June 28, 2008

Reading 1
Acts 3:1-10
Peter and John were going up to the temple area
for the three o'clock hour of prayer.
And a man crippled from birth was carried
and placed at the gate of the temple called "the Beautiful Gate"
every day to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple.
When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple,
he asked for alms.
But Peter looked intently at him, as did John,
and said, "Look at us."
He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.
Peter said, "I have neither silver nor gold,
but what I do have I give you:
in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk."
Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up,
and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong.
He leaped up, stood, and walked around,
and went into the temple with them,
walking and jumping and praising God.
When all the people saw the man walking and praising God,
they recognized him as the one who used to sit begging
at the Beautiful Gate of the temple,
and they were filled with amazement and astonishment
at what had happened to him.

Responsorial Psalm
19:2-3, 4-5
R. (5) Their message goes out through all the earth.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day pours out the word to day;
and night to night imparts knowledge.
R. Their message goes out through all the earth.
Not a word nor a discourse
whose voice is not heard;
through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.
R. Their message goes out through all the earth.

Reading II
Gal 1:11-20
I want you to know, brothers and sisters,
that the Gospel preached by me is not of human origin.
For I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it,
but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
For you heard of my former way of life in Judaism,
how I persecuted the Church of God beyond measure
and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism
beyond many of my contemporaries among my race,
since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions.
But when God, who from my mother's womb had set me apart
and called me through his grace,
was pleased to reveal his Son to me,
so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles,
I did not immediately consult flesh and blood,
nor did I go up to Jerusalem
to those who were Apostles before me;
rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem
to confer with Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days.
But I did not see any other of the Apostles,
only James the brother of the Lord.
--As to what I am writing to you, behold,
before God, I am not lying.

Gospel
Jn 21:15-19
Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples
and, when they had finished breakfast, said to Simon Peter,
"Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
Simon Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."
He then said to Simon Peter a second time,
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Simon Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
He said to him, "Tend my sheep."
He said to him the third time,
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time,
"Do you love me?" and he said to him,
"Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.
Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go."
He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.
And when he had said this, he said to him, "Follow me."

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

June 25, 2008

Special Drinks Issue

By PETE WELLS

YOU may regard the electric blender as a helpful household appliance. For your bartender, it is a tool straight from the devil.

“You’d be hard pressed to find a barman who takes his work seriously who works in a joint with a blender,” said Duggan McDonnell, an owner of the bar Cantina in San Francisco. “I worked in one restaurant that did blender drinks and I’m telling you — the noise, the whirring, you’re going through blades in the middle of service, and craziness abounds.”

So widespread is the loathing that whenever Martin Cate posts a job opening at Forbidden Island, his bar in Alameda, Calif., he finds it necessary to screen out bartenders who refuse to use the devices. “Don’t like blenders?” his ad goes. “Don’t apply.” Each time it runs, people write to tell him just how happy they are that they don’t work for him.

After all, there are plenty of bars where they will never be called on to push “Liquefy.” The owners of high-minded cocktail haunts like Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco or the Clover Club in Brooklyn cultivate a genteel atmosphere that is not just pre-Prohibition but almost pre-Edison.

Toby Maloney, an owner of another such bar, the Violet Hour in Chicago, once worked at a restaurant where the owners’ purchase of a blender touched off a covert rebellion. “All the bartenders decided that was not going to happen,” he recalled. “I remember the blender — can you hear my quotes? — accidentally falling down the stairs.”

So it’s something of a shock that a couple of bars are lugging the machine back up the stairs again, dusting it off and even giving it a place of honor.

At the Rusty Knot at the western edge of Greenwich Village, two blenders work all night long and, on weekends, most of the afternoon, churning up fluffy snowdrifts of rum. In the two years since it opened, Forbidden Island has worn out three blenders.

“They just didn’t handle the volume,” Mr. Cate said. “The ball bearings freeze up in there. Or the blade in the bottom of the cup freezes up or something, and they don’t run, and there’s this unsettling burning smell that comes out of the blender.”

The Herculean blenders at those two bars — and granted, two bars is far from a national landslide — work so hard for an excellent reason. Bartenders might hate making blender cocktails, but the rest of us love drinking them.

We loved them in the ’30s and ’40s, when the Waring blender washed ashore in Havana and was adopted by Constante Ribalagua, head barman at the Floridita. According to legend, Ribalagua made more than 10 million daiquiris. There is dispute about his precise technique, but for many drinks he seems to have used the blender almost as a cocktail shaker, pulsing the ingredients just long enough to chill them, but not so long as to turn the drink to slush.

He was known for filtering out even the tiniest shards of ice with a fine mesh sieve, and for the grapefruit-and-maraschino-liqueur daiquiri he served Hemingway. But Ribalagua had five versions of that cocktail, all worth a second look, particularly the Daiquiri No. 2, with its hint of oranges.

We loved blender drinks in the ’50s, when the piña colada sailed north from San Juan and captured the mainland United States. It was taken up by the tiki bars and restaurants that spread across the country after World War II, inspired by the success of Trader Vic’s in Emeryville, Calif., and Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood.

Modern bartenders might embrace the blender if they had been around in those pioneer days.

“Before they had blenders, they had blocks of ice, and they had four or five guys on a busy night, and all they would do is shave ice,” said Michael Buhen, an owner of the Tiki-Ti on Sunset Boulevard. Mr. Buhen’s father, Ray, worked for Don the Beachcomber in 1934, when it opened. “And then they invented the blender and you didn’t have to do that stuff anymore.”

We might have loved them a little too much in the ’70s. At fern bars across the land, singles’ nights were lubricated by heaping goblets of sugary frozen drinks like the Mudslide and the Outstanding Alexander (Cognac, Grand Marnier, coffee liqueur, whipping cream, chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream).

“If anything is going to turn you off a blender, it’s having one of those,” said Jeff Berry, the author of “Sippin’ Safari,” a book about lost tropical drink recipes and the people who created them. “When you put cream liqueurs in a blender ...,” he said. “I can feel myself falling off the stool right now.”

In the wake of that era’s lawless abandon, Mr. Cate said, “the whole world of exotic cocktails ended up having this bad reputation.” What went wrong, he and others say, is that the bartenders who were scooping rum raisin ice cream into their drinks forgot that there was a craft to this business.

“If you’re going to make a blended drink, don’t take any shortcuts,” Mr. Maloney said. “You’re going to need good ingredients. You’re going to make simple syrup, you’re going to need to squeeze your juices fresh, you’re going to have to use bitters. It takes the same attention to detail, if not more.”

Those were among Mr. Maloney’s tricks when, serving as a consultant, he devised the Rusty Knot’s piña colada recipe. For his Spiced Colada, he added lemon and lime to Captain Morgan’s spiced rum and positively drenched the drink in Angostura bitters. It was just the sort of crisp slap in the face that was needed to bring the piña colada back to life. The bar sells more of them than its owners ever imagined.

“It’s insane,” said Taavo Somer, who dreamed up the Rusty Knot with another restaurateur, Ken Friedman. Mr. Friedman turns out to be one of the bar’s most enthusiastic consumers of frozen cocktails.

“Some of these drinks are kind of dangerous,” Mr. Friedman said. “It tastes like you’re having Jamba Juice, and you’re not. I can’t count on one hand the number of people who’ve had to walk me home because I was having one of these Spiced Coladas.”

For home bartenders, it’s worth practicing a few basics before the rum takes effect. The blender can be put to several handy uses behind the bar. It will purée fruits like mangoes, peaches or strawberries, one of the best ways to get their ripe flavors into a cocktail. For drinks with egg whites, like the Pisco Sour, it can whip up a fast froth. (A dose of soda or sparkling wine also produces a nice thick head on a blender drink.)

In a technique called flash blending, a three-to-five-second pulse with cracked ice chills the drink quickly and efficiently. The ice can be strained out, Floridita-style, or the chunks and shards can be left in, which is typical of tropical cocktails. (Mr. Cate uses flash blending in a deeply refreshing tropical gin punch he calls Max’s Mistake.) The technique is worth remembering on summer days when the cooling effect of a cocktail would be nullified by the effort of mixing it in a shaker.

Most difficult to master is the most common use of all, for the frozen cocktail. The right consistency is thick enough that it sticks a little to the side of the blender, but not so thick it needs to be ladled out with a spoon. Getting it just so requires the kind of heightened attentiveness other people reserve for their romantic relationships.

“You’re chunky when you first go into the blender, then you’re smooth, and then in a couple of seconds you start to go back and the ice in your blender starts to refreeze again,” Mr. Cate said. “You’re watching for that point. Your eyes and your ears tell you when it’s there. If all of a sudden you hear the motor rev up higher, you know there’s an air bubble, and you have to stop and shake it down. It involves all the senses.”

Mr. Maloney agreed, saying that it always takes longer than you think it will. “There’s an evolution of how the blender sounds,” he explained. “It starts out crunchy and crackly and you can hear the ice breaking down. Then it starts speeding up. Then it sounds nice and smooth. And then it sounds ‘wa-aa-wa-aa-wa-aa’ — the tone starts to go up and down. And that’s where you want to stop it, just after it’s done that for a little bit.”

Ideally, a frozen drink should look like “powdered ice,” he said. “The whole point is to whip as much air in there and make the ice as fine as a white sand beach.”

The craft of the blender, it turns out, may be as demanding as hand-carving cubes from huge slabs of ice, or home-brewing bitters out of rare South American roots and twigs, as they do in the hushed sanctums of the classic cocktail.

Maybe, some day, those places will mix their kinds of drinks in a blender.

“We have a regular at the Rusty Knot who comes in and orders a frozen Negroni,” said Mr. Maloney, referring to the cocktail of gin, vermouth and Campari. “You know what? It’s not nearly as bad as you think it’s going to be.”

By SARAH WILDMAN

Correction Appended

THERE is new energy in Vienna’s imposing gorgeous streets. Where museum-worthy beauty may once have felt untouchable, there is a palpable sense of a city loosening up. It’s alive in the reinvention of the gasthäuser — the Austrian greasy spoons that haunt every corner — now taken over by young chefs’ reinvigorating menus. It’s in the night life, which ranges from gritty to über-designed lounges. It’s in festivals like ImpulsTanz (www.impulstanz.com), the modern dance extravaganza that charms the city each summer, and will do so again this year from July 10 to Aug. 10.

