Jonathan Lloyd, in his letter ("Definition doesn't include 'treason,'" Jan. 15), implies there can be no contemporary significance for the Second Amendment other than self-defense.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, would disagree. He listed 27 usurpations perpetrated by King George III to justify force and the subsequent secession of the Colonies. What preceded Mr. Jefferson's list of reasons for why the Colonies wished to declare their independence was a timeless statement, as important now as it was then. It provides the bedrock principles for what makes the United States a "free society."

Most agree that our inalienable rights are to be secured by government, "That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government..."

Those who reduce this debate to self-defense confuse tyranny and treason and, in doing so, ignore the reality of madmen and corrupt governments that have always sought to disarm any form of opposition. It is common knowledge the best and most effectual means to politically enslave a society is to disarm them.

The Founders believed the Second Amendment was not meant to apply only to those weapons that pose no threat to government. What the Founders enshrined was a citizen's ability to retain the rights and means to always offer resistance to governmental oppression. An armed society is not about overthrowing the government, it's about preventing the government from overthrowing our liberty.

JOHN SOKOLEWICZ

Malta

We've had sequestration before, in the 1980s; the dire predictions made then failed to materialize. President Barack Obama, who proposed sequestration in the first place, and his surrogates in the administration, would have us believe the cuts, which took effect March 1, would quickly result in chaos. Their picture presented is the firing of police, firefighters, prison guards and air traffic controllers to absorb the reduction in spending.

A clear example of a half-truth vision appears in the editorial "It's not that hard, Washington," Feb. 26, in which you talk about "tens of thousands" losing jobs or taking cuts through furloughs, point out how unemployment lines will "grow even longer," how the economy "will likely stall, if not reverse," children will go without vaccines and the nation will become noncompetitive.

This is fear-mongering. It does not reflect the results of a rationally applied 5 percent cut. These are the same arguments made in the 1980s.

The Times Union could have noted that $65 billion was injected into the economy in the form of funding for rebuilding and infrastructure development after Superstorm Sandy, which offsets the 5 percent budget cut. You could have noted more careful management of existing programs would obviate the need for cuts elsewhere. You could have noted there will be some pain associated with the cuts, but the result will be a stronger, more vibrant nation.

A pessimistic, half-empty mind-set may sell papers, but is hardly truth.

JAY MURPHY

Clifton Park

Although I have no association with Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation ("First, remember the Constitution," Feb. 12) and I'm not even a gun owner, I find it necessary to respond to the accusations of J. Michael Malec in his letter ("Founders never implied treason," Feb. 28). This is because I understand the precious value of the choice Mr. Gottlieb defends.

The accusation of "treason" is a foul red herring. The Colonial patriots who fought for American freedom and later supported our Constitution also got this accusation from American Tories.

The Tory leaders promised Americans law, order and security, which they said would collapse without the British, and many were gulled. They would not have been, had they examined the likely motivation for such promises and what the British authorities had actually been doing. Notice the parallel with the modern liberal promise (security) in exchange for more restrictions that never make anyone safer. This hook, if swallowed, only ensures greater dependence on a government that is obsessed with its own security from us.

Americans today understand the patriots who fought for our independence were not treasonous, but then Britain wasn't an occupying invader. Early settlers depended on powerful empires for the goods, raw materials and security that were welcomed, but it came to a point that Britain became more abusive than beneficial. This is why it was called a "revolution," and those behind it were both patriots and revolutionaries.

Those who drafted our Constitution were excellent students of history. The lesson they learned was that no government remains good forever. In truth, most are best for "their people" soon after a revolution.

What do you who read this think of your government today?

PATRICK O'CONNEL

Albany

The folks at the American Conservative Union did not get the memo about the GOP's painful election loss of 2012 — so the group forgot that you win elections through addition, not subtraction.

Thus the conservative's conservative organization did not invite GOP New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to its annual Conservative Political Action Conference that starts Thursday. McDonnell has riled the right by agreeing to a tax hike, and Christie was too chummy with the president during Hurricane Sandy. To CPAC, the fact that these two men managed to win statewide office is just piffle.

For its 2012 confab, CPAC uninvited GOProud, the conservative gay-rights group, that had been a co-sponsor of 2011 and 2010 CPACs. Though GOProud is still on the outs, although the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a CPAC co-sponsor, will host a panel affiliated with CPAC, "A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet." Panelist Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud executive director, will talk about how conservatives can broaden their base.

CEI's Christine Hall said her think tank is hosting the event because "We're not in the business of turning away allies."

CPAC, however, did invite Donald Trump, the real-estate developer who is famous for being rich and famous. In 2011, Trump infamously challenged President Barack Obama to release his birth certificate to prove that Obama was born in the United States. Being a birther put Trump's face and comb-over all over cable news.

CPAC also invited Dick Morris and Newt Gingrich — two conservative bombasts with a talent for marrying unwavering self-promotion with certain self-destruction.

