In the face of the tragedy in Haiti, I want to make a proposal. It’s not a realistic proposal, I grant; but it is a serious one. My proposal is this: that all those Anglicans involved in litigation amongst one another in North America ”” both in the Episcopal Church and those outside of TEC; in the Anglican Church of Canada, and those outside ”” herewith cease all court battles over property. And, having done this, they do two further things:

a. devote the forecast amount they were planning to spend on such litigation to the rebuilding of the Episcopal Church and its people in Haiti; and

b. sit down with one another, prayerfully and for however long it takes, and with whatever mediating and facilitating presence they accept, and agree to a mutually agreed process for dealing with contested property.

Read it all.

A professor at Columbia University, Mr. Stiglitz uses his experience teaching to give the lay reader a lucid account of how overleveraged banks, a shoddy mortgage industry, predatory lending and unregulated trading contributed to the meltdown, and how, in his opinion, ill-conceived rescue efforts may have halted the freefall but have failed to grapple with more fundamental problems.

He is eloquent on how the American economy was sustained before the crisis by “a debt-financed consumption binge supported by a housing bubble” and impassioned in describing what he sees as the government’s failure to make substantial reforms to the economic system: though “excesses of leverage will be curbed,” he writes, “the too-big-to-fail banks will be allowed to continue much as before, over-the-counter derivatives that cost taxpayers so much will continue almost unabated, and finance executives will continue to receive outsized bonuses.” In each case, he writes, “something cosmetic will be done, but it will fall far short of what is needed.”

Read it all.

Each year, about 16,000 people are processed through the DuPage County Jail in Wheaton, and about 85 percent of them have lived lives twisted and broken by drug abuse.For many, their stay in the county jail becomes an impromptu trip to detox and an opportunity to craft a new kind of life. That is where Annie Rose comes in.

When Rose, 29, the executive director of JUST (Justice, Understanding, Service and Teaching) of DuPage, first meets her clients, many have gone through rehab at the jail and are “thinking clearly for the first time in a very long time,” she said.

“It seems like every week I hear at least one inmate say they are grateful that they ended up in jail because they wouldn’t have walked into rehab on their own. They are glad to get this chance to get on track,” said Rose, an Ohio native who settled in the Chicago area after graduating from Wheaton College. She has been director of JUST since February.

Read it all.

Mr. Obama this month presented his government’s findings on how the plot went undetected. But a detailed review of the episode by The New York Times, including more than two dozen interviews with White House and American intelligence officials and with counterterrorism officials in Europe and Yemen, shows that there were far more warning signs than the administration has acknowledged.

The officials also cited lapses and misjudgments that were not disclosed in the declassified government report released Jan. 7 about what went wrong inside the nation’s counterterrorism network.

In September, for example, a United Nations expert on Al Qaeda warned policy makers in Washington that the type of explosive device used by a Yemeni militant in an assassination attempt in Saudi Arabia could be carried aboard an airliner….

Read it all.

Rejecting offers to evacuate him from Port-au-Prince, Episcopal Diocese of Haiti Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin said Jan. 18 that he must remain in the Haitian capital.

“No, I will stay with my people,” the Rev. Lauren Stanley, one of four Episcopal Church missionaries assigned to the Haitian diocese, told ENS the bishop said in response to the evacuation offer.

Stanley was home in Virginia when the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck just before 5:00 p.m. local time Jan. 12 and has been monitoring diocesan reports from there.

“The people are strong,” Duracin told Stanley, echoing messages she has received from other priests. “We still have our people, and they are strong. We need to help them.”

Read it all.

Brown at 79.0, Coakley at 26.4.

Read it all.

A Mass of Christian Burial was held Tuesday at St. Mary of the Nativity Church in Scituate, where he was a parishioner.

“We mourn the passing of Father Cowhig, who was called to the priesthood during tumultuous times in the history of our nation and world,’’ Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, said in a statement. “He ministered with love, commitment, and a desire to bring the message of Christ to parishes and communities across the Archdiocese. We pray that God grant him eternal rest.’’

Burial was at New Calvary Cemetery in Mattapan.

A simply lovely obituary–read it all.

Ruth Pierre wept before the congregation of a small Haitian church in Mattapan yesterday, mourning her uncle, who was killed in the earthquake that has left her impoverished homeland in ruins.

But Pierre said she is also grateful for those who survived, for those who have been rescued from the rubble that has paralyzed Haiti.

“My uncle died, but God saved many others,’’ said Pierre, 25, one of a dozen members of Church of the Nazarene who reflected on their families and loved ones during the 11 a.m. weekly service. “Thank you, God. I pray there are more found.’’

Read it all.

Mark Mardell reports from Chicago on the president’s current standing.

Listen to it all ( 5 3/4 minutes).

Anote of gratitude is due Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe for ordering the immediate firing of Matthew Kim after a tortuous seven-year saga. This wasn’t the first time that Yaffe tried to inject common sense into the absurdly difficult and expensive task of ridding classrooms of teachers who don’t belong there. His previous decision to allow the Los Angeles Unified School District to fire Kim, issued in July, was ignored by the panel that has authority over contested teacher dismissals.

The Kim fiasco is a reminder of just how many thousands of dollars and costly lawyers and innumerable court appearances are currently required to fire incompetent or otherwise troublesome teachers. And, adding insult to injury, Kim has been paid his full salary and benefits since 2003 while doing no work for the district.

Read it all.

The first, from Lorna Ashworth, the proposer of the motion,is here and the second, from the Secretary General is there.

A Church of England bishop has warned that the former Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for new limits on immigration would “play into the hands of racists”.

