Daily links, Wed., Dec. 28: Sen. DeMint's war on the poor, and Christians libertarian and pugilistic

In class warfare news, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint issued his Tea Party-inspired deficit reduction plan [1], 70 percent of which ($3 trillion) comes from programs to help the poor; the rich (seniors with annual income of $1 million and certain super-wealthy farmers) lose about $20 billion in government support. You do the math. In other news, U.S. Catholic's own Liz Lefebvre blogs about the millionaires that make up Congress [2]. No wonder "shared sacrifice" tends to mean cutting Medicaid. Seriously? You can go to hell for that kind of meanness. (See Matthew 25 [3], goat section.) Also in politics, on the eve of a possible Ron Paul win in Iowa, Norman Horn explains how one can be both Christian and libertarian because--well, maybe you should just read it [4] if you are interested.

Laurie Goodstein at The New York Times covers the conflict between church (Catholic Charities) and state (Illinois) [5] over same-sex couples adopting children and Catholic Charities getting state contracts. We at USC have so already covered that.

At Vox Nova, Christmas continues as David Cruz-Uribe blogs about how well clergy get along at Bethlehem's church [6] of the Nativity. (Not so well.) Whatever happened to that "Prince of Peace" stuff?