I called ACU chairman Al Cardenas to ask him why CPAC didn't invite Christie and McDonnell, who have won elections, but did invite Trump, who never even ran, to speak this year. Cardenas was too busy to chat, although a spokesperson sent me a long quote that lauded CPAC's list of 250-plus speakers and lamented the group's inability to invite more.

It concluded, "This year we have invited leaders who are focused on furthering conservative ideals, and we even invited a select number of those with whom we disagree. We at the American Conservative Union have an almost 50 year history of fighting for our shared conservative values and we look forward to the next 50."

Good luck with that. Many Republicans look back at the 2012 primary and wince at the revolving montage of underqualified presidential hopefuls. Mitt Romney was the best of the bunch, yet an incumbent presiding over an ailing economy was able to trounce him.

So what does the conservative Woodstock do?

Send in the clowns. Snub the working stiffs who win elections to make room for the yahoos who sabotage them.

Many Republicans believe that Obama won because his team was able to turn out what Rush Limbaugh refers to as "low-information voters."

How can Republicans beat that? By turning out our own low-information voters, that's how. Now, it could be that CPAC is trying to lead the way by showcasing low-information speakers. Too bad that tactic didn't turn out so well in 2012.

Debra J. Saunders writes for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her email address is dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.

When it comes to providing college educations to low-income students, most of the discussion focuses on getting them on campus.

But actually keeping those students enrolled in college is a far steeper challenge.

Poor finances. A lack of campus support. Insufficient academic preparation. Stress outside the classroom.

They all take their toll: Seventy-five percent of the low-income students in the United States who start college never finish. And 40 percent of all students who start college in this country drop out — the highest failure rate in the world.

Colleges blame high schools, because their graduates aren't prepared for college-level work. High schools fault families for not supporting their own efforts. And families find the financial expectations overwhelming.

We'd do better to unite and concentrate on the cornerstones of success. It's a dialogue that needs to begin now, because the price of inaction is huge.

This is an issue with costly, real-world consequences. Dropping out hurts more than students and their families. It exacts a real cost on our economy. Every year students who don't persist in their studies cost the federal government $130 billion in lost tax revenue.

The dropout crisis is particularly troubling because it inordinately affects impoverished families, and is yet another sign of the vanishing American Dream. Although family income has always shaped educational attainment, today a great student from poverty is less likely to graduate from college than a mediocre student from a wealthy household.

Only 26 percent of eighth-graders with below-average incomes but above-average test scores go on to earn a bachelor's degree. But an almost identical percentage of eighth-graders from wealthier homes with worse scores do the same.

The gap between our low-income children and their higher-income peers in every educational measure — college graduation, college going, standardized test scores — has widened every year since 1980. Income is a better predictor of educational attainment than race, and it's becoming less and less likely that a low-income student, regardless of intelligence, will move up the socioeconomic ladder.

These trends are threatening our future. Because America's colleges and universities receive $175 billion each year in grants, loans and tax breaks, two unlikely allies, President Barack Obama and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., recently addressed college-sector problems. They offered veiled threats that higher education needs to get its act together. Now is the time for these institutions to buckle down and build on proven strategies for helping low-income students succeed.

And there are models for success. At Paul Smith's College, a 1,050-student institution in the Adirondacks, recently implemented software helps advisers know when students encounter trouble in their classes.

But this comprehensive student success program needs more than technology to work. The cornerstone of the program is individual, sustained relationships where faculty work with students to build on their strengths and design focused plans for success.

Since this program was first implemented, the number of students with a first-semester GPA at or above 2.0 has increased 15 percent. And there has already been a 34 percent increase in first-time, full-time students earning associate degrees.

The lesson is obvious. Students respond to immediate and personal attention when they can see others care about their success. But Paul Smith's is just one institution. To have any impact on the educational goals of low-income students, a broader strategy is needed.

We need to ensure that students are prepared for the rigors of higher education. We also need to help students build resilience and survival skills, something College For Every Student has been doing for two decades. By recognizing the imperative to move the dial beyond access to persistence, College For Every Student is about to launch a national initiative to ensure that our students — 20,000 low-income children, in grades 3-12, in 24 states — have the competence to complete college.

College For Every Student will host a symposium, "Building the College Persistence Bridge," at the CFES Center in Essex, Essex County, on June 6. Mandy Savitz-Romer, the Harvard professor who has written a definitive work on college success, will deliver the keynote address. We welcome those with an interest in this issue to attend.

Rick Dalton is president and CEO of College For Every Student. John W. Mills is president of Paul Smith's College.

In case you haven't heard, President Barack Obama leaves for Israel next week. It is possible, though, that you haven't heard because it is hard for me to recall a less-anticipated trip to Israel by a U.S. president. But there is a message: Little is expected from this trip — not only because little is possible, but because, from a narrow U.S. point of view, little is necessary. Quietly, with nobody announcing it, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shifted from a necessity to a hobby for U.S. diplomats. Like any hobby some days you work on it, some days you don't. Obama worked on this hobby early in his first term. He got stuck as both parties rebuffed him, and therefore he adopted, quite rationally in my view, an attitude of benign neglect. It was barely noticed.

