Mourdock’s Comments Pose Dilemma for Romney – NYTimes.com

NYTs reports on Romney’s friends in the new more right wing Republican party and their outlandish remarks regarding rape and a women’s dignity and rights…

“The charged anti-abortion comments made this week by Richard Mourdock, a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, pose …”

via Mourdock’s Comments Pose Dilemma for Romney – NYTimes.com.

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Latinos Religion and Campaign 2012:Catholics Favor Obama, Evangelicals Divided – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Latinos are divided by religion in their preferences in the upcoming presidential election, according to the latest survey by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, both projects of the Pew Research Center. Three-quarters of Latino Catholics and eight-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Latinos support President Barack Obama’s re-election. However, among Latino evangelical Protestants, who account for 16% of all Latino registered voters, just 50% prefer Obama, while 39% support his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.

These same patterns are reflected in Latinos’ partisan affiliations. Eight-in-ten religiously unaffiliated Latino voters (who make up 15% of the Latino electorate) and seven-in-ten Latino Catholics (57% of the Latino electorate) are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. Among Latino evangelical voters, identification with the Democratic Party is lower; about half are Democrats or lean Democratic, while about a third are Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party.

As the presidential election approaches, many Hispanic churchgoers say they are hearing from their clergy about various political issues and, to a lesser extent, about candidates and elections. Roughly half of Latinos (54%) who attend religious services at least once a month say they have heard their clergy speak out about abortion, while 43% have heard from the pulpit about immigration, and 38% say their clergy have spoken out about homosexuality. A smaller proportion, roughly three-in-ten, report hearing from their clergy about candidates and elections.

via Latinos Religion and Campaign 2012:Catholics Favor Obama, Evangelicals Divided – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Campaigns Raise Focus on Women for Final Weeks – NYTimes.com

Shortly after the combative presidential debate on Tuesday, Mitt Romney’s campaign began running a striking new commercial that uses a former Obama supporter to contest the notion that Mr. Romney’s positions on abortion and contraception are …

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The Catholic “Swing” Vote – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Catholics are often identified as a major “swing” voting group in American politics.1 In recent presidential elections Catholics have made up roughly a quarter of the electorate, and, indeed, they have been closely divided between the two parties.

 

But a new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that most subgroups of American Catholics have reliably voted either Republican or Democratic. White Catholics who identify themselves as politically conservative have consistently voted for Republican candidates in recent elections. And white Catholics who identify themselves as political liberals have consistently voted for Democrats, as have Hispanic Catholics and other Catholic minorities.

The only group of Catholics that has been divided in recent elections is white Catholics who identify as moderates; they were closely divided in both 2000 and 2004 before swinging strongly in the Democratic direction in 2008. So far in 2012, there has been little drop-off in support for the Democrats among this group. In Pew Research Center polling conducted so far this year, about half of white Catholic moderates identify themselves as Democrats or say they lean toward the Democratic Party (51%), while 39% prefer the GOP.

via The Catholic “Swing” Vote – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

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Abortion laws: And then there was one | The Economist

MISSISSIPPI’S sole remaining abortion clinic is a small single-storey sandstone building on a street corner in the state’s capital. The Jackson Women’s Health Organisation (above) appears unremarkable, until you notice the reflective glass in all the doors and windows, the multiple security cameras and the thick black plastic draped over the wrought-iron fence to shield clients from …

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Valerie Jarrett Is the Other Power in the West Wing – NYTimes.com

President Obama was in a bind, and his chief of staff could not figure out how he had …

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Candidate Preferences by Religious Group – Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Polling conducted in May and early June by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that Mitt Romney continues to hold a commanding lead over Barack Obama among white evangelical voters. But Obama leads Romney by large margins among black Protestants and religiously unaffiliated voters.

The poll was conducted May 9-June 3 among 3,003 adults (including 2,338 registered voters). It was largely completed before the release of a weaker-than-expected federal jobs report on June 1 and recent declines in financial markets. The complete report, which includes general election preference by religion (PDF), is available on the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press’ website.

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Republicans Concerned Over State Focus on Social Issues – NYTimes.com

Fiscal issues and union rights were front and center in many Republican-controlled legislatures last year. But this year, with the nation heading into the heart of a presidential race and voters consumed by the country’s economic woes, much of the debate in statehouses has centered on …

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Catholic Fund Heightens Scrutiny of Recipients’ Ties – NYTimes.com

For three years now, Compañeros, a small nonprofit organization in rural southwestern Colorado, has received thousands of dollars from the Roman Catholic Church to help poor Hispanic immigrants with basic …

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Obama Backs Student in Furor With Limbaugh on Birth Control – NYTimes.com

The election-year fight over the administration’s birth control policy escalated Friday, with two unlikely figures — a Georgetown University law student and the conservative radio host …

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Rick Santorum Blinks in the Spotlight : The New Yorker

After ten months of ruthless culling, has the Republican “base”—an excitable, overlapping assortment of Fox News friends, Limbaugh dittoheads, Tea Party animals, war whoopers, nativists, Christianist fundamentalists, à la carte Catholics (anti-abortion, yes; anti-torture, no), anti-Rooseveltians (Franklin and Theodore), global-warming denialists, …

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Rick Santorum, Meet Hamza Kashgari : The New Yorker

President Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religious freedom makes Rick Santorum “throw up.” “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their …

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