The Boston Globe, Jan. 15:

Pope Francis’ recent selection of 15 new cardinals from 14 countries ”“ one of the most diverse crops of senior prelates the Catholic Church has ever seen ”“ solidifies the Holy See’s commitment to redefine the composition of the church’s leadership. It represents another step in Francis’ overarching mission to broaden the reach of the church by having its leadership reflect the people it serves.

The bishops come from remote nations like Uruguay, Ethiopia, Cape Verde, and Tonga; as well as from the Asian cities of Bangkok, Yangon, and Hanoi. In a surprising snub, no new cardinals from the United States were named.

The wide-ranging choice of new cardinals also reinforces and enriches church leadership in areas where Catholicism is actually growing. In the Asia-Pacific region alone, for example, the number of Catholics has increased from 14 million in 1910 to 131 million in 2010, according to a report by Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. Similarly, the Catholic share of the population in sub-Saharan Africa has risen from 1 percent a century ago to 21 percent in 2010.

These 15 new members of the College of Cardinals, all of them under 80, will be eligible to vote for the next pope, which makes a true global balance of power more likely. Not too long ago, the majority of cardinals came from a single country: Italy.

Still, many have raised legitimate questions about the pope’s strategy of bringing in fresh blood and new voices. John L. Allen Jr. of the Globe-affiliated website Crux warns of “other possible consequences to consider of bypassing the usual suspects.” He writes: “Prelates who have no Vatican experience, who don’t speak Italian, and who don’t themselves have the experience of running a large and complex ecclesiastical operation, may feel a natural tendency to defer to the old hands ”“ generally meaning the same Vatican mandarins whom Francis recently excoriated for suffering from ”˜spiritual Alzheimer’s’ and the ”˜terrorism of gossip.”’

A fair point, perhaps. But Francis has repeatedly shown a willingness to take risks, and he should be celebrated for that. This move is essentially a reflection of the profound change in the demographic composition of the church. It’s also a step in the right direction as Francis challenges and transforms the church’s power structure. Some criticize Francis for being all talk about transformation. With these new appointments, his actions back up the rhetoric.

The Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield (Mass.), Jan. 12:

The film “Selma” recalls a grim time in our nation’s history. Unlike many films about historic events, there can be no comfort gained in saying those days are behind us.

The recently released movie is centered around the trip to that Alabama community by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 to draw attention to voting rights irregularities there and in many other Southern communities. The federal Civil Rights Act had been passed into law, but bigoted local authorities were blocking the attempts of blacks to exercise those hard-won rights.

A peaceful protest march on March 7 ended shortly after it began with a brutal beating of marchers by white law enforcement officers wielding clubs and whips, an ugly episode in American history recreated powerfully by director Ava DuVernay. Captured by television cameras, the incident horrified Americans and change came with relative quickness. Dr. King led a much larger march to Montgomery and the Voting Rights Act was passed. But no one was declaring victory then or now.

Grinning yahoos at town clerks’ offices may no longer be able to deny a black citizen the right to vote because she can’t name all 65 county judges ”“ a memorable scene from the movie ”“ but voting rights are denied today in subtler ways. Denial comes in the form of voter “fraud” regulations passed to address fraud that statistically doesn’t exist. Driver’s licenses are demanded as ID even though a disproportionate number of African-Americans in the South don’t drive. Rural polling areas are eliminated to make it difficult for those without cars to vote.

Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina are among the states where these restrictive laws are either on the books or have been brought forward for passage. They played a role in the last presidential election. Unfortunately, they will almost assuredly play a role in the next presidential election.

That these laws are routinely proposed, passed and signed into law by Republican legislatures and governors is something the party is understandably defensive about. The criticism will end when the policies do. It is shameful to pretend that regulations enacted to keep likely Democratic voters away from polling booths are actually designed to eliminate a non-existent problem. No one is fooled, least of all the judges who routinely toss out these bills and laws as unconstitutional.

Attacks, often fatal, on blacks by white law enforcement authorities are not artifacts of the past either. Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York City, and the horrific death in Cleveland of Tamir Rice, are among the reminders. Vigilantes like George Zimmerman, who shot and killed an unarmed Trayvon Martin in Florida, also escape justice. (Zimmerman, hero of too many white Americans, was back in the news last weekend for allegedly throwing a wine bottle at a girlfriend.)

Young people of all races should see “Selma.” History is recreated powerfully, the legendary names from the history books are brought back to life, and the contemporary context is apparent.

It is a movie, however, not a documentary, and many historians are bristling at the film’s portrayal of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson as a deterrent to the voting rights cause. LBJ was a tough, deal-making politician with a bad temper who spoke vulgarly, but he was a civil rights leader, not a follower, and least of all an obstacle. It is sad to hear that LBJ (as played by Tom Wilkinson) is being booed in some theaters.

Many will look back at those horrific events of a half-century or so ago and say “look at how far we have come,” and in many ways America has, as the election of President Obama attests. But we’ve not come nearly far enough. Not when black lives are seen by some as cheap. Not when black voters are still blocked from getting to the polling booths, just as their ancestors were not that long ago in Selma, Alabama.