***

The shift in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from necessity to hobby for the U.S. is driven by a number of structural changes, beginning with the end of the Cold War. There was a time when it was truly feared that an Arab-Israeli war could trigger a wider superpower conflict. During the October 1973 war, President Richard Nixon raised America's military readiness to Defcon 3 to signal the Soviets to stay away. That is not likely to happen today, given the muted superpower conflict over the Middle East. Moreover, the discovery of massive amounts of oil and gas in the U.S., Canada and Mexico is making North America the new Saudi Arabia. So who needs the old one?

Of course, oil and gas are global commodities, and any disruption of flows from the Middle East would drive up prices. But though America still imports some oil from the Middle East, we will never again be threatened with gas lines by another Arab oil embargo sparked by anger over Palestine. For China and India, that is another matter. For them, the Middle East has gone from a hobby to a necessity. They are both hugely dependent on Middle East oil and gas. If anyone should be advancing Arab-Israeli (and Sunni-Shiite) peace diplomacy today, it is foreign ministers of India and China.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine last week, Robin M. Mills, head of consulting at Manaar Energy, noted that "according to preliminary figures reported this week, China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest net oil importer." Mills described this as a "shift as momentous as the U.S. eclipse of Britain's Royal Navy ... The United States is set to become the world's biggest oil producer by 2017."

***

At the same time, while the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict emotionally resonates across the Arab-Muslim world, and solving it is necessary for regional stability, it is clearly not sufficient. The most destabilizing conflict in the region is the civil war between Shiites and Sunnis that is rocking Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Yemen. While it would be a good thing to erect a Palestinian state at peace with Israel, the issue today is: Will there be anymore a Syrian state, a Libyan state and an Egyptian state?

Finally, while America's need to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace has never been lower, the obstacles have never been higher: Israel has now implanted 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza have seriously eroded the appetite of the Israeli silent majority to withdraw from the West Bank, since one puny rocket alone from there could close Israel's international airport in Lod.

For all these reasons, Obama could be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Israel as a tourist. Good news for Israel, right? Wrong. While there may be fewer reasons for the U.S. to take risks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is still a powerful reason for Israel to do so. The status quo today may be tolerable for Israel, but it is not healthy. And more status quo means continued Israeli settlements in, and tacit annexation of, the West Bank. That's why I think the most important thing Obama could do on his trip is to publicly and privately ask every Israeli official he meets these questions:

"Please tell me how your relentless settlement drive in the West Bank does not end up with Israel embedded there — forever ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians with a colonial-like administration that can only undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy and delegitimize Israel in the world community? ... Everyone is focused on me and what will I do. But, as a friend, I just want to know one thing: What is your long-term strategy? Do you even have one?"

Thomas Friedman writes for the New York Times.

It has been said that "there is nothing worse than unemployable, frustrated youth."

This is an inescapable truth that applies to the 70 percent of all gun violence deaths in the United States that are perpetrated by indigent young minority males on young minority males. In urban centers across America, handgun violence is linked to race and to the socioeconomic status of our youth.

To highlight the devastation of this violence, the Children's Defense Fund documented, between 1979 and 2009, 116,385 children died due to gun violence, 47 percent were African-American. In 2008 and 2009, one child was injured by a gun every 31 minutes, equal to filling 1,375 classrooms of 25 students each.

Now is the time for our gun control measures to be focused on the overwhelming handgun violence in our cities. The NY SAFE law recently enacted is a strong step in bringing to an end the killing fields many of our neighborhoods have become. We must seize this opportunity and address the causes of minority youth violence.

Our society has the bureaucratic infrastructure in place to dramatically reduce gun violence. There is a tremendous need for successful youth programs and services in minority neighborhoods, where youth unemployment rates are as high as 50 percent and where violence at home is as common as on the streets. We must now expand and improve on programs focused on building minds and communities.

MARCOS A. CRESPO

Member of Assembly

85th Assembly District

The Bronx

On Feb. 28, while Albany Law School students were listening to a guest lecture from Rashida Manjoo, the United Nations special rapporteur on Violence Against Women, members of the U.S. House of Representatives (including all but one from New York) reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act.

Just days earlier, Ms. Manjoo urged Congress to do just that. The law contains expanded protections for Native American and Alaskan Native women, LGBT victims and immigrant victims and their children.

Although somewhat coincidental, the presence of Ms. Manjoo in the Capital Region on the day of VAWA's reauthorization is most fitting. After several failed attempts in the last few sessions of Congress, the passage of an inclusive VAWA could only be achieved through a nationwide coordinated campaign of advocates, many of whom are found right here. Just this year, students of Albany Law School worked with community partners led by the Albany County Coalition Against Domestic Abuse to successfully urge the Albany Common Council and the Albany County Legislature to pass statements declaring freedom from domestic violence to be a fundamental human right.

From international efforts at the United Nations, to national efforts through the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, to grass-roots efforts here in Albany — it takes a coordinated effort to overcome partisan posturing in order to strengthen the ability of our federal government to fulfill its duty to prevent and punish domestic violence.

