July 11, 2008

DEATH PENALTY
Carter Attorney General to Head Panel on Death Penalty
John Wagner/Washington Post (07/11/2008)
Gov. Martin O'Malley tapped a former U.S. attorney general yesterday to lead a panel examining Maryland's death penalty, opening another chapter in the state's long-running legal and political drama over the issue. Benjamin R. Civiletti, who served under President Jimmy Carter from 1979 to 1981, was introduced at an Annapolis news conference along with others chosen by O'Malley (D) and legislative leaders to serve on the 23-member Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, which the General Assembly created this year.

POLYGAMY
Mormon Church, polygamists battle over language
Reuters (07/11/2008)
WASHINGTON - Mainstream Mormons and a breakaway sect that practices polygamy illegally are battling over who can call themselves "fundamentalist Mormons."

DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE
US Episcopal leader defends church to Anglicans
Rachel Zoll/Associated Press (07/11/2008: pewforum.org)
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, a theological liberal, has tried to ease the tensions in meetings with other Anglican leaders. Starting next Wednesday in Canterbury, England, she will be explaining the church's actions in her broadest venue yet: the Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world. Jefferts Schori said she's looking forward to the "face-to-face conversation" at the event.

FAITH LEADERS
King children sue brother, father's estate
CNN (07/11/2008)
ATLANTA, Georgia -- Two children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are suing their brother, saying he took money from the civil rights icon's estate "for his own benefit." The suit also alleges that Dexter King wrongfully took money from the estate of his mother, Coretta Scott King. The suit, filed by Bernice King and Martin Luther King III, names Dexter King and their father's estate as defendants.

CONGREGATIONS AND FAITH GROUPS
Iowa Church Is a Beacon After Immigration Raid
Samuel G. Freedman/New York Times (07/11/2008)
The only redemptive thing that can be said, perhaps, is that in the crisis at Postville — with nearly 400 immigrants imprisoned and facing deportation, with 40 mothers under house arrest awaiting their own court dates, with families that had two working parents now forced to survive on hand-outs from a food pantry — the beacon of the Catholic church to immigrants has rarely shone more brilliantly.