Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

This follows earlier reports that the NYPD has conducted massive surveillance on the city’s Muslim community and regularly shown an Islamophobic video as part of its training regimen for new police recruits.

As Rep. Keith Ellison wrote last week, these tactics fray relations between the Muslim community and the police, making the city and its residents less safe — not to mention the civil rights questions and privacy issues raised by the NYPD’s profiling and intrusiveness.

Given everything that has come to light, perhaps the most disturbing questions are why hasn’t Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly been held responsible for these abuses and why does Mayor Michael Bloomberg continue to defend these ethically questionable activities?

Photo Credit: Luke Roberts/Flickr

But some states (led by Florida), which have already filed a joint lawsuit opposing the Affordable Care Act’s minimum coverage requirement, have extended their legal complaints to ask the Supreme Court to rule the Medicaid expansion unconstitutional as well.

In response, a coalition representing dozens of religious groups has written an amicus brief in support of the Medicaid law, rejecting the states’ arguments and explaining that:

This expansion is morally proper and legally permissible. Neither the facts nor the case law support any conclusion that states are or will be improperly coerced into participating in Medicaid. Congress has never required the states to participate in Medicaid. Rather, the ACA offers the states generous support for Medicaid expansion, 100 percent of which will be paid for by the federal government in the near term. Because states can opt out of Medicaid, the only compulsion they face is the knowledge that the Medicaid expansion is the right and moral thing to do.

Signers to the brief include mainline Christian denominations like the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. The Union for Reformed Judaism, a host of Catholic organizations, and numerous other religious health and community groups are also on the brief.

H/T Think Progress

Franklin Graham casting doubt on the president’s faith is a dog-bites-man story at this point, and Graham doesn’t need my help to make himself look like a demagogue — but it’s worth mentioning just how deeply wrong these attacks are. Not only does he dishonestly impugn the President’s Christian faith, he also advances anti-Muslim bigotry and puts forth a discrediting image of Christian leadership.

A pastor should not go on national television to speculate about the sincerity of other people’s Christian faith – especially to score political points. Franklin Graham should apologize to the President, and cable news shows should stop giving his religious bigotry and dishonesty a public platform. He has demonstrated a clear lack of credibility as a commentator on faith and politics.

The phony war on religion
By Tom Ehrich — Religion News Service
Do you see the theme? Religion’s enemy isn’t government. If anything, the American system has bent over backwards to protect religion from the accountability, fairness and justice that are expected of other citizens. No, religion’s enemy — if it has one — is itself.

Fight over birth control mandate becomes battle to frame debate
By Sam Baker — The Hill
Democrats successfully shifted a debate over religious liberty to birth control last week, but opponents of the contraception mandate are trying to shift it right back.

Religious Groups Line Up To Support Affordable Care Act
By Ian Millhiser — Think Progress
On Friday, however, a broad coalition of religious organizations filed an amicus brief supporting the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion that should give the lie to any claim that the faith community opposes the ACA.

Catholic Hospitals Expand, Religious Strings Attached
By Reed Abelson — New York Times
As Roman Catholic leaders and government officials clash over the proper role of religion and reproductive health, shifts in health care economics are magnifying the tension.

Santorum Obliquely Suggests Obama Worships Earth, Not God
By Kirsten Powers — Daily Beast
Perhaps it’s really Senator Santorum who hews to a “phony theology” at odds with the Bible. Santorum, who has been a shameless apologist for polluters, appears to worship at the altar of business and free enterprise no matter the cost to the health of Americans—including unborn Americans.

Immigration and the Campaign
By New York Times, Editorial
The Republican presidential candidates have not made immigration a focus of their campaigns. But, as they head toward a debate on Wednesday in Arizona, ground zero for anti-immigrant hostility, it is a good time to ask them hard questions about immigration. The odds are bad that they will have sensible answers.

States Move on Tuition Equity for Undocumented Students
By Julianne Hing — Colorlines
Despite tough economic times and a hostile political environment, immigrant rights activists are forging ahead, and having success, pushing a pro-immigrant youth agenda at the state level.

Voter ID
By Lucky Severson — PBS, Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly
…Many South Carolinians, especially citizens of color, were born at home and lack birth certificates, and so to obtain those birth certificates is a very costly endeavor and also an administrative nightmare.

NYPD monitoring of Muslim students sparks outrage
By David B. Caruso and John Christoffersen — Associated Press
The mayor faced off with the president of Yale University on Tuesday over an effort by the city’s police department to monitor Muslim student groups for any signs that their members harbored terrorist sympathies.

President Obama’s Five Most Personal Religious Statements
By Daniel Burke — Religion News Service
Even as a significant percentage of Americans falsely believe Obama is Muslim, the president has spoken of his Christian faith with increasing fervor during his three years in the White House.

Bishop Minerva Carcaño Has a Nearly Impossible Job
By Mary E. Hunt — Religion Dispatches
Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño of the United Methodist Church is part of a new wave of women’s leadership in mainline Christian denominations—and if our recent phone conversation is any indication, she has her work cut out for her.

This quote was included in a Bloomberg article:

“They’re setting an example from the top, saying, ‘You know what? If the company doesn’t do well, our CEO isn’t going to do as well,’” said Jeanne Branthover, a managing director at Boyden Global Executive Search Ltd. in New York.

This, of course, is exactly the kind of reaction Bank of America wants.  But this kind of special praise is ridiculous. This is how executive pay is supposed to work — tied to the success (or lack thereof) of the company. The fact that Bank of America’s decision stands out as some kind of commendable deviation from the norm shows just how completely big-bank executives have rigged the system in their favor and shielded themselves from the accountability and consequences that are just a fact of life for the 99%.

Meanwhile, as Brian Moynihan figures out how to feed his family on only $950,000 this year, homeowners across the country continue to lose their homes because of the big banks’ aggressive foreclosure tactics.

This video from Cuentame highlights the story of Arturo de los Santos, an ex-marine in Los Angeles whose family is facing eviction for missing mortgage payments. The kicker? The de los Santos purposefully missed those payments on their bank’s advice that it would speed up their loan modification process. Instead of the promised relief, Chase bank turned around and foreclosed on the family.

When opponents of housing relief try to argue that the only people suffering are irresponsible homeowners who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford, they ignore the massive amounts of fraud and deception that have led to stories like this.

Until banks like Chase and Bank of America come clean about their illegal, immoral records and start doing something to fix the massive damage they’ve done to American families, they deserve no praise.

H/T New Bottom Line

While MSNBC is far and away the most frequent offender, other networks give Perkins a platform too. But on CNN earlier this month, anchor Don Lemon finally provided an example of how to do this right, challenging Perkins for his organization’s silence on violence against gays and lesbians.

Equality Matters adds context:

Though Perkins denies condoning violence against gays and lesbians, he’s made a living out of peddling homophobic myths that depict LGBT people as threats, predators, and enemies of the state.
…
Perkins’ FRC also has also long opposed efforts to protect gays and lesbians from violence. The organization has been a vocal opponent of efforts to include sexual orientation in anti-bullying and hate crime legislation. FRC Senior Fellow Peter Sprigg has openly advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality and even suggested that gay people should be exported out of the country.

Good on Lemon for speaking up. Hopefully other anchors and networks will take notice and stop giving this hate group credibility and a free pass.

Schneck breaks the Catholic population down into three distinct groups: Latino Catholics who mirror earlier Catholic immigrants in their ethnic ties to the Democratic party, “cultural Catholics” who have lower levels of mass attendance and mixed political views, and “intentional Catholics” who by virtue of not having left the Church, are “distilled” down to a more conservative group who “actively choose to embrace the church and its teachings” and “are motivated by economic issues and increasingly by opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration.”

These observations seem to fit with John Sides’s analysis of presidential approval polls which tentatively suggested that Obama’s “political hit” among Catholics after the release of his administration’s contraception regulations appeared to occur largely among a limited group of Catholics who already disapprove of the President and are unlikely to vote for him anyway.

