Bush's faith-based chief: Toning it down

by Mark Silva

President Bush, who campaigned with promises to "rally the armies of compassion,'' has pointed with pride to his ability to steer federal funding to "faith-based'' organizations with a mission of social service - more than $2 billion a year in federal funding has gone to their efforts.

A series of directors also have passed through the president's Office of Faith-Based and Community initiatives, with the newest and fourth leader of the president's cause arriving with only months left in the term: He is Jedd Medefind. And, as our colleague at Countdown to Crawford reports, he has had some pointed things to say about the political oppostion:

Before arriving in Washington, the former aide to a California assemblyman wrote a series of essays accusing liberals of "moral blindness" and equating protection of California's Headwaters Forest with "public ownership of assets in the former Soviet Union."

He penned numerous speeches and op-ed contributions, Countdown's Jim Gerstenzang notes, which outlined "a particularly conservative bent. He accused liberals of operating with "a profound moral blindness that somehow morphs and distorts all lines between good and evil, ultimately embracing a radical relativism incapable of distinguishing between lawmen and criminals, heroes and villains."

In another, Medefind attacked cities "that promote one sort of morality by closing public roads for transvestite marches, hanging gay pride flags, and funding homosexual art displays" but "deny funds for Boy Scout public service campaigns."

Now, much of his writing has been pulled from a Web-site which once featured it - the source of the Jungle-Jim photograph of the new faith-based director featured here.

The political orientation of the new director marks a distinct turn from the views of the man who served as director longer than any, the second to run the office, serving about four years and overlapping the first and second terms of the presidnet - Jim Towey, a devout Catholic who served under the tutelage of Mother Teresa and left to become president of the Beneditine monk-run St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania. He's a Democrat.

Medefind came to Washington about two years ago and worked at the Department of Labor's faith-based office. Before that, he was chief of staff to Tim Leslie, a Republican member of the California Assembly.

At one point, his essays were available at the "Four Souls'' Website.

The L.A. Times' Gerstenzang tells us that Americans United for Separation of Church and State, skeptical about the faith-based office at the White House since its creation in 2001, managed to retrieve some of Medefind's postings through an archival search.

A White House spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore, said: "Earlier in his career, this Web-site was used to promote some of Jedd's work. It's my understanding that most of his work was taken off this website over two years ago.'' That would have been about the time he came to work for the Bush administration, Countdown notes.