If we follow the usual script, this means it’s time for upset listeners and viewers to rally to the cause, as they have in the past, and browbeat Congress into restoring the budget. (NY Times)

European consumers are entitled to fear genetic modification in their own backyards, even if proper scientific debate is often drowned out by agitprop and railing against multinational corporations. But they have no right to browbeat the developing world into following their lead. (The Economist)

So the Pentagon contends that it has no choice but to exclude its sufferers from the Purple Heart, given to those whose injuries result from direct and intentional action by the enemy. Doing so would not debase the medal, as some defenders of the Purple Heart callously put it, but it would change it, perhaps in unintended and unwelcome ways. (NY Times)

Why take real people who have been a source of inspiration for millions and debase them for the purpose of “entertainment”? Jack’s Widow elicits the same queasy sensation as reading a supermarket tabloid. (USA Today)

Among the council’s key developments were its ecumenical outreach and the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass. (USA Today)

Brother Roger, the Swiss Protestant theologian who in 1940 founded a community of monks in Taizé, in eastern France, that became a worldwide ecumenical movement, died there on Tuesday. (NY Times)

They culminated a weekend of frantic around-the-clock negotiations, as Wall Street bankers huddled in meetings at the behest of Bush administration officials to try to avoid a downward spiral in the markets stemming from a crisis of confidence. (NY Times)

The broader point is that frantic price-lowering will likely continue as long as the economy remains weak and business travel continues to contract. (The Economist)

In response to ”Making E-ZPass Easier” (July 28), let’s not overlook the profound oxymoron of both the name and idea of New Jersey’s E-ZPass system and its out-of-state cousins. (NY Times)

Sure, they’ll have to endure three or four hours in an “extended-range regional jet” — a flying oxymoron if there ever was one. But those folks don’t have to go through Dallas or Chicago or St. Louis to get to New York, and that means a lot. (WSJ)