Future historians may have no idea how many people perished in one of the worst storms in U.S. history.

For poor and lower middle-class taxpayers, the bill will mean regressive tax hikes after a few years.

Catholic leaders have been vocal in their support for the Dream Act. The question is whether strongly worded statements from the U.S. bishops and others will be enough to shake Congress into action.

If the tragic revelations of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis are any guide, the process of reckoning with problems that have been avoided for decades will itself take decades.