the job, and less than three months after the breakup, he thinks most of his flock is adjusting to the new reality.

“There’s always a lament, but I think people are happy here now,” he said.

While attendance at the church’s three Sunday services used to number about 500, now about 200 of the faithful show up. Gray conceded that’s a hit spiritually and financially.

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So I’ve had some quick hands-on experience with the Apple iPad and a few hours to think about it, and there’s a lot about the device that impresses me, and a few things that depress me. On the whole, though, it’s a winner.

First off, the thing is fast. Touch response is snappy and immediate, apps launch instantly and even action scenes in video (I watched a few scenes from Star Trek) are skip- and freeze- free. Apple’s in-house chip design arm (formerly known as PA Semi) has seemingly produced a beautiful piece of silicon in the A4 processor. Which leads one to wonder if the company’s relationship with Intel is bound to be short lived.

For the most part, the thing works like a really big, and far faster, iPod Touch. Which may sound a bit anticlimactic given the hopes for this thing, but it’s really more important that you might think. The larger screen makes all sorts of things that seemed like compromises before””reading, movie watching and, frankly, Web browsing””into rich, rewarding experiences.

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When a San Francisco nonprofit was pushing a controversial California bill last year to remove the restrictions on energy that residents can generate from solar and wind systems, the group needed supporters.

So it turned to an ordained minister named Sally Bingham.

“We have very few voices that are embraced by all levels of society as moral arbitrators,” says Adam Browning, executive director of the nonprofit, Vote Solar Initiative. “But Sally speaks with moral authority.”

As the environmental minister at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, Ms. Bingham is sought after by more than just Vote Solar. Other environmental groups and political leaders are also reaching out to the 67-year-old, who operates a nonprofit interfaith environmental outreach group dubbed the Regeneration Project out of a modest office in the city’s Financial District.

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The head of a think tank on marriage and family testified at the Proposition 8 federal trial Tuesday that same-sex marriage would weaken marriage and possibly lead to fewer heterosexual marriages, more divorces and “more public consideration of polygamy.”

But under cross-examination, David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, acknowledged that he wrote in a book in 2007 that the U.S. would be “more American on the day we permit same-sex marriage than we were on the day before.”

Blankenhorn was called as an expert witness by lawyers defending Proposition 8 against a constitutional challenge by two same-sex couples. He is an author and researcher who is not associated with any university. He earned a master’s degree in history in England, where he studied the history of labor unions.

Blankenhorn testified that he later worked as a community activist in low-income neighborhoods in Massachusetts and Virginia, where he became interested in the effect of fatherless families on children.

Read the whole article.

Obama pledged to spend money to fix the economy now while pushing for longer-term efforts to cut the deficit. He continued to strike a populist tone in calling for tougher rules on banks and for rolling back a Supreme Court decision vastly expanding the influence of corporations in electoral politics. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,” he declared, “or worse, by foreign entities.”

At the same time, Obama sought to grapple with public unhappiness over the economy, a particularly strong sentiment among working-class voters, who have most felt the lash of hard times. It was clear that if Obama did nothing else, he would identify himself with the word “jobs” and shout his determination to bring them back.

It was also obvious that he realizes his administration lost two critical battles last year: to define his stimulus plan and his health-care proposal. Polls show that Republicans’ negative claims have stuck with voters, while the administration’s arguments for the merits of both plans have not.

Obama made the case for his ideas again, but he also challenged Republicans to do more than criticize.

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* Middle Class Relief. These are the type of proposals that work for politicians in normal economic times. In bad economic times, the middle class (and others) do not want symbolism and sympathy. They want economic growth and jobs.

* Economic Growth and Jobs. Tonight the president had one main task: to make a credible case that his policies will help reduce unemployment. For the most part, he failed. His proposal to cut the capital gains tax for small business investment seems positive. His other ideas — taking money from some bankers and giving it to other bankers and a temporary hiring tax credit — are a caricature of job-creation policy. For the most part, Obama defended a continuation and expansion of the stimulus package, which promises to bring prosperity on high-speed trains. Compare Obama’s speech to John Kennedy’s State of the Union in 1963, which called for permanent tax cuts that would allow America to move toward full employment. Some Democratic presidents have actually understood how the economy works.

