Vox Sentences: Popemania!

Circus Pontifex Maximus; a counter-coup in Burkina Faso; and Hillary Clinton comes out against Keystone XL.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

The Pope totally supports your preferred policies

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Pope Francis I is in Washington, DC! His Popemobile is a Fiat! The coverage is breathless and swooning!

  [The Guardian / Stephanie Kirchgaessner]

• The Pope will be giving a papal mass tomorrow morning in DC. This graphic guide from the Post tells you what to watch for.

  [Washington Post / Bonnie Berkowitz and Todd Lindeman]

• Most DC pundits are waiting to see what Francis has to say about climate change — the subject of a major encyclical he wrote earlier this year.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• And advocates for other progressive causes, including immigration, are eager to use the Pope as a way to bash conservative politicians.

  [The New Republic / Suzy Khimm]

• But Republicans, including Rep. Steve King, are hoping that the Pope avoids politics — and sticks to apparently-apolitical issues like the sanctity of marriage and the right to life.

  [TPM / Caitlin Macneal]

• How liberal is Pope Francis, though, really? His public statements certainly sound radical, and there are arguments he's liberalized Church governance as well.

  [Washington Post / Anthony Faiola]

• Some Catholic conservatives argue (persuasively) that those statements are taken out of context, and that he's mostly continuing in the footsteps of his reputedly-more-conservative predecessor Pope Benedict XVI.

  [National Review / Ramesh Ponnuru]

• Perhaps, as critic Michael Brendan Dougherty says, Francis is just a blunter speaker — "practically an insult comic."

  [The Week / Michael Brendan Dougherty]

• But the most striking characterization of Francis' views comes from Ross Douthat: Pope Francis is a catastrophic pessimist about the fate of the modern world.

  [New York Times / Ross Douthat]

Standoff in Burkina Faso

Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images

• West African leaders are attempting to reinstate Burkina Faso's interim president after a short-lived counter-coup; this has led to a standoff between the pro-interim president army and opponents in the presidential guard.

  [Al Jazeera ]

• To get what's going on, rewind to fall 2014, when the longtime president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, was ousted in a coup by the army after he tried to abolish term limits.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The army scheduled elections for this fall. But after the transitional government sought to block members of Compaoré's regime from running, the presidential guard, which supports Compaoré, ousted the new government last week.

  [The Economist]

• West African leaders have been mediating a deal, and this morning it looked like they'd succeeded, when the leader of the presidential guard coup apologized to the country for his coup.

  [NPR / Marie Andrusewicz]

• But the regional leaders' plan (which hasn't been finalized yet) is rumored to include amnesty for the 2014 coup's leaders, which is making some residents very angry — and could jeopardize a deal.

  [BBC]

• Before leaving office, however, the presidential guard coup leader gave an interview to Vice News, which is some sort of Peak Vice.

  [Vice News / Pierre Mareczko]

Papal News Dump: Clinton opposes Keystone

Earl Gibson III/Getty Images

• Hillary Clinton announced at a campaign event that she's officially opposed to the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.

  [NPR / Tamara Keith]

• As Brad Plumer explains, the Keystone debate has become a proxy for a much bigger debate about climate.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Keystone has become the signature issue over which environmentalists organized during the Obama presidency, which resulted in big gains for the movement.

  [Vox / David Roberts]

• Obama is still considering the pipeline. And until today, Clinton was silent out of deference to him; she was also involved in the issue as Secretary of State.

  [MSNBC / Alex Seitz-Wald]

• Meanwhile, Canada — whose government has been pushing for Keystone — is in the middle of an election that could result in an anti-Keystone government.

  [Bloomberg / Nicole Gaouette]

MISCELLANEOUS

Fidel Castro greeted the Pope in an Adidas tracksuit. Why? [Slate / Joshua Keating]

• What it's like to have your spouse come out as trans.

  [NY Mag / Alex Morris]

• A British puzzle book that basically drove people insane.

  [Hazlitt / Jess Zimmerman]

• America's foremost public intellectual is writing a Marvel Comics storyline.

  [NYT / George Gene Gustines]

• GiveDirectly is the most exciting charity in the world. Now its founders are turning cash delivery to the poor into a business.

  [Bloomberg / Sangwon Yoon]

VERBATIM

"We even have sushi in the South Bronx now. Go figure." [Bronx borough president Rubén Díaz Jr. to NYT / Ronda Kaysen]

• "Even when they self-identify as progressive Democrats, elite Americans value equality less highly than the middle class."

  [Slate / Ray Fisman and Daniel Markovits]

• "The do-gooder, on the other hand, knows that there are crises everywhere, all the time, and he seeks them out. He is not spontaneous – he plans his good deeds in cold blood."

  [The Guardian / Larissa MacFarquhar]

• "I’m the writer, but I do the workout. Writing’s not sitting. Sports, I have all of them in my body. Muscles always, for moving."

  [The Toast / Mallory Ortberg]

• "David Cameron’s nasty little scandal speaks to a suspicion many people already have: that in British society, you don’t get to become Prime Minister because you’re talented or because you work hard. … You get there by traumatizing the homeless and skull-fucking a dead pig, and that ritual gives you power because you have demonstrated utter, pathetic submission to your fellow oligarchs."

  [The Leveller / Lawrence Richards]

WATCH THIS

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s wonderful world of color [YouTube / Estelle Caswell and Todd VanDerWerff]

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/17/8228807/unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-color-netflix

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