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
Obama Says Faith Mandates Him to Care for the Poor
By Lauren Markoe — Religion News Service
President Obama connected his faith with his policies toward the poor at the National Prayer Breakfast…a subtle but sharp contrast to remarks made by presidential hopeful Mitt Romney the day before.
Why the poor should concern Romney
By Ruth Marcus — Washington Post, Opinion
The deeper problem is that Romney’s remarks betray a trio of fundamental misunderstandings: of the nature and scope of poverty in America; the state of the social safety net; and the impact of his own proposals on protections for the poorest Americans.
DeMint to Romney: Love the Poor By Shredding the Safety Net
By Ed Kilgore — Washington Monthly, Political Animal
Romney is also taking flak from conservatives who thought his comments about the “very poor”…showed too much interest in helping those most in need.
Is Romney Gaining Ground among White Evangelical Voters?
By Joanna Brooks — Religion Dispatches
Primary results in Florida show that Mitt Romney show that Romney may be gaining evangelical voters, a group once thought impossible for him to win.
New Poll: Mainline Protestants Up for Grabs Heading into November
By Lauren Markoe — Religion News Service
They may not be as large as Catholics or as active as evangelicals, but white mainline Protestants have a big thing going for them this election cycle: they are divided, and possibly persuadable.
Black Churches and a New Generation of Protest
By Leslie D. Callahan — New York Times, Room for Debate
…given the proportion of African-American people who are or have been imprisoned, our nation needs a way back to productive life for previously incarcerated persons. A good beginning would be for churches to ensure that returning citizens were welcomed back into their communities of faith.
Study says immigration law has economic costs
By Dana Beyerle — Tuscaloosa (AL) News
An exodus of illegal immigrants could cost the state billions of dollars a year, according to a study by Samuel Addy, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama.
California’s Catholic hierarchy takes stand against illegal-immigration dragnet
By Matt O’Brien — Bay Area News Group
The Bay Area’s biggest religious institution, the Catholic Church, is throwing its weight against a federal immigration dragnet that in the past two years deported more than 6,500 people from the region.
Secret NYPD Document Describes Which Muslims to Spy On
By Joe Coscarelli — New York Magazine
Recommendations from [a confidential NYPD intelligence report] include, “Expand and focus intelligence collections at Shi’a mosques,” but as noted by NBC New York, none of the dozen mosques listed in New York and nearby states “has been linked to terrorism, either in the document or publicly by federal agencies.”
Singling Out Islam: Newt Gingrich’s Pandering Attacks
By Conor Friedersdorf — The Atlantic, Opinion
…anti-Muslim bigotry in America is treated differently than every other kind, often by the very same people who allege without irony that there is a war in this country against Christians.
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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
Mitt Romney Not Concerned About People Living In Poverty — But He Should Be
By Rev. Chuck Currie — Huffington Post, Opinion
But talk to social service providers and faith-based groups…and you’ll hear story after story about people being turned away from aid because it doesn’t exist.
Obama uses prayer breakfast to call for assistance to poor
By Amie Parnes — The Hill
President Obama used his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday to discuss the need for the country to take care of the poor and needy in society.
National Prayer Breakfast Gets A Rival: The People’s Prayer Breakfast
By Jaweed Kaleem — Huffington Post
The National Prayer Breakfast is about to get “occupied” — sort of. Just half a mile from the hotel, dozens or perhaps hundreds of a network of clergy and their supporters, part of “Occupy Faith” within the Occupy Wall Street movement, plan to converge for their own “People’s Prayer Breakfast.”
Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges
By Denise Grady — New York Times
Many Catholic colleges decline to prescribe or cover birth control, citing religious reasons. Now they are under pressure to change.
Right still reads Falwell’s playbook
By Michael Sean Winters — National Catholic Reporter
Religion in America has long been prominent in the public square, but it is only recently that the primary face of religion in political discourse has been the face of conservative evangelical Christianity.
Barack Obama announces plan to help homeowners
By Jennifer Epstein — Politico
President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced a plan to resuscitate the struggling housing market and help millions of homeowners refinance their mortgages, urging Congress to address a problem that is “massive in size and scope.”
