"I will be running any plans I have for this domain by my own Catholic doctrinal enforcer, my never-miss-a-Sunday grandmother Rita."

"This is the religious equivalent of having had four terms of George W. Bush only to find that his successor as president is Karl Rove. Get it now?"

All German teens were obligated to participate in the Hitler Youth. Ratzinger joined when he was 14 and remained in the group about a year, leaving as soon as he was permitted. He was later drafted into an anti-aircraft unit of the German army, though he deserted two years later without having fired a shot.

• Full coverage from the Herald includes a profile, Father Alberto's blog, remembrances of John Paul II, and Herald and Knight-Ridder coverage of the conclave.
  
• Yahoo Full Coverage: Pope Benedict XVI. Includes links to bios, lists, coverage, and good links.
  
• Pope Benedict/Cardinal Ratzinger profile from Wikipedia, includes links.
  
• The Pope Blog. Has texts, news, etc.
  
• (Added later:) Pope Benedict 15 Blog with links, info from Oxford Review.(Via Sheila Lennon.)

"In a few months, when the Terri Schiavo case has drifted into the ether inhabited by such cultural cataclysms as the Elian Gonzalez case, those who sent money or a supportive message to the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation will discover that they've made Schindler's list. Their e-mail boxes and snail-mail boxes will be stuffed by a host of appeals from organizations pushing everything from the privatization of Social Security to school vouchers to an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the constitution."

"Many who value the separation of church and state have sought an appropriate response to the federally-funded National Day of Prayer, an annual abuse of the constitution. Nontheistic Americans (including freethinkers, humanists, atheists and agnostics), along with many traditionally religious allies, view such government-sanctioned sectarianism as unduly exclusionary."

"That's a longstanding strain of American thought, too. In fact, the traditional American attitude toward religion -- and especially religion in politics -- might be summed up this way: "Religious, but not too much."
This is captured in two provisions from the Tennessee Constitution, adopted in 1796. Article IX, Section 2 provides that "No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state."
On the other hand, Article IX, Section 1 provides that: "no minister of the Gospel, or priest of any denomination whatever, shall be eligible to a seat in either House of the Legislature.""

"The Generator asked: If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
'Er. I mean... (long pause) I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. You know, I just... I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.'"

"A good blog is work and the whiners would do well to tend to their own blog knitting....
More often, however, it is an agreeable process to gradually come to know bloggers through their interests, attitudes, likes and dislikes, senses of humor, photos selected, general outlook, how they carry themselves in this public venue and their styles in expressing it all. And some become friends."

I firmly believe that what Kara Thrace did to Leoben in "Flesh and Bone" was wrong. I believe that a society which employs torture on the defenseless captives in its custody has crossed a bright shining line that civilized people should not cross. Likewise, I think that Laura Roslin promising a man freedom only to kill him in the end is abhorrent to the ways in which I want my president to behave. However, I also understand why each of them did what they did...
...These are the debates that I hope you have among yourselves, your families, your friends. I want the show to provoke you into thinking about the times you live in and the choices that are being made all around you every day. In a time when the President of the United States actually asserts that he has the power to arrest without warrant and detain indefinitely without charge or appeal, any citizen (indeed any person on the face of the Earth) simply by designating them as an "illegal combatant," we should all be engaged in a vigorous and energetic debate about who we are as a people and as human beings and exactly how we do intend to respond to the very real threat posed to this nation and to the foundations of liberal democracy posed by people capable of, and willing to, fly airplanes into buildings.

New and interesting
Here's a roundup of some new things found on the Web:

SPLOID is the new online tabloid from Gawker/Wonkette/Engadget genius Nick Denton. It looks and reads like one of the British or German tabloids. Fun.

YaGoHooGle: this is an interesting concept which puts the two searches next to each other: like this one, for Miami Herald.

On the Pope front, Dream of Italy blog has news about travel in Rome, closings, housing, etc. Also interesting: The Pope Blog, We Want a Black Pope, and Get Religion.

World Wind from NASA, is a new satellite imaging database software that lets you 'fly' over terrain around the world. (Similar to FIU's Terrafly?). I haven't downloaded and tried the software, but a World Wind Wiki has tips and samples of screenshots from users.

2005 Congressional Pig Book reveals waste in spending; from Citizens Against Government Waste.

On the president beat....:
Some attention being paid to the amount the president's Social Security reform campaign is costing: in David Sirota's blog; and a Washington Post story about Congressional queries (registration may be required). Sirota estimates that just the cost of flying Air Force One to these rallies for one hour would pay the benefits of 5 retirees for a year.

"Back then, both sides were civil to one another. No one disputed that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and had been for a decade. Or that an eating disorder probably had led to Terri's cardiac arrest and collapse, not physical abuse by Michael as some now contend.
Nobody was a murderer, an abuser, an adulterer, a fanatic, a liar. They were just family, trying their best to do right by their daughter, wife, sister.
... After all these years, what haunts me is something Terri's brother once said: "If Terri knew what this had done to this family, she would go ballistic."
And he told me that before things spun out of control."

"It is unfortunate, to say the least, that so many people -- particularly media figures -- who have publicly doubted the result of the trial do not appear even to have been aware of these other witnesses' testimony, let alone viewed it live or even reviewed it in transcripts."