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Pope: World Migrants' Day, welcoming without prejudice and without fearPope Francis marked the World day for Migrants and Refugees, at the Angelus in St Peter's Square with several thousand people including many migrants groups and associations."Don't close the doors to hope". "The Holy Spirit does not want closures; he wants openness, welcoming communities where there is room for everyone". "Every closure, in fact, keeps at a distance those who do not think like us. This - we know - is the root of so many great evils in history: of the absolutism that has often generated dictatorships and so much...

New Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that the United States must engage in the world and work with its allies as he addressed Defense Department employees and service members for the first time as Pentagon chief. “We can't dictate to the world, but we must engage in the world. We must lead with our allies,” Hagel said in his first speech as secretary. “Allies are, as everyone in this room knows, particularly important. No nation — as great as America is — can do any of this alone.

As the din of America’s falling headfirst over the fiscal cliff reverberates across the nation, the Obama administration is quietly killing a key economic metric that tells how, and how many, people are voting with their feet. Since 1991 the Internal Revenue Service has been compiling statistics on filers’ addresses, which the agency’s Statistics of Income division uses to show who is moving into and out of every county and state in the nation. As you’d expect, the IRS also knows the aggregate income levels of those who move. So the movements of the most fundamental productive components of the...

There have been some real characters elected to Congress over the years. Davy Crockett, for instance, served one term in the House of Representatives, then told his constituents to go to hell and headed for Texas where he died defending the Alamo and became an American icon. And who could ever forget those delightful violin concertos delivered so frequently by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia? Fortunately, the current Congress is not without its share of fascinating personalities. Take Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who must be moonlighting at the Comedy Club. Seems he had folks rolling in the...

<p>Is this the "pale rider" from Revelation? A mysterious, pale green figure seen in televised news coverage of the Egyptian riots has prompted some viewers to ask, "Could this be the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse?"</p>

Harry Reid tried very hard to cause his own country to lose a war, bending all the powers of his high office to that ignoble end. And it is not an issue that can be raised in his reelection campaign. Harry Reid wanted America to be defeated in Iraq to embarrass a president who belonged to the other party and to gain seats in Congress for his party, thereby enhancing his own prestige. And he is quite comfortable putting party ahead of country. The charge carries insinuations of treason, so it is necessary to make the appropriate distinctions. Back in...

The museum exhibits are taken from the Old Testament, but the special effects are pure Hollywood: a state-of-the-art planetarium, animatronics and a massive model of Noah's Ark, all intended to explain the origins of the universe from a biblical viewpoint. The Creation Museum, which teaches life's beginnings through a literal interpretation of the Bible, is claiming attendance figures that would make it an unexpectedly strong draw less than a year and a half after it debuted. More than a half-million people have toured the attraction, in northern Kentucky just outside of Cincinnati, since its May 2007 opening "We're depressed, I...

There's a new Swift attack in town, and her name is Jane. Former Bay State Acting Gov. Jane Swift, campaigning with John McCain in Manchester, challenged the qualifications of Mitt Romney and other Republican presidential rivals last night. Swift said Romney, who followed her as governor, lacks the foreign policy experience of someone such as McCain, a military veteran and senior U.S. senator from Arizona. "We can sleep at night," she said, knowing McCain is President. McCain, launching a campaign blitz in New Hampshire, sounded a similar note as he spoke of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the struggle...

Asked what he'd do about the North American trade deal, Obama said it needs changes, so he'd "immediately call the president of Mexico (and) the president of Canada."

I attended Keith Ellison's town hall forum today in Robbinsdale, with the topic of credit justice issues (sub-prime lending, pay-day loans, etc). With very late notice in the local paper, it seemed media and Ellison's friends outnumbered any citizens attending. Seems the media got more of a notice than the citizens of Robbinsdale. That was probably on purpose (gee, ya think?). About 50 were in attendance today. Ellison started off the forum with a catch phrase: "The Politics of Generosity," where we all should share in prosperity. Everybody counts. everybody matters. With that, he introduced a "highly accomplished, dear friend"...

A Spring teen who survived a brutal beating with a pipe last year apparently jumped to his death from a Cozumel-bound cruise ship on Sunday. An 18-year-old was observed by "a bunch of people" jumping over the railing of the upper deck of Carnival Cruise Lines' Ecstasy around 7:35 a.m. Sunday, said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers. [ snip ] Ritcheson's death comes less than three months after he testified before Congress about how two teens nearly killed him on April 23, 2006 by repeatedly kicking a patio umbrella stand into his rectum while shouting "white power!"