The Bennington (Vt.) Banner, Jan. 12:

Given the passion of the rhetoric, one would think the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is either a potential catastrophe for the environment or a great boon for the economy. Both contentions are overblown.

The 1,179-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline would carry more than 800,000 barrels of oil sands petroleum a day from the province of Alberta in Canada to Steele City, Nebraska, in the U.S.

From there, the oil would flow through existing pipelines to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Its construction has been a matter of contention for six years. Though President Obama has had the authority to decide on approval himself, he has dithered.

Republicans, newly in control in both the Senate and the House of Representative have made passage of legislation to approve the project their top priority. They say it’s key to our energy future and would be great source of new jobs. Last week, the House of Representatives voted 266 to 153 in favor of the measure. The Senate took up the legislation on Monday.

Because the pipeline begins in Canada and extends into the U.S. It is deemed an international project, subject to State Department review and ultimate approval by the president. President Obama has said he will veto the legislation, as the authority to decide is his. In 2009, the Obama administration quietly approved a 986-mile pipeline for oil sands petroleum from Canada to the U.S. called the Alberta Clipper. By the summer of 2011, the State Department was on the verge of also approving Keystone XL.

What happened next is detailed in a Jan. 8 Times article. Environmentalists, led by Vermonter Bill McKibben, disappointed that Obama did not pass a climate change bill in his first term, seized on stopping Keystone as a litmus test for Obama to retain their support in the 2012 election.

For their part, Republicans saw an opening, including polls showing that Americans generally supported the project by a healthy margin, according to the Times. Thus did the Keystone pipeline become politicized in a way the Alberta Clipper, did not.

On both sides, the facts are less spectacular than the rhetoric. According to the Times article, “Energy policy experts say the practical impact of the project, both on the environment and the economy, is limited.” In its review of the project, the State Department found that it would create only 50 permanent jobs. The review found the project would support about 42,000 temporary jobs during its construction period. Not all of this employment would be newly created but would be “continuity of existing jobs in current or new locations.”

As the president has noted, “this is Canadian oil passing through the United States to be sold on the world market. It’s not going to push down gas prices here in the United States.”

On the environment, the State Department review found that the pipeline would not make global warming worse because the petroleum would be extracted from the oil sands in any case and the oil would be transported by other means, such as trains. Indeed, the transport of this volatile and dirty raw product on aging rails infrastructure and in inadequate rail cars presents public safety and environmental hazards of its own.

Many, however, have equated support of Keystone XL with climate change denial. As noted, the scientific link between this project and climate change is unclear, even if the symbolic link is well established in many minds.

Even after vetoing the Republican legislation, Obama could decide to approve the project anyway, though it’s not likely he will. “I’m going to make sure that if we look at this objectively, we’ve got to make sure that it’s not adding to the problem of carbon and climate change,” he said in December. “We have to examine that and we have to weigh that against the amount of jobs that it’s actually going to create, which aren’t a lot.”

The Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald, Jan. 16:

In 1910, just 9 percent of Americans graduated from high school. By 1940, that number had climbed to 50 percent and today 86 percent of New Hampshire and Maine students graduate high school.

America’s high school graduation rate steadily increased as traditional agricultural and industrial economies gave way to a knowledge-based economy that demanded higher levels of education of its workers. Our nation met that need by dramatically increasing the number of high schools to serve students and by making them free to all who wanted to attend.

Looking at our school systems today it’s hard to imagine that free public education was once a radical notion pushed by social reformers like Horace Mann and John Dewey.

That’s probably why President Obama invoked history when calling to make two years of community college education free to all American students willing to put in the work to maintain a 2.5 or higher grade point average.

“America thrived in the 20th century in large part because we made high school the norm,” Obama said Jan. 9, at Pellissippi State Community College, in Knoxville, Tennessee. “Then we sent a generation to college on the GI Bill. … Then we dedicated ourselves to cultivating the most educated workforce in the world and we invested in one of the crown jewels of this country, and that’s our higher education system. And dating back to Abraham Lincoln, we invested in land-grant colleges. We understood that this was a hallmark of America, this investment in education.”

The president estimates that as many as 9 million more American students would have access to higher education under his proposal. And before you say it will never happen, consider that he chose to make these comments in Tennessee because that state, with a Republican governor and two Republican U.S. Senators, offers free community college to its students.

Teddy Roosevelt called the presidency a “bully pulpit,” meaning that it’s a great place to communicate with the American people. And we strongly support the president’s message in support of increasing student access to our community colleges.

Anybody who has had to pay tuition in recent years knows that the cost of four year colleges ”“ even state schools like the University of New Hampshire ”“ have become so expensive that most students leave them with a heavy load of debt along with their degrees. In New Hampshire the average student graduates $33,000 in debt. In Maine it’s $30,000. That’s quite a hole to dig out from just as you are beginning your working life.

That’s why we have applauded partnerships between New Hampshire’s community colleges and its four-year state colleges that allow students to transfer credits from community college toward their undergraduate degree. And that’s why we don’t think the president’s proposal to take the next step to make community colleges free is unrealistic.