Friday

4:30 p.m.
1) URBAN HIKING

Skip crowded Kärntner Strasse, and lose yourself in the winding streets of the First District while the late-afternoon sun glows off the 17th- and 18th-century buildings. Wander down Dorotheergasse and around the Spanische Hofreitschule, past the grandeur of the Hofburg Imperial Palace, taking in the Staatsoper and the Albertina, up Bräunerstrasse, pausing to peek at the gorgeous sweets in Zum Schwarzen Kameel (Bognergasse 7; 43-1-533-81-25; www.kameel.at). Then meander down swanky Tuchlaben, ending up with a sober homage in Judenplatz at Rachel Whiteread’s memorial to the city’s destroyed Jewish community.

6:30 p.m.
2) EARTHLY DELIGHTS

Before settling down to a glass of prosecco at Meinl (Am Graben 19; 43-1-532-33-34-6100; meinlamgraben.at), the downstairs bar in the gastronomic mecca that is Julius Meinl am Graben, be sure to wander around the aisles of this foodie’s paradise.

7:30 p.m.
3) DARK STAR AT NIGHT

Tucked behind the Am Hof Church on the ground floor of a 17th-century building, Zum Finsteren Stern, or To the Dark Star (Schulhof 8; 43-1-535-2100) is a well-executed epicurean drama with vaulted ceilings and an arched wall of wood carved with tiny stars. Finsteren Stern’s menu changes nightly; recently an asparagus frittata starter was dressed with herbs and cream (9.10 euros, or about $14.50 at $1.59 to the euro), and the grilled sea bream with olive butter (18.20 euros) was succulent. For dessert, try the house topfentarte with rhubarb, a slightly spicy take on traditional Austrian cheesecake.

Midnight
4) GREEN BAR

Grab a drink at the Palmenhaus (Burggarten 1; 43-1-533-10-33; www.palmenhaus.at), the Imperial greenhouse with an impressive display of greenery under its soaring glass atrium. After 8:30 p.m., a D.J. spins.

Saturday

10 a.m.
5) NOSHING AND HAGGLING

Get to the Naschmarkt early for everything from fresh ravioli to spices to asparagus; from Karlsplatz to Kettenbrückengasse, this cook’s haven becomes solid humanity by noon. On Saturdays, beginning at Kettenbrückengasse, a flea market is crammed with Czech glass, wartime memorabilia and antique porcelain dolls. After haggling, stop at the trendy Do-An (Naschmarkt Stand 412; 43-1585-82-53) where less than 10 euros buys a Turkish-style omelet, flatbreads and a melange (café au lait). Or slip across the street for a Naschmarkt breakfast for 9.90 euros at the Cafe Drechsler (Linke Wienzeile 22 and Girardigasse 1; 43-1-581-20-44; www.cafedrechsler.at).

1 p.m.
6) TABLES AND LABELS

Hip Vienna is on show at the furniture shop Wohnzeile4 (Linke Wienzeile 4; 43-1-587-80-80; www.wohnzeile4.at), where you can get a 72 euro vinyl paste-on wall design from Very Sticky or 5,000 euro felt couches. Then head up Girardigasse to the sleek Nachbarin (Gumpendorferstrasse 17; 43-1-587-21-69; www.nachbarin.co.at), filled with new European fashion designers. Next door, Lichterloh (Gumpendorferstrasse 15-17; 43-1-586-05-20; www.lichterloh.com) offers the biggest names in midcentury furniture (Noguchi, Eames) and vintage tabletop designs.

3 p.m.
7) MUSEUM TOWN

In 2001 the former imperial stables and riding school morphed into the amazingly untouristy MuseumsQuartier. In addition to the limestone Leopold Museum (www.leopoldmuseum.at), the Kunsthalle’s rotating exhibitions (www.kunsthallewien.at), the black basalt Museum Moderner Kunst (www.mumok.at) and the Zoom Kinder Museum (www.kindermuseum.at), there are shopping, eating, drinking and dancing. The Tanzquartier (43-1-581-35-91; www.tqw.at) is tucked into the MuseumsQuartier, and performances are often under 25 euros. For snacks and drinks, the romantic Café Restaurant Halle (43-1-523-70-01) and the cozy Kantine (43-1-523-82-39) are favorites, but its hard not to love the Turkish-tiled ceiling at milo (43-523-65-66). Start at the Leopold, with the controversial Egon Schiele collection; there are allegations that a number of the works acquired by Rudolf Leopold after World War II had been looted in the Nazi era.

8 p.m.
8) GAME-TIME DECISION

For high-end dining it’s hard to beat Vestibül (Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 2; 43-1-532-49-99; www.vestibuel.at), the modernist space carved from Imperial splendor that’s matched by luxurious fare like goose liver pâté and kohlrabi with beef (tasting menu is 47 euros). Or try a renovated gasthaus, Zum Roten Elefanten (Gumpendorferstrasse 3; 43-1-966-80-08; www.zumrotenelefanten.at; tasting menu 22 euros), which has an updated midcentury interior with chandeliers and mismatched wallpaper. The saffron, fennel and asparagus soup had a satisfying bite; a trout fillet came with eggplant-and-mint dressing.

12:30 a.m.
9) TO THE BEAT

Take a cab to the Danube Canal and get in line for Badeschiff Wien (on the canal between Schwedenplatz and Urania; 43-676-69-69-009; www.badeschiff.at), an anchored ship that’s been converted into a club that’s packed with Viennese and with raunchy slide shows projected on the walls. Beers are 7.50 euros for two. In the summer, the roof deck pool is popular for night swimming. Or try the DO & CO Hotel’s sleek upstairs bar (Stephansplatz 12; 43-1-535-39-69; www.doco.com) with a spectacular view.

Sunday

10 a.m.
10) MORE COFFEE

In Vienna’s cafe scene, none marries the take-itself-seriously kitsch with modernist sensibility as well as Café Prückel (Stubenring 24; 43-512-61-15; www.prueckel.at). Have a big espresso and sun yourself on the patio outside or while away the morning on the brown velveteen banquettes.

11:30 a.m.
11) LIGHT AND SHADOWS

Across the street, MAK (Stubenring 5; 43-1-711-36-0; www.mak.at), a museum of applied arts, offers excellent exhibitions, including Barbara Bloom’s light-and-shadow play and Jenny Holzer’s installation using the solid Biedermeier furniture of the early 19th century.

1 p.m.
12) HAPSBURGS ON PARADE

The Bruegels at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Maria Theresien-Platz; 43-1-525-24-0; www.khm.at) were part of the Hapsburgs’ personal collection; the building itself is an astounding mix of murals, marble and royal excess. Then walk up to the Unteres (lower) and Oberes (upper) Belevedere, two facing Baroque palaces surrounded by gardens and home to a selection of Klimts (Oberes, Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 27/Unteres, Rennweg 6; 43-1-79-557-0; www.belvedere.at).

7:30 p.m.
13) MUSIC FOR THE MASSES

Vienna’s relationship to music is legendary, and performances can be found from the acoustically marvelous 19th-century Musikverein (Bösendorferstrasse 12; 43-1-505-81-90; www.musikverein.at) to the Staatsoper (Opernring 2; 43-1-51444-2250; www.staatsoper.at). But consider some of the lesser-known venues: like the Wiener Konzerthaus (Lothringerstrasse 20; 43-1-242-002; www.konzerthaus.at), which highlights music that ranging from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra to the popular Israeli singer Chava Alberstein. Or hang on until the wee hours at Porgy & Bess, Vienna’s Jazz emporium (Riemergasse 11; 43-1-503-70-09;.www.porgy.at).

THE BASICS

Many major carriers offer round-trip service from the New York airports with a stop, typically Frankfurt. A computer search for July found options around $1,400.

The City Airport Train (www.cityairporttrain.com) costs 15 euros round trip, about $24 at $1.59 to the euro, and takes 15 minutes to get to the city center. Pick up a Vienna Card for 18 euros at the tourist center on Albertina Platz (43-1-798-44-00-148) for museum discounts and 72 hours of transportation on the extensive U-Bahn and tram system.

The Ring (Kärntner Ring 8; 43-1-22-1-22; www.theringhotel.com), close to the opera house, is the new kid in a city of grand hotels. With 68 rooms it’s relatively compact, and calls itself “casual luxury.” Rooms start at 199 euros.

Hotel Hollmann-Beletage (Köllnerhofgasse 6; 43-1-96-11-960; www.hollmann-beletage.at) has 25 rooms, each packed with techie amenities. A small downstairs spa is also a draw; rooms start at 150 euros.

The Pension A und A (Hapsburgergasse 3; 43-1-890-51-28: www.pensionaunda.at) is two months old. Rates at the eight-room designer pension start at 146 euros, including breakfast.

Correction: June 29, 2008
The 36 Hours column on June 15, about Vienna, misspelled the German for “Vienna” in a reference to a concert hall. And an accompanying map repeated the error and also misspelled the German for “Vienna” in reference to a club. The concert hall is Wiener Konzerthaus and the club is Badeschiff Wien — not Weiner and Wein.

June 26, 2008

By ERIC DASH

MasterCard Worldwide agreed on Wednesday to pay $1.8 billion to its credit card rival, American Express, to settle claims related to a 2004 antitrust lawsuit.

The settlement comes about seven months after Visa paid more than $2.1 billion to American Express to put similar claims behind as it as raced ahead with plans for an initial public offering in March. MasterCard, which went public two years ago, had been under pressure to resolve the suit since uncertainty surrounding the litigation was one of the few clouds hanging over the rapidly rising stock.

Under the terms of the deal, MasterCard will make the $1.8 billion in payments to American Express in quarterly installments over three years. It will book an after-tax charge of approximately $1 billion for the settlement costs in the second quarter.

The agreement, reached late Tuesday night, brings the total that American Express has collected to more than $4 billion. That makes it the richest in corporate history. With losses rising and the economy slowing, the deal comes at a time when American Express could use the money.

“Business conditions continue to weaken in the U.S. and so far this month we have seen credit indicators deteriorate beyond our expectations,” the chairman and chief executive of American Express, Kenneth I. Chenault, said in a statement. “The antitrust settlement we’ve reached with MasterCard provides us with a multi-year source of funds that should, among other things, help to lessen the impact of this weakening economic cycle and, when conditions improve, give us the ability to step up investments in the business.”

