March 26, 2008

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Clinton criticizes Obama over his pastor's inflammatory words
Foon Rhee/Boston Globe (03/26/2008)
Hillary Clinton had stayed out of the fray over the inflammatory remarks made by Barack Obama's long-time pastor. But yesterday she told reporters and editors at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that she would have left her church if her pastor had said the kinds of things about the US government and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. did.

FAITH LEADERS
Security concerns prompt Rev. Wright to cancel trip
Shannon Buggs and Jennifer Leahy/Houston Chronicle (03/26/2008)
Security concerns have prompted the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to cancel his appearance at Houston's Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church for the first time in two decades. Wright, who until February was minister of Sen. Barack Obama's church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, was scheduled to preach three guest sermons in Houston on Sunday.

EDUCATION
Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling
Neil MacFarquhar/New York Times (03/26/2008)
Across the United States, Muslims who find that a public school education clashes with their religious or cultural traditions have turned to home schooling. That choice is intended partly as a way to build a solid Muslim identity away from the prejudices that their children, boys and girls alike, can face in schoolyards. But in some cases, the intent is also to isolate their adolescent and teenage daughters from the corrupting influences that they see in much of American life.

Pottermania lives on in college classrooms
Patrick Lee/CNN (03/26/2008)
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut -- J.K. Rowling has retired Harry Potter, but the fictional boy wizard lives in on college classes across the country where the children's books are embraced as literary and academic texts. Drawing on their expertise in theology, children's literature, globalization studies and even the history of witchcraft, professors have been able to use Harry Potter to attract crowds of students eager to take on a disciplined study of the books.