The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, the Right Rev John Packer, is the latest Anglican cleric to criticise Lord Carey of Clifton after he said in an article in The Times that he feared the present levels of immigration threatened “the very ethos or the DNA of our nation”.

Lord Carey is a member of the crossparty parliamentary group on balanced migration, which last week urged the political parties to make a commitment to keeping Britain’s population below 70 million.

Read it all.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

–Hebrews 5:12-14

Taliban militants unleashed a carefully coordinated, deadly attack on the heart of Afghanistan’s capital and its U.S.-backed government…[yesterday], killing five people and injuring more than 70 in an attack that illustrated the insurgency’s ability to strike at will at virtually any target.

The five-hour assualt, carried out by seven Taliban insurgents wielding AK-47 rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and suicide bomb vests, plunged downtown Kabul on a bustling workday morning into a state of war. Afghans shopping or heading to work screamed as they darted for cover while bursts of gunfire rang out overhead and explosions shook the downtown area.

Read the whole thing.

The Reverend Ellis Tucker Bowerfind, Rector

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Alexandria , Virginia

The Reverend James R. Harlan, Rector

Church of the Ascension, Denver , Colorado

The Reverend Jedediah D. Holdorph II, Rector

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Medford , Oregon

The Reverend John S. Nieman, Rector

Holy Trinity Parish, Clemson , South Carolina

The Reverend Dr. Michael Louis Vono, Rector

St. Paul ’s Within the Walls, Rome , Italy

This week the European Commission begins studying Greece’s latest plan for extracting itself from its financial crisis. But although the deployment of the Brussels machinery has taken the edge off the drama, any sense that the problem is now contained would be an illusion. The possibility that a country within the eurozone will get to the brink of defaulting on its sovereign debt remains real.

The new Greek Government’s plan remains incredible, based on a cut in the budget deficit from nearly 13 per cent to under 3 per cent in three years. That implies that Greece would, in one coherent sweep, push through profound reforms of the public and private sectors that it has not yet been able to tackle.

It remains likely, then, that Greece is headed for a crisis that tests the stability of the eurozone. The burden of Europe’s most difficult decision this year would fall on Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who would have to decide whether to rescue Greece to forestall a crisis throughout the currency club.

Read it all.

The uncertainty surrounding the suddenly-too-close-to-call Massachusetts Senate special election, as well as its high stakes, has political handicappers and strategists wondering if maybe they’ve seen this one before – in 1991, when long-shot Democrat Harris Wofford seized on the health care issue to pull off a shocking Pennsylvania special election victory that sent tremors across the political landscape.

It’s hard not to notice the similarities between the 1991 Senate special election and the current Massachusetts Senate contest.

Much like Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Wofford, a little-known Democrat who had been appointed to the late Republican Sen. John Heinz’s seat, began the race as a distinct underdog, and few expected he would be able to overcome former Gov. Dick Thornburgh, who left his post as U.S. attorney general to run for the seat.

Read it all.

Read it all. I see over on Intrade that Brown is up to 70 and Coakley is down to 30. It will be stunning if it holds–KSH.

Google employees may have assisted hackers who launched a cyber-attack from China, prompting the company’s threat to leave the country, it has emerged.

The world’s most popular search engine is believed to be investigating whether one or more of its own workers bases in the Chinese offices helped those attempting to break into the e-mail accounts of human rights activists last month.

Last week, Google said that it may pull out of the country after it was was targeted, along more than 30 other companies, in a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China”. It has now emerged that a number of Chinese journalists may have also seen their e-mail accounts hijacked.

Read it all.

Like other ministers in churches with Haitian-American congregations across the USA, the Rev. David Eugene took to the pulpit of his north Miami church Sunday and sought to offer solace to his worried, grieving flock.

“I preached from Deuteronomy, chapter 31, verse 8, and the title of my sermon was ‘I will not forsake you,’ ” said Eugene, pastor of Haitian Evangelical Baptist Church. “The second part of the text was Psalms 46, verses 1 and 2 ”” ‘The Lord is my refuge, my help and my strength.’

“It was very emotional. There was some crying,” he said.

Read it all.

When I listen to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I’m always curious as to why many of us overlook the opening statements of his 1963 address. It’s as if we only hear one side of his speech. Why do we quickly repeat the words “I have a dream,” and not the words “America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation….”

In 2010, poverty can disguise itself by hiding behind unemployment lines, housing foreclosures and the inability of a young person to afford a college education. When we look around our nation, many businesses are suffering from insufficient funds, as are too many families.

Once again, we wonder if the great vaults of America are still rich with opportunities for everyone.

The “fierce urgency of now” is what King mentioned back in 1963. But how long is “now”?

Read or listen to it all.

In the months ahead, as 30,000 additional heavily armed American soldiers and Marines surge into Afghanistan, a much smaller group of young Americans will ship out to the world’s most populous Muslim country: Indonesia.

Armed with little more than laptops and textbooks, shod not in combat boots but in sandals and sneakers, these 25 volunteers will be the first representatives of the Peace Corps to land in Indonesia since the organization was expelled in 1965. By agreeing to dispatch volunteers to live side-by-side with Indonesians, teaching English to their children and exchanging insights into each other’s cultures, the Obama administration is sending the clearest possible signal to the world’s Muslims: America’s fight is not with you, but with the terrorists at your fringes.

The move also reflects recognition by the administration and Congress that the Peace Corps is a critical component of a new “smart power” policy toward U.S. engagement abroad. Such an approach emphasizes public diplomacy and grassroots-level development assistance over military hard power. Acknowledging the need for this shift, Congress voted last month to raise Peace Corps funding by $60 million ”” the largest increase ever ”” to $400 million.

Read it all.