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Martini, once favoured by Vatican progressives to succeed Pope John Paul II and a prominent voice in the church until his death at the age of 85 on Friday (8/30), gave a scathing portrayal of a pompous and bureaucratic church failing to move with the times.

A KERFUFFLE has broken out between philosophy and physics. It began earlier this spring when a philosopher (David Albert) gave a sharply negative review in this paper to a book by a physicist (Lawrence Krauss) that purported to solve, by purely scientific means, the mystery of the universe's existence. The physicist responded to the review by calling the philosopher who wrote it "moronic" and arguing that philosophy, unlike physics, makes no progress and is rather boring, if not totally useless. And then the kerfuffle was joined on both sides.

Do Americans have a moral responsibility to people in poverty in other countries?

Republicans need to figure out where they stand on children's welfare. They can't be "pro-life" when the "child" is in the womb but indifferent when it's in the world. The good news is that last year the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the rate of premature births fell in 2008, representing the first two-year decline in the last 30 years. The bad news is that, according to the March of Dimes, the Republican budget the House just passed could do great damage to this progress, including: $50 million in cuts to the state-based prenatal care programs and services for children with special needs; and nearly $1 billion in cuts to CDC's preventive health programs, including its preterm birth studies.

So for nursing home residents with advanced dementia, sons and daughters often opt to return the favor - even though the medical consensus is that it's not a favor. Most dementia patients will eventually develop problems with eating and swallowing as the disease progresses, but feeding them through surgically implanted tubes has not been shown to improve their survival, to prevent pneumonia or heal bedsores, or to improve their quality of life. Nevertheless, about a third of nursing home residents with advanced dementia do receive feeding tubes, usually during a hospitalization.

Concern re elim'n of DS comm'ty (at time of progress, & self-stated happiness)

Liberalism should be popular, but isn't, because people don't perceive that government is honest or helps them. Liberals haven't worked on cleaning house.