Michael Sean Winters adds:

It is true that Catholics as a whole, due to assimilation, now reflect the electorate as a whole. There are conservative Catholics on one side and liberal Catholics on the other. In between, are the Catholic swing voters. What distinguishes Catholics as a religious group in politics, then, is not that they vote as a bloc but that a significant number of them remain up for grabs, which is not necessarily true of other religious cohorts within the electorate.

Beck’s website, The Blaze, includes this photo from the trip of Beck meeting with newly appointed Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

There’s no indication of how long the meeting was or what they spoke about but hopefully the answers are brief and nothing of substance.

Given Beck’s violent rhetoric and particular attacks on religious traditions like Catholicism that are deeply concerned about social and economic justice, faith leaders like Cardinal Dolan should refuse to give him any level of endorsement or credibility.

In weaving faith into campaign, Santorum resorts to chiding opponents
By David A. Fahrenthold and Felicia Sonmez — Washington Post
As his campaign surges, Rick Santorum is testing an untested model for incorporating religion into his message. He is betting that Americans want a president who uses faith not just to inspire — but also to judge.

In the National Spotlight, Santorum Doesn’t Shy Away from Social Issues
By Alex Altman — TIME, Swampland
Rick Santorum’s victories on Feb. 7 kicked off a month-long trial period, which will be capped by Super Tuesday on March 6, to convince Republican voters that he is not only the best conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, but also a viable general-election candidate. Midway through Santorum’s moment, it’s tough to tell if he’s thriving or blowing it.

Birth control as election issue? Why?
By Ann Gerhart — Washington Post
To many observers, it seems that the clock has indeed been turned back. Using birth control to have sex without making a baby has been settled social behavior… For many, it seems the common-sense way to avoid the prospect of abortion, which has been the really divisive issue of sexual politics.

My Take: The myth and reality of the Catholic vote
By Stephen Schneck — CNN, Belief Blog
While there is not an obvious Catholic vote on the macro scale, there are three discreet “Catholic votes” that really matter in American elections.

Latino Mormons speaking out against Romney
By Russell Contreras — Associated Press
As Romney continues to seek the Republican presidential nomination while rarely discussing his faith, a growing number of vocal Hispanic Mormons say they intend to use Mormon teachings as a reason to convince others not to vote for him.

In wake of immigration law, some migrants return to Alabama
By Alan Gomez — USA Today
When Alabama’s immigration law went into effect in September, it sent shock waves throughout Hispanic communities within the state. Whole families left overnight, parents pulled their children out of school, and city centers became ghost towns as legal and illegal immigrants alike hid from police.

The Crazy Rush to Attack Iran
By Peter Beinart — Daily Beast, Opinion
…the experts are speaking out against attacking Iran over its nuclear program, but hawks like the GOP presidential candidates are drowning out the warnings.

Interfaith Group to Political Candidates: Ditch Divisive Religious Appeals
By Sarah Posner — Religion Dispatches
A coalition of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and religious liberties organizations has released a Statement of Principles regarding religion in political campaigns

NYPD Monitored Muslim Students All Over Northeast
By Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Eileen Sullivan — Associated Press
The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned.

The many faces of marriage in America
By Los Angeles Times, Editorial
The same shift that occurred in opinions about interracial marriage is happening in attitudes about same-sex marriage. Just ask folks in Washington and New Jersey.

They’ve been running a major campaign to urge Members of Congress to support these regulations as a way of protecting both God’s creation and human lives. According to Alexei Laushkin of EEN, “We believe protecting the unborn from mercury poisoning is a consistent pro-life position.”

Unfortunately, some on the Religious Right would rather stand with partisans decrying “big government” than stand up for children and pregnant women when it comes to mercury emissions. According to The Hill, several dozen Religious Right organizations are challenging EEN’s campaign, saying “most environmental causes promoted as pro-life involve little threat to human life itself, and no intent to kill anyone.”

The article goes on to point out that “mercury harms the nervous systems of children exposed in the womb and can impair learning and early development, among other harms associated with emissions of the toxic substance, according to EPA.”

It’s sadly all too predictable to see Religious Right figures clamoring to defend conservative ideology and score partisan points, even at the expense of the lives they claim to defend.  I’m glad to see EEN standing strong in the face of this cynical criticism.