CNN) — A Holocaust denier Pope Benedict XVI welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church last month has been removed from his position as head of a seminary in Argentina.

Bishop Richard Williamson, shown in a recent Swedish interview, says he’ll recant “if I find this proof.”

1 of 2

The views of Bishop Richard Williamson, who has led the seminary in La Reja since 2003, do not reflect those of The Society of St. Pius X, said Christian Bouchacourt, head of its Latin American chapter.

“It’s obvious that a Catholic bishop cannot talk with the ecclesiastical authority, but to things related to faith and morality,” Bouchacourt said in a written statement.

Williamson, shortly before the pope lifted his excommunication, denied the Nazis had systematically murdered 6 million Jews during World War II.

In his blog Saturday, Williamson, referring to himself, posted a note, saying, “His Excellency is neither dead, dying, nor retired.”

Earlier Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned Pope Benedict about the issue, though neither side seemed to have shifted its position over Williamson.

“It was a very constructive conversation,” the German government and the Vatican said in a joint statement about the call. Merkel and the pope expressed respect for each other’s opinion, the release said — diplomatic-speak for saying neither side budged.

Merkel demanded Tuesday that the pope firmly reject Holocaust denial.

“The pope and the Vatican must make absolutely clear that there can be no denial of the Holocaust,” Merkel said.

The Vatican has pointed to several statements by Pope Benedict in the past few years condemning the destruction of European Jewry, including his visits to concentration camps. He has also said he did not know of Williamson’s views on the Holocaust when he lifted the excommunication.

“I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against — is hugely against — 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler,” Williamson said recently in an interview with a Swedish television station, which also appeared on various Web sites after its broadcast. “I believe there were no gas chambers.”

Germany’s Catholic bishops Saturday called for the expulsion of Williamson, a member of an ultra-conservative group expelled from the Church by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

Read Complete article….

Holocaust denier removed as head of Argentine seminary – CNN.com.

Cutting the Unemployment Line

Even in this economic chaos, some jobs remain recession resistant

There are three options government can pursue when the economy goes south. First, the Fed can cut interest rates, buy up assets, and extend credit, all of which the central bank has already done. Second, Congress can cut taxes on businesses and consumers in the hope they will spend more. The first effort—last year’s tax rebates—didn’t have the intended effect since consumers used much of the windfall to pay down debt or save. The substantial tax cuts that will be part of the Obama stimulus package would likely have a similarly muted effect. Businesses and consumers, facing a tough credit environment and needing to repair their balance sheets, will likely use proceeds from the tax cuts to tide themselves over. The third option is for the government to directly purchase goods and services, to substitute the demand that consumers and businesses aren’t providing.

The Washington remnant of the Republican Party—40 senators and 178 representatives—is all for Options 1 and 2, cheap money and tax cuts. But they’re having great difficulty with Option 3. They have forgotten Richard Nixon’s famous line that “we’re all Keynesians now.” To them, spending government funds to goose the economy is unacceptable, not just because of the possibility of poor execution —i.e., pork. No, many are rejecting it as a matter of principle. Even though several Republican governors are pleading for assistance in the form of federal spending, Washington Republicans are saying no.

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele laid down the party line on CNN: “Let’s get this notion out of our heads that the government create jobs. Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job.” Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina succinctly summed up his opposition: “We can’t keep spending and borrowing to get us out of a recession.” Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri concedes that some government spending—such as spending on highways—can create jobs but thinks that spending on mass transit or alternative-transit infrastructure isn’t stimulative.  Read More…

Will the Stimulus Plan Create Jobs? | Newsweek Voices – Daniel Gross | Newsweek.com.

Obama Sends Vice President to Build Bridges

US Vice President Joe Biden is the star guest at the Munich Security Conference this weekend. His speech on Saturday is supposed to form the basis of the new trans-Atlantic partnership. Instead of concrete pledges, experts await a bid to mend ties between Europe and the US.

It’s been little over three weeks since Joe Biden became deputy to the most powerful man in the world and he still hasn’t grown into his new role. The former senator can be seen at the State Department discussing foreign policy or dining with President Barack Obama in the White House. Sometimes he presents himself as a champion of the middle classes, at other times he appears in shirtsleeves at on a railway platform pleading for investment in infrastructure. “It is hard now,” he admitted in a recent TV interview. “What I have to think now is, everything I say, I am the vice president. I am not the president. So everything I say reflects directly on the administration.”