In a separate statement, the chief executive of MasterCard, Robert W. Selander, said the settlement eliminated “the uncertainty, time commitment, and expense of a prolonged court case” and kept the company’s balance sheet intact.

The announcement early Wednesday comes more than three years after the Supreme Court ruled that Visa and MasterCard had violated antitrust rules by barring their member banks from offering credit cards that could be used on rival payment networks.

American Express and Discover Financial quickly filed suit, seeking billions of dollars in damages based on the revenue they believed they had lost.

The settlement will probably put pressure on both Visa and MasterCard to strike similar deals with Discover Financial. Discover is seeking as much as $6 billion from the two companies, according to court filings that were unsealed earlier this month.

While Discover’s customers tend to charge less on their cards, holders of Discover cards issued through other banks spend significantly more. But Discover’s user fees may be lower than those of American Express, its more prestigious rival.

The industry has changed significantly since the antitrust ruling. Bank of America and Citigroup, two of the largest three credit card issuers, signed a deal to offer their customers American Express-branded cards, and HSBC and General Electric’s financial service arms reached agreements with Discover.

And with the American market largely saturated, debit cards and payments using cellphones are the areas that are most ripe for growth.

The agreement resolves American Express’s claims against MasterCard, whose publicly traded stock is still largely owned by big financial institutions like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC.

In November, Visa agreed to pay American Express $945 million. It then used the proceeds of its initial offering to make an additional payment in late March, and will continue to pay American Express $70 million each quarter until the full settlement is reached.

Together, both settlements represent about $880 million a year for American Express over the next three years, starting in the third quarter of 2008 and running through 2011.

MasterCard shares were up about 4.5 percent in mid-morning trading; American Express shares were flat.

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; A07

TOKYO -- When it comes to saving energy, the Japanese have much to teach the United States and other rich countries, whose leaders descend on Japan next month for a Group of Eight summit.

Energy consumption per person here is about half that in the United States, and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slower than anywhere in the industrialized world.

There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging. And nothing embodies the surge quite like the toilet -- a plumbing fixture that has been reengineered here as an ultracomfy energy hog.

Japanese toilets can warm and wash one's bottom, whisk away odors with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds. They play relaxation music, too. "Ave Maria" is a favorite.

High-end toilets can also sense when someone enters or leaves the bathroom, raising or lowering their lids accordingly. Many models have a "learning mode," which allows them to memorize the lavatory schedules of household members.

These always-on electricity-guzzlers (keeping water warm for bottom-washing devours power) barely existed in Japan before 1980. Now, they are in 68 percent of homes, accounting for about 4 percent of household energy consumption. They use more power than dishwashers or clothes dryers.

"For hygiene-conscious Japanese, the romance with these toilets is equivalent to the American romance with the Hummer," said Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the environmental group at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington.

Toilets with built-in warmers for bottom-washing first arrived in Japan in the 1970s. They were U.S.-made medical devices for hemorrhoid sufferers. But they took off, becoming the most profitable innovation in the modern history of Japanese bathrooms, according to toiletmakers.

The Japanese are serious about cleanliness. The word for clean -- kirei -- is also a word for beautiful. People often sweep the street in front of their house. They remove their shoes upon entering a house. They shower before bathing. They are sensitive to odors. For all these needs, aversions and desires, super toilets fit the bill, as well as catering to the Japanese love of gadgets.

In addition, Japanese houses are often small and, in the winter, chilly. A warm, comfortable, musical and hygienic seat in the bathroom expands living space.

But as with a Hummer, romance with a high-end toilet is not cheap. Luxury models cost up to $4,000 -- plus at least $2.50 a month per toilet in higher electricity bills.

But unlike the Hummer, which few Americans are now buying and which General Motors may soon stop making, romance with toilets continues to bloom in Japan, albeit with the intensive mediation of government energy watchdogs, who have begun to monitor the behavior of the toilet-smitten masses.

The final report of the Electric Toilet Seats Evaluation Standard Subcommittee noted last year that 23 to 30 percent of Japanese men now sit while urinating. They do so, the report said, for comfort and for "prevention of urine splash."

The report also included findings from the Warm-Water-Shower Toilet Seat Council (an industry group) that women urinate eight times a day, with an average on-seat time of 96 seconds.

The government started gathering these details around 2000, when nationwide surveys of electricity use began to show that toilets had become a significant factor in the country's appliance-driven failure to contain energy use in the home.

The Japanese government is struggling to meet obligations under the Kyoto global warming treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

At the G-8 meeting next month, Japan will be pushing the United States and other member countries to accept mandatory limits on emissions of the gases, which cause global warming.

Since the oil shock of 1973, no industrialized country has been more effective in squeezing more affluence out of less imported energy than Japan, experts say. Relative to its economy, Japan consumes only a third as much oil as it did 35 years ago.

Industry has led the charge, more than doubling output while using less energy than it did in 1973. To make a ton of steel, Japanese manufacturers use 20 percent less fuel than their counterparts in the United States and 50 percent less than those in China.

The primary reason for efficiency gains was lack of choice. Japan is an export-dependent manufacturing economy with virtually no domestic sources of fossil fuel. In industry, fierce global competition helped compel the profit motive to marry energy efficiency.

No such shotgun marriage, however, has taken place in the Japanese home, where energy consumption has jumped by 213 percent since the 1973 oil shock. Government figures have shown that household power use has risen at almost exactly the same rate as personal spending. (Despite the rise, per capita residential emissions of greenhouse gases in Japan are only 41 percent of those in the United States.)

"Consumers won't sacrifice comfort for the sake of energy conservation," said Yasuhiro Tanaka, chief of the energy efficiency division at the agency for natural resources and energy. "Consumers won't follow that path because we are richer."

Since the government cannot stop affluent consumers from buying flat-screen televisions and super toilets, it has chosen to squeeze manufacturers, requiring them to meet increasingly strict energy targets.

In the toilet industry, progress has been impressive, with nearly every manufacturer meeting its 2006 energy-efficiency target, according to government surveys.

Toto, Japan's largest toiletmaker, says that in the past decade, it has cut the monthly cost of electricity for its multi-featured toilets from $4.69 to $2.59. Almost all of this reduction has come without the involvement of toilet users, according to Kazumi Kasahara, a Toto manager.

"We have not heard about customers who turn their toilets off because they want to be green," he said. "What we do hear about are customers who get addicted to these toilets and cannot stop using them."

For the addicted, Toto and other manufacturers -- with government encouragement -- have invented the intelligent toilet.

After a few days on the job in a household, it memorizes when and how family members do their business. Then, with history as its guide, the toilet intermittently heats up its seat and warms its water.

When no one is likely to be in need, the toilet is cool.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; A11

Senior Justice Department officials broke civil service laws by rejecting scores of young applicants who had links to Democrats or liberal organizations, according to a biting report issued yesterday.

The report by the Justice Department inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that a pair of high-ranking political appointees who are no longer with the department had violated department policy and the Civil Service Reform Act by using ideological reasons to scuttle the candidacy of lawyers who applied to the elite honors and summer intern programs.

In one instance, steering committee member Esther Slater McDonald deemed "unacceptable" an applicant who professed admiration for the environmental group Greenaction and passed over another with ties to the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the report said.

McDonald, who left the Justice Department last year and now works for a law firm in the District, sent colleagues a Nov. 29, 2006, e-mail in which she complained about "leftist commentary and buzzwords" in applications. Many of the underlying documents, on which McDonald and others wrote comments, were destroyed before the probe began, according to the report.

Auditors also criticized Michael J. Elston, former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, for failing to supervise McDonald and for weeding out candidates on his own based on "impermissible considerations." Elston may have denied one Stanford Law School applicant because she had written a law review article about gender discrimination in the military, the report said. Elston left the Justice Department last year amid questions about his role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He now works at a private law firm.

McDonald and Elston did not return telephone calls seeking comment yesterday. Experts said they are unlikely to face sanctions for what investigators called deliberate "misconduct" because they have left government employment.

Traditionally, the highly coveted intern and honors jobs had been awarded based on merit. But in 2002, top Justice Department officials moved to give political appointees more control, prompting complaints from the career ranks. The problem flared up again in 2006, when hundreds of applications were rejected for questionable reasons, according to the report.

Candidates for the Honors Program that year whose résumés indicated liberal affiliations were weeded out at three times the rate of conservative-leaning applicants, investigators said. San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, who was later fired for reasons that remain under investigation, reached out to no avail to Elston over the decision to reject a candidate who had won a prestigious appellate clerkship with a Democratic judge.

Peter Keisler, then chief of the Justice Department's civil division, called Elston after several applicants to his unit were denied, including a Harvard Law School graduate and former Justice summer intern who had worked as a paralegal at Planned Parenthood, the report said.

The report on the honors and intern programs is the result of the first in a series of investigations into the role that politics may have played in law enforcement and hiring decisions at the Justice Department over the course of the Bush administration. Studies focusing on hiring and enforcement in the troubled civil rights division, the rationale for the U.S. attorneys' dismissal, and the role played by former Justice Department officials including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales could be issued soon, according to lawyers following the issues.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who replaced Gonzales last year, said he has taken steps to overhaul the hiring process. Considering politics in hires for career slots is "unacceptable," Mukasey said in a statement.

Former Justice Department officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations said the study underscores the challenge for the next president.

"The Honors Program at DOJ has always been the 'A-list,' " said Nicholas M. Gess, a Justice official under President Bill Clinton. "The next attorney general will be stuck with many from the 'B-list."

June 25, 2008

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON — With sinking home values continuing to drag down the economy, Congress is poised to approve a huge package of housing legislation, including a refinancing program aimed at rescuing hundreds of thousands of homeowners in danger of foreclosure and the most sweeping government overhaul of mortgage financing since the New Deal.

Lawmakers moved with increasing urgency on Tuesday after a closely watched housing index showed prices nationally had declined in April by more than 15 percent from a year earlier. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, threatened to keep the Senate in session through the Fourth of July holiday to finish the housing measure, if needed. The House has already approved similar legislation.

