Social Issues

JERUSALEM - An Israeli protester set himself alight during a rally Saturday night marking the anniversary of a wave of demonstrations that swept the country to protest the high cost of living and other social issues, authorities said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the man in his 40s poured flammable liquid over himself at a protest in Tel Aviv and set himself on fire. He was later rushed to a hospital, where he was being treated for serious burns, Rosenfeld said. Israel's Channel 10 TV showed footage of the man on fire.

RENO, Nev. - The presidential candidates tried to put aside politically risky talk of gay rights Friday and return to Americans' top worry, the economy, in two states critical to the hopes of President Obama and his rival Mitt Romney. Obama discussed how to help homeowners seeking to avoid foreclosure in hard-hit Nevada, while Romney was focusing on jobs in North Carolina - more evidence that each views the sluggish economic recovery as the key issue in November's election. For both, it was a day to move past the week's back-and-forth on gay marriage, punctuated by Obama's announcement that he now supports it. Romney, who reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriage repeatedly, was distracted by a news report that led him to apologize for decades ago mistreating a high school classmate who was gay. "There are things that we can do right now to help create jobs, to help restore some of the financial security that so many families have lost," Obama told Nevada voters after he met with struggling homeowners.

COULD FORMER U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's chances to win his home state's presidential primary election be slipping away? Santorum holds a razor-thin 2-percentage-point lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania's April 24 Republican primary, according to a Daily News /Franklin & Marshall College Poll to be released Wednesday. Romney, who took 28 percent to Santorum's 30 percent, has room to grow since 24 percent of the 505 registered Republicans in the poll said that they are undecided.

Most presidential candidates would have brushed aside the young woman's challenge, perhaps mumbling something polite about agreeing to disagree. Not Rick Santorum, on that January afternoon in a hotel ballroom full of college students in Concord, N.H. He was going to convince her (and the entire room) that, no, the inherent right to happiness does not mean society should permit two gay men to marry. "So if you're not happy unless you're married to five other people, is that OK?"

I recently bought Pat Meehan a beer in an Amtrak coach car on a late-night train from Washington to Philadelphia. Meehan, the former U.S. attorney, is locked in one of the hottest House races in the nation against State Rep. Brian Lentz in Pennsylvania's Seventh District. I have known Meehan for years, but we hadn't planned to take the same train. We shared an observation about this election cycle: the lack of conversation about social issues. Meehan told me that out on the stump, it is all about the economy.

From 1828 to 1888, Hiram Corson practiced medicine from an office in rural Montgomery County, making house calls as a matter of routine and delivering about 3,000 babies. But his impact was also felt nationally in the medical community. And along with his work as a doctor, he was a leading liberal advocate on the pressing social issues of his day. "Dr. Corson was a progressive in both medicine and on controversial social issues," said Louis A. Meier, a Norristown surgeon and student of local medical history.

Now, having taken down my Kerry-Edwards lawn sign, I have concluded that the Democrats lost because they continue to move further and further to the left on social issues, exalting "anything goes" as equally beneficial for society and better public policy. Consider the overwhelming 11-for-11 passage of state constitutional amendments codifying marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution and prohibiting any facsimile of such in most cases. America can see what Democrats are trying to do with their support for "civil unions" and activist judges.

I'M A SUCKER for long-shot candidates running campaigns that seem to stem more from political fiction than any reality. As such, I cannot ignore one Max Myers, who is now officially running for governor. How much of a long shot is he? Well, the only reason he has a prayer is that he's an ordained minister. How unusual is his campaign? He's a Pentecostal minister from central Pennsylvania running as a Democrat. He's traveling the state on an announcement tour that started Monday in Philly at the William Way LGBT Community Center and ends Wednesday at an Allentown brewery.

The Republican disaster of 1992 doubtless will be closely examined. And as with most calamities, amid the wreckage are the seeds of the party's rebirth. As we sift through the ashes, we find both what went wrong and what we can do to sow a Republican renaissance. WHAT WENT WRONG The economy. As long as the nation was chugging along, people were unconcerned with whether President Bush was proposing economic improvements. But when indicators showed a recession, it became politically untenable when economic stimulants were not immediately prescribed.

