Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, are pursued by reporters after attending a moment of silence event on Capitol Hill Jan. 6 in Washington, the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)
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Politico rounds up results about the GOP primary candidates who had voted to impeach former President Donald Trump. With the defeat of Liz Cheney Tuesday night, only two of the 10 brave Republicans who put the Constitution above partisanship will be on the ballot in November. The rest either did not run, or ran and lost. This is not your grandfather's Republican Party anymore.
The Washington Post has a great report on the efforts by former President Donald Trump to find top-notch lawyers to handle his many — and mounting — legal challenges, and the chorus of "noes" he is getting in return. Imagine: Lawyers are the people who care enough about their reputations to say "no" to the former president, but members of Congress? Not so much.
In The New Yorker, the great Jane Mayer looks at redistricting by state legislatures, not just of congressional districts, but of state legislative districts too, and how the effort is undermining democracy. It is also driving politics to the extremes, as legislators only have to worry about a challenge from their own flank. Of all the mistakes the Founding Fathers made, leaving redistricting to the political branches is one of the most damaging.
At The New York Times, Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren rightly complains about the distorting way religion appears, and is made to appear, in our media culture. She writes:
… when we primarily talk about God in the context of political or ideological debate, believers’ actual experience of God, worship and faith — not to mention spiritual virtues like humility, gratitude and kindness — often gets lost. God becomes merely another pawn in the culture wars, a means to a political end, a meme to own our opponents online or an accessory donned like a power tie.
And it is often believers who are at fault in reducing God to a pawn in the culture wars. That said, it was ironic her piece appeared the same day our Gospel reading featured Jesus telling his disciples: "Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." Even the irenic cannot reduce God to their cause.
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Turns out, the old adage "Roma locuta est, causa finite est" ("Rome has spoken, the case is closed") is no more. The final teaching authority of the Catholic faith apparently resides at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. where Dominican Fr. Thomas Petri has told the Catholic News Agency that the church's teaching against artificial contraception is "irreformable." This is despite the fact that Pope Paul VI said his encyclical Humanae Vitae was not infallible, and one can think of any one of a number of moral teachings that have changed through the years. For example, does Petri invest the endowment of the House of Studies? I hope so, but for a millennium, the church proscribed the charging of interest.
At Crux, national correspondent John Lavenburg examines the economic crossroads at which the island of Puerto Rico finds itself, with comments from religious leaders who are close to the people and see the challenges every day. Note to the Biden administration: If you want a real success story in the fight against climate change, it is hard to imagine a place with more latent wind and solar power than Puerto Rico, and where the energy grid is inadequate and outdated as well. With some investment and loan guarantees, you could make the island a Laudato Si' beacon for the hemisphere.
At Architecture Daily, a look at some of the approaches to design in the city of Copenhagen, which regularly tops the list of most livable cities. I am not a "bucket list" person, with a long list of things I need to do before I go to meet my Maker. Life has blest me plenty. Still, I would not mind going to see this beautiful city that turns industrial sites into recreational centers.
