At RNS, Mark Silk on the religion of the Confederate flag. Silk also has a post about the degree to which Laudato Si' is a political manifesto.
The link between religious text and political program is also the subject of a thoughtful essay at Religion & Politics by Christiana Peppard. Unsurprisingly, she hits the nail on the head: The encyclical is a religious text with clear, and clearly stated, political consequences and objectives.
It isn't often you see emotion on television that is authentic and raw and entirely appropriate to the discussion. But, in talking with Wolf Blitzer, Donna Brazile, one of the classiest women in DC, displayed precisely such a strong, real and justified emotional response: