Obama Appoints Church-State Law Expert to Head Faith-Based Office

As the world watched the Vatican for an announcement of a new leader for the Roman Catholic faithful, the White House quietly made a leadership appointment of its own on Wednesday, to the office responsible for outreach to religious organizations: Melissa Rogers will be the new director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

In some ways, the appointment of Ms. Rogers, a scholar of church-state legal issues, signals a new focus for the office. Her predecessor, the Rev. Joshua DuBois, sent President Obama Bible passages each morning and was known for fostering discussions with religious leaders on how to approach broad social goals. Yet Reverend DuBois made little headway in clarifying the First Amendment issues facing the office, which has been controversial since President George W. Bush created it in 2001.

But in another sense, Ms. Rogers wil be continuing a job Mr. Obama asked her to start in 2009, when she led a diverse advisory committee charged with recommending ways to overhaul the office. Mr. Obama signed an executive order codifying many of the proposals, most of which clarified the ground rules for religious organizations seeking government aid for social services, late in 2010.

“Melissa will work to advance the president’s vision by promoting partnerships that serve the common good in ways that respect church-state separation and religious freedom,” a White House official said. “Like President Obama, Melissa believes that government and religious organizations can partner to promote the common good, but that government should not promot! e religion or become excessively entangled with it.”

The agency, originally called the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, was best known for its mission in the Bush administration to help religious groups secure government grants to provide social services. Yet, as Ms. Rogers noted in a 2011 speech, such partnerships “long predate the Bush administration, and they will far outlast the Obama administration.”

She added, “Thus it’s necessary and prudent to ensure that these partnerships are as effective and constitutionally compliant as they can be.”

She has praised the Obama administration for making nonfinancial relationships a priority, arguing that they can be just as effective without prompting thorny constitutional issues.

Yet Ms. Rogers has been vocal about her disagreement with current policy on an important issue for civil libertarians: allowing religious organizations to hire based on religion for programs that receive federal money.

“While I elieve religious organizations should have full freedom to make religious calls regarding jobs subsidized by tithes and offerings,” Ms. Rogers said, speaking to the Baptist Joint Committee in 2011, “when government-funded jobs are involved, I believe the calculus changes.”

“I believe the Obama administration should undo Bush policies that broke with that tradition” of equally opportunity for taxpayer-financed positions, she said.

Church-state separation advocates cheered her appointment. The Rev. Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, called her a “good choice,” with a “wealth of knowledge about the constitutional issues surrounding church-state relations and a reputation for thoughtfulness and patience.”

Ms. Rogers is the director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a senior fell! ow at the! Brookings Institution. She has previously been an executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and a general counsel for the Joint Baptist Committee, and she was a co-author of a case book on religion and law.

Imagine Adjustable Prescription Glasses

Adlens glasses use removable knobs to adjust the prescription.

Adlens is about to introduce a pair of inexpensive eyeglasses with both celebrity cachet and a technology that lets you adjust the prescription by just turning a knob.

Its John Lennon Collection features glasses in the round style favored by Mr. Lennon (or Harry Potter, if you don’t know who Mr. Lennon is) with a variable lens that can be djusted for near, intermediate or distant sight. The sizable knobs that adjust the lenses are removable, but you would have to keep them handy if you often want to change prescriptions.

The glasses, which become available in April at a price of $80, are just one of several similar designs available from other companies, but Adlens claims its design has a greater range of adjustability than those of its competitors.

The glasses work by using fluid to change the shape of a membrane inside the lens, which changes the prescription. Different companies have taken a variety of approaches to variable focus lenses, including one that uses liquid crystals to make the adjustment.

The John Lennon Collection will be available in a variety of styles.

In a test, the ophthalmologist Ryan Beveridge, using a lensometer, found that the glasses delivered on the declared corrective power of minus 4.5 diopters to plus 3.5 diopters. That means correction from fine print to scenic overlooks.

The doctor said the glasses were good for people with presbyopia, an inability to focus, especially on items that are close, which is often addressed with bifocals or trifocals. Virtually everybody will get presbyopia, usually after age 40. “These will work for a majority of people,” Dr. Beveridge said of the Adlens glasses.

But not everybody. People with astigmatism, for instance, an abnormal curve of the cornea, will not be helped much by the adjustable focus.

Dr. Beveridge called th design “a good start,” although he noted some lens aberrations and distortions. For that reason, he said, the Lennon glasses may be best used as a backup.

To add a little Lennon-like social responsibility to the brand, for each pair purchased, Adlens will donate a pair of glasses to needy Rwandans through its Ministry of Health.

Obama Says Budget Differences Could Be ‘Too Wide’ for a Deal

President Obama, in an interview with ABC News released on Wednesday, said that the differences between Democrats and Republicans on spending and taxes may be too great to reach an agreement on the budget.

“Right now, what I’m trying to do is create an atmosphere where Democrats and Republicans can go ahead, get together and try to et something done,” Mr. Obama said. “But ultimately it may be that the differences are just too wide.”

If the Republicans won’t consider increasing revenues, or will only trade revenues for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, “then we probably are not going to be able to get a deal,” he said.

The president called the recent meetings he’s had with Republican members of Congress “useful,” adding that he’s learned “people don’t always know what I’ve actually proposed.” The president will continue his outreach on Wednesday with a lunch meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Responding to Representative Paul D. Ryan’s call for the White House to put forward a budget that would achieve balance in 10 years, Mr. Obama said that he would not “chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance.”

The budget put forward by Mr. Ryan would make cuts to domestic government programs, including Mr. Obama’s signature health care reform, overhaul Medicare and Medicaid and cut the top marginal income tax rate, while balancing the budget by 2023.

Mr. Obama, rejected this proposal, suggesting that Mr. Ryan’s budget would achieve balance “on the backs of, you know, the poor, the elderly, students who need student loans, families who’ve got disabled kids.”

Karma Hotspot Gives Out Free Data

The Karma Hotspot gives you free data each time you allow someone to share your hotspot.

I hate when products make me a shill by alerting everyone on Facebook when I use them. Maybe I don’t want to share what pictures I’ve viewed on EyeEm, and I certainly don’t want Spotify telling anyone I listened to the Archies.

Which makes the Karma Hotspot somewhat confounding. It appears to be one of those apps that overshares, but it isnâ€t.

The Karma Hotspot acts as a go-between to connect a Wi-Fi phone, tablet or computer to the Web using the mobile phone network. It gives away data - 100 megabytes’ worth - when you sign up, and each time you allow someone to share your hotspot. That 100 megabytes is equivalent to downloading about 300 e-mails or 15 good-quality three-and-a-half minute songs.

To make joining easy, Karma’s registration is through Facebook. All you need is an e-mail address and a Facebook password, and you’re in. In fact, you can’t currently sign up without a Facebook account. The company said it was working on an alternative.

Here is where the confusion comes in. When you sign up with any app through Facebook, it asks if you want to allow the app - in this case Karma - to share information. If you say yes, you will see a message telling you that Karma can share posts on your timeline. That makes it look as if it ! will.

But, although the mechanism is there to share, said Robert Gaal, Karma’s chief executive, the app doesn’t send any automatic notifications, so it doesn’t matter. In a test, Karma sent no unwanted alerts.

To be doubly sure, you can take another step to protect your privacy in  Karma’s Facebook settings. Look for the little gear icon in the upper right corner of your Facebook home page. Click it for a drop-down menu, and choose “account settings.”

On that page, in the left-hand column, you should see an icon with the word “apps.” Click it to see a list of apps. Where you see Karma, click on “edit.” That should open a list of options, with “Visibility of app” at the top. Click on the drop-down menu there and choose “Only Me.”

That should ensure that no automatic posts go out.

As for how the app works after the sign-up, the data speed at my desk wasn’t blazing. Although the device promises 4G speeds where available, my average was 1.8 megabits pr second, which is less than half the speed I average on the AT&T LTE network, and was too slow to run YouTube videos without periodic freezes.

The roughly 3-inch-square Karma hotspot hardware costs $80. If you just want to buy data without signing up friends, it’s $14 per gigabyte.

Q&A: Quieting a Noisy Facebook

Q.

I haven been hearing mysterious little “boop” sounds coming from the computer and I think it’s Facebook making the noise. What is it doing

A.

In addition to visually notifying you of updates and messages with small red numbers on the icons at top of the screen, Facebook can also provide an audible notification of your friends’ online activity. If you want to make it stop, click the gear-shaped Settings icon in the top-right corner of a Facebook page and select Account Settings.

On the left side of the Account Settings screen, click Notifications. In the middle of the page, under “How You Get Notifications,” go to “On Facebook” and click View. Next, turn off the checkbox next to “Play a sound when each new notification is received.” This setting applies only to the desktop version of Facebook.

In this same settings area, you can also change how frequently Facebook sends you notification updates by e-mail or text messge. When you are finished adjusting your notifications settings, click the Save Changes button.

