I would have to question whether I could continue supporting him for President.

The new partnership will not endanger the separation of church and state, so long as a few basic principles are followed. First, if an organization gets a federal grant, it will not be permitted to use that grant money to proselytize to the people it serves, and the group will forbidden to discriminate against them on the basis of their religion. And groups will be required to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws in their hiring practices--including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

FISA renewed.  Iraq drags on.  Iran IS a threat.  Maybe privatize social security.  No universal health care.  No repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.  Energy policy that focuses on nuclear energy and coal.  And now (maybe) we'll keep on giving tax dollars to religious groups that hire and fire based on faith.

This is yet another reason why I will not only not ride the Unity Pony, I'm thinking of taking a shot at it.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush's commitment to the cause, said Obama's position on hiring has the potential to be a major "Sister Souljah moment" for his campaign.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush's commitment to the cause, said Obama's position on hiring has the potential to be a major "Sister Souljah moment" for his campaign.

Lovely, just lovely. The idea of the "Sister Souljah moment" was that it was just one event - a moment - not a whole campaign.

Yech! no wonder I'm an independent.  At least the Democrats would FIGHT McCain on this.

This is what happens when no one challenges a candidate who says one thing to one group and something completely different to another.

This is what happens when the powers-that-be in the party allow their visions of vast oceans of cash to obscure the emptiness of the candidate.

I think this is going to be a deal-breaker for a lot of people.  It's going to - pardon the expression - resurrect all of Obama's connections to people like Jeremiah Wright, which will peel off even more support.

I don't care how this gets "explained."  I don't want to hear a lot of talk about how this is part of "reaching out" to the faithful.  

Who is this man?  Is he trying to out-Republican the Republicans so that the landscape is so blurred people will be bamboozled into voting for him?  And then what?  What the heck is this man going to do if he is elected?

I think that is a serious question because while this hiring and firing question may really piss off the Dem base, it would be welcomed in the most extreme religious circles - so it would help Obama with some in McCain's base.

So who benefits from an erroneous report like this one?

The entire program has been shown to be a dismal failure.  It's unConstitutional on it's face, whether you draw in the hiring practices or not.  I am a Unitarian, the federal government is taking my hard earned money and giving it to Christians--a faith I do not subscribe to or believe in.  It's unConstitutional.  

Barack Obama says he teaches Constitutional Law, yet he makes this declaration to pander for votes from Republicans.  It is unconscionable.  We all skewered Bush for this, so Democrats had better take Obama to task for it as well.

I am not enamored of faith-based initiatives unless the government is out of the picture altogether.  If churches/religious institutions want to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless and counsel the sick, let them do that with private contributions.

Instead he wants to expand it.

I know he panders to the extreme, but the problem is that his thin record makes it hard to judge what he would and would not do. Therefore, I will have to assume the worst in this case.

I don't care about the clarification about hiring and firing. Faith-based organizations can do anything they want, with their own money. Hell, they are already getting sponsored heavily, because they pay no taxes.

OK that's it for me. Who do I vote for now?

Is Ralph Nader still running?
How about Pat Paulson? Still alive?
What about that Pig that ran in the sixties?

I see that a McCain administration would be a disaster of major proportions.
And an Obama presidency would merely be spectacularly disappointing.  Aaarghh...

What Obama has done is shown organizations that wouldn't have considered doing it EXACTLY how to get away with it.

If you don't think this will happen, or has happened already, then there really is no point in discussing it.

Do we believe that majorities in limited-resource communities will not use this to marginalize and exclude minorities within the local social-service ecosystem?

But the net effect is to gut public schools and public social services. Instead of working on ways to make the things government should be doing more effective, we privatize and subcontract these public functions to religious organizations.

Obama has requested 4-5 million for faith-based programs... 2.3 million of that for religious schools.  For me, this violates separation of church and state.

I, also, have doubts about Obama's willingness to support discrimination issues as he voted for Thomas B Griffith.  This is one of several votes that I absolutely disagreed with.

Leahy on Griffith

NOW on Griffith

Obama's vote

Why choose to talk about faith-based initiatives and patriotism now?

I have a real problem with the whole faith-based initiatives thing to begin with, but I think the priorities thing is bugging me even more.

supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities,

why shouldn't a religious institution that is NOT using taxpayer funds, not hire or fire based on people sharing those same religious beliefs?

thats like saying a catholic church must hire Hindu staff or face discrimination charges,

seriously you have a problem with regigous institutions hiring and firing based on whether people actually share the same faith as that religious institution?

and obvious then since they made the effort to clarify NON-TAXPAYER. Obama doesn't support this if they use Taxpayer dollars.

However, as someone who is quite sympathetic to religion in general, but who is ALSO vehemently opposed to union between church and state (because it's just as bad for the religion), I find this plan to continue the Bush program very disapointing.

Not suprised at the general trend though. He's been quite clear he wants to generate a religious wing inside the democratic party. I can even see it being successful politically if done in the right way.

(Indeed, the current "flip flop" meme is overstated: He's shifted on a number of issues over his career, but many of the ones he's now getting hit for are years old.)

are we now going to get a list of all these items, or is it going to be left to the republicans (and their 527's) to call him out?

the whole "faith based" thing was a sop to the religious right, with no economic evidence to support it whatever. it should be shut down immediately, as it's clearly violative of the church/state separation required by 1A.

that sen. obama (or clinton, for that matter) would seek to expand it is problematic on its face. i would like to see some concrete evidence, supporting tben's assertion that sen. clinton maintains the same posture on this issue as sen. obama has publicly stated.

Bush initiated the programs, and now they're an established, expected system of funding for religious organizations.  If you want to do something to stop them, have at it, but it's naïve to criticize any Dem using these programs to garner votes.  More than thirty states have their own faith based initiative programs already.  

Yes, the more we fund good social programs through religious organizations, the more we undermine the separation of church and state.  Churches beef up their communications channels (mailing lists, computers, the works) with tax money while using their own money for their proselytizing and political work, much of which is anathema to our values and issues.  (e.g. the Catholic Church fighting equal rights for gays.)   They can easily show that the money that came in went to a project that it was intended for, and still use the tax money to backfill their organization.  When you pay someone's salary to coordinate a program, that doesn't stop them from spending their time doing whatever else the organization wants done.  Since the initiatives fund good work for society, they're not going to be scrutinized on the level that needed to stop or prevent abuses.  Unfortunately, they also out compete other not for profit organizations because church groups are also funded through regular donations, other grants, etc.  

Distributed allocation of tax money makes it harder to prove churches use the money for purposes we don't want them to, and if you catch them, so what, it's easy to fire (or move) an employee that broke the rules and just continue.  

inaccurately reported what the anonymous source told them?

or

that the anonymous source gave them inaccurate information.

In scenario 1, the AP would have gotten it wrong.
In scenario 2, the anonymous source got it wrong, but the AP accurately reported what the anonymous source said.

But imagine being this woman. She'd been thrown out of her apartment by an abusive partner. She had the choice of lying about who she was or spending the night in the cold. And when she was honest about what happened to her and who she was, they denied her a bed because they were "uncomfortable" with her.