The Christian Century

Though President Bush has repeatedly maintained that the U.S. does not engage in torture, his administration continues to equivocate. It has insisted that terrorists need not be treated like ordinary combatants. It has admitted to practicing waterboarding (simulated drowning) and refuses to rule out that inhumane practice despite the objection of most legal experts, civilian and military.

Calling tough interrogation methods a “valuable tool” in the war on terrorism, President Bush last month vetoed a bill to outlaw waterboarding in a rebuke to congressional Democrats and mainstream church leaders, including signers of a “United Methodists Do Not Torture” petition.

A progressive group of U.S. nuns has called on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney because of their roles in the war in Iraq.

For the second time in as many years, President Bush vetoed a bill June 20 that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

President Bush has become what he said he would be, a uniter: both conservatives and liberals are united in thinking that he has taken the country off track. In what seems to be a protracted lame-duck period for the president, pundits are already speculating about the post-Bush era.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has canceled plans to speak at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration next January because of organizer Jimmy Carter’s recent criticism of President Bush. The Democratic ex-president later softened his evaluation of Bush after Huckabee and other Republicans decried Carter’s denunciation of Bush’s White House performance.

A regional group of United Methodist bishops has affirmed the process surrounding the possible placement of President George W. Bush’s library and policy center on the grounds of Southern Methodist University.

Southern Methodist University, which holds to its denomination’s standards for leadership and public service, has become embroiled in a controversy over linking itself permanently to the husband of one of its most famous alumni, Laura Bush.

Yes, the letter written by President Ahmadinejad of Iran to President Bush last spring is a political document, and is no doubt duplicitous, multilayered and deliberately deceptive. Yet the letter, framed as an address by one believer in God to another, received little sensible comment in the American media. Suppose the appeal to Bush to take his Christianity seriously is at least in part genuine. Can we American Christians hear this appeal?

President Bush in mid-August signed into law a measure that aims to preserve a controversial cross on public land in San Diego. The law permits the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial to be owned by the federal government, marking the latest juncture in a legal battle over its constitutionality.