This piece in the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) from Jim Towey, President Bush's former Director of the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, reveals the very different way in which President Obama is using the network of preachers that office utilizes to "serve the poor:"

I can tell you two things that would have happened immediately. First, President Bush would have fired me-and rightly so-for trying to politicize his faith-based office. Second, the American media would have chased me into the foxhole Saddam Hussein had vacated.

Yet on Tuesday President Obama and his director of faith-based initiatives convened exactly such a meeting to try to control political damage from the unpopular health-care law. "Get out there and spread the word," Politico.com reported the president as saying on a conference call with leaders of faith-based and community groups. "I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what's now available to them."

Since then, there's been nary a peep from the press.

According to the White House website, the faith-based office exists "to more effectively serve Americans in need." I guess that now means Americans in need of Democratic talking points on health care. Do we really want taxpayer-funded bureaucrats mobilizing ministers to go out to all the neighborhoods and spread the good news of universal coverage?