Club for Growth Leads Conservative Charge, Sometimes at Republicans

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, would seem to be just the kind of promising politician his party needs at this stage: a telegenic, 35-year-old former Air Force pilot, close to members of the House leadership and an effective campaigner who won easily in both 2010 and 2012.

But to the Club for Growth, the conservative group intent on electing candidates who adhere strictly to a small-government, low-tax philosophy, Mr. Kinzinger falls short.

The group is featuring him on a new Web site intended to promote primary challenges next year to Republican incumbents who it believes have compromised on conservative principles. In Mr. Kinzinger’s case, the group said, his failures include going along with the bipartisan agreement in 2011 to raise the federal debt ceiling and voting with Speaker John A. Boehner to ratify the deal at the beginning of this year to raise taxes on the wealthy but avert tax increases for the middle class.

As the Republican Party and the conservative movement continue to debate the lessons of 2012 - a discussion that will get further attention this week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington - the Club for Growt! h is playing the role of principle-driven counterweight to Karl Rove, whose political operation has been leading the charge favoring of a more pragmatic view of how Republicans can best regain power.

It is a stance that has made the group and its president, Chris Chocola, beacons of conviction to economic conservatives who think the party’s Congressional leadership has been too willing to make deals and back moderate candidates. But the Club for Growth’s strategy has also exacerbated strains within the party and drawn criticism that ideological conformity is the wrong formula for a party seeking to broaden its appeal in the wake of successive losses in presidential campaigns.

“I havealways been concerned with the Club for Growth’s mission,” said Rich Galen, a Republican commentator and former aide to Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle.  “As someone who came to Washington after Watergate when the House G.O.P. could meet in a phone booth, I have always felt it is too hard to elect our folks to put them at risk in primaries.”

To be a broad-based majority party, Mr. Galen said, “you have to accept that the edges will get farther and farther apart and you have to accept that one edge will not agree on all items with the other edge â€" but they will agree more with that other edge than they would with Democrats.”

To Mr. Chocol! a, that k! ind of attitude is exactly the problem.

“I can’t go to the Capitol Hill Club anymore,” he said, referring to the hangout for House Republicans. “But we have a $16 trillion debt because politicians worry about being popular rather than providing the leadership to do the hard things.”

Mr. Chocola’s argument is that the path to success for Republicans is to embrace sharp ideological differences with Democrats rather than sanding them down, even in states and districts that do not inherently lean conservative. As models, he points to Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Republicans who won their seats in 2010 in states tha President Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012.

In an interview, Mr. Chocola dismissed the idea that Club for Growth and other conservative groups were responsible for losses in Senate races last year in Missouri and Indiana, where the Republican candidates, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, both collapsed after making statements about rape. His group had backed Mr. Mourdock but not Mr. Akin.

“Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin lost because they said stupid things,” said Mr. Ch! ocola, a ! former Republican member of the House.

“The real question is Heather Wilson, Tommy Thompson, George Allen, Denny Rehberg - why did they all lose” Mr. Chocola said, referring to Republican candidates for Senate in 2012 in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Virginia and Montana. “If you have these kinds of establishment-backed Republican candidates who lost, in some cases in states where Romney won, that’s a more interesting question and one that ought to be the focus of the party. I think the answer is that you just need candidates who are willing to articulate a clear, convincing, conservative economic message and aren’t afraid of what Republicans re supposed to stand for.”

Mr. Chocola said he does not see the Club for Growth being in a fight for the soul of the party with Mr. Rove’s group. “But if they want to create a Republican primary establishment-versus-conservative battle, the conservative’s going to win,” he said.

It is not clear how aggressive the Club for Growth will be in fielding conservative challenges to Republican incumbents this year. Mr. Chocola said the group prefers to back candidates who have already decided to run rather than recruiting challengers to take on incumbents, and that it studies races carefully before jumping into primaries to ensure it is behind candidates who have a shot at winning.

“People ask about Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander and Mitch McConnell,” he said, naming three incumbent Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2014 and are viewed as ideologically wobbly by some conservatives. “We’re risk takers. But there are a lot of dynamics that have to be in place for us to engage in a race like that.”

“We don’t just do it because we like to make people miserable,” he said. “We do it because we think there’s a good chance of getting a champion of economic freedom in that seat.”