The centerpiece of the Senate package is a rescue-refinancing plan aimed at stemming the tide of more than 8,000 new foreclosures a day that lenders are filing across the country. The plan would allow distressed borrowers and their lenders to stem losses by allowing qualified owners to refinance into more affordable, 30-year fixed-rate loans with a federal guarantee.

The legislation would also provide benefits for first-time buyers, who would receive a refundable tax credit of up to $8,000, or 10 percent of the value of a home, on purchases of unoccupied housing.

As part of a regulatory overhaul of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, the bill would permanently increase to $625,000, from $417,000, the limit on loans they can purchase from lenders in expensive housing markets, making it easier for borrowers to obtain mortgages at discounted rates. Despite a presidential veto threat, the package received overwhelming bipartisan support, clearing by 83 to 9 a crucial procedural vote in the Senate on Tuesday morning.

Final passage of the bill was snagged temporarily in the Senate Tuesday evening because of a fight over renewable energy tax credits. Still, major supporters of the bill said they hoped it would be completed before for the holiday.

“There’s a great desire to act,” said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, the bill’s main author in the House. “We’re just not there yet.”

The bill would provide $150 million to expand counseling for borrowers to prevent foreclosure and would establish stricter disclosure rules to require lenders to make plain the maximum monthly payment for a borrower with an adjustable rate loan.

The bill also establishes an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, to be financed by $500 million to $900 million in fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The fund will cover any expenses related to the foreclosure rescue plan for three years, and will be used to create affordable rental housing.

Under the refinancing plan, only borrowers seeking to remain in their primary home would be eligible. Lenders would first have to agree to cut the principal balance of loans to roughly 85 percent of each property’s current value.

Still, with the closely watched Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index showing home prices in 10 major metropolitan areas down 16.35 percent in April from a year ago — the worst annual decline in two decades — lawmakers and some housing experts said the refinancing plan was becoming increasingly attractive to lenders.

According to industry benchmarks, lenders lose as much as 40 to 60 percent in foreclosure.

Even as Senate negotiators raced to finish the package ahead of the recess, talks were already under way with Mr. Frank and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to reconcile differences between the Senate bill and similar legislation approved by the House.

At the White House, the press secretary, Dana Perino, softened some of the Bush administration’s criticism.

“We do think that there are some really good aspects of that Senate bill,” she said.

Still, Ms. Perino reiterated the veto threat citing concern over a provision that would allocate nearly $4 billion in grants to communities with high foreclosure rates to buy and rehabilitate vacant properties.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, the chairman of the banking committee, said that he was willing to negotiate with the White House over the proposed grant money.

And Mr. Dodd said he believed lawmakers wanted to finish the bill before heading home for Independence Day: “People I don’t think want to leave here, hanging bunting around and eating hot dogs and hamburgers knowing that every day thousands of Americans are falling into an abyss, losing their housing.”

Skeptics say the plan is a handout for irresponsible borrowers and lenders, who would be able to get rid of their worst-performing mortgages, putting taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in risky loans.

But in a contested election year, with Americans losing billions of dollars in home equity, officials in both parties seem reluctant to be seen as sitting on their hands.

And a close look at the fine print of the bill shows that lenders who want to use the program to refinance troubled loans into new, federally insured mortgages will have to take substantial losses. They will also have to make carefully calculated decisions about whether it makes more sense to foreclose and resell or action a property or to help a struggling borrower refinance and remain in the home.

At the same time, homeowners seeking to use the program will have to prove that they have enough income and creditworthiness that they can afford to pay their new loans.

“The mortgages aren’t just being given out on willy-nilly random basis,” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Borrowers will have to pay a hefty fees to further insulate taxpayers from losses. As a result, the biggest risk may be that because the program is complicated — and voluntary — few lenders or borrowers will make use of it.

The delay Tuesday night exposed a rare rift between two senators from the same state, Mr. Reid, and Nevada’s junior senator, John Ensign, a Republican who was pushing renewable energy tax credits.

Mr. Reid, in a speech on the Senate floor did not refer to Mr. Ensign by name, but was angry.

“We’re going to stay here and finish the housing bill,” he said. “It may knock a few people out of parades on July Fourth or whatever, however long it takes us to do this.”

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

June 25, 2008

Reading 1
2 Kgs 22:8-13; 23:1-3
The high priest Hilkiah informed the scribe Shaphan,
“I have found the book of the law in the temple of the LORD.”
Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, who read it.
Then the scribe Shaphan went to the king and reported,
“Your servants have smelted down the metals available in the temple
and have consigned them to the master workmen
in the temple of the LORD.”
The scribe Shaphan also informed the king
that the priest Hilkiah had given him a book,
and then read it aloud to the king.
When the king heard the contents of the book of the law,
he tore his garments and issued this command to Hilkiah the priest,
Ahikam, son of Shaphan,
Achbor, son of Micaiah, the scribe Shaphan,
and the king’s servant Asaiah:
“Go, consult the LORD for me, for the people, for all Judah,
about the stipulations of this book that has been found,
for the anger of the LORD has been set
furiously ablaze against us,
because our fathers did not obey the stipulations of this book,
nor fulfill our written obligations.”
The king then had all the elders of Judah
and of Jerusalem summoned together before him.
The king went up to the temple of the LORD with all the men of Judah
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem:
priests, prophets, and all the people, small and great.
He had the entire contents of the book of the covenant
that had been found in the temple of the LORD, read out to them.
Standing by the column, the king made a covenant before the LORD
that they would follow him
and observe his ordinances, statutes and decrees
with their whole hearts and souls,
thus reviving the terms of the covenant
which were written in this book.
And all the people stood as participants in the covenant.

Responsorial Psalm
119:33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40
R. (33a) Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.
Instruct me, O LORD, in the way of your statutes,
that I may exactly observe them.
R. Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.
Give me discernment, that I may observe your law
and keep it with all my heart.
R. Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.
Lead me in the path of your commands,
for in it I delight.
R. Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.
Incline my heart to your decrees
and not to gain.
R. Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.
Turn away my eyes from seeing what is vain:
by your way give me life.
R. Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.
Behold, I long for your precepts;
in your justice give me life.
R. Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord.

Gospel
Mt 7:15-20
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,
but underneath are ravenous wolves.
By their fruits you will know them.
Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
Just so, every good tree bears good fruit,
and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,
nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down
and thrown into the fire.
So by their fruits you will know them.”

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Food: Eat, Memory

Published: June 22, 2008

For my sister, Mary, who has lived in a Maryland institution for the mentally retarded since she was 8, there’s no hiding the fact that food is central. When she is eating, food appears to be the focus of her attention. She doesn’t like to be distracted from it by conversations, let alone by dramatic events. In anticipating the birthday lunches my parents planned for her on her yearly two-hour visits to their summer rental in Bronxville, N.Y., to which she was accompanied by an attendant, she would always reel off the menu she was expecting. This meal never varied throughout her teens and remained unchanged as she passed through her 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s: chicken salad, tomatoes, rolls with butter, iced tea, ice cream and cake. Each summer, she would mention the food within moments of arriving. Mary has a way of speaking that can almost be like singing or intoning, with each syllable given enormous weight. This menu always sounded particularly emphatic. During the chicken-salad course, she would mention a few times that ice cream and cake were coming.

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Recipe: Summer Bagna Cauda With Vegetables (June 22, 2008)

Mary is 59. So am I. We are twins. These days, children with the degree of autism, mental retardation and elements of schizophrenia from which she suffers are more likely to live in a group home than to be institutionalized. Indeed, even the notion of “suffering” that I just suggested has come to look a bit suspect, since it implies that it is “best” for a person not to have certain “deficits.” And I am no longer certain that she suffers more than others, only that her distress can be more immediately obvious when it hits her, and harder to comprehend, because limited verbal communication is at the heart of what ails her.

I spent my early childhood trying to read her. So did my parents, who maintained that it would upset Mary to return to the Manhattan apartment where she spent her first eight years, if only for a two-hour lunch. Therefore even when my older brother and I had reached advanced middle age, our father had died and our mother’s health had declined to such an extent that she could no longer go to Bronxville, we held the yearly lunches in a private hotel dining room and had them replicate the exact menu we made for Mary in Bronxville.

By the summer of 2005, it was clear that our mother would not last much longer. At 99, she was unable to move her hands or legs or take care of herself in any way. She had not spoken for months, was hard of hearing and would only open her eyes for a few minutes at a time. Our friends Amy and Piergiorgio were now living with her and, along with an extraordinary woman named Marjorie, helping to take care of her. Piergiorgio prepared wonderful soft dishes for her, which she was fed while her eyes remained, for the most part, closed. In those last weeks, when Amy read to her, our mother, a journalist who had been a brilliantly verbal person, no longer gazed raptly up at her face as she used to do but remained curled up in sleep, in her darkness.

Together Amy, Piergiorgio, Marjorie, my brother, his girlfriend and I decided to organize a birthday lunch for Mary in the apartment. We were worried about whether she would be shocked to see her mother in such a debilitated state in her wheelchair — unable perhaps to recognize Mary, to hug or talk to her, and possibly remaining asleep the entire time — and we were equally concerned that Mary might explode in some kind of blind fury at the sight of the apartment. I racked my brain for the lunch items we needed — the exact type of rolls, for example. Amy reminded our mother about the coming lunch every day, whispering into her ear. I purchased a birthday cake and ice cream; my brother and his girlfriend bought presents; Marjorie brought balloons. At the last moment, in addition to the chicken salad and tomatoes and rolls prepared by Amy, Piergiorgio decided to produce an antipasto plate brimming with salami, prosciutto, mozzarella, Brie, olives and tomatoes with basil, while Marjorie prepared an elaborate salad and a huge watermelon with sliced fruit inside. These dishes looked as startling to me in this context as a pork loin at a Seder, but it was too late to worry.

Escorted by an aide, Mary arrived dressed in a snappy striped shirt and pink summer pants. She had a particularly comfortable, confident air. In fact, it was as if she knew her way around. Although she asked where the bathroom was, she walked to it as if from long-buried habit. Her ease in the apartment, and with our mother, was self-evident. But this was the least of the surprises. She ate her chicken salad and rolls and tomatoes, to be sure, but she was particularly taken with the antipasto, of which she asked for second and third helpings, while asking for more of everything by name. She dug into the watermelon and the unexpected salad with obvious delight and interest. More than once she said that she was having a wonderful time.

And all of this occurred in the presence of a miracle. From the moment our mother was brought into the room, her eyes remained open in unmistakable wonder and joy, as she looked from one of us to the other in astonishment and gratitude, galvanized, awakened, transfixed, radiantly fulfilled by the sight of her daughter. The occasion brought her back from a kind of somnolence that had lasted for months, as if encountering bright daylight after an age of darkness. Her eyes remained opened even after Mary left, and that night she barely slept.

It is amazing how much people contain that we never have a chance to know about, how vast and mysterious we all are. I thought back to this birthday lunch when, only a few months later, we were remembering our mother. How could I not cry when Piergiorgio recited these lines in Italian from a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo:

Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.

(Everyone stands alone on the heart of the earth
transfixed by a sun ray:
and suddenly it is evening.)

Allen Shawn, the composer and writer, teaches at Bennington College. He is the author of “Wish I Could Be There.”

June 24, 2008

Reading 1
Is 49:1-6
Hear me, O coastlands,
listen, O distant peoples.
The LORD called me from birth,
from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.
You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
For now the LORD has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

Responsorial Psalm
139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15
R. (14) I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
O LORD, you have probed me, you know me:
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
R. I praise you for I am wonderfully made.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
R. I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.
My soul also you knew full well;
nor was my frame unknown to you
When I was made in secret,
when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.
R. I praise you, for I am wonderfully made.

Reading II
Acts 13:22-26
In those days, Paul said:
“God raised up David as king;
of him God testified,
I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart;
he will carry out my every wish.
From this man’s descendants God, according to his promise,
has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus.
John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance
to all the people of Israel; and as John was completing his course, he would say,
‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold, one is coming after me;
I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’
“My brothers, sons of the family of Abraham,
and those others among you who are God-fearing,
to us this word of salvation has been sent.”

Gospel
Lk 1:57-66, 80
When the time arrived for Elizabeth to have her child
she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard
that the Lord had shown his great mercy toward her,
and they rejoiced with her.
When they came on the eighth day to circumcise the child,
they were going to call him Zechariah after his father,
but his mother said in reply,
“No. He will be called John.”
But they answered her,
“There is no one among your relatives who has this name.”
So they made signs, asking his father what he wished him to be called.
He asked for a tablet and wrote, “John is his name,”
and all were amazed.
Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue freed,
and he spoke blessing God.
Then fear came upon all their neighbors,
and all these matters were discussed
throughout the hill country of Judea.
All who heard these things took them to heart, saying,
“What, then, will this child be?”
For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.
The child grew and became strong in spirit,
and he was in the desert until the day
of his manifestation to Israel.

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

One in Five Self-Proclaimed Athiests Express Faith in Higher Power

By Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 23, 2008; 12:00 PM

More than 90 percent of Americans -- including one in five people who say they are atheists -- believe in God or a universal power, and more than half pray at least once a day, according to results of a poll released today that takes an in-depth look at Americans' religious beliefs.

The poll, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, also found that nearly three-fourths of Americans believe in heaven as a place where people who have led good lives will be eternally rewarded. And almost 60 percent believe in hell, where people who have led bad lives and die without repenting are eternally punished, the poll found.

Majorities also believe that angels and demons are at work in the world and that miracles occur today as they did in ancient times.

"These are common beliefs among the American public," said Gregory A. Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum, a D.C. think tank.

This is the organization's second report that is based on one of the largest polls of Americans' religious beliefs ever conducted, with more than 36,000 adults interviewed.

The first report released in February took a broad look at the American religious landscape, while this report dives deeply into the faith and politics of religious, and non-religious, Americans.

On the political side, for example, it found, among Jews who pray daily, 36 percent are politically conservative -- more than twice as many as those who pray less often. Among evangelical Christians, 56 percent who pray daily are politically conservative, compared to 40 percent of all other evangelical Christians.

On the whole, though, that difference holds true more for Christian faiths than non-Christian faiths, the poll found. "Members of non-Christian faiths," the report says, "tend to be much more moderate or liberal."

Two-thirds of Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 22 percent of Mormons. Also, 77 percent of historically black churches are Democrats or lean Democratic, while only one-third of evangelical churches are Democrats or lean Democratic.

It also found some agreement among the most faithful and the least faithful. While it confirms that those who attend church and pray frequently are most likely to oppose legalized abortion and believe that homosexuality should be discouraged, it finds less of a divide on other issues.

More than 60 percent of Americans across the religious and secular spectrum want the government to do more to help the needy and support stronger environmental laws, for example. And majorities in most religions believe the United States should concentrate more on problems at home and pay less attention to problems overseas, according to the report.

On these issues, "we can see a kind of consensus that exists across a great variety of religious groups," said Smith.

The study confirmed what is already known about the United States -- that it is a deeply religious nation. But it fleshes out that stereotype with myriad details that add depth and complexity, and some surprises, to the picture.

For example, along with 21 percent of the people who describe themselves as atheists but express a belief in God or a universal spirit, more than half of those who say they are agnostic express a similar conviction.

But most Americans -- even many of the most religiously conservative -- have a non-exclusive attitude toward other faiths. Seventy percent of those affiliated with a religion believe that many religions, not just their own, can lead to eternal salvation. Just about one-quarter believe there is only one true way to interpret their own religion's teachings.

"Even though Americans tend to take religion quite seriously and are a highly religious people, there is a certain degree of openness and a lack dogmatism in their approach to faith and the teachings of their faith," said Smith.

June 23, 2008

By LAURA M. HOLSON

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Tero Ojanpera is an unlikely media entrepreneur. Mr. Ojanpera, a veteran Nokia executive, is not a fan of “American Idol,” although he says he enjoys it from time to time. And when he tried to watch a recent episode of “Hannah Montana,” one of his sons switched the channel.

But four years ago, Mr. Ojanpera and his colleagues in the research center had an epiphany: that entertainment was crucial to the future of Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone maker. Within a year, Mr. Ojanpera, who earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, was cruising the palm-tree-lined streets of Beverly Hills, meeting with technology-wary studio executives who greeted him as coolly as a producer pitching a sequel to “Ishtar.”

“They were like, ‘Is this for real?’ ” Mr. Ojanpera (pronounced oy-an-pera) recently recalled.

Indeed, it was. While once formidable competitors like Motorola struggle just to deliver their phones on time, Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company. Last August, Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, created Ovi, an Internet service and online music store. Its intent, analysts say, is to compete directly against Apple.

Nokia is also positioning itself as a promoter of social networking, with photo and video sharing and games for users of its cellphones. That is because Nokia predicts that in the next five years, mobile phone users will create 25 percent of the entertainment watched on so-called smartphones, like the iPhone and BlackBerries. And just as important to the company’s strategy is users who will share that entertainment.

Music will be important, too. Nokia joined with Sony BMG and the Universal Music Group, which have agreed to give consumers a year’s worth of free downloads they can keep indefinitely as long as they buy and use specific Nokia models.

And to overcome Apple’s formidable lead in delivering digital entertainment to handheld devices, Mr. Ojanpera wants to bridge the gap between musicians and filmmakers and their fans, allowing consumers to get exclusive concert video and recordings or collaborate directly with artists like the director Spike Lee, whom Nokia hired recently to oversee a mobile video sharing and social networking project.

This is unfamiliar territory for Nokia, which got its start in the mid-1800s as a paper maker. But as Mr. Ojanpera explained, companies like his have no choice. “Change is painful, but you have to figure this out in order to be successful,” said Mr. Ojanpera, who is based in White Plains. “The question is, are you willing to play by the new rules?”

The task of negotiating with self-important media moguls, though, is likely to be as tricky for Mr. Ojanpera as it was for Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, who met resistance from entertainment companies and wireless carriers unwilling to give up a measure of control.

Mr. Ojanpera is deliberate in conversation, weighing his words carefully, and he lacks the outsized personality of Mr. Jobs. In a recent interview he was reluctant to take much credit — “It is not the Finnish way,” he said — or draw attention to his fast rise up Nokia’s corporate ranks. But those who have worked with him suggest his skill is finding the middle ground in any negotiation. When jostling with the Universal Music Group to offer its catalog on Nokia phones, Mr. Ojanpera agreed to support a plan that would make it easy for musicians to get their concert videos onto mobile phones.

“Neither of us felt we had to get the better of each other,” said Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group International.

While Mr. Ojanpera may lack Mr. Jobs’s charisma, he more than makes up for it with Nokia’s global might. Nokia sells 14 mobile phones a second — tallying worldwide market share of 39 percent. That reach gives entertainment executives an enticing international platform over which to digitally distribute movies and music. The company got a head start outside the United States, where its N series of multimedia smartphones is popular. The Nokia N96, which is expected to make its debut in the United States this year, is made specifically for video and television, with high-power stereo speakers and a five-megapixel camera.

“When Nokia puts their weight behind something, they don’t need to be the first,” said Pekka Koponen, a former Nokia executive. “They can dominate the market Mr. Jobs creates for them.”

Another possible advantage for Nokia is that music companies welcome a challenger to Apple. They are wary of Apple’s growing power in digital music distribution; Apple is the top music retailer in the United States, outpacing the behemoth Wal-Mart in April.

Mr. Grainge, who negotiated the free download deal with Mr. Ojanpera, said: “To have another big global player in the mobile music business is good news. Everyone within Universal is doing what we can to make it work.”

Mr. Ojanpera was born in 1966, one of three boys, and he grew up in a small mining town in Finland. He got his first job at a Nokia research and development center where he studied radio frequencies. From his earliest days at Nokia he specialized in understanding high-speed mobile networks, the so-called third-generation, or 3G, networks that are quickly becoming the industry standard.

Before being named executive vice president for entertainment and communities in January — a job created specifically for him — Mr. Ojanpera held a number of senior management positions, including chief technology officer, chief strategy officer and head of the Nokia Research Center, where he and his colleagues studied consumer behavior and design.

But he does not perceive his lack of media experience as a hindrance. “This, to me, is about curiosity and the willingness to learn something new,” he said. “You can have really smart people, but things don’t necessarily change. The challenge is who can translate those ideas into practice.”

