Secular groups are getting a little antsy with President Obama‘s slow pace of reform on the White House’s faith-based office. Outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens says he has cancer of the esophagus and cancelled his book tour.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan carried forth (someone get her an editor) on her interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establish and Free Exercise clauses on religious freedom. The ACLU wants the feds to ensure that women have access to “emergency reproductive care” at religiously affiliated hospitals.

Evangelical heroine and disability-rights activist Joni Eareckson Tada is recovering from breast cancer surgery. A Nebraska woman is filing suit against her old boss after she was fired when she became pregnant and the boss said the woman’s baby had “negative energy.”

Remember those summer concerts at Coney Island that a neighboring synagogue thought were too loud? A judge ruled against the concerts (NYC prohibits loud noise w/i 500 feet of a religious building that’s holding services), but Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed an emergency bill to let the concerts run this summer. A Jewish podiatrist from Miami who’s one of the newest contestants on CBS’ “Big Brother” will bring his own kosher cookware to the group house.

An immigration judge has granted asylum to Mosab Hassan Yousef, the so-called “Son of Hamas” who became a Christian and an Israeli spy, and claimed he would have been killed if returned to his native West Bank. At least one sponsor has withdrawn from an upcoming Christian music festival in Wisconsin because Sojourners founder Jim Wallis was on the program — apparently they thought Wallis is too “humanistic.”

A National Counterterrorism Center official is defending the targeting the U.S. citizens — namely Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who support terrorism campaigns.

As we told you yesterday, Italy appealed a ban on crucifixes in the classroom to the European Court of Human Rights. The NYT assesses the pope’s Vatican reshuffling yesterday, especially Quebec’s Cardinal Marc Ouellet to head the powerful Congregation for Bishops. Another lawsuit targeting the Vatican for abuse has been filed in Los Angeles. Pope Benedict XVI told a German bishop who resigned because of child abuse, and then wanted his job back, to commit to a life of prayer instead.