I thought you said,
“You scratch my back

And I’ll scratch your blogwatch”
And I thought you said we had a deal…

Dappled Things: “In Whom do we put our faith? I think those are questions that all of us should seriously ask ourselves periodically. There are probably a number of ways that we could phrase our response, but one answer that is certainly 100% wrong is that we have faith in Father So-and-so, and that we believe in God because Father says so, and that we are in the Church because Father is so wonderful. Or Sister, or the bishop, or His Holiness, or our dear sainted German grandmother. God alone is perfect: everyone else is bound to fall short. And when the one we’ve placed on the pedestal falls, our faith (if it depends on another human person) is likely to fall, too. God knows, if I gave up my religion every time some stupid priest offended me, I’d have become a pagan a long time ago.”

Family Scholars: New research, inc.: “This brief proposes a new, straight-forward solution to eliminate the marriage penalty for struggling families. Alex Roberts, co-author of the brief and a research associate at the Institute for American Values, notes, ‘There are simply too many programs and too many unique living situations for the marriage penalty to be eradicated in a piecemeal fashion. That’s why we propose a brand new idea: Give low-income couples a refundable tax credit for the exact amount of their marriage penalty.’ A ‘marriage calculator,’ established earlier this year by the Urban Institute and the Administration for Children and Families, is an easy-to-use, web-based program that can determine any low-income couple’s marriage penalty.”