I welcome Sarah Palin rsquo s selection as McCain rsquo s running mate for a mixture of reasons From a political perspective I think her youthful inexperience and her female gender will weaken the Republican ticket sexism like racism is not dead nbsp And anything that makes it less likely tha

There are some extraordinary gatherings organised by Catholic movements that take place each year but which go largely unnoticed by the media One is the annual interfaith gathering organised by the Sant Egidio community in a different city in October each year Another is the so-called Rimini Mee

On NPR And it s not Brad Pitt s nbsp For that see below James Martin SJ

Our political bloggers will say more later about John McCain s surprising pick of Gov Sarah Palin of Alaska as his vice-presidential running mate For now one part of her biography is worth noting Palin s fifth child has Down s Syndrome which was discovered during prenatal testing Yet Pal

Barack Obama is the only American politician who can fill a stadium as he did last night in Denver By moving the venue from the smaller indoor arena to the massive outdoor one he did three things First he invited and received comparisons with John F Kennedy who accepted the Democratic nod i

For those of you who enjoyed Mary Doria Russell s bestselling science-fiction novel nbsp The Sparrow about a group of Jesuit scientists nbsp and lay colleagues who discover life on far-off planet with some tragic results comes this bit of casting nbsp news nbsp nbsp Many years ago there we