‘Morning, everyone! I’m subbing for Christy today, so I and the catboys here thought we’d round up some news cats for you.

Hey, Tim Russert! As long as we’re vetting pastors here, Dave Neiwert and my Mercury Rising co-blogger Charles respectfully suggest that you extend your wondrous journalistic skills beyond Obama’s pastor to look at John McCain’s pastor, Dan Yeary — whose sermons are online, as Charles notes. (FDL readers: How much you wanna bet the words "Dan Yeary" never even pass Timmeh’s lips?)

Speaking of Tim Russert: Remember Jane’s challenge from yesterday? Guess who didn’t take her up on it? (Hint: Jack Welch apparently boasts of banging any progressive notions out of him, thus making him into the perfect corporate servant.)

And speaking of John McCain, a guy who really wants to be his running mate has been buffing up his conservative anti-tax credentials so thoroughly that the state he’s supposed to be governing is falling apart because of it. Way to go, Tim Pawlenty!

From the Iowa Independent (h/t to Norwegianity and the Washington Independent), we hear that Iowa is now the 17th state to refuse Bush’s cherished Title V, Section 510 funding for abstinence-only sex education. This is because, as anyone with a functioning brain and without paychecks from the anti-sex lobby can tell you, abstinence-only sex education is a big fat failure.

In a good sign that online journalism is starting to thrive, Minnesota Monitor is hiring. (They’ve probably got all the applications they need right now; I just posted this to show that in an era when the big papers are slashing staff and budgets, online media is starting to add to same.)

So what news cats have skittered under your sofas today?