I just say no against any faith based initiatives, and special envoys to the Vatican.

to me why there should be a single penny of taxpayer's money used to renovate a place of worship??? I must be missing something here......

we just got rid of one jesus freak now we got another one! hows that for irony? hope biden dont use the office intercom like cheny did to bush and have bidden tell obama god wants him to invade iran!

is looking a bit dated. Hope the moolah comes soon.

I couldn't care less if people worship Jesus, Elvis or Odin- Just lets keep the government out of the religion buisness.
You worship your god, I choose to worship no god.

This is an example of Obama trying to reach out to the right wing relgious nuts-
Bad idea.

Set aside one room in a govt office somewhere in DC, put your faith-based people in it and tell em to pray for success in various areas as much as they like.

Edit: As far as their compensation goes, tell them you're praying for them

"Because religious belief or non-belief is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society."

["Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government", Section 46: Freedom of Religion]

Given his position on FISA, retaining "unitary executive" privileges for himself and keeping and expanding the so-called faith-based initiatives scam, Obama has shown pretty poor regard for the Constitution. This is odd coming from a constitutional scholar.

Regardless what a compromised Supreme Court says, this is unConstitutional, and the argument demonstrating it so is simple: It's one thing to offer tax refunds for anybody wishing to donate their own money to whatever faith-based enterprise they wish. It is entirely voluntary, a matter purely of their own choice. So long as their religious entity remains apolitical, there's no big problem granting them tax exempt status. But when, say, my tax dollars are taken, without my consent and given to a religious organization that I cannot or will not support - for whatever reasons of my own that I do not need to justify to anybody, and when it is a given that I must pay taxes or face prison and the and forfeiture of all of my assets, the situation now becomes coercive. I am given no choice in the matter; I am compelled against my will to support religion. The State, through its power to deny my my freedom and wealth (such as it is...) is imposing religion on me, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it short of breaking the law by refusing to pay taxes. By this point alone, the "Faith-Based Initiatives" violates the Constitution, in that it is a coercive imposition of support/participation in religion by the government which wields irresistable power.

Then, to to rub salt in the wound, it represents an unpardonable act of irresponsibility by government on two counts. The first is that it allows discrimination by recipients of money to make hiring and dispersal decisions based on creed, religion, race, ethnicity and so on. The government becomes derilict in its duty to assure fairness and equal opportunity. Second, if any social need in society is so great that it actually requires public funds to correct, it is then mandatory that that process take place directly by and under the authority of competent government agencies. If it is important enough to warrant public funds, it is also too important to entrust to those who are not required to satisfy fiduciary obligations to the People, are not obliged to obey labor laws, fair labor standards, an so on. It is again an irresponsible abdication, that reduces the entire thing to one more privatization scam that pillages the People's treasure into private hands which have no right or business being involved in the People's business in the first place.

More, there is no way that this money is going to be equitably distributed. Christian groups, including those that are bigoted, intolerant and anti-social, will get the lion's share. Then will come Jewish Charities. How much of the pie goes to Islamic charities? How many of those Islamic charities will be denied because some Islamophobe has decided that you can't give money to anything Islamic because, as everybody in the Islamophobe's church knows...they're all terrorists set on imposing sharia on America? Hindus? Seiks? Buddists? Baha'is (who wouldn't accept money even if it was offered to them)? You can bet that faiths like Wiccans or satanists won't get anything, nor will atheists. The point here is that there will be those who get and those who don't. And, that gives the entire scam more of a flavor of the state imposing specific religion and specific religious values on society. The State favors Christianity, so all the tax payers are compelled to support it. Coercive, state-imposed religion. That's intolerable.

What may be the most hurtful thing about this is that this is nothing more than a way to buy votes. Nothing more. That those who are sworn to defend and protect the Constitution are instead willing to trash the Constitution, merely in order to curry political favor, to barter away our protections for such a cheap and worthless bauble, is a disgusting betrayal of the public trust. It is also a betrayal of their duties to their office. Shame.

Thus far, Obama hasn't shown us jack on his constitutional chops. Every opportunity he has had, he's made the wrong choice.

I'm very dissapointed and more than a little ashamed of his performance in this area. He damn well should, and does, know better.

This whole scam needs to be eliminated, and Obama should smack himself on the head for even having considered it.

Wouldn't needing money for a faith-based initiative kinda deny the faith part?

Thank You!

It was always gonna be impossible to dislodge 'em, even if it were what the Prez desired.

And it never was...

I warned about this shit back when he visited Borkebakc Chapel, and ev en before, on the primary trail...

"...civil rights and civil liberties advocates were disappointed to see that Obama left completely untouched five Bush-era executive orders."

They are disappointed because they didn't care what Obama was actually saying and doing during the campaign. They were feverish. Too feverish to care about issues involving civil liberties. So now, Obama is being Obama. And they're "disappointed". What fools. Barnum was right.