Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu announced Thursday he is retiring from public life later this year when he turns 79, saying “the time has now come to slow down” and spend more time with his family.

The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town said after his birthday on Oct. 7 he will limit his time in the office to one day per week until February 2011.

“Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family reading and writing and praying and thinking too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels,” Tutu said in a statement Thursday. “The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.”

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“By this estimate, the Recovery Act has met the president’s goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs — two quarters earlier than anticipated,” Romer said with a straight face. (More than 2.5 million non-farm jobs have been lost since ARRA was enacted in February 2009, all of them in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

How does the CEA arrive at these numbers? It uses two methods, Romer said. The first is a standard macroeconomic forecasting model that estimates the multiplier effect of fiscal policy. (The government’s spending is someone else’s income.) The second method is statistical, using previous relationships between GDP and employment to project future behavior.

These numbers might just as well have been pulled out of a hat. Recall that it was the same model and method the administration used in January 2009 to predict an unemployment rate of 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 with the enactment of the fiscal stimulus and 8.8 percent without. The unemployment rate now stands at 9.5 percent.

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Update: Michael Boskin chimes in on the same theme, calling them Obama’s Economic Fish Stories.

South Carolina consumers would pay more for food, water, electricity and prescriptions in exchange for a lower overall sales tax rate under a tax revision proposal given preliminary approval Wednesday.

And the proposed sales tax increases don’t stop at necessities. The state’s Tax Realignment Commission recommends that the state for the first time charge sales taxes on digital purchases from online stores, such as iTunes and Amazon.com, and pay more to buy a car as part of a massive makeover of the way the state collects taxes.

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The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% ”” to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket ”” 25% ”” will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.

But the damage doesn’t stop there.

The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% ”” to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% ”” a 164% increase….
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. “This provision of ObamaCare,” according to ATR, “increases the additional tax on nonmedical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% to 20%, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10%.”

Brand Name Drug Tax. Makers and importers of brand-name drugs will be liable for a tax of $2.5 billion in 2011. The tax goes to $3 billion a year from 2012 to 2016, then $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018. Beginning in 2019 it falls to $2.8 billion and stays there. And who pays the new drug tax? Patients, in the form of higher prices.

Read it carefully and read it all.

You may find it here.

Why do we react so badly to young suicide? The young suicide is particularly unacceptable: he or she appears to engage in the reverse of Pritchard’s ultimate rejection ”” it is not we who are rejecting the individual suicide so much as the young suicide cohorts who are rejecting us ”” our love, family, faith, imagination, creativity, culture, civilisation. We are, in many senses, as much affronted as confronted by each such event. But this is essentially because we view the individual as belonging to us, to our society. For some religions, life and death belong only to God.

We need to reflect that even the most rejected, lonely, desperate, hopeless and helpless individual still has one little domain of sovereignty: his or her physical being. Continuation or cessation of that physicality is the only decision they can make ”” and who are we to deny them that exercise?

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The Australian Institute of Family Studies recently held its biennial conference, celebrating 30 years of “advancing understanding of Australian families”. The conference recognised key statistics that illustrate some of the dramatic changes in the landscape of families, including declining marriage rates and the increase in cohabitation and ex-nuptial births.

One only has to glance at the 500-plus comments expressing outrage at Bettina Ardnt’s “backward opinions” (which suggested that Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s de facto relationship might not be setting the best example for young female onlookers) or, more recently, the response to the article by Chris Meney to conclude that we seem to have reached consensus: cohabitation is another stage on the pathway to a family.

When it comes to children’s wellbeing, AIFS director Professor Alan Hayes recognises that the function of the family unit is what matters, rather than the form. What is crucial is that children have an example of a loving relationship that doesn’t disappear before their eyes; that they’re brought up in an environment of love.

Please take special note of that line: “the function…is what matters, rather than the form.” A better statement of modern gnosticism you will rarely see. Read it all–KSH.

The 70-million strong Lutheran World Federation has struggled to live up to its own vision of inclusiveness regarding the role of women, the general secretary of the church grouping, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, has told LWF members.

“Equitable participation in God’s mission is the hallmark of an inclusive communion. Member churches are therefore urged to take appropriate steps towards the ordination of women, and, where it is not the case, to put in place policies of equality,” Noko said in his address to the LWF’s highest governing body on 21 July in Stuttgart, Germany.

Noko, who is set to retire from his position in November after 16 years, was delivering his report to the Lutheran grouping’s 11th assembly, taking place from 20 to 27 July.

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The Senate gave final approval Wednesday evening to legislation providing added unemployment benefits through November to millions of Americans who have been out of work for six months or more, ending a politically charged fight.

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For the past year, bartenders and bishops, the committed and the curious alike have sampled “Sacred Cocktails,” a ministry started by the Rev. Tommy Dillon, rector of St. Aidan’s Church in San Francisco in the Episcopal Diocese of California.

Dillon said he partnered with the popular Lookout Bar in San Francisco’s Castro District a year ago to provide a way into church for those outside it who might be interested “by gathering once a week for sacred discussions ”¦ in a location that people might feel comfortable coming to.”

