Nuns who have been critical of a budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that would defund many social programs in favor of tax cuts wrapped up their nine-state tour in Washington, D.C. on Monday with an interfaith event at the United Methodist Building near the Capitol.
‘Paul Ryan has claimed to be a faithful Catholic, and I have no reason to suspect that that isn’t accurate, ‘Sister Mary Ellen Lacy Daughter, a lobbyist at Catholic social justice lobbying group NETWORK, told Raw Story. ‘What we do know, and what the bishops agree with us on, is that the document, the budget that he wrote, is not a moral document. It is not a faithful budget. It is not consistent with the Catholic social teachings. He may claim one thing, but it is clearly in opposition to what we believe.
More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday.
From June 25 to July 1, some 2,171 record temperatures were either broken or matched, the NOAA said. For the 30 days of June, that number rose to 3,215.
Accuweather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said the number of records broken was very unusual. He said that while some aspects of the heat wave are unknown, much of it is because of a lack of snow cover during the late winter on America’s plains.
Instead of the sun’s heat melting snow, it instead heated the ground, which in turn warmed the air. The increase in temperature even made crops grow ahead of schedule until now; Sosnowski said the lack of rainfall has stunted crops’ growth.
Sosnowski added that while some areas are not unusually warm, namely New England and the Northwest, the center of the country will experience high temperatures for the next several weeks, possibly into August.
Five states had more than 100 record temperatures broken in June. Texas had 237 records broken, followed […]
Physicists say they have all but proven that the ‘God particle’ exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.
The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton’s discovery: It was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what it is and can put that knowledge to further use.
The focus of the excitement is the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle long sought by physicists.
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, say that they have compiled vast amounts of data that show the footprint and shadow of the particle, even though it has never actually been glimpsed.
But two independent teams of physicists are cautious after decades of work and billions of dollars spent. They don’t plan to use the word ‘discovery.’ They say they will come as close as […]
It is a terrible thing when a once-noble phrase gets beaten to a meaningless pulp. The time has now come to rescue the phrase ‘religious freedom’ from its abusers. In the writings and speeches of Catholic bishops and evangelical leaders in recent months, ‘religious freedom’ has come to mean something close to its opposite. It now stands for ‘religious privilege’. It is a coded way for them to state their demand that religious institutions should be allowed special powers that exempt them from the laws of the land.
On 22 June, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops kicked off its ‘Fortnight for Freedom’, a campaign of complaints about alleged persecution of the largest, most powerful and politically influential religious denominations in theUnited States. Religious freedom is ‘in jeopardy in America’, says Archbishop Jose H Gomez in a prominent article in the theological journal First Things. Let’s consider some of the alleged assaults.
At St Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois, the adjunct professors had not had a raise in five years, according to Tom Suhrbur, an organizer with the Illinois Education Association. In 2010, in hopes of securing higher pay and benefits, they sought to organize themselves into a union.
The administration of St […]