The future, he says, will look something like this. While consumers now can buy movie tickets, watch videos and listen to music on their phones, the process is disjointed, with no place for one-button shopping. Nokia wants to make it seamless. Want a concert ticket? Press “yes” on your keypad. Want to listen to a favorite song? Press “yes.” Watch a concert video? Buy a DVD? Read a review? Need a hotel room nearby? Post photographs to your Facebook page? Just press “yes.” “It will be that easy,” he said.

To make that happen, Mr. Ojanpera has sought the advice of artists and producers, among others, including the director Ridley Scott and David A. Stewart, half of the 1980s group the Eurythmics.

Mr. Ojanpera met Mr. Stewart more than a year ago at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and since then they have had monthly conversations, tutorials mostly, Mr. Stewart said, on how the music business works.

“We disagree on the speed of things. I’m trying to force it faster and he, quite wisely, understands he’s in a world where things exist in a certain way,” Mr. Stewart said. “Tero’s thinking is that he’s going to change the way things work and it’s going to be better. But it takes time.”

Executives are more receptive now when Mr. Ojanpera comes calling. “There is more interest,” he said. But he too is realistic. It’s not yet like the early days of the DVD explosion, when the heads of movie studios flew on their private planes to Bentonville, Ark., to woo Wal-Mart executives. But one day, maybe it will be.

“Once we start to see them make the trek to our headquarters in White Plains,” he said, “then I know things really have changed.”

June 23, 2008

Link by Link

By NOAM COHEN

WHEN the NBC News host Tim Russert died on June 13, NBC tried to hold back the news from going public for more than an hour to notify his family vacationing in Italy and presumably to prepare for what became six hours of coverage on its cable news outlet, MSNBC.

And King Canute, ancient legend has it, tried to hold back the tide.

Mr. Russert collapsed from a heart attack in NBC’s Washington newsroom around 1:40 p.m.; he was treated there and then taken to a hospital, arriving at 2:23 and being pronounced dead shortly thereafter, according to press accounts. The network, in the voice of its respected former anchor, Tom Brokaw, announced the news at 3:39.

Long before Mr. Russert’s death was reported on air, however, it was flashing across the Internet via the text-messaging service Twitter and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Television networks have a tradition of allowing a network suffering a death to make the announcement first. Other news outlets, including The New York Times and The New York Post, were about five minutes earlier in reporting Mr. Russert’s death for their Web sites.

On Wikipedia, Mr. Russert’s page was updated at 3:01 p.m. — adding the date of death and turning present-tense verbs into the past tense almost 40 minutes before the NBC announcement. The entry was particularly influential since many journalists had heard of Mr. Russert’s becoming stricken, but did not know the outcome. If some turned to Wikipedia to refresh themselves about Mr. Russert, they found an article that seemed to confirm what many had been hearing.

“We were not prepared to say anything until all the family had heard,” said Allison Gollust, an NBC News spokeswoman. “The last thing we wanted to do was to have the family discover this on the air.” She said NBC had asked the other networks to hold back and they readily agreed.

“Before we reported it, I remember someone saying it’s on Wikipedia,” she said, which had them “flabbergasted.”

Holding back the news certainly isn’t the norm for journalists. Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC host, said on his prime-time show “Countdown” that Friday: “We wanted to be sure, absolutely certain, that every member of Tim’s family who needed to be told in person in private had that opportunity, was given that small piece of grace today. Other organizations did not do that.”

For better or worse, it seems that even NBC News cannot protect the family of one of its own in that way.

Looking at the detailed records of editing changes recorded by Wikipedia, it quickly emerged that the changes came from Internet Broadcasting Services, a company in St. Paul, Minn., that provides Web services to a variety of companies, including local NBC TV stations.

An I.B.S. spokeswoman said on Friday that “a junior-level employee made updates to the Wikipedia page upon learning of Mr. Russert’s passing, thinking it was public record.” She added that the company had “taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC.” NBC News said it was told the employee was fired.

The instinct of the junior-level employee, presumably, was to correct the record on Wikipedia and share knowledge with the wider world. That flash of idealism was very brief; 11 minutes later, according to Wikipedia records, someone at another Internet Broadcasting computer deleted the date of death and turned all the past tenses back to present tenses. Only minutes later, of course, none of this would matter.

With the spread of online outlets like blogs and MySpace pages and citizen journalists, it can be easily forgotten that the only thing that the Internet cannot guarantee you is an interested audience.

Online journalists like Matt Drudge and Perez Hilton rely on the fact that their scoops will be read by influential members of the news media. But for the other self-made reporters out there, collective enterprises like Wikipedia, which allows anyone to make an edit, or the liberal blog DailyKos, which allows any registered user to post a diary, offer a rare chance to speak to a large audience.

In the case of Wikipedia, this is emphatically not what the site was meant to do. One of the principles of the site is No Original Research — every fact must have appeared somewhere reputable before it can be repeated. (This cause can seem an obsession as stickler editors patrol the site flagging unattributed facts with the label “citation needed.”)

Yet, time and again Wikipedia has been the place where news has broken, usually from anonymous writers who report a death on a person’s article page, like that of the feminist writer Andrea Dworkin in 2005, or, a year later, the killing of the film director and actress Adrienne Shelley in Greenwich Village.

The lesson seems to be this: as long as there is news, people will try to share it. And new technology promises to turn the process into a tide that can swallow us up, good intentions and all.

June 23, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

By PAUL KRUGMAN

“Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.” So declared President Bush in 2002, introducing his “Homeownership Challenge” — a set of policy initiatives that were supposed to sharply increase homeownership, especially for minority groups.

Oops. While homeownership rose as the housing bubble inflated, temporarily giving Mr. Bush something to boast about, it plunged — especially for African-Americans — when the bubble popped. Today, the percentage of American families owning their own homes is no higher than it was six years ago, and it’s a good bet that by the time Mr. Bush leaves the White House homeownership will be lower than it was when he moved in.

But here’s a question rarely asked, at least in Washington: Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway?

Listening to politicians, you’d think that every family should own its home — in fact, that you’re not a real American unless you’re a homeowner. “If you own something,” Mr. Bush once declared, “you have a vital stake in the future of our country.” Presumably, then, citizens who live in rented housing, and therefore lack that “vital stake,” can’t be properly patriotic. Bring back property qualifications for voting!

Even Democrats seem to share the sense that Americans who don’t own houses are second-class citizens. Early last year, just as the mortgage meltdown was beginning, Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who is one of Barack Obama’s top advisers, warned against a crackdown on subprime lending. “For be it ever so humble,” he wrote, “there really is no place like home, even if it does come with a balloon payment mortgage.”

And the belief that you’re nothing if you don’t own a home is reflected in U.S. policy. Because the I.R.S. lets you deduct mortgage interest from your taxable income but doesn’t let you deduct rent, the federal tax system provides an enormous subsidy to owner-occupied housing. On top of that, government-sponsored enterprises — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks — provide cheap financing for home buyers; investors who want to provide rental housing are on their own.

In effect, U.S. policy is based on the premise that everyone should be a homeowner. But here’s the thing: There are some real disadvantages to homeownership.

First of all, there’s the financial risk. Although it’s rarely put this way, borrowing to buy a home is like buying stocks on margin: if the market value of the house falls, the buyer can easily lose his or her entire stake.

This isn’t a hypothetical worry. From 2005 through 2007 alone — that is, at the peak of the housing bubble — more than 22 million Americans bought either new or existing houses. Now that the bubble has burst, many of those homebuyers have lost heavily on their investment. At this point there are probably around 10 million households with negative home equity — that is, with mortgages that exceed the value of their houses.

Owning a home also ties workers down. Even in the best of times, the costs and hassle of selling one home and buying another — one estimate put the average cost of a house move at more than $60,000 — tend to make workers reluctant to go where the jobs are.

And these are not the best of times. Right now, economic distress is concentrated in the states with the biggest housing busts: Florida and California have experienced much steeper rises in unemployment than the nation as a whole. Yet homeowners in these states are constrained from seeking opportunities elsewhere, because it’s very hard to sell their houses.

Finally, there’s the cost of commuting. Buying a home usually though not always means buying a single-family house in the suburbs, often a long way out, where land is cheap. In an age of $4 gas and concerns about climate change, that’s an increasingly problematic choice.

There are, of course, advantages to homeownership — and yes, my wife and I do own our home. But homeownership isn’t for everyone. In fact, given the way U.S. policy favors owning over renting, you can make a good case that America already has too many homeowners.

O.K., I know how some people will respond: anyone who questions the ideal of homeownership must want the population “confined to Soviet-style concrete-block high-rises” (as a Bloomberg columnist recently put it). Um, no. All I’m suggesting is that we drop the obsession with ownership, and try to level the playing field that, at the moment, is hugely tilted against renting.

And while we’re at it, let’s try to open our minds to the possibility that those who choose to rent rather than buy can still share in the American dream — and still have a stake in the nation’s future.

Donations Passed $300 Billion for 1st Time

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 23, 2008; A05

Americans donated $306 billion to charities in 2007, as U.S. philanthropic giving rose to a record level despite a downturn in the national economy, a survey being released today has found.

Charitable giving increased 1 percent last year, when inflation is taken into account, and surpassed $300 billion for the first time, according to the Giving USA survey.

But experts said that the growth may be short-lived, as many charities reported concerns that rising gas prices and turmoil in the housing and credit markets could hamper their fundraising this year.

In 2007, most of the donations, about $229 billion, came from individuals. But after years of steady growth, that figure remained stagnant last year, a sign that the softening economy may be pinching charitable contributions. Giving by corporations totaled $15.9 billion, an inflation-adjusted decline of 1 percent from the year before.

Meanwhile, giving from private foundations increased 7 percent and through personal bequests 4 percent, adjusted for inflation.

Del Martin, chairwoman of the Giving USA Foundation, which compiles the annual report, said the modest growth encouraged her. But she said many charities surveyed, particularly those with small endowments, were worried about this year's fundraising totals.

"Those nonprofits that have the most tenuous relationships with donors are the ones that have the greater concerns," she said.

In Washington, as in cities across the country, demand for services at charities is soaring amid the economic downturn. Requests for emergency assistance have increased 28 percent at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, said president and chief executive Edward J. Orzechowski.

Donations to Catholic Charities increased last year, he said, crediting a loyal corps of donors.

