Quietly awaiting execution

Saudi Arabia isn’t high on anybody’s list for a religious freedom award. But last year there were some hopeful signs for religious liberty advocates when the king dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who had condoned killing owners of television networks that broadcast immoral content. He had also appointed a female deputy minister and changed the makeup of a body of religious scholars — who issue fatwas — to give more moderate Sunnis representation.


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An Aggie nerd considers his path

There is so, so much to like in the recent Dallas Morning News profile of a young Texan who is wrestling with the ultimate decision of whether or not to become a monk in the Cistercian community at Our Lady of Dallas, a monastery in Irving, near Dallas.


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Health care: So who is cheering?

As you would expect, my morning email was full of angry press statements from conservative groups — with a heavy evangelical-right flavor. Most of the emails attacked Rep. Bart Stupak and his circle of Democrats who, in the end, agreed to back the U.S. Senate health-care reform legislation, after President Barack Obama agreed to issue an executive order clarifying that this bill would not end the ban on federal funding of abortions.


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Take this number -- please

On Saturday, thousands of opponents of the current health care legislation showed up at the Capitol where they expressed concern with various parts of the bill. I was able to observe many hours of the protest and some of the proceedings inside. But I thought it interesting that the very first protester I saw getting off at the Metro stop nearest to the Capitol was a nun in habit.


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Parsing the abortion language

So it appears that we are staggering to the finish line on this health-care reform bill — maybe. To no one’s surprise, or, at least, no one who has paid any attention to American politics for several decades, the key dividing line continues to be abortion.


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