A few weeks ago, I was rummaging through a storage closet at home when I came across a stamp collection I kept when I was a kid.

I was surprised to see it because I assumed that I had long ago discarded this battered book of postage stamps mainly from the 1960s and `70s. I began leafing through it and almost immediately spotted a U.S. stamp that made me do a double-take. It was an 8-cent stamp from 1972 that depicted a drawing of a typical nuclear family of a mother and father with two children. Across the top were the words "Family Planning."

Ralph Reed, the main architect of the successful political development and mobilization efforts of the Christian Coalition in the 90s -- is back.  Not that he ever really left, but he is back now with what he calls a "a 21st-century version of the Christian Coalition on steroids."

Adele Stan has the story at AlterNet -- including how the recent Wisconsin recall was a pilot project for November.  Reed says that his Faith and Freedom Coalition, will contact some 27.1 million conservative voters as many as as dozen times before November as well as focus on getting voters, Stan reports to "vote early in states that permit it."

This is, in my opinion, the most important election related story about the Religious Right this year.  It is a must read for anyone who is serious about the 2012 election, and for that matter, the future of American politics.

Here are a few excerpts.

Several years ago, when Mitt Romney was merely a multi-millionaire Massachusetts politician, he couldn't locate the conservative Christian evangelical movement with a GPS or MapQuest. Over the past few years however, Romney and his team have been holding a series of meet-ups - whose pace has been recently accelerated - with conservative Christian leaders to assure them of Romney's fealty to their issues.

When Romney heads off to Israel later this summer, he hopes to accomplish at least three objectives: renew his longtime friendship with Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu; convince Jewish donors and voters that he is more Israel-friendly than President Barack Obama; and, send a message to conservative Christian evangelicals that he can be trusted.

A 2011 poll conducted after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with the Religion News Service, found that 6 in 10 evangelicals, and 38 percent of all Americans believe that God uses natural disasters to send messages. When natural disasters strike, whether they are hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornados or forest fires not caused by human intervention, Christian fundamentalist disaster interpreters come out of the woodwork. They trumpet the news that God is sending a warning to humankind.

While the devastating forest fires in Colorado may not have been directly caused by human intervention, an unholy alliance of Christian dominionists and libertarians may have exacerbated the damage.

Christian Broadcast Network's Brody File reports, "Last week around 70 conservative Christian leaders met in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to discuss what it would take to get behind Romney." CBN's lead political correspondent, David Brody, states that the choice for the vice presidential candidate is crucial, and "acceptable nominees" for vice president include the following.

Tim Pawlenty
Mike Huckabee
Bob McDonnell
Rick Santorum
Bobby Jindal
Marco Rubio

It is not surprising to hear Catholic League President Bill Donohue call for liberal Catholics to fall in line or leave the Church.  What is surprising is that former New York Times editor Bill Keller recently took to the op-ed page to agree.

In so doing, career journalist Keller exposed both his attitude towards and ignorance about his faith. Actually, we have to call it his former faith because he says he is so beyond lapsed he is now a "collapsed Catholic."

Predictably, the folks at the Christian Right Family Research Council and its political arm FRC Action, are not happy with the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Obama healthcare plan.

On the day the decision was handed down, Tom McClusky, Senior Vice President of FRC Action, sent out an e-mail to donors asking for funds so that the group could reinforce its "efforts at the Republican National Convention and the Platform Committee meetings the week before."

According to McClusky, "Our aim is to keep the Republican document conservative with an emphasis on the pro-life and traditional family planks already in the platform." McClusky wants to repeal "Obamacare. And not just repeal "some of it and not other parts. Repeal the whole thing and replace it with common sense reforms that can be agreed upon."

McClusky then listed "just a few of the major problems with ObamaCare" based on an FRC Action  analysis:

• Forcing Americans to have health insurance or be fined (or taxed!)
• A new bureaucracy (IPAB) that will serve as a rationing board
• Subsidies for health plans that include abortion in state exchanges
• The mandatory abortion fee that is at least $12 per year for all plans with abortions
• No conscience protections against government discrimination against businesses, providers, health insurers who refuse abortion.
• Religious Freedom violation through the contraception/abortifacient mandate, which narrowly restricts religious liberties to churches. Penalties for failure to comply could be $100 per day per employee for the employer (and insurer) who fails to offer "preventive care services", meaning contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilizations free to the patient.

McClusky adds that "now it's our job to make sure that we have the right elected officials who won't abuse their authority. ...The Republican Party Platform meetings in August are only one step in our efforts." He ends by citing Ephesians 6:13:

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

But in the spirit of coded messages aimed at the Biblically-literate Christian Right, the surrounding text is worth reading, especially:

"Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." [New International Version (NIV)].

So for McClusky, the choice in November apparently is between a Patriot and an agent of Satan.

Let's start with the now immortal words of former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who during a February 2002 press briefing tried to explain the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups: "[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - there are things we do not know, we don't know."

Here are some things "we know that we know" about William Donohue: he has been president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for nearly twenty years; he's quick to accuse anyone criticizing the Catholic hierarchy as being a Catholic-basher; he relishes publicity -- always ready for his Fox News Channel close-up; he's a stalwart defender of all things Catholic; he's gruff and likes to throw his weight around; he's mean-spirited and prone to making outrageous comments; he's a serial gay-basher; he has been a staunch apologist for priestly child abuse, claiming it was the result of having homosexual priests; and, he has a predilection for dumping on Jews.

One of our "known unknowns?" Why does Donohue feel he can dump on Jews with impunity?

It is long past time to end the use of Nazi and holocaust analogies regarding legal abortion and contraception in the United States. The practice substitutes a weak, inflammatory analogy for substantive disagreement. It elevates the most cynical kind of demagoguery over respect for constitutional democracy. It is abusive towards the the religious views of those for whom abortion can be a moral choice, which includes most of organized Judaism. What's more, the Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly denounced such uses as a further abuse of the victims of the Nazi holocaust itself.

What is remarkable to me is that some of those who engage in this also claim to embrace civility in public life, and do not seem to see any inconsistency in their approach.    

In recent weeks we've watched the Vatican try to stifle a vital part of the Catholic Church: the nuns.  Indeed, the Church fathers seem to have become quite unhinged in their efforts to quiet women who have dedicated their lives not only to Catholicism, but to betterment of all.

Why is this?  Its simply because the good Sisters have the ability to redirect the Church to a place where conservative men do not want to go.

"Our economy has become what it has to a large degree in spite of the government, not because of it.  At times the government has helped, and at times it has hurt, but in balance, it has probably done more damage than good when it has intervened."  "With sound management, our U.S. government could be 20% of its present size while accomplishing much more than it does now."  I See a New America, Rick Joyner, pgs. 61, 99.

Despite massive cultural changes, young people coming out an at earlier age, more support groups, greater awareness of and attention paid to bullying as exemplified by the powerful It Gets Better Project, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens continue to face incredibly difficult times in their homes, schools and communities.

A new Human Rights Campaign (HRC) survey finds that "Official government discrimination or indifference along with social ostracism leaves many teens disaffected and disconnected in their own homes and neighborhoods."