And Now News for the Day - Tuesday, September 27, 2011

In Washington, DC the US Senate reached a bipartisan spending agreement on Monday which allows the government to avoid a shutdown on September 30. The Senate voted 79 -12 for a seven week extension of government financing. The House will have to approve the measure next week.

In London six men from Birmingham have been charged with planning an act of terrorism in Britain. The plot included training in Pakistan, preparing for suicide bombings, and constructing an explosive device. Wanting to be suicide bombers, having raised money for terrorism, recruiting people for terrorism are some of the charges the men received. Four of the men will appear at the Old Bailey on October 21.


In Austria computer hackers published names and addresses of almost 25,000 police officials, a move that critics say compromises the personal security of the police officials. The names were published in response against a draft law requiring telecommunications companies to provide police with internet and telephone activity for six months.


Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president knows it's all over. His party lost its Senate majority in a historic defeat seven months before the 2012 presidential election. The Socialist party will have the majority in the Senate for the first time since 1958. Optimism fuels the Socialist party leaders who now think their chances of winning the presidency have improved greatly because Sarkozy is unpopular with many voters.


Wangari Maathai was one of Kenya's most recognizable women. in 2004 Ms Maathai won her Nobel in 2004 for combining science and social activism. Wangari Maathai was beaten and arrested by the former president of Kenya who described her as the mad woman. World leaders, former students, and some African visionaries remembered her as the Tree Mother of Africa. Maathai was the first female from Africa to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She died after a battle with cancer. She was 71.

Household vinegar can be used in fighting cervical cancer. The procedure was developed at John Hopkins medical school and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization.

At least 26 schoolchildren and two teachers were killed and forty other people injured in a bus accident in Pakistan. The accident occurred east of the capital of Islamabad.

Events happen which require the prayers of the faithful.

Debt Ceiling

Social justice is needed as much now as in any time in history. The past month there have been so much posturing and posing about the issue of the federal government's debt ceiling.

How the debt ceiling was discussed, the programs which were offered up, sacrificed to gain support within the US Congress were both frightening and amusing. There was a heartlessness, a contempt for fairness, for social justice.

The art of American politics is the creation and organization of superficial, temporary idolatry.

The debt ceiling mess revealed the aristocracy of idols the democracy of idolaters and the fears of the common man.

The populace cannot understand the debt ceiling: the politicians avoid speaking honestly about the debt ceiling: the politicians want the voters to remain confused and angry.

Debt ceiling rhetoric exposes the darkness, the despair that is now the heart and core of our political systems. Our politicians are now proud to be boorish, unsympathetic characters.

An inertia of faith and trust will be the true aftermath of this round of debt ceiling decisions. Both the common good and the common man were offered as sacrificial pawns. Now both the politicians and the nation itself have questions of character and credibility. We are now behaving like tourists searching for a plastic idol made cheaply in China.

And now the Senate will debate and vote on this plastic idol which cheaply assaults the character, the integrity of all Americans especially the poor, the elderly, those who need government help the most.

Hopefully, American politicians will learn to love their neighbors and not just their lobbyists and special interest groups.