It likely won’t happen right away, and there will be a vigorous debate about whether the program should be administered by states or the federal government. But we agree with the president’s assertion that “in a 21st century economy, where your most valuable asset is your knowledge, the single most important way to get ahead is not just to get a high school education, you’ve got to get some higher education.”

We have been greatly impressed at the quality of education offered at our local community colleges as well as the innovative relationships they have formed with area businesses, which allows students to learn the skills they need to get good paying jobs upon graduation, and, incidentally, provides the businesses with the skilled workers they cannot do without.

With each passing year it seems, America’s community colleges are rising in prestige and we certainly applaud the growing contribution they are making to the lives of students and to the economic health and vitality of our nation.

The Times Record of Brunswick (Maine), Jan. 13:

Filling a gas tank over the weekend cost just $26. Prices like that cause one to blink, and blink again. Yep, the price of gas was very close to $2 per gallon, something that hasn’t seen since 2009. Not that long ago, it cost $50 to fill the same tank.

Who doesn’t like lower gas prices? And yet, it makes one wonder if we shouldn’t be foregoing some of the windfall ”“ not all, but some ”“ and socking some gas tax money away to deal with critical infrastructure issues while the price war lasts.

Because let’s be honest, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis aren’t upping their production, and thus cutting their own income, for our benefit. They’re doing it to bring the Russian bear to its knees. They may be doing it to harm Iran’s economy. And they’re likely doing it to encourage us to leave tar sands in the ground and cut back on fracking.

While many have no love for tar sands or fracking, which is damaging to clean water everywhere it’s been tried, it is definitely having an effect on the employment picture in fracking communities and in Canada. Frackers are laying workers off; while tar sands oil is still being refined, there are significant questions about whether the Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs over the Ogallala Aquifer, is ever going to make it off the drawing board. And if the price keeps dropping, neither the frackers nor the tar sands pits will bother, because the cost of producing oil and gas that way is much more expensive than what they can earn back on their product with prices this low.

Plans for new drilling are already on hold in much of the country.

It’s likely that the Saudis and Kuwaitis will keep this up for a while. Cornering a market takes time. But what if, in the interim, we took an additional 10 cents from our unexpected windfall and put it toward a temporary gas tax, with the sole purpose of fixing roads and bridges, and investing in public transit infrastructure?

Mainers and those from away bought more than a billion gallons of gasoline last year alone. It’ll likely be more this year, because as prices fall, people travel again. But even at a billion gallons, a temporary extra gasoline tax of 10 cents would give us $100 million per year to fix roads, bridges, railroad tracks, commuter rail stations, buy a few buses and more.

This year’s Maine Department of Transportation list of work priorities for the 2015-2017 period includes $388 million for bridge capital and preservation, highway construction or rehabilitation, pavement preservation, and light capital paving annually. There is an annual shortfall of about $119 million, or about 31 percent. The shortfall could be almost eliminated with the temporary gas tax, and at a dollar less per gallon, we’d still have an extra 90 cents in our pockets.

A temporary gas tax seems like common sense to us. It’s a small price to pay for the benefit of driving on smooth roads and safe bridges and keeping our own cars in good condition, and a good percentage of the cost would be borne by visitors, who probably won’t miss the dime per gallon, either.

It’s worth a try, anyway. And since the gas price war probably won’t last too long, we should act now so that the tax is in place before tourist season.

The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, Jan. 15:

The Boston Olympics? There may be mixed feelings in Boston about The Hub as the Olympic host in 2024, but from Connecticut the prospect looks absolutely delightful.

It’s hard to get to places like Sochi, Beijing or Rio de Janeiro. Boston, right up the road, would afford a once-in-a-lifetime chance for many state residents to see an Olympics.

Boston was selected as the U.S. candidate for the 2024 Games, beating out Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Critics such as economist Andrew Zimbalist raise a valid issue ”“ some cities have nearly gone broke hosting the Games. The beauty of Boston is that it is compact, has good public transit and is full of college and university facilities, so if run efficiently it shouldn’t have to cost a fortune (and the Big Dig should have taught the city something about controlling cost overruns).

To that end, officials have reached out to former Gov. Mitt Romney, who is widely credited with making the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City a success.

Also, as those who’ve attended the Boston Marathon or the World Series can attest, the city knows how to run major sporting events (imagine a duck boat leading the Olympic torch down Commonwealth Avenue).

Can Connecticut dip its beak into the Olympic ambrosia? The state may be able to land a couple of events, as Courant columnist Dan Haar suggests, perhaps in sailing, equestrian or cycling, and perhaps some spinoff tourism. There would be more opportunities if it were easier to get to Boston by mass transit, particularly railroad, from central Connecticut. (It will be impossible to pahk yuh cah in Hahvahd Yahd.)

To sell the Olympics to local skeptics, the Boston 2024 committee will have to show that the investment will accrue to the long-term benefit of the city and region. Good rail service from Hartford-Springfield should be on the table, because if the Mass Pike is the only option west of Worcester during the 17-day event, people will be sleeping in their cars in the Charlton service plaza.

Boston will have an uphill fight against Paris, Rome and Berlin, but it doesn’t have to be Heartbreak Hill. Boston can make a great case for itself. Dare to dream.

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