Throughout the Iraq war, one of President Bush's loudest Democratic critics has been the longest-serving member of the Senate: Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. *** Yet the octogenarian lawmaker's voice was quavering as he spoke, his regal bearing a bit unsteady. It was another indication that all is not well with Byrd, an institution within an institution, who turned 89 in November after winning a ninth Senate term. The war debate now unfolding in Congress is tailor made for Byrd, fusing his three celebrated Senate roles: Appropriations chairman (the legislation on the table is a spending bill); resident constitutional...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House defended Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday from criticism from Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) that he was one of the worst U.S. defense secretaries ever for his handling of the Iraq war. McCain, one of President George W. Bush's key allies in the U.S. Congress on Iraq, is running for his party's nomination to be president in 2008. "I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," the Arizona senator and former Vietnam War veteran said on the campaign trail in...

CHICAGO -- Some parents are writing their college-age children's resumes. Others are acting as their children's "representatives," hounding college career counselors, showing up at job fairs and sometimes going as far as calling employers to ask why their son or daughter didn't get a job. It's the next phase in helicopter parenting, a term coined for those who have hovered over their children's lives from kindergarten to college. Now they are inserting themselves into their children's job searches -- and school officials and employers say it's a problem that may be hampering some young people's careers. "It has now reached...

Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck have crafted an insightful and heartfelt look at the experiences of the Dixie Chicks over the last three years, chronicling the often bizarre consequences of singer Natalie Maines' anti-Bush wisecrack on a London stage. Maines' statement is captured in "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," as are the meetings where they plot how to circumvent the core country audience and, eventually, how to reroute a tour and cancel shows due to poor ticket sales. It's the rare thorough documentary on a musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should...

Globalization: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is having a grand time cavorting around the world on his Axis Of Evil tour. But we notice he's disgusting as many countries as he's wooing. Vietnam is the most interesting. Chavez blew into Hanoi on Monday and right away began praising Vietnam's government in exactly the way it didn't want: by hailing communism. "Vietnam, with its valor, defeated imperialism not only on the battlefield, but also has maintained socialism in the ideological arena," the South American dictator intoned. Uh-huh. To Vietnam's officials, who've been trying diligently to integrate their nation into the world economy, that's...

AN EXASPERATED father has discovered, at his expense, that cyberspace is not the ideal arena for family feuds. Two weeks ago Steve Williams became so fed up with his daughter's messy bedroom that he built a website featuring pictures of his slothful offspring's lair in an attempt to shame her into action. However, the public humiliation, proved to be a short-lived victory. While it did spur his daughter, Claire, into tidying her room, it also whet her appetite for revenge. With the help of her father's friends, the 20-year-old business student has now set up a rival website that displays...

California Rep. Gallegly reverses retirement, will seek new term Associated Press WASHINGTON - A California congressman has changed his mind about retirement and says he'll seek re-election to an eleventh term. Republican Elton Gallegly made the announcement today. He represents the 24th District, a heavily Republican region that covers most of Ventura County and a portion of Santa Barbara County. On Friday, the 62-year-old Gallegly had announced he wouldn't run again because of unspecified health reasons. However, he'd already filed papers to be a candidate and it was too late to remove his name from the June primary ballot. Only...

The Rev. Pat Robertson said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being punished by God for dividing the Land of Israel. Robertson, speaking on the “700 Club” on Thursday, suggested Sharon, who is currently in an induced coma, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995, were being treated with enmity by God for dividing Israel. “He was dividing God’s land,” Robertson said. “And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations or the United States of America. God says,...

Teresa Heinz drops 'Kerry' Compiled by Tribune-Review staff Sunday, February 6, 2005 A campaign convenience is no more. According to The Washington Times, Teresa Heinz, the erstwhile Teresa Heinz Kerry, has stopped using the last name of her husband, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, last year's Democrat presidential nominee. Preceding its Women Who Make a Difference Awards dinner next month, the National Council for Research on Women is featuring "a conversation with Teresa Heinz," according to a release from the organization. The council failed to mention the final half of the Fox Chapel ketchup heiress' formerly elongated last name in several...