GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney foolishly revived the dust-up about his income tax secrecy last week. He claimed he paid at least 13 percent, an assertion easy enough for him to prove by releasing his tax documents.

But he's refusing to do that. He called the concern about his tax rate "small-minded." Much more important issues overshadow it, he contended.

It was the 82-year-old nun who caught my attention. In the early morning hours of July 28, Sister Megan Rice, Michael R. Walli, and Greg Boertje-Obed of the peace group Plowshares cut through fences at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.The group spray-painted protest messages, hung banners, and splashed blood on the national facility, which manufactures US nuclear weapons and stockpiles highly enriched uranium. This act of civil disobedience is the latest in a series of such protests since 1980 when the group was founded to raise public awareness of the continuing dangers of nuclear weapons.

The cruel impoverishment of the debate among the presidential and congressional candidates took a gigantic leap into the pits with Mitt Romney’s selection of 42-year-old Rep. Paul Ryan from the deindustrialized town of Janesville, Wisconsin. Ryan is invariably described by reporters as “an intellectual leader of the conservative movement” and by fellow Republicans as a person “who tells the hard truths” to the American people.

Shady money, voter suppression, shifting positions, murky details and widespread apathy.      

If there is a road map for a Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan win in November, that’s it. Distasteful all.