Tom writes:

> At 04:57 PM 7/2/2004, HP Fan wrote:
>  >In Related thought: The Bush administration has requested copies of
rosters
>  >from every church in the country: names, addresses, phone, and
contribution
>  >history.
>
>  This is simply not true.

As Tom says, it's not true -- but a variant of it is. The Bush Administration
doesn't so much want to spy on churchgoers as it wants to prey on them. The
Bush re-election people see churchgoers as their last reliable audience.

From today's Reuters' newswire:

========================================

Updated: 07:27 AM EDT
Bush Seeks Church Membership Data
By David Morgan, Reuters

WASHINGTON (July 1) - President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious
conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn
over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil
libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties"
and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church
congregations.

A copy of the guide directs religious volunteers to send church directories
to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by
the Bush campaign and talk to clergy about holding voter registration drives.

The document, distributed to campaign coordinators across the country earlier
this year, also recommends that volunteers distribute voter guides in church
and use Sunday service programs for get-out-the-vote drives.

"We expect this election to be potentially as close as 2000, so every vote
counts and it's important to reach out to every single supporter of President
Bush," campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

But the Rev. Richard Land, who deals with ethics and religious liberty issues
for the Southern Baptist Convention, a key Bush constituency, said he was
"appalled."

"First of all, I would not want my church directories being used that way,"
he said, predicting failure for the Bush plan.

The conservative Protestant denomination, whose 16 million members strongly
backed Bush in 2000, held regular drives that encouraged church-goers to "vote
their values," said Land.

"But it's one thing for us to do that. It's a totally different thing for a
partisan campaign to come in and try to organize a church. A lot of pastors are
going to say: 'Wait a minute, bub'," he added.

The guide surfaced as a spate of opinion polls showed Bush's reelection
campaign facing a tough battle.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed Bush running neck-and-neck with
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry among registered voters, 47 percent of
whom said they now believed the president had misled Americans about the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Bush campaign has also been spending heavily on television ads, only to
see the president's approval ratings slump to new lows.

Stanzel said the campaign ended the month of June with $64 million on hand.
He had no figures on how much Bush has raised in June. At the end of May, Bush
had raised $213.4 million and spent all but $63 million.

The latest effort to marshal religious support also drew fire from civil
liberties activists concerned about the constitutional separation of church and
state.

"Any coordination between the Bush campaign and church leaders would clearly
be illegal," said a statement from the activist group Americans United for
Separation of Church and State.

07/01/04 19:30 ET

=======================================

Wirt Atmar

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