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If you were really hoping the bill would pass, you can take heart in other news: the Federal Election Commission just changed campaign finance rules, giving big exemptions to religious and charitable groups.

Politics:

• Protestants flex political muscle in Brazil's presidential election | Jesse Jackson called in to attract evangelicals (Associated Press)
  
  
• Focus on the Family celebrates victory in California | Responding to opposition from concerned citizens, Governor Gray Davis quietly vetoed AB 2651, a bill that would have forced radical pro-gay policies upon California's foster care system (Press release)
  
  
• The right judge? | Whoever controls the appeals courts has tremendous say over whose values will prevail in the United States (Bob Herbert, The New York Times)
  
  
• Robertson charity wins 'faith-based' grant | Operation Blessing International is to get $500,000 in the first wave of grants (The Washington Post)
  
  
• Ken dolls in paradise | The future of God in Ashcroft's America (Jerry Stahl, LA Weekly)
  
  
• Mormonism doesn't deserve backlash | Mitt Romney's campaign refuses to discuss the gubernatorial candidate's religion, simply saying such matters should have no place in the election (Tom Keane, Boston Herald)
  
  
• Democracy & religion in America | Tocqueville's surprising linkage (Michael Novak, National Review Online)
  
  
• No faith in Bush's war on Iraq | Invading Iraq is not a faith-based initiative. This is shocking, considering the self-proclaimed piety of President Bush (Derrick Z. Jackson, The Boston Globe)
  
  
• Wet Hartselle: Power to churches | City alcohol ordinance opens door for religious groups to limit places where booze is sold (The Decatur [Tenn.] Daily)

Life ethics:

• If only unborn children could vote | By identifying fetuses as "unborn children," Bush effectively has managed to establish personhood for fetuses while appearing to care deeply for the huddled masses (Kathleen Parker, The Orlando Sentinel)
  
  
• School offers morning-after pill to 11-year-olds | Under-16s can already obtain the pill without their parents' consent from hospital accident and emergency units and pharmacies (The Daily Telegraph, London)
  
  
• Supreme Court won't stay ruling on Louisiana 'Choose Life' plates | Opponents promptly file second request asking justices to block any sales of plates until case is argued on its merits (Associated Press)
  
  
• Bush's silence is golden in stem-cell debate | From all this quiet and looking the other way, it seems obvious that neither Bush worries much about the fate of blastocysts and fetuses (James P. Pinkerton, Newsday)
  
  
• Nancy Reagan fights Bush over stem cells | She believes that the research could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's disease (The New York Times)
  
  
• Also: Nancy Reagan lobbies for stem cell research (BBC)
  
  
• Also: Slow going on stem cells | When Nancy Reagan, the State of California and leading medical scientists all express frustration within days of each other over the slow pace of stem cell research, it seems clear that the compromise approach toward this controversial research fashioned by President Bush is not working (Editorial, The New York Times)

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September (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46