FPL Daily News Reel: August 2, 2012
The FPL News Reel is a daily round-up of the top faith and politics stories in the news. You can sign up for the email version of the News Reel here, subscribe to the RSS feed here, and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel.
Faith leaders oppose GOP tax plan 
By Bob Allen — Associated Baptist Press
More than 60 Christian leaders and theologians…signed an open letter Aug. 1 criticizing a proposal backed by House Republicans to extend Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, while allowing enhancements to middle-class tax credits added in 2009 by President Obama to expire.
Any Way You Slice It, Romney’s Tax Plan Is Regressive
By Ed Kilgore — Washington Monthly
If wealth is a measurement of “success,” and if success is a measurement of “virtue,” then regressive policies become a moral imperative, and that’s pretty much the unstated overriding goal of today’s conservative movement and GOP.
A Budget Crisis Averted, for Now
By New York Times, Editorial
Members of Congress used to be embarrassed when they could not perform their basic job of passing spending bills and instead had to finance the government with a series of short-term resolutions. But such patchwork has now become commonplace, and it is a sign of Washington’s profound dysfunction that the short-term agreement reached on Tuesday came as a relief to both sides.
Catholics Share Bishops’ Concerns about Religious Liberty
By Pew Forum on Religion & Public LIfe
Yet the bishops’ protests…have not drawn much more interest among Catholics than among the general public. And there are no significant differences in the presidential vote preferences between Catholic voters who have heard about the bishops’ protests and those who have not.
WWII vet Sen. Inouye: Obama’s birth-control mandate is no Pearl Harbor
By Elise Viebeck — The Hill
The Senate’s most senior member called out a Republican congressman for comparing the federal birth-control mandate to the events of Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, 2001.
Pelosi, Dems push Homeland Security for clarity on LGBT deportations
By Mike Lillis — The Hill
Without specific, written guidance, there remains the very real risk agency officers, agents, and attorneys making decisions about individual cases would overlook LGBT family ties, particularly the ties of immigrants to their U.S. citizen same-sex partners or spouses, and thereby, decline to exercise prosecutorial discretion, Pelosi, Nadler and 82 other Democrats wrote…
Tennessee Candidates Engage in Anti-Islam Contest
By Reuters
An argument over who is more opposed to the Islamic faith and the construction of a mosque near Nashville has become an unlikely issue in a nasty Tennessee Republican congressional primary to be decided on Thursday.
Detained DREAMer Tells His Story From Behind Bars
By Marco Saavedra — Sojourners, God’s Politics
Despite being a DREAMer, the border patrol office I approached looking for a missing friend didn’t think twice about detaining me. Little did they know they were doing exactly what we wanted, bringing us to this detention center filled with low-priority detainees. No one deserves to be locked up like they are inside of this facility.
