It’s Christmas Eve and there’s all sorts of gift-giving going on. Senate Democrats (finally!) placed a giant health care bill under President Obama’s tree, voting 60-39 in favor. There’s still a lot of negotiating to do with the House version, and abortion remains an obstacle, but as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs put it: “Health care reform is not a matter of ‘if.’ Health care reform now is a matter of ‘when.'”
Former President Jimmy Carter gave an unexpected Christmas (or Hanukkah?) gift to Jews with a letter of apology for any offense he’s given in his his criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinians. And since we’re brimming with holiday cheer this Christmas Eve, Focus on the Family is out with its list of naughty (The Gap) and nice (Target) retailers when it comes to that still-simmering war on Christmas.
There was a minor scuffle involving a politician, a Christmas tree and an atheist sign (always a more potent mix than Grandma’s spiked eggnog) in Illinois, and someone who’s likely to end up on Santa’s naughty list: an Anglican priest who’s promoting, or perhaps defending, shoplifting by the poor.
A federal appeals court in New York has rejected claims by 9/11 victims’ families that their free exercise rights were violated in the clean up of World Trade Center debris; the families had said not being able to find their loved ones’ remains hindered them from hosting a proper religious funeral. And in Minnesota, a federal judge has ruled in favor of employees at Mesaba Airlines (a Delta subsidiary) who were alleging religious discrimination.
WaPo’s George Will, in a Christmas present that arrived three days early, parses the pope’s outreach to disaffected Anglicans in his Sunday column. His more liberal colleague, E.J. Dionne, meanwhile, muses about why “the culture wars went into recession along with the economy” in 2009.
A second Irish Catholic bishop has resigned in the fall-out from a damning government report on how the church mishandled the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Stepped-up violence in Iraq has the nation’s beleagured Christian minority increasingly anxious, especially at Christmas and as Shiites prepare to mark the bloody Ashura holiday. The Weekly Standard raises the red flag of homegrown (or perhaps imported) Islamic extremism.
Italian author Umberto Eco is concerned that European youth don’t know who the 3 wise men are. Yitzhak Ahronovitch, who captained the refugee ship Exodus and tried to land thousands of Jewish refugees on the shores of Palestine in 1947, has died at 86.