"Oceania Was Always At War With Eurasia" of the Day

When campaigning for President, Barack Obama complained that President Bush's "faith-based initiative" had "a partisan ax to grind." He vowed to limit such funds to "programs that actually work."

So what does last-month's report of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships propose? Among other things (page 56):

Energy Efficiency and Green Jobs:

Recommendation 1: Form an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and assign Faith- and Community-Based Liaisons to EPA regional offices.

Recommendation 2: The Administration should provide guidance to State and local governments on how to partner with faith-based and nonprofit organizations to retrofit and green buildings.

Recommendation 3: Encourage the Department of Labor, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other Federal agencies to work cooperatively with faith-based and neighborhood organizations to ensure that low-income communities and workers with barriers to employment are targeted when creating green job training programs.

Environmental Education and Communications:

Recommendation 4: The Administration should sponsor a public educational campaign on the environment, utilizing a centralized Website, such as Environment.gov.

Recommendation 5: The White House should sponsor regional conferences to mobilize faith- and community-based organizations to promote environment sustainability and energy efficiency.

Sustainable, Community Gardening and Small-Scale Agriculture:

Recommendation 6: Support partnerships and collaboration for sustainable, community gardening and small-scale agriculture.

As usual for the President, this is less post-partisan, more presuming progressive policies are universal and pushing them with taxpayer dollars. As the Weekly Standard's Meghan Clyne observes:

Perhaps it’s only reasonable that global-warming activists would turn to God for help as the scientific case for their position collapses. As if Climategate had never happened, the council report asserts [page viii] with blind faith: "Adequately addressing global climate change--through better and more extensive partnerships with nonprofits and other efforts--will result, for example, in less migration, fewer refugee crises, and greater food security." The swollen Red Sea will part, the waters of Noah’s greenhouse-gas-fueled flood will recede, and the meek shall inherit the earth. All it takes is a little federal infiltration of America’s houses of worship.