"When times are tough, people are willing to dig deeper," Orzechowski said. But, he added, "when the demand rises to the degree that it is, there's no way we can meet that demand, even with increased giving."

Any decrease next year in giving, no matter how modest, could severely hurt area nonprofit organizations, said Julie L. Rogers, president of the District-based Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation. She said many groups are "chronically undercapitalized anyway."

"They may be very well managed, but they live at the financial margins because most of them don't have much by way of financial reserves or working capital, and they are raising every dollar every year," Rogers said.

A promising sign for charities is the steady growth in giving by private foundations. Buoyed by gains in stock market investments and a record $37 billion in new gifts, the combined assets of U.S. foundations rose from $550 billion in 2006 to $614 billion in 2007, according to a recent survey by the Foundation Center, a group that researches philanthropic giving.

Although much of that money remains locked in endowments year after year, foundations are spending a larger share of their assets than was true a decade ago, the survey found. More than half of foundations surveyed said they planned to increase their giving in 2008.

"What you are seeing is the value of sustained endowments that increase in good times and therefore are equipped and able to respond to society's needs in bad times," said Steve Gunderson, president and chief executive of the Council on Foundations.

In overall U.S. charitable giving, religious congregations received the biggest windfall from donors, the Giving USA study found. Religious groups collected $102 billon, or one-third of all gifts, followed by nonprofit educational organizations, which collectively raised $43 billion.

But the share of overall donations going to religious groups has decreased steadily over time. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, religious congregations received nearly half of all gifts, according to Giving USA's historical data.

Martin attributes this to increased competition among nonprofit groups for donations, as the number of charitable organizations has soared over the past decade to about 1.4 million.

In 2007, international aid agencies, environmental groups and human service charities saw the largest increases in charitable gifts. Gifts to international groups, which were so small 20 years ago that the category was nonexistent in the survey, have grown steadily, increasing by 13 percent last year to $13 billion.

"That number is indicative of what I say often: In a global economy, you have global philanthropy," Gunderson said.

June 23, 2008

Reading 1
2 Kgs 17:5-8, 13-15a, 18
Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, occupied the whole land
and attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel
the king of Assyria took Samaria,
and deported the children of Israel to Assyria,
setting them in Halah, at the Habor, a river of Gozan,
and the cities of the Medes.
This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the LORD,
their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt,
from under the domination of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and because they venerated other gods.
They followed the rites of the nations
whom the LORD had cleared out of the way of the children of Israel
and the kings of Israel whom they set up.
And though the LORD warned Israel and Judah
by every prophet and seer,
“Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes,
in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your fathers
and which I sent you by my servants the prophets,”
they did not listen, but were as stiff-necked as their fathers,
who had not believed in the LORD, their God.
They rejected his statutes,
the covenant which he had made with their fathers,
and the warnings which he had given them, till,
in his great anger against Israel,
the LORD put them away out of his sight.
Only the tribe of Judah was left.

Responsorial Psalm
60:3, 4-5, 12-13
R. (7b) Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
O God, you have rejected us and broken our defenses;
you have been angry; rally us!
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God, with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men.
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

Gospel
Mt 7:1-5
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Survey Shows Age, Too, May Affect Election Views

By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 22, 2008; A01

As Sen. Barack Obama opens his campaign as the first African American on a major party presidential ticket, nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Lingering racial bias affects the public's assessments of the Democrat from Illinois, but offsetting advantages and Sen. John McCain's age could be bigger factors in determining the next occupant of the White House.

Overall, 51 percent call the current state of race relations "excellent" or "good," about the same as said so five years ago. That is a relative thaw from more negative ratings in the 1990s, but the gap between whites and blacks on the issue is now the widest it has been in polls dating to early 1992.

More than six in 10 African Americans now rate race relations as "not so good" or "poor," while 53 percent of whites hold more positive views. Opinions are also divided along racial lines, though less so, on whether blacks face discrimination. There is more similarity on feelings of personal racial prejudice: Thirty percent of whites and 34 percent of blacks admit such sentiments.

At the same time, there is an overwhelming public openness to the idea of electing an African American to the presidency. In a Post-ABC News poll last month, nearly nine in 10 whites said they would be comfortable with a black president. While fewer whites, about two-thirds, said they would be "entirely comfortable" with it, that was more than double the percentage of all adults who said they would be so at ease with someone entering office for the first time at age 72, which McCain (R-Ariz.) would do should he prevail in November.

Even so, just over half of whites in the new poll called Obama a "risky" choice for the White House, while two-thirds said McCain is a "safe" pick. Forty-three percent of whites said Obama has sufficient experience to serve effectively as president, and about two in 10 worry he would overrepresent the interests of African Americans.

Obama will be forced to confront these views as he seeks to broaden his appeal. He leads in the Post-ABC poll by six percentage points among all adults, but among those who are most likely to vote, the contest is a tossup, with McCain at 48 percent and Obama at 47 percent.

His campaign advisers hope race may prove a benefit, that heightened enthusiasm among African Americans will make Obama competitive in GOP-leaning states with large black populations. But to win in November, Obama most likely will have to close what is now a 12-point deficit among whites. (Whites made up 77 percent of all voters in 2004; blacks were 11 percent, according to network exit polls.)

This is hardly the first time a Democratic candidate has faced such a challenge -- Al Gore lost white voters by 12 points in 2000, and John F. Kerry lost them by 17 points in 2004 -- but it is a significantly larger shortfall than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton encountered in their winning campaigns.

Many think Obama has the potential to transform current racial politics. Nearly six in 10 believe his candidacy will shake up the racial status quo, for better or worse. And by nearly 3 to 1, those who think Obama's candidacy will affect race relations said it will have a positive impact. (Four in 10 said it probably will not make much of a difference.)

African Americans are much more optimistic than whites on this score: Sixty percent said Obama's candidacy will do more to help race relations, compared with 38 percent of whites. Two-thirds of those supporting him for president think it will improve the situation.

But sorting out the impact of these and other racial attitudes on the presidential election is not straightforward.

About a fifth of whites said a candidate's race is important in determining their vote, but Obama does no worse among those who said so than among those who called it a small factor or no factor.

Nor are whites who said they have at least some feelings of racial prejudice more or less apt to support Obama than those who profess no such feelings.

Putting several measures together into a "racial sensitivity index" reveals that these attitudes have a significant impact on vote preferences, independent of partisan identification. Combining answers to questions about racist feelings, perceptions of discrimination and whether the respondent has a close personal friend of another race into a three-part scale shows the importance of underlying racial attitudes.

Whites in the top sensitivity group broke for Obama by nearly 20 percentage points, while those in the lowest of the three categories went for McCain by almost 2 to 1.

A similar pattern holds among Democrats. Obama scores more than 20 points better among nonblack Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in the "high" group than he does among those in the "low" group.

Obama has some convincing to do among the 29 percent of whites who fall into the scale's lowest category. (Twenty-one percent were in the top grouping, 50 percent in the middle.) Almost six in 10 whites in the low-sensitivity group see him as a risky choice, and a similar percentage said they know little or nothing about where he stands on specific issues. Nearly half do not think his candidacy will alter race relations in the country; 20 percent think it will probably make race relations worse.

But McCain's challenges are also an important part of the equation.

Numerous polls, for example, have indicated that McCain's age may be a bigger detractor than Obama's race. And more are now concerned that McCain will heed too closely the interests of large corporations than said so about Obama and the interests of blacks.

The poll was conducted by telephone June 12 through June 15 among a national random sample of 1,125 adults. The results from the full poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. The error margin is larger for subgroups; it is four points among whites and seven points among African Americans.

Assistant polling analyst Kyle Dropp contributed to this report.

June 22, 2008

Reading 1
Jer 20:10-13
Jeremiah said:
“I hear the whisperings of many:
‘Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!’
All those who were my friends
are on the watch for any misstep of mine.
‘Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail,
and take our vengeance on him.’
But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion:
my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.
In their failure they will be put to utter shame,
to lasting, unforgettable confusion.
O LORD of hosts, you who test the just,
who probe mind and heart,
let me witness the vengeance you take on them,
for to you I have entrusted my cause.
Sing to the LORD,
praise the LORD,
for he has rescued the life of the poor
from the power of the wicked!”

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
R. (14c) Lord, in your great love, answer me.
For your sake I bear insult,
and shame covers my face.
I have become an outcast to my brothers,
a stranger to my children,
Because zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me.
R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.
I pray to you, O LORD,
for the time of your favor, O God!
In your great kindness answer me
with your constant help.
Answer me, O LORD, for bounteous is your kindness;
in your great mercy turn toward me.
R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.
“See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!
For the LORD hears the poor,
and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.
Let the heavens and the earth praise him,
the seas and whatever moves in them!"
R. Lord, in your great love, answer me.

Reading II
Rom 5:12-15
Brothers and sisters:
Through one man sin entered the world,
and through sin, death,
and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned—
for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world,
though sin is not accounted when there is no law.
But death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those who did not sin
after the pattern of the trespass of Adam,
who is the type of the one who was to come.
But the gift is not like the transgression.
For if by the transgression of the one the many died,
how much more did the grace of God
and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ
overflow for the many.

Gospel
Mt 10:26-33
Jesus said to the Twelve:
“Fear no one.
Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.
What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;
what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
But whoever denies me before others,
I will deny before my heavenly Father.”

Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

June 21, 2008

By RACHEL L. SWARNS

WASHINGTON — Driven largely by the surge in foreclosures and an unsettled housing market, Americans are renting apartments and houses at the highest level since President Bush started a campaign to expand homeownership in 2002.

The percentage of households headed by homeowners, which soared to a record 69.1 percent in 2005, fell to 67.8 percent this year, the sharpest decline in 20 years, according to census data through the end of March. By extension, the percentage of households headed by renters increased to 32.2 percent, from 30.9 percent.

The figures, while seemingly modest, reflect a significant shift in national housing trends, housing analysts say, with the notable gains in homeownership achieved under Mr. Bush all but vanishing over the last two years.

Many of the new renters, meanwhile, are struggling to get into decent apartments as vacancies decline, rents rise and other renters increasingly stay put. Some renters who want to buy homes are unable to get mortgages as banks impose stricter standards. Others remain reluctant to buy, anxious that housing prices will continue to fall.

