Activists Push for Repeal of Tax Cut for Wealthy
By The Jewish Daily Forward
The young people are targeting the districts of Congress members who support tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 annually. They group said in a statement that the activists are “standing up to the wealthiest members of Congress who are voting to line their pockets while demanding more of the nation’s most vulnerable to reduce the deficit, balance the budget and protect funding for critical programs and services.”

The Republican Party Cardinal
By Andrew Sullivan — Daily Beast,The Dish
[Dolan's] stature turns a benediction into political act. It may just be a prayer – but it is one offered by one of the most recognizable Catholic leaders in the country, at a party political convention. It just can’t get more partisan than that.

The Real Reason Rick Warren Cancelled His Candidate Forum: His Increasing Irrelevance
By Amy Sullivan — The New Republic
Despite Warren’s efforts to make it seem as if he was selflessly cancelling an appearance with both presidential candidates in order to avoid contributing to a toxic political climate, the evidence strongly suggests that there wasn’t any Saddleback forum this time to cancel.

Romney says his Mormon tithing shouldn’t be public
By Thomas Burr — Salt Lake Tribune
Mitt Romney says in a new interview that one of the reasons he’s distressed about disclosing his tax returns is that everyone sees how much money he and his wife, Ann, have donated to the LDS Church, and that’s a number he wants to keep private.

Todd Akin in Tampa with top social conservatives
By Kate Nocera — Politico
The embattled Missouri Senate candidate flew to Tampa to meet with members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive coalition of powerful conservative and evangelical leaders, activists, and donors.

Kris Kobach Tells Mitt Romney How It’s Going to be on Immigration
By Adam Serwer — Mother Jones
Since the GOP primary, Romney has tried to moderate his rhetoric, if not his actual positions, refusing to answer specific questions and muddying his own views on what approach he would take on immigration. Now, the Republican platform commits him to a set of specific, hardline policies.

Christians Deliver Petition to Repeal Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s Executive Order
By Beau Underwood — Sojourners, God’s Politics
Today, two Christian leaders in Arizona delivered a petition signed by thousands of Christians to Gov. Jan Brewer calling on her to retract her controversial executive order denying driver’s licenses and other benefits to undocumented young people who qualify for deferred action.

ICE agents sue own agency over deferred deportations
By Alan Gomez — USA Today
A group of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents filed a lawsuit against their own agency Thursday, arguing that the Obama administration is not letting them fully identify and deport illegal immigrants.

Evangelical Colleges Didn’t Figure Out Whether They Covered Contraception Before Suing Over Obamacare Regulation
By Tara Culp-Ressler — Think Progress
In preparation to sue over Obamacare, evangelical colleges are more closely examining their existing student health plans — only to discover that they actually already cover the contraceptive services they object to.

Pluralism and prejudice: How conflicts over religious pluralism reveal America’s new ‘Sacred Ground’
By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite — Washington Post, On Faith
Patel sees our political process as a mirror of our increasing diversity, especially religious diversity. He writes, “America is among the most religiously diverse countries in human history and by far the most religiously devout nation in the West.”

After Sikh Temple Shootings, New Focus on Combating Hate Crimes
By John Nichols — The Nation
The signal that the White House has not and will not forget what happened at the Sikh Temple is important, as are the condolences the first lady shared. The real significance of the visit was the message—very much welcomed by the Sikh community in Wisconsin and nationally—involved the recognition of the need for a broader dialogue about violence and hate in America.

Blood on the hands of both sides in culture wars
By Tom Krattenmaker — USA Today
Thank you, Family Research Council, for now conceding what conservative groups have been loath to acknowledge in recent years: the truth that incendiary rhetoric indeed does contribute to a climate conducive to politically motivated violence.

Dolan to Give Benediction at Gathering of the G.O.P.
By Sharon Otterman — New York Times
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, will deliver the closing prayer at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., after Mitt Romney accepts the party’s presidential nomination next week.

Cardinal Dolan at the Values Voter Summit?
By Maureen Fiedler — National Catholic Reporter, Opinion
An appearance at this summit is tantamount to an endorsement of Republican candidates. In fact, it’s an endorsement of some of the most right-wing members of that party. Indeed, because of the confirmed appearance of Paul Ryan at the summit, observers might be led to think Dolan endorses the Romney-Ryan ticket.

