In its Action Update today, the Family Research Council (FRC) partially cast blame for the tragic shooting at a megachurch in Colorado yesterday on “the secular media.” In the e-mail, which was sent under the name of FRC Action President Tony Perkins, the group says it’s “hard not to draw a line between” the shooting and “hostility” by “some in the secular media toward Christians”:

It is hard not to draw a line between the hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians and evangelicals in particular and the acts of violence that took place in Colorado yesterday. But I will say no more for now other than that our friends at New Life Church and YWAM are in our thoughts and prayers.

This summer, “legislation to beef up investigations into unsolved murders from the civil rights era” passed the House by an overwhelming margin of 422-2. But the bill is being held up in the Senate, where Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has put a hold on the bill because he believes that “its price tag of $13.5 million a year” is too much. Sens. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) have vowed to continue pushing the legislation.

Progressive talk radio host Rachel Maddow “taped a pilot” recently for MSNBC, in which she teamed up with MSNBC prime time VP Bill Wolff. Maddow currently makes “irregular appearances on MSNBC.” According to TVNewser, there is “no word on if the pilot is being considered ready for take-off.”

UPDATE: MSNBC’s Dan Abrams is hosting a series this week entitled Bush League Justice which focuses on how the Bush administration has politicized the Justice Department.

Today on Fox News, host Shepard Smith and co-host Courtney Friel discussed the story of an Icelandic teen who discovered and dialed President Bush’s secret direct phone number. Friel joked, “We of course have President Bush’s number in our blackberries, right.” Smith sarcastically responded, “Yeah, we are his network after all. So we have to have his number.” Watch it:

The young boy who attempted to call Bush was interrogated by the Secret Service and reportedly warned that he would be put on the no-fly list. His mother notes that her son “has become a bit of a hero in Iceland.” “Bush is very unpopular here,” she said. (HT: Newshounds)

UPDATE: In today’s briefing, Dana Perino denied the boy dialed a secret Bush phone number. “My understanding is that he called the public line that anybody can call, the 1414 number,” she said.

Julian Sanchez says he’s the comic bookiest presidential candidate, which does seem to be one area in which he can take a clear first place.

I was thinking about the tenor of the European debate over immigration issues and how it differs from our own, and one thing I came up with is that it’s more similar to an older American debate, focused on the first wave of Catholic immigrants, in which people were troubled by the notion that Catholicism (a religion with hierarchy and authority at its very core) might be incompatible with democracy. Unfortunately, I knew very little about that debate except for half-remembered snatches of Stephen Macedo’s Diversity and Distrust. But Ross pointed to this gem from The Atlantic‘s archives, a 1927 exchange on Al Smith’s presidential candidacy which takes this subject up at length in the second half of Smith’s contribution.