Praise Congress!

Or at least Representative Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He has added to an existing bill a measure to allow churches to make political endorsements without losing tax exempt status.

Another example of if at first you don't succeed, change the law.

Last week, an effort by the campaign to enlist members of "friendly congregations" in distributing campaign information at their places of worship came to light in the form of a message e-mailed to some members of the clergy and other people in Pennsylvania, and legal experts warned that any implicit endorsement of one candidate over another could jeopardize a religious group's tax-exempt status.

How do the Republicans spin it their way? Here's how:

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, called Mr. Lynn's view extreme.

"He would like to exclude people of faith from participating in America's civic life and participating in the political process," Mr. Schmidt said. "That is just fundamentally wrong. The Bush campaign has an inclusive message. The campaign wants people of faith to participate in the political process."

Um, I'm not a Constitutional scholar or anything, but I believe people of faith can participate in "America's civic life" anytime they want. They can vote, they can talk about issues that the church supports, they can even engage in voter registration drives. They just cannot specifically endorse or oppose a candidate from a tax exempt pulpit.

Here's another take:

In an interview yesterday, Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said his denomination also supported efforts to lift the restrictions.

"We don't think that churches should be endorsing candidates,'' Dr. Land said, "but that should be a decision made by the churches, not by the government.''

The Safe Harbor for Churches provision is less sweeping than previous proposals to change the rules. It would greatly reduce the tax penalties for either one or two deliberate political endorsements in a calendar year and would also allow a church to make as many as three "unintentional" political endorsements in a calendar year without penalty. It does not define "unintentional.''

Ah, three sins are now okay it seems. It doesn't seem that there are more than three elections in a year. My question is if my church endorses John Kerry next Sunday, can they then do all they can to get him elected and still only count this as one strike? That would be a lot of money dedicated to his campaign.

*ENDNOTE* I must admit I was a little confused as to why tax exempts should be restricted from campaigning, so I took to the search engine and found this document from Americans for the Separation of Church and State. Some points they make:

-Tax-exempt groups are supposed to work for the public good, not spend their time and money trying to elect or defeat candidates.

-A large church, or a number of churches working together, could form a political
machine. Religious groups could select candidates and support their campaigns. This would inevitably allow the largest denomination in each community to dominate political life.

-Political parties and candidates could give generous sums of money
to houses of worship, write off the donations as tax-deductible, then have the churches do political work on their behalf, essentially making churches part of a money-laundering scheme.