Christians push for new immigration process as they support deferred status
By Noel Castellanos — Washington Post, On Faith
Unfortunately, within a week, Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman have all made moves to stop these opportunities for young people. This is why Christians are mobilizing again. In just a few days a petition targeted at Brewer, who was the first to take steps to limit the effectiveness of deferred action, has gained over 5,000 signatures from concerned Christians.

Middle class share of America’s income shrinking
By Associated Press
A study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center…describes this mid-tier group as suffering its “worst decade in modern history,” having fallen backward in income for the first time since the end of World War II.

New poll finds majority oppose making changes to Medicare
By Daniel Strauss — The Hill
The Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS poll released Thursday found that in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin, a majority of voters would rather Medicare “continue as it is.” Fewer than a third offered support for Ryan’s budget proposal that recipients get federal subsidies to buy private insurance.

Report: Romney Economic Plan Hurts Red States, Helps Wealthy Urbanites, While Obama Boosts Rural Areas
By Ari Melber — The Nation
Take the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the median price of a home is $1.3 million. There, 73% of residents do better under Romney’s plan than Obama’s…Yet in the heartland, the economic map skews just as strongly towards Obama. It is almost impossible, for example, to find any large areas of Ohio that don’t fare better under Obama’s plan.

Florida’s Menacing Moves to Restrict Voting
By Graciela C. Catasús — The Nation, Voting Rights Watch 2012
Florida’s actions appear to follow similar trends in other swing states, leading many to wonder if this is a tandem effort to suppress voting rights in states with sizeable Latino populations. Colorado and New Mexico are also cracking down on voter fraud—despite the fact that there is no evidence that it actually exists.

GOP embraces anti-Shariah
By Alex Seitz-Wald — Salon
In Tampa this week, GOP leaders adopted a plank to their platform supporting a ban on foreign law and aimed at Shariah, the Islamic religious law that many conservatives insist is secretly insinuating itself in the U.S.

NYPD: Muslims’ Conversations About Anti-Muslim Bias Justify Spying on Muslims
By Adam Serwer — Mother Jones
An improperly redacted court transcript reveals an NYPD official’s dubious rationale for spying on Muslims.

RNC Now Says Anti-Abortion Platform Doesn’t Necessarily Disavow Rape Exemptions
By Pema Levy — Talking Points Memo
Though RNC officials pushed back on the extreme characterization of their platform earlier in the week, the idea they they are not taking a stand one way or the other on rape and incest exceptions is relatively new.

Obama And Romney Faith Interview: Candidates Speak Openly About Religion
By Cathedral Age
Washington National Cathedral’s magazine, Cathedral Age, asked President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney an identical set of questions about the presence of faith in their lives and the role of religion in America.

‘You’re On Your Own’: Obama Readies Education Offensive Attacking Ryan Budget
By Pema Levy and Evan McMorris-Santoro — Talking Points Memo
Paul Ryan’s addition to the Republican presidential ticket unleashed a new back-and-forth over the future of Medicare. But Democrats believe Ryan also gives them an opening to talk about another seminal issue tied to the congressman’s controversial budget: education.

In Exclusive Interview, Paul Ryan Distances Self From Todd Akin
By CBS Pittsburgh
Ryan, like Romney, distanced himself from Akin’s remarks, but in Congress, he joined Akin in opposing abortions even when a woman has been raped.

Akin Fiasco Gets Rove to Admit, Again, Why Crossroads Exists
By George Zornick — The Nation
Crossroads GPS ads are supposed to simply be educational—so why are they suddenly being pulled in Missouri?

GOP platform calls for more Arizona-style immigration laws
By Cameron Joseph — The Hill
The official party position now reads that “State efforts to reduce illegal immigration must be encouraged, not attacked,” and says the Department of Justice should immediately drop its lawsuits against controversial state immigration laws in Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina and Utah.

