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Wuerl among 24 new cardinals


Pope’s orthodox views reflected in selection of Washington archbishop


BY MICHELLE BOORSTEIN Pope Benedict XVI named


Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl and 23 other Catholic leaders to the elite College of Cardinals on Wednesday, choos- ing men who share his orthodox approach to Catholic doctrine. With the announcement,


Benedict, 82, has named more than 40 percent of the cardinals whowill determine the direction of the church by choosing the next pontiff. Many of the new cardinals,


elevated during the pope’s week- ly address in St. Peter’s Square, are eager to engage with Catho- lics who have been alienated by rigid dogma and by the clergy sex abuse scandal, which first ex- ploded in the United States and has now erupted in Europe and other parts of the world. At the same time, they are


generally unyielding on many of the issues that have dogged the church in recent years, rejecting tolerance for birth control, same- sex marriage, female clergy and the idea that Jesus is not the only route to salvation. “The voice of the church


should be a teaching voice,” said Wuerl in a phone interview after his selection. “It should be a voice of persuasion. It should be offering spiritual, pastoral guid- ance.” Wuerl, 69, is considered a


leading catechist, or teacher of Catholic doctrine, and a diplo- mat on volatile social issues. He is well known for refusing to deny Communion to Catholic politicianswho support abortion rights. Wuerl has said he cannot deny the sacrament to a willing participant, because he cannot know what is inside a person’s heart when that person shares private worship with God.


cardinal continued onA10 LAURENT CIPRIANI/ASSOCIATED PRESS


RIOTINGINFRANCE: Police clashwith youths inLyon at a protest against government efforts to raise the retirement age. In severalEuropean countries, demonstrations have become increasingly violent over lesser efforts than those planned byBritain to cut the public deficit.


Group peered between the lines on foreclosures


Fla. activists launch effort to sniff out questionable paperwork


BY ARIANA EUNJUNG CHA


west palm beach, fla. — Nearly a year before the national furor over foreclosures began, Lisa Epstein, a nurse, ran into three other amateur sleuths who were separately investigating shoddy practices at mortgage companies. While meeting for the first


time in November at an old one-story law office in this city, the four strangers compared notes and began to piece together the scope of the problem: All over the United States, big financial firms may have been using fraud- ulent paperwork to evict strug- gling borrowers from their homes.


Justice Thomas’swife doesn’t shy fromspotlight


BY KAREN TUMULTY AND KEVIN MERIDA


The decision by the wife of


Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to confront the woman who accused him of sexual ha- rassment two decades ago has stirred up old and painful ques- tions that have never fully been put to rest. In an earlymorning voicemail


Oct. 9, Ginni Thomas implored Anita Hill to recant the account that turned Clarence Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings into a national sensation. Why Ginni Thomas did this is


unclear. Hill stands by her ac- count, and she told ABC News and the New York Times that she found it offensive that Ginni Thomas asked her to apologize. More mystifying, even to


friends and associates of the Thomases, is the timing: After 19 years, the collective national


memory of Ginni Thomas sitting in a Senate hearing room in a cheery plaid jacket, quietly wip- ing tears from her eyes, had faded. In its place was emerging a newThomas, awoman familiar in conservative circles for her decades of activism. Her high-profile politicalwork


is unusual for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in anonymous contributions at her disposal, she is becoming a political and intellectual force as the head of a new group called Liberty Central, which is aimed at turning the splintered and raucous tea partymovement into something coherent and lasting. She has also been establishing


thomas continued onA7


l Ruth Marcus: Ginni Thomas is wrong to


seek an apology. A21


LOCALLIVING1 A healthy Halloween?


How to make your sweet decisions smart ones, both at home and at work.


OPINIONS


David S. Broder: When country came first for politicians. A21


I FORECLOSURESYSTEMINCHAOS


For some federal workers, another risk With the foreclosure freeze, some employees are in mortgage limbo— and their security clearances could be threatened. A15


COLOROFMONEY


Asking for loan help shouldn’t draw scorn Yes, many who are now underwater were too optimistic, but they don’t deserve mean-spirited criticism now. Michelle Singletary, A16


6 ONLINE


Find reader-friendly explanations of all facets of the mortgage crisis, and share your views, at wapo.st/foreclosure-freeze.


Now tightknit, the group is


largely responsible for setting off the growing firestorm over fore- closures. Epstein, a Fairfax County na-


tive who became an activist after she lost her job and became unable to pay her mortgage, launched a grass-roots move- ment against the country’s larg- est banks, which are facing the prospects of billions of dollars in


soured loans and legal expenses. Joining her wereMichael Red-


man, whose foreclosure blog drew the White House into the controversy, and Thomas and Ariane Ice, who run a boutique law firm that was the first to depose “robo-signer” Jeffrey Stephan of Ally Financial’sGMAC mortgage unit in December. Inaddition to trying to educate the public about the issue, the


group had also been quietly pass- ing along stacks of problematic documents to state and federal regulators, lawmakers, judges, and law enforcement officials. They pointed out that docu-


ment processors such as Stephan had admitted in sworn deposi- tions that they had signed off on up to 10,000 foreclosure docu- ments a month, even though they had not reviewed them as legally required. They also shed light on foreclosure cases in which the paperwork appeared to have been backdated, forged or im- properly notarized. Now, at least five major mort-


gage companies have frozen some foreclosures. Attorneys general from each state have joined forces to investigate, and a federal task force is considering criminal charges in the matter. Some bank stocks have fallen on concerns that the issue of flawed


mortgage continued onA16 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010