REUTERS

US President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden.

This Saturday Biden will be speaking explicitly on behalf of the United States. His speech at the Munich Security Conference will be the vice president’s first major international appearance — and the Bavarian capital is rolling out the red carpet for him. The conference organizers promise that his speech will provide the impetus for a new start in trans-Atlantic relations.

What are the expectations for the speech? “The tone is the message,” Laurie Dundon, who previously worked with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and is now at the Bertelsmann Foundation in Washington, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “The right words would define the parameters for future cooperation, just as preparations are being made for Obama’s Europe trip at the beginning of April to the G-20 summit in London and the NATO summit in Kehl and Strasbourg.”

COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE…

Biden at the Munich Security Conference: Obama Sends Vice President to Build Bridges – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

A Harvard scholar takes a look at the Great Emancipator

Racial jokes? Shipping freed slaves to Africa? These aren’t the sorts of things most people generally associate with Abraham Lincoln, whose 200th birthday is on Feb. 12. In a new book, “Lincoln on Race & Slavery,” and a new series airing Feb. 11 on PBS, “Looking for Lincoln,” Harvard professor and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. takes a fresh look at the 16th president. (For more on Lincoln, see Dorothy Rabinowitz’s television review and the book review.)

PBS

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Wall Street Journal: There have been 14,000 books written about Lincoln, according to you, more than any other American. Isn’t that enough?

Mr. Gates: The only person who has received more attention in print is Jesus, which is astonishing. But, no one has done a book or film from my particular perspective.

Which is?

Here’s the complicated truth: Lincoln was always opposed to slavery as an institution, [but] he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people. He gave a speech [in 1858] in Charleston, Ill., in which he said he was opposed to interracial marriage, opposed to blacks serving on juries or serving in the military and said the difference between the white and black races was permanent and fixed by nature. This is a long way from being the Great Emancipator, man. He had a penchant for the n-word [before 1860] and he proposed a constitutional amendment funding the colonization of the freed slaves.

Yet you grew to like him even more after delving into his racial attitudes, correct?

The difference between Lincoln and everybody else is that he had a capacity to grow. In the last speech of his life, Lincoln said for the first time in the American presidency: “I want to give the right to vote to [a few] black men.” He thought the Declaration of Independence included black men. Thomas Jefferson didn’t do that.

We’re in the midst of a Lincoln revival. Steven Spielberg is in the process of doing a Lincoln movie with a screenplay by Tony Kushner and Barack Obama has been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” about Lincoln’s cabinet. Why is he so enduringly popular?

There’s a Lincoln for all seasons in America. There are dozens of Lincolns. There’s Lincoln the atheist, the Northern Lincoln, the Confederate Lincoln, Lincoln the war criminal, Lincoln the savior of the union, Lincoln the humorous, Lincoln the melancholy. One guy wrote a book about Lincoln as gay, another of Lincoln the heterosexual lover. Lincoln the white supremacist; Lincoln the Great Emancipator…

In the film you criss-cross America, visiting a high-school class in downtown Chicago, the Ford Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated, and the Harlem office of President Bill Clinton. In Lincoln’s New Salem, Ill., a recreated town inhabited by Lincoln devotees, a woman threatened to eject you for hinting that Lincoln had an affair with Ann Rutledge. Were you surprised?

New Salem is all reconstructed log cabins and [its people] are dedicated to protecting the myth of Abraham Lincoln — the idea that he did no wrong. I find it charming, but as a scholar, it’s ridiculous.

Barack Obama swore the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible and references Lincoln frequently in speeches.

Barack Obama is the logical extension of Lincoln’s decision to abolish slavery in the South and his embrace of black rights at the end of his life. Also, Lincoln was the Great Reconciliator “with malice toward none”: That’s Barack Obama.

In the film you show “Abraham Obama,” a work by street artist Ron English that melds Lincoln and Obama’s faces into a single image. Do you think the comparison is appropriate?

When we filmed they gave me a poster. I’m looking forward to having Abraham Obama sign it.

—Christina S.N. Lewis

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Takes a Look at Lincoln in His New Book and PBS Series – WSJ.com.