Oh yeah, make my day. And let's go after the religious right's and the Catholic Church's tax credits next. They can either be churches or they can be Republican party election operatives - it's their choice. But they can't be both and stilll get tax exempt status.
President Bush's re-election campaign is trying to recruit supporters from 1,600 religious congregations in Pennsylvania - a political push that critics said Wednesday could cost churches their tax breaks.
An e-mail from the campaign's Pennsylvania office, obtained by The Associated Press, urges churchgoers to help organize 'Friendly Congregations' where supporters can meet regularly to sign up voters and spread the Bush word.
'I'd like to ask if you would like to serve as a coordinator in your place of worship,' says the e-mail, adorned with the Bush-Cheney logo, from Luke Bernstein, who runs the state campaign's coalitions operation and is a former staffer to Sen. Rick Santorum, the president's Pennsylvania chairman....
The director of a nonpartisan watchdog group called the campaign's church appeal "a breathtakingly sad example of mixing religion and politics."
"I have never in my life seen such a direct campaign to politicize American churches — from any political party or from any candidate for public office," said Rev. Barry W. Lynn of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "By enrolling churches in an election scheme like this, I think the Bush-Cheney campaign is actually endangering those churches' tax exemptions without even the courtesy of telling them that they run a risk."
