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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (755441)	12/1/2006 3:21:28 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 769670

I read that the Bush administration has already moved to block declassification of his activities.

To: pompsander who wrote (755441)	12/1/2006 4:18:39 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Obama's invitation to church causes stir Evangelical pastor defends senator's address at AIDS summit By SEEMA MEHTA Los Angeles Times Dec. 1, 2006, 1:13AM chron.com The friendship was unusual from the start. Rick Warren was the conservative white pastor of a 20,000-member evangelical church in Orange County, Calif. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was a liberal black politician and a rising star in the Democratic Party. After meeting in Washington, D.C., in January, they started calling regularly. When Obama was writing his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope, he asked Warren, himself a best-selling author, to review the chapter on faith. As Warren planned his second international conference on AIDS at his Saddleback Church, he asked Obama to address the group during a session today titled We Must Work Together. Some evangelicals had criticized Warren for his approach toward AIDS, which included working with gays. But the speech by the pro-choice potential presidential contender has drawn renewed vitriol from conservative Christian radio hosts and pundits, as well as some evangelical preachers. "Why would Warren marry the moral equivalency of his pulpit — a sacred piece of honor in evangelical traditions — to the inhumane, sick and sinister evil that Obama has worked for as a legislator?" wrote radio host Kevin McCullough. Saddleback Church responded to the criticism with a statement this week defending Obama's appearance but also noting Warren's disapproval of some of his political beliefs. "Let it be made very clear that Pastor Warren and Saddleback Church completely disagree with Obama's views on abortion and other positions he has taken, and have told him so in a public meeting on Capitol Hill," the statement said. "Our goal has been to put people together who normally won't even speak to each other. We do not expect all participants in the Summit discussion to agree with all of our Evangelical beliefs. However, the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by Evangelicals alone." But the evangelicals' foray into AIDS work is relatively recent. According to religious scholars, they were among the loudest voices insisting AIDS was God's punishment for gays' behavior after the disease emerged in 1981. They remain slow to respond to the pandemic because of the disease's links to homosexuality and promiscuity, all prohibited by their interpretation of Bible. "This is a touchy subject for evangelicals," said John C. Green, a professor of religion and politics at the University of Akron and co-author of Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches From the Front. The conference "really is a departure (but) you'll probably find a lot of the ambivalence really hasn't gone away." Rick Warren's wife, Kay, agrees that AIDS has been difficult to broach. "Evangelicals have been really afraid," she said. "They don't want to talk about condoms. They don't want to talk about HIV because that means having to talk about sex. We want to break that kind of silence."