function and dysfunction

-- Taking a place next to Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi, an American 'traitor' has received favorable consideration:

Edward Snowden, the fugitive American former intelligence worker, has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov prize, Europe's top human rights award.

 -- Reminding me a bit of the 1968 My Lai Massacre (347-504 civilians slaughtered) during the Vietnam War ("It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it") ... the U.S. Congress, largely at the hands of a Republican minority, sent America into a partial government shutdown today:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress plunged the nation into a partial government shutdown Tuesday as a long-running dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law stalled a temporary funding bill, forcing about 800,000 federal workers off the job and suspending most non-essential federal programs and services.

-- And in Rome, Pope Francis and his advisers are considering ways to reconfigure and revitalize a teetering 'Vatican-centric' establishment:

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis opened a landmark meeting Tuesday on reforming the Catholic Church, saying he wants a missionary church with a modern spirit that gives hope to the poor, the young and the elderly like his namesake St. Francis did.

Was there ever a more self-defeating ingredient than the word "missionary?"