Pledges

Choosing compromise over division, leaders of the world's most important economies pledged Thursday to offer $1.1 trillion in loans and guarantees to countries most badly damaged by the global downturn, encouraging hopes that their concerted action could nudge the stalled world economy toward recovery. The measures announced at the Group of 20 summit in London may not constitute the "new global deal" called for by President Obama and the host, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

On a remote ranch more than 70 miles west of Austin, Texas, top evangelical leaders from around the country assembled last weekend for a private two-day retreat. It wasn't a religious revival that drew the group of 200, which included luminaries of the Christian right; it was the chance to hear the personal testimony of one man: Rick Perry. Inside an air-conditioned tent, the Texas governor and Republican presidential contender was grilled about his beliefs and his record in extraordinarily frank sessions.

Like many nonprofit groups around the country that depend on public support, Los Angeles' television station KCET-TV has found itself facing a significant financial setback after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A special appeal in November, on the air and on the Internet, helped alleviate some of the $1-million shortfall.

Dawn Ellison was too young to understand it when she was first promised a full scholarship to college. Even after it sank in, there were times when it was hard to see why it mattered. This month, though, as Ellison and a group of her elementary school classmates graduate from high school, they can finally bask in the reality of the promise made when they were 6.

President Obama called on Republicans to be equal partners in his efforts to jump-start the nation's fragile economy in the new year, pledging to work in good faith with the party as it prepares to assume greater power in Washington. In his weekly address Saturday, Obama said that economic data showed the economy had been "gaining traction" for months, and that his personal resolution for 2011 was to do everything he could "to make sure our economy is growing, creating jobs, and strengthening our middle class.

The South Korean government's pledge to get tougher on piracy and its self-congratulatory remarks after a military raid last week that freed 21 sailors held hostage by Somali pirates may attract more violence, analysts and critics say. President Lee Myung-bak's celebratory reference to the raid as part of a new anti-piracy policy increasingly waged with high speed boats and attack helicopters and other comments are drawing pledges of retaliation from...

"No means yes, and yes means anal!" That was the chant of Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges as they marched past dorms housing freshman women at Yale University last October. As a result, the fraternity was recently banned from all campus activities for five years. The hazing ritual was in poor taste, certainly. But did the fraternity really deserve to be suspended? Weren't the "Dekes" guilty of, at the very worst, the kind of offensive speech protected by the 1st Amendment (or in Yale's case, by the university's 1975 codification of rights of free speech and expression on its campus)