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This post is being updated as additional links become available. Vatican Radio has just announced this news in German. If an English version becomes available, I will provide it. Thanks to Richard Chonak at Catholic Light, we have at least a rough translation of the decree above in which a priest - Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - a central figure in the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje, has been laicized. You can read about the "severe canonical sanctions" taken last year against Fr. Vlasic by the Holy See in this link - Medjugorje: Canonical Status of Fr. Tomislav Vlašić, OFM. The...

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats, after months of preparing for a full-scale fight with President Bush over a Supreme Court nominee, found themselves Wednesday instead weighing whether or how to battle his choice of John G. Roberts Jr. The problem Democrats face is that Roberts, a well-known Washington lawyer before becoming a federal appellate court judge in 2003, appears to be more conservative than they would like but less ideological than they had feared. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) set the tone the day after Bush selected Roberts, taking pains to describe the nominee as an accomplished lawyer and a...

Washington WhispersSenator Kerry's Final ThreeKerry campaign insiders tell us that the Vice Presidential selection team is down to three finalists.They won't say who they are, but we hear that Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack remains the front runner and that North Carolina United States Senator John Edwards is in the pack.Senator Edwards is liked inside Kerry headquarters, as evidenced by the Edwards bumper stickers in some cubicles.

A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles.