While some are calling yesterday’s change of policy with regard to contraception coverage a win-win for both the Catholic church and the Obama administration, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops does not see this as a win. Instead, they see it as one small little step, and they are pressing for much, much more.

The first amendment’s protection of religious liberty is not a license for religious organizations or individuals to disregard any law or regulation they don’t like. If the White House wants to end this fight, that’s the argument they’re going to have to make to the public. Instead, they have allowed the USCCB to set the terms of the debate, and the USCCB is quite happy to continue doing so.

This isn’t over, folks. Not by a long shot.

James Dobson’s slam on Newt Gingrich at the recent behind-closed-doors meeting of evangelical Christian leaders grabbed a lot of attention in the press, but no one seems to remember that these two have a past. In 2007, Gingrich went on Dobson’s radio program to confess his history of marital infidelity, and received the blessing of numerous TheoCon leaders for doing so.

Now, though, Dobson appears to have led the charge against Gingrich in that meeting of religious conservatives. Is Dobson repenting for having given Gingrich a platform to try to rebuild in image back in 2007?

Not since 1972 has generation played such a significant role in voter preferences as it has in recent elections. Younger people have voted substantially more Democratic in each election since 2004, while older voters have cast more ballots for Republican candidates in each election since 2006.

A new Pew Research Center study suggests this pattern may well continue in 2012.

Little reported on…except by themselves (and here)…were the arrest of several journalists, including Amy Goodman at the 2008 Republican Convention. Their crime was committing acts of journalism, which is obviously dangerous within a city block of a gathering of the GOP.

It occurs to me that in fact the self-styled sensible types are not arguing against “purity” but the progressives’ right to exist, much less speak out.

Obama’s 2008 campaign was about changing the way Washington worked, people either don’t think he has changed it or don’t think his changes have been for the better.

As you may have noticed Firedoglake is having a membership drive.

I mention this because earlier this month I received an email from Michelle Obama mentioning it was her husband’s birthday (50th) on August 4th.

Today I received an email from Cindy McCain stating that Monday, August 29th is her husband’s birthday (MMXIVth).

I’ve found one of the saddest yet most common defenses of President Obama’s handling of his job to be the weird argument that it simply wasn’t possible for him to do a better job, or to do anything different from what he did. It always reminds me of the mantra of the misguided extreme optimist Dr. Pangloss in Candide, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Ezra Klein is up with another post defending Obama with this same basic argument.

The level of Democratic enthusiasm for voting for President Obama again has dropped noticeably in PPP’s recent polling. From Tom Jensen, “Only 48% of Democrats on our most recent national survey said they were ‘very excited’ about voting in 2012. On the survey before that the figure was 49%. Those last two polls are the only times all year the ‘very excited’ number has dipped below 50%.”

As Obama buys into the deficit hysteria of the GOP, he is endangering not only the social safety net on which millions depend, but also his own particular job. One aspect of the 2012 election calculus that I don’t think Team Obama realizes is that a deal like this will throw away any hope he has of holding onto the Catholic voters that supported him in 2008.

In states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida, Catholics are a sizable chunk of the electorate, and Obama cannot afford to alienate them. If he caves to the GOP on the debt ceiling negotiations and sacrifices Social Security and Medicare to protect the tax gimmicks so beloved by the MOTUs and banksters, these voters will not be happy.

Just let those states sink in: Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida. Obama’s not going to win them without significant Catholic support, and cutting the social safety net is NOT going to help get those votes.