President Bush spoke bluntly of his battles with substance abuse during a visit yesterday to a Baltimore job-placement program that has received the kind of federal faith-based funding he wants to boost, reports the Baltimore Sun. “Addiction is hard to overcome,” Bush said at the Jericho program, which helps former prisoners lead productive lives. “As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life. [] I understand that sometimes you can find the inspiration from a higher power to solve an addiction problem.”
Bush was in Baltimore to mark the seventh anniversary of an executive order creating the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Jericho get $660,000 a year from the Department of Labor’s Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative. Bush met for nearly an hour with 11 ex-cons, telling them about the “commonality” they shared by turning to church-based organizations to overcome problems. Despite the achievements of groups like Jericho, the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, which educates on the value of church-state separation, said called Bush’s initiative a “colossal failure.”
Link: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/politics/bal-md.bush30jan30,0,1391475.story