Two really nice pieces in the Times in recent days: this profile of Ted Kennedy Jr. by Mark Leibovich, which is somewhat unconventional in its methodology but really does give you a sense of the conundrum of being Teddy’s son; and today’s story about how the NRA has successfully fought attempts to take guns away from abusive husbands—and how many women have been killed as a result.

Make that three nice pieces of reporting: I was fascinated by this article on how the new pope can’t escape the lingering consequences of the Catholic Church’s complicity with the Argentinean military dictatorship in the 1970s…

After a previous military coup in Argentina in 1930, the church forged a role as a spiritual guide for the armed forces. By the time military rule was established again in the 1970s, their operations overlapped to the point where some bishops were provided soldiers as personal servants in their palaces, and only a handful of bishops publicly condemned the dictatorship’s repression….

Pope Francis was not one of them.