Power
Policy, governance, authority, human rights. Scripture watched empires rise and fall long before ours, and it speaks plainly about how power is used and misused. These reflections read the news of power against that long record.
In Louisiana, the judge who evicts you is paid by the case
The fee is legal and the same whoever wins. Moses set a harder test for judges: whether the small get the same hearing as the great.
"Remember my name": Iran sentences a student to hang for blasphemy
A student in Mashhad faces the rope for a post about Muhammad. Christians worship a man condemned on the same charge, so should anyone die for insulting God?
Robert Pether came home from Iraq because his wife kept asking
He thanked her, then refused to call his homecoming justice.
Shot seven times at Fort Hood, he forgives and will still watch
Alonzo Lunsford wants to look Nidal Hasan in the eye at his execution. He doesn't want the whole country watching with him.
Amish schools owe New York $118,000. Measles is spreading upstate.
The Amish want the Supreme Court to stop New York's vaccine fines as measles spreads upstate. Paul guarded the conscience and the neighbor in one letter.
Texas's classroom Commandments leave out the slaves God freed
A judge ordered Galveston to hang the Ten Commandments by October 11. The state's text stops at "I AM the LORD thy God." At Sinai, the sentence kept going.
Hands folded as if in prayer. Who was listening for a no?
An 83-year-old woman lay silent, eyes shut, as her assisted death began, her family says. Police are investigating, and a mother's advice to a king asks who spoke for her.
The rule born from Martha's death now reaches every A&E
She was thirteen when a hospital did not listen. The rule her parents built now lets anyone in an English A&E force the room to hear them.
The state that could not protect Christa Pike now schedules her death
On September 30, Tennessee executes Christa Pike for a murder at eighteen.
A Pardon Invoked the Day of Atonement and Cut the Confession
The holiest day on the calendar turns on naming the wrong out loud. The clemency granted on its eve named nothing.
Alabama freed Ervin Harris after forty-two stolen years
He was nineteen when one witness picked him out. He is seventy-one now, cleared at last, and the forty-two years are not coming back.
The UN Retires the Map That Flattered Greenland and Shrank Africa
Greenland has spent four centuries impersonating a continent. The UN just voted to end the performance. Sinai had a rule about that.
The one fact a year of argument cannot bury
Charlie Kirk was shot dead on a campus a year ago. The anniversary comes wrapped in a memorial, a protest, a capital trial, and a fight over what it means.
A court called Jackson's water crisis grievous, then dismissed the case
Ten judges called the harm grievous and dismissed the case anyway. They may be right about the law. Amos asks a different question about the water.
A court made lighting a candle for the dead a crime
A Hong Kong court has criminalized the last public mourning of Tiananmen's dead. A government that must outlaw a candle has told you what it is afraid of.
Three men, three states, one day, and the church bells tolled
Three states put three men to death on one day. Across the South, churches rang the bell they toll for the dying. The question is who it tolls for.
Kabul celebrated five years while its women were shut out
Five years after the Taliban retook Kabul, the anniversary ceremony had no women in it. Outside, they described their erased lives to foreign reporters in whispers.
Forty thousand dead, and now the war ends on paper
After forty years and forty thousand dead, Turkey voted its enemies a legal path home. The bereaved are the ones asked to make room for them.
Born of War in Sudan, a Child With No Name on Record
A boy born in Darfur has no birth certificate, no number, no father the law will name. His mother holds a child the state cannot see.
Arizona Lets the Church, Not the Court, Define a Confession
Arizona's highest court ruled that churches, not judges, decide what counts as a confession. A father confessed to abusing his children, and the abuse went on for years.
Life Without Parole for a Shot He Never Fired
The driver gets a murder charge; the shooter pleads down and walks. Almost every state lets one man's killing land on another man's neck.
The Refugee Mother Wins the Case No One Rallied For
America built a campaign around one persecuted pastor. A federal judge just ruled for the mother no one organized for.
Hong Kong Raids Bookstores and Won't Say Which Books Are Illegal
Five booksellers arrested, and no list of banned titles. The government wants fear to do the censoring. Scripture was written by men who knew that strategy from inside a cell.
The Pastor Who Sent His Family to Safety and Flew Back
A man walked out of a Chinese prison on July 4. Eight of his colleagues did not. The decision that defines him was made eight years earlier, at an airport.
ICE Handcuffs a Nun in Her Habit Outside Mass
She wore the habit as a declaration. The agents who cuffed her had no category for what was walking past them.
Guards Shaved His Vow, the Court Left No Remedy
A Rastafarian's twenty-year vow was shaved off by guards who knew it was illegal. The Court agreed the law was broken, then ruled no one answers for it.
Hungary's winners wrote a term limit over their own heads.
After sixteen years of one man's rule, Hungary capped every prime minister at eight years, binding the winners as tightly as the leader they replaced.
Three Philadelphia men walked free after 28 wrongful years
Jermal Shuler, Marc Brittingham, and Rasheed Turner walked out together on May 26. New forensic evidence on the time of death undid a case built on a single witness.
Iran's opposition is being asked what mercy would cost
Five Kurdish parties unified. A London congress warned against revenge. James names the math nations almost never choose.
A Kalamazoo officer caught a baby dropped from a burning window
Moses promised arms underneath. On a Michigan sidewalk this month, that promise wore a uniform and held up its hands.