The Club for Growth’s supporters said the group helps the conservative cause even when it does not put its considerable financial clout behind a candidate, because the mere threat of a primary challenge keeps some Republicans from drifting ino the political center. They said the group’s advocacy of moving more aggressively to balance the budget in 10 years was one reason that Representative Paul D. Ryan offered a plan this year to do just that. Mr. McConnell, leery of the potential for a Tea Party-inspired primary challenge against him, has hired the campaign manager employed in 2010 by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Tea Party favorite.

For now, the Club for Growth is probing for smaller opportunities, chiefly among incumbent House members who are in safe Republican districts but have voting records that the group deems insufficiently conservative on the issues it cares most about - primarily, matters of taxes and spending.

In Mr. Kinzinger’s case, Club for Growth gave him a 56 percent rating on its voting scorecard in a district that Mr. Romney carried with 53 percent of the vote - the kind of district that Democrats would need to put in play if they are to have a chance of winning back control of the House.

“We’re not concerned with an out-of-touch D.C.-based PAC that, time after time, unsuccessfully attempts to force their Washington agenda on Illinois families and businesses,” said Brook Hougesen, Mr. Kinzinger’s spokeswoman.

Follow Richard W. Stevenson on Twitter at @dckstevenson.

Club for Growth Leads Conservative Charge, Sometimes at Republicans

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, would seem to be just the kind of promising politician his party needs at this stage: a telegenic, 35-year-old former Air Force pilot, close to members of the House leadership and an effective campaigner who won easily in both 2010 and 2012.

But to the Club for Growth, the conservative group intent on electing candidates who adhere strictly to a small-government, low-tax philosophy, Mr. Kinzinger falls short.

The group is featuring him on a new Web site intended to promote primary challenges next year to Republican incumbents who it believes have compromised on conservative principles. In Mr. Kinzinger’s case, the group said, his failures include going along with the bipartisan agreement in 2011 to raise the federal debt ceiling and voting with Speaker John A. Boehner to ratify the deal at the beginning of this year to raise taxes on the wealthy but avert tax increases for the middle class.

As the Republican Party and the conservative movement continue to debate the lessons of 2012 - a discussion that will get further attention this week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington - the Club for Growt! h is playing the role of principle-driven counterweight to Karl Rove, whose political operation has been leading the charge favoring of a more pragmatic view of how Republicans can best regain power.

It is a stance that has made the group and its president, Chris Chocola, beacons of conviction to economic conservatives who think the party’s Congressional leadership has been too willing to make deals and back moderate candidates. But the Club for Growth’s strategy has also exacerbated strains within the party and drawn criticism that ideological conformity is the wrong formula for a party seeking to broaden its appeal in the wake of successive losses in presidential campaigns.

“I havealways been concerned with the Club for Growth’s mission,” said Rich Galen, a Republican commentator and former aide to Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle.  “As someone who came to Washington after Watergate when the House G.O.P. could meet in a phone booth, I have always felt it is too hard to elect our folks to put them at risk in primaries.”

To be a broad-based majority party, Mr. Galen said, “you have to accept that the edges will get farther and farther apart and you have to accept that one edge will not agree on all items with the other edge â€" but they will agree more with that other edge than they would with Democrats.”

To Mr. Chocol! a, that k! ind of attitude is exactly the problem.

“I can’t go to the Capitol Hill Club anymore,” he said, referring to the hangout for House Republicans. “But we have a $16 trillion debt because politicians worry about being popular rather than providing the leadership to do the hard things.”

Mr. Chocola’s argument is that the path to success for Republicans is to embrace sharp ideological differences with Democrats rather than sanding them down, even in states and districts that do not inherently lean conservative. As models, he points to Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Republicans who won their seats in 2010 in states tha President Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012.

In an interview, Mr. Chocola dismissed the idea that Club for Growth and other conservative groups were responsible for losses in Senate races last year in Missouri and Indiana, where the Republican candidates, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, both collapsed after making statements about rape. His group had backed Mr. Mourdock but not Mr. Akin.

“Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin lost because they said stupid things,” said Mr. Ch! ocola, a ! former Republican member of the House.

“The real question is Heather Wilson, Tommy Thompson, George Allen, Denny Rehberg - why did they all lose” Mr. Chocola said, referring to Republican candidates for Senate in 2012 in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Virginia and Montana. “If you have these kinds of establishment-backed Republican candidates who lost, in some cases in states where Romney won, that’s a more interesting question and one that ought to be the focus of the party. I think the answer is that you just need candidates who are willing to articulate a clear, convincing, conservative economic message and aren’t afraid of what Republicans re supposed to stand for.”

