Events

Today the Vatican announced that there has been no cover-up in the latest U.S. sex-abuse scandal, and could we all just leave the Pope alone? This whole thing must feel like someone stampeded cattle through St. Peter's. But let's be serious. It looks quite like the current Pope intervened in the Ecclesiastical trial of a priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys, and failed to act on dozens of other cases: The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the...

But not according to John Boehner: I laughed so hard I cried. Oh, by the way, John? Yes we did.

If you believe in small government, individual liberty, and all the other things that conservatives traditionally believe, then equal rights for gays naturally follows. As evidence I give you the British Conservative Party's leader (and probably the next prime minister), David Cameron: [N]o-one should be in any doubt that the Conservative party abhors homophobia, that we support equal rights, that we support civil partnerships, that we think that part of being a strong central right party in Britain...

I didn't expect to see O'Hare on this list. (Oh, it wasn't. Don't worry.) Gulliver has the summary: HAVING assessed 9.8m passenger surveys for its annual awards, Skytrax, a research company, has just named Singapore’s Changi airport the best in the world. Incheon airport, near Seoul, which was last year’s winner, came second and Hong Kong airport third. These three would appear to be well clear of the opposition, according to Skytrax’s methodology, as they have held the top three slots (in different...

Well, maybe the Republicans who predicted market Armageddon over the weekend were right. Even though the markets went up on Monday and Tuesday, this morning they have, indeed, collapsed. During the first half-hour of trading this morning the Dow has lost 24, the NASDAQ 10, and the S&P 4. Points. Meaning, 0.23%, 0.4%, and 0.3%, respectively. Yes, the markets have spoken. They just haven't said anything about health-care reform.

Via Andrew Sullivan, a 185-voice virtual choir:

The Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters now has a bigger desktop: 2400 pixels wide and 1920 pixels high, baby. Kewl.

President Obama signed the health-care reform bill just now. It's law. So the U.S. now has a health care law with as much charity and compassion as, say, the U.K.'s circa 1950. And still no stock-market crash. How about that.

Yesterday some of my classmates fretted about how the stock market would collapse today because of health care reform passing the House. Yawn. With half an hour to go, the NASDAQ, DOW, and oil are up; bonds are down; gold is down. All the indicators are within 1% of Friday's closes. What a disaster: Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s. It's hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they'll...

And we now have a 20th-century health care plan for America. Just in time. Fifty years from now, our children and grandchildren will wonder why the vote was so close, kind of like how we today wonder about the 85 who voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or maybe the way we don't, but we should. Update—James Fallows: For now, the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor...