Obama's Problem with Pastors: Round 2

Well, it turns out Barack Obama may have a problem with pastors. Wright was the most serious misstep in Obama's successful campaign for the Presidency. And Warren is the worst thing Obama has done - inviting Warren to give the inauguration invocation - as President-elect.

The only good news about this is perhaps Obama will learn from these experiences, and not do something similarly damaging when he's actually President, and his decisions have far greater consequences.

As it is, though, this two-for-two, with two very different but reprehensible pastors, should be more than enough to make us see the wisdom of separation of church and state in this country.

Warren sees brothers marrying sisters, polygamy, and adults marrying children as the same as gays getting married (see video below). In a genuinely free society, in which the government does not tell consenting adults what to do, the only business that government should have regarding any of the above is preventing and punishing child abuse.

We're apparently still a way off from that society. Maybe Obama is even doing its cause a favor by keeping it so prominently on the front burner.

My wife and I will still watch the inauguration with pleasure, but not when that bigot gives the invocation.

McCain's Shifting Cone of Silence

I thought McCain did better than Obama in the twin interviews conducted by Rev. Rick Warren in California Saturday. McCain's answers were crisper, more decisive. I recall saying to my wife that McCain seemed ... better prepared.

Rick Warren assured viewers, twice, that McCain had been kept in "a cone of silence" during Obama's portion of the interview. McCain quipped that he had had his ear to the wall, trying to listen. Since the essence of the two interviews was that they contained the same questions - thus allowing an "apples to apples" comparison, as Rev. Warren noted - McCain's not hearing anything of Obama's interview was somewhat crucial.

Today the New York Times reported that McCain's ear was not against any wall, because McCain was not in a room at all. He was in his motorcade for at least half of Obama's interview. It would have been trivially easy for McCain to have gotten word of any or even many of the Reverend's questions.

There is no proof of this (yet). Republicans are claiming this is all Democratic sour grapes, an attempt to account for McCain's surprisingly superior performance.

At very least, the Rev. Warren owes Americans an explanation. If the "cone of silence" he said McCain was in was metaphorical, that certainly wasn't clear in what Rev. Warren said on Saturday. At very least, McCain in a car, in which cell phones easily could have conveyed the substance Warren's questions to Obama, raises questions.

I'm looking forward, more than ever, to the Presidential debates beginning next month, in which we'll know for a fact that both candidates will be hearing all questions at the same time.