Latino evangelicals find political voice
By Joseph Treviño — Arizona Daily Star
Samuel Rodríguez, a pastor and the head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that claims 40,118 affiliated churches, said that in Arizona alone the group has managed to register 98,000 Latinos to vote.

Five Things Government Does Better Than You Do
By Monica Potts — American Prospect
There are many ways in which the government can make better decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government programs. Here are five.

NYPD: Muslim spying led to no leads, terror cases
By Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo — Associated Press
In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department’s secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation, the department acknowledged in court testimony unsealed late Monday.

Black Baptist says racism still a problem
By Bob Allen — Associated Baptist Press
While predominantly white denominations prefer to save face about their shortcomings on racial-justice issues, Shosanya said, much of the posturing about being “one in Christ” is often anemic “when the rubber hits the road,” especially when that requires the sharing or relinquishing of power.

Stopping the GOP assault on democracy
By Katrina vanden Heuvel — Washington Post, Opinion
Few people spending more money to influence fewer voters in fewer states: That’s what shrinking democracy looks like. The only thing growing is the price tag. This is more than an election-year issue — it’s an existential crisis.

From Nunzilla to ‘You Go Girl’: A Tale of Sisters
By Katherine Marshall — Huffington Post, Opinion
With Paul Ryan now in the vice presidential spotlight, LCWR will not take a political stand. However, [Sr. Farrell] made clear that LCWR and its members will maintain their staunch support for the poor and programs that support them, and budgets will be an obvious focus.

The repugnant code behind Todd Akin’s words
By Washington Post, Editorial
Mr. Akin was utterly unconvincing in explaining that he “misspoke.” It is scary that someone so ill-informed could hold elective office or have a chance of becoming a senator.

Crucial Senate Race in Uproar
By Naftali Bendavid and Louise Radnofsky — Wall Street Journal
Republicans urged Rep. Todd Akin to quit the key Missouri Senate race after he said women’s bodies can avert pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape.”

What I built — with government help
By James C. Roumell — Washington Post, Opinion
I did work harder, and perhaps more imaginatively, than many colleagues. But does that mean I built it myself? Does it diminish my success to be grateful for the public investments that so clearly contributed to my success? Every successful person knows, and will admit if he is honest, that luck played a role in his good fortune.

The Promise-Keeper
By David Weigel — Slate
The point of all this: proving that the first “Medi-scare” battle of the election is ending and that Republicans have fought it to a draw. Ryan got his message down to a zinger, and repeated it all week. “We want this debate,” he said. “We need this debate. And we will win this debate.”

Ohio GOP Admits Early Voting Cutbacks Are Racially Motivated
By Ari Berman — The Nation
Why do Ohio Republicans suddenly feel so strongly about limiting early voting hours in Democratic counties? Franklin County (Columbus) GOP Chair Doug Preisse gave a surprisingly blunt answer to the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday: “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine.”

GOP prepares tough anti-abortion platform
By Peter Hamby — CNN
The Republican Party is once again set to enshrine into its official platform support for “a human life amendment” to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion without making explicit exemptions for rape or incest, according to draft language of the platform obtained exclusively by CNN late Monday.

Gov. Jan Brewer Tries to Stop the DREAM in Arizona
By Beau Underwood — Sojourners, God’s Politics
The faith community cannot be silent in the face of such despair. Gov. Brewer needs to hear from religious leaders disappointed in her actions in the hopes that such moral outrage might cause her to reverse course.

Farm Bill Blues
By Christian Century, Editorial
The farm bill is enormous in scope. It represents a mess of irrational, unhelpful policy; it’s also responsible for some essential programs. It needs to be reauthorized. Then it’s back to the longer-term work of building a food system that does right by farmers, eaters and the land.

Study: Less religious states give less to charity
By Jay Lindsay — Associated Press
The study released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that residents in states where religious participation is higher than the rest of the nation, particularly in the South, gave the greatest percentage of their discretionary income to charity.

Paul Ryan’s Uphill Fight for the Catholic Vote 
By Lauren Fox — US News & World Reports
“Catholics are steeped in a tradition that puts the common good and community before extreme individualism,” Gehring says. “This is going to be a factor with quite a few moderate Catholic voters in key states where Ryan’s appeals to the wonders of the free market are going to ring hollow.”