SARAH ROGERSON

Professor

Albany Law School

Director, Family Violence Litigation Clinic & Immigration Project

THE ISSUE:

The church makes history with its first South American pontiff.

THE STAKES:

Can the new pope reassert a sense of moral authority and social relevance?

The selection of a new pope, for centuries steeped in ritual, intrigue and majesty, became all the more dramatic on Wednesday as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina emerged to the adulation of thousands in St. Peter's Square.

It's neither irreverent nor disrespectful of the history that's been made to note that Pope Francis assumes the infallible authority within the Catholic Church at a time of grave multiple crises. Those daunting difficulties only intensified under the troubled and abbreviated reign of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis' rigidly conservative predecessor.

Most threatening of all is the failure of the Catholic hierarchy to adequately address the sexual abuse scandal that it allowed to fester for decades, both in the United States and abroad. This lapse leaves the church's moral authority compromised to an almost unimaginable degree.

Internally, the church is similarly, if less seriously, troubled — both by an alarming decline in the appeal of religious vocations and the ongoing challenges of its own self-governance.

That's truly tragic. Both the religious world and the secular world need the church to re-emerge as an unquestioned force for social justice and spiritual leadership. Little good comes if an institution that has enriched the lives of billions remains a less potent force, either ecclesiastically or politically.

For observant Catholics and those who remain Catholic only by heritage or culture, these are critical times. For those who adhere to different faiths or have no religion at all, scrutiny is in order as well.

Pope Francis immediately raises hopes that the church could at once appeal to, if not entirely unite, those disparate constituencies. The church has looked for leadership where it never has before, to the world south of the equator so full of Catholics. If the church is ever to enjoy the redemption of a renewed relevance, it is best poised to do so under the guidance of a pope more drawn to social outreach than doctrinal warfare, which might fairly be expected of a prelate from Latin America.

As a priest, he earned a reputation for humility and demonstrated a commitment to economic justice. He established himself as a political force, as well, by trying to lead the church back toward broader acceptance after it had failed to challenge the murderous dictatorship that terrorized Argentina from 1976 to 1983.

For the first time, a pope has come from the ranks of the Jesuits, arguably Catholicism's most intellectually accomplished order. But while the man who would become Pope Francis has toiled far from the Vatican, he has not shied from controversy. Just a year ago, for example, he denounced the hypocrisy that he saw in Argentina's priests.

"In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage," he said. "These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptized!"

Might this hint at a new inclusiveness in the church? The new pope's own mission of salvation will be enhanced by similar words and by actions that go beyond. In the church and well beyond it, a time of turmoil yielded Wednesday to a day of hope. Yes, pray for an altogether more auspicious future.

J. Michael Malec, in his letter ("Founders never implied treason," Feb. 28), must be oblivious to statements like that from Thomas Jefferson: "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

There are literally hundreds more like this from virtually every Founder of (what was) our Republic. Also, the concept that the Constitution does not confer rights but limits government appears to be alien to Mr. Malec and those who agree with him.

The right to keep and bear arms is a "natural right," not one confirmed upon us by any government or governmental agency. All the Second Amendment does is confirm that, in a Constitution that was created to provide for a government of limited powers, delegated to them by the people, the government shall not interfere (or infringe) on this "natural right."

Regarding the use of the word treason, was it "treason" for the people of Russia to rebel against Josef Stalin, for the people of Cambodia to rebel against Pol Pot or for the people of any tyrannical state to rebel against their oppressors?

JIM KRESS

Northville, Mich.

Based on more than 20 years' experience in caring for a son with autism, as well as volunteering time, money and resources to the not-for-profit agencies that have served him well, I can honestly foresee Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed 6 percent cut being the straw that broke the camel's back ("Jobs at risk in services for disabled," Feb. 27).

These agencies have operated on shoestring budgets for years, forced to endure cut after cut. I can well imagine the increased cost and risk this proposed cut will create for our not-for-profit agencies, our communities and the state.

We have experienced the alternatives, and they are not desirable outcomes: Behavioral challenges that result in more restrictive and costly environments; more emergency room visits; more injured consumers and staff; less community integration, and the heartbreak of developmental regression and loss of independence. This outcome is tragic and costly.

Prevention is key to lower costs, and we are about to dismantle a system of care by decimating its ability to provide prevention and intervention where it is so critically needed.

While I understand the mechanics of New York's Medicaid dilemma, its work to eliminate fraud and abuse, and the federal forces behind the politicized push to target reimbursement rates, I cannot imagine why not-for-profit agencies have been targeted to absorb this level of budget cutting.

Honest and compliant not-for-profits have proven they can be more efficient and cost-effective in providing services to individuals with disabilities, so why would we put them at such risk?

It is time to ask ourselves how we can distribute the burden of our humanity and stay human in the process.

KAREN NAGY

Rexford

I implore Gov. Andrew Cuomo to repeal the proposed budget cut of Medicaid funding for nonprofit organizations that serve people with developmental disabilities.

My son, Gabriel Miller, needs this funding in order to survive.

