Excerpts and More Top Stories

Emily Schultheis, Politico – At least 5 million voters, predominantly young and from minority groups sympathetic to President Barack Obama, could be affected by an unprecedented flurry of new legislation by Republican governors and GOP-led legislatures to change or restrict voting rights by Election Day 2012.

GUN CONTROL: Time to face facts on gun control

Fareed Zakaria, CNN, Opinion – The United States stands out from the rest of the world not because it has more nutcases – I think we can assume that those people are sprinkled throughout every society equally –but because it has more guns.

ENVIRONMENT: The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

Richard A. Muller, NY Times Opinion – Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

EDUCATION INVESTIGATION: Senate Committee Report on For-Profit Colleges Condemns Costs and Practices

Tamar Lewin, NY Times – After a two-year investigation of for-profit colleges, Senator Tom Harkin will issue a final report on Monday. According to the report, there is overwhelming documentation of exorbitant tuition, aggressive recruiting practices, abysmal student outcomes, taxpayer dollars spent on marketing and pocketed as profit, and regulatory evasion and manipulation.

BABY BOOMERS: The Entitled Generation

Bill Keller, NY Times, Opinion – To my fellow baby boomers, we seem to have entered one of our periodic seasons of boomer-bashing. In rapid Op-Ed succession, we children of the postwar demographic bulge have been blamed for turning religion into an indulgent free-for-all, for giving elites a bad name and for making greed respectable, or at least acceptable.

HEALTHCARE: Health insurance mandate faces huge resistance in Oklahoma

Sandhya Somashekhar, Washington Post – Antipathy toward President Obama’s signature health-care overhaul runs so deep that when the federal government awarded Oklahoma a large grant to plan for the new law, the governor turned away all $54 million of it.

HEALTHCARE: Doctor Shortage Likely to Worsen With Health Law

Annie Lowrey and Robert Pear, NY Times – The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000.

TAX REFORM: Rep. Dave Camp patiently pursues tax reform

Lori Montgomery, Washington Post – Now, as Washington bickers over whether to keep existing tax policy a bit longer, David Camp (R-MI) is focused on finishing the job. Leaders in both parties say they want 2013 to be the year Congress finally enacts a simpler, fairer tax code. Last week, Camp unveiled legislation laying out his principles for reform and establishing deadlines to force action sometime next summer.

AURORA: Colorado Suspect Expected to Be Charged at Hearing

Jack Healy and Dan Frosch, NY Times – Colorado prosecutors are expected to formally charge James Eagan Holmes with multiple counts of first degree murder on Monday morning in a movie theater shooting rampage here 11 days ago that left 12 people dead and dozens wounded.

GOP: How Paul Ryan captured the G.O.P.

Ryan Lizza – The current Presidential campaign centers on the debate about the government’s role in the economy. Ryan, by forcing Republicans to embrace his budget plan, has helped shape this debate

WOMEN’S RIGHTS: Republicans vs. Women

NY Times, Editorial – A new Republican spending proposal revives some of the more extreme attacks on women’s health and freedom that were blocked by the Senate earlier in this Congress. The resurrection is part of an alarming national crusade that goes beyond abortion rights and strikes broadly at women’s health in general.

FARM BILL: Drought of Ideas in Congress Is Worse Than in Farm Belt

Bloomberg, Editorial – The worst drought in more than a half-century is gripping most of the U.S. Midwest and South, and Congress is deadlocked as it tries to pass a new farm bill, as it does every five years, amid demands for broad emergency assistance for the hardest hit areas.

SUPREME COURT: Scalia on Obama: ‘What can he do to me?‘

Kenneth P. Vogel, POLITICO – Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Sunday said he did not “view it as a threat” when President Barack Obama in April predicted his signature healthcare overhaul “will be upheld because it should be upheld” and that anything less would constitute “judicial activism” by the high court.

More on Elections 2012

ELECTIONS 2012/ROMNEY ABROAD: An American Abroad

Steve Coll, The New Yorker –  Boldness does not seem to be part of Romney’s makeup. Last week, he embarked on a far more conventional tour, visiting some of America’s most reliable allies: Great Britain, Israel, and Poland.

