Crossposted from SmokeyMonkey.org.
I have a new plan to balance the budget: get Congress to obey the Constitution. First, if they had not abrogated their power to declare war to an unbalanced, crusading President and his cabal of war-mongers, then we could have saved the country the $245 Billion that has been wasted there. We all know how well that money is being spent, don't we?
Second, by continuing to recognize the First Amendment and its establishment clause, Congress could have saved over a $1 Billion by not illegally distributing money to Christian organizations. This little billion is but a small piece of a huge pie being offered up illegally by the President and his Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI).
There is established a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (White House OFBCI) within the Executive Office of the President that will have lead responsibility in the executive branch to establish policies, priorities, and objectives for the Federal Government's comprehensive effort to enlist, equip, enable, empower, and expand the work of faith-based and other community organizations to the extent permitted by law.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has pursued legal action against at least one such program. InnerChange is an evangelical Christian organization that attempts to rehabilitate prisoners using proselytizing instruction in their religion. In no way, shape, or form can this be explained in a constitutional way.
There can be no doubt that federally funding organizations that do not separate their social services from their religious instruction is a clear violation of the establishment clause. Hell, even Pat Robertson sees constitutional issues with Bush's initiatives.
Under our settled Constitutional law, government may not engage in content discrimination of speech. The same government grants given to Catholics, Protestants, and Jews must also be given to the Hare Krishnas, the Church of Scientology, or Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church--no matter that some may use brainwashing techniques, or that the founder of one claims to be the messiah and another that he was Buddha reincarnated.
As if the simple legality of the initiative wasn't damning enough, the fact is that there is no evidence that faith-based initiatives are any more effective than secular assistance. In the example of the InnerChange prison program, only by skewing numbers does the program so much as break even with a comparison to control groups. (AU.org)
In another example, a study commissioned by the Texas Department of State Health Services suggests that abstinence-based sex education is ineffective at lowering the rates of teen sex. Why would we want to unconstitutionally fund a program that doesn't even address any type of real issue or concern?
Bill Berkowitz has a valid theory: President Bush wants a theocracy!
Bush's "unapologetic religious tone" and his willingness to "speak of being called to the presidency, of a God who rules in the affairs of men, and of the United States owing her origin to Providence," also separate him from recent predecessors.
And the entire Bush crime family is in on it, of course. His brother has been opening faith-based prisons in Florida. How such a thing could ever come to be is beyond me. Should we be running faith-based public schools as well? According to our Constitution, absolutely fucking not!
Gov. Jeb Bush has blessed this prison alliance between church and state and is openly pushing for such ties throughout state government. Critics say the governor is urging outright violation of the Constitution -- and risking a lot based on little more than faith that fewer inmates will backslide if they get religion while locked up.
The Bush cabal is "urging outright violation of the Constitution" in virtually everything they do. With a complicit Congress, is appears there will be nothing done to stop the erosion of our civil liberties.