An Obama Disappointment

Okay, given that headline, I don't want anyone to take up the idea that I in any way regret my vote in 2008. Obama would have to do something egregiously evil, like stomping puppies on live television, before I would say that I shoulda voted for Grampaw McDrooly and Sister Lipstick Pitbull...

That said, his whole handling of the Faith Based Initiative process started by his Magic Christian predecessor has stuck in my craw for over a year now.

As Rev Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (full disclosure: I am a member of AU and chapter leader, and I sit on the National Advisory Council), wrote on the Huffington Post today:

When Obama was a candidate in the summer of 2008, he announced his vision for a dramatically revised "faith-based" initiative. And before Obama took office, Americans United and numerous other organizations presented his transition team with a concrete set of changes that could have solved all of the problems Bush had created.
Instead of moving on those changes, Obama created his Advisory Council, a body made up mostly of religious leaders. He tasked this entity with, among other things, looking at an array of legal and policy questions. In the meantime, the President did not change a single rule from the previous administration. This Bush-era regimen has since governed the distribution of billions in social service funding. In effect, the creation of the Council has had the effect, intended or otherwise, of perpetuating a deeply harmful status quo.

Read the whole thing. It's an eye-opening look into some of the workings of the Obama Administration and its approach to many of things that those of us out here in The Real World are truly concerned about.