Amy Sullivan

On Time.com today: The U.S. Catholic Church’s all-out war against an abortion bill that doesn’t exist and wouldn’t pass even if it did. Or, Why I Don’t Want to Hear Another Word About FOCA.

Nancy Pelosi, who is leading a congressional delegation to Italy (the economy may be tanking but the co-dels must go on!), popped by the Vatican today for a chat with Pope Benedict. Anti-abortion advocates are pleased to hear that the Holy Father took the occasion to remind Pelosi that he does not believe Catholic politicians should …

If like many people you wondered if you’d heard correctly when Judd Gregg specifically cited his differences with Obama over the census–the census? that census?–when he withdrew his nomination to be Commerce Secretary, you might want to read my Time.com story on why the national headcount is such a red-hot political issue.

The Colorado Independent is reporting some interesting figures related to the involvement of major religious institutions in the campaign to reverse a California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. For all the flack the LDS Church has gotten for supporting the ballot initiative, its financial investment …

Mike Huckabee says the stimulus bill is “anti-religion.” The Christian Coalition calls it “an attack on people of faith.” The Traditional Values declares that the economic package “stimulates anti-Christian bigotry.” My goodness. Maybe the devil really is in the details.

Or…maybe this is a classic case of social conservatives …

So say the Democratic House and Senate negotiators working on the stimulus bill. It’s just in time for a conference meeting on the bill, scheduled start right about now. The final pricetag is said to be $50 billion less than the package the Senate approved yesterday. We’ll find out soon enough what got cut–and what, if anything, from …

Does having a MySpace page on which you don’t hide the fact that you’re a lesbian constitute “telling” the military about your sexual orientation? What about kissing your girlfriend in the checkout line in Wal-Mart? It does if you serve in the Kansas Army National Guard, which

If you watched Grey’s Anatomy last week (I know…go ahead and judge me), you might have seen a rather unusual ad for the birth control pill Yaz. I was about to hit the mute button when the Yaz actress looked into the camera and said, “You may have seen some Yaz commercials recently that were not clear. The FDA wants us to correct a few …

More than 5,300 people were killed last in Mexico’s horrific ongoing drug war. And now this. It’s nearly impossible to envision an end to the madness. But it would help if we at least had a new drug czar.

Obama’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday morning struck me as a little meh. There were some nice touches–as in his Inaugural address, he gave a shout-out to those “who subscribe to no faith” and to “humanists,” an encouraging break from the you-can’t-be-moral-without-being-religious rhetoric of the past eight years. And …

Diana Butler Bass makes a smart point about the grumbling about whether Obama is being sufficiently bipartisan in these early days of his Administration: Obama never promised bipartisanship. He vowed to end partisanship, to move beyond partisanship. You can argue he’s not doing a good job of post-partisanship either, but they’re not the …

We already know that Obama plans to officially announce Joshua DuBois’ appointment to be director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships tomorrow, as well as the unveiling of his newly-formed Presidential Advisory Council of the same name. But I’m told by a religious leader who will be part of the Council …

Mark Leibovich’s profile of Robert Gibbs and the Obama campaign’s communications operation was much-discussed when it came out in December. But there was one troubling passage in the piece that has not gotten the attention it deserves:

[Anita] Dunn tells the story of a tense practice session before the third debate in which Obama,

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