Immigrant Worker Firings Unsettle a College Campus
By Jennifer Medina — New York Times
Seventeen workers could not produce documents showing that they were legally able to work in the United States. So on Dec. 2, they lost their jobs…The renewed discussion over immigration and low-wage workers has animated class discussions, late-night dorm conversations and furious back and forth on alumni e-mail lists.
Paul: Immigration not solved by barbed wire, guns
By Beth Fouhy — Associated Press
Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul outlined his views on immigration Wednesday, saying he favors a compassionate policy that doesn’t rely on “barbed-wire fences and guns on our border.”
Warren Buffett’s ‘nuclear bomb’
By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite — Washington Post, On Faith
Great wealth is not, in itself, immoral. What is immoral is when some of the wealthy their means to lobby for an unfair advantage that tilts the economic playing field so grossly in their favor. All Americans have a moral obligation to level the playing field again.
Good Returns
By Thomas Healey — America
The latest version of socially responsible investing is known as “positive investing,” taking a financial stake in companies or institutions committed to making a meaningful societal impact.
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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 and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel
Romney sweeps most groups in Florida vote
By Tom Curry — NBC News
Mitt Romney swept to victory in the Florida primary Tuesday night by winning nearly every income, age, religious, ideological, and ethnic group…
Turning the ‘Buffett Rule’ Into Law
By New York Times, Editorial
On Wednesday, Senate Democrats are expected to create legislation that would require million-dollar earners to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Even if the bill faces a brick wall of Republican opposition, which it will, a vote on this proposal cannot come soon enough.
Obama’s breach of faith over contraceptive ruling
By E.J. Dionne Jr. — Washington Post, Opinion
One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.
Government, Religion and Contraception
By Martin E. Marty — Sightings
Such issues are easily exploited by political factions and interests on all sides, but they cannot easily be wished away. Did the government in the current case act brutally, as its opponents claim? Or is the government simply seeking to help assure justice to citizens of all religious and non-religious sorts?
Corrections, religious groups ask lawmakers to oppose prison privatization
By Kathleen Haughney — South Florida Sun-Sentinel
A coalition of 17 groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Private Corrections Institute and several human rights and religious organizations sent a four-page public letter to Senate President Mike Haridopolos today stating its opposition to a controversial prison privatization proposal.
Study Says U.S. Muslims Don’t Want Shariah Either
By Omar Sacirbey — Religion News Service
North American Muslims are more than satisfied with the secular legal system and do not want a set of parallel courts for Islamic law, according to a new study of U.S. and Canadian Muslims by a Washington-based think tank.
At West Point’s prayer breakfast, no room for hate
By Sally Quinn — Washington Post, On Faith
Where is that zero-tolerance policy against bigotry now? Who invited Boykin to speak at West Point? When the superintendent, Lt. General David H. Huntoon, found out about it, why didn’t he cancel the address immediately instead of waiting until there was a media firestorm?
Local groups start fight against trafficking
By Joseph Dits — South Bend Tribune
Eleven orders of Catholic nuns in Indiana and Michigan, including the local Sisters of the Holy Cross and Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, contacted the managers at 220 hotels within a 50-mile radius of Indianapolis. They knew that this weekend’s Super Bowl could be ripe ground for the use of sex slaves in prostitution.
Young lawyer fights for social justice on her way to becoming a nun
By Sheila Stroup — New Orleans Times-Picayune
McCrary tries to strike a balance between prayer and ministry. The young lawyer, who will be 30 in February, has a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship and spends her days as an advocate and organizer, working with Safe Streets/Strong Communities, a grassroots group that operates out of an office on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard.
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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 and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel
Challenging Racist Campaign Rhetoric
By Rev. Jennifer Butler — Huffington Post, Opinion
Leaders of both parties agree that the dignity of work is better than living on the dole, but the GOP tactic of pitting employment against the safety net is a false choice that promotes a cruel agenda.
Is compassionate conservatism dead?
By Amy Sullivan — USA Today, Opinion
Just three years after George W. Bush left the White House, compassionate conservatives are an endangered species. In the new Tea Party era, they’ve all but disappeared from Congress.
