Why Bush is a bad president

There are a number of reasons why I dislike GW Bush:

1. Faith Based initiaves

The justification for this legislation is that it is unfair for faith-based institutions to be excluded from receiving federal funding for charitable work. Provisionally I can agree with this. Provided that a religious institution can provide a secular charitable service, there's no reason that they shouldn't receive federal funding just as any other charity.

The way I would expect a system like this to work is as follows: A government initiative is spear headed to build something, say a homeless shelter. The government send out a request for bid to various charities. In this request they describe what they want, and the charity tells them how much money they would need to do that. The organization that comes back with the lowest number gets to build the shelter.

However, that's not how Bush's system works. Under the Bush system, a certain amount of federal funding is reserved for faith-based charities. Then faith-based institutions can apply for a chunk of that money for their various secular projects. Bush even provides them with a healthy guide to secularizing their project just enough to allow federal funding.

This is tantamount to state-sponsored religion. It is in direct conflict with the First amendment.

2. Sanctity of Marriage

It is not the provision of the government to write laws enforcing a particular view of morality that is currently popular.

3. Abortion

Abortion is a medical procedure of questionable moral value. But it is not the provision of government to legislate medical practices, nor is it the provision of government to legislate morality.

However, as much as I dislike Bush, some of the popular rallying cries against him just don't make sense to me.

People like to blame Bush for the things that have gone wrong with the war in Iraq. That's silly. Bush is not a president who micro-manages. He asks his generals to do something and provides them with what they ask for to do it. If things do not go well, he cannot be faulted for trusting the military to do their job.

People also like to say that the war was unjustified. This displays an ignorance of world events that is amazing to me. The UN balked at endorsing a war because some of their charter members were getting cheap oil. Meanwhile Iraq was urinating all over any number of treaties. Iraq might not have been the nest of terrorists intelligence reports made it out to be. But it did commit numerous of crimes in the international arena, any of which was adequate grounds for war.

To me, Bush seems to be a well-meaning idiot who is trying to do the best he can. However his idea of government is distinctly unconstitutional, and I think it will take the courts many years to repair the damage his administration has incurred on our body of laws. The government should not and can not legislate morality.