ELECTIONS 2012: Romney and the Go-For-Broke Election

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, Opinion – Here are the two great campaign mysteries at midsummer: Why does Mitt Romney appear to be getting so much traction from ripping a few of President Obama’s words out of context? And why aren’t Romney and other Republicans moving to the political center as the election approaches?

ELECTIONS 2012: Obama’s Team Taking Gamble Going Negative

Jeff Zeleny, NY Times – As the campaigns prepare for the next phase of the race, the two sides are taking stock of what they have achieved in their first sustained engagement, a relentlessly negative effort over the last two months to define the other. But both the opportunities and the risks in the definition wars are greater for Mr. Obama.

ELECTIONS 2012/ROMNEY ABROAD: Romney praises Israel’s success, but failure to mention occupation outrages Palestinians

AP through Washington Post – Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who called his comments racist and out of touch.

ELECTIONS 2012/DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION: Bill Clinton to Have Leading Role at Party’s Convention

Jeff Zeleny, NY Times – Former President Bill Clinton is set to play a central part in the Democratic convention, aides said, and will formally place President Obama’s name into nomination by delivering a prime-time speech designed to present a forceful economic argument for why Mr. Obama deserves to win a second term.

ELECTIONS 2012: Cheney calls Palin selection for vice president in 2008 ‘a mistake’

Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post – Former vice president Richard B. Cheney said the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008 was “a mistake” — the sort of mistake Mitt Romney should avoid.

ELECTIONS 201: If Obama loses the election, here’s why

Drew Westen, Washington Post, Opinion – So, beyond the anemic economy, why do the latest polls show the former Massachusetts governor in a dead heat with the president? Because Obama’s administration made three crucial errors that enabled the Republican obstructionism that has tied his hands for the past two years.

ELECTIONS 2012/UNDECIDED VOTERS: As campaign heads into final 100 days, undecided voters still struggle

Matt Zapotosky, Emma Brown, Laura Vozzella, Joshua Hicks and David A. Fahrenthold, Washington Post – In these next 100 days, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney and their political allies will spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to sway uncommitted voters in a few key states.

ELECTIONS 2012: Will America Abandon ‘Hope’?

Pete Du Pont, Wall Street Journal, Opinion - Sixty-five percent of respondents in a recent Rasmussen Reports poll felt our nation was on the “wrong track.”  To some degree they blame Mr. Obama for the weak economy and his policies for stifling economic growth. But our nation’s overall dissatisfaction can also be attributed to a disappointment in the way that this president has governed.

ELECTIONS 2012/ROMNEY TAXES: Romney unsure if he’s paid less than a 13.9% tax rate in the past

Morgan Little, Chicago Tribune – Romney’s 13.9% rate falls far below rates typically applied to those with incomes approaching the $20.1 million he made in 2010.

ELECTIONS 2012/FOREIGN POLICY: Romney and Obama Strain to Show Gap on Foreign Policy

Peter Baker, NY Times – In his latest broadside against the incumbent’s foreign policy, Mitt Romney blamed President Obama for the Arab uprisings last year, arguing that he could have headed them off by pressing the region’s autocrats to reform first.

ELECTIONS 2012/VOTING RIGHTS: A lifetime sentence for felons

Editorial Board, Washington Post, Opinion – In an election year when many states have added dubious voter ID requirements sure to affect minority voters disproportionately, another set of impediments to the franchise worsens the problem: laws in 11 states that disenfranchise felons.

ELECTIONS 2012/ROMNEY ABROAD: Why Is Mitt Romney Going to Poland?

Molly Ball, The Atlantic – It turns out Poland is far from a random choice — it’s a destination with both geopolitical and domestic resonance for Romney. Read on for five reasons his campaign likely chose it.

ELECTIONS 2012/ROMNEY ABROAD: Romney Courts Campaign Donors in Israel

Ashley Parker, NY Times – Mitt Romney came to Jerusalem to publicly lock arms with Israel. But privately, he also used the opportunity to raise money and offer top donors an unofficial mini-retreat abroad.

The Common Good publishes a U.S. domestic news digest every weekday, available here.