The Christian Science Monitor writes about Henry Paulson, new Treasury Secretary as follows:

The wide gap between the richest and poorest Americans has not often been the topic of choice for the Bush administration's two previous Treasury secretaries.

So it was notable this week that Henry Paulson, the president's latest Treasury head, chose to put that issue on his short list - as one of the nation's four prominent, long-term economic challenges. Mr. Paulson's head-on approach during one of his first public appearances as secretary differs from his predecessors' strategies, some analysts say.

The optimist in me thinks that someone in the administration has finally figured out that continued collusion with rich and powerful elites is morally offensive and a failed strategy. Maybe the President's often-avowed Christian values will finally start to become evident in his political life. The pessimist, however, suspects that as Paulson's agenda becomes more widely known within the administration, he'll be quietly forced out.

This is an interesting article about the first grants from a new foundation "for projects that have broad implications for our understanding of the deep or ultimate nature of reality."

So far, all of the institute's money is from the Templeton Foundation, which has often been criticized by scientists for attempting to blur the lines between science and religion.

Even skeptics, though, suggested that the new institute, which used the Templeton money as seed money and is run completely separately, could be good for science.