The Obama administration has announced a new process to review all 300,000 active deportation cases to ensure that they are consistent with the nation’s enforcement priorities. The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice will form a working group that will consider deportations on a case-by-case basis and focus its resources and efforts on high priority targets — individuals who pose a threat to public safety and national security or repeat immigration law violators. And while the review won’t explicitly offer categorical relief for any single group — like bi-national same-sex couples, children who were brought to America at a young age, pregnant women, military veterans — the process could provide greater protection for these populations. LGBT families and same-sex couples will be considered as families and could benefit from the discretion of the working group.

In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano explains that the case-by-case approach was first detailed in March 2010 and recently reiterated in a memorandum from June, 2011. She argues that the process will enhance public safety and allow immigration judges “to more swiftly adjudicate high priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.” “This process will also allow additional federal enforcement resources to be focused on border security and the removal of public safety threats,” she argues.

The new process is a result of a long-standing administration policy to ensure that the nation is “not clogging the system with folks who are not maximum priorities,” a senior administration official explained. Lower-priority deportation cases “are being set aside so we can focus more on our more serious cases of convicted criminals and other high priority categories.”

The senior administration official said that the process is designed “keep folks who are low priority cases out of the deportation process to begin with.” Those individuals in the existing caseload will also be eligible to apply for work authorization visas, but those determinations will be made on a case-by-case basis.

The fight over a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in Minnesota could cost up to $10 million before voters go to the ballot in November 2012. And while the measure only seeks to define civil marriage as “a union of one man and one woman,” proponents of the amendment have begun waging a campaign that blurs the line between civil and religious unions.

Even though marriage equality bills have never tried to dictate what any religion can believe or practice when it comes to sanctifying religious marriage, the Minnesota coalition, Minnesota for Marriage, and other so-called “traditional groups” are defining their campaign in religious terms. For instance, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is encouraging Facebook fans to “support marriage as God intended it to be,” while Minnesota Family Council (MFC) President John Helmberger has injected God into his rhetoric, predicting success if “people of faith [rise] up, speak, and participate in the campaign”:

Even though this campaign promises to be a great struggle, we are very confident of victory – if we receive your help and that of thousands of other Minnesotans who believe in God’s design for marriage. With your support, we will help the voters of our state see the timeless institution of one man-one woman marriage asthe foundation on which our society is built and the best environment for producing and raising children.

MFC is also organizing pastors, recruiting “Church Captains,” training people of faith through the “Minnesota Worldview Leadership Project,” and featuring various NOM leaders and religious right figures like Chuck Colson and Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family. (Given that NOM spent $709,000 in 2010′s Minnesota gubernatorial campaign alone, their contributions to this fight cannot be underestimated.) Ralph Reed’s group, the Minnesota Faith and Freedom Coalition, will hold a “strategy session” in October in support of the amendment with former gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer and Michele Bachmann as a “Friend of the Family” award winner. Reed, a leading figure in the Jack Abramoff scandal, founded the Coalition specifically to “re-energize” the religious right.

But civil same-sex marriage — which is already outlawed in the state — poses no actual threat to religious freedom, which is preserved in the six states that allow for marriage equality. In May, 55 percent of Minnesotans opposed the amendment, but 15 months and $10 million could certainly change their minds.

Jim Burroway has a good post exploring the troubling connection between GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and Peter E. Waldron, a campaign staffer “responsible for her faith-based organizing both in Iowa and South Carolina.” Yesterday, the Atlantic reported on Waldron’s “arrest in Uganda in 2006 on charges of running illegal guns and ammunition,” but Borroway explores his deeper ties to the country’s infamous “kill gays” legislation and radical Christian theology:

1) ATTENDED SERVICES OF OF KILL-GAYS BILL ADVOCATE: A deeply religious born-again Christian, Waldron traveled to Uganda in 2004 to sell HIV-monitoring computer software to the government and preach on the weekends. There, he attended and was featured in the Church services of Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa, “the prominent supporter of Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which calls for the death penalty for LGBT people under certain circumstances.”

2) NO ‘SECULAR-SPIRITUAL DIVISION’: This passage was lifted from a now-deleted document explaining the guiding theology of Waldron’s Cities of Faith Ministries. “For generations Christians have wrongly divided all the affairs of their lives into secular matters and spiritual matters. Many of those secular-spiritual divisions and classifications are artificial divisions and heretical in its origins based on humanist philosophy rather than the historic Biblical teachings of the Church.”

3) SOCIETY WILL COLLAPSE WITHOUT GOD: “A totalitarian form of governance arises when the Word of God is compromised, ignored or denied. A person will self-destruct from abuse of spirit, soul and body. A nation will collapse under a “hard” or “soft” form of dictatorship, abuse of public or elected office, and a general denial of human freedom – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – arises. The source of one’s belief system dictates the conduct whether it be personal or national. The same goes for the end result.”

4) CHRISTIAN DOMINATION: According to George Grant, a Christian Reconstructionist with whom Waldron co-wrote a book, “It is dominion we are after. World conquest. …If Jesus Christ is indeed Lord, as the Bible says, and if our commission is to bring the land into subjection to His Lordship, as the Bible says, then all our activities, all our witnessing, all our preaching, all our craftsmanship, all our stewardship, and all our political action will aim at nothing short of that sacred purpose.”

It’s impossible to know the degree to which Michele Bachmann agrees with these beliefs, but given her ongoing association with reactionary Christian thinkers and history of pandering to these groups in order to advance her political ambitions, it’s fairly possible and maybe even probable that she would associate herself with some of these statements.

Meanwhile, the the campaign is standing by Waldron. “Michele’s faith is an important part of her life and Peter did a tremendous job with our faith outreach in Iowa,” told Politico. “We are fortunate to have him on our team and look forward to having him expanding his efforts in several states.”

The FAMiLY LEADER’s been working the Iowa State fair, raising money through a “quarter poll.” Fair-goers can vote as many times as they want for whichever presidential candidate they want, but it costs them 25 cents per vote. Despite the fact that over 65 percent of the voters have been Republicans, President Obama has almost twice as many votes as the leading Republican, Michele Bachmann:

The President’s polling in Iowa may have dipped, but if it takes less than $100 to show how out of touch the FAMiLY LEADER is in this election, it seems like that’s a price Iowans are willing to pay. (HT: Jeremy Hooper.)