corrente

Thank God for The New Yorker! Hendrik Hertzberg writes:

This project goes beyond the frequent use of evangelical code words in [Bush's] speeches; beyond the shocking and impious suggestion, more than once voiced in the President’s approving presence, that [H]e was chosen for [H]is position by God Himself; beyond the insistence on appointing judges of extreme Christian-right views to the federal bench; beyond the religiously motivated push to chip away wherever possible at the reproductive freedom of women. It also includes money, in the millions and billions. The money is both withheld and disbursed: withheld from international family-planning efforts, from domestic contraceptive education, and from scientific research deemed inconsistent with religious fundamentalism; disbursed to “abstinence-based” sex-education programs, to church-run “marriage initiatives,” and, via vouchers, to drug-treatment and other social-service programs based on religion. Though Congress has declined to enact the bulk of the President’s “faith-based initiatives,” the Administration has found a way,, via executive orders and through bureaucratic novelties like the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Compassion Capital Fund. “The federal government now allows faith-based groups to compete for billions of dollars in social-service funding, without being forced to change their identity and their mission,” [Bush] boasted a couple of weeks ago, in a commencement address at a Lutheran college in Mequon, Wisconsin. He did not mention that “their identity and their mission”—their principal purpose, their raison d’être—is often religious proselytization.
(via The New Yorker)

So, Hendrick, what's your point?

One can only hope that the poisoned chalice of Federal funding, filled with your and my billions, will cause the Jeebofascists who drink from it to become as corrupt and Godless as the rest of us. Uh, what's that you say?

UPDATE Here's a vivid description of Inerrant Boy pandering to the theocrats:

"But I do believe that groups should be allowed to access social service grants so long as they don't proselytize or exclude somebody simply because they don't share a certain faith," he said. "In other words, there's a way to accomplish the separation of church and state and at the same time accomplish the social objective of having America become a hopeful place and loving place," Bush said to loud applause and shouts of "Amen."
(via WaPo)

So, these guys where shouting "Amen" for our Constitutional system? No. They recognized Bush's pious nod to "the separation of church and state" for what it was: hypocrisy. What do they care about? The money. When they have it, they'll be able to proselytize all they want.