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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - The New Hampshire Republican Party is accusing Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheens campaign of coordinating with a political action committee on an ad targeting Republican Scott Brown.

Republicans on Monday asked the Federal Elections Commission to investigate whether information posted on Shaheens campaign website amounts to illegal coordination with the Senate Majority PAC, which has released an ad using similar language. Both accuse Brown, who hopes to challenge Shaheen in November, of being beholden to Big Oil and Wall Street.

Republicans call it an obvious and brazen attempt to coordinate with independent groups, which is barred by campaign law.

It is essential that the FEC thoroughly investigate Shaheens shady Super PAC coordination scheme to ensure public confidence in our election laws, Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Horn said.

Shaheens spokesman Harrell Kirstein said the complaint has no merit and noted that the criticism leveled at Brown is nothing new.

The truth is Scott Brown has been under attack for years for coddling Big Oil and Wall Street and cashing in on those connections, he said.

Reflecting the fierce competition of this years elections, outside groups have lifted video from campaign websites in several U.S. Senate races around the country. The Kentucky Opportunity Coalitions is using public footage of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and in North Carolina, both Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan and her Republican rival have uploaded digital files for allies to use.

The Campaign Legal Center has filed numerous complaints with the FEC arguing that such ads amount to republication of campaign materials and thus are illegal campaign donations. But Paul Ryan, the watchdog groups senior legal counsel, said Monday that the Senate Majority PAC appears to have stayed within the rules.

Theyre big time players with really smart lawyers, he said. It sounds like they are trying to thread the needle here and take their cues from the candidate while avoiding the republication rule as well as the coordination rule.

Under the coordination rule, candidates cant tell super PACs or other outside groups what to do. But Ryan said his group is considering filing a complaint arguing that posting material that apparently serves no other purpose than facilitating outside ads is at least an implicit suggestion that violates the law. And, he said, regardless of whether campaigns and PACs are violating the law, theres sometimes a difference between legal and right.

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Republicans file complaint against Shaheen

All Progressives Congress Holds State Congress
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has held its State congress across Nigeria, with the congress postponed in Adamawa, Edo, Kaduna, Kano and Katsina States....

By: Channels Television

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All Progressives Congress Holds State Congress - Video

As the demographics of religion change in the United States, faith may have a different degree of influence than it once did.

Garry Knight/Flickr

Is religion the most important thing in your life? This is one of the questions people had to answer in a 2013 Public Religion Research Institute/Brookings surveyas researchers tried to figure out how much faith influences people's viewson culture and the economy. They got pretty striking results: More than half of people who they considered to be "religious conservatives" said yes, while only about 10 percent of people classified as "religious progressives" said the same. This means that on a whole host of issues, ranging from abortion and gay marriage to welfare and the minimum wage, faith probably has more of an influence on how conservatives think than it does for liberals.

It's tough to get inside people's heads and understand how their beliefs about God affect their views on culture, but a new report from Brookings hints at why researchers might want to: In terms of numbers, religious progressives are gaining on religious conservatives. According to the researchers, "religious progressives" are people of faith who have typically "liberal" opinions on a range of issues: They want more government support for the poor, rather than less; more freedom to have pre-marital sex and drink, rather than less, etc. From this break-down of age and race, you can see that religious progressives dominate America's growing populations:

Blacks, hispanics, and people of mixed race are all more likely to be religious progressives than conservatives; these groups are also among the fastest-growing demographics in the United States. Similarly, Millennials are more than twice as likely to be religious progressives than religious conservatives; in fact, people older than 50 make up more than 60 percent of those who are considered to be religious conservatives. Although it's impossible to talk to an 18-year-old about her views on culture and predict what she'll think in two decades, these demographic trends suggest that the religious right is about to start shrinking.

But the question of influence is a little fuzzier. Although more than a third of Millennials are considered religious progressives, roughly 40 percent don't have any faith at all: A growing number of young people don't identify with a particular religion. That, alongwith the fact that an overwhelming majority of religious progressives don't see religion as "the most important thing in their life," suggests that faith is losing its overall influence over how people think about social and cultural issues.

As the authors of the Brookings study wrote, "Religious progressivism, precisely because of its diversity, will never constitute the same cohesive and relatively homogenous force that religious conservatism represents." In terms of individual hearts and minds, it's hard to tell how much of a role "religion" has in the new wave of "religious progressivism"it's possible to be religious and progressive at the same time, but it's also possible that those progressive beliefs don't have much to do with God.

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The Growing Power of Godly Progressives?

by Joe Arnold

WHAS11.com

Posted on April 28, 2014 at 6:41 PM

Updated today at 8:04 PM

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Ahead of a trip to Chicago to meet with wealthy, progressive campaign donors, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes on Monday emphasized grassroots fundraising in Kentucky.

"We are working hard in this race to make sure that Kentuckians have a voice," Grimes told WHAS11, "and we are so proud of the work that we have done in fundraising."

Grimes stressed that her campaign's average contribution is $25.

"We are going to continue to work very hard raising the most out of Kentucky than anyone has ever raised," Grimes continued, "and we've got people all across this nation joining us."

Grimes did not volunteer any information about her planned meeting with the Democracy Alliance, reported by Politico last week. According to the Politico report, the spring meeting of the "secretive club of wealthy liberals" includes plans by some of the countrys biggest Democratic donors "to pull their party and the country to the left."

Despite plans announced last week by the progressive Credo Super PAC to mobilize in Kentucky to defeat Grimes' likely opponent, five-term Republican incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell, that same day Grimes separated herself from Credo and other environmentalist Democrats by announcing her support for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

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Grimes stresses grassroots ahead of progressives event

Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed | credits: File copy

The All Progressives Congress on Monday hailed the reported suspension of a planned rally by the Peoples Democratic Party, in Yola, Adamawa State, on Tuesday.

The APC said the decision taken by the ruling party, which was in line with the prevailing mood of the nation, especially the abduction of over 200 schoolgirl in Borno State, was a positive sign.

Interim National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said in a statement released in Lagos that the suspension was the very right decision to take under the circumstance.

According to the APC, the suspension of the rally has shown that President Goodluck Jonathan is beginning to hearken to the voices of his compatriots on important national issues.

The statement partly read, As we said in a statement we issued on April 24, it smacks of insensitivity, inhumanity and indecency for our President and other leaders to be engaged in any celebratory venture when we do not yet know the fate of the schoolgirls who were abducted from their school and taken to an unknown destination.

We also said the President should not repeat the same mistake he made by flying to Kano to dance at a political rally even as the smoke was yet to clear from the scene of the Nyanya bus park bombing. We are delighted that good sense has prevailed this time.

The party also said while the President does not have to shut down the government, he must continue to shun all celebratory public outings until all the schoolgirls have been safely reunited with their families.

In response, the PDP said it was high time the opposition party stopped taking credit for well thought out decisions made by the President.

Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Abdullahi Jalo, told The PUNCH in a telephone interview in Abuja that no one envisaged that such an ugly situation was going to take place. As such, the issue of the opposition party advising the President not to go to Yola did not arise.

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APC hails Jonathan for suspending Yola rally