Mr. Chocola said he does not see the Club for Growth being in a fight for the soul of the party with Mr. Rove’s group. “But if they want to create a Republican primary establishment-versus-conservative battle, the conservative’s going to win,” he said.

It is not clear how aggressive the Club for Growth will be in fielding conservative challenges to Republican incumbents this year. Mr. Chocola said the group prefers to back candidates who have already decided to run rather than recruiting challengers to take on incumbents, and that it studies races carefully before jumping into primaries to ensure it is behind candidates who have a shot at winning.

“People ask about Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander and Mitch McConnell,” he said, naming three incumbent Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2014 and are viewed as ideologically wobbly by some conservatives. “We’re risk takers. But there are a lot of dynamics that have to be in place for us to engage in a race like that.”

“We don’t just do it because we like to make people miserable,” he said. “We do it because we think there’s a good chance of getting a champion of economic freedom in that seat.”

The Club for Growth’s supporters said the group helps the conservative cause even when it does not put its considerable financial clout behind a candidate, because the mere threat of a primary challenge keeps some Republicans from drifting ino the political center. They said the group’s advocacy of moving more aggressively to balance the budget in 10 years was one reason that Representative Paul D. Ryan offered a plan this year to do just that. Mr. McConnell, leery of the potential for a Tea Party-inspired primary challenge against him, has hired the campaign manager employed in 2010 by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Tea Party favorite.

For now, the Club for Growth is probing for smaller opportunities, chiefly among incumbent House members who are in safe Republican districts but have voting records that the group deems insufficiently conservative on the issues it cares most about - primarily, matters of taxes and spending.

In Mr. Kinzinger’s case, Club for Growth gave him a 56 percent rating on its voting scorecard in a district that Mr. Romney carried with 53 percent of the vote - the kind of district that Democrats would need to put in play if they are to have a chance of winning back control of the House.

“We’re not concerned with an out-of-touch D.C.-based PAC that, time after time, unsuccessfully attempts to force their Washington agenda on Illinois families and businesses,” said Brook Hougesen, Mr. Kinzinger’s spokeswoman.

Follow Richard W. Stevenson on Twitter at @dckstevenson.

The Early Word: A Change Is Going to Come

Today’s Times

• President Obama met with Senate Democrats on Tuesday about potential changes to entitlements, Mark Landler and Jennifer Steinhauer report. Even though the lengthy discussion remained civil, some senators voiced concerns about cuts to popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.

• The Justice Department confirmed that its voting rights section has been torn over ideological splits between liberal and conservative factions dating to the Bush administration and continuing into the Obama era, Charlie Savage writes. The report recounts an array of “troubling” episodes and a distrustful culture.

• It was a good day for President Obama’s gun-safety agenda in Congress, with the Senate Judiciary Committee passing two measures designed to curb shooting violence. The approved bills - one aimed at expanding background checks to private gun sales and another that would renew a grant program that focuses on school safety - are now likely to go to the Senate floor for a full vote, Jennifer Steinhauer writes.

• An appeals court ruled that Mr. Obama violated the Constitution when he made recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board last year, but the White House disagrees. The administration is now preparing to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, Charlie Savage reports.

• No one is safe from Internet hacking - not the vice president of the United States of America, not even Beyoncé. An investigation was started on Tuesday after a Web site originating in Rus! sia posted the home addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal information of more than a dozen celebrities and politicians, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicole Perlroth report.

• Though both sides have been reassuring the public that a bipartisan compromise on a budget deal is possible, Senate Democrats and House Republicans outlined vastly different approaches to coming up with a solution - a reminder of how far apart they remain on fiscal policy, Jeremy W. Peters and Jonathan Weisman report.

• Annie Lowrey provides a news analysis about the debate over balancing the federal budget. While some economists agree that keeping a gvernment’s debt within reasonable limits is good and necessary, there is some disagreement over how important balancing the budget actually is.

Around the Web

• Officials at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs “were either unwilling or unable to say” who is leading the department, The Hill reports.

Happenings in Washington

• President Obama will swing by Capitol Hill again Wednesday, this time to meet with the House Republican Conference. Later, he will meet with C.E.O.s in the White House to discuss cyber security and to get their input on how the government and private sector can work together to help eliminate threats to the nation’s technological infrastructure.

• Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will speak at an event in! Rockvill! e, Md., about the need to reduce homicides related to domestic violence.

• Michelle Obama will deliver remarks to C.E.O.s of the Business Roundtable to promote her Joining Forces Initiative, which helps members of military families find jobs.