Senior Catholic bishops are threatening to oppose the health care bill under consideration in Congress if lawmakers don't make significant reforms regarding federally funded abortions and other issues. "No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion," the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a letter Thursday to members of Congress. The letter follows a recent Senate Finance Committee vote that defeated Republican amendments that Democrats said would broaden current restrictions of federal funding for ...

William Safire, a onetime speechwriter for President Nixon who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, has died at age 79, the newspaper announced Sunday. Safire joined the Times as a columnist in 1973. In addition to his conservative news columns, which he wrote until 2005, he wrote a language column for the paper's Sunday magazine from 1979 until shortly before his death. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978 for his columns on ...