Nuns Ask Candidates To Spend A Day With The Poor
By Jacki Lyden — NPR
A group of Catholic nuns say they’re worried about the way GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney will approach poverty and safety-net programs, if elected. So the nuns have invited him, and his running mate Paul Ryan, to spend a day with them, helping the poor.

An Unserious Man
By Paul Krugman — New York Times, Opinion
Ryanomics is and always has been a con game, although to be fair, it has become even more of a con since Mr. Ryan joined the ticket.

Can Faithful America Vote for Paul Ryan?
By John W. McCarthy — Huffington Post, Opinion
What is clear is that Paul Ryan does an awful lot of talking about faith but seems to only follow Church teachings when it suits him politically. A few weeks ago he was leading the charge against the president’s balanced contraception policy — now he’s ignoring the urging of his Church leaders to restructure his budgetary priorities.

‘Dreamers’ cautious about Obama’s deferred-action program
By Daniel González and Eugene Scott — Arizona Republic
Undocumented immigrants are taking their time filling out the paperwork for President Barack Obama’s deferred-action program that allows them to legally stay in the country because they have only one chance to get the application right.

Spate of attacks near Ramadan trouble U.S. Muslims
By Yasmin Amer and Moni Basu — CNN
At least seven mosques and one cemetery were attacked in America during Ramadan, according to groups that track such incidents.

Shootings here, there, yet action eludes us
By Josh Brodesky — Arizona Daily Star, Opinion
“We are really well-suited to champion this cause,” Patricia Maisch, who grabbed the magazine from Jared Lee Loughner, told me last week. “I don’t see any reason to stop trying. If I do, then I will have lost a lot of respect for myself.”

Claire McCaskill Reacts To Todd Akin’s ‘Legitimate Rape’ Remarks
By Sam Stein — Huffington Post
“I have a hard time imagining a woman uttering the phrase ‘legitimate rape,’” McCaskill said. “It is not something that would ever come out of a woman’s mouth, because it is something every woman is fearful of. I think every woman knows someone who has had to deal with sexual assault.”

In Defense of the Southern Poverty Law Center
By Aaron Taylor — Sojourners, God’s Politics
It’s one thing to say the Bible says homosexuality is a sin and I oppose gay marriage. It’s another thing to say these people are out to get your children!…You can’t single out a group of people as a threat to civilization, and then cast yourself in the role of a victim when people suggest that your words are hate speech.

Memo to Ryan: “Life Issues” Go Beyond Abortion
By Simone Campbell — Religion & Politics, Opinion
Today, we continue to question how a budget that deliberately harms people at the economic margins while further enriching the wealthiest can ever be defined as “pro-life” or in keeping with Catholic social teachings.

Catholic Group Prays for Paul Ryan’s ‘Conversion’
By Alicia Mundy — Wall Street Journal, Washington Wire
The group launched a website, PrayforPaulsChangeofHeart.org, that asks visitors to “Please pray for Paul Ryan, a devout Catholic, to have a change of heart on the federal budget.” It includes a special Rosary prayer to St. Paul, “the great convert,” to bring about a transformation in the anti-deficit Republican.

As the White Protestant Vote Recedes, the GOP Turns to ‘Voter Fraud’
By Allan J. Lichtman — Daily Beast
Republicans are not responding to a newly discovered crisis in voter impersonation at the polls, but to a partisan crisis brought on by their party’s declining base of white Protestant voters.

Analyst says Romney plays religion card
By Terry Goodrich — Associated Baptist Press
A new political ad by presidential candidate Mitt Romney accusing President Obama of “waging war on religion” is an opening salvo in religious rhetoric that likely will escalate as the November election approaches, says a Baylor University political expert and author.

Obama turns back the clock on Guantanamo
By Baher Azmy — Washington Post, Opinion
In other words, far from closing the prison camp as he promised, President Obama is steadily returning Guantanamo to the secretive and hopeless internment camp that he vilified as a candidate.

PHOTOS: Masses yearning to breathe free
By MSNBC, Maddow Blog
Hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants scrambled to get papers in order Wednesday as the U.S. started accepting applications to allow them to avoid deportation and get a work permit under a new government program.