I cared for Gabriel as a single parent with the help of nurses that came to our home for 18 years. Nursing care became sporadic due to shortages of personnel and lack of expertise for his complexity of care.

Even though I was a healthy 53-year-old man, I reluctantly had to acknowledge that I could no longer care for Gabriel in the way he needed in order to keep living.

Gabriel now lives at Lexington Center's Mountain View residence, a New York State Association for Retarded Children chapter in Gloversville. This 24/7 skilled nursing facility is one of the few residential homes equipped to care for people with significant and severe disabilities.

Gabriel was on hospice care for the first two years of his life, yet he survived.

Why? Because of the level of continued consistent care he received from his family, nurses and from resources — including medications — provided by the Medicaid waiver program. He now receives a continuation of this level of care at Mountain View. The love and dedication of personnel and financial support are what has kept this young man alive every day since. The care he receives at his Medicaid-supported home keeps Gabriel alive.

You may wonder:

Why we keep using these resources and provide the constant care we do for this young man?

Why spend the money?

Why not just let him die?

Because, like a baby, or even a pet that you may have loved, this young man, even though he cannot speak, walk, or use his hands, exudes happiness and pure unconditional love to everyone. He is beloved by anyone who has ever been around him or taken care of him.

Perhaps that is why he is still alive today.

His life does make a difference and contributes to all those around him.

Please, governor, do not cut any monies for people with disabilities. They are the vulnerable, silent ones — and they need your love and support.

Dave Miller lives in Delmar.

More than 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchasers, according to a brand-new ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Wayne LaPierre and the NRA do not. (Even though they did, right after Columbine, when they cynically judged it was safe to give lip service to universal background checks because there was no way Congress would pass them.)

Now, after the horror of Sandy Hook, LaPierre and the NRA leadership have been resolute in opposing the expanded background checks that more than 9 in 10 Americans want.

But surely 91 percent of the public trumps the high-capacity cash magazine the NRA keeps emptying at their friends in Congress, right?

Wrong.

On Tuesday the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a measure calling for universal background checks, which means even private firearms transactions would have to be run through the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

It passed out of committee on a straight partisan vote.

That's right — not one Republican mustered the guts to vote for something 91 percent of the country supports. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who has made closing the gun show loophole a post-Sandy Hook personal priority, had some choice words for his Republican colleagues on Judiciary.

When GOP committee members argued Tuesday that criminals would get guns regardless of expanded background checks, Schumer snapped, "You don't use that on any other law — on terrorism, on robbery, on murder, on money laundering — we never see the argument that we shouldn't have laws because bad people will get around them anyway. Only on this issue."

It would be more understandable if this had been a House vote, where many lawmakers are elected from severely gerrymandered districts that are, in fact, outliers in most national policy debates.

But senators, after all, represent everyone in their states. How do you get to 91 percent without support in red states? The answer is, you don't.

That's not just sad — it's shameful.

Remember the names: Chuck Grassley, Iowa. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Texas, who are locked in some sort of a contest to see which one can out-extreme the other. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina. Jeff Sessions, Alabama. Orrin Hatch and Michael Lee, Utah. Jeff Flake, Arizona.

Profiles in courage.

David McCumber is the Hearst Newspapers' Washington bureau chief.

The item was too delicious to resist: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, he of the don't worry, be happy approach to the federal deficit, had been forced to declare bankruptcy.

Except it wasn't true.

The tidbit was satire, from a website called The Daily Currant. The Currant's "tell" was obvious to anyone who took introductory economics: Krugman, it said, had attempted, like a good Keynesian, to "spend his way out of debt," after "racking up $84,000 in a single month ... in pursuit of rare Portuguese wines and 19th-century English cloth" — a wink-wink reference to the classic examples of comparative advantage in international trade.

If a lie gets around the world before the truth gets its pants on, imagine what bloggers can do. Reporters used to joke about tips that were too good to check. Now it's items too good not to repost.

And so Breitbart.com, the conservative website, fell for the Krugman item, crowing about how this Keynesian "thing doesn't really work on the micro level."

***

This is in part a cautionary tale about modern journalism — the Currant piece made its way to Breitbart via an Austrian magazine translation that was then picked up by a financial blog and reposted on The Boston Globe's website.

The more important caution is what this susceptibility to satire illustrates about our failure to understand those whose points of view differ from our own.

In a world of siloed, self-selected information flow and knee-jerk willingness to attribute irredeemable stupidity and bad motives to opponents, the inclination to assume the worst is no surprise. Information — or pseudo-information — is trusted when it clicks neatly into our jigsaw puzzle of preconceptions.

We laugh at Iran when its news agency reprints an Onion parody, "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama."

We snicker when China's official newspaper picks up The Onion's report that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Eun has been selected its "sexiest man alive."

But you don't have to be an insular foreign government to suffer from premature posting syndrome. The Washington Post experienced its own embarrassing episode with the Currant recently when a freelance blog contributor picked up a satirical report about Sarah Palin joining Al Jazeera America, a supposed illustration of Palin's effort "to find ways to stay relevant while her 15 minutes fades into the political history books."