The confluence of factors has largely derailed what Mr. Bush called “the ownership society,” his campaign to give millions of people — particularly minority and lower-income families — a shot at homeownership by encouraging lenders to finance more home purchases.

“We’re not going to see homeownership rates like that for a generation,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, a research company.

For many minority and lower-income families who viewed homeownership as a stepping stone to building wealth and passing it on to their children, the transition from owning to renting has been the unraveling of a dream. Burdened now by debt and bad credit, some of these families are worse off than they were before they bought.

“The bloom is off of homeownership,” said William C. Apgar, a senior scholar at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University who ran the Federal Housing Administration from 1997 to 2001. “We’re seeing more dramatic growth in renters and a decline in the number of owners. People are beginning to understand that homeownership can be a very risky venture.”

Mr. Apgar said the Joint Center had predicted an increase of 1.8 million renters from 2005 to 2015, given expected population trends. Instead, they saw a surge of 1.5 million renters from 2005 to 2007 alone. In the first quarter of this year, 35.7 million people were renting homes or apartments, census data show.

“Even though we’re only looking at a short period, these trends are pretty powerful,” Mr. Apgar said.

Mr. Zandi said he believed that minority and lower-income homeowners had been hardest hit. Nearly three million minority families took out mortgages from 2002 to the first quarter of this year, housing officials say. Since minority families were more likely to receive subprime loans, economists believe these families account for a disproportionate share of foreclosures.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said that officials had hoped the homeownership gains would stick. “We’re disappointed that conditions in the housing market didn’t allow those gains to be sustained,” he said. “But we’re optimistic that they can return.”

The new renters include people like Tina Williams, a 43-year-old medical assistant who lost her three-bedroom colonial in Cleveland to foreclosure in March after her adjustable rate mortgage spiked and she struggled to find work.

Ms. Williams slept at a homeless shelter and at the homes of friends after five apartment complexes rejected her, citing her bad credit and history of foreclosure.

Finally, someone offered to rent her the third floor of their house. Her new $300-a-month rental has a bedroom, a living room and a bathroom, but no kitchen.

“People say, ‘Tina, how are you living?’ ” said Ms. Williams, who has cobbled together the semblance of a kitchen with a microwave, a minirefrigerator and an electric frying pan.

“I say, ‘I’m living on God’s grace and mercy,’ ” said Ms. Williams, who had dreamed of passing on her first home, bought in 2001, to her two grown daughters.

“My daughter says I’m living in a hole in the wall,” she said. “But I can eat every day. I have a roof over my head. When I found this place, I started shouting for joy.”

Nationally, rents have increased about 11 percent since 2005, when homeownership rates started to decline, though that growth is slowing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2005, vacancy rates for rental properties in Cleveland hovered around 10 percent, according to the Northeast Ohio Apartment Association, which represents landlords in the Cleveland area. Today, the rate stands at 5.2 percent.

Christopher E. Smythe, the association’s president, said the collapse of the housing market had improved the economic climate.

“Our apartment traffic is up, people are renting again and occupancies are up,” he said in a letter to members this year.

In other places, like Los Angeles, the slump in the housing market has begun to push up vacancies as condominiums are converted into rentals, according to Raphael Bostic, the associate director at the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California.

But those new apartments are often out of reach of struggling families. And since many owners of rental properties are also going into default, the foreclosure wave has resulted in fierce competition for affordable apartments in some cities.

In Rhode Island, 41 percent of the state’s foreclosed properties are multifamily dwellings, which would most likely have housed tenants, a recent study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition concluded.

“We’re seeing the displacement of tenants at the same time that we’re seeing former homeowners enter the rental market,” said Raymond Neirinckx, a coordinator at the Rhode Island Housing Resources Commission, which handles housing policy.

Meanwhile, some people who have lost their homes find that landlords view them with suspicion.

Steve Allen, 51, a Vietnam veteran in Seattle, was repeatedly rejected when he and his wife, Lesa, started searching for an apartment this month. Some apartment managers said no because they had lost their home to foreclosure. Others said their credit scores were too low.

Debbie Suber, 46, who lost her home in Cleveland last year, said she and her husband were lucky to find a landlord who was willing to consider their income, not their credit scores. “By the grace of God, that’s why I have a place,” she said.

Times are also tough for renters hoping to buy. Banks have tightened mortgage standards, insisting on good credit scores, proof of income and sizable down payments. Lez Trujillo, the national field director for Acorn Housing, a nonprofit group that helps lower-income families get mortgages, said a third of their applicants ended up with houses just a few years ago. Now, it is one in 10, she said.

Barbara O’Leary-Hatfield-Liberace, a 68-year-old retiree and an Acorn member, encountered such difficulties when she and some friends decided to buy a $340,000 house in Seattle.

The mortgage company they consulted said they needed to clean up their credit and come up with a $45,000 down payment, money they do not have.

So on most nights, when Ms. O’Leary-Hatfield-Liberace thinks about her dream house, she reaches for the rosary that she keeps under her pillow.

“I pray a lot and hope to heck we’ll win the Lotto,” she said.

June 21, 2008

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Record prices for gasoline and jet fuel should be good news for Amtrak, as travelers look for alternatives to cut the cost of driving and flying.

And they are good news, up to a point.

Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month.

But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand.

Many of the long-distance trains are already sold out for some days this summer. Want to take Amtrak’s daily Crescent train from New York to New Orleans? It is sold out on July 5, 6, 7 and 8. Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 5? The train is sold out, but Amtrak will sell you a bus ticket.

“We’re starting to bump up against our own capacity constraints,” said R. Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak.

The problem is that rail has shriveled. The number of “passenger miles” traveled on intercity rail has dropped by about two-thirds since 1960, and the companies that build rail cars and locomotives have also shrunk, making it hard to expand.

In 1970, the year that Congress voted to create Amtrak by consolidating the passenger operations of freight railroads, the airlines were about 17 times larger than the railroads, measured by passenger miles traveled; now they are more than 100 times larger. Highway travel was then about 330 times larger; now it is more than 900 times larger.

Today Amtrak has 632 usable rail cars, and dozens more are worn out or damaged but could be reconditioned and put into service at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars each.

And it needs to buy new rail cars soon. Its Amfleet cars, the ones recognizable to riders as the old Metroliners, are more than 30 years old. And the Acela trains, which have been operating about eight years, have about a million miles on them.

Writing specifications for bids, picking a vendor and waiting for delivery takes years, even if the money is in hand.

Amtrak is an alternative to airlines along the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, and on some routes out of Chicago and a few in California. But most of its other routes are so slow that people take those trains because they have no alternative to reach places like Burlington, N.C., or Burlington, Iowa. Or they go for the train ride itself.

The railroad carried about 25 million passengers last year and may hit 27 million this year. (That is all intercity traffic; commuter rail, connecting suburbs and cities, is also growing, but that is not Amtrak’s market.) By contrast, the airlines carry about 680 million domestic passengers a year. If Amtrak were an airline, in terms of passenger boardings it would rank approximately eighth, behind Continental and US Airways and ahead of AirTran and JetBlue.

H. Glenn Scammel, a former head of staff of the rail subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the railroad should give up on some of its cross-country trains and redeploy the equipment on relatively short intercity trips, where it could provide enough frequency to attract new business. (Providing one train a day in each direction will not draw many new business travelers.)

But the railroad’s labor contracts provide stiff penalties for dropping routes, and dropping states from its itinerary would hurt its political support, especially in the Senate, where thinly populated states are overrepresented relative to their population.

Scarcity is not all bad for the railroad, though. It has raised ticket prices, so that it recorded ticket revenues of $153.4 million in May, up 15.6 percent from $132.7 million in May 2006. That jump is higher than the ridership increase of 12.3 percent, to 2.58 million, from 2.30 million.

Most of the money came from airline-style “yield management,” using a computer to look ahead, see how many seats are filled, and raising or lowering the price on the remainder. Mr. Black said that while the railroad is not set up to make money, “we’re intended to maximize revenues.”

Profits are unlikely. The Government Accountability Office found last November that Amtrak had received more than $30 billion in federal aid since its creation in 1971, but was still in “poor financial condition,” with extensive deferred maintenance.

When Amtrak began operating 37 years ago, the plan was for it to eventually break even. In 1997, Congress passed a law threatening dire consequences if it did not reach self-sufficiency by 2002.

But by 2002 the mood had changed, and the appropriations have continued, financing losses of over $1 billion a year.

The G.A.O. analysis noted the continued operation of cross-country trains with low ridership and high costs. “The current structure does not appear to effectively target federal funds where they may provide the greatest level of public benefits, such as reduced traffic congestion and pollution,” it said.

Oil costs hurt Amtrak, too. Fuel is projected to reach 11 percent of Amtrak’s budget this year, up from 6 percent in 2004. The railroad is not radically more energy-efficient than other means of travel. Amtrak can move a passenger a mile with 17.4 percent less fuel than a passenger car can, and about 32.9 percent less than an airline can, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It does save oil, however, since much of the fuel Amtrak uses is in the form of electricity, made from coal, natural gas and nuclear power.

Despite its popularity with passengers, the biggest determinant of the railroad’s health is still the federal government, and in Washington, views diverge sharply.

Last year Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, and others won overwhelming Senate approval for a bill that would offer the states 80 cents for every 20 cents they spend on new intercity passenger rail service, the same as the match offered for highway projects.

The House passed a bill with the same provision by a veto-proof margin earlier this month. The bill will soon go to a conference committee, but the White House is threatening to veto it because it wants the passenger rail system to be turned over to private operators.

Some members of Congress think the private sector should play a bigger role, and that that congestion and fuel prices should push the country to trains, but not necessarily to Amtrak.

The House version of the Amtrak reauthorization bill has a provision that invites private companies to build a rail link between New York and Washington that would make the trip in less than two hours.

The Florida Representative John Mica, a senior Republican member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee who wrote the provision, said, “We have no passenger high speed rail service in this country. To really change that, you’re going to have to bring in the private sector to develop, finance and operate the system.” Both versions of the bill authorize bigger subsidies, but Congress is often more generous in authorization bills than in actual appropriations.

Amtrak’s fortunes also hinge on who wins the White House; Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, was a staunch opponent of subsidies to Amtrak when he was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. Barack Obama, the probable Democratic nominee, was a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill to provide an 80/20 financing match.