Nuns group: We are not leaving the church
By Kevin Eckstrom — Religion News Service
A leader of the group of Catholic nuns who are facing a crackdown from the Vatican said Thursday (Aug. 16) that her members have no plans or desire to leave the church, or reconstitute their group beyond Vatican control.

Family Research Council accuses Southern Poverty Law Center of sparking shooter’s hatred
By Chris Lisee — Religion News Service
The SPLC’s Mark Potok called Perkins’ accusations “outrageous,” and said his group is committed to offering “legitimate and fact-based criticism.”

What the Right Gets Wrong About the FRC Shooting
By Adam Serwer — Mother Jones
Given his group’s years-long characterization of gays and lesbians as child-molesting sociopaths bent on abusing children, I doubt [Family Research Council President Tony] Perkins wants his silly standard for what constitutes a justification of violence to be applied to himself.

Shooting at the Family Research Council Offices
By Tim King — Sojourners, God’s Politics
My heart is with the rest of the FRC staff. Their place of work will not feel safe after this. It will undoubtedly be difficult knowing there are those who would do violence against you because of your convictions.

Poll: Religious Groups Divided on Gun Control, But United Against Guns in Churches
By Lauren Markoe — Religion News Service
“Although the issue of gun control tends to divide Americans by party, gender, region and race, there is broad agreement among the public that there are some places where concealed weapons should be off limits,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director.

Young immigrants pack Navy Pier to seek protected status
By Antonio Olivo and Ellen Hirst — Chicago Tribune
The hosts of Dream Relief Day at Navy Pier on Wednesday expected a big turnout of people looking to take advantage of a new federal reprieve for students and young adults in the country illegally. But they were overwhelmed by the size of the crowd that showed up.

Executive order from Governor Jan Brewer blocks IDs, benefits for illegal immigrants
By ABC15.com
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday ordered state agencies to deny driver’s licenses and other public benefits to young illegal immigrants who obtain work authorizations under a new Obama administration policy.

Students face challenges, fears living without Social Security number
By Rose Ybarra — Catholic News Service
“When you don’t have papers, you live scared,” Aranet told The Valley Catholic, newspaper of the Brownsville Diocese. “You worry that if the police stop you, they’ll send you back. … My greatest fear is that they will stop us on the way to or from school.”

N.Y. Cardinal Timothy Dolan Defends Obama Invitation to Al Smith Dinner
By Chris Lisee — Religion News Service
Dolan said the dinner exemplifies the American value of free religious exercise, and called it an opportunity for civility and dialogue. He responded to critics by portraying Obama’s invitation as the lesser of two evils.

Paul Ryan, Joe Biden: A Tale of Two Catholics
By Daniel Burke — Religion News Service
Biden and Ryan both cite their faith as a formative influence, but neither is known as a standard-bearer for the Catholic hierarchy’s chief political causes: abortion and gay marriage. In fact, the two candidates are — politically at least — nearly polar opposites.

My Take: Christianity and Ayn Rand’s philosophy are 2 distinct religions
By Stephen Prothero — CNN, Belief Blog
Now that one of the Republican Party’s least ideological men (Mitt Romney) has christened one of the GOP’s most ideological men (Paul Ryan) as his running mate, Ayn Rand is back in the news.

Religious Progressives Cannot Sit Out This Election
By Rita Nakashima Brock — Huffington Post
Progressives have nothing like the funds that Citizens United has unleashed from the monied right wing. What we have are people hours, and it’s our willingness to work for candidates that is the best protection against a takeover of the country by the 1 percent at every level of our government.

What Jewish voters want — and what the candidates don’t offer
By Rebecca Vilkomerson — L.A. Times, Opinion
…the same Public Religion Research Institute poll cited above found that 46% of Jewish respondents said a commitment to social equality is the most important element of their Jewish identity. It may not be a significant force in the election of 2012, but it would be a mistake to discount this growing segment of the Jewish community.