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Britain moves to slash deficit


NEW ‘AGE OF AUSTERITY’


Effort in sharp contrast with U.S. and Europe


BY ANTHONY FAIOLA


london — Britain unveiled on Wednesday a campaign to dig it- self out fromunder amountain of public debt, setting up a global experiment: Can a major nation drastically slash government spending without derailing its economic recovery? The new Conservative-led co-


alition headed by Prime Minister David Cameron announced cuts deeper than the ones made by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, outliningaplantoeliminatehalfa million government jobs, slash welfare benefits and reduce $131 billion worth of other public spending on everything from fighter jets to social security to the arts by 2015. The effort puts Britain at the


core of the debate over how fast, and howdeep, to cut the crushing levels of public debt racked up by governments from the United States to Europe and now viewed by leading economists as one of the greatest threats to the global economy. Britain’s pull-the-ban- dage-off-fast approach now stands in sharp contrast to the thinkinginWashington,wherese- nior administration officials are leery of the impact such drastic steps couldhave ontheU.S. recov- ery,andwherefurther increasesin funding are stillbeing considered. The new coalition is gambling


its political future on a bet that Britons will embrace a painful new age of austerity after years of big-spending Labor governments under prime ministers Gordon


budget continued onA11 Tea party banking on phone calls In grass-roots effort, volunteers reach far and wide across nation to help sway voters


BY AMY GARDNER IN HILLSBORO, ORE.


f the fortunes of this year’s hardest-fought campaigns hinge on the final push to get


out the vote, then what’s going on inside a tidy bungalow along the railroad tracks of this Portland bedroom community matters a great deal. Here, in between making din-


ner and baking cookies and cele- brating the 16th birthday of one of her eight children, tea party activist Rosie Gagnon is working the phones, squeezing in 10 or 20 minutes or even an hour when she can, placing dozens of calls each day urging voters to support her favored candidates. “Hello, my name is Rosie, and


I’m a volunteer with Freedom- Works PAC, a grass-roots organi- zation advocating for limited gov- ernment,” began Gagnon, reading from a script. “I’m calling to ask


the nation’s most competitive congressional contests. With mailing lists numbering


in the hundreds of thousands and Internet-based call programs that do everything but read the script, national tea party organi- zations are trying to take advan- tage of the movement’s vast but decentralized grass-roots muscle. The fact that thousands are


willing to participate shows an evolution among a part of the tea party movement into a more tra- ditional kind of political force, not just a rebel cause able to turn out a crowd for a rally. FreedomWorks, which claims


LEAH NASH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Rosie Gagnon shows her daughterHannah, 11, how to make phone calls from their home inHillsboro, Ore., using an online program.


for your vote for Senate candidate Sharron Angle in the general election on Tuesday, November 2nd.” It’s no mistake that Gagnon is calling people in Nevada rather


INSIDE POLITICS&THENATION Another twist in


the ‘don’t ask’ battle Federal appellate judges grant a temporary stay of last week’s injunction against the ban on gays serving openly in the military. A3


METRO


Ehrlich, Take 2 If the gloves-off governor reclaims the office, will Maryland Democrats see a rematch? B1


BUSINESS NEWS.........A15-18 CLASSIFIEDS......................F1 COMICS..........................C7-8


EDITORIALS/LETTERS.....A20 FED PAGE.........................A19 KIDSPOST........................C10


LOTTERIES.........................B4 MOVIES..............................C5 OBITUARIES....................B6-7


TELEVISION.......................C6 WEATHER..........................B8 WORLD NEWS.............A12-13


Printed using recycled fiber


DAILY CODE Details, B2


2BASEBALL


The Yankees stay alive A 7-2 victory in the Bronx cuts the Rangers’ lead in the ALCS to 3-2. D1


1THOMAS BOSWELL: The pinstriped giant has been awakened. D1


THETVCOLUMN


‘Glee’: Making an issue The cast looks a lot less wholesome in the November GQ, and a group with “Parents” in its name is not happy.


3 2 1 0 


The Washington Post Year 133, No. 320


CONTENT © 2010


than Oregon, where the Republi- can Senate nominee isn’t given much of a chance. Encouraged by national tea party groups, she and other activists are dialing long-distance to try to influence


2,100 registered callers nation- wide, is just one group with a phone-from-home program. The Sacramento-based Tea Party Ex- press helped sway primary elec- tions in Alaska, Delaware and Nevada by placing tens of thou- sands of calls to those states, and


tea party continued onA9


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