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It should be noted that in Jos we are coming face to face in confrontation with Satan and the powers of hell, and only God can save us. There are, however, many Muslims who totally disagree with violence as a means of settling issues, and of course it is not in accordance with the gospel to use violence to settle issues either. What seems to be a recurring decimal is that over time, those who have in the past used violence to settle political issues, economic issues, social matters, intertribal disagreements, or any issue for that matter, now continue to use that same path of violence and cover it up with religion. We must pray against the powers of hell. We must also pray for our state government, our Houses of Assembly at state and federal levels and our law enforcement agents, that they may choose the path of truth and justice, and deal with crime by its proper name, so that no-one, no matter how high or low, no matter of what faith or creed, should be exempt from facing the law.

The national leadership should be lifted up to God, that they may rise beyond a concern for political success and seek to do good and right in all things for the benefit of all people. This is a most urgent prayer request, because Nigeria as a nation has a large and ever-increasing army of leaderless, lawless, unemployable, unemployed, demoralized, and near hopeless youth. This, to my prophetic mind, is the big security issue which the governments at local, state and federal levels are not taking seriously. For example, every crisis in Nigeria in the last ten years has been executed by this generation of young people. With each passing year, they perfect their skills, and when they run out of a supply of money””or when they become bored with any situation””then any opportunity for action gives them satisfaction. This army has no religion, but can choose to go under the name of religion to achieve its motives. They are uneducated, and so their values are totally different, as are their ways of handling weapons or choosing how issues are settled. Please pray for us.

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Q: The local Church [in England] has five archdioceses and 17 dioceses. Catholics number just over 5 million, or 8.9% of the population. [Could you] reflect on the present challenges for the Catholic Church in England.

Archbishop Nichols: The research, which was carried out recently, reflects a more composite community and registers a numerical increase of which we weren’t fully aware.

Something else which catches the eye at this moment is that the life of faith is much more intense in the larger cities than in the rural areas of the country, where the numbers are falling and the priests are growing old and there are serious difficulties.

I also think that this research showed that in regard to the rest of the population, Catholics are much more committed to the cause of social justice. And this is encouraging for us, because it is a concrete expression of the social teaching of the Church and because is shows that beyond the noted difficulties we also have some stories of success to tell.

Read the whole interview.

In an interview with Vatican Radio in Rome, where the archbishop is with other English prelates for their ad limina visit, Archbishop Nichols said, “The reaction to this document is, in a certain sense, measured. There was a strong reaction at first, which was inflated by the media. Now we are in a phase of evaluation, reflection and prayer.”

In order for there to be a “complete assessment of the Pope’s initiative,” the archbishop said, “one must consider the important announcement of the start of the third phase of ARCIC talks, the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission. In my opinion, the two are related.”

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The call to blog took a lot of people by surprise. After all, the 82-year-old from Bavaria is better known for his conservative doctrine and revival of the Latin Mass than for his computer savvy. At first, the Rev. James Martin was startled as well. Martin is the author of The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything and blogs each day for the Catholic magazine America. Then Martin thought, surely Jesus would blog if he were on the Earth today.

“He didn’t sit around and wait for people to come to him,” Martin observes. “He went out and met people by the Sea of Galilee who were fishing. He went to tax collectors’ booths. He went into synagogues. He went all over the place. And so we need to, figuratively speaking, go out to the ends of the Earth ”” which includes the blogosphere.”

The pope has not announced his own blog. But if he does, he might be wise to listen to the experts.

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Somewhere in the halls of Sahuarita Middle School in Tucson walks a boy who already is a deadbeat debtor.

He isn’t old enough to qualify for credit. But at the house his family was evicted from recently, someone used his name and Social Security number to rack up a $950 unpaid bill with Tucson Electric Power.

The boy’s mother — a financially troubled woman with a string of criminal convictions — says she doesn’t know how the bill ended up in her son’s name.

Ugh–read it all.

Mr Zhu noted that investors are increasingly borrowing the cheap US dollar, and investing the borrowed funds in emerging markets, where interest rates are higher, and therefore generating a better return than saving in the dollars.

