The Associated Press is reporting that Barack Obama has today announced that he is “expanding” the faith based initiatives program that George W. Bush started during his tenure. Obama now intends to offer cash support to organizations “no matter their religious or political beliefs.”

In other words, now faith based funding will go to groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now), the group that has for the last decade or so been involved in massive voter fraud all across the country.

The question becomes, how is this still a “faith based” program? Isn’t it now just an average everyday pork plan that covers just any old community organization that the government wants to fund? This change would be like taking funding for the beef industry and covering pork, chicken and fish producers too. In other words, it wouldn’t be the beef industry plan anymore.

Furthermore, don’t groups like ACORN already get funding to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars from other programs? The answer to that is, of course, yes. So, are we now apparently to expect that such groups have had a new spigot opened up for funding from the federal government? We must now realize that ACORN’s funding will grow exponentially from this whole new avenue of funding.

Naturally, Obama is calling this a “crisis” effort. As the AP says, Obama “said in this time of economic crisis, it was proper for the government to be providing help to Americans.” It’s all an emergency, you see.

Still, it is interesting that Obama has decided to keep this faith based initiative idea at all. His left constituency has railed against Bush’s evil mixing of religion and government for the past 8 years. Remember how often they called Bush a “religious zealot”? Yet, here is The One keeping the same program.

Before signing the measure, Obama told the annual National Prayer Breakfast the program would not show favoritism to any religious group, and would adhere to a strict separation of church and state.

Not “showing favoritism” means that he will continue to fund religious groups, the very thing his base has railed against.

So the question is, will the DailyKos set excoriate Obama for mixing politics and religion just like Bush did? Or does the Obammessiah get another pass from the hypocrites on the left?