The Gist

Obama's Evangelical Push

Two related stories about Obama popped up this morning that are inducing a lot of winces. We'll definitely be getting into these on the show today.

The first is Obama's announcing his intention to expand President Bush's faith-based initiative programs. The campaign is saying it's different, that he's not in favor of substituting government services with faith-based ones. But seriously, why should our tax money be used to help people trade in an addiction to alcohol for an addiction to Jesus? And what about the kind of discrimination we saw with Bush's faith-based programs, where churches with antigay agendas got government money?

The announcement is part of an aggressive push by the Obama campaign to court the so-called more "moderate" evangelical vote.