(Continued from page 32)

nificant shift to the political right. But scholars who study Jewish voting patterns say it won't happen in 2012.
• Although recent studies have found potential for some movement toward the GOP, analysts say any revolution in the U.S. Jewish vote won't occur anytime soon.
• "I would be very surprised to find that this is the transformative election," said Jonathan Sarna, an expert in American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
• Surveys confirm that growth in socially conservative Orthodox Jewish communities, who tend to be GOP voters, is greater than in Jewish groups from other traditions. Russian-speaking Jews are also emerging as a strong GOP constituency, as evidenced when Republican Bob Turner won the special election to succeed disgraced New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.
• But a generous estimate of the two groups combined would make them only a quarter of American Jews, with many living in heavily Democratic New York. Steven M. Cohen, director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at New York University's Wagner School, predicts "status quo ante" -- the way things were before -- for a decade or more, at least until the many Orthodox children reach voting age.
• ___

• PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Confidential files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on men they suspected of child sex abuse are set to be released after a two-year-long court battle.
• The anticipated release of the files on Thursday by Portland attorney Kelly Clark will reveal 20,000 pages of documents the Scouts kept on men inside -- and in some cases outside -- the organization believed to have committed acts of abuse.
• The court-ordered release of the so-called perversion files from 1965 to 1985 has prompted the organization to pledge that they will go back into the files and report any offenders who may have not been reported to the police when alleged abuse took place.
• That could prompt a new round of criminal prosecutions for offenders who have so far escaped justice.
• The Scouts have, until now, argued they did all they could to prevent sex abuse within their ranks by spending a century tracking pedophiles and using those records to keep known sex offenders out of their organization.

(Continued on page 34)