Planning for Poverty: The SNAP Challenge
By Christian Piatt — Sojourners, God’s Politics
…families receive $4 a day per family member to cover food costs, so the SNAP challenge is pretty simple (in theory, at least): Live on the same amount with your family for a week. For a family of four like us, this means we’ll have $112 to spend on all groceries for the week.

Young immigrants can apply for Dream Act-like protections starting Wednesday
By Steve Hendrix — Washington Post
“This is single largest opportunity we’ve had since [the amnesty program of] 1986 to bring people out of the shadows and into documented status,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.).

The Difference a Century Makes: A Tale of Two Ryans
By Maria Mazzenga — Religion & Politics
Many of those protesting Paul Ryan’s budget measures cite the name of another Ryan in their arguments. In Catholic circles, the name Ryan in relation to the economy usually brings to mind another important figure: Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945), arguably the most influential American Catholic social and economic thinker of the twentieth century.

Ryan’s abortion stance could widen gender gap in swing states
By Sam Baker — The Hill
Rep. Paul Ryan’s record on abortion and contraception could help widen a gender gap that is already hurting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in several key states.

Some below poverty line don’t qualify for Medicaid
By Associated Press
Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don’t qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That’s especially true in states where conservative governors say they’ll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama’s health law.

Ryan hailed by Jewish GOPers, organizations see him as a face of budget confrontations
By Ron Kampeas — Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jewish groups see Ryan’s plan threatening Medicare and Medicaid, programs that are cornerstones of care for the Jewish elderly — a population growing faster than among most other religious and ethnic groups.

Pennsylvania Voter ID Decision: Judge Refuses To Grant Injunction To Halt Law
By Marc Levy — Associated Press
A Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday refused to stop a tough new voter identification law from going into effect, which Democrats say will suppress votes among President Barack Obama’s supporters.

Overt Discrimination in Ohio
By New York Times, Editorial
In Ohio, as in other states, the Republican Party is establishing a reputation for putting short-term political gain ahead of the most fundamental democratic rights.

Unprosecuted Hate Crimes
By New York Times, Editorial
…too often bias-motivated violence is underreported to state and local police departments, even when states and cities have hate crime laws on the books. In many cases, such violence is prosecuted as conventional crime.

Missouri ‘Right to Pray’ Law Could Limit Teaching Evolution
By Krystnell A. Storr — Science
Those words give students the legal right to skip assignments related to evolution if the subject matter conflicts with their beliefs, Rosenau says. And that exemption could extend throughout their scholastic career, he adds, since evolution is not just taught in one lesson but remains a recurrent theme throughout science education.

PNBC addresses prisoner reentry
By Bob Allen — Associated Baptist Press
The Progressive National Baptist Convention has set out to raise $100,000 to establish its first national center to aid churches in helping individuals re-enter and reintegrate into communities after being released from prison.

Paul Ryan’s Religion Problem 
By Sarah Amandolare — Salon
From Catholic and Protestant bishops to the 40-religion advocacy group People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), representatives of various faiths have shown disdain for Ryan’s 2013 House Republican budget, which passed on March 29.

Ryan’s Medicare plan would be tricky to pull off
By Associated Press
The Republican-backed shift to private insurance plans could saddle future retirees with thousands of dollars a year in additional bills. That would leave the children of the baby boom generation with far less protection from medical expenses than their parents and grandparents have had in retirement.

Romney-Ryan Economic Plans Would Increase Unemployment, Deepen Recession
By Ari Berman — The Nation
Ryan’s 2011 budget plan proposes what the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities calls “the most severe and wrenching budget cuts in US history—two-thirds of which would come from programs for people of low or moderate incomes” (Medicaid, Pell grants, food stamps and low-income housing).

Is the ‘culture-warrior’ model for archbishops the right one?
By National Catholic Reporter, Editorial
NCR does not believe the church should “back down.” The church’s involvement in the public square is vital. The church’s voice has been raised consistently on behalf of the poor and the marginalized, the undocumented and the unborn. The question is whether the “culture-warrior” model of the new trio of archbishops is the right model for such involvement.

What War on Religion?
By Tiffany Stanley — Religion & Politics, Opinion
If we could declare a moratorium on the phrase “war on religion” in all but the most apt circumstances, we would. We urge other media outlets, the president, and Mr. Romney to do the same.

