Welcome to the Morning Buzz, PRRI’s morning dose of religion-related news with a shot of data. Is your part of the country particularly greedy? Slothful? Lustful? I would note, according to these measures, Nevada is a particularly virtuous state.

More and more federal legislators are calling it quits: Congressional retirements are at the highest point since 1996. Perhaps, as these Italian physicists suggest, we should replace them with people plucked at random from the general public.

A call to raise the minimum wage, from the editors of Bloomberg. Overall, two-thirds (67%) of Americans favor raising the minimum wage to $10.00 an hour.

Are the Tea Party and Mitt Romney beginning, albeit grudgingly, to work together? Romney has struggled, throughout the primary, to gain Tea Party support.

Rep. Paul Ryan says that his budget was shaped by his Catholic beliefs. Some liberal Catholics, however, disagree that Catholic social teaching is synonymous with small government.

Some Republicans are calling on Romney to “own” his Mormonism, in an attempt to solve his “authenticity problem.” One Romney adviser, however, pointed to the 1-in-5 (19%) of voters who say they would not vote for a candidate who did not share their beliefs, as a major deterrent.

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