Perhaps suspicion of the other is an inherent part of human nature. Perhaps it's an essential element of success in politics.

The phenomenon underscores President Obama's new plan. No one should expect instant results — it's a long way from dinner at the Jefferson to the dessert of a bargain — but outreach is useful.

It's much harder to leap to unfounded assumptions about the other side, and much easier to credit good intentions, if you have spent some time hearing their point of view.

***

I spend a lot of time interviewing administration officials and congressional Republicans, and sometimes I think: What these people really need is a good marriage counselor, someone who can get them to stop long enough to understand the situation as the opposition sees it.

One fact, stunning to White House officials, is the degree to which many Republicans remain unaware of the substance of the administration's offers on entitlement reform. This is symptomatic of a messaging failure on the part of the White House, but also of the poisonous environment in which both sides live.

As do their constituents. Given Washington's gridlocked condition, it's hard to argue with Congress' low approval ratings. But it's also hard to square public contempt for Congress with the reality that most individual lawmakers of both parties are extraordinarily hardworking and serious about public policy.

A survey from the Congressional Management Foundation and the Society for Human Resource Management reports that members of Congress put in an average 70-hour workweek when Congress is in session, and 59 hours during recess.

When it comes to Congress, the parts are greater than the sum of the whole. When it comes to politics, the satire rings truest when distrust is at its peak. If we — public officials and voters alike — could remember the first point and get past the second, we would have a better chance of fixing this mess.

Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.

All things considered, I'd rather be in Rome. Isn't everyone?

Tout le journalism monde has descended on Rome since Pope Benedict XVI's surprise retirement last month. The ensuing Vatican intrigue has been appropriately sumptuous: Was it the gay cabal? Blackmail? Did the butler do it?

And now what?

The 115 cardinals electing the new pope finally made their choice Wednesday after weeks of finger-drumming by the international press. The cardinals picked Argentina's Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who chose the name Francis I.

The cardinals, according to one source in Rome, declined to be rushed by journalists. Meanwhile, reporters stateside daily embarrassed themselves by projecting their own values on to the centuries-old institution — insisting that the church has to modernize on issues ranging from women priests to same-sex marriage to abortion.

One colleague recently intoned a popular, if overwrought, sentiment: If the church doesn't change its position on women in the clergy, the church is doomed.

This is all laughable to anyone vaguely familiar with Catholic teaching. The Virgin Mary is at the center of the church and is otherwise known as the mother of God — hardly a secondary role. Women who want to become priests may need a different church as the all-male priesthood is considered doctrinal. One doesn't easily amend that sort of thing.

For now, such issues are not of prime concern to the church or the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. Rather, Vatican concerns tilt more toward alleviating poverty in the developing world and ending the persecution of Christians.

And, getting its own house in order.

No one needs a primer on the scandals that have plagued the church the past few decades — or the more-recent discoveries of financial mismanagement and the so-called "gay cabal." Francis immediately will have to yoke himself to these burdens. Amid such troubles, not to mention managing a world religion, an assortment of eccentric personalities and a vast charitable and diplomatic empire, he will need a sense of humor.

The modernization of the church about which so many recently have opined is unlikely to make headlines soon. What is imperative is that Francis be a strong communicator, or an "Evangelical Catholic," as author and commentator George Weigel termed it. This means, among other things, adapting to the global news cycle.

This is no century for introverts.

The recently retired pope much preferred study and writing to meeting and greeting, his tweets notwithstanding. Efforts to humanize him via stories that he loved cats were somewhat outdated. When a prominent television personality visited the pope, he gave Benedict a gift — a Baccarat cat.

Benedict had no cats at the Vatican.

The church faces enormous challenges, obviously, but none so daunting as communicating the Good News, which translates to helping millions around the world. Whatever one's opinion of Catholicism (I am not Catholic), the church remains a bulwark against Western secularization and the culture of choice. Is it really desirable that the leader of the Christian church embrace the destruction of human life in the womb?

One may make painful, personal choices as the law permits, but even non-Catholics can find solace in the barricade that men and women of conscience erect between human beings and the abyss of relativity. If the church means nothing to some, it is a welcome noisemaker in the public square, fearless in making the argument that life does matter.

Without the Catholic Church millions of the world's least fortunate would suffer. Catholic Relief Services works in nearly 100 countries and reaches 100 million of the world's poorest with emergency aid and health care, including 280 HIV and AIDS projects. Catholic Charities USA provided food services to 6.5 million people last year.

Scandal surely has diminished the Vatican's moral authority, but 2,000 years of history suggest it will adapt and survive. Any evaluation of its present situation must also include recognition of the immense good that individual Catholics and the church do.

Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparkerwashpost.com.

David Janower has spent much of his life bringing beauty, inspiration, passion, hope, vision, integrity, knowledge and community spirit to thousands of us living here in the Capital Region and beyond.

Through his remarkable life of service as the founder, artistic director and conductor of Albany Pro Musica and also as the director of choral studies at the University at Albany, David has enriched our lives abundantly.

Last week, during surgery for a different condition, David suffered a massive stroke. The shock waves are still surging through David's community of family, friends, singers, students. During the next weeks and months, as the waves become ripples, what will be so alive in the stillness of the healing waters will be the powers of hope and faith to help David know that he is treasured and not alone.

I'm one among many who are connected to David by knowing his essence but not the details of his life.

We are the kind of friends and colleagues who bump into each other at a community event, say hello and goodbye with a big full-armed hug, do a quick catch-up in the code language that is spoken when time is short, and promise to set a time and place for the lunch date we've been intending to make happen for decades. We don't know what kind of food the other likes but I'm guessing our choices would be similar in the way that we both love people and music and doing what we can to make the world right.

In the spectrum of how I am connected to David, I'm part of the group that is sandwiched somewhere between the intimate circle of David's closest friends and family, and the amorphous web of people who only know David through what they've heard since news of his stroke became known.

However any of us know David, let us in our imaginations sit down together at the Help-David-Know-We're-Pulling-for-Him table and focus our loving thoughts his way. Pulling for David means that we wish him profound peace and freedom from pain as he travels his journey from recovery from surgery and massive stroke, to whatever his future will be.

For now, David is unable to pick up the baton to enliven the power of music that opens our hearts and stirs our souls. The show must go on, so let's collectively pick up David's baton and direct the magnificent echoes of his music to him where he lies in a bed in a room at a local hospital.

This weekend, Albany Pro Musica is performing two concerts called "If Music Be the Food of Love." David will not be there to conduct, but Albany Pro Musica will carry on by gracing us with the sustenance of theirs and David's music.

Let us join them at their table of song, either in person or in spirit, as together we sing for David and send the powerful intentions of our healing harmony his way. "If Music Be the Food of Love" concerts include a newly commissioned piece built upon verses from scriptural passages in "The Song of Songs."

Ruth Pelham is founder and executive director of Music Mobile Inc.

The concerts will be heard Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul's Church, 21 Hackett Blvd., Albany, and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Key Hall at Proctors in Schenectady. For more information, contact: info@AlbanyProMusica.org.

Hugo Chavez was a buffoon and a demagogue. But was that all?

Upon his death last week, the Venezuelan president was remembered in the United States for many things: his rambling speeches, his abusive anti-American rhetoric (George W. Bush is a "devil" and a "donkey"), his human rights violations (independent judges get locked up), his nationalization of industry and oil, his inflationary economic policies, his inability to deal with out-of-control crime, and his mad embrace of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Venezuela had replaced the Soviet Union as the main supporter of communist Cuba, and Chavez seemed to regard himself as another Castro brother. With his passing, Washington could hope for a thaw in its relations with a nation that, through all the turmoil, remains its fourth-largest source of imported oil.

But in death, as in life, Hugo Chavez challenges a basic assumption that the United States has long made about Latin America. For more than a century, that vast region has represented a venue for the free market — a place from which to draw resources and to which to sell products. Across eras of dictators, revolutions, juntas, death squads, trade treaties, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and, lately, democratic socialism, Washington has been unflagging in an aggressive protection of its own economic interests.

For the United States, it was all too easy to dismiss Hugo Chavez as a throwback; his anti-U.S. denunciations echoed other self-styled populists such as Fidel Castro or Daniel Ortega, the longtime Sandinista leader and current president of Nicaragua. And Washington could smugly note how Latin revolutionaries have been consistently corrupted by power, betraying those who gave it to them.

Yet underneath the hateful rhetoric and broken politics of the region lies a basic condition to which the United States has always been blind, but which people of the South can never forget. That condition is mass poverty.

"I bring food to the hungry," the Brazilian cleric Dom Helder Camara famously said, "and they call me a saint. I ask why there are so many hungry, and they call me a communist."

Known as the "archbishop of the poor," Camara was a prophet of liberation theology, the left-leaning Catholic movement from which Hugo Chavez took inspiration. The Venezuelan leader began by asking Camara's question. That is why millions of poor people recognize Chavez as theirs, and why there was so much open grief in the streets of Caracas last week.

Over time, Chavez moved from being an idealistic firebrand advocating for the poor, to being a force for their empowerment, to becoming perceived as the latest reduction to the absurd of socialist self-importance. Across roughly the same period, liberation theology itself went from being the inspiration of millions to a broadly discredited disappointment. Denounced as Marxist, a source of class conflict, unfair to the affluent, too obsessed with material matters, and condescending to the pieties and values of poor people themselves, liberation theology was rejected by establishment Catholicism and marginalized. Chavez and his Christian ideology were alike in falling short and being denigrated.

The failure of ideals can seem inevitable when huge percentages of an entire continent's population live in hopelessness and deprivation, which no politics or social program can ever seem to improve. Especially when both free-market economics and traditional, otherworldly theology are proudly indifferent to such grinding conditions, the willful North American blindness to the plight of the poor can seem justified.

But that is wrong. "The poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny," said Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of liberation theology. "His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of a system in which we live and for which we are responsible. ... Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order."