This phenomenon called carry trade in the US dollar is a “massive issue today,” said Mr Zhu.

“It’s bigger than the Japanese yen carry trade 12 years ago,” he said.

However, if the United States were to tighten its lax monetary policy, making borrowing more costly, funds could then flow out just as suddenly from emerging markets, back into the US market.

This could cause a collapse in emerging markets’ currencies, and spark a repeat of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

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[Leslie] Kammerdiener is among thousands of unpaid caregivers ”” parents, spouses, siblings and war buddies ”” helping veterans injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars get through each day, says Barbara Cohoon, deputy director of government relations for the non-profit National Military Family Association. She says the caregivers are a vulnerable group, often under-recognized, and in need of help to navigate the military’s medical system. Cohoon says not all caregivers receive military benefits, even though many have quit jobs, moved out of their homes and drained their savings to care for their loved ones.

“Nobody’s got a handle on numbers, but 7,500 is the number bandied about,” says Cohoon, whose organization provides counseling and helps families negotiate the health system.

The range of injuries caregivers attend to spans from gashes and fractures that will heal, to comas, amputations, burns, paralysis, nerve damage and brain injuries so severe that cognitive function lingers at the toddler level or below.

Read it all and watch the video of Bob Woodruff and his wife Lee also.

One year had taken him from a self-professed unifier to a historically divisive president; from the man selected to solve the country’s problems to the person often disparaged as their cause. He squinted against the lights and stared hard at the audience for his first State of the Union address, looking a little grayer, a little older than when he assessed the country in the same venue last February. A circus of cameras and power brokers stirred around him, yet he stood alone at a single microphone, quieting the crowd with a series of somber nods.

It had been, Obama told the audience, “one of the most difficult years in our history” — and it had been one of his most difficult years, too.

The president had plenty of reasons to be frustrated Wednesday night, and he channeled all of them during his 71 minutes at the podium. The poker player so often lauded for his evenness was instead pleading and persistent, frank and angry. His words as much as his body language suggested a shift, that this was the time not only to address the populist aggravation but to make it his own. He pressed his forefinger against his thumb and made jabs at the air to accentuate his points. He told the crowd that he “hated” the bank bailout, that he wanted the government to match the public’s “decency,” that he was tired of “the numbing weight of our politics.”

“How long should we wait?” he asked. “How long should America put its future on hold?”

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Politicians, including Obama, had been highlighting the dilapidated Dillon County school for more than a year by the time of Obama’s February 2009 speech. He and several other presidential candidates visited the school during the run-up to the 2008 election. And Obama first brought national media attention to the students’ plight in August 2007, when he winced as a high-pitched train whistle interrupted lessons during his visit.

All but $4 million of the federal money the county is receiving is a loan, which the area will pay back using revenue from a 1-cent sales tax levied in 2007, Rogers said. Some of the money will be used to refurbish existing facilities and build a new early childhood development center. But about $25 million will go toward building a new J.V. Martin Junior High School.

The school is in a rural swath along Interstate 95 in the state’s northeastern corner known as the Corridor of Shame, after a 2005 documentary about conditions in schools there. The school itself is a hodgepodge of buildings; the original part, a former church, dates to 1896, and the latest section was added in 1955. The auditorium, built in 1917, was condemned in 2008 by the state fire marshal.

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Rebuffing the concerns of church leaders over the fate of shuttered church buildings, the city’s Landmarks Commission is recommending that six more Catholic churches be designated as historical city landmarks.

The designation, which would give the buildings some protection against demolition or structural changes, is opposed by the Diocese of Cleveland, which is in the midst of closing some 50 parishes.

The City Council would need to adopt legislation to implement the Commission’s recommendations, and in a letter sent to the commission and council members, the diocese called the proposals “extremely offensive.”

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The Anglican Church of Canada may close up to 14 churches in British Columbia because of declining attendance.

Bishop James Cowan of the Anglican Diocese of B.C. says its community numbers are dwindling because churchgoers are aging and no new members are taking their place.

“We are a church saying a crisis could come if we don’t act. It is painful.”

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Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High; and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

–Psalm 50:14-15