Florida Evangelicals a different breed of voter than brethren in Iowa, South Carolina
By John Sepulvado — CNN, Belief Blog
There are signs that Florida’s evangelical voters may be more forgiving of Romney’s past social liberalism than their Iowa and South Carolina brethren – and more willing to support a Mormon candidate.
A Harder Squeeze on the Poor
By New York Times, Editorial
House Republicans have hit upon a noxious scheme to help pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut: a tax increase on millions of poor working families.
Paul Ryan budget: Democrats await new proposal
By Jennifer Haberkorn — Politico
Democrats have had success in framing the original plan — under which traditional Medicare wasn’t an option — as “the end of Medicare as we know it.” They’re hoping to do the same this year when senior voters and Medicare will be important to the presidential and down-ticket races.
Working Poor: Almost Half Of U.S. Households Live One Crisis From The Bread Line
By Alexander Eichler — Huffington Post
What does it mean to be poor? If it means living at or below the poverty line, then 15 percent of Americans — some 46 million people — qualify. But if it means living with a decent income and hardly any savings — so that one piece of bad luck, one major financial blow, could land you in serious, lasting trouble — then it’s a much larger number. In fact, it’s almost half the country.
Missouri Faith Leaders Take On Predatory Lenders
By Jim Hill — Ethicsdaily.com
A coalition of community and faith groups is currently supporting an initiative petition to be placed on Missouri’s November ballot to cap the rate of predatory lending in our state at 36 percent.
General Withdraws From West Point Talk
By Erik Eckholm — New York Times
Plans for a talk at West Point by a retired general known for his harshly anti-Muslim remarks were abruptly canceled on Monday….
Farmers, immigrants unite against E-Verify
By Manuel Valdes — Associated Press
In Olympia, it’s not too often immigrant-advocacy groups and farmers are on the same side of a proposed bill. But the unlikely allies have teamed up in this session of the Legislature to push a measure aimed at stopping more cities and counties from adopting a federal program that checks an individual’s eligibility to work in the U.S.
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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 and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel
How conservatives lost their moral compass
By Neal Gabler — Politico, Opinion
What is happening to America is not the rise of a new conservatism. It is the demise of shame.
2012 racial code words obscure real issues
By Juan Williams — The Hill, Opinion
Race is always a trigger in politics, but now a third of the nation are people of color — and their numbers are growing. With those minorities solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president, the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics.
Beyond the Buffett Rule
By Paul Waldman — American Prospect
To reform our tax code, we have to treat income earned from investments the same as income earned from working.
With Focus on Income Inequality, Albany Bill Will Seek $8.50 Minimum Wage
By John Eligon — New York Times
The Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park is no more, but the focus it brought to income inequality is having an impact in Albany and beyond.
Romney adviser goes all out to rally Hispanics in Florida
By Eli Saslow — Washington Post
Morris had spent the past week buying Hispanic radio advertisements, cajoling Florida politicians into endorsements, making speeches in two languages and cashing in every favor earned during her 20 years as a political consultant. “Right now, our Hispanic outreach is me,” she said.
A Divide on the Payoff of Legalizing Immigrants
By Julian Aguilar — New York Times
Granting legal status to the illegal immigrants living in one of Texas’ largest metropolitan areas would generate at least $1.4 billion a year in revenue for state and federal agencies, with Social Security and Medicare being the largest potential beneficiaries, according to an analysis by a Houston business group.
Mark 1:21-28: The Need for Authentic Leadership
By Rev. Angela Zimmann, Ph.D — Huffington Post, Religion
The National Latino Evangelical Coalition launched its “Nuestro Futuro” campaign, a national campaign to register new Hispanic evangelical voters, particularly young Latinos and Latinas.
Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims Blast Rick Santorum on Equality Comment
By Omar Sacirbey — Religion News Service
Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus are accusing Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum of bigotry and ignorance after he said that “equality” is solely a Judeo-Christian concept.
Wisconsin Rises Up Against Walker
By John Nichols — The Nation
What does democracy look like? How about this: a governor, swept into office on the GOP wave of 2010 with a financial assist from the billionaire Koch brothers, pivots immediately from moderate talk about job creation to radical austerity that divides his state more than any in the Union. He attacks the collective bargaining rights of public workers and teachers.
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