President Highlights Faith-Based Initiative at Leadership Conference

...You know, one of the tests of character for America is how we treat the weakest of our citizens. Interesting test, isn't it? What are we doing in government to help people who need help? Part of the test of government is to understand the limitations of government. Government -- when I think about government, I think about law and justice, I really don't think about love. Government has got to find ways to empower those whose mission is based upon love in order to help those who need love find love in society. That's really what we're here to talk about.

Finding ways to help those who need love find love in society, eh?

I guess that explains Guckart.

No, such a ridiculous statement by Bush deserves a ridiculous response.

I happened to catch this speech. There's normally a lot of vacuousness in Bush's speeches and this one was no exception. There are only a few things he said that are worth commenting on. One was his implication that funding for faith based organizations has been increased.

Since 2003, the administration has increased grants to faith-based organizations by 20 percent. That's a positive development; that's the kind of news that I like to hear, particularly when those faith-based programs are changing America one soul at a time. Last year, 10.3 percent of all federal grants -- those are grants coming out of Washington, those are not formula-based grants to states -- 10 percent of those grants went to faith-based organizations. That's up from 8.1 percent. So I asked Towey, I said, how are we doing? He said, well, the percentage of grants to faith-based programs has grown, and that's good. Ten percent isn't perfect. Ten percent is progress. That means about $2 billion in grants were awarded last year to religious charities. That's a start.

I've been over this before. Basically, Bush's crew are including organizations that don't consider themselves faith based in that total.

There were also two anecdotes given to explain his concern for the rights of faith based organizations:

...the federal government denied a Jewish school in Seattle emergency disaster relief because the school was religious. That's an indication that there's a roadblock. We have a cultural problem when FEMA money -- we're going out to help lessen the effects of a disaster that hurt -- hit, and all of a sudden, the school was denied federal money because of the nature of the school.

...the federal government -- when I came in office, I found out the federal government was threatening to cut off funds for an Iowa homeless shelter. The shelter was receiving money from the federal government, and the shelter was doing good work. The shelter was helping to meet an objective, which was to provide housing for the homeless, but they were threatening to cut off money because the governing board was not sufficiently secular.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but I don't believe him.

Given the rhetoric used to justify repealing the inheritance tax (farmers losing their family farms, when not a single case of it happening can be found), I would like to know which organizations he's talking about. I do not believe it was as cut-and-dried as he said, if anything similar happened at all.

The devil is in the details...which is why he never gives them to you up front.

I figure it should take maybe a couple of hours for the White House to come up with the names and addresses of these mistreated organizations. The records for the organizations should be available for FOIA requests as well.

You see, my concern comes because of Bush's insistence that government has been obstructing these organizations.To my knowledge, the only "obstruction" the government regulations impose is insisting you don't discriminate in hiring. And they've already changed that. So I think it's a good idea to hold Bush's feet to the fire over his incendiary rhetoric.