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Faith, tolerance and terror -- in Indonesia

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As you would expect, there was a wave — totally justified — of press coverage of the major speech that was delivered by President Barack Obama during his return to Jakarta, Indonesia, a city that he called home as a child. To read the speech text, click here.


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Mr. Mayor's righteous hand man

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Like many Angelenos, I have long since soured on the mayor of our great city. It’s still shocking to me that he basically moonwalked into a second term. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s personal peccadillos and ethical standards aside, his tenure, like his personality, has been more show than biz; all talk, no game.


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Passports to Mecca (and safe travel)

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In the past decade or so, the mainstream press has offered waves of news features that have attempted to explain the state of mind in our nation’s growing Islamic population. The need for these stories is obvious, although most of them end up presenting a single, unified Muslim community that does not in fact exist.


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Got news? Freedom, China and Lausanne

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With the election finally over, I’m slowly emerging from the bunker at my newspaper in Washington, D.C. I work for an editorial page, and while I don’t strictly cover politics, obviously it has dominated the news for the last few months. I’ve been wanting to discuss something here for a while, but I’m just now getting around to it.


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Religion beat is boring, huh?

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Don’t you just love the religion beat? I have never understood the complaint that religion news is boring territory. It seems like every time I turn around this beat serves of some new and fascinating twist, often with either joyful or distressing overtones.


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