Partisans Make Political Points

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 26, 2001 | by Sheila R. Cherry

With John Ashcroft finally confirmed as U.S. attorney general and the Cabinet in place, George W. Bush forges ahead with his agenda as some Democrats fight the president teeth and nail.

Nothing brings out the dark angels of Washington secularism like religion praised sincerely. President George W. Bush's pick for attorney general, devout Christian John Ashcroft, won Senate approval with the support of only eight Democrats after a multifronted nomination battle that would have tested the faith of Job.

The better part of Ashcroft's 90-minute prevote meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus -- none of whom serve in the Senate -- was spent discussing the Democratic group's concerns about Ashcroft's civil-rights record. He was that confident.

The final vote -- which was delayed for a week by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee -- signaled double victories: an impressively established Cabinet less than two weeks into his administration for Bush and, for Democrats, the firing of 42 "message-sending" shots across Bush's bow as a warning against future conservative judicial nominees. Failing to give Ashcroft his blessing was Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who during last November's presidential campaign also denied his religious beliefs might cloud his governance.

Civil libertarians and partisan Democrats meanwhile have been dancing on the head of the Constitution's "establishment clause," which they see as the pin that will prick Bush's ballooning efforts to include faith-based programs in federal funding for welfare and community services. According to Bush, allowing such organizations to compete for federal resources will help to heal the kinds of public needs and hurts that "will only respond to a mentor's touch or a pastor's prayer," as he outlined in his inaugural address.

The First Amendment to the Constitution says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Bush takes the view that discriminating against religious groups that are not the established religion, but which wish to compete to provide social services, is a violation of the "free-exercise clause." This view has become so popular that, in 1999, former vice president Al Gore assured Salvation Army officials that when faith-and values-based organizations partner with government "they have created programs and organizations that have woven a resilient web of life support under the most helpless among us."

Yet, as he acted to correct government discrimination against the religious providers of social services, President Bush saw a band of constitutional lawyers coming after him. What initiated this was Bush's signing of Executive Order 13199 establishing a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (see "Bush Embraces Charitable Choice," p. 22).

Last week, the chorus of critics howling against Bush's school-voucher proposals, long attacked as an effort federally to fund religious schools, warned that the wages of sin from his school-accountability effort to defund those that fail to educate would be unemployment among the teachers in failed schools. This week, the president's detractors again withheld their compassion from the receivers, with the usual suspects continuing to wail.

"What the government funds, it always regulates," advised the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, now speaking not for People for the American Way but as executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "Once churches, temples, mosques and synagogues are being financed by the public, some of their freedom will be placed in jeopardy by the almost certain regulation to follow," the group's Website warned. Lynn is a reliable lefty who hoots against the religious right when it exercises its independence to complain about the government bias of the mainline liberal denominations.

Officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) meanwhile remind the skeptics that the federal government already knows how important partnerships with faith-based organizations can be. USAID Administrator J. Brady Anderson noted in a written statement in January, "I think we have made progress during my tenure in expanding our partnership with these organizations, whose work is critical to meeting the basic needs of millions around the world less fortunate than ourselves."

Nor have government tax-exemptions impeded the compensation and hiring freedoms of the faith-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Days after being forced to admit having fathered a child with a PUSH employee, the group's leader, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, took a 72-hour sabbatical to reflect and contemplate his remorse. A Rainbow/PUSH citizen-education fund reportedly facilitated a coast-to-coast relocation for the aide.

Cheered back into action by his forgiving flock, Jackson returned and promptly showed his own forgiveness by hiring Democratic former congressman Mel Reynolds, whose sentence for campaign corruption was commuted during an 11th-hour act of benevolence by Bill Clinton. Along with the federal corruption charges, a government sting operation uncovered that Reynolds had been carrying on an illicit affair with a 16-year-old campaign worker. Investigators also caught Reynolds on tape expressing his desire to include a possibly fictional 15-year-old Catholic-school girlfriend in a menage a trois. Reynolds reportedly will be Rainbow/PUSH's advocate for prison reform.