March, 2008

When Pope Benedict XVI makes his first papal trip to the United States in April, he will be guided by a seasoned Vatican ambassador who sees the visit as an opportunity to introduce a little-known pope to a complex set of audiences: American Catholics, Americans in general and global opinion leaders. “The image of Benedict XVI is not only not well known, but it is badly known,” said Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who, as apostolic nuncio, is the Vatican’s top diplomat in the United States.

When John McCain faced a firestorm over the Rev. John Hagee's endorsement, he publicly renounced the pastor's past anti-Catholic remarks but not his support. The controversy largely faded, in part because Mr. McCain had worked quietly to build alliances with conservative Catholic leaders willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The McCain campaign's Catholic outreach, which has gone largely unnoticed, is part of a larger effort to build bridges with religious voters who are key to the Republican's presidential prospects – a constituency Mr. McCain has long had trouble with.

Driven by a mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s. The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years with the economy, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters.

The 2007 farm bill is now the 2008 farm bill. And if something doesn't happen in Congress by April 18, it could very well become the 2009 farm bill. There are many constituencies interested in different provisions of the five-year, $286 billion-plus farm bill currently facing revisions by a House-Senate conference committee. Catholic rural life advocates want to see limits placed on the size of federal commodities payments. The biggest payments now go to the largest farms. Catholic anti-poverty advocates would like to see gains made in federal food stamp and nutrition funding.

A U.S. appeals court decision to overturn the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of killing a police officer in 1981, is a victory for human life, said Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. A panel of judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld Abu-Jamal's murder conviction March 27, but also upheld a lower court ruling vacating his death sentence. In an interview published on the front page of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, March 28, Cardinal Martino said: "Justice is not accomplished by punishing with another crime. For this reason, every death sentence not carried out is a victory for man and for life."

The state already at the cutting edge of immigration reform seems poised to undertake yet another experiment: a guest worker program created and administered by a state rather than by the federal government. The Arizona legislature is expected on Monday to fast track bills to create a temporary worker program in the state. Even with the backing of top lawmakers, the bills face big hurdles, including sign-off from the feds. But if approved, they would streamline the process for Arizona employers to hire temporary workers from Mexico – and would serve as a model for national reform, say supporters.

When Americans cast ballots on November 4 to elect a president, some states also will ask voters hot-button questions like whether or not to ban gay marriage. Such "ballot initiatives" - proposed amendments to state constitutions or legislation - have become a staple of U.S. elections and have played a role in recent presidential races. Two that have qualified for November's ballot stand out: one to ban gay marriage in the presidential battleground state of Florida -- where votes for Republican and Democratic candidates have been closely split in recent elections - and another in Colorado to roll back affirmative-action policies aimed at helping minorities overcome discrimination.

Pope Benedict likely will walk a fine line between trampling on academic freedom and laying down the law on orthodoxy when he meets with top U.S. Catholic educators next month, experts and observers say. The April 17 session at Catholic University of America in Washington already has prompted some speculation that the German-born pontiff might reprimand the heads of more than 200 U.S. Catholic colleges and universities. The issues range from how far faculty theologians can stray from the mainstream in their teachings to whether politicians whose stands on abortion or other issues conflict with those of the church should be invited to speak on campus.

Five former U.S. secretaries of State on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran. The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference in Athens aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice. Each of them said closing the prison in Cuba would bolster America's image abroad.

There are more slaves today than at any point in human history," according to a recent estimate that there are currently 27 million worldwide. One hundred and forty-three years after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1865 and 60 years after the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights banned the slave trade worldwide, slavery -- or, as it is euphemistically called, human trafficking -- is actually thriving. It is, as Hillary Clinton has said, "the dark underbelly of globalization."

The words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Barack Obama's longtime pastor, continue to fuel controversy, in part because the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is so close this year, in part because the words themselves pose a stark question about America's cross-racial discourse: When does speaking out against injustices cross into hate speech? And does it reveal the little awareness among whites of the centuries of African-American struggle and its tradition of "prophetic preaching?"

"Normalcy," President Bush said, "is returning back to Iraq." Bush's is pleading for more patience from his own weary public for a war that has now surpassed five years and 4,000 American dead. Bush Thursday made the case that Iraq has made impressive progress in political reconciliation in recent months even as his argument was overshadowed by the latest outbreak of violence. Bush cast the battling in Basra not as a setback but as more fodder for optimism, a sign that Iraq's leaders were ready to challenge the militias that dominate the southern city with a tough security crackdown designed and led by the government's own forces.

Understanding Pennsylvania's rich Catholic tradition and responding to it is an article of faith for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama as the April 22 primary looms in the still unsettled and intense Democratic presidential race. This year, Clinton has fared well among Catholic voters in early primary states and she holds a substantial lead over Obama among Catholic Democrats in Pennsylvania polls. Some analysts argue, however, that Catholic voters' race, age and economic status — rather than religion — are more likely to play a greater role in determining their vote.

