America's new politics-and-election blog

America magazine has a new blog called, well, "America Magazine's Election Blog."  Here's the announcement:

Our blog is designed to help teachers in civics, history, politics and journalism use the blog to stimulate discussion in the classroom, facilitate research projects by the students, and familiarize the students with Catholic social thought and what that tradition has to say about current events. The special election blog will run from September 8 through election day.

Each weekday morning, the blog will have a new posting by 8 a.m. EDT. This will be posted by our regular political blooger, Michael Sean Winters, author of the recently published book Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can save the Democrats. Additional posts from the

America staff will appear throughout the week. Students, like all readers, can post comments on these blog posts by the staff. Teachers can work with the America staff if they want their students to post blog entries also.

Now, I'm a regular reader of America (I was a Jesuit Volunteer, after all), and I enjoy the blog and Michael Sean Winters's work.  And, it seems to me that the stated mission of this new blog -- "to help teachers" and to "familiarize students with Catholic social thought and what the tradition has to say" -- involves a new challenge.  If the blog is to be true to that mission, it seems to me that the blog will have to work hard (as we all should do) to avoid one-sided, partisan, or polemical use or interpretation of "Catholic social thought."  It is encouraging that the blog links to a reasonably diverse array of political sites and blogs.  I hope the editors will invite contributions from reasonable and faithful Catholics who see the tradition playing out in ways that might, from time to time, depart from the magazine's editorial stance.

To be clear, I don't think group blogs have an obligation to be internally "diverse".  (MOJ is, but we are somewhat rare, I think.)  Most of the bloggers at, say, dotCommonweal seem to lean left, while most at the First Things blog probably lean right, and that's fine.  But America is setting out to create a resource for teachers, and I am inclined to think such a (worthy) project carries with it some responsibilities.  We'll see. 

UPDATE:  Here's a link to another election-related blog for Catholics.  (The short film, by Grassroots films, was -- I thought -- very powerful.)