Neither Chavez's excesses nor, now, his death can disprove what he was right about: the need to grapple with the horrors of mass poverty.

James Carroll writes for the Boston Globe.

I've never been known for my athletic prowess. This admission comes as no surprise to my high school gym teacher who, after four years of unsuccessfully attempting to teach me the most rudimentary of sport skills, took an early retirement to pursue a less stressful career. Last I heard, she was giving helicopter bungee jumping lessons somewhere over the Rockies.

My children, having drawn the short end of the genetic straw, have followed in my clunky, uncoordinated footsteps. I have to admit I don't really mind. These days, most kids are involved in school teams and travel leagues for multiple sports, often at the same time. Some families thrive on athletic competition. In our house, it's being able to recite from memory all 473 cable channels in order that counts.

***

Don't think our lifestyle comes without pressure. You see, we live in the suburbs, where every minivan is required by law to have a soccer ball magnet attached to its bumper and shin guards are a perfectly acceptable baby gift. Our neighbors' idea of a lazy Sunday afternoon is figuring out how to be at only three athletic fields at the same time instead of the usual four.

As a result, my husband and I have a lot more free time on our hands compared to other parents. While our friends get up at the crack of dawn on weekends to stand on the sidelines in the rain or snow, we're home eating pancakes in our pajamas. And as they debate the merits of traveling to the Comfort Inn in Allentown versus the Holiday Inn in Hoboken for a tournament, because one serves peanuts at the bar while the other has pretzels, we can put our feet up on a Saturday night and watch TV in the comfort of our own home while eating pretzels and peanuts at the same time. Score!

Then it came time for our oldest to apply to college. Her friends began receiving calls from college coaches while our phone sat oddly silent. Apparently, no one was looking to recruit a potential Facebook major with a minor in Pinterest. And some of these kids were getting athletic scholarships. But I told myself that's because they'd focused on sports while my children were more well-rounded. A strategy I began to question as I wrote all those well-rounded zeros on the tuition checks.

My husband and I refer to our oldest as our practice child because we made so many mistakes. (Don't worry; she's 20, and this is a newspaper, so there's no chance she'll ever read this.) There was still time, however, for my other children to jump on the athletic bandwagon.

***

And that's when I came up with a brilliant idea. And by that I mean a hastily thought out plan with no consideration whatsoever of the potential long-term consequences. Our family would run a 5K together.

My announcement was met with the same amount of enthusiasm my family normally reserves for a prune juice commercial in the middle of a SpongeBob episode. This may be due partly to the fact they had no idea how far a K was, let alone five of them. You may be familiar with exotic cultures from foreign lands and already know that 5 kilometers is 3.1 miles. But I've done my best, as a true-blooded American parent, to insist that my family measure things in feet and inches. Once they learn metric, it's a slippery slope to escargot and Smart cars.

They resisted until I bribed them with new sneakers and matching T-shirts. There was a lot of complaining when they discovered there wasn't an app to make the whole thing easier. Then even more complaining when I pointed out this would give us plenty of quality time together.

And while we made it to the finish line in a respectable time, I'm not holding my breath waiting for college track coaches to call. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but it lasted a lot longer than my kids would have liked.

Naturally, we couldn't wait to get home, put our feet up and watch some TV. Somebody pass me the pretzels and peanuts.

Betsy Bitner is author of the blog lostintheadirondacks.com and a mystery writer. She divides her time between Clifton Park and the Adirondacks. Her email address is bbitner1@nycap.rr.com.

J. Michael Malec in his letter ("Founders never implied treason," Feb. 28) should consider what the Founders said of the Second Amendment. Mr. Malec erroneously claims the term well-regulated means government regulation.

However, "well-regulated" in context of the "militia" doesn't imply government regulation. It means the necessary militia be well-regulated, but not by the national government. The overriding purpose of the Second Amendment is guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a check on the standing army, which the Constitution gave the Congress the power to "raise and support."

Noah Webster, in urging ratification of the Constitution, said, "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe." George Mason, in remarks to Virginia delegates recalled experience with the British monarch's decrees "to disarm the people. was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

Thus, the well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state might someday fight against an army of a tyrannical national government. It is ludicrous to suppose the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, which are proscriptions on federal powers, simultaneously acted as a grant of power to the same. Similarly, the term "well-regulated" would make no sense if it were a grant of "regulation" power to the government (national or state), when the purpose was to both declare individual rights and define where the federal government's powers ended.

ANDREW GELBMAN

Albany

"Coalition pushes for women's rights agenda," March 5, makes repeated use of the phrase "reproductive rights" with reference to abortion. The same phrase appears frequently, outside of quotes, in other recent coverage of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal regarding abortion expansion in the state.

As George Orwell once observed, "political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible ... [t]hus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness," e.g., bombing of civilians is "pacification" or torture is "enhanced interrogation."

"Such phraseology," Orwell pointed out, "is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Orwell would not have been surprised to see abortion providers, pro-choice advocates or the media use the phrase "reproductive rights."

CLAIRE HAZZARD

Delmar