Comments on: The Gospel According to Barack

By: Gary Aknos [Visitor]

Gary Aknos [Visitor] — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:42:14 +0000

Violation of church and state?

Check out full coverage of this at
http://www.ucctruths.com/

And send an email to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (americansunited@au.org) demanding that the UCC lose it’s 501(3(c) tax exempt status because:

From the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State perspective, a political speaker at a religious event has one of two distinct roles: Either they are 1) speaking as a candidate for office or 2) speaking as a non-candidate. If Obama was speaking as a non-candidate (since he was supposedly invited over a year ago before he declared) then his reference to campaign pledges if elected to office clearly violates AU’s standard for separation. If he was speaking as a candidate, AU’s standards call for equal access by the other candidates for the same office… which didn’t appear to happen. In either case, his speeches before the Iowa Conference and the General Synod were a violation of separation by AU’s own standards.

From the UCC perspective, there should be no confusion as they publicly advocate for the same rules on separation as AU. Furthermore, UCC leaders and conference ministers understood Obama’s status as a declared candidate for some time and, by virtue of their reporting on the Iowa speech a week earlier, also understood that Obama’s address would be a campaign speech. The UCC clearly and knowingly violated AU’s standard for separation.

By: Bubblehead [Visitor]

Bubblehead [Visitor] — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 04:16:54 +0000

I went ahead and E-mailed the Congressman to find out what he had to hide; I found out that he now only accepts E-mails from people in the 1st District, so you wouldn’t be able to send him one anyway. (Interestingly, I note that your Congressman doesn’t restrict is incoming communications; I wonder why Rep. Sali felt the need to do so?)

I’ll let you know what I hear from him — if anything.

By: Bubblehead [Visitor]

Bubblehead [Visitor] — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:43:06 +0000

His staff is actually pretty experienced — they seem to be D.C. professionals, and not Idahoans. My guess is he’s planning on asking for earmarks like everyone else, but he doesn’t want to be embarrassed when not many of them come through because he has so little actual power in Congress. I’d write him to ask, like you suggested earlier, but he doesn’t respond to me. Maybe you could ask him.

By: Adam Graham [Member]

Adam Graham [Member] — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:57:52 +0000

Bill Sali does walk the walk. Look at his voting record. His staff is new and unfortunately, this wasn’t reported as was the case with the vast majority of Congress. Had the Majority actually done its job, this would be a moot point. I would hope the Congressman would produce these at some point.

By: Bubblehead [Visitor]

Bubblehead [Visitor] — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 01:49:19 +0000

So I notice Congressman Sali is among those who didn’t respond to the request to list their earmarks: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/21/earmarks/
So was his staff just incompetent, or does he just talk the talk and not walk the walk?