J. David Kuo, 44, an evangelical Christian conservative and former top official of President George W. Bush's faith-based initiative who drew wide attention when he publicly accused the administration of failing to live up to the values it espoused, died Friday in Charlotte, N.C. He was diagnosed a decade ago with brain cancer, his wife, Kimberly, said. After leaving his post as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2003, Mr. Kuo became an open critic of that operation.

I'M A SUCKER for long-shot candidates running campaigns that seem to stem more from political fiction than any reality. As such, I cannot ignore one Max Myers, who is now officially running for governor. How much of a long shot is he? Well, the only reason he has a prayer is that he's an ordained minister. How unusual is his campaign? He's a Pentecostal minister from central Pennsylvania running as a Democrat. He's traveling the state on an announcement tour that started Monday in Philly at the William Way LGBT Community Center and ends Wednesday at an Allentown brewery.

HARRISBURG - New Pennsylvania laws that take effect in the coming days toughen penalties for underage drinking, mandate training for school workers on how to recognize and report child abuse, and require more humane methods of putting down animals. Others increase worker and employee contributions to the state's Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund; require contractors on public-works projects to make sure through the federal E-Verify system that their employees are legal residents; and simplify voting rules for servicemen and women and others living overseas.

RICHARD Mourdock, a conservative Republican who is favored to win a U.S. Senate seat in Indiana, pulled a Todd Akin on Monday night, pontificating that pregnancies from rape or incest are "something God intended" - and therefore the victims should not be able to obtain abortions. But this time, the reaction of the Republican Party establishment was quite different from the reaction to Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's assertion in August that, if a rape is "legitimate" (that is, the woman didn't secretly want it)

Robert W. Patterson is editor of the public-policy journal the Family in America When Sen. John Kerry sought to unseat President George W. Bush eight years ago, journalist Thomas Frank thought he could help the challenger from Massachusetts. In a 2004 bestseller, What's the Matter With Kansas? , Frank claimed Republicans were playing dirty tricks by leveraging cultural "wedge" issues to dupe voters in his native state from voting their economic interests - in other words, for Democrats.

By Arthur Caplan When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Boston in the late 1960s, I had little firsthand contact with minorities. But I knew a lot about one African American man who kept showing up on our new color television and in the sports pages that I devoured every day: Muhammad Ali. Due to chronic illness, Ali can't speak as eloquently as he once did. But that doesn't mean he hasn't been heard. During my youth, there was no more prominent athlete than Ali. His every deed and word - and there were plenty of them - was news.

TAMPA - Rick Santorum stared at his smartphone, monitoring his wife, Karen, who was 10 yards away at the anchor desk in the CNN Grill, appearing as part of an on-air panel during Tuesday's session of the Republican National Convention. He was getting ready, as he might say, to take it to 'em. Two of his daughters and a couple of aides hunched over him at his table, blocking the noise of all the people who wanted to get at him. Afterward, Santorum was mobbed by well-wishers and fans, wanting to know about his coming speech in the convention hall; his disabled daughter, Bella; and his take on the man who Tuesday claimed the prize Santorum had wanted.

By Jennifer Rubin TAMPA, Fla. - There are a lot of pundits here in Tampa with no real politics to report on. So I thought now would be a good time to do some explaining about the odd natives (well, natives for only a few days) whom the punditocracy has ventured out to poke and prod and report back on like so many 21st-century Margaret Meads. Much of what the observers "know" is wrong, so simply dispelling 10 of their misconceptions about Republicans should be useful: 1. The GOP has been taken over by tea party.

JERUSALEM - An Israeli protester set himself alight during a rally Saturday night marking the anniversary of a wave of demonstrations that swept the country to protest the high cost of living and other social issues, authorities said. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the man in his 40s poured flammable liquid over himself at a protest in Tel Aviv and set himself on fire. He was later rushed to a hospital, where he was being treated for serious burns, Rosenfeld said. Israel's Channel 10 TV showed footage of the man on fire.