One of the challenges we face at the Register is balancing the horror of modern realities with the decorum a newspaper must keep. The big news stories in this week’s issue presented this dilemma.

There is Saddam Hussein’s execution, an event for which many Americans are grateful but which has been thoroughly denounced by the Vatican.

Our editorial this week addresses it.

There is the rise to power of Nancy Pelosi, who comes from a well-known Catholic family and who is herself a mother of five, who began her legislative season at a Mass. At the same time, she is a great promoter of abortion and has made it her first priority to champion embryonic stem-cell research.

Last, there is the death of President Ford. He was truly an underappreciated president in many ways, possessing the rare qualities it took to govern as an unelected president in the wake of one of the biggest scandals in American presidential history. Yet he supported legalizing abortion and helped keep abortion legal by his appointment to the Supreme Court. Years hence, his contributions to spreading the great evil of abortion will cast a dark shadow over his accomplishments.

On both of these news stories we simply reported the news as it is, on page 2 — making sure to use no euphemistic language. That, after all, is what a newspaper is supposed to do.