Supporters of all presidential candidates are angling to discover how to best appeal to Catholic voters, who could be a key swing vote in the November presidential election. According to Robert Reilly, a successful McCain campaign must win over Catholics to win the White House. Robert R. Reilly, who was President Ronald Reagan’s liaison to Catholics between 1983 and 1985, wrote in an article published on Wednesday that Senator John McCain could not win the presidential election without the Catholic vote, which makes up about 25 percent of the electorate. “The worst thing he could assume is that the Catholic vote will fall into his lap because Catholics will have nowhere else to go,” he said.

The U.S. immigration service said yesterday that it will temporarily stop denying green cards to refugees and other legal immigrants tied to groups that sought to topple foreign dictatorships, placing their cases on hold while it determines more "logical, common-sense" rules for judging them. The decision will potentially affect thousands of pending applications for permanent U.S. residence.

Sen. John McCain, carefully distancing himself from President Bush and seeking to sound a moderate tone, called Wednesday for stronger ties with allies and cautioned that American power "does not mean we can do whatever we want, whenever we want." In his first major foreign policy speech since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, McCain told the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles that to end terrorism and pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States must lead by "attracting others to our cause" and "defending the rules of international civilized society."

Amid a sluggish economy, a record 1.1 million Ohioans are getting food stamps, the state’s welfare agency said. That’s about 10 percent of the state’s population. Caseloads have almost doubled since 2001, when an estimated 628,000 people were in the program, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Low wages, unemployment and more expensive groceries, gasoline and other necessities have contributed to financial hardships facing many families.

The Catholic Conference of Ohio has joined the state’s religious leaders in a campaign for payday lending reform. Speaking at a February 26 Ohio Coalition Responsible Lending news conference, six religious leaders urged Ohio voters to support House Bill 333 and to let their representatives know the bill should be enacted. The bill remains in a house committee. There has been one public hearing on it, but there has been no movement to bring the bill up for a vote. The proposed bill would cap what the group called the “exorbitant” 391 percent interest rate typically charged to some of the 300,000 Ohioans by the payday lending industry each year. “More harm than good has come (from payday lending) for people in need of cash,” said Jim Tobin, associate director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio, the public policy arm for the state’s Catholic bishops. He said the bishops are concerned for people caught in a “spiral of indebtedness.”

With the presidential campaign going full tilt, a new government report on a big national problem is usually followed by volleys of rhetoric from the candidates. But on Tuesday, when the annual report on the precarious state of Medicare and Social Security came out, the reaction was not exactly deafening. The two programs on which millions of elderly Americans depend are apparently just too hot to handle -- especially since any realistic solution is likely to involve a politically unpalatable mix of higher taxes and lower benefits.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says the United States is approaching a "perfect storm" of problems that "will cause our health care system to implode" if the next president doesn't act. Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton would agree. But that's about where agreement over health care ends. McCain's ideas could continue to leave millions of people without insurance, experts say, and could increase the number of employers dropping or limiting health plans. Covering more people, as Clinton's and Obama's plans attempt, could cost more than expected, they say.

A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even larger portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said yesterday. Satellite images show a runaway 160-square-mile chunk of ice that broke off the Wilkins Ice Shelf in western Antarctica. The event is a result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan. Although icebergs naturally break away from the mainland, collapses such as this are unusual.

A U.N. food aid agency appealed to donor countries Monday to help close a spiraling gap of at least $500 million caused by soaring food prices, saying its efforts to feed the world's needy would otherwise have to be scaled back. The Rome-based World Food Program said it issued the appeal in a letter to governments Thursday, urging them to be as generous as possible by May 1 to prevent it from having to cut food rations in its global operations. The steadily climbing cost of food and fuel means that people are "simply being priced out of food the market," the agency's executive director, Josette Sheeran, told reporters in a conference call.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave employers a green light to reduce health benefits for millions of retirees who turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare. The justices turned away a legal challenge from AARP, the nation's leading senior citizens lobby, which had contended these lower benefits for older retirees violated the federal law against age discrimination. The court's action upholds, in effect, a rule adopted last year by federal regulators that says the "coordination of retiree health benefits with Medicare" is exempt from the anti-age-bias law.

Troop levels in Iraq through 2008 would remain nearly the same as at any time during five years of war, under plans presented to President Bush yesterday by the senior American commander and the top American diplomat in Iraq, senior administration and military officials said. Bush announced no final decision on future troop levels after the video briefing by the commander, General David H. Petraeus, and the diplomat, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. The briefing took place on the day when the 4,000th American military death of the war was reported and just after the invasion's fifth anniversary.

It began in the simplest way. Over lunch with girlfriends, Debbie Tenzer listened as they argued over the state of the world – war, crime, schools in Los Angeles – and how they felt helpless to change anything. Friends soon suggested she post these activities on a website, and DoOneNiceThing.com was born. Now she communicates with "nice-oholics" in 53 countries – people inspired by the website to pour tons of school supplies into Afghanistan, meet the needs of students fleeing hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, send sweaters to help people endure the bitter winter winds in Iraq, and so on.