Pope Francis: Letter to the People of God (full text)

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-08/pope-francis-letter-people-of-god-sexual-abuse.html

With shame and repentance,

we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been,

that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives.

We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.

Jeff Flake and Mark Warner…

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) joined U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) in offering an amendment to the defense appropriations bill to prohibit the executive branch from revoking security clearances for political reasons.

“Congress has a bipartisan responsibility to ensure that the president is not misusing his executive power by revoking any individual’s security clearance for purely political reasons,” said Flake. “The authority granted to the president by the Constitution is limited, and there are well-established processes and procedures in place that determine steps for granting and revoking a security clearance. These steps include identifying a non-political reason for a clearance revocation. This amendment comports with those long-standing practices by disallowing the expenditure of taxpayer funding for political purposes.”

The amendment prohibits the use of federal funds to grant, deny, or revoke an individual’s security clearance, except in accordance with the United States Constitution and all current federal laws and regulations governing security clearances.