Obama campaign unveils its ‘Catholics for Obama’ 2012 team
By David Gibson — Religion News Service
So far, however, the hierarchy’s efforts do not seem to have swayed Catholics, who often agree with the bishops on some issues but still tend to support Obama over Romney. And in October, just before the election, Obama is set to appear with Romney at a high-profile charity dinner hosted by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan — a platform some conservatives fear could give Obama a boost with Catholics. That has led to unusual criticism of Dolan from the right.

Black pastor: gay marriage wedge issue
By Bob Allen — Associated Baptist Press
African-American Baptist leaders are working together to counter attempts by outsiders to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to divide black voters, a Baptist minister and NAACP leader said in a radio interview Aug. 11.

Report Highlights Islam’s Global Diversity
By Chris Lisee — Religion News Service
“There isn’t one single Muslim world. There are many Muslims around the world that share beliefs, but there are differences as well,” said James Bell, director of international survey research at the Pew Forum.

Pastors foresee raceless church
By Jeff Brumley — Associated Baptist Press
Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta is considered by some a hopeful sign that Sunday may soon no longer be the most segregated time in America.

Paul Ryan’s budget logic is quandary for some Catholics
By Kathleen Hennessey and Lisa Mascaro — Los Angeles Times
…it is the Ryan budget — with its steep cuts to food stamps, healthcare for children and the disabled, and social programs, while sparing the Pentagon — that has put him at odds with some in his church.

Paul Ryan isn’t a deficit hawk. He’s a conservative reformer.
By Ezra Klein — Washington Post, Wonkblog
He is not primarily interested in reducing the deficit or cutting federal spending…Rather, the common thread throughout his career is his desire to remake the basic architecture of the the federal government.

Paul Ryan: Champion of Dissent
By Michael Sean Winters — National Catholic Reporter, Distinctly Catholic
Despite Ryan’s reputation as a serious intellectual, it is difficult to see how deep his intellect actually runs if he can so uncritically praise such a hateful human philosophy as Rand’s.

The Romney-Ryan Plan for America
By New York Times, Editorial
As House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan drew a blueprint for a government that would be absent when people needed it the most. Medicaid, food stamps, and other vital programs would be offloaded to the states, but the states would not be given the resources to run them. The federal government simply would not be there to help the unemployed who need job training, or struggling students who seek college educations.

Nuns Reject Vatican Takeover But Seek Dialogue on Differences
By David Gibson — Religion News Service
American nuns facing a Vatican takeover of their leadership organization on Aug. 10 rejected Rome’s plans to recast the group in a more conservative mold, but declined — for now — to respond with an ultimatum that could have created an unprecedented schism between the sisters and the hierarchy.

Vatican assessment discussed behind closed doors at LCWR assembly
By Carol Zimmermann — Catholic News Service
References to how the sisters were discerning their next steps were clear in the daily prayer sessions where the sisters were continually reminded that they were at a crossroads and should let go of fears and preconceived ideas and trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Talk About Poverty (#TAP): Peter Edelman’s Questions for Obama and Romney
By Greg Kaufmann — The Nation
…in a July 29 op-ed for the New York Times, Edelman takes on the popular myth first coined by Ronald Reagan, “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” Not so, Edelman argues. He notes work by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demonstrating that without Social Security, food stamps, the earned-income tax credit, and the rest of the safety net, “poverty would be nearly double what it is now.”

Brewer advisers form health pact to push to expand Medicaid
By Mary K. Reinhart and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez — Arizona Republic
Two key advisers to Gov. Jan Brewer are attempting to create a coalition of hospitals, insurance plans, providers and other players to push Arizona to expand Medicaid under federal health-care reform.

Deferred deportation program starts soon; advocates say issues remain
By Patricia Zapor — Catholic News Service
Potential applicants for the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals may be anxious to submit applications as soon as the system opens Aug. 15, but as the date approached, many issues remain unsettled.

State Voting Suppression Schemes and How They’re Being Challenged
By Aura Bogado — The Nation, Voting Rights Watch 2012
This week marks the forty-seventh anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. A lot has changed since then.