Sacred Cocktails, which celebrated its first anniversary in June and recently received a $1,000 grant from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific Celtic Cross Society, is the first Episcopal presence in the Castro District in decades, Dillon said July 20 in a telephone interview from his office.

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Nine Anglican congregations in Loudoun and Fairfax counties asked the Virginia Supreme Court July 10 to reconsider part of a ruling from a month before that remanded a church property case back to a lower court.

The dispute centers around whether the nine congregations may keep the properties upon which their churches were built after breaking away from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia to join the Anglican District of Virginia in 2006. The Loudoun church involved is Church of Our Saviour at Oatlands.

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A letter to the parish about it is here.

The unemployment rate in the United States is likely to remain well above 7 percent through the end of 2012 and the duration of President Obama’s current term, according to the Federal Reserve.

Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, told Congress on Wednesday that it would take “a significant amount of time” to restore the 8.5 million jobs lost in the United States in 2008 and 2009, and warned that “the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain.” He also warned that financial conditions, particularly the European sovereign debt crisis, had “become less supportive of economic growth in recent months.”

In presenting the Fed’s semiannual monetary policy report to Congress, Mr. Bernanke struck a more cautious tone than he did when he last submitted the report, in February.

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The young minister’s alarm goes off at 6 a.m., time for his own devotional and the one he will send to the president of the United States.

This particular morning, Joshua DuBois meditates on the disciple Peter’s first letter to the early church. The text he prays over and e-mails to Barack Obama half an hour later is about something else.

It’s a private start to the day for the president and the pastor, a spiritual BlackBerry session they guard carefully.

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It’s been three years since the Anglican Church of Nigeria “crossed borders” into the United States to establish a new home for conservatives who were unhappy with the liberal direction of the U.S. Episcopal Church.

And if the Nigerians didn’t step in, the global Anglican family would have lost a lot of people, said the new primate of the Church of Nigeria.

“We came because we love the Anglican church and we do not want the Anglican church to split,” Archbishop Nicholas Okoh told The Christian Post in an interview Tuesday. “That would’ve been the case if we didn’t come in.”

Though the Nigerian church, which is the largest regional body in the Anglican Communion with more than 18 million members, came to the U.S. with compassion, it was recently disciplined for violating a moratorium on cross-border intervention.

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Government watchdogs told a Senate panel Wednesday that the Obama administration’s effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure isn’t working and that the Treasury Department has failed to fix the program.

Special inspector general for the financial bailouts Neil Barofsky said the program has not “put an appreciable dent in foreclosure filings,” during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the $700 billion bank bailout. He also said the Treasury Department has ignored earlier demands that it set clearer goals for the program.

Elizabeth Warren, who chairs a separate Congressional Oversight Panel on the bailouts, said Treasury’s failure to act more quickly could be hurting the recovery.

More foreclosures could force down the price of homes and further hurt the already-ailing housing industry.

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The US will impose new sanctions on North Korea, following the crisis over the sinking of a South Korean warship.

The move was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a visit to South Korea.

She said the measures would target Pyongyang’s sale and purchase of arms and import of luxury goods, and would help prevent nuclear proliferation.

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Dear Members of Trinity Parish:

As your bishop, I am inviting you to attend a confidential meeting at which I will provide you with additional information concerning my reasons for inhibiting the exercise of the priestly office by Dean Philip C. Linder.

I am convening this meeting because in my pastoral judgment, and in my exercise of the ministry of oversight as an ordained episcopal leader in our church, it is my conclusion that sharing additional information with you is necessary. I hope to assure you of the deliberate and careful way in which decisions have been made, and the factual justification for them. The ultimate goal of the meeting is to ensure that the health and wellness of the parish are preserved.

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With so much water already under the bridge, it seems a risky move to wade into the debate between Commonweal (and its apparent legal advisor, Professor Timothy Jost) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at this stage of the debate over the contents of the health care reform law (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or PPACA). On the other hand, it might be the perfect time to step back and survey the prolific exchange. Commonweal’s editors just don’t seem to trust the USCCB’s legal or policy analyses of the PPACA insofar as freedom of conscience or abortion are concerned.

Conversely, Commonweal has extended every benefit of the doubt to the opinions of one professor, Timothy Jost, who not only has no record of cooperation with Catholic moral and policy interests along the consistent ethic of life, but seems to regard Catholic contributions to moral reasoning about law with animosity, comparing Catholic influence to the establishment of an Iranian theocracy. Furthermore, Jost seems to be a strident partisan across the board, a condition best (and hilariously) exemplified in his May 17 editorial for Politico, wherein Jost wrote how “unimaginable” it would be for American voters to want Republicans back in government when, under the Democrats, the “economy has come roaring back.”

Meanwhile, The USCCB’s uniquely nonpartisan voice””even in the midst of some of the nastiest inter-party exchanges in recent history””successfully held together advocacy against killing the unborn with advocacy for expanding health care insurance to all Americans. Yet Commonweal, it seems, would not be satisfied with anything less than a full-throated blessing of whatever the House majority decided to offer pro-life Americans while in the throes of desperate, last-minute negotiations.

Read it all (and follow the links if you haven’t followed the debate).

Dear Friends, as I said, this Gospel passage is very important at vacation time, because it recalls the fact that the human person must work, must involve himself in domestic and professional concerns, to be sure, but he has need of God before all else, who is the interior light of love and truth. Without love, even the most important activities lose value and do not bring joy. Without a profound meaning, everything we do is reduced to sterile and disordered activism. And who gives us love and truth if not Jesus Christ? So let us learn, brothers, to help each other, to cooperate, but first of all to choose together the better part, which is and will always be our greater good.

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The projected image was of international statesmen gathering in solidarity with an Afghanistan
marching forward. But the alacrity with which they headed for their planes after spending the briefest of times in Kabul seemed to mirror the West’s haste to get on the exit route from this costly war.

There had, in the many previous conferences on Afghanistan’s future, been an air of expectation and even optimism. But the gathering for the “Kabul process” was permeated with an undercurrent of past disappointments and trepidation for the future.

The pledges made, already well-trailed, were trotted out without much conviction, the declaration of support for Hamid Karzai who had been accused by some of his Western backers of stealing last year’s election, delivered with little enthusiasm. Nine years after the fall of the Taliban, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, talked of the road ahead “being full of challenges” and “questions by many on whether success was even possible”.

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Official Chinese surveys now show that nearly one in three Chinese describe themselves as religious, an astonishing figure for an officially atheist country, where religion was banned until three decades ago.

The last 30 years of economic reform have seen an explosion of religious belief. China’s government officially recognizes five religions: Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Daoism. The biggest boom of all has been in Christianity, which the government has struggled to control.

Read or listen to it all and make sure to take the time to follow the slide show.

“It’s a sleazy business run by sleazy people…”

—North Charleston Councilwoman Phoebe Miller, who plans to vote for casino boats to come to North Charleston anyway

The church recently concluded a study of more than 32,000 Methodist congregations across North America, seeking the “key factors impacting vital congregations.” The study surveyed everybody from bishops to district superintendents to people in the pews.

Working with New York-based Towers Watson consultants, researchers constructed a “vitality index” to measure each church and concluded “that all kinds of UMC churches are vital — small, large, across
geographies, and church setting.”

The report identified four key areas that fuel vitality: small groups and programs; worship services that mix traditional and contemporary styles with an emphasis on relevant sermons; pastors who work hard on mentorship and cultivation of the laity; and an emphasis on effective lay leadership.

These four factors “are consistent regardless of church size, predominant ethnicity, and jurisdiction,” the study concluded.

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The Diocese of San Diego has joined several other dioceses ”” including Massachusetts, Southeast Florida and Southern Ohio ”” that have decided since General Convention 2009 to allow some form of public blessings for same-sex couples.

The decision by the Rt. Rev. James Robert Mathes, Bishop of San Diego, reflects the recommendations of the diocese’s Holiness in Relationships Task Force Report [PDF].

“My approach on this matter, and several other things, is to be in conversation with the community,” Bishop Mathes told The Living Church.

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Payrolls decreased in 27 U.S. states in June, led by California and New York, signaling the slowdown in hiring is broad-based.

Employers in California cut staff by 27,600 workers last month and those in New York reduced employment by 22,500, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Tennessee, Arizona and New Mexico rounded out the five states with the biggest job losses.

The U.S. lost 125,000 jobs last month as the government cut temporary workers conducting the 2010 census and private payrolls rose a less-than-forecast 83,000, according to Labor Department figures issued July 2. The data signal companies are becoming reticent to hire as the economy cools.

“Businesses are looking at what’s going on in Europe and the stock outlook and people are becoming a little more skittish,” Marisa Di Natale, a director at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report. “We may see that for a couple of more months until we start to see some real momentum in some sector of the economy.”

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While many communities are fearfully contemplating extensive cuts, Maywood says it is the first city in the nation in the current downturn to take an ax to everyone.

The school crossing guards were let go. Parking enforcement was contracted out, City Hall workers dismissed, street maintenance workers made redundant. The public safety duties of the Police Department were handed over to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

At first, people in this poor, long-troubled and heavily Hispanic city southeast of Los Angeles braced for anarchy.

Senior citizens were afraid they would be assaulted as they walked down the street. Parents worried the parks would be shut and their children would have nowhere to safely play. Landlords said their tenants had begun suggesting that without city-run services they would no longer feel obliged to pay rent.

The apocalypse never arrived.

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From here:

When Barry Goldwater mounted his campaign for the White House in 1964, the Jewish humorist Harry Golden took notice. “I always knew the first Jewish president of the United States,” Mr. Golden put it, “would be an Episcopalian.”

On the surface, Mr. Golden was simply stating a biographical fact. Mr. Goldwater’s Jewish father had married an Episcopalian woman and their children were raised as Christians.

The Times’s stylebook says to use “Episcopalian” only as a noun; the adjective is “Episcopal.” (In this case, of course, we could simply have dropped “woman” and used the noun “